Rory & Ita (27 page)

‘W
e got the train back from Cork to Amiens Street, and from Amiens Street to Howth Junction.
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We’d no money left, and taxis were a great luxury, so we lugged our cases up the road. He didn’t carry me over the threshold. He was romantic enough in his own way, but he had enough to do with lugging the cases without humping me up on his back as well.

‘When we arrived at the house, Rory’s sister Breda was here. She had a fire lit, and she had the cupboards full of food donated by Rory’s mother; everything you could think of, tea, sugar, bread, meat, sausages, rashers – she kept us fed for a week. We’d hardly any money and, of course, Rory had to work a week before he’d get any money.
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‘The house was pretty sparse, but I suppose we had as much as most people. We had the bedroom suite which Rory had bought, and the floor in the bedroom was stained. I’d made a rug, and that ran beside the bed, and I’d made net curtains for the front windows; they were flimsy but they were OK. I’d made heavier curtains, also for the front windows. We had no problem with street lights, because we had no street. We had no
curtains on the back windows; we were surrounded by fields. In the sitting-room, we had the chesterfield suite which Rory’s three oldest sisters had bought us between them, and his father and mother had given us money and we’d bought a carpet square for the sitting-room and lino for the dining-room. We called it the dining-room but it was actually the living-room, and used more than any other room. And we had the dining-room suite, which I’d bought. It was a nice light oak; I was very pleased with it. We got it in Roche’s Stores; it was actually their Spring Show display piece that year. The other two bedrooms were empty, not a thing in them. And the hall had bare boards. That was it really, and the little ornaments we got for wedding presents.
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The kitchen was bare, except that the cupboards were fitted. We’d no kitchen table, not for a few months. And I’d no ironing board; I spread a blanket on the floor and ironed on the floor. All those things were kind of extras; we got them as we went along. We had a cooker – we had to have a cooker; we got that on the never-never, from the ESB. We didn’t have a fridge, and not for years afterwards.

‘It was very exciting. The house had been empty; no one had lived in it. We used to come out and look at it, before we got married, but to arrive and to fix up your things in your own house and to know it was yours – and the weather was fine for quite a while, and
everything seemed to be falling into place. It was wildly exciting.
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‘The house actually went up in a field, built in a row of bungalows, and there was no road. There was a driveway and a front wall, but no road. I remember, Rory’s sisters called, and they walked along the tops of the walls, to avoid walking in all the mud. It never cost them a thought – they laughed at it; they were delighted that we were fixed up. In fact, I was well pregnant before they started the road. It was very muddy at one stage, and there was a foreman who went up and down on a motorbike, and he instructed the men to put boards, planks, across the mud, so I wouldn’t slip.
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It never bothered me.
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The whole thing was so exciting. Everything was new, and I got to know the neighbours.

‘We all met down in the grocer’s, Peter Butler’s shop.
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That was the meeting place. Peter served at the counter. He was a very friendly, big Mayo man, and everybody liked going into the shop. I got to know a lot of people that way. I remember, the first woman who spoke to me was Aileen Turley. She had her eldest son with her, in his pram. She had been an Aer Lingus hostess. At that time there were a lot of ex-Aer Lingus hostesses living here; they were all very pretty women. And I met a Mrs Thompson that first day – I’ve forgotten her first name. She was a beautiful woman. Again, she’d been an air hostess; her husband was a pilot. Then Drugan’s, the
chemist, opened. I was their first customer. And, again, it became a meeting place.
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‘And I got to know Maura Coghlan, two doors down, very quickly. And there was Sheila Mulvaney, and Leo. And then there were the Mays, Ena and Barney. We were walking past one day and we saw a man standing in their doorway, and Rory recognised him as a man he’d known in the College of Art, Harry Burton. He was a very nice, quiet type of a man and he introduced us to the Mays. They were lovable characters. Barney was by way of being a Walter Mitty; he read an awful lot of detective stories, and he lived in a little world of his own.
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He was also an alcoholic. I remember coming home one day – I think it was a Sunday morning – walking past the Mays’. They had a rockery in the middle of the front garden, and Barney’s car was up on top of it – like a decoration, a cherry on a cake.

