past? When Peg was ‘showing me off’ as a baby in a pram in Saint Patrick’s Park or wheeling me over the humpbacked bridge in Saint Stephen’s Green, was her claim that I was her baby really true after all? Martha used to joke about it, letting the ‘the old maid’ have her way, but she never contested it.
Peg, in early photos, is blue-eyed and only slightly fading-blond, just like my mother – just like me. But I knew Martha was my mother. Every child knows his mother surely (whatever about his father) by smell or instinct, or some unwritten chemistry.
I could have asked Peg straight out about my father, though she wouldn’t have answered me even if I had the nerve to ask. All information she gave was volunteered; that was her way. Non-knowing meant non-hurt in her book, just as it did in my mother’s. At least they had that much in common.
***
Patrick succeeded in getting his post back in Madrid without promotion after the War (when Irish neutrality was no longer an issue?). My mother commuted between Madrid and Dublin, but the more she did so, the more she became unsettled in both worlds, and the fading prospect of having a child introduced a strain in her relationship with Patrick.
Impotence in a partner can be grounds for an annulment of a marriage, but not then:
All my efforts to convince M about AI have failed. She makes me feel like a fool, an oddity. My health is not good in this heat. The things one does for a job. M wants to return to Dublin to settle there permanently. But I am positioned indefinitely now in Madrid, even though the JJ incident still hovers like a black cloud over me. There are so few people one can trust. But that is the diplomat’s world. The world I chose, or rather the world I was ushered into after Clongowes.
***
An attempted theft:
M and A have just returned from the Retiro. They are distraught, or at least A is. They said they were sitting on a bench in the park with their eyes closed to the sun, when M said she felt something like a rat nibbling at her handbag. When she opened her eyes she saw the long, unclean nails of a beggar trying to open her bag to steal her purse. He clung like a leech to the bag, and despite the shoo-shooing of both women he was hard to shake off – hunger makes the poor fearless. When the wretch relinquished his grip on the bag thanks to a push from A’s ample arms, M dipped into her purse and gave him a one hundred peseta note. The would-be thief walked away as puzzled as A was, or as I myself was later, on hearing about the matter. I gave out to M (perhaps unfairly; she started to cry, and said that I had no charity). I told her that a diplomat’s wife must stay clear from all public incidents, and reminded her of the JJ matter. As part of the corps diplomatique we must always remain calm and circumspect even when many tongues wag.
***
The seeds of doubt:
Maybe I should never have married her. I built up her expectations and then shot her down. G is nearer her own age, and nearer her own class too. That is why I fear him so much. Maybe I shouldn’t have jumped JJ that day. My role would have been made easier as a diplomat and as a husband, and without doubt as a what? in the other area too. I mean what do I care about gunmen or revolutionaries? I would like to see a united Irish republic, but only if obtained peacefully. I am no fanatic.
***
My mother returned to Dublin again in the spring of 1947.
‘The break will do you good,’ Patrick said.
My mother recounts to Patrick that there was a lush spring growth in the countryside of Rathfarnham in nineteen forty seven: grass lengthened, yellow furze brightened the hillsides, buds appeared on trees. As the days got warmer, she visited the house more often, and enjoyed sitting in the garden when the sun shone. Wrapped in a shawl, she embroidered or read or wrote a letter.
One of the… perhaps the only drawback, Patrick of a Liberties’ dwelling: no garden of one’s own. Your
Peg, in early photos, is blue-eyed and only slightly fading-blond, just like my mother – just like me. But I knew Martha was my mother. Every child knows his mother surely (whatever about his father) by smell or instinct, or some unwritten chemistry.
I could have asked Peg straight out about my father, though she wouldn’t have answered me even if I had the nerve to ask. All information she gave was volunteered; that was her way. Non-knowing meant non-hurt in her book, just as it did in my mother’s. At least they had that much in common.
***
Patrick succeeded in getting his post back in Madrid without promotion after the War (when Irish neutrality was no longer an issue?). My mother commuted between Madrid and Dublin, but the more she did so, the more she became unsettled in both worlds, and the fading prospect of having a child introduced a strain in her relationship with Patrick.
Impotence in a partner can be grounds for an annulment of a marriage, but not then:
All my efforts to convince M about AI have failed. She makes me feel like a fool, an oddity. My health is not good in this heat. The things one does for a job. M wants to return to Dublin to settle there permanently. But I am positioned indefinitely now in Madrid, even though the JJ incident still hovers like a black cloud over me. There are so few people one can trust. But that is the diplomat’s world. The world I chose, or rather the world I was ushered into after Clongowes.
***
An attempted theft:
M and A have just returned from the Retiro. They are distraught, or at least A is. They said they were sitting on a bench in the park with their eyes closed to the sun, when M said she felt something like a rat nibbling at her handbag. When she opened her eyes she saw the long, unclean nails of a beggar trying to open her bag to steal her purse. He clung like a leech to the bag, and despite the shoo-shooing of both women he was hard to shake off – hunger makes the poor fearless. When the wretch relinquished his grip on the bag thanks to a push from A’s ample arms, M dipped into her purse and gave him a one hundred peseta note. The would-be thief walked away as puzzled as A was, or as I myself was later, on hearing about the matter. I gave out to M (perhaps unfairly; she started to cry, and said that I had no charity). I told her that a diplomat’s wife must stay clear from all public incidents, and reminded her of the JJ matter. As part of the corps diplomatique we must always remain calm and circumspect even when many tongues wag.
***
The seeds of doubt:
Maybe I should never have married her. I built up her expectations and then shot her down. G is nearer her own age, and nearer her own class too. That is why I fear him so much. Maybe I shouldn’t have jumped JJ that day. My role would have been made easier as a diplomat and as a husband, and without doubt as a what? in the other area too. I mean what do I care about gunmen or revolutionaries? I would like to see a united Irish republic, but only if obtained peacefully. I am no fanatic.
***
My mother returned to Dublin again in the spring of 1947.
‘The break will do you good,’ Patrick said.
My mother recounts to Patrick that there was a lush spring growth in the countryside of Rathfarnham in nineteen forty seven: grass lengthened, yellow furze brightened the hillsides, buds appeared on trees. As the days got warmer, she visited the house more often, and enjoyed sitting in the garden when the sun shone. Wrapped in a shawl, she embroidered or read or wrote a letter.
One of the… perhaps the only drawback, Patrick of a Liberties’ dwelling: no garden of one’s own. Your
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