Wheels Within Wheels (7 page)

My parents naturally approved of these literary ambitions. Yet to have encouraged me too enthusiastically, in the absence of any discernible talent, would have been irresponsible. Fortunately my mother enjoyed nothing more than being a literary critic. Everything she read was dissected and an ill-written book, endured for the sake of the subject matter, made her look quite haggard. An aspiring writer could ask for no more suitable mother and after a tactful interval – never look a gift story in the syntax – my parents’ Christmas and birthday presents would reappear to be torn phrase from phrase. During these sessions I sat beside my mother like the most docile of Victorian daughters, attentively absorbing her every suggestion. This was the one area in which I did not spurn adult advice.

In May 1938 we acquired a motor car. I cannot imagine by what financial conjuring feat my mother managed that, but somehow a brand-new, dark green, four-door Ford Ten appeared – having been paid for before delivery, eccentric as that may seem to a generation reared on
hire-purchase
systems. Motor cars were then a rarity in Lismore, yet ours was no extravagance; for my mother train-travel would have been intolerably troublesome and painful.

Almost every Saturday and Sunday, in all seasons, we motored to the sea. (‘Driving’ seems to have replaced ‘motoring’ only after the second war.) My mother loved to sit in the car for hours with the windows wide open, parked if possible within reach of the flying spray; she was especially partial to midwinter gales. Meanwhile my father would march briskly along beaches or cliff-tops while I did my own thing among rock-pools or sand-dunes. While Tommy was around he usually came with us.

On Saturdays we often paused in Dungarvan, a market-town on the coast, to shop at Miller’s old-fashioned Select Family Grocers. Mr Miller, beaming and bowing, would hurry out to the car to discuss with my mother cheeses and rices and teas and coffees while an assistant, wearing
a half-moon leather apron, hovered in the background ceremoniously bearing samples on a round brass tray. These my mother would closely examine before committing herself to the expenditure of ten or twelve shillings. I sometimes think of this scene as I push my sweaty way through a seething supermarket crowd, beneath the glare of
strip-lighting
, between cliffs of gaudy packages.

Occasionally Mrs Mansfield accompanied us to Dungarvan, but she never shopped at Miller’s and I soon realised that she disapproved of our doing so. When I questioned my mother about this she looked embarrassed – an uncharacteristic reaction to any question of mine – and at once I knew that I had touched on one of the more sordid areas of adult misbehaviour. But she would, I was confident, tell me the truth. Then she said, ‘Mrs Mansfield doesn’t believe in supporting Protestant shops.’

Momentarily I suspected a red herring. ‘But that’s daft!’ I objected. ‘What does a shop’s religion matter?’

‘It doesn’t matter at all,’ said my mother, ‘but many Irish people think it does.’

Suddenly various pennies began to drop; now I understood obscure remarks that had been made in my presence by the Ryans, or by the nuns at school, or by Old Brigid or Tommy’s foster-mother. I felt an overwhelming, angry disgust – perhaps my first step away from orthodox religion. There was no logical reason why I should have recoiled so violently, at the age of eight, from an attitude that had long been accepted as normal by the majority of my compatriots, both Catholic and Protestant. Obviously I comprehended none of the practical or philosophical implications. I only knew that this was something
contemptible
, which should be opposed.

Next morning I reopened the subject at breakfast-time. I was sitting on a stool by the fire in my parents’ bedroom, eating grapefruit, and my mother was still in bed, propped against a pile of pillows, her heavy, glossy, chestnut braids coiled on a pale green bed-jacket and the bible open on her bookrest. (She began each day with a chapter from the New Testament.) Overnight my agitation about religious bigotry in general had been aggravated by my particular grief about the Ryans and Mrs Mansfield and Old Brigid – people to whom I was deeply attached –
being guilty of this evil. I felt threatened. What to make of a world in which some of my most respected adults had been suddenly revealed as wrong-doers? So I asked my mother, ‘Why can’t somebody teach people not to be bigots?’