‘Mr and Mrs Winks, Dave and Eva, were our next-door neighbours. They were from Scotland. Dave was quite a prim and proper man, a gentlemanly man. Eva told us she was from the Gorbals, in Glasgow, and she was Jewish. She was a terrible gambler – she told me herself she was, and that her father had been a professional gambler. I wasn’t quite able for her. She’d borrow money from me, money I couldn’t afford, and I was nearly afraid to ask for it back. She was tougher than
I was – put it that way. I didn’t dislike her at all, but I was a bit wary of her. Her mother-in-law used to come from time to time, from Scotland; she used to bake cakes to beat the band and they’d often end up on our table.

‘I settled in very quickly. At first, I was feeling around and getting to know people, but I can’t say I ever felt lonely. I went off walking and moseying around the place. I didn’t miss work. I kept myself busy. I was wrapped up in my own affairs and my own life, and my own house. When we told people where we were going to live, they’d say, “Why are you going so far away?” And my answer was always, “Away from what?” I loved Terenure, as a place, but I was happy enough to leave the atmosphere, and everything else at home, and to get away on my own.
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On Wednesday, I’d go over to Terenure and have my dinner with my father and stepmother. I cycled over, at first, and cycled back, to cook Rory’s dinner when he came home.

‘I wasn’t very long before realising I was pregnant. I just began to feel sick; I didn’t know what it was all about, and it was actually Mrs Winks who told me. I said, one day, in all my innocence, “I don’t feel well. I felt awful sick this morning.” And she said, in her best Scottish accent, “Ach, you must be pregnant.” So, she was right.

‘It had its ups and downs – same as they all had. It stopped me doing a lot of what I’d normally have done,
but – I was a funny kind of person – I accepted whatever hit me and just got on with it. Every morning, for about three months, I was sick – dreadful vomiting – and an hour later I felt fine for the day. I remember, we had our Christmas dinner and, within twenty minutes, I got rid of the lot. I just thought, what a waste. But I was excited, especially when I began to show and started to feel well. I made all the baby clothes. Money was really scarce, so you had to make as many clothes as you could. At that time, babies wore long flannelette night dresses, little belts around them, and a shawl. You dressed the baby in nightdresses for two or three months after it was born; you’d tuck the flannelette, it went down over the feet and toes. I made five or six nightdresses.

‘I was at home one morning, on my own, and the waters burst. I didn’t know what to do at first. I went down to Sheila Mulvaney, and I stayed with Sheila nearly all day. Until Rory came home – it probably seems strange now, but you didn’t take people out of work; you couldn’t phone up and tell them to come home. Sheila was awfully kind to me and so was Leo. Leo had a car, and it was they who brought me into the nursing home that evening. Aideen was born that night.
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The nursing home was over in Phibsborough; a Nurse Borrowman owned it. I stayed there for nearly two weeks; that was the thing then. They were very nice, but I was dying to come home. I can remember being as proud as punch. And she was the first
grandchild, on Rory’s side, so there was huge excitement. They all arrived with presents galore, all kinds of things; Breda made beautiful little dresses, beautiful work altogether, smocking all across the bodice. I was in there for my birthday and they all arrived with birthday presents.

‘Aideen was christened while I was still in the nursing home, in Christ the King church, in Cabra. But we had a tea when we came home from the nursing home. I still had the top tier of the wedding cake; that was her christening cake. We had the grandparents out, and Rory’s Aunt Bridge, Aunt Mag, and Aunt Lil, and Máire and her husband, Jimmy. There was a bottle of sherry, the height of luxury. I’ve forgotten who was pouring the sherry – it could have been me – and Rory’s mother said, “You can give a glass to Bridge and Mag but don’t give much to Rory; he’s not used to it.” She really believed he’d never had a drink.

‘We had a new pram. I think it was about £
14
. It was dear enough, but it was lovely. People would stop to look at Aideen; they’d seen me pregnant, and they’d stop, and I got to know everyone that way. It was mostly young couples, starting off; we were nearly all newly-weds. We went walking miles with those prams. Saved heat in the winter; got us out in the summer. I brought her out every afternoon, no matter what the weather was like, up to Sutton Cross or, sometimes, up Baldoyle Road – three or four miles sometimes.

