A County Dublin Love Story
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Project1_Layout 1 20/11/2012 10:41 Page 1 A County Dublin Love Story Conan Kennedy A WALK ON THE SOUTH SIDE Copyright © 2010, 2013 Conan Kennedy www.conankennedy.com The right of Conan Kennedy to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published as printed edition in 2010 by MORRIGAN BOOK COMPANY Published in E format in 2013 This publication may not be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publishers. ISBN 978-0-907677-04-8 MORRIGAN BOOK COMPANY KILLALA, CO MAYO IRELAND [email protected] SOUTHSIDE_TEXT 2012 AMEND.indd 1 20/11/2012 10:56 THEY MET IN DUBLIN. She was a schoolgirl. He was older, a returned emigrant, back from Africa. They got married and went to America. Returning to Ireland they lived in County Dublin. DúnLaoghaire. The southside. This is a story of that place, their place, their times. Their love story. A WALK ON THE SOUTH SIDE SOUTHSIDE_TEXT 2012 AMEND.indd 2 20/11/2012 10:56 A WALK ON THE SOUTH SIDE SOUTHSIDE_TEXT 2012 AMEND.indd 3 20/11/2012 10:56 CONAN KENNEDY MORRIGAN SOUTHSIDE_TEXT 2012 AMEND.indd 4 20/11/2012 10:56 CONAN KENNEDY MORRIGAN SOUTHSIDE_TEXT1.indd 1 22/5/10 22:31:43 1 SOUTHSIDE_TEXT1.indd 2 22/5/10 22:31:45 A WALK ON THE SOUTH SIDE Google says... This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia’s quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. Ok, I’ll try. 1 SOUTHSIDE_TEXT1.indd 1 22/5/10 22:31:47 LANSDOWNE, KILLINEY ROAD UST AS WELL they didn’t meet in The Bleeding Horse”. “JSuch was the son Hugo’s comment when I told him my own parents had met in Lansdowne Tennis Club. Hence the reason they called their house Lansdowne. That house was their life. Married in 1941, they never lived anywhere else as a married couple. And rarely went on holidays. Though I do remember them once taking my older sister and myself to a rented holiday cottage in Brittas Bay. That was about it, holiday wise. They were a quiet and secretive couple, very hard to know. I am a novelist, and on top of that I am their son...but I never understood them. And still don’t. They didn’t seem to have any friends. I rarely remember people calling. Which was a pity. My mother had good china and silver teapots and the like, and she kept the house very well, quite prepared for visitors. And we had a maid. Lansdowne is on Killiney Road, more or less opposite the cul de sac known as Killiney Grove. Pushing the word grove a bit, those one and a half miserable trees poking out of tarmac. But a gesture I suppose. The parents’ house was new when they moved in, a Mr Conway had built it and the two others alongside. The site was really just the edge of a field by the road. There were no houses opposite on the left hand side of Killiney Road in those days. I was born in this house. A home birth. But not for trendy reasons. In those days it was the normal thing. In fact the trendy thing for the middleclasses then was to be born in a nursing home. Trendiness tends to be based on having money, being different to the norm. For no particular practical reason. Dr Wright came over from Dalkey to deliver me. Dr Wright was son of an earlier Dr Wright, one of those old doctoring families that don’t seem to have continued to our times. The earlier edition had been my mother’s doctor as a child. They lived in Ulverton Road, but had lands behind. ‘Dr Wright’s Field’. This is now the site of Ormeau Park. Which… and here comes the really uninteresting bit, was built by a Mr Martin from Belfast who’s grandson’s name is mentioned most mornings on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland. ‘And the editor was Niall Martin’. God my mind is cluttered 2 3 SOUTHSIDE_TEXT1.indd 2 22/5/10 22:31:48 A WALK ON THE SOUTH SIDE Anyway, Dr Wright bicycled over ‘with a bag of rusty tools”, or so my father said. But my father said things like that. When he spoke at all. A humourous person, he lived in the silent audience of life, as someone watching bad comedians. But sometimes he found it funny, and laughed. Generally though it was a quiet house. Very quiet. There was a rhythm. Dargle Laundry in Bray collected sheets, for laundering. Grimes in Dalkey delivered meat, by bicycle. And