‘It’s difficult,’ she explained, ‘because bigotry is self-perpetuating.’ (She never believed in tempering her vocabulary to the unlearned lamb.) ‘Bigots are so sure they’re right they don’t even try to see any other point of view. But it’s wrong to blame individuals for being bigoted – that’s just another form of bigotry and sometimes it’s worse because it’s so self-righteous while pretending not to be. Usually people inherit bigotry – it’s a sort of communal disease. So if you hear other children repeating nonsense about all Protestants going to hell, and so forth, don’t lose your temper. Just try to make them realise that such beliefs are unchristian and stupid. Then at least – even if they don’t believe you – they’ll be aware there’s another point of view.’

I have never forgotten this conversation. My mother’s response to my first serious querying of a widely accepted attitude had shown that in certain circumstances nonconformism was not merely allowable but desirable. At once my anxiety evaporated and I was full of happy
self-importance
, seeing my parents and myself as crusaders against the forces of evil.

I cannot recall many conversations or scenes from my first decade, but the few memories I have are very vivid, possibly because they mark emotional or mental advances.

One raw November noon, not long after my discovery of bigotry, I stood waiting for my grandfather outside Trinity College and as I watched the crowds hurrying across College Green I wondered, ‘How important are all those people? Soon they will all be dead. And I’ll be dead. What is a person? Do we really matter? Or do we only think we do? Why are we alive?’ As they formed in my mind I was aware of the enormity of these questions. And I remember a detached, fatalistic acceptance of the fact that even as an adult I was unlikely to find coherent answers. But I was also aware that merely by asking such questions I had acknowledged the mystery at the centre of things and so perhaps had already found as much of the truth as was necessary for me. Oddly, I
made no attempt to try to relate these speculations to the formal religion which was so much a part of my life at that time. They belonged to a category labelled ‘Private Important Thoughts’ – Pits for short – and nothing would have induced me to discuss them with any grown-up. Does every child have, as I had, an image of what adults expect children to be? And do they all courteously preserve this image, outwardly, lest their adults might be discomfited, while inwardly they are becoming something quite different, full of Pits that have nothing to do with Dr Dolittle or stringing conkers? But perhaps there is something more than courtesy behind the dissembling reticence of childhood. A personality is forming, and loving adults are eager to help mould it – while the child is determined to remain in control of his own evolution. Also, nothing is ready to be exposed. Most artists dislike having their incomplete work considered and discussed and this analogy, I think, is valid. The child is incomplete, too, and is constantly experimenting as he seeks his own style of thought and feeling. And all this is going on long before puberty, at an age when many children are expected still to believe in Santa Claus.

Not long after my ninth birthday my grandfather and I had a brief, curiously moving encounter in the sitting-room at Charleston Avenue. My grandmother had died of cancer the year before, but the
battleground
of the bridge warriors still reeked nostalgically of cigarette smoke, coffee grounds and sherry fumes. It was cluttered with an assortment of very bad and very good furniture, severely ravaged by moth, woodworm and dust, and over the mantelpiece hung the arms of the Leinster Murphys – four Lions Rampant and three Sheaves of Corn. The blue, scarlet and gold had been dimmed by wood-smoke from the inefficient grate, but the motto was still legible:
Fortis et Hospitalis
. Pappa came upon me one day when I was standing on the hearth in the empty sitting-room gazing up at those lions. And he asked me, ‘Do you know what the motto means?’

‘That we should be Strong and Hospitable,’ I replied.

‘Yes – but physical strength and material generosity are easy. To have strength and generosity of the mind and the spirit is what matters. We must all have our faults – but never be weak or mean.’ Then suddenly Pappa looked comically startled; he was too humble and humorous to 
be able to lecture even a grandchild unselfconsciously. For a moment he stood staring through the window, twirling an end of his moustache and humming a snatch from
The Gondoliers
. Before I could think of anything to say he had left the room.

On our monthly weekend visits to Dublin we usually left for home after Sunday tea. In those days the journey took six hours – it now takes three – and being prone to car-sickness I preferred night travel which allowed me to cheat my disability by sleeping. Often I woke only next morning, to find myself in my own bed.

