Anne's Song (2 page)

Tommy was a very good-looking boy with dark hair and eyes to match and he grew into a handsome young man. As a child, Denise was very cute with dark curly hair and brown eyes; as an adult she's the one who looks most like our mother. She's very placid, very loving. She's the kindest person I know, someone who would never, ever forget a birthday or an anniversary. If it's someone's birthday, she'll be the one who arranges the party, who gets everyone together, who buys the cake. Every spare minute she has, she goes to visit our mum and she's not shy of keeping us up to the task, either. She can be fiery, and too sensitive sometimes for her own good which means she's always been easily hurt, but she doesn't hold grudges. Family means everything to Denise.

My only abiding memory of living in Finglas is of the babysitter my parents would employ when they were out in the evenings on singing engagements. On one occasion, this girl – she can barely have been a teenager – got bored with sitting in our house and wanted to take me over the road to where she lived. The only problem was what to do with Denise who was just a toddler and who couldn't tag along like me. So she tied Denise to the bedpost by her hair. I may have been young but I wasn't standing by and letting that happen to my sister. I marched straight upstairs and released her. People who meet me might describe me as quiet, but that doesn't mean I'm timid. I'm a strong character and I know the difference between right and wrong. With one exception, I've never let anyone control me.

Not long before we moved out of the house in Finglas in June 1954, my sister Maureen was born. Maureen's the one on whom everyone can offload their troubles. She doesn't get riled; she's the family peacekeeper, a person who never likes to think badly of anyone; she's been like that since childhood. She's also the family beauty, no question. She had hazel eyes and mid-brown hair with a slim figure. And she was always smiling. Anyone who met her was alwavs attracted to both her looks and to her

We moved to the St Anne's Estate in Raheny when I was five. Finglas had a reputation for being pretty rough, but Raheny, while still a council estate, was a cut above; we were moving up in the world. By then, there were six of us: my parents, Tommy, me, Denise and Maureen. Hence the move; we were a rapidly expanding family.

Ours was the corner house next to some sort of electricity substation fenced off behind a large locked gate. I was a bit of a tomboy and I'd think nothing of climbing over this gate, although it was forbidden and potentially very dangerous. There was also a big derelict mansion not far away, in a place we called Seven Hills. I'd be down there with my little group of friends, climbing in and out of its broken windows – or we'd go off to a new estate that was being built and get inside when the workmen had gone. We'd also shin up trees and then spit on people as they passed underneath.

I was at the local girls' Catholic junior school where I made lots of friends and enjoyed my book work, but the highlight for me was always the school concert where we'd perform for the teachers and our parents. I can still recall the material of the dress I wore when I had to tap dance with a group of other six-year-olds. It was made of bright red net and covered in sequins with a skirt that stuck out. I felt like a film star, someone out of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. It's one of the best memories of my childhood.

When I think back to my early years growing up in Ireland, I was rarely indoors. I'd either be at school or playing outside with my friends, often still eating the last of my tea as I ran out the door. I was meant to be in the street outside our house where I'd play hopscotch or skipping games, but, being a little wild thing, I'd be off and getting up to all sorts in the fields that surrounded our estate. We were never supervised, but life seemed somehow so much safer back then.

I'd only come home again when it was time to go to bed: at seven in the winter, which I hated because it seemed so early, but eight in the summer because of the light evenings. In bad weather, we'd stay indoors and, if my dad was around, he'd read to us or we'd look at comics or draw or listen to the radio. There was always music and singing in the house. Each of us kids must have inherited Mum and Dad's musical ability because a song only had to come on the radio and we'd all start singing along, unconsciously able to pick up the right harmonies. In time, we were given little bits of homework by the teachers at school. It was a wonderful carefree kind of a childhood. Our parents were there if we needed them, but we were allowed to be what we wanted to be. We might not have been rich in terms of material possessions, but we were loved and we were happy. There's no price you can put on that.

Sometimes Dad would take us in his old banger out to Howth Head or we'd go by steam train to the seaside at Bray, where we'd sit on the grass on the promenade and eat fish and chips; or we'd walk into Dollymount and buy sweets, and then stay on the beach all day and eat the picnic Mum had made: bread and jam washed down with bottles of water or lemonade for a special treat. We couldn't swim, but we'd play in the sea and we never came to any harm. It was an uncomplicated, contented early childhood with no foretaste of the dark days to come.

