My father came to Dublin in 1939 with £10 and a bicycle. He lived, as did many of his generation, in various digs, principally around the northside of the city, places such as Marino, Fairview and Drumcondra. The landladies, though civil, were rarely kind, and this experience left an indelible mark on him. His guiding light through this and other phases of his life was a strong faith and a wonderful sense of humour, writes Kieran Phillips.
He would jovially recall that if you told a landlady what you liked, she would teach you how to do without it. Except for one such woman. After months of bacon and sausage for tea, he suggested to her, diplomatically, that in order to vary his diet, he might have a boiled egg. She duly supplied a boiled egg every evening for four months.
Brand of marmalade
He recalled this story years later. He had mentioned to my mother that he liked a particular brand of marmalade. Generous to a fault, she returned days later from the local cash and carry with 24 pots, a considerable quantity "to be eaten by spoon", as my father observed. Thus was his penchant for the marmalade cured and, once it was consumed, no re-order was forthcoming.
But nothing was left unused. My father was of the "waste not, want not" generation - the sort of man who would follow you through the house switching off unnecessary lights and admonishing anyone who dared leave the hall door open, even for a moment, on winter evenings. "There you are now, heating up the garden and the neighbours' gardens too" he would exclaim.
Not that he was a mean man, far from it. Just careful. To this day I cannot leave the hall open without more than a hint of guilt. On winter evenings he would build fires, more like pyres, that would melt steel. We would maintain the necessary distance, but no matter how hot it got, no window was to be opened. Heat was to be enjoyed or perhaps endured, but most certainly not wasted.
His days in Dublin digs can hardly have been harder than his time in "prison", as he referred to his incarceration in St Nathy's College, Ballaghadeereen, Co Roscommon. He was exiled from his home in Charlestown, just a few miles away, but it might as well have been on a different continent. He was released only at Christmas and for the summer, though family visits were permitted on rare occasions. He learned to wash and bathe with cold running water - there was no hot tap. Perhaps there lay the genesis of his later appreciation of heat.
Commercial rooms
He became a commercial traveller. His territory covered the south-east of Ireland - Wicklow, Wexford, Carlow, Kilkenny, Laois and parts of Tipperary. It was here he found his niche. It was a time when salesmen were respected, when hotels had commercial rooms, when "advice cards" were sent to customers to say at what hour you would be calling, and when orders, taken and posted in Wexford at 10 p.m., were delivered in Dublin by 8 a.m. the next day. With him there was no hard sell. It was a time when customers were friends.
Seventeen years after retiring, he still received Christmas cards and telephone calls from many of those customers. One would be from Tommy Murphy in New Ross. It was as much part of Christmas Eve in our house as Midnight Mass. Tommy's older staff would wait on to speak to my father then also. And after the call he would glow as he retraced his steps through the streets of the towns and villages of the south-east which he knew so well. It would encourage him to repeat old stories we'd heard many times before, but which he delighted in telling again.
A favourite was about Toddy, a customer for whom my father had a great affection. Payment was not his strong point and head office in Dublin, having given in again, would ask my father to intervene. The ensuing cat-and-mouse games were hilarious, throughout my father never lost his affection for Toddy, possibly recognising in him the same roguishness he himself possessed, albeit in a different form.
In later years he re-christened me Toddy. He reckoned that I was a reincarnation, and that I could not be trusted in matters large or small. This, I hasten to add, was done in jest. But it was part of my father's genius to be able, with one word or even a name, to ascribe to you an entire personality.
Birthday card
In fact it is due to my alter ego Toddy that my father unwittingly made me an everlasting present. He was not someone from whom I ever expected a birthday card, despite constant jibes from me. That was my mother's job. But, following her death, he popped into Maura in the local post office after 10 o' clock Mass one January some years ago and bought me one.
He signed it "To Toddy, Happy Birthday and Happiness always - Daddy". I was astonished, and even more so the following year when the exact same card appeared. He preserved it and recycled it every year, for many years. It became yet another of the running jokes between us - jokes which included his renaming world figures in pidgeon Irish. George Bush became Seoirse Crann. John Major was Seán Mór, and Ian Paisley was An tAthair Ian. It is the birthday card, however, that endures. A few weeks ago, not long before the first anniversary of his death, I found it underneath the mattress of his bed, where he used carefully preserve it, the greeting now more precious than ever before.