were never more than distantly polite. To my father’s family, my mother’s relations were not only politically corrupt but barbarously unlearned, hard-drinking, irreligious, foppish and extravagant. To my mother’s family, my father’s relations were not only politically irresponsible but feckless, bigoted, prudish and riddled with intellectual pretensions that never came to anything. Happily these prejudices left me unaffected. I grew up fond of both families, unquestioningly accepting their covert mutual hostility as a fact of Irish life.
* Pappa had been in Rome as Ambassador to the Vatican from the Government of the Irish Republic.
3
In November 1936 my father at last found a house to rent at a price we could afford. It was on the South Mall, Lismore’s most respectable street, but the dwelling itself was so irreparably decrepit that no modern squatter would stay there overnight. Short of a leaking roof, it suffered from every defect buildings are heir to and, for the next twenty-one years, it decayed – usually quietly, but occasionally dramatically – about our ears. Dating from the 1820s, it was two-storeyed, semi-detached and covered in Virginia creeper. The fanlight and wooden porch were attractive, a pair of romantic stone urns graced the front garden and overgrown fuchsia-bushes billowed on either side of the hall door. The well-proportioned rooms had good marble mantelpieces and mock-Adam ceilings and the wide hall was tiled in cream and dull red – pleasant, old-fashioned, indestructible tiles. However, some past tenant with execrable taste had left the whole place superficially hideous. The hall was painted a dead laurel green, only relieved by irregular patches of yellow-grey mildew where the plaster had fallen off. (For years I was fascinated by those patches, seeing them as maps of undiscovered countries.) The staircase was covered with cracked red and blue linoleum which ill-matched the magnificent mahogany banisters. Upstairs were five rooms: three large bedrooms, a boxroom which became my playroom and another large room, complete with fireplace, which at some remote period had been converted into a bathroom. The bath stood on four gigantic iron lion’s paws and resembled a modern child’s swimming-pool. It was patriotically stained green and orange and had a shower-device, of considerable antiquarian interest, near the ceiling. This had become viciously perverted and it sprayed, with tremendous force, only onto the opposite wall. When my father had forgotten to warn three successive guests he put up a notice saying ‘Please do not touch’. The lavatory also had its notice, to explain that the chain needed three morse-like pulls: long-short-long. The wash-basin could almost have been used as a bath and was without a plug: apparently none to fit it had been manufactured since the turn of the century. Had my fatherexerted himself he could, at the cost of a few pence, have remedied this and many other defects. But the idea of personally improvising a washbasin plug – or anything else – would never have entered his mind and he judged our numerous discomforts too trivial to warrant expensive expert attention.
Throughout the house we found peeling beige woodwork and wallpaper that had faded to a uniform grey-brown. Everywhere the paper was coming unstuck and in the dining-room rats had eaten through it at several points, thus demonstrating the fragility of the basic structure. Dry-rot afflicted the floor boards and some other sort of rot caused the ground-floor ceilings to snow gently if anyone walked about too vigorously overhead. This perhaps explains why I have always moved rather lightly for one of my build.
At the end of the hall a semi-glazed door led to a narrow, dark, flagged passage with ominously bulging henna-distempered walls. Having passed a storeroom, a pantry and a larder one entered the kitchen. Here sly draughts sneaked up from damp non-foundations through gaps between
* Pappa had been in Rome as Ambassador to the Vatican from the Government of the Irish Republic.
3
In November 1936 my father at last found a house to rent at a price we could afford. It was on the South Mall, Lismore’s most respectable street, but the dwelling itself was so irreparably decrepit that no modern squatter would stay there overnight. Short of a leaking roof, it suffered from every defect buildings are heir to and, for the next twenty-one years, it decayed – usually quietly, but occasionally dramatically – about our ears. Dating from the 1820s, it was two-storeyed, semi-detached and covered in Virginia creeper. The fanlight and wooden porch were attractive, a pair of romantic stone urns graced the front garden and overgrown fuchsia-bushes billowed on either side of the hall door. The well-proportioned rooms had good marble mantelpieces and mock-Adam ceilings and the wide hall was tiled in cream and dull red – pleasant, old-fashioned, indestructible tiles. However, some past tenant with execrable taste had left the whole place superficially hideous. The hall was painted a dead laurel green, only relieved by irregular patches of yellow-grey mildew where the plaster had fallen off. (For years I was fascinated by those patches, seeing them as maps of undiscovered countries.) The staircase was covered with cracked red and blue linoleum which ill-matched the magnificent mahogany banisters. Upstairs were five rooms: three large bedrooms, a boxroom which became my playroom and another large room, complete with fireplace, which at some remote period had been converted into a bathroom. The bath stood on four gigantic iron lion’s paws and resembled a modern child’s swimming-pool. It was patriotically stained green and orange and had a shower-device, of considerable antiquarian interest, near the ceiling. This had become viciously perverted and it sprayed, with tremendous force, only onto the opposite wall. When my father had forgotten to warn three successive guests he put up a notice saying ‘Please do not touch’. The lavatory also had its notice, to explain that the chain needed three morse-like pulls: long-short-long. The wash-basin could almost have been used as a bath and was without a plug: apparently none to fit it had been manufactured since the turn of the century. Had my fatherexerted himself he could, at the cost of a few pence, have remedied this and many other defects. But the idea of personally improvising a washbasin plug – or anything else – would never have entered his mind and he judged our numerous discomforts too trivial to warrant expensive expert attention.
Throughout the house we found peeling beige woodwork and wallpaper that had faded to a uniform grey-brown. Everywhere the paper was coming unstuck and in the dining-room rats had eaten through it at several points, thus demonstrating the fragility of the basic structure. Dry-rot afflicted the floor boards and some other sort of rot caused the ground-floor ceilings to snow gently if anyone walked about too vigorously overhead. This perhaps explains why I have always moved rather lightly for one of my build.
At the end of the hall a semi-glazed door led to a narrow, dark, flagged passage with ominously bulging henna-distempered walls. Having passed a storeroom, a pantry and a larder one entered the kitchen. Here sly draughts sneaked up from damp non-foundations through gaps between
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