On the drive to and from Bettystown, I often felt sick sitting in the back of the car. Our old car would wobble along and then, as I watched the cars flashing by out of the side window, I would get dizzy and shout to my father to stop as I was going to be sick. I only ever felt ill when someone else was driving; when I was behind the wheel, I was perfectly fine. Driving was something that I could do well and I badly needed something to boost my confidence. I was dreadfully shy, maybe because I grew so tall at a very young age, and I used to walk around with my head and shoulders down, trying to make myself smaller, my arms dangling like a gorilla.
I remember my first dance. I was sitting on a chair at the side of the hall, as was the custom: boys on one side, girls on the other. A good-looking boy crossed the floor, his dark hair stiff with Brylcreem, and asked me to dance. I was thrilled, but when I stood up I was towering over him; he made some hasty excuse and ran off. As I surveyed the boys in the hall that night, it seemed to me that they were all training to be jockeys.
It took me years to get over my shyness. It was so bad at one stage, whenever we won something in a rally, I would send my co-driver up first to collect the trophy, but once I got into a car I felt insulated and confident. I was always happiest behind the wheel. Maybe in the beginning the car was like a home for me, the only thing I had complete control over and where I felt secure. Growing up, there was little sense of security and maybe this was because our family lived in so many different locations. My mother was a nomad and never wanted to be in one residence for long. We lived in so many places: Bray, where I was born, then Dundrum, Terenure, Rathfarnham, Blackrock and Sandymount before finally settling down in Dunboyne, County Meath. I grew up falling over paint cans and ladders. When I got married I would stay in the same house all my life, I vowed, but the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, as the saying goes.
We lived in a beautiful house in Waltham Terrace in Blackrock for a while. It was a wreck when my parents bought it but Dad was great with his hands and with help from some friends he renovated it. There were steps up to the hall door and a basement leading out to the garden. They bought it for £8,000, and when they put it on the market a few years later it made twice as much. That was a great transaction but in most cases they would buy at the wrong time and sell again at an even worse one.
When we moved into the house at Strand Road, Sandymount, my mother loved it because the sea was on our doorstep. It had six bedrooms and she took in students from Trinity College. One evening in the kitchen of that house, with its stone-flagged floor, Mother dropped a plate and Dad mumbled something like ‘That’s right, drop the lot’ in a jokey kind of a way. My mother took every plate she could put her hands on and smashed them to the ground deliberately, one after the other. Dad stood there looking at her, his face expressionless, without making a comment, and when everything lay shattered on the floor, he took up the brush and swept up the mess. He never reacted to anything she did, but calmly accepted it, and maybe that’s where he went wrong. I believe my mother wanted him to retaliate but he never did. She got her own way all the time and that’s why we moved around so much. She could never stay in any house for long and my father just went along with her wishes.
Moving didn’t really make a difference – my mother was never content, no matter where we lived, and there were constant rows, not just with my father, but all of us. She was an attractive woman and everybody who didn’t have to live with her thought she was wonderful. My mother was talented, a good dressmaker, with a great sense of style, and we found out too that she could write. When Pamela went to live in America, she wrote long letters describing everything at home in such detail; she had hidden talent and so much pent-up energy. I believe she was frustrated by not having the opportunity to express herself and maybe that was why she was such a very heavy smoker. There were packets of Gold Flake and Player’s around the house and my father was always begging her to give them up. Eventually, after years of smoking and a doctor’s warning, she did.
Being married to my father, staying home and minding children didn’t suit her, and let’s face it, there were three people in their relationship: my father, my mother and my father’s best friend. He was a builder and we lived for a time in a bungalow he built for them in Terenure. Poor old dad would go out the back door to go to the garage early in the morning and his best friend would come in the front door. Roger and I were told to run out into the garden and play while they talked or whatever they were doing! He was married to a woman he had met on holiday in England and my mother was only introduced to him after she had married Dad.
Little things would upset me, like the Christmas when Dad bought my mother a beautiful Christian Dior necklace with two little diamonds; it is beautiful, I still have it. She took it from him with a very offhand thank you, but when Dad’s friend came in with a handbag, pure leather, from Brown Thomas, she thanked him profusely and raved about it for weeks. She told me in later years that Dad’s friend had asked her to go away with him, but she refused because of us. I often wished she had taken him up on his offer because life at home would have been happier for everyone. I used to pull my jumper over my ears so as not to hear her when she was screaming at Dad; Pamela just stuck her nose in a book and Roger would go out to get away from it all.
I once asked my father why he didn’t leave her and he told me that he had tried. He went up to Belfast to join the army but his eyesight wasn’t good enough and he was turned down and came back home. As he got older, his life was miserable. He suffered from Bell’s palsy and had a series of mini strokes. My mother’s behaviour didn’t help his condition and I never really understood why she was so unkind to him.
When my brother got married in Middlesbrough, in England, we all went over for the wedding. My mother, my Aunt Lily and a family friend sat in the car during the long drive back through the Pennines, taking delight in talking about my father and his many shortcomings as if he wasn’t there. I sat beside him, holding his hand, as the tears ran down his face. A trusting, loving man, he was abused by my mother and betrayed by his best friend.
My father died when he was 73 and the wife of his friend went the year after, so my mother was finally free to marry. She bought a beautiful, long, brown velvet coat and she looked absolutely gorgeous. My father’s friend had two daughters and they were there in the church with their husbands on the day of the marriage. At the altar, my mother was asked by Roger, the son-in-law of the man she was about to marry, to sign a pre-nuptial agreement waiving all rights to his fortune. She did as she was asked without any fuss or question. It amazed me that the family could possibly have thought she was after his money; surely they must have known that this affair had been going on for over 40 years?
I loved my father and we had a great relationship – he was always my biggest supporter. He was a wonderful husband; he never looked at another woman, never drank alcohol or smoked. Everything was for my mother, but she didn’t appreciate any of that and made life a misery with her constant yelling, slamming doors and generally behaving like a spoilt child. Her animosity towards my father seemed to spill over on to me. Nothing I ever did was quite right in her eyes, from how I did my hair to choosing a husband. Mother–daughter relationships are often troubled, but ours was particularly so. She did nothing to help my confidence; it was Dad who did his best to encourage me, yet she knew I had talent. But my mother endeavoured to fulfil some of her own ambitions and aspirations through me, especially after I left school.
CHAPTER 2
I went to Beaufort High School in Rathfarnham, run by the Loreto nuns. The nuns wore hard white wimples covering their foreheads so not a wisp of hair could be seen, a black veil over the top, a long black habit, and they smelt of carbolic soap. Our uniform was no better. We were made to wear a chocolate brown pinafore dress, with a square neck with pleats at the front, which made the girls who had a bit of a bosom look huge, and the sash belts tied around our middles didn’t help. A yellow and brown striped tie, a beige jumper and brown knickers with elastic around our knees completed the hideous outfit. I hated every bit of it and I’ve never worn brown since.
I was popular with some of my