milk was delivered on a cart from Wilkie’s Farm in Saval Park Road. And no, I am not one hundred and eight. It was all just very different then. The times and the house itself. The picture opposite shows it as it was for the sixty years of my parents’ ownership, an auctioneer’s shot of the place just before it was sold. But later it was changed. Extended and modernised. Electric gates. And all. Amazing how for only a hundred thousand euro or so it’s possible to remove every last vestige of character from a house. As a child I looked out those windows across fields full of haystacks, back and front. And the grazing of cows, the seasons changing, all that. To the back was Wilkie’s Field, now the site of Ballinclea Heights. And beyond that the hill known locally then as ‘the rocks’. Officially it’s Roches Hill. The same Roches as in Rochestown Avenue. I don’t think there was any bloke called Roche involved in this at all. And believe the name derives from an old French word for rocks. Sensible enough. This was all rocky countryside. With a plethora of Carraig roads and Corrig roads and…Rock roads. That small window in the centre of the front of the house was my bedroom. I could see to Dublin Bay from there. Foghorns blared, and east winds blew in the smell of the sea. That bay seemed to be nearer then. All changed now. The window immediately to the left of mine was the bedroom of my sister Louise Kennedy. An international swimmer, she was later to be a well known swimming teacher around Dún Laoghaire. She died suddenly and young. I record her here. Unmarried, with no children, she is forgotten otherwise. My parents too are both gone to their reward now. My mother to Glasnevin to the Roman Catholic grave of her own people. And my father to ‘the Protestant side’ of Deans Grange, to his. It was the way they wanted it. 2 3 SOUTHSIDE_TEXT1.indd 3 22/5/10 22:31:48 Killiney to Sandycove Y OLDER SISTER AND I would walk from Killiney down Mto nursery school in Sandycove. We were seven and five, that sort of age. My father did have a car, because he was a commercial traveller, but he was away during the week and my mother went around on a bicycle. There was a bus, and sometimes we’d get that, but most days we walked. Walking saved the few pennies for sweets. There was very little money around. My mother cut up squares of newspaper for lavatory paper. Though of course if she hadn’t had a maid I suppose things would’ve been a lot easier. Off we’d set. Turn sharp left at the gate. The neighbouring house was Longleat. I know now that it had been called after the English stately home. Because? The owner had been a gardener there before coming to Ireland. And brought the name with him. Pity that he didn’t also bring a few lions. But he did obviously arrive with spades and rakes and horticultural equipment. Always were nice gardens around that house. History of the origin of house names is a study in itself. In the 1950’s there were actually very few houses on this part of Killiney Road. After Longleat and The Maples there was nothing. Fields and ponds and trees to the left, and Urney on the right, home of J.J.Kelly. Rumour had it that JJ had been a German spy in the war. But I remember him as a genial old buffer cutting his hedge. Though in later years he did wear a saffron kilt. Blokes in saffron kilts could be up to anything. Opposite his house was the triangle. In those days it wasn’t derelict and had a neat railing all the way around. Though kids would squeeze through to investigate. It was the septic tank for Urney. Septic tanks are very interesting. There was also the horse trough. Erected by horse philanthropists in Victorian times. And it still had water in it then, rather than geraniums, though I never saw a horse drinking there. Next house down was Anglesea. And from then on down it was just fields on both sides of the road. In later years the fields to the left were filled with bungalows, and 4 5 SOUTHSIDE_TEXT1.indd 4 22/5/10 22:31:51 A WALK ON THE SOUTH SIDE one of these was Fairy Hill. My aunt lived there. Her name was Doris but they called her Dodie. She’d been a chorus girl. Her brother was a bookie. He wore yellow waistcoats. Not only was Dodie my aunt, she was my Godmother.