Rory & Ita Read Free Page A

all had some kind of a flu, and she stayed up to look after us, and she got pneumonia and she died. I remember being carried in to see her and I remember her hands were white and I remember saying, “Mammy has new gloves.”’
    She remembers the priest coming to the house, with two altar boys. ‘I was in the cot, in my bedroom, and, whatever way the coffin was fixed, I could see it through the door. And I thought it was wonderful, the priest coming up the stairs – he had a kind of regalia on him, and these two little boys ringing bells and going into her room. I thought it was a holiday. The priest and the two little boys and the bells ringing, and then off they went.’
    She watched from her parents’ bedroom window. ‘I must have been still sick because I was taken out of the cot and I can remember the horses had black plumes, and there was a hearse and my father had a black hard hat. Neighbours were there, I can remember that. I can’t remember relations but I remember my father had a black armband and a black tie, and all the blinds were pulled on the road. The men walked off behind the hearse, only the men.
    ‘I never realised she was dead. I remember being told that she was coming back, which was terrible but I suppose it was done to shut me up; I was told she was coming back. I’m still waiting.’
    A hand.
    Her hand,
    Winding a handle and putting a needle in place.
    Only a hand.
    I can not recall a body or face.
    Later, I knew that the handle was part of a gramophone.
    Newly arrived
    And she still alive.
    Later still,
    When lonely and blue
    I handled that handle,
    Remembering she had handled it too. *
    * Ita: ‘He didn’t go home until she died. She wasn’t dead when I was born – I think I can claim that – but I have a very vague memory of my father going off with a suitcase, a small suitcase, and being told that my grandmother was either dying or dead. I was very small at the time. That’s my only memory of her; I never met her.’
    * The father of Maeve Brennan, author of
The Springs of Affection, The Rose Garden, The Long-Winded Lady
and
The Visitor
.
    * From
Allegiance
(1950) by Robert Brennan.
    † Gaelic Athletic Association. Jim Bolger reported on gaelic football and hurling.
    * From
You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II
by Jeff Kisseloff: ‘All of this later helped me in the army, because I learned how to get dressed putting on my socks and shoes fast on the cold floor. Congoleum, which I learned later was not a bad word for floor covering, to me was one of the worst words for poor people. If you had congoleum floors, that was terrible … To this day I don’t like to walk barefoot except on my own rug at home’ (Lee Silver).
    * China (from ‘Delft’).
    * By Ita Doyle.

Chapter Three – Ita
    ‘T here was a lady at the corner of the street, a widow, and, now and again, she’d go mad and she’d throw statues, always religious statues, out through the window and they’d land at the path opposite and smash, and nobody paid any heed to this. She’d come out the next day and everyone would say “Good morning,” or “Good evening,” and nobody would say, “What happened to you that you threw the statues out?”’
    She loved the street. ‘I don’t think the winter kept me in. We just wrapped up and went out; the weather meant nothing to us.’ Her great friends were Doris and Marie Sullivan, who lived next door, in No. 26 , and her best friend was Noeleen Hingerty, who lived opposite, in No. 4 . There were other children from up and down the street, the Kerrigans and the Fays and the Murphys. They all grew up together. They played with wooden hoops, and sticks. They could beat the hoops up and down the street with no traffic to get in their way, only the odd milk float or coal cart. And there was hopscotch. ‘We drew what we used to call a piggy bed on the path and made numbers in the boxes. Then you had a piggy. It was usually a stone