When Tommy and I went to school down the road, we'd run home at lunchtime to listen to a radio programme, a daily soap opera, called
The Kennedys of Castle Ross
while Mum made the food. She was a plain cook. It might be sausages, beans and potatoes or, one of her favourites, a joint of gammon served with mashed potato and cabbage or curly kale. We loved her banana sandwiches, and I remember Denise was particularly partial to her rice pudding. At the weekend, she'd always make a huge pan of stew. I don't recall her teaching us how to cook, although, when we were older, we were taught how to bake. I remember my Dublin days as an idyllic upbringing for a child, even if money was tight – and that was something that children don't really understand, or need to, when they're growing up.

When I must have been no more than six, Nana Breslin died. It was a terrible shock. She had an asthma attack on a bus that brought on a heart attack. She was only fifty-two. I remember someone coming to our house when I was in bed. I heard voices at the front door and suddenly my mother let out a piercing scream. I could hear her sobbing her heart out, but nobody came to tell us what was going on or why she was so upset. So I got out of bed and called through the banisters, asking what the matter was. My dad said, 'Oh, it's just your mammy. She's fine now.'

The next day, I asked him again. He said, 'Your nana's gone to heaven.' And that was that. I didn't really understand what I'd been told, but every time I tried to talk about it, someone changed the subject. I wasn't allowed to go to the funeral, so I never got the chance to say goodbye to her. Eventually, my granddad, Miles, got married again to a lovely woman called Madge.

I think it took my mother a long time to get over the loss of Nana Breslin, but that is only a presumption I've arrived at with hindsight. She never, ever discussed her feelings with us. Instead, she was kept constantly busy round the house. If she was in a good mood, she'd let us join in and help her. She might suddenly shout out, 'Right. Who's for polishing the floor then?' You'd expect most children to make a dash for the door, but not in our house. The chorus of 'Me! Me! Me!' must have been heard halfway down the street as we rushed to volunteer. Mum would tie rags to our feet and we'd skate and slide the full length of the hall floor, polishing it in the process. If we'd been good, she'd give us money for sweets.

There were two rooms on the ground floor on the right as you came in the front door. The one that overlooked the street was kept for best occasions; the other was a family room. There was a kitchen opposite. Upstairs, there was a bathroom with a toilet and three bedrooms. I shared with Denise and Maureen. Tommy and later Brian had the second room, and our parents had the other. It was a long time before any of us had a bed to ourselves and certainly never when we lived in Ireland.

We girls used to play a game in our bedroom called Standing On Knees. Denise and I would sit on the bed and raise our knees. Maureen – and Linda later on – would take our hands and climb on, then we'd let go and they'd have to stand balanced on our knees without falling off. Or one of us would sit at one end of the bed with another at the other end and we'd join hands and rock backwards and forwards, like a swingboat. Of course there would sometimes be arguments, many of them started by me. I was a tearaway, happy to pick fights with anyone. I daresay there was a bit of hair-pulling, too – it would be surprising if that hadn't happened, as we were all living on top of each other – but we were very close, each other's best friends, which is how it remained throughout our career.

Our next-door neighbours in Raheny were the McMahon family. There were seven children, the oldest a girl called Mary who was two years older than me. She taught me to ride a bike and I took my First Communion with her brother Padraic when we were both seven. It was a great and special day in my life with visiting relatives and friends showering gifts and money on us in the old Irish tradition. That night, Dad took me to the Royella, the nightclub where he was the resident singer. He sat me at the side of the stage where everybody made a great fuss of me; he bought me a bottle of pop and I was allowed to stay and watch his act. I felt very grown-up.

It was also around this time that we got a black-and-white television, the first people on the estate to own a set. I was so transfixed by it that I was happy just watching the test card on the screen when I got home from school and before programmes started in the early evening. My favourites were
The Flowerpot Men
and
The Woodentops;
later on, it would be
Emergency Ward 10
and
Dr Kildare;
I was deeply in love with Richard Chamberlain.

My second brother, Brian, arrived after we'd moved to Raheny. He turned out to be as quiet as Tommy was noisy. He was shy and introverted to the point of being scared of his own shadow. He had a big fort and would spend hours playing with his soldiers on his own. In 1958, Linda arrived; that makes her eight years younger than me. I never remember my mother being pregnant and it was never discussed. It was just that every eighteen months or so, there was a new baby in the house. Linda was the polar opposite of Brian: an outgoing, sunny child we nicknamed Dublin Molly because of her deep voice and strