Rory & Ita by Roddy Doyle
‘We just got very basic information. The censorship was very efficient. We didn’t know, really, what was going on. There couldn’t have been more than a handful of people in the country who did know. And there was never any word of those horrible atrocities being perpetrated by the Germans. In any case, remember, it was only twenty years or so since the British Army and the Black and Tans had been committing atrocities in Ireland.
‘Towards the end of 1940, coal was no longer freely available.* It was quite common to see women going out and coming back with bundles of sticks that they pulled out of the hedges around the farms, just to keep the fire going. My father secured a bog cutting from the County Council, up the mountains at Castlekelly. Sleáns† were made; Jack Kelly, the Tallaght blacksmith, hammered them out for us. The bog was seven miles away and I spent most Saturdays and Sundays turning and footing turf. I can still remember the aroma of the tea and black-pudding sandwiches that sustained us in our toil. We eventually accumulated a rick of turf, and a lorry was hired to haul it home. When we arrived, the turf was gone – stolen. My father afterwards discovered that the thief was from Terenure. During the War of Independence, the same man had been in danger of being executed for blathering secret information in pubs. But my father had interceded on his behalf, and had saved his life. Later in life, when most of the likely referees were dead, the same man claimed and was awarded a pension for Republican activities – and he stole my father’s rick of turf. We had to return to the bog.
‘Again, towards the end of 1940 – I think – the German U-boat campaign increased, and all the wheat that we used to get from Canada and the US became very scarce. So it was decided, in the milling of the Irish grain, not to separate the husks. The result was a new kind of brown bread – they called it brown bread but it wasn’t wheaten bread, just a dreadful imitation. It tasted appalling.
‘The O’Reillys lived opposite us, in Newtown Park. Nan went to school with my mother and she married Michael O’Reilly, a fine big man who always seemed to own a decent-looking mackintosh coat. During the War, Michael took the boat to England, along with many others. But, invariably, he visited us at Christmastime, carrying a white loaf. For anybody who experienced the brown bread made from Irish wheat, this bread really was manna. There was a parody of a wartime song which went: Bless’em all, bless’em all, Bless all the lads in the Dáil, Bless de Valera and Seán McEntee, Who gave us brown bread and a half ounce of tea. People had to stretch the tea ration by reverting to the habit of drying and re-using the tea leaves. My grandmother told me that, in her young days, the tea was so dear that the first making was reserved for important people like the parish priest or the schoolmaster, and that the leaves were used again and again. The taste of the re-run tea was diabolical. Some people tried to make tea with shell cocoa, a derivative of the chocolate industry – the husks of the cocoa beans. The result was terrible; nobody knew how to make the brew properly.* My mother solved the matter by buying black-market tea, at £1 per pound, in Moore Street.† Anyway, during one of his visits, Michael O’Reilly described a form of heating called a Benghazi – so-called because it was devised by the British Army in North Africa. It consisted of two petrol cans, each equipped with a small tap, one containing water and the other containing engine oil, or even used oil from the sumps of cars. These cans were connected by copper pipes to a large frying pan, housed in the firebox or the kitchen range. The flow to the frying pan was controlled by the taps – three drops of oil to one drop of water. It worked on the principle of the explosive nature of the oil-and-water mix on a hot surface; it generated fierce heat. Our engineer on the project was my cousin, Jack Kelly,‡ who was regarded as the mechanical genius of the family. It worked – and there was no more turf cutting.
‘Shortly after that, the owners of our old home, the Dominican Fathers, requested possession, and Jack and my Uncle Bob were now likely to be homeless. My mother couldn’t contemplate such a thing, so several large car containers were purchased and a wooden bungalow was built out the back.* Jack was the builder, and there was a lean-to for Uncle Bob. Jack and myself occupied the bungalow and it was festooned with rifles, bayonets, and Jack’s Sam Browne belt – he was an officer in the local LDF company.
