Rory & Ita (8 page)

His close friends were Noel Mullally, his cousin, Seán Poynton, Francis Colleran, Joe Kelly, J.J. Hughes. ‘Right across from our house were Doyle’s Fields – no relation – but we could walk into the fields, through the gates, and then we took off. We roamed, up as far as Killinarden, through all sorts of marvellous fields and ditches. We’d even eat young turnips out of the ground. We went miles and miles, and we discovered all sorts of things. Once, we came across some ditches and it only came to me in later life, thinking about the structure of them, that they must have been part of the outer defences of the Dublin Pale, a part that hadn’t been ploughed away, a big double ditch and, then, further ditches. We used to
run up and down these things and they were quite substantial earthworks.

‘There were slight divisions between the fellows going to school. It was the top of the town against the bottom of the town, that kind of rivalry. And then there was the rivalry between the town of Tallaght and Colbert’s Fort – it’s up the back of the Urney factory. There were the Finnegans; Billy Finnegan – Duck Egg – was a dangerous customer to get mixed up with; there were the Redmonds, Joe Stynes, and Paddy Brady, a big bruiser of a fellow.’

He wore white on his First Holy Communion Day, in 1930. ‘It was a very fine, cashmere-type, woollen jumper, with white short trousers and white shoes. My mother was also keen on sailor suits. It caused me terrible grief; I had to wear the sailor suit to school. I was much resented by the lads, all cocked up in style like that, and I was beaten up. My mother would say, “Don’t you have anything to do with those fellows,” but I had to go to school with them. So, the result was, my father took me down to a boxing club, down in Terenure somewhere, where I was taught how to box. Shortly after I’d acquired some skills, a row over the sailor suit blew up again and I had a fight in the schoolyard, and I knocked the mallarkey out of Paddy
Brady from Colbert’s Fort. I had all the skill now, like Nel Tarleton,
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the boxer, straight left and a right cross, hopping around. In any case, I hit him enough to sicken him. And, after that, I was accepted, no more persecution, one of the lads.’

‘I
had no idea where we were going. We went on a train and we were met at the station by this strange man; I didn’t know who he was. He turned out to be my Uncle Watt. We were taken out to a pony and trap and we sat in, with our cases. It was raining and there was a tarpaulin put over us all, and off we went – the first time I was ever in a pony and trap. Daddy, Máire, Joe, myself and Miss Dunne. And we arrived down at the main road. It was cement, and the pony and trap was lovely and smooth, and I loved that – I was really sleepy, I remember. And I remember the noise of the hooves. And then we turned up a laneway and it was rough and we were hopping along, and I’d doze off and I’d be hopped awake again. But I remember arriving at the house. It was dark, so I couldn’t see what it looked like, and there was another strange man, Uncle John, and a strange woman who was my Aunt Bessie. I didn’t know who they were; I’d never heard their names mentioned before. But we were brought into the sitting-room,
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and the fire was lighting and the wet things were taken off. And I remember sitting on Uncle John’s lap. I didn’t know who he was, but he was very nice. Very quiet, very little to say, but he rubbed
my hands and heated them. And then I remember going to bed.’

She had just arrived at Coolnaboy, her father’s childhood home, a mile from Oilgate, about eight miles south of Enniscorthy, in County Wexford. She was, she thinks, four years old. Watt and John were her father’s younger brothers and Bessie was his sister.

‘At the top of the stairs, there was a little room, and lying in this room was a very old lady, and she turned out to be my father’s aunt, Mary Kate. I had no idea what was wrong with her, but she never got out of the bed, and every time we went down to Oilgate we had to get her peppermints. Years later, I asked what had been wrong with Mary Kate – she was dead by then – and I was told that, really, there was nothing wrong with her. She just went up to bed one day and she didn’t get up again. She took to the bed. I suppose it was a form of depression. My cousin, Maeve Brennan, told me that when she was a child and she’d lived in Coolnaboy because her father was on the run, herself and her sister used to go up the stairs and they’d torment Mary Kate. She’d pick up her stick and she’d say, “Ah, ha, if I get you,” and they’d say, “But you can’t, sure you can’t?”

