Maeve Binchy (36 page)

Market day in Charleville, where the Binchys had a store like Sean O’Connor’s in
Light a Penny Candle
.

Main Street, Charleville, Co. Cork, where the Irish Binchys descended from Cromwellian settlers. Maeve’s grandfather, William Patrick, lived at No. 42.

One of the first Model ‘T’ Ford vans supplied to Binchy’s bakery in the 1920s, which traded up until 1982.

Clongowes Wood, Balraheen, the Jesuit school where in 1911 five Binchy boys were studying.

Binchy Park, the estate purchased by Owen Binchy in the 1920s.

Maeve’s father, William Binchy, flanked by two friends, W. Roche and J. McMahon, close to the hotel where William met Maeve’s mother, Maureen, in the 1930s.

The view from Maeve’s childhood home which begs comparison with the fabulous view over the Bay of Naples in Italy.

Maeve’s first home, Beechgrove, at the south end of the Lower Glenageary Road, on the border of Dalkey and Dún Laoghaire.

Eastmount, the house on Knocknacree Road where Maeve’s childhood was a joy.

The little train which, to this day, takes girls back and forth around the bay between Dalkey and school in Killiney.

Mother St Dominic and the nuns of the Holy Child who, unable to understand the Irish accent, were putty in the girls’ hands.

Maeve’s favourite walk as a child was up over Dalkey Hill and down Killiney Hill, with its distant shadowy aspect of the Wicklow Mountains to the south.

Maeve, top right, a nervous child, always worrying that something lay in wait for her around every corner.