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.
