‘When Joe left school, my father was keen that he go to university; he certainly was bright enough. But he went off one day and joined the Army. He just went off and we didn’t know where he’d gone, and he arrived back in an Army uniform. He wasn’t a tall man, and I thought he’d never lift those boots, but he did. He sat the cadetship exams and passed, with flying colours. But he was an inch too short, and he didn’t get the cadetship. He was told that they might relax the height rule later, so he sat the exam again, and he got it again, but he hadn’t grown any – and that was it. But he seemed to be very happy. He certainly made a lot of friends. And, of course, he was out of the house, which suited him down to the ground, because he was away from our stepmother. He came home every week and he’d be polishing his buttons and his boots. I still remember the oxblood polish for the boots.‡ I think he was in Portobello Barracks. He was a private at first, and I don’t think he rose much higher than that. He was in the Commandos, a wireless operator. He was in the Army right through the War, and it was only afterwards that I heard about some of the hardships. There was one story; they were camped somewhere, and the camp was flooded out and they slept on sodden mattresses, which can’t have helped his arthritis in later years – but he’d have been the last man to blame the War for anything. He was quite happy. When he left, after the War, he got a commendation. I still have it, and it ends, “Bolger was always clean and neat in his habits.” I thought it was the funniest thing. It’s there, typed out: “Bolger was always clean and neat in his habits.”
‘Máire left school before me. She was going to do a commercial course; I think she might even have started, but she’d sat the Civil Service examination, and she was called. There was keen competition for jobs in the Civil Service; they used to print the names of the successful candidates in the papers, the first hundred out of, literally, thousands. So, she was delighted. She worked in Dublin Castle, for the Department of Industry and Commerce. The offices were pretty miserable, badly heated. But you had a job, you had your money at the end of the week; she seemed to be very happy. And that was where she met her husband.
‘He was Eunan James Peoples and he came from what his mother used to call “the cathedral town of Letterkenny”.* When he arrived up to Dublin first, people used to called him Onion or Union, and everything else except Eunan, so he just said, “Call me Jimmy.” So, from that on, he was known as Jimmy. He was a lovely man, very good company, very witty, and very talented. He knew Greek and Latin. If you asked him about flowers, he knew all the Latin names, the ones in brackets. He was really a very bright man. He played the guitar, and sang all the songs of the day. And he acted. He was in a drama group with the Civil Service; we used to go to see him. He was very good.
‘Máire was only twenty-two* when she got married, and Jimmy was about sixteen years older. He already had a house in Harold’s Cross,† which I know he bought for £600. The wedding was very early in the morning, in St Joseph’s church, in Terenure. I was the bridesmaid. White weddings were rare, particularly during the War when material was scarce. Máire had a green-coloured frock; it was lovely. Some of the girls in the office where she worked gave her some of their clothes coupons, and various other friends gave her some too. I had a kind of a pink dress, off the hanger. I was quite plump at that time – a thing I hadn’t been before or since – but, I suppose it was my age. I thought the dress was beautiful but I think it exaggerated my size. It was very early in the morning because there was only one train a day to Galway, where they were to spend their honeymoon. So the reception was held in a hotel opposite Westland Row Station, so they could dash across and get the train; I think it was called the Grosvenor Hotel. It was a nice reception but it finished very early; the whole thing was over by ten o’clock in the morning.’
After leaving school, she went to a commercial college. ‘I can’t remember whether it was spelt “Skerry’s” or “Skerries,” but it was on Stephen’s Green, a few doors down from the Department of External Affairs, where my father worked. The building has since been knocked down. I don’t know why that particular college was chosen, but my father had decided that I should do a commercial course, and I was quite happy to do it; it never crossed my mind to look for anything else. And I was to sit the Civil Service exams. That was always the aim in our house, the Civil Service – permanent and pensionable was very acceptable. But I never did sit the exams. At the college, we did shorthand, typing, bookkeeping, English and maths. I remember, there was a Miss Warren in the office; she was a very distant person. And there was a Mr Hammill in charge – he was very nice – and various teachers for the different subjects. I took to it straight away, although the maths was always a mystery to me. But I was very quick with the shorthand, and I took to the typing and got the speed up very quickly. I quite enjoyed it, and I liked the place itself. We had to do an essay every week, and I was happy doing them and always got good marks. I tried to make them humorous and they were often read out in class. I was exactly a year there.
