Authors: Roddy Doyle
‘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
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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
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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.’
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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.’
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In north County Dublin.
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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.’
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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.’
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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.’
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Rory: ‘This was a paper-size, seven and a half inches by ten inches.’
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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.
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The Fianna Fáil newspaper, founded by de Valera in 1931.
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GAA stadium and headquarters.
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The union was the Dublin Typographical Provident Society (DTPS).
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Rory: ‘The name went back to medieval times, when the printing industry was first organised. The metal had to be boiled – dirty work – and always done by the unfortunate apprentices. They were covered in muck and dirt and smelling of smoke. Somebody named them the printer’s devils, and it stuck.’
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Rory: ‘He was known as Jacko by the staff.’
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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.’
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Local Defence Force.
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Rory: ‘We referred to the Great War, not World War One; we didn’t realise we were witnessing the start of World War Two.’
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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.’
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Turf-cutting blade; a double-sided spade.
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Rory: ‘I’ve recently seen shell cocoa used as a garden mulch. It took fifty years to work that one out.’
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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.’
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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.’
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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.’
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Rory: ‘My mother also had a bad night.’
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Rory: ‘He was later the boss of the Sugar Company, but at that time he was OC of the Southern Command of the Irish Army.’
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Rory: ‘A bag of chips and a piece of fish, usually ray.’
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Rory: ‘I never saw a clothing ration coupon until the week I was married and my mother handed over my ration books.’
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Electricity Supply Board.
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Rory: ‘A few years ago, I tried to smoke some plug tobacco – a fit of nostalgia – and it nearly blew my lungs asunder.’
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A theatrical costumier.
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A future Taoiseach, and gourmet.
‘W
e didn’t look on the War as hardship. I suppose we were insulated against it. I’m sure there were awful shortages, but I have no memory of them; so I can’t have been too deprived. The kitchen was always heated, because there was a back boiler. There was no coal, but we always had turf. It was usually wet but it seemed to work alright. And the next-door neighbours, the Sullivans – Mr Sullivan was a Guard; he was the sergeant up in Terenure – he used to cut turf
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and every load that came back, there was turf put over the back wall for us. People helped each other.
‘And, of course, there was the black market. I don’t remember ever being short of tea or sugar or butter, or any of those other things that people seemed to be short of. I didn’t know how the black market worked, but I do know that bags of sugar and tea managed to come into the house. My stepmother wasn’t a great organiser, and she seldom went out the door; I did a fair bit of the shopping, as did Máire. So I think it was the neighbours who managed to get the sugar and tea, and she just paid for them.
‘And I remember this awful thing that people still talk
about, this brown bread; I remember when it came in – maybe I’m a bit peculiar, but I thought it was alright. Denis Hingerty was working up in Belfast, and he’d come home every now and again, and bring white bread. And Mrs Hingerty always gave us some of this white bread, and it was absolutely beautiful – it was better than cake. But the famous brown bread
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– people complained that they’d had problems with diarrhoea, but I can’t remember anything bad about it.
‘I think the fact that he was drinking black-market tea went right over my father’s head. He handed out money every week for groceries, and they materialised in the kitchen; a little pixie could have arrived and brought them, for all he knew about it.
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He knew nothing about prices. The tea was put in front of him and he, literally, didn’t know where it had come from. And he loved Irel coffee.
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He had it every day, after his dinner.
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But he wouldn’t have known where that came from either. Things were put on the table, and as long as they were paid for, he was happy. I remember coming home with a new coat, and saying, “Do you like it, Daddy?” and his answer: “Does it fit you?” My answer
was, “Yes.” “Then it’ll do,” says he. And toeless shoes – I arrived home with toeless shoes; I thought I was the bee’s knees. And he looked, and said: “How very nice. If I went around with the toe out of my boots, they’d be talking about me.”
