Rory & Ita by Roddy Doyle

  ‘My mother took us into Dublin one day. I don’t know what the occasion was; she must have fallen into some money. We had our dinner in Woolworth’s on Henry Street, and it was wonderful. And then, she brought us to the pictures, the Metropole. I don’t know what the name of the film was but there were a lot of these French officers with pillboxes hopping around, gesticulating and talking. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but I remember the theme music. And I remember, quite graphically, on the Pathé News, the assassination of Alexander of Yugoslavia and the French Foreign Minister, in Marseille.* That was the first time I ever saw a film. The next time I went to the pictures was to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, some years later.† In actual fact, we never went to the pictures, because that would have meant the wasteful spending of money. Money was for food‡ and clothes; anything else was frivolous. So we didn’t go, although some went who had a damn sight less than we had. Regular goers would tell me about Buck Jones and all those characters and I remember someone describing Hell’s Angels§ to us. I thought I’d never grow up till I got to see Hell’s Angels. I never did get to see it but it was a great story.’

  * * *

  He changed schools when he was twelve. ‘I went to live with my Aunt Bridge, in Inchicore.* Tirconnell Park; it was a newly built housing estate. They called them utility houses; I don’t know why. I think, first of all, my mother wanted me to go to the Christian Brothers, and Bridge’s house was near the school, but I also think that there might have been a question of crowding. The house was very packed and she was expecting again, although I didn’t know that at the time. She was expecting Rosaleen – the twins.† Bridge had plenty of room – so few people in the house; it took me a while to get my head around that – and there was always the prospect that I would be fixed up with a trade. Her husband was works manager of a printing place and had already got an apprenticeship for my cousin, Tom Poynton.

  ‘Bridge was married to a North of Ireland man, Jack O’Hagan, from Tandragee, who started life as Jack Hagan, a Protestant, and then converted. He met my Aunt Bridge. She was a very good-looking woman, as are all my female relatives. And, in spite of his great belief in King Billy and all that background, he wanted to marry her. So, he turned around and changed his name to O’Hagan. And he became more Catholic than the Catholics themselves, very dogmatic. When they met, he was a good-looking man; he had black curly hair and a full set of teeth. When I knew him he had neither. He had lost his hair through enteric fever and he lost his teeth through pyorrhoea.

  ‘Living there was persecution; it was terrible. They didn’t know how to handle young people at all. They were terribly dogmatic and I think they were dedicated to the belief that, no matter what you did, you were doing something wrong. It was a most horrific time. Child abuse was what it was – nothing physical at all but constant, constant carping; you couldn’t do anything right. If I came home and said, “I got a first prize in school,” that achievement would be degraded – that kind of thing. I had come from a house full of people, where nobody ever rowed* in any real sense. But in the O’Hagan household there was a constant bickering that never rose to anything like violence, but constant sharp interchange. If one said, “That’s a fine day,” the other said, “Not as fine as all that,” just for the sake of making a disagreement. But they were made that way; they knew no better.

  ‘Jack himself had a peculiar make-up. He loved to dominate, to be the boss. He loved to be the organiser, so he organised the tenants’ association in Tirconnell Park. And then, before it had gone too far, he had fallen out with several of the other people. When Jack O’Hagan fell out with somebody it was a hanging matter. He became a pioneer.† So nothing would do but that everybody in sight had to become a pioneer, and if you didn’t, he positively blaggarded you. He could get quite vicious at it.

  ‘I was living in that atmosphere, and I felt it rather difficult. But it didn’t break me. I could have done without it, but it didn’t break me. I put up with it.’ He didn’t resent his exclusion from the Tallaght home. ‘It never crossed my mind. It was a family thing; I was going to be taken care of, later on, with an apprenticeship. At home, after me, there were three sisters and they had a common partnership of their own. And Jackie was seven years younger and Patsy was twelve years younger than me, so there was no male partnership there. My older cousins were at least twenty years older than me. So, I didn’t feel any particular alienation from home. It was a house that was dedicated to the upbringing of girls. Any favours that there were, would go to the girls – unquestionably. I never harboured resentment about it.’ He didn’t miss his mother, ‘not particularly’, or his father. ‘He would go to his work and come back, did some gardening, had the odd chat, went fishing and, generally, he wasn’t an intruding kind of person. My mother did the lot. So, I – kind of – didn’t miss him either. But, at the back of my mind, he was there.’

