A Tale of Redemption

Anne was the eldest of eight children. She was born in 1916 in County Cavan.

Her father was a publican, politician and a mixed livestock Farmer. A man of exacting and varying moods, light and dark, depressive and manic. His weapon of choice was an engineers metal ruler, an instrument of punishment giving vent to his ire and critical moods. Secretly Peter had spent periods in the Mental Hospital, Cavan Town and would have been diagnosed as Bi-Polar in modern times. His relapses often went untreated, except through a self-prescribed bottle of Poteen.

He took little joy out of living and each day was a struggle. He hated dealing with the public but had no other choice. He felt trapped. The only light in his life was his eldest child, Anne, his singular delight and he constantly indulged her while being strict on his other seven children. He insisted on her being finely attired, especially when relatives were visiting or she was on public display. She had long blond ringlets, a smiling and sweet disposition and was charming with her cuteness and responsiveness to attention.

However this over indulgence fostered Anne`s dominance of her siblings, as she learned that there was one rule for her and a stricter rule for them. At times she could be cruel, bullying and demanding – often eluding chores around the farm and getting more than her fair share of favorite foods and rare treats bought from town.

Her mother, Mary, was a wonderful fair and loving mother but she was helpless to convince her husband to treat Anne equitably with her other siblings.

"I’m the bread winner here, woman, and my wishes are not to be challenged by you who was without dowry and lucky to have been taken off the shelf by me"

He said this with steel and anger in his threatening voice.

"Just as you say, Pete, just as you say" she meekly replied.

Anne had a keen and quick intellect and had a wonderful skill of forward planning and creative thinking. She was well ahead of others and could be both scheming and cunning in her deliberations. This strangely delighted her father, as she seemed to have inherited his mathematical and rational mind. Her achievements at Secondary School put her in the top five per cent of her fellow academic students and she was consistently first in class at Mathematics and scientific calculations, Algebra, Calculus and Geometry. These subjects were tackled by Anne as an easy means of relaxation. Her teachers gave glowing reports of her progress which were warmly welcomed by her parents.

These had the effect of re-enforcing her father’s discriminatory behavior towards his eldest daughter and gave him plenty of scope for self-justification. She was proving to not to have "licked it off the stones", as his uneducated neighbors would say. Anne`s self-confidence and plans for self-advancement continued to grow unabated. Her father provided the scare resources for her to attend the Loreto College, Cavan as a boarder and ensured that all her wishes and desires were fulfilled without her having to make any demands upon him.

This unfair distribution of scarce resources resulted in a shortage of money to be spent on the rest of the family. They were usually dressed in hand-me-downs and could be found falling asleep during national school classes, owing to over tiredness from farm work that was more suited to adults. They were cowed down and lacking in confidence, as their father rarely had a good word or encouragement for any of them individually or collectively. He seemed to resent their presence in his life at times, as he was basically a self-centered individual who had little thought for anyone else, even his wife or children.

Peter’s siblings were all like-minded. People used to say "that crowd have a fierce grip on a pound" and "they would take the land from under your feet, if you let them" but the O’Brien family had little heed of what other people thought about them. Ambition and self-advancement was their only goal and money was their God.

Anne advanced to Teacher Training College, Dublin, and a rare privilege for a female in her locality during the early years of the State. She loved the freedom and the fact that she had broken loose from the bonds of attachment to rural life and those of inferior intelligence and thought. Her life in Dublin city was fast, bright and exciting. Fellow teachers in training provided her with delightful and stimulating debates and exciting conversations. Dances, parties, trips to the seaside and carriage rides in the Phoenix Park was all part of her social scene.

A scholarship from Cavan County Council covered her fees, board and lodgings, so her father’s financial support could be squandered on her every whim and flight of fancy.

Anne had a delightful singing voice, was a wonderful dancer, and played a highly accomplished violin. Evening soirees were facilitated by a chorus of gentlemen callers, as her high spirits and sparkling wit was in high demand. Life was a whirl and her feet never seemed to touch the ground. She felt that her destiny had been fulfilled. High honors were conferred upon her, at her final passing out ceremony. She had been nominated as "class valedictorian" and gave a rousing, inspired and well received address to the ceremonial gathering.

"Where to now?" she pondered and she could not wait until her next adventure.

However in September 1939 the World was no longer her playground, having been plunged into war. It seemed that Economic forces were conspiring against her and, much to her chagrin, the bottom fell out of Anne`s being. Rationing had been introduced during “The Emergency” in the Irish Free State and, times being hard, money from home was suddenly in short supply. Her gay days in Dublin had come to an abrupt halt, her high life at an end, Anne was forced to up sticks and return home to her dull, dreary rural roots.

In the intervening years many of her siblings had bloomed and when freed from her omnipresent oppressive personality, were no longer amenable to her shrill ordering and selfish demands of them.

“Do it yourself” was their common retort, presenting a unified impervious front that was alien to Anne.

“But I’m your eldest sister” she pleaded to deaf ears.

She was both upset and confused. It would appear that her place in the family had been usurped and that things would never be the same as before.

Allied with this change in status, Anne was shocked to learn that her fathers mental state had deteriorated and that he was no longer the domineering influence in the family. Her mother was now firmly the boss and her word was fair but was law. Anne`s was treated the same as her other siblings and this did not sit well with her. Having been so spoiled, she now felt disenfranchised and alien in her own home. It became clear that she would have to rely on her own limited resources and strike out on her own once more.

She was left with no choice but to take what little poorly paid teaching work that was to be found. This involved her taking up her first teaching post in a two teacher school at Killany, Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan. A collection of infertile small farms on inadequate holdings ensured that the local population could never climb out of poverty.

It was a total shock to her system. The school house was both old and decrepit, located at the top of a high Drumlin hill which was exposed to all the extremes of the weather. A small stove struggled to give a spark of heat, fueled by damp turf. The Headmaster was an old careworn alcoholic bachelor of advancing years. He was once full of inspirational educative ideas but the heathen louts that attended his school had no longing for learning, just as was the case with their fathers and fore fathers before them.

Something in the shock to her system forced Anne to rethink her life, her direction, her enforced circumstances and it created a change within her. She came to grips with the running of the school and effectively usurped the ineffective Headmaster and brought order where only chaos reigned heretofore. The pupils had a new found respect for her authority and outbreaks of violence became a thing of the past. She found no need to use corporal punishment, as a combination of encouragement, affirmation and an occasional tongue lashing were a winning formula for results.

She introduced new subjects more suited to the rural environment were introduced by her on to the Syllabus. Weekly market prices for animals were discussed and naturally adding, subtracting and multiplication followed. Crop rotations were discussed and she found great enthusiasm among her pupils for Biology, Flora, Fauna and Nature in general. Poets of the soil were discussed and a love of language, rhythm and rhyme was imbued among these tillers of the soil. Her love of music and violin playing raised their spirits and their clouded minds to higher things and she assembled a school choir that brought pride to the Parish and beyond.

In fact Anne became respected and honored among the decent hardworking folk of the school catchment area. She was much in demand to attend local social functions and over time her haughty nature became softened and more warm heartened. For the first time in her life she felt appreciated and needed for whom she really was, her inner talents shared among so many and her inspiration leading to some of her pupils attaining heights that they never would have imagined before her arrival among them.

At a harvest barn dance one September night she met a local musician called Joe, the lead player with a visiting Ceilidh band. He was debonair, friendly and was an easy conversationalist. He immediately made Anne feel at ease, with his warmth, charm and flattering attention. Joe was a well-traveled individual with a cache of amusing anecdotes to tell. Anne found herself drifting into a dreamy state. She became conscious and gave a hearty laugh, finding the blood rushing to her cheeks.

"Oh go on, you tell these stories to all the girls that dance to your music"

"No, I’m usually too busy concentrating on my playing but you sparked like a pure cut diamond among glass from all the other girls tonight"

She found his sparkling eyes full of warmth and life and was enraptured by his body fragrance and the body heat radiating between them – she imagined listening to Joe in her dreams. He seemed to have spun a magic spell around her. She was entranced, a feeling that was at first strange yet tingling.

They met the following day after school for a walk along the river Fane. Joe was dressed in fashionable tweeds and was even more handsome in the soft daylight of late autumn. They kicked up the leaves together and both simultaneously laughed with a vixen Fox and her cubs broke cover in front of them. The day was unseasonably warm and they walked along in light heart, naturally holding hands.

"Have I known Joe all my life?" she thought.

"I’m glad that I waited to meet someone special, like Anne" he thought.

They spoke of favourite authors, playwrights and poets. A mild disagreement ensued but they both laughed and said "We will agree to differ". Theater was a shared loved, or "playacting" as Joe called it. Anne was part of a local drama troupe which was putting on J.M.Synge`s "The Playboy of the Western World" in a couple of weeks’ time in the local hall and then the large hall in Carrickmacross. Joe said he would love to give a hand and help her to rehearse her key part of Margaret Flaherty.