Rory & Ita Read Free Page B

but wedevised a thing; you put a stone in a shoe polish tin and it slid better. And I can remember once, there was a girl who lived in the street parallel to us, Oaklands Terrace, and she was forever whining. And my brother, Joe – who, I must admit, was a bit of a brat – he took the stone from her, and she set off away, “Joe Bolger took my piggy! He took my little piggy!” She ran home screaming, so somebody ran after her with the piggy because we didn’t want to get into trouble. And, of course, we had skipping ropes which we could stretch right across the street. Some could barely jump but others had dazzling performances. I was a good skipper.’

    The milkman came around on a horse-drawn float. ‘In those days you got your milk into a jug. You’d bring out your jug or he’d come in and fill it, whatever it was, a pint, two pints, and he’d always put in an extra bit which was known as the tilly, * and sometimes the tilly varied. But the churns were beautifully polished – everything was beautifully polished, absolutely spotless.
    ‘And then there was the coalman, Mr Nolan. * The Nolans lived in Terenure. Quite a big house they had, beside the police barracks. They actually had a ballroom in their house and we used to go up there for dancing lessons; Lillie Comerford was the dancing teacher.’ The Tontine Society also met in the ballroom, every Sunday morning. ‘The Tontine was, really, to bury people. You’d see men going in there every Sunday and paying into the Tontine, and then, when anyone died – people didn’t have spare cash and it was very important to have money to bury people and it would be a matter of pride tobury them properly. So, it was its own form of insurance.
    ‘Mr Nolan was a great big man and he was black, black and he always had a sack around his shoulders, and I don’t know why or what it was there to preserve, because underneath it was black too. Our house had no back entrance, so he used to carry the coal right through the house and on the coal day they used to put newspaper for him to step on. I don’t know what it cost; they’d pay him there and then. The milkman would be paid once a week.’
    She remembers the neighbours with great affection. ‘Such a mixture of people, all types, all religions and, I suppose, all social classes. There were two Garda sergeants, one right opposite, and one beside us, Mr Sullivan. There were Church of Ireland people, the Wilkinsons, on the other side of us, in No. 24 , and every Sunday morning their window was open wide and hymns came soaring out. They had a loganberry which used to grow beside the wall and Mr Wilkinson used to put a branch over the wall, for us to take the berries, but sometimes his wife would come out and take it back. She was a very nice lady but she obviously didn’t want to share the loganberries. Mr Wilkinson’s sister was married to a man whose parents lived opposite, and they were Presbyterians. Carmichael was their name, and then further down the road there was the Holmes family and Mrs Holmes was Mr Wilkinson’s sister as well, and they were Church of Ireland. He was in Guinness. And then there was a Jewish couple past him, a Mr and Mrs Matofsky, and they had some kind of a furniture factory. And two doors from them there was another Jewish family, Mr and Mrs Morris, and thenback down the road, Mrs Morris’s sister lived and she was Mrs Silverman.’ The vegetable man called once to the Silvermans and young Sammy Silverman was sent out to get the vegetables and fruit, including a pound of plums. ‘So the vegetable man weighed the plums and he gave them to Sammy and Sammy went in, and Mrs Silverman weighed them and they were light-weight, and she ran after the vegetable man and she told him that she’d weighed them and they were light-weight, and he just kept going and he shouted back, “Weigh Sammy.” Mrs Silverman used to seek refuge in Mrs Morris, her sister’s house, and I don’t know whether Mr