‘Jobs were very scarce then; this was in 1944. But there was a phone call to the college from the Pathology Department in UCD* which was just around the corner, on Earlsfort Terrace. They asked if the college had someone who had the Leaving Cert and was good at English. I was sent around, and I was interviewed by Professor O’Kelly and Professor O’Farrell. I did a little test – shorthand and typing; there was a Miss O’Toole in charge, a very efficient woman. I got the job. I was to start at twenty-five shillings a week, which was good, because lot of girls started at fifteen shillings a week. I was over the moon.
‘I remember going in the first day, and I was first there; nobody else had arrived. I sat there, waiting, and the first to come in was a girl called Chris Lynch; she was from Cavan. We became great friends. It was Chris who showed me what to do. I thought, because they’d asked for someone who was good at English, that I’d be doing some writing. And I also thought that I’d be doing lots of shorthand. But, from the first day, my ability at English didn’t seem to be that important and I never did one stroke of shorthand. But I did do the books – I kept the day-book, and I also did a fair bit of typing.
‘The Pathology Department was run by Professor O’Farrell and Professor O’Kelly; T.T. O’Farrell – I think it was Thomas Theodore – and W.D. O’Kelly. I got on with both of them. T.T. was a pure gentleman, although I never called him T.T. – he was Professor O’Farrell. But he was a thorough gentleman. He was a big man and he shuffled along; someone told me he had gout. The other man I also liked very much, but some people weren’t all that keen on him. He was a bit sharper in his attitude. I remember, one day, a woman said to him, “Excuse me, Professor, have you got the time?” and he said, “Yes, but I haven’t got the inclination.”
‘I bought lavender soap with my first week’s pay. The money was in an envelope; the tax was stopped. I think it was called lavender oatmeal soap; you could see the little pieces of oatmeal in it. It was supposed to be good for the complexion; I can’t say it helped with the lines, but it did its best. But it had this beautiful lavender perfume; it was really lovely.
‘There were so many different types of soap. The lowest form was a black soap known as “dirt shifter”. It was used for scrubbing doorsteps – people really did scrub doorsteps in those days. A lot of the doorsteps were made of granite, including ours, and they really benefited from a good scrubbing because the mica in the granite really shone. Then there was Sunlight. You got a box with two big hunks of Sunlight, stuck together; you needed a knife to cut them apart. Sunlight was used for washing clothes, and everything else; it was a yellow colour. There’d be one of the Sunlight blocks in the bathroom. Then, a step up from Sunlight was toilet soap, Lifebuoy or Palmolive, but it wouldn’t have been used on a regular basis. Palmolive was gorgeous; it was a green soap, and it was wrapped in a green crinkly paper – I can still see it – with a gold and black band.
‘The second thing I bought was a navy-blue blouse, with white spots. It was linen
, and I bought it in Bergin’s drapery shop, in Terenure. I think it was five shillings. And I bought a new bike, on the never-never. I got it in a shop in Rathmines; I can’t remember the name. I paid for it every Friday. I’d cycle back from work, and pay them whatever I owed. I was always prompt with the payments; I never missed. It was a smashing bike. I’d been using Máire’s old bike, but I’d wanted one of my own. I was earning my own money and I wanted something I’d bought myself. I wanted a better bike. It was state-of-the-art, with three speeds – this was really high-tech. It was maroon-coloured and it glided along; it was marvellous. It had a basket at the front and a carrier at the back. I used to cycle to work and home for dinner, and cycle back in; the bus fares and lunches would have eaten away at the twenty-five shillings. I went everywhere on it.