  His new school was St Michael’s, the Christian Brothers’ primary school on Keogh Square, on the site of the old Richmond Barracks. ‘It was an uneventful time, which I rather enjoyed. Maybe because I had a couple of scuffles early on, the lads decided to leave me alone; they’d roughed the culchie,* you know. But I did quite well there, and I did exceedingly well in the Primary Cert.† But I didn’t excel at sports. I remember one sports day, sitting on a bench just looking at everybody, most of them running around in shorts, killing themselves sweating, and Brother Brady it was, gave me a book to read. The book was called The Boys of Benn Eadar, a most remarkable book. The writer described helicopters, auto-gyros, as they were known then; the boys went in this auto-gyro across the bay, from Howth to somewhere near Dalkey, or some salubrious place like that. And when one of the boys wanted to communicate with his father, the writer described a video-telephone. The boy lifted the phone and pressed a button, and he slowly saw his father materialise on a screen. Now that, remember, was in the 30s. People talk about the Christian Brothers and their behaviour but, in this case, Brother Brady just reckoned that I wasn’t going to move from one place to another with any particular speed just to get in front of the other fellow, so he gave me the book. I read it sitting on the sideline. That’s my happiest memory of St Michael’s.

  ‘They were competent teachers. Now and again, there’d be a half dozen* handed out for obstreperous behaviour. There was a lay teacher called Johnny Roebuck; he gave the whole class six of the best, lined us all up. He didn’t ask who was making the noise; we were all making the noise, so he didn’t waste his time. Apart from that, he was a good teacher. He was a tough, rough Kerryman but he didn’t go around beating people up.† The only time I remember getting really afraid was during the run-up to a religious instruction exam. We were being taught the Papal Encyclicals, Rarum Novarum, Quadrogessimo Anno, and one of the gospels – I think it was Saint Luke. Rarum Novarum was about the rights of the worker; it’s a very great social document. What Quadrogessimo Anno was about, I haven’t a clue. Now, some of the fellows were careless about learning, and the head brother, Brother Hourigan, got anybody who wasn’t doing well, and they were taken up and beaten across the backside, in front of the whole class. It was terrifying. I very quickly became quite a learned Catholic, theology and all the rest of it.’

  He was eventually rescued from Aunt Bridge and Jack O’Hagan. ‘I met an older cousin of mine, Patsy Kelly. He was one of the sons of Nannie, my mother’s eldest sister. When Nannie died Patsy and his brothers were taken into my grandfather’s household. Patsy was my mother’s pride and joy, apart from her own family.* She arranged for him to go to Synge Street.† Then one day, she was going into town and she saw him walking along the street. He was on the jair‡ most of the time, mitching. So it was decided that Patsy would be put into the bar trade, and he was sent to Fleming’s, a pub on Trinity Street. He was a likeable man, good looking, easy-voiced. He always had a good suit and the latest gadget from Dublin. Anyway, I don’t know why he was there in Inchicore, but I met him on the street and he knew Bridge
of old, what Bridge was like, and he asked me how I was getting on. I told him a few things and he went, post-haste, and told my mother what was happening. And the upshot of it was, she arrived and there was a terrible bloody row – and I went home. I’d been there for a year or so.’

  He left St Michael’s and moved to secondary school, James’s Street, which, like St Michael’s, was managed by the Christian Brothers. ‘James’s Street was dominated by the Guinness set-up. The brewery was on both sides of the street. On the left side, beyond the gate of Guinness’s headquarters, was St James’s church. And, just beyond that, you turned on to Basin Lane. Basin Lane ran from James’s Street, up around by the canal basin, an unloading bay for the barges bringing the hops and barley up from the country. The school was near there, on Basin Lane. And the smell around that area was always of hops and malting barley.

