My father was busy and outgoing, with an attractive personality which drew people to him, and so it was a natural evolution that he became involved, and quickly assumed a permanent role, in civic affairs in Athlone. He was persuaded to run for the town council, initially as a Chamber of Commerce representative and Independent. Later he decided to take on the mantle of Fianna Fáil, not for any ideological reason, but out of loyalty to Seán Lemass, I imagine.
At this time Athlone was part of the constituency of Athlone–Longford, which was represented by the TDS Erskine (Hamilton) Childers, Thomas Carter and Seán Mac Eoin. It was Childers who ‘serviced’ Athlone and so about once a month he would visit the area, arriving by train with his bicycle. I would be sent, as a very young girl — just six or seven years old — over to the railway station to meet him and would accompany him as he wheeled his bike up the road to our house in the Ranelagh. There my father, who had detailed in his notebook for the TD all the queries which had come in from constituents over the previous weeks, would go through these with Childers, who would in turn note them in his own book. Then up Childers would get and on his bike and away around the town, calling at all of the addresses faithfully compiled and given to him by my father. Much later, he would come back to our house, fortified by the many stories he had heard and the many cups of tea he had been given. Then it was time for me to do my job again, accompanying him back over to the railway station until he got on the train, put his bike in the luggage carriage and away he went. It all sounds so old-fashioned now, but it wasn’t really. There was a great deal of dignity in the exchanges between my father and Erskine Childers, and in turn between the TD and his electorate, those who had solicited his presence. There was a strong sense of the unspoken contract which existed between them all. Around that time, 1943 to 1944, there were two elections within eleven months, and Erskine Childers, who was returned for both of them, continued to put in his regular appearances in Athlone.
In the years which followed, life carried on seamlessly in our busy household. My father was clearly devoted to his work and no matter what the vagaries of the night before, would get up at 6 a.m. without fail, wash and shave himself and walk down into the bowels of Gentex, as the factory was called, to meet the workers coming in for the first shift of the day. The number of employees — many of them female — increased exponentially and for many years, Gentex was the economic mainstay of the town of Athlone and the rural hinterland around it. The factory complex was continually being added to with, for example, huge sheds being erected — the bleaching, dying, finishing and spinning sheds — but for my father, with his advanced ideas on social practice among workers, the facilities on offer for employees were an equal priority. There was a resident, full-time nurse on the premises and a doctor visited at regular intervals. Right throughout the 1940s and beyond, there were workers’ councils and recognised trade unions in place in Gentex — at a time when such structures were only beginning to be introduced in other workplaces throughout Ireland. I know now that my father was very much influenced by socialist thinking, and he never failed to put such principles into practice in so far as he could.
Looking back now from a world in which women are expected to use their education and to enter the workforce, many may wonder how my mother managed to contain herself, with her brood of young children in the town of Athlone? It seems that she took up the card game of bridge, which at the time was starting to be a craze throughout Europe. She joined clubs and found friends to play with. And she mastered the game. So much did she master it in fact, that later, in the 1950s and 60s, she would represent Ireland at bridge conventions in Europe and beyond, travelling to such far, far places (to our young minds) as Lake Como, Vienna and London to fly the flag. In Seamus Dowling’s The History of Bridge in Ireland, Mrs Anne Lenihan is cited as being a winner of the Lambert Cup, with her name ‘frequently appear[ing] high on the leaderboard of major competitions’. Meanwhile, my father continued to be ever more involved in local politics, going from town council to county council, and becoming on many consecutive occasions Chairperson (there were no mayors then), both on the county council in Mullingar and on the Athlone Urban District Council.
My childhood was easy-going and because I was the youngest by so many years, I assumed a kind of ‘busybody’ role. When people came to the house to see my father about problems they had, I would always be the one to answer the door, bring them in and sit them down. I would say that my father would be with them in a moment and then dutifully go off and get him. I am certain that it was then that the belief was instilled in me that you were there to serve the people and that they should be treated properly and politely — and in my public life, I never forgot those early lessons. My father often explained how, for those people who came to him with a difficulty, their problem was the most important thing in their lives at that moment. I would notice that people generally seemed happier going away than when they had first arrived to see my father, as if the sharing of their troubles had helped them, and so this was something I strove for also in my work throughout my life.
Brian and Paddy were sent to the local Marist Boys’ Primary School and from there to the Marist Secondary College, also in Athlone. Brian completed his schooling there, but Paddy was sent at a certain point to Garbally College in Ballinasloe as a boarder, as he was proving a handful at home. It was felt that he would benefit from the discipline and the control of Garbally, but he was to prove a handful there too, and he was threatened with expulsion on two occasions. On one occasion, the threat was actually carried out, but he was taken back again — a rare event, I would think! Paddy smoked from a relatively young age and perhaps took a beer or two as well, all of which at that time was regarded as wild behaviour. I remember hearing this and it passing over my head. But both of my brothers persevered to the end and came out with their Leaving Certs.