‘One night, the Germans dropped a bomb on Rathdown Park, in Terenure. We felt the shock three miles away, in Tallaght. Mrs Cunningham, next door, ran up and down the road in her nightie, screaming at the top of her voice.† Jack and I sat up in our respective beds, and I looked across at Jack, and asked, “Is this war? What should we do?” Jack replied, “We’ll wait till we’re mobilised,” lay down and went back to sleep. I did the same and, while terror and turmoil raged in the civil population of Newtown, their brave defenders slept the sleep of the just and awaited the trumpet call.
‘I think it was in 1942 that General M.J. Costello – General Micky Joe‡ – led a great manoeuvre from Cork to Dublin. He brought his army over and through the Blackwater River, losing two or three soldiers by drowning. However, the Baldonnell Command was ready and waiting for him, and the Tallaght Company was deployed at the Featherbed Mountain, in an attempt to thwart an advance along the Military Road, from Wicklow.
‘We set up base camp and acquired several coopers of stout and a couple of bottles of whiskey. This was the canteen, and Fred Alsop was in charge of it. Fred was a Londoner. He’d served in the British Army in the Great War, had been stationed at Tallaght Aerodrome and had married Katie Ford, another schoolmate of my mother’s. I was ordered to assist Fred in the peeling of several sacks of potatoes. I was also to keep an eye on the canteen, because I didn’t drink at that time. I was saving myself for later.
‘At about five o’clock in the morning Micky Joe’s boys struck, an hour ahead of schedule; the mountain was swarming with soldiers. They’d outflanked the mountain and come at us from behind. My abiding memory is of hearing the agonised cry of our district leader, Tom Watkins, “For Jaysis’ sake, save the canteen!” Fred and I promptly dumped the liquor into the nearest boghole and, afterwards, we couldn’t remember where. At least, I couldn’t. But I wouldn’t have been too sure about Fred – he was very resourceful. But, in the scramble to dump the canteen, I struck my shin against the iron band of one of the coopers. I was wounded in action; I still have the mark to this day. I wasn’t awarded a medal, a citation for valour, or a pension. Of such is life.’
‘There was a day during the War when Dublin was blanketed by the most appalling fog. No buses, trams or bicycles could move. I set out to walk the seven miles home. I reached Christchurch Place and literally bumped into my cousin, Patsy Kelly. He suggested we get some chips, and he led the way down Werburgh Street, to Burdock’s. That was actually the first time I ever ate chips, although I’d heard the lads in work talking about going for a “wan an’ wan”,* and I’d heard it alleged that so-and-so’s vinegar was really horse’s urine.
‘In the New Year of 1944 or’45, I took my sister, Rosaleen, to the Moving Crib, in Inchicore. It was a nativity scene, a great moving tableau, with full-sized figures and animals, and rich, very attractive costumes. I remember the cold January day and travelling on the upper deck of the No. 21 bus. Rosaleen was enthralled and, at one stage, she turned to me and said, “Are we in Scotland?”
‘Clothing was rationed but I knew nothing about this since my mother controlled the coupons.† But the clothing shortage was never a problem in our house, since my mother and my sisters had a natural skill at needlework and a garment underwent many transformations before it was exhausted. But, really, what my sisters did and what they got up to, I hadn’t the foggiest idea. It was part of a feminine thing, secrecy, which a man didn’t enter. They had their own world.
‘Shoe leather was scarce, and leather was of such poor quality that people nailed metal tips or hob nails to the soles of their shoes, to save the leather. The sound of a crowd of people walking down O’Connell Street was a unique experience – there wasn’t a heavy roar of traffic to mask the sound. It has sta
‘Sometime during 1943, we made a technological leap. We didn’t know about technology at the time but that was what it was. Tom Watkins became the distributor for small wind turbines, called Wind Chargers. Jack Kelly erected the mast and device, and when the wind blew, the turbine charged a car battery. This provided power for lights and for the wireless. But when the wind was low, the battery went low, the lights grew dim, and the wireless became almost inaudible. The matter wasn’t helped by the fact that neither my mother nor my Aunt Lil had the slightest idea of how the process worked. No amount of advice on rationing the use of lights made the slightest difference to them. When the power was on, all the lights were blazing. When the wind became very strong, it was necessary to run outside and turn the turbine out of the wind. Apart from the danger to the turbine, the noise it made was as loud as a fleet of aeroplanes. However, the ESB* finally arrived – I don’t know precisely when since I had other important things to occupy my attentions. But I did notice that we were no longer dependent on either turf or the Benghazi, and that we had an electric cooker, an electric kettle and an electric iron.