‘I didn’t really feel anything about the War at all,
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except this awful fear of the glimmer man. You weren’t supposed to cook by gas, between the hours of this, that and the other – some time in the evening. But I remember the gas being lit to heat the kettle, and it was all very surreptitiously done; we were put to the front door, on sentry duty, to make sure the glimmer man wasn’t coming. He was from the Gas Company, and if you were caught with your gas on, it was fearful – terrible retribution, altogether. And, of course, if the gas had been used, you had to be very quick in cooling the ring. Because the glimmer man would come in and put his hand on the ring and, if it was the least bit warm, you were in trouble. Everybody was afraid of this glimmer man but, actually, it turned out – we found out years later – there were only two or three glimmer men for the whole of Dublin.
‘I wasn’t particularly interested in what was happening. But the News was on every night, on the radio. Radio Eireann. My father would have thought that the BBC was biased. It was on a par with rugby and other foreign games, so you didn’t listen to it. Radio Eireann, though, was like the GAA. We did listen to some English programmes, a few comedy programmes. There was
ITMA – It’s That Man Again –
he loved that. “Can I do you now, sir?” this charwoman used to say; I think she
was called Mrs Mop. But, for news, it was Radio Eireann. We talked about the “War,” not the “Emergency”. And I never heard my father say the Emergency; it was always the War. But he was the kind of man, no matter how strong his opinions, he’d never voice them. He was a very secretive kind of man. If he heard you saying something that he didn’t approve of, he’d check you, but he never would have said something like, I side with the Germans or the British. That would be kept to himself, maybe discussed with friends his own age, but he never discussed such things with us.’ He worked at the Department of External Affairs but, ‘there again, he kept his mouth shut. His brother-in-law, Robert Brennan – my Uncle Bob – was the Ambassador to Washington during the War. And he came home, certainly once, maybe twice. I can remember one occasion, he came with little wooden ornaments, brightly painted, “A Present from Washington” written on them. We thought they were the last word; they were lovely. One was in the shape of a little clog, and one was a clock; I got the clock. I was in Kilmuckridge, and Uncle Bob came down to visit Bessie and Mike. He came down in an army lorry, and, I remember, we went up to the village in the lorry, to Boggin’s, the grocery and pub. Walter Boggin, the owner, was a second cousin of my father’s. There was great excitement, having a well-known visitor down there, and a Wexford man to boot – that made it better still. I don’t know what they spoke about; it really went over my head. I’m sure they were momentous things he was talking about, but I was more interested in sitting in the back of the lorry, and being treated to lemonade and biscuits. He was an extremely polite man; he would never ignore you just because you were a
child. He spoke to me, even in the midst of all these adults. Another time he came home, he had his daughter Emer with him. She was a lovely person, very gracious, tall and slim. I still remember her magnificent coat. It was beautiful, tweed, completely lined in fur, real fur. It was absolutely beautiful, and she was so slim – it was gorgeous.
‘I remember being down in Wexford, in Kilmuckridge, and my Uncle Mike had the only radio in the district – he was an extremely forward-looking man – and lots of the neighbours used to come at night to hear the news about the War – which always amused me, because I didn’t think it had an awful lot of effect on people down in Kilmuckridge. But every night, the kitchen was packed, and all listened intently. There was this old man called Andy Byrne, and he had been a seaman, but he had a farm up the road. He used to come over every night, and I only heard afterwards that he actually had money invested in Australia and his great worry was that the Japs were going to invade Australia and his money would be gone. Andy smoked a pipe with no shank. Now and again, he’d take the pipe out of his mouth and put it in his dog’s mouth. The dog always held the pipe firmly for a minute or two. Andy, and all around, would laugh heartily, and then Andy would retrieve the pipe and put it straight back into his
own mouth.
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I also remember, when I was in Kilmuckridge and my father was with me, he went down to the creamery in the village with Uncle Mike. He was standing around, chatting to the men and listening to them, and this one particular man said, “It’s going on too long. Why don’t they just sit around the table and lay down their specifications?” And my father came back chuckling; it was the greatest cure for a war. I remember, we were at Mass one day and everything was dead silent. And a man was walking up the centre of the church, walking slowly; he was fairly elderly, and his shoes were creaking very badly. I remember looking at my father, and he looked down and said, very quietly: “They’ll stop creaking when they’re paid for.”