Once, however, I woke as we crossed the Vee – and experienced pure terror for the first time. Directly above the car a dancing wall of orange and scarlet flame was obviously about to engulf us. This gorse-fire had of course been deliberately started and was not even remotely dangerous. But as we chugged up the steep slope the flames spread swiftly, filling with their terrible beauty the blackness of the night. Fear paralysed me, until a turn in the road made it seem that we were about to plunge into the crackling, glowing, writhing heart of the inferno. Then I shrieked and clutched my father’s shoulder – thus putting us in real danger. Even when my mother had calmed me a residue of fear remained and on future crossings of the Vee I both dreaded and longed for the superb fury of a burning mountain.

That same winter I inconsistently failed to panic even slightly when there was ample excuse for hysteria. During a very frosty spell my father had put a rug under the car bonnet – and then, typically, forgotten to remove it. Halfway up the Vee I happened to notice, through a gap in the floor beside the foot-brake, an ominously flickering brightness. I stared at it for a moment, fully aware of the implications, and then said in a carefully calm voice, ‘I think we’d better stop. The engine seems to be on fire.’

My parents, who were no doubt discussing some medieval heresy or other, took no immediate notice. Then, ‘What did you say?’ asked my mother.

‘I said the engine seems to be on fire.’ And I remember adding sourly, ‘So we’ll all be blown up if you don’t stop talking about religion and put it out.’

An instant later my father was hurling the burning rug onto the 
roadside. For the next five hours he and my mother hardly exchanged a word on any subject, which I well knew presaged a monumental row as soon as I was out of earshot.

At about this time I was suddenly afflicted by an irrational terror of darkness. Electricity had not yet come to Lismore; at dusk the
lamplighter
went up and down the South Mall and Old Brigid lit the oil lamps and closed and barred the shutters and drew the curtains and, when I had been put to bed at seven o’clock, darkness was, officially, final. However, for reading illicitly I had a secret supply of candles and matches and my new terror was revealed to myself when I forgot, one evening, to smuggle these in from my playroom. The playroom door was a mere three steps away, across the landing, yet I felt sick with fear at the thought of venturing out into the total, silent blackness. Inevitably I then saw myself as a most despicable coward, a craven sissy, a
lily-livered
, weak-kneed, spineless rotter.

This terror quickly became a phobia that dominated all my waking hours. Sometimes I was tempted to confide in my mother, but pride inhibited me. As the days passed my dread of bedtime increased; this had become my regular test of courage and always I failed it. At breakfast-time I might have successfully persuaded myself that, that very evening, I would do what had to be done. Yet when the moment came, when Old Brigid and my father had said good-night and kissed me and gone, I simply lay listening to the mealtime noises in the dining-room below while little shivers of shame ran through my body. Night after night, I told myself that within minutes this torment could be ended – if I found the necessary courage.

Then one very cold evening I did find it. I slipped out of bed, tip-toed to the door and began a deliberately slow tour of the whole of the first floor – including the airing cupboard and attic, which to many seemed quite spooky even by daylight. I moved silently through the dense
blackness
, my hands outstretched to guide me, and the thudding of my heart seemed to hurt my ribs. Something odd happened to my sense of time and the ordeal seemed to be taking place outside the normal framework of hours and minutes. But it was worth it. When I got back to my bedroom my self-respect was restored and all fear of darkness exorcised forever.

On most issues, at this period, I did confide in my mother. Yet already my attitude towards her was habitually guarded; while half of me needed comfort and guidance the other half was suspicious of interference. From my father I had inherited a certain shyness or gaucherie or tendency towards self-effacement – to this day I am not sure of the exact nature of the trait – and this was aggravated by observation of a woman who always seemed at ease in every sort of situation. Unwittingly, my mother gave me an inferiority complex I was never to outgrow. I recognised and took for granted the fact that in looks, intelligence and poise she set a standard I could never hope to reach and for years I heroine-worshipped her. Yet I may also have unconsciously envied her capacity to inspire such devotion – not only in myself but in many others. ‘A magnetic personality’ is the stock phrase. And as a child I expended a
disproportionate
amount of energy on testing myself against the power of that magnet.