‘Cigarettes were particularly scarce. People would often queue for hours to buy five cigarettes and they could forget about brand preference. Naturally, there was a thriving black market. The inconvenience was more than I could tolerate, and I never smoked cigarettes. But, in 1944, I won some prize money in the exams at the School of Printing, and I went to Lucky Cody’s on Dame Street and bought a Riseagle briar pipe and an ounce of John Cotton’s Edinburgh mixture, for two pounds, ten shillings. I filled up the pipe, lit up, and strolled back to Juverna Press. Half an hour later I thought I was dying. I turned green, saw sparks and got violently sick. My first instinct was to dump the pipe in the Liffey but, on reflection, I reckoned that there’d been a lot of money involved. So I kept the pipe.*
‘During the summer evenings, my friends, Desmond Sharkey, Michael Kennedy, and myself strolled out in Tallaght, smoking our pipes, in search of recreation; we’d discuss things, tell each other lies, make up more lies. The local lads called us the Bruno Boys, and several other names. I knew Des from living in Tallaght and, later, he got an apprenticeship in the Juverna Press a couple of years after I did, courtesy of Jack O’Hagan again. Michael I got to know when we moved down to Newtown, because he moved in with his family. One thing we shared was, we didn’t have much in common with the other lads of the village. We just gravitated towards each other.
‘In those days, small travelling circuses often came to Tallaght and set up their tent in Doyle’s field. I was in a front seat, enjoying the show, when I thought the end of the world had come. One of the go-boys at the back of the tent had dug up a strip of sod and flung it at me. He hit the pipe, jerked it out of my mouth, and I thought the top of my head was gone with it. I turned to where the lads in the back were hysterical laughing, and I believe I offered to fight the lot of them. They kindly refused the offer.
‘During our rambles, we hatched a brilliant idea for having some fun at the weekend dances. We’d pretend to be RAF officers, on leave from England. I became Ivor Doyalski, a Polish count, Michael became Lieutenant Montfonstaff, a New Zealander, and Des Sharkey was an Australian. We acquired suitable accents, and a lot of the girls believed us. It never crossed their minds that I, a Polish count, had a tweed suit on me.’
He liked women. ‘I rather liked the look of them, the way they were made. And I liked going to dances with them. But I was also very wary of getting into any entanglement. There were also vague warnings being issued by my mother; she was adept at laying down principles: “Mind those ones; they’re after your good job.” That wasn’t bothering me, but the trouble of disengaging, if you got entangled; that worried me.
‘The other two lads went a step too far. They hired uniforms from Ging’s* and set off for Sutton Tennis Club. They were very well-received, had a good time and were invited to spend the night at the home of the Club Secretary. They enjoyed their breakfast, and were brought to visit the famous steeplechaser, Caughoo. They were photographed with the Grand National winner, and strolled down to the bus stop at Sutton Cross. The boys in blue were waiting for them in a squad car. They were arrested, very severely questioned, held in custody, and appeared the following Monday before District Justice Reddin. It turned out the Club Secretary was an Army officer, serving in the Intelligence Branch, and that morning he’d noticed that Des was wearing brown shoes with his uniform, and the penny dropped. They were very lucky, because Reddin was a learned liberal gentleman who took a lenient view of their escapade. The matter was serious, since it was forbidden, under the Emergency Powers Act, to wear foreign uniforms in the State. Reddin gave them a lecture and a small fine. But they could have been jailed. I was glad I’d resisted the temptation that time, because I was older than the other two and the outcome could have been different.