  ‘It was a good school. They were good teachers. There was an old chap called Breen, history and geography; I can still see him – moustache, glasses. He was very keen. He told us a great amount about Mary Queen of Scots and the association between Scotland and France. The history of Ireland didn’t figure much. I think it ended somewhere around the Wyndham Land Act.* And it was vaguely mentioned that there’d been a rebellion in 1916. It wasn’t history yet, I suppose; it was almost current affairs.

  ‘I was good at history, geography, English – particularly English. With the encouragement of the Brothers, I wrote a couple of articles for Our Boys,† but they weren’t accepted. However, I had that ability – it was recognised, to write essays and things like that. Individual books weren’t on the curriculum, as such. It was general literature and poetry. There was an Irish anthology, Blátha na File,‡ and it had all the well-known Gaelic poetry in it, Cúirt an Mhean Oíche,§ and such like. The English poetry book was Flowers from Many Gardens, an anthology of all the better works, Keats, Chesterton, all of them. Of course, we did Shakespeare; Hamlet sticks out in my mind. Mention would be made of a book in school and I’d go to a library, mostly Rathmines library; I’d dig it out and read it. I remember reading A Shropshire Lad by your man, Housman. It was remarkable. I read Mary Anne Hutton’s translation of The Táin. I remember reading The Canterbury Tales.’

  He remembers no violence or cruelty at James’s Street. ‘That’s one of the reasons why I found it difficult to take on board the recent complaints about the Christian Brothers. I’d gone to primary school in Tallaght, the Christian Brothers’ primary school in Inchicore, then James’s Street. They weren’t what you’d call very salubrious neighbourhoods and yet I don’t remember seeing anything, except for that one time the Head Brother made an example of the boys who didn’t know their Christian Doctrine.’ He enjoyed school. ‘And I learned another big lesson, about doing the obvious thing. It was during another Christian Doctrine examination, the Archbishop’s examination. I had a very good retentive memory and wrote down a good account of what was in the book. I did notice some peculiar things happening at the back of the class, lads copying from the book, but nobody was paying much attention to it, including the reverent gentleman who was supervising us. In the heel of the hunt, I got 30 per cent in the exam. If it wasn’t literally the same, a word-for-word copy of what was in the book, it didn’t measure. You had the book on your desk and you copied everything, and everyone around you was at it. So, I was reprimanded. I think the Brother was surprised that I was so stupid, that I didn’t cop on. But I had standards in those days. I couldn’t bear the idea of not having a go on my own.’

  He cycled to school from Tallaght, and home, a round twelve-mile journey. ‘I came down through Dolphin’s Barn and then cut through a lane called the Back o’ the Pipes, on to James’s Street. I cycled along there every day and, every day, the south wind blew and I’d stand on the pedals and battle hard against it. And I once had the bright idea, to get out of the main force of the wind along the Crumlin Road. So I went on to the Windmill Road. This was the time when the Behans, Brendan Behan and his brothers and all, had just been shunted out there* – and there they were. I was ambushed, and I never cycled faster – I’d have won the Tour de France. The music of the stones hopping off the spokes of my bicycle was, quite literally, unbelievable. If I’d been caught I doubt very much if I’d have lived to regret it. I never went that way again.

  ‘I had a habit of reading a book while cycling. Not to be recommended. I was going along the street one time, oblivious to everything, reading the book – and I came to a sudden stop. I ended up on the roof of a van with the book in one hand, the driver shouting; I’d frightened the life out of him. I think the book was Glenanaar by Canon Sheehan.

