“What’s in it?” Gigi asked.
“Mother,” Anne replied simply. Gigi let out an ‘eek’ and nearly dropped it.
Going through Customs at Boston, the officer opened the camera bag and asked, “What’s this?”
“Mother,” Anne said again. When he looked puzzled, she added, “Her remains.”
He dropped that bag faster than Gigi had. “Lady, I don’t know if you can do that!”
“Oh, yes, I can, and here’s the documentation.” And she passed over all the papers necessary for the importation of my mother’s ashes. The supervisor had to be called, but at last the papers were found to be in order and Anne was allowed into the U.S. with her mother.
Because of all the Customs fooforah, Anne was nearly the last person out. I was the first one to see her. She was hauling a lot of stuff, so I said, “Is there anything I can carry?” I was surprised when she handed me my old camera bag.
I looked at it curiously, “What’s in this?”
“Mother,” she said again. I clutched that bag tight in my arms. I’m sure that Bami would have loved the whole thing.
The next day, cool and foggy, we drove to the cemetery with Anne’s Aunt Edna, her cousin Joe Gibney, myself and Alec. In a short ceremony, Bami was laid to rest next to her husband, G.H. McCaffrey. On the way back, Edna said, “Now G.H. takes on the white man’s burden once more.”
Boskone was a wonderful tonic for Anne. A Time When sold well and she won the E. E. “Doc” Smith award. The signing tour was a success.
Better yet, the Ballantine’s years of patiently keeping their authors on the shelves had begun to pay off handsomely for Anne — the March royalty check was regal — $4500. Anne was overjoyed — she could afford to have the telephone turned back on.
But the best was yet to come. Beth Blish had started helping her mother, Virginia, in the agenting business. She met with Jean Karl, the editor at Atheneum, and heard a brilliant request – was there any chance of Anne writing a story for young women in a different part of Pern? Jean felt that more female readers would be wooed to science fiction if they could identify with the characters.
When the question came to Anne back in Ireland, she pulled out what she had tried to write for Roger Elwood, about a young woman named Menolly. At the time, back in Meadowbrook House, the words would not come — Anne had no one like Menolly from which to draw on. Now, with the young Brennanstown riders constantly in sight, and often at dinner, Anne found inspiration — in the ebullient Derval Diamond, Kim Baker — who had taught her donkey to jump, and all the other students and riders.
Now the story of Menolly wanted to be written. Anne found that Dragonsong came to her quickly — with a house full of youngsters every evening, she had no lack of inspiring characters. For the character of Menolly, which Anne had never been able to see, she found one in particular — Derval Diamond.
Anne signed the contract in 1975 and Dragonsong was published in 1976. Even before it was published, Jean Karl wrote to ask Anne for a sequel — at the same time that Anne wrote Jean Karl asking if she could! They quickly agreed, the book would be Dragonsinger.
Once again, as things were looking up in her writing, things were falling down at home. The house they had been renting started showing worrying cracks along the main wall that ran the length of the house. Anne informed the owners, who called in an architect. The architect was amazed to discover that the center wall rested on nothing! There were no supports, no flooring, nothing. The weight of the center wall was beginning to pull the house down. Worse, the house had been built upon fill, which was subsiding, so that the house was beginning to slip downhill while also breaking in the middle.
Even if she had wanted to, Anne could not stay in 79 Shanganagh Vale. She had been happy in the house and hated the thought of starting another round of annual moves. She counted up her earnings and was surprised to find that she could afford a down payment on a house.
To get a house, Anne needed a loan. She approached her bank manager with a copy of the letter from Atheneum, stating the advance monies for the paperback sale, half of which were hers. She remembers watching the bank manager reading the letter when she heard, “A woman shouldn’t be allowed to have this much money.”
The bank manager’s lips hadn’t moved. Anne realized that the exchange had to have been telepathic. She thanked him for his time, took back her letter, and changed banks. She got her mortgage from the Irish Permanent Building Society.
She found her house twenty-six miles outside of Dublin, in the southern county of Wicklow, just about nine miles south of the new Brennanstown Riding School. The house had been built by the next door neighbors. The Beirnes had built the house for their mother but she decided that even with all that was going on up in Belfast, she just couldn’t leave her friends. The bungalow was separated from theirs by a tall wall. It was a four-bedroom bungalow with an L-shaped living/dining room and a cozy kitchen. It stood on a full third of an acre. It was love at first sight.
Anne named it Dragonhold, because her dragons had bought it for her.
Dragonhold from the sky
We loved that house so much that we moved in the night before the carpeting was put in and slept in front of the fireplace — Gigi, myself, Anto, Rick Farmer, and Eamonn Hanrahan, all huddled in blankets.
Dragonhold came together quickly as a warm, friendly household. Anne’s master carpenter friend, Wayne Sheader, made a present of some driftwood he had found on the seashore which he’d embellished just slightly to become a dragon’s head, which we placed in the bushes outside to frighten the unwary.
The Dragon’s Head
Anne had realized that she could build stables on the side of Dragonhold. Soon Ed was installed, along with Gigi’s horse, Ben. Ed got to play in a field not far from the house and got happily fat eating grass and frolicking whenever he felt like it. He’d always come when Anne called, “Horseface!”
Settled in, Anne picked up where A Time When left off and finished The White Dragon. Judy-Lynn del Rey and everyone at Ballantine/Del Rey loved it. They were glad to get their first new dragon book in seven years. They got Michael Whelan, whose magnificent art was always eye-catching, to do a matching set of covers and re-released Dragonflight and Dragonquest in their new covers at the same time as they published The White Dragon in hardback.
When it came out in 1978, The White Dragon flew high – to become the first science fiction hardcover book to reach the New York Times Bestseller list.
The success of The White Dragon gave Anne, who had made the dragons fly, a secure perch on the ground.
In all her years of writing about dragons, Anne had always been amazed to find people who belonged in her books — like Jan Regan and Bernard Shattuck. And she had often used characteristics of the people she knew in her people on Pern. In all those years, Anne had never directly put someone in her books. “They’ve got their own lives, I don’t need to give them more,” she said. But when tragedy struck, she changed her rule.
Dragonhold, seen from the exercise area
With her greater economic freedom, Anne found herself able to afford the “little” things in life — like a new car, good saddles and tack for her horse. She bought a Toyota Corolla and has been a firm Toyota fan ever since.
Jan Reagan (Lessa) exercising a pony in front of Dragonhold
The new tack and the Corolla brought Anne some unwanted attention. One night they were startled by noises out back – but as the wind often brought strange sounds, no one thought much of it. It was not until the next morning that they discovered that the tack room had been burgled. Immediately afterward, Anne applied for and got a license for a shotgun. The daughter of a Kernel, Anne knew full how to load and fire a shotgun.
Gigi with our dog Saffron at Dragonhold
Gigi was now the only one at home — I was doing a stint in the U.S. Army — and old enough to throw the occasional party. Gigi and I had been throwing parties since 1971, and had always been good about be
having and cleaning up afterwards. However this one night the party was crashed by some rowdies who would not listen to common sense. Fortunately, another of the party-goers had a bit of a “reputation” himself and was outraged that anyone would abuse Anne’s hospitality. John Greene threw the rowdies out.
John Greene was then just finishing off an enlistment in the Irish Army. When I met him while on leave, we compared experiences: they ran five miles every day in full pack, we ran two miles in tennis shoes; we had the finest equipment in the world, they had whatever the French or British didn’t want anymore; we had to be prepared to fight off the Soviets, they were prepared to fight off all comers. I decided that the Irish Army was a tougher outfit
Johnny’s sense of humor and readiness to “try it on” meant that he had had many a rough-and-ready tumble. He was not someone to be trifled with.
He and Anne clicked. They understood and truly admired each other. Johnny once told me, “Your Mum is so fantastic. She really cares. I would do anything for her. I’d guard her door. I would die for her.”
I did not escape Johnny’s sense of humor. When I got out of the Army, my mother realized that I did not have a decent suit to wear. As she had just gotten membership in the very posh Sloane Club in London, she was determined that her son would be presentable — my mother gets a real kick out of “presenting” her boys (it’s the only time she can get me in a suit).
Johnny had just left the Irish Army himself and was, surprisingly, working in a haberdashery. So I was sent to him. He picked up a marvelous gray pin-stripe, with small stripes. When I complained to him that it was too loose, he looked me up and down and said, “When’s the last time you exercised?” I mumbled something and Johnny said with a knowing look, “Trust me, Todd, it’ll fit you.”
All too soon, it did. And now I’m far too large for it.
Ed got older and feebler. Finally, after a series of mini-strokes, Anne decided that Ed’s pains were greater than his pleasures. The vet came and administered the drug and Anne with tears streaming, said goodbye to Mr. Ed.