‘VE Day was a special day in Dublin, because some fool, a student, burnt a tricolour at Trinity College. I was in town that evening. I was coming down Trinity Street, and there were huge crowds and tremendous noise and what I subsequently learnt was that Charlie Haughey* and a few boys from UCD had come down and set fire to a Union Jack. And a riot started. I saw this senior Garda standing up on a car, and I heard the words, “In accordance with the Riot Act …” I said, “I’m getting out of here,” and I did. It was just as well, because there were dozens of people flattened by the Guards. Once the Riot Act was read, there was no discretion; if you were in the way, you got belted. The Guards were all worked up.
‘I’d heard the news earlier. Someone came into work and said the Germans had surrendered. It wasn’t unexpected. We didn’t immediately fall into a bed of roses; there were still years of shortages and rationing. I didn’t see any newsreels in the following weeks; I didn’t go to the pictures in those days.
‘I’d got over the first years of apprenticeship, and I was getting a bit older. I was working in town, I had a few bob in my pocket, and my world was getting bigger. Then I entered the College of Art, and I entered into a completely different world.’
* Rory: ‘There was no electricity. It had been installed a few years before in the old house, so we had to get used to candles and oil lamps all over again.’
* In north County Dublin.
† Rory: ‘He worked his foot up and down and that gave the power to the machine; there was no electrical motor or anything like that. It was generally used for small jobbing work – cards and menus.’
* Rory: ‘Each font of type, every letter in the font had something known as the matrix; it was a brass, stamped-out piece of metal, and it ran along a matrix guide, which was a ridged metal bar. When you pressed a key on the keyboard, the matrix fell out of the magazine, down a shoot, into an assembly, which would allow a line of type to be cast. On each matrix was a stamp-reversed image of every character in a font of type.’
* Rory: ‘The forme was the final printing surface; it is the type all laid out in pages. It was the metal, the type and the blocks for making the pictures, all put together, all contained in a strong steel frame. The page was locked into the frame by wedges called quoins. When it was done properly the whole lot lifted and could be carried down and put on the machine for printing. If it wasn’t properly done, it would fall out and cause chaos.’
* Rory: ‘This was a paper-size, seven and a half inches by ten inches.’
† Arthur Griffith (1871–1922): born in Dublin; apprenticed as a printer; active in the Gaelic League and IRB; fought for the Boers, 1897–9; edited the United Irishman; founded Sinn Féin, 1906; headed the Irish delegation in the Treaty negotiations, 1921; elected President of the Dáil, 1922.
* The Fianna Fáil newspaper, founded by de Valera in 1931.
† GAA stadium and headquarters.
* The union was the Dublin Typographical Provident Society (DTPS).
† Rory: ‘The name went back to medieval times, when the printing industry was first organised. The metal had t
‡ Rory: ‘He was known as Jacko by the staff.’
* Rory: ‘The other apprentice, Michael Doggett, never got the abuse that I did – not that he deserved it either. I suspect it was because he was related to one of the company directors.’
* Local Defence Force.
* Rory: ‘We referred to the Great War, not World War One; we didn’t realise we were witnessing the start of World War Two.’
* Rory: ‘One solution to the shortage in our house was wet turf, primed by every book or periodical my Aunt Lil could get her hands on.’
† Turf-cutting blade; a double-sided spade.
* Rory: ‘I’ve recently seen shell cocoa used as a garden mulch. It took fifty years to work that one out.’
† Rory: ‘That was very, very expensive, but it was considered almost essential; a working man couldn’t get through the day without a cup of tea, and my mother liked it too.’
‡ Not the Tallaght blacksmith, also called Jack Kelly. Rory: ‘My cousin, Jack Kelly’s father, known as Skin Kelly, was the original blacksmith. When he died, his brother, Jack Kelly, took over the running of the forge. So, Jack Kelly, the blacksmith, was my cousin, Jack Kelly’s uncle.’
* Rory: ‘The only cars assembled in Ireland were Fords, in Cork. All the British cars were imported in wooden crates. The crates were terrific for timber. If you had a few of those crates, you had the makings of a wooden hut or a bungalow.’
† Rory: ‘My mother also had a bad night.’