  ‘Now and again, I’d cycle towards Terenure and up to Templeogue and drop in to see my Granny Doyle. She was a bright little old lady who wore a black bonnet and a little black cloak when she left the house. She once told me that her husband’s grandfather – my great-greatgrandfather, Myles Doyle – told her that he had escaped from Wexford in 1798, after the Battle of Arklow. He made his way through the Wicklow Mountains and eventually arrived at Firhouse, where he set up a forge.† She also held very deep Fenian leanings and was generally of a radical outlook. She said that Garibaldi was “a proper bowsey” for annoying the Pope. Tim Healy was “a sleeveen rat” for betraying Parnell. My Aunt Bride said, “But, Ma, Parnell married a divorced woman.” My Granny said, “He was a Protestant and didn’t know the differ.” Her opinion of William Cosgrave* was close to unprintable and she thought that “that fellow” Hitler in Germany was up to no good and should be watched. My father was amazed when I told him about the forge in Firhouse. He said, “My mother never told me anything like that.” I said, “Did you ever ask her?” He just looked at me and shook his head.

  ‘My father was a smallish, quiet man. He was accorded a high level of respect by my mother; they never fought or argued. He never raised his voice or his hand. He was fully supportive of most of her ideas. If my mother thought that she wasn’t getting her way, she could turn on the waterworks; big tears would roll down her beautiful Grecian nose, and my father was gone.

  ‘He was incredibly neat. He always had shining shoes and could literally walk across a ploughed field and they’d still be shining. He had a stud box and a collar box and always wore a trilby hat when dressed. In my earliest memories, he also had a bowler hat in a hat box. This was worn on important occasions. He also had two beautiful cut-throat razors, and sharpened them with a strop. My mother occasionally used them for cutting up lino, and he eventually threw in the towel and began using safety razors, Mac’s Smile and Gillette; the blades cost a penny each and their life could be prolonged by rubbing them around the inside of a glass tumbler. Fly fishing was his favourite hobby. He was a master of the River Dodder and would tie flies for each particular area of the river. He had beautiful greenheart and split cane rods. He taught me how to fish but I didn’t have the patience. Many times in summer, he’d arrive home at breakfast time with a bag of brown trout and, sometimes, a bag of mushrooms. I only remember him being vexed whenever he heard of somebody catching fish with a net. He hated any suggestion of cheating. His sense of patriotism was total and he believed, without any reservation, that de Valera personified the spirit of the nation. He was devastated and actually shed tears when de Valera lost the 1948 election and a Coalition Government took over. His regard for his neighbours was kindly and charitable, except where he encountered overt opposition politics; then his charitable instincts would be somewhat dulled. He had played football and was regarded as a knacky wing-forward. In his last games, he played for the Seán Doyles, a team named after his brother, Johnny, who was fatally wounded during the Civil War. He often took me to boxing tournaments in Portobello Barracks. I saw the great Ernie Smith box.’*

  ‘I don’t remember being particularly interested in women; I had more things on my mind. In any case, by the time I got to school, got through the day, got back home on the bicycle, there wasn’t much time left for frivolities, you know. Any of the fellows I
knew who got involved with girls, it meant an awful lot of their spare time. You couldn’t do what you liked. If you wanted to go into Dublin* or you wanted to go anywhere, you were tied up: “Oh, I can’t go now; you see, myself and Mary are doing this, that and the other,” and that, to me, was slavery.’

  Women might not have distracted him but other things did. ‘I was about fourteen or fifteen at the time. Dan McCabe lived up the road, up near where the High Street in Tallaght is now. He was a very kind, stern man with one of those eagle-type faces. And then there was young Dan. He was about a year older than I was, but wise beyond his years. We used to ramble the fields together but I never saw him laugh; everything in life was dead serious for Dan. He was in the Fianna,† and he organised a troop of us.

  ‘I think, looking back, that the McCabes’ house must have been the centre for dissident Republicans. I saw people; there were a couple of brothers from Howth, well-spoken men, George and Charlie Gilmore. They were engineers, in fact. One of them engineered the blowing up of King Billy in College Green,‡ and the other fellow actually had a plan to drop a bomb on Leinster House,§ to hire an aeroplane to do it. I met these mysterious people in McCabes’. And they were all gentlemen. So, anyway, I joined the Fianna Boys and we were drilled in the essentials of rough street combat, how to set up ambushes, and things like that. And all of this was happening under the eyes of the powers-that-be, my own family and everybody else.