The rest of the day was hard for her.
At 11:20 PM, Irish Time, Anne was awakened by the phone. It was Alec — announcing the birth of Eliza Oriana Johnson, Anne’s first grandchild. The date was memorable, September 9th, 1981 — the last square date of the century, 9/9/81.
It was about that same year that Johnny started getting into more trouble. “I just can’t make it in the real world,” he told me not long after I finished my term in the Army.
“Well, what are you going to do, re-enlist in the Irish Army?” I asked.
“Do you think the Americans would take me?” he countered. I didn’t realize that he was half-serious.
Not long after, Johnny told us how he had stopped his little brother from entering the French Foreign Legion. And then — I get this letter:
“Hello Todd,
I suppose you’ll laugh yourself silly to learn that
I’ve joined the French Foreign Legion.”
He was right.
For the next several years Johnny would regale us with letters from such far-off places as Djubouti. “It’s 40ºC here in the desert and they’re dropping like flies. You get used to attending a funeral every week but I think it’s too much when the medical officer drops dead halfway through a 40-kilometer march.”
And he was a good soldier. Soon Johnny was sporting Corporal’s chevrons. And then he was promoted again, to the lofty Marechal de logique which is equivalent to Sergeant. He worked as a radio tech and had to become fluent in French — although we never heard him speak the language.
He knew that Anne did her shopping in Bray on Thursdays and would often surprise her there when home on leave.
John Greene, Marèchal de logique
In November of 1988, John Greene was murdered, for no apparent reason, while out for the evening in Orange, France. Anne felt his loss keenly — we all did — and decided that she would make him Jayge (for “J. G.”, one of his nicknames) in Renegades of Pern. She dedicated the book to him. Since then, Anne has put him in every book she writes, in hopes of giving him alternate lives for the one he lost.
In this book, she asked me especially to remember him. If you want to get a taste of the Anne’s admiration for John Greene, you should read the short story, The Ship Who Sang.
Anne on Ed
Now you have the stories behind the stories. Just as Anne has more stories still to be told, you can be sure that there are still more stories behind the stories. But as she hasn’t told her stories yet, I cannot tell you stories behind them. We’ll all have to wait and see.
Thank you for taking the time to learn the stories behind the stories, and I hope you enjoyed seeing how Anne McCaffrey, the “dragon lady”, first set the dragons free on Pern and then was herself freed by her dragons — and you, their fans.
May your skies always be bright and full of promise.
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been written but for Shelly Shapiro of Random House/Del Rey. It was at her suggestion that I started it at all.
I would like to thank Betty Ballantine, David Gerrold, and Virginia Kidd for consenting to be interviewed for this book. I would like to thank Carolyn A. Davis of the Reader Services Librarian in the Department of Special Collections of Syracuse University for providing me with a copy of Anne McCaffrey's original Dragonflight notes.
I would also like to thank my sister, Georgeanne Kennedy, and brother, Alec Johnson, for their recollections and encouragement. Thanks also to my very good friend Geoff Hilton for allowing me to tell a very good tale on him, and to Derval Diamond for the same reason. And I'd like to thank all our friends in Ireland for their kindness and support.
I could not have written this without the support of my wife, Jenna, and the love of my daughter, Ceara.
My debt to Anne McCaffrey, my mother, goes far beyond this book and no acknowledgement will ever be sufficient. In addition to all that has gone before, I would like to thank you, Mum, for putting up with my interviews and the countless e-mail exchanges for this book.
Needless to say, any mistakes, omissions, or downright lies are strictly my own.
Todd J. McCaffrey
March 17, 1999
About the Author
Todd McCaffrey is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. The second child of Anne McCaffrey, author of the Pern series, McCaffrey grew up surrounded by science fiction, fantasy, and plenty of dragons. His love of reading was supplemented by a fascination with space travel and exploration, and after growing up in both New York and Ireland he eventually earned a degree in mechanical engineering at the College of Technology (now Dublin Institute of Technology). He then earned his pilot license and subsequently flew solo across the United States—twice. McCaffrey has also served in the US Army and worked in computer programming. He is the author or coauthor of many books and short stories, among them Dragonholder: The Life and Dreams (So Far) of Anne McCaffrey and eight books in the Pern saga, including Dragonsblood. He lives in Los Angeles, California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1999 by Todd McCaffrey
Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox
Cover photo by Orla Callaghan
978-1-4976-8945-9
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