‘Another memory I have, and I was very young – all the water from the house was drawn from a well, and the well was just past the back door. It never dried and it had beautiful water. In the summer, little flies used to dart across the top of the water. They fascinated me, and I was kneeling at the edge of the well one day and I was trying to catch them and I toppled in. The water was whirling around my head – my head, my shoulders, and a funny sound in my ears. And the girl from the
next farm, Eileen Parker, grabbed me. As I was toppling in. She was only about three years older than me but she grabbed me and pulled me out. She had an apron on and I can still remember my foot catching in the apron. She was trying to pull me and my foot was caught and impeding her but she still managed to lug me out. Miss Dunne came running and I was dried off and put to bed and there was a great fuss, but Eileen saved me that day.’

At the time of her first visit, Watt (Walter) Bolger, Bessie (Elizabeth) Bolger and Mary Kate Whitty lived in Coolnaboy. ‘Uncle John was living in Pouldearg,
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a farm, down in a place called Balnaslaney, right beside the Slaney River. It had been my father’s mother’s original home.’

Watt was her father’s youngest brother. He had ownership of the farm because ‘my father was looked upon as the smart boy of the family; he was extremely bright. Very often, the smart boy was picked to be a priest. So, my father was sent to St Peter’s College in Wexford, to become a priest. That was him fixed up, as far as his mother was concerned. And Uncle John was given his mother’s farm, at Pouldearg. It was the richer farm, way ahead of Coolnaboy. So, then there was only one boy left and that was how Watt fell into possession of Coolnaboy.

‘Aunt Bessie was what was termed “doing a line” with Mike Parker, of Kilmuckridge.
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And Mike Parker had two old – I think they were cousins, the Miss
Byrnes, and they had a house and farm in Kilmuckridge. Mike
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was actually a pig buyer for Buttle’s, Buttle’s Barley-fed Bacon, a very big business in Enniscorthy, and he lived with the Miss Byrnes and took care of the farm for them. And Uncle Watt was doing a line with Katie Doyle, who lived in Coolamain.
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She was a good deal younger than Watt. But nobody could move, because each move depended on the demise of the two Miss Byrnes. Watt couldn’t marry Katie and bring her in, and, sure, she wouldn’t have wanted to move in, with Bessie there.

‘Now, I was too young to know what was happening but, when I was ten, everybody moved. The Miss Byrnes had died. And Mike had the farm. So, Bessie and Mike got married and Bessie moved to Kilmuckridge.
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Máire was the bridesmaid, and Daddy was the best man. And less than a year later, Watt got married and Katie moved in, and that was the best thing that ever happened to Coolnaboy.

‘It had always been very quiet, and Katie brought great life to the place. She had eight children and I’m sure there was never as much life and love and laughter in the place, because the grandmother had had the name of being a very severe and strict woman. Katie was wonderful; I used to love going down to her, in the summer. Everything about the place, I loved. I was made one of the family, immediately. You felt that you were
the
person there, whereas, back home, you were, kind of, just someone who was in the house. But in Coolnaboy you were always treasured and taken care of and chatted to and talked to and considered as good as anyone else. And there was great freedom – the fields. I loved all the farm work.

‘It’s a very special place. It’s a very large, long house, with a thatched roof. There was a small hall, as in most farmhouses in Wexford, and, to the left, there was this huge kitchen. And there was a big open fire; you could look up the chimney and nearly see the sky. And the usual fixtures of an open fire, big, black cooking pots and kettles. The fire was always lit. It had bellows and you’d turn the handle – it was like a big wheel – and the pipes were under the grate, and the air flamed the
fire. I don’t remember it ever going out; they used to bank it down at night – slack at the back of the fire, very fine coal, and it smouldered away.

‘Every night, they used to say the Rosary. But there were crickets in the fire and they chirped and chirped there – I could never see them during the day. There was an oil lamp on the wall. It was over the table, so if you wanted to read, you had to go and sit under the lamp. But we’d be at the Rosary and, the next thing, one of these crickets would make a beeline for the lamp, and there’d be a great bang and the cricket would nearly explode; sometimes he’d be dead but sometimes just stunned and he’d run back home. And Joe and I got into the habit of counting the explosions and saying, “There’s another one gone.” And I remember one night, we were saying the Rosary, and this big beetle was crossing the floor. Joe had a plain pin. It’s funny, because my father used to have a plain pin stuck in his lapel, and this was for cleaning his teeth, like a toothpick. And Joe had a pin that night, maybe copying my father, and he stuck the pin in the beetle. The pin went down on the creature and it started to go around and around, trapped by the pin. It ran away when it got free.