My mother was true to the promise she made herself in her first teaching job in Loreto Bray, and she sent my sister Anne there as a boarder at the age of 13. It sounds odd now but it was the norm then that, if you could afford it, after national school was over, you sent your children — both boys and girls — to boarding schools. And so in due course, I too arrived at the Loreto Convent in Bray as a twelve-year-old, when Anne was in her final year there.
I hated boarding school with a passion. Just as my mother had vowed to send her daughters to Loreto, I vowed that as regards any children I might have in future, I would never send them away. I missed my home; I missed my father and all the family; I missed my friends. I hated the cold; I hated the food; I suffered with the loneliness of it all. Yes, I made friends but somehow I never got over my wish to be at home rather than where I was. I became a prickly teenager, noted for being vaguely subversive and not at all like my ‘good’ sister, with whom I was constantly compared. But there was one sterling aspect about life in Loreto, and that was the way we were taught and with this came the realisation that learning could be exotic and interesting, and that there were worlds outside ours to be explored through books and through conversations and in classes. I loved the wonderful library there, where I could continue to enjoy the adventure and excitement of reading, which had begun in my home in my very early years. I developed a schoolgirl crush — we all had them — on a Mother Benedicta, who taught us Latin. Looking back now, I realise that she was a brilliant woman who instilled and fostered in me a love of the Latin language, of the Odes of Horace and so many other classical works. I enjoyed sports too, and in my last year was appointed captain of all the Dublin Loreto schools at netball. All of this side of school life was exciting and it made up in important ways for the barren loneliness of being a boarder, as I experienced it. It was always cold and we were always hungry: these were my two dominant impressions at the time.
My love of Latin flourished, however, and has stayed with me. I got Honours in my Leaving Cert Latin and indeed when I started my teaching career, it was Latin I wanted to teach. But of course it eventually disa
ppeared as a subject from the general curriculum and is now taught in just a few chosen schools. I think this a great mistake because Latin is the foundation for all other languages and its concision, language structure and clarity of thought are qualities which would stand many a writer now in very good stead.
By the time I left Loreto Convent, Bray in 1954 at the age of 17, my brother Brian had concluded his law career at UCD. Meanwhile Paddy had begun studies in agricultural science, but left after one year to go to England. My sister Anne had completed her hotel management training in the college based in Shannon Airport, while my father and mother had purchased and re-established the family home in the Hodson Bay Hotel in Athlone. So life had changed utterly for me during my final years at school.
That summer of 1954, and indeed during the long college holidays in subsequent years, I helped out in the Hodson Bay Hotel: like my siblings, I was expected to work — there was no such thing as three months spent hanging around. I worked in the kitchen, washing dishes; I worked in the bar; I worked in the bedrooms. I can’t remember if I received a regular payment, but from time to time my father would give me money — enough for me to get by on. I had friends in the area and we went for all of our entertainment to Athlone town and the nearby rural areas, where marquee dancing was the excitement of the day. A large tent would be erected in a field, miles from nowhere, and one of the foremost bands of the day would play until 3 a.m. There we young girls met our opposite numbers in the young fellows, and the encounters which followed were often strange, interesting and exciting.
I learned to drive when I was very young, just 16 or thereabouts. An experience from those days has always stayed in my mind as one of those key moments in my life, and very much indicative of my upbringing. I was barely 17 at the time and very useful to my father during the holidays as a driver. The railway station in Athlone had to be visited every day to pick up fresh chickens and fresh salmon, which would be sent via rail from Limerick and Monaghan and such places for the numerous weddings we hosted in the hotel and for which we had quickly established a good reputation. My father had a big, old-fashioned, two-tone Rover car and one of my first drives on my own was into CIÉ to collect boxes of fresh provisions. With some help, I loaded up at the station and then set out on the road again, to drive the three miles back to the Hodson Bay. I careered into a ditch, however, and got a right fright. There were no mobile phones then of course, but I went to a neighbouring house: that of Delia Donnelly, who ran a typing school — I knew she had a landline. We telephoned my father at the hotel, and I told him what had happened.
‘Are you hurt? Are you alright?’ he said. Fortunately I was fine.
‘Did you hurt anyone?’ was the next question.
‘No, just a ditch.’
‘Well then, you’re fine. I’ll be there for you shortly.’ And so he was.
The very next day, without any hesitation, he sent me off again in the car. I have always thought how that was the right thing to do at the time, as I have been a fairly fearless driver ever since. It was a lesson well taught and a lesson well learned.
I had what was considered a good Leaving Cert — Honours in English, Latin, Drawing, History and Botany — a strange assortment of subjects. My parents could afford to send me to college and it had always been assumed I would go to UCD. I remember my father asking, ‘What would you like to do, what would you like to be?’ I had replied, ‘I would love to be a journalist’, but back in 1954, there were very few women journalists about. It is funny that I was always interested, and continue to be interested, in the world of media and journalism. Anyway, my father insisted that the first thing I needed to do was to get a good BA degree, and of course he was right. I was enrolled at UCD — which was then in Earlsfort Terrace — to study Arts.
