The Vasectomy Doctor Page 4

  Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. The bells of the Angelus are calling to pray. In sweet tones announcing the Sacred Ave.

  CHAPTER 3

  Some Schooling

  Now with national school in Prosperous safely behind me I am about to be shipped off to Ring College down in Waterford for a full year’s boarding there. The year is 1951 and I am nine years of age and a bit young I think to be wrenched from the security of family life. As with everything else in the Ireland of this time, things have not been going particularly well at home on the farming front. Men have been let go and the money is tight. On the national front things are even worse with thousands of Irish people emigrating to the UK each month. We do not know it then but this is the start of a whole new wave of emigration, the time of the vanishing Irish.

  There is a well-known Waterford lilt that translates like this:

  I was a day in Waterford

  There was wine and punch on the table

  There was the full of the house of women there

  And myself drinking their health.

  Having been in Ring College for one full month everyone was expected to switch to speaking Irish exclusively. Being caught speaking English after October was an offence that was taken very seriously indeed. It used to be an expelling offence in the school’s earlier days but the fact of the matter was that when I was there times were hard all over Ireland and the owner of Ring, An Fear Mór, was finding it difficult enough to fill the school. Certainly he could hardly afford to go expelling people found speaking English or he would soon be losing revenue. My memory of it is that the ‘speak Irish only’ rule was as much honoured in the breach as in the observance. Certainly in the classrooms only Irish was spoken. But outside on the playing pitch or in the handball alleys it was a mixture – Irish out loud and English under your breath.

  An Fear Mór was indeed aptly named. He looked a tall gangrenous and rather gaunt figure to me, a nine-year-old looking up at him. In some ways there was a de Valera-like cut to him. But for all his height he was a gentle man and known to be a patient teacher. He devoted his life to the promotion of the Irish language and the founding of his own Irish college.

  Whenever I think of Ring College I feel cold and hungry. The food was sparse and inadequate. Breakfast was a small bowl of porridge with skimmed milk and sugar. It had a funny kind of old taste to it that I can’t quite describe. This was followed by bread and butter and jam. Only on Sundays did we get a ‘fry’ consisting of one bit of black pudding, a sausage and a hard-fried egg. During the week we lined up mid-mornings at a window where we were each handed a slice of buttered bread. Many of us would take this back into the classroom and toast it on the potbellied stove using a ruler as a toasting fork. All of us in that class had burned rulers and nobody seemed to have seen fit to outlaw this rather dangerous culinary activity.

  Lunches and evening meals were not much better. Burned vegetable soup was a great favourite. I can still smell it. ‘Cheffy’s Vomit’ we used to call it. But as the man was not able to rustle up a bit of soup without making a mess of it you can imagine what his other efforts at high cuisine were like. Meals were presided over by Mícheál O’Donal who sat up at a raised table, a leather strap sticking out of his back pocket. This strap was used on the hands of any young offenders although in truth corporal punishment was not a big feature in the college at that time. Every Wednesday we were released into free Ireland and marched in line up to ‘the store’ a mile away where we were allowed to spend one shilling each. A slab of Cleeve’s toffee was how a lot of us used up our budget because it would last you for most of the day. You had to find a fairly heavy stone to break off a bit from a slab of Cleeve’s.

  We slept in long dormitories with lockers at the end of the beds. You had to keep your locker very tidy and polish your shoes regularly. The boy in the bed next to me composed a song in Irish to be sung to the same air as ‘Carricdone’. The first line went: ‘Tá an gruaig ag fás ar mo Mícheál.’ ‘The hair is growing on my Michael’; an event in his young life that he clearly thought was worth capturing in song. What came after this first line I am not at all sure but I suspect that he may well have run out of inspiration at this point. What a pity. Nor can I say what turn this young bard’s life took when he graduated from Ring College. For all I know he may well have become a lyricist of the punk rock industry for clearly he showed great early promise in this particular genre.

  Looking back on it now I have to say that my year in Ring was not a particularly happy one. I was too young to be away from home and having to learn everything through Irish had its own unique disadvantages. In fact the whole thing put me back for a full year because when I presented myself to the brothers in Naas having come out of Ring, I was put back into fourth class because I could not do long division. My age would have rightly had me in fifth class. So in effect I had lost a whole year. You might say so what’s the big deal? All I can say is that it did affect me. At the end of the day this meant that I was nineteen doing my leaving certificate whereas everyone else was seventeen or eighteen and I never really felt good about that.

  I did learn something in Ring College though. I learned the rudiments of tin-whistle playing and an appreciation for Irish singing and these were to be a considerable advantage to me in later life and indeed right up to this day.

  * * *

  For the most part I cycled the seven miles into the Christian Brother’s moat school in Naas and back again each day. And while this may have been tough at the time, I believe it has served me well since in that I have always been blessed with a level of fitness and energy that in truth I do very little to deserve. You would not get a ten-year-old boy today to cycle fourteen miles a day and, even if you could, it would be most unsafe for him to attempt it. But back in 1952 the roads around here were all but empty. You could go all the way from Downings House along the canal to the moat school in Naas and not see four cars during ‘rush hour’. Sometimes I could get in behind a tractor pulling a load of turf or hay and you would get kind of sucked along and that was great. If it was raining I had this cape that went over the body and over the handlebars and I wore a water-proof hat on my head and really there was no big deal about any of this. I have no memory of ever being cold on that long bicycle journey.

  My first great setback on entering that school was being put back into fourth class as I have already mentioned. After that everything was fine really. The Irish Christian Brother’s Schools, founded by Edmund Rice during the first decade of the nineteenth century, had a reputation of being very rough and liberal with their corporal punishment. I say ‘had’ because Christian Brothers are now practically extinct. Unfortunately all we ever seem to hear about the Christian Brothers these days is when yet another of its elderly community, white-haired, stooped and wearing civilian clothes, is dragged in front of the courts to face yet more charges of a paedophilic nature. This is an absolutely catastrophic end to the teaching order because it tends to completely overshadow the memory of the many good and decent men who joined the brothers over the past 200 years. There have been very few new recruits in Ireland to the brothers in the past five years. They are in effect almost finished, almost extinct.

  The brothers had, as I say, a reputation for being somewhat brutal but I saw none of that in Naas during my time there. I had Brother Joyce, Mr McCarthy, known to the boys as Stalky, and Brother Tynan, and I have to say that each of these men in their turn was a good teacher who treated us all with respect.

  During my three years in the CBS in Naas my two sisters, Bridget and Catherine, were away in Dominican College, Wicklow while my brother, Davoc, was a few classes ahead of me in CBS Naas and later was away in agricultural college in Gormanstown. So for much of this time I had the place at home more or less to myself, which suited me fine. Both my parents were of course always writing. My mother was working on a book to be titled Irish Saints for Boys and Girls while my father was working on his second book titled All Ireland.


  All Ireland, first published in 1956, was a major undertaking and is a beautifully written and illustrated guidebook to all of Ireland. But that’s the problem. If the book has any faults it is that it is too delightfully written to be just a guidebook while not being insipid enough to be a complete guide of all Ireland, if you can follow. My father can’t seem to sacrifice any literary art for the merely practical and we end up with a book perhaps better suited to the bedside table than the glove compartment of the car. But does that matter? Dip into his book anywhere and you will see what I mean:

  Having tried making territory in every shape and form, the weary world brings its experimenting to a conclusion in county Cork. Gougane Barra is a deep tarn held in a cup of crusty mountains: on the open side the infant river Lee frolics out of its rock-ribbed, mountainous nursery.

  * * *

  It was around this time too that Davoc and I tried our hands at the hard labour that footing turf really is. During the summer of 1955 Bord na Móna, up the road from us here, was paying very good money on a piecework basis. We were trying to get enough money together to buy a bicycle each. In those days a good new bicycle cost in the region of £14. In Bord na Móna they were getting thirty shillings per plot of turf footed. A plot comprised one acre of machine cut turf lying tightly knit in long rows flat on the ground. So if you managed to foot say only ten plots each you had your bicycle. A good worker could easily foot a plot of turf a day and get well started into a second one. It all sounded fine in theory. Given that we worked like everyone else we should have our bicycles in about two weeks’ time.

  But with us there was absolutely no chance of success. Footing turf is the most soul destroying, boring and backbreaking work that I have ever put my hands to. There we were, young, fit and motivated and between us we staggered to foot a half a plot a day. If you do not do this properly the ganger Con Burke might come along and kick down your day’s work. There are no short cuts, no tricks of the trade. You just get on with it and do it and do it right, as they would have said at the time.

  You turn the first two sods upside down on the ground about a foot apart at their centres. The next two sods also get turned groundside skywards and are placed horizontally across the two on the ground, noughts and crosses fashion. Thus you build the foot up until it is five sods high and therefore contains ten sods of turf in all. Now you move along in a straight line and repeat the performance and then repeat it about 300 more times that day. The dried surface of the turf is hard and abrasive and wears down the skin of your fingers. Only cissies wore gloves in those days. A good footer would only take thirty seconds per foot. It would be much easier and quicker if you did not have to turn each sod as you proceeded but then Con Burke is only about six plots up to your left and is reported to be in a particularly bad humour today. Con was actually a patient of mine twenty-five years later and I got to know him as an absolute gentleman and not at all like the feared ganger he appeared to be to us.

  After about a week of this we had to concede defeat. In order to foot turf in the way that some of the people around us were doing it, I think you would want for more than a new bicycle.

  * * *

  In the autumn of 1956 I started to board in the Dominican College, Newbridge for what was to be a five-year stint. Situated on a bend of the river Liffey and with a decent view of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains in the distance, Newbridge College first opened its doors to students in 1852. My first day there was a cool, bright and breezy autumn day. There was a lot to get used to. Qualifying as a ‘local boarder’ I was to be allowed go home on all bank holiday weekends and, later, on most Sundays. This took away a lot of the tedium and loneliness of being a boarder, that and the fact that I already had a taste of boarding in Ring College. During those first few days many of my fellows students were homesick and displaced but after a few days most people more or less settled down and accepted their lot.

