A Life Beyond Boundaries Read Free Page A

home in 1941, this young Vietnamese woman, whose name was Ti-hai (Miss no. 2 said her parents, concerned mainly with sons), was all set to go with us, because she enjoyed seeing the world. But California, our landing point, was drumming up racist anti-Asian policies, and the American consulate in Shanghai refused to give her a visa, so she had to return to Vietnam. After the war, my mother tried to find her through diplomatic channels, but without success.
    My first memory of schooling dates from about 1942. My father was in and out of hospitals in San Francisco, and my baby sister was born in 1943. My mother was too exhausted caring for her husband and the new baby to cope with two energetic little boys who, at that time, quarrelled constantly. So we were packed off to The Country School, a boarding school run by two grim Scandinavian women outside Los Gatos, at the edge of present-day Silicon Valley. The school is still there, but the town has becomeso big that today it’s near the centre. America was quite unfamiliar to us, we missed our parents badly, and we were often physically punished. I had the misfortune to wet my bed, and the school rules forced me almost every day to miss a class so I could wash my sheets, for which I was mercilessly teased and bullied. I do not remember learning anything there.
    After the family returned to Waterford and managed to buy a house at the edge of the town, my brother and I were put into a Quaker primary school. Cars were then a rarity in our town, so we went to school in a donkey-cart driven by my mother’s elderly and extremely kind gardener. I had my first experience of a traffic accident when I rushed out of the school gate and ran into just such a donkey-cart which happened to be passing by. Had it been a car I would probably have been killed, but as it was, I only broke my shoulder-bone.
    When we boys were given bicycles to go to school, we were introduced to the class struggle and religious conflict. We had to ride down through a Catholic neighbourhood of relatively poor people. The boys there took us to be snobby, half-English and Protestant, and were usually ready for a fight. The way down was not that bad, as we could ride very fast and arm ourselves with hockey-sticks. But going home uphill was when we ‘got it’ from these lads. At the time I did not understand why we were hated, but it was a useful lesson in the effects of religious, class and racial bigotry. Today, I don’t remember much about the Quaker school except that I was so afraid of a red-faced mathematics teacher that I often played truant, lying tomother. I was also a member of a little gang headed by a tough, athletic girl called Fiona.
    The most important piece of luck for me was another key decision made by my mother. Irish law made it compulsory for small children to start learning either Irish (nationalism) or Latin (Catholicism). My mother saw no point in my learning a nearly extinct language spoken fluently only in the far west of the country, so Latin it was. She found a private tutor for me, Mrs Webster, a wonderful middle-aged woman who was the best teacher I have ever had. It may be hard to believe, but she made me fall in love with Latin, and realize that I had, from the start, a gift for languages.
    Later I asked my mother: ‘Why Latin? It is even more extinct than Irish.’ Though she did not know Latin herself, she knew the right answer: ‘Latin is the mother of most Western European languages – French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian – so if you know Latin, you will find all these languages easy. Besides, Latin has a great literature which every well-educated person should know.’
    It turned out, however, that my mother had another reason for her decision. She believed that Irish schools of those days were not very good, and she wanted her two boys to go to a fine boarding-school in England which might help them get into a good ‘public