‘We had to borrow the cot. She slept in the pram for three weeks, maybe a month. Then somebody who worked with Rory in the
Independent
lent us a little cot; it was big enough for her – it was grand. Then, there was another man who worked there – I’ve an idea
his name was Bob Peffers
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– and he made us a lovely cot. He charged very little for it. All our children slept in that cot.

‘Being a mother was a question of trial and error. But what could I do, only take to it; I had the baby and I had to take care of her. I tried breast-feeding for the first few weeks, but I obviously couldn’t; she screamed and screamed and screamed. And it was my doctor, Dr Chapman, who said it would be better to put her on the bottle. I must be quite honest and say that I wasn’t upset at having to give up. It was a relief. I was very sore and uncomfortable, and Aideen wasn’t happy. I put her on the bottle and she stopped crying; she was the quietest baby after that. And if I went out and left her with Rory, which was seldom, he could give her a bottle – he couldn’t breast-feed her.

‘But I loved the whole idea of being a mother. I managed it fine. She was the first grandchild in the Doyle family and, as far as her Grandad Doyle was concerned, she was absolutely perfect. She was late walking, and he’d say, “All the better. When they walk too early their legs get bandy. Much better.” She was late having teeth: “All the better, much better; she’ll have them longer.” There were sleepless nights – there are always sleepless nights. You’d be livid when you had to get up, but it didn’t seem to matter the next day. Loss of sleep never really affected me; I seemed to get by great on what I had.

‘I was delighted when Rory changed jobs; it was what
he wanted. And he’d worked very hard in the
Independent
. He used to work on Saturday nights, for extra money. He’d cycle in, and work until two in the morning, and cycle home. It was heavy going, but it was the money that enabled us to pay the mortgage and everything else. But, now that he was teaching, he had set hours. He had long summer holidays. I was delighted that he was at home more, although he was never what you’d call a great man for hoovering or dusting; he wouldn’t have known how to put the hoover together.
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He cycled to work at first, and then he started getting the train into work. The same group of people used to run up the road to the station every day. There was one woman, Teenie Moloney, who was living in her bungalow with her sister, Belle, before she got married; she was a civil servant. They used to go haring up the road, and they’d cut through a field, a short cut. It was the usual Irish thing, of
bóthar
. The word for a road in Irish is
bóthar
, and it really means a cow track, the way cows cut through the shortest way possible. Bó is “cow”. And they really made a
bóthar
through the field to the station. But I remember, one day, they were running up and there was a young priest with them; he was a cousin of Teenie’s. He tripped in the field, and he was delaying the others. And Belle, at the top of her voice, shouted, “Get up, you dirty-looking eejit, or we’ll all miss our train.” It was an unusual way to address a priest, even if he was your cousin.

‘I had one miscarriage, between the first two children. It was in the third month. I was taken into Holles Street.
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I went in at about six in the morning; our neighbour
Kiernan Coghlan ran me in. He was very kind; he was one of the few men on the road with a car. I was put on a trolley – I had the miscarriage; the baby came in the hospital – and I was still on the trolley at six o’clock that evening. And not only that, but nobody asked me if I had a mouth on me; I didn’t even get a cup of tea. I’m not blaming the hospital either: the nurses were busy and I just lay there. That was the kind of sucker I was; I took whatever was coming.
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At about six o’clock a matron came around, and she went through a few of the nurses, and I was put into a lovely, comfortable bed; I thought I’d gone to heaven. I was very weak when I got home. I remember my legs being weak, and feeling groggy. I don’t know how distressed I was; I can’t remember. It was just before Christmas. Rory had changed jobs by then. He had time off and he was able to mind the baby.

‘I was happy when I was pregnant again. It was still a shock – it’s always a shock when you realise you’re pregnant. There was no such thing as a planned pregnancy; it just happened, and that was it – you took whatever was coming. Some women had babies year after year. I did well; I had two years between mine – I got a good break. I went to the same nursing home, Nurse Borrowman’s. I don’t remember going in. I was well cared for. I remember one particular night – it was an oldish house – there was a storm. Those windows rattled like hell all night. And I could have sworn I heard a mouse scratching too. I thought I’d never get home.