  At that time the college was divided into two separate sections – a junior school for first, second and third-year students and a senior school for fourth, fifth and sixth-year boys. I was to spend two years in junior school and three years in the senior house across the courtyard. This actually was a sensible arrangement because it tended to reduce the bullying and other nasty ancilliary activities not unusual to boarding schools of the day. Each year then in turn was divided up into an A class and a B class for the less academically endowed. Throughout my five years in Newbridge College I never made an A class but it didn’t bother me all that much.

  There were far more priests than lay teachers there at this time. Many of them carried colourful if not always flattering nicknames. There was the religious teacher, Fr Cassidy, who was called Hopi as in Hop-Along Cassidy. There was Fr Curtin, who we called the Gimlet, because of his piercing eyes. There was a nasty little Corkman who taught mathematics and who was given the nickname Snitch which suited him nicely. There was the French teacher, Fr O’Donovan, who was named Ghostie because, in his white habit and with his gaunt expression, he looked like your quintessential ghost. There was an unfortunate and very elderly little lay teacher called Snotters. Poor old Snotters would stand on the threshold of the classroom with his fingers clasped together in front of him under his chin and he would kind of sway backwards and forwards as if not knowing whether to come in or go out of the room. There was a fellow in my class called Fergal McAuliffe and he could do a great take off of Snotters’ way of coming into a classroom.

  And then of course there was the Coot, Fr Henry Flanagan, the best teacher that I ever had in my life. If I am ever asked for just one thing to justify my five years spent in Dominican College, Newbridge, paid for by my hard-pressed and far-from-well-off parents, then I would cite the Coot. But then of course he taught my best subjects. He taught and conducted the choir, something I served in every year, first as an alto, later a tenor, not because I was a goody-two-shoes but simply because I enjoyed singing. Then he directed the annual Gilbert & Sullivan opera, something I was also very much involved in every year – Patience, The Mikado, The Pirates of Penzance, HMS Pinafore and The Yeomen of the Guard. He taught English and art and directed the arts and craft club. In this club, which I joined on my very first day in Newbridge, I learned how to turn wood and the rudiments of cabinet-making, skills that have been useful to me all my life. My friend Fergal McAuliffe made a flat-bottomed boat that we later took down the Liffey as far as Yeomanstown.

  One of the nice things about Newbridge was that you were not forced to play rugby – a game for which I had very little talent anyway. So, while my mates may have been practising the scrum or line-outs, I might be turning a large salad bowl in the arts and crafts club. I am not saying that one activity is in any way superior to the other. All I’m saying is that in education, rather than regimentation, latitude in allowing students to find their own niche is very important.

  The Coot taught us English in fifth year and asked us to write an essay about a train journey I think it was. I remember then, for the first time in my life, using some descriptive passages and creative ideas and actually enjoying writing. What I produced was no masterpiece of course but Fr Flanagan thought it was good enough and he read it out to the class and congratulated me. I do not believe that all teachers fully understand the importance of a little praise now and again. That year I was given a gold medal for essay writing and my confidence was renewed for all time. It is the small things and rare moments like that that education should be all about, not brilliant marks and six honours in the leaving certificate.

  While in Newbridge I also joined the FCA or Forsa Cosanta Áitiúil, Ireland’s reserve army. The other fellows in our class used to laugh at us and say that we were in the Free Clothing Association. But they could laugh away. I was in the FCA for three years and enjoyed every moment of it. I fired the Lee Enfield .303 rifle, the Vicker’s Submachine Gun and the Bren Gun. Every summer we went to Kilkenny to the army’s annual training camp where we were sent on field manoeuvres, learned about combat ta
ctics, field communications, ceremonial drill and how to work the butts under the huge targets to signal to the marksman 500 yards back where on the target their rounds were hitting. After a day of that you would eat a horse. If you misbehaved you were sent on ‘fatigues’: peeling potatoes for a day or some such demeaning activity. All of this gave me great insight into army life, enough to know that it was not something I would ever want to get into as a career.

  In sixth year I was in the debating society and this was something else that stretched the imagination and taught one how to assemble one’s argument and present it in a persuasive way. That year too we had a concert at which I sang a song called ‘Whistling Phil McHugh’, a Percy French song but by no means one of his better ones, wherever I got the idea from:

  Now whistling Phil McHugh has come over from Dunlahy

  And we don’t know what to with Miss Mary Ann Mulcahy.

  Oh stop please, this is embarrassing. Let’s have no more of that. But the point here is that this was the first time that I ever stood up on a stage and sang a song to a real live audience and I must say my audience was most gracious in their applause.

  * * *

  At home both parents were still beavering away at their typewriters. It was during these years also that my mother made her three lecture tours of the United States. Each tour would last six to eight weeks and take her around most of America, east to west. Her venues were in the main third-level Catholic institutions and her subject was the lives of saints – mostly Irish saints I think. They were fairly punishing schedules and by the time she was finished she would come home absolutely exhausted. But they were also very lucrative and quite frankly money in our house was always pretty tight what with four of us in boarding school more or less all at the same time and writing being the main source of income. Later in life I would learn all about trying to put children through boarding schools myself. It’s no joke. In many ways America and my mother may have saved the day.