‘I remember when I heard about the end of the War. I was standing, waiting for a bus on Harcourt Street – I mustn’t have cycled that day – and I heard someone say the War was over. There was great excitement, but nothing like in England. I remember having the radio on that night, the BBC, and hearing the cheers. I was nearly sorry we hadn’t suffered bombing the way they had, so we could rejoice in the same way. And then, after, there were the newsreels and those awful scenes of the prison camps. I couldn’t look at them. I used to close my eyes. In a way, it was cowardly, but I used to say, “At this stage there’s nothing I can do about it, so why have nightmares?” But it was dreadful. It was shocking – nobody could believe it, what had been happening.
‘My friend Noeleen was a few years younger than me but she’d left school after the Inter, when she was sixteen, so she was working and we both had our few bob. We used to go to the pictures. We went in for the romances; I can’t remember any one specific film, we went to so many of them. And then we started going to various hops – dances. And there was a girl working in UCD; I’ve forgotten her name, but we were quite friendly. She was a member of the Dublin Musical Society, and she asked me if I’d like to join. I thought it was a good idea, because it was a way of meeting people; it’s a kind of crossroads in life when you leave school and you’re on your own. So I joined. I was able to sing a bit; I was fine for the chorus. We performed Rose Marie in the Gaiety. I had three or four chorus parts. It was great fun.
‘I remember, this one time, myself and Noeleen went to the pictures in the Carlton. There was a restaurant upstairs, and we often went to have tea and a cake after the pictures, so up we went and ordered our tea and cakes. They usually put a plate of cakes in front of you and you took your pick, and they knew by the number left on the plate how many you’d had. But we were sitting there, chatting, and this man came in, and he was French. He spoke little bits of French in between his English, and we had our schoolgirls’ French, so we knew what it was. He ordered coffee, or tea, and cakes. So he had his cake on his plate and, to our huge amazement, he asked the waitress for a fork, and he sat eating his cake with a fork. At that time it was unheard-of. We thought we’d never get out, to fall around laughing at the idea of a man eating cake with a fork.
* Rory: ‘On the matter of the bog-cuttings, the Guards were especially active. They knew all about them, where they were and who was in charge of them. So when the County Council decided to open up the bog-cuttings, the Guards were in like a flash and had the best bits taken.’
* Ita: ‘I remember Rory talking about it for ever and a day.’
† Ita: ‘Years later, in 1948, I was down in Wexford, on holidays, and my stepmother had to go into hospital. Gallstones or kidney-stones, I can’t remember – someplace where there shouldn’t have been stones. I knew that my father and Joe were alone in the house, and two more useless men for housework were never invented, so I decided to go home. When I got home, there was no sign of any food. They came home from work, so I said I’d go and get a few things; I said we’d need bread, and my father took out £1 and said, “Is that enough?” Remember, this was 1948. When I got married, in 1951, £1.10s was enough to feed the two of us for a week.’
‡ Ita: ‘It came in a bottle, and was made on milk.’
§ Ita: ‘Dinner was eaten at about 1 pm, and “tea” was in the evening.’
* Ita: ‘Remember, I was only fourteen when the War was declared.’
* Ita: ‘This had no adverse effect on his health because he died of old age.’
* Ita: ‘It was only years later that I realised that not everyone in America had lovely white teeth and white socks.’
†31st of May, 1941; twenty-seven people were killed.
* Ita: ‘I only discovered last week [January 2001] that ration books for sugar and tea were introduced in 1942; both myself and Rory had the idea that they were brought in earlier. It goes to show you how wrong your memory can be. I found this out when I was given a photocopy of a page of the Irish Times, dated Tuesday, June 16, 1942; there was a photograph of Maeve Brennan on it. She was working as a librarian in the National Catholic School for Social Services, in Washington D.C. Right underneath the photograph, there was an article about the introduction of the coupons, and another article about three warships sunk by Italian planes.’