My first term at UCD began in early October and it had been decided that I would lodge in Loreto Hall, which was a hostel for first-year students. I ended up staying there for the three years. Earlsfort Terrace was literally beside Loreto Hall, so if you had a lecture at 9 a.m., you could get up at 8.55 a.m. and still be there on time — and that was the way I lived those early days! I also developed a habit that has remained with me throughout my life. I was not what one would call a steady studier — although I was a consistent attendee at lectures and always keen to absorb everything which passed within the confines of the campus between the students and the tutors. My pattern of study had quickly developed into that of a last-minute ‘spurter’, with a frenzy of work in, say, the last six weeks before an examination, when I would study flat out and really achieve results. Somehow my brain wasn’t suited to the long slog, but rather to the hard, frenetic, eleventh-hour dash. To this day, if I have study or work to do, I will always leave it to the very last minute, as this is what works best for me.
I liked the atmosphere of college life — there were always things to do and people to talk to — but my enjoyment of those years was based above all on my thirst for knowledge and the stimulation of learning. I went to my lectures, even though I wouldn’t have been a great note-taker. In the first term of my first year, I took Latin, English and Sociology. There would be 300–400 students in the English lectures, if you chose to go, which I did — there was a wonderful English lecturer called Lorna Reynolds, who later became a professor at University College, Galway.
My father’s first cousin, the historian Robert Dudley Edwards, was the head of History in UCD at the time. One day I was seated in this vast lecture hall and in came Dudley Edwards with long, flowing, curly grey hair, wearing his gown, as he always did. All at once, he boomed out at the top of his voice, ‘Is there a Mary Lenihan here?’ I was mortified. I put up my hand and when he commanded in that loud, resonant voice, ‘Come with me’, everyone around me started murmuring and laughing. I followed him outside, where he questioned me, ‘How come you didn’t join my History class?’ I replied in a mumble and he just said, ‘You are to start taking History now!’ And I did. Later on, I was delighted I had followed his advice, as he was a wonderful lecturer.
I enjoyed hostel life, as restrictive as it was, certainly by today’s standards. My older brother Brian was living at that time in Dublin in an apartment quite near me, with two other fellows. Any time you wanted to stay out late, you would have to get permission, so Brian would say to the staff at the hostel, ‘I am taking my sister to . . .’ — it would always be a worthy place. Of course I wouldn’t be going out with him at all: I would be staying over at a friend’s flat. In that sense, I was never restricted. I was reared in a house with two boys, so meeting the opposite sex wasn’t a big novelty for me. Of course though, we girls would be eyeing up all the boys at college. I remember at one stage, I used to sit three seats down from Tony O’Reilly in the lecture hall!
I completed my first year and I always remember how my English lecturer Lorna Reynolds wrote to my father and mother, saying that I should continue English as I had got a very good mark. My parents were delighted and it was decided that I would do a ‘Group 4’ English, which was a complete English degree with an ancillary subject — French was mine.
I met Enda O’Rourke that summer while working in the Hodson Bay Hotel. I was just 18. I was playing tennis on the court adjoining the hotel and he was there with some of his friends. I heard him say, ‘Who is that girl?’ and we were duly introduced. I fell for him straight away. Two years my senior, he was interesting and a bit of a lad, but initially, it was above all a physical attraction: I loved his looks, his dark hair and dark skin. It was this physical liking which turned into love and led to us getting married. Throughout our long married life together, Enda and I never lost that sense of attraction and delight in one another.
The Crescent Ballroom in Athlone was the favourite place at the time for my age group to go. It was owned by the legendary Syd Shine (who is still alive today), and he played there with his band, the Syd Shine Orchestra. In the beginning I would just arrange to see Enda there on a Thursday night when the band was playing. We d
idn’t have proper dates, with him bringing me there and so on, but we soon graduated to that. I remember standing outside just before we went in, watching people weaving in and out and dancing. I have a very vivid memory of them dancing old-fashioned quick steps and foxtrots, and so on. Enda and I went there on a regular basis. I had been out with guys in Dublin — harmless things, like walking home from English Lit. debates — but Enda was my first serious romance. I knew pretty quickly that he was the one; I don’t know if he knew as quickly as I did. I also knew, however, that I had to finish my degree, as I had only completed one year.
After that summer, I went back to UCD and Enda would come up to Dublin to see me. It was quite intense and I would go home on a more regular basis because I had something to go home for. When I was about 19, we made the joint decision that we would break up for a while and see what happened. I don’t remember being upset about it, so it must have been a mutual decision. We decided we should ‘play the field’ for a bit, just to see if what was between us was real. Looking back now, I suppose it was a pretty modern way of approaching the relationship. Before Enda had met me, he had had a girlfriend and I used to tease him about her. She was away doing a Physical Education course, which was very glamorous and up-to-the-moment, I thought.
During the period when we temporarily broke up, we both went out with other people, although not in a very serious way. I met a guy called Gerry O’Malley, who was a very well-known Roscommon footballer. He was quite a few years older than me, and very quiet and shy. We started to go on a few dates. From time to time, I would hear that Enda had been out with his girlfriend from before. Of course, we ended up getting back together again. I think we must have met somewhere and when we saw each other again, we knew that this was it.
Just Mary Page 2