* Ita: ‘My father used to call them “counter hoppers”. There was a lot more to the job than hopping counters, but he spoke about counter hoppers.’
† Also referred to as the B.M. days – Before Mum.
* Ita: ‘It was straight at the sides and bare at the back – like a boy’s behind. Having read in the paper that brushing your hair made it grow, Máire brushed her shingled head for hours. It didn’t accelerate growth; it just made her head terribly sore.’
* Pearse founded St Enda’s school in 1908.
* Ita: ‘Some of them I only met again after fifty years, at a reunion. I was very pleased, because everyone knew me. I didn’t know everybody, but when I looked hard enough, I could see the younger face behind the older face.’
* Ita: ‘You had to pay a fee – you paid the shop a fee and you served your time.’
† Val Mulkerns: born 1925 in Dublin; books include A Peacock’s Cry (1954); A Friend of Don Juan (1979); The Summerhouse (1984); Very Like a Whale (1986).
‡ Ita: ‘He took after my father in the boot-polishing. Boot-polishing was the only domestic chore that my father ever did.’
* In County Donegal.
* Ita: ‘If a woman worked a certain amount of years in the Civil Service, she got a lump sum when she left. Because there was a marriage bar; a woman had to leave the Service when she married. But Máire wasn’t there long enough; she got no lump sum.’
† Suburb of Dublin, about three miles south of the city centre.
* University College Dublin.
Chapter Ten – Rory
‘When I got to the stage where I could save some of my earnings – that would have been towards the end of my apprenticeship – I began to feel that I wanted to buy clothes for myself. Because my mother bought clothes for everybody, for herself, my father, brothers and sisters. I wanted my own independence. So I looked around at the kind of clothes I liked, and I saw some people wearing Donegal tweed. I liked the look of it, so I went to Kevin and Howlin’s, on Nassau Street, and I paid £10 for a handmade suit in Donegal tweed; that was cash money, almost two weeks’ wages. I felt great in it, and my mother was delighted with it. It hung on me OK. People who didn’t know me may have thought I was somebody important or eccentric, or one of those Gaelic League people who went around talking Irish out loud. I wasn’t talking Irish out loud but I was going around in this lovely suit, and enjoying myself. Then I wanted a hat with a wide brim. That, I suppose, was the artistic look; artists wore wide-brimmed hats, and that was what I was looking for. I never found out where Seán O’Sullivan* or Seán Keating† got their wide-brimmed black hats. But I knew I could get a lovely green velour hat in Kingston’s,‡ and I paid £3 paid for it. I was caught out in a dreadful rain shower and the green dye from the hat ran down my face. So I went back to Kingston’s to complain, and the fellow said, “Actually, with that hat, one sh
ould carry an umbrella to protect it from the rain.” I told him I’d bought the hat to protect my head from the rain, and so I succeeded in having the hat changed for another one.
‘When I started the apprenticeship, I went to the school of printing, at Bolton Street College of Technology, a half-day, every day, for two years. And the following two years I went to night classes, twice a week. The third year was book work, how to design and assemble books, and then, in the fourth year, general display and jobbing.§ I was always interested in the display aspect of print, and thought I’d like to develop my knowledge and skills. So I went, first of all, to Rathmines, the technical college there, and found that it was more geared towards advertising agency work. And I discovered, after general conversations with other students, that the advertising agencies offered a whole lot of jobs; nice jobs to go to, you were honoured to work for them, but they didn’t pay you much. Unless you owned the place, you got paid buttons, but you felt good. So I said to myself, “That’s no good for me,” as I was earning a good wage as a compositor, and I decided that I might learn more in the National College of Art. So I went there the following year. I originally went to learn design – that’s what I signed up for – but there was this Dutch professor who had a habit of imposing his ideas on the students. Everybody ended up with the same-looking poster, or that sort of thing. That wasn’t what I really wanted, so I changed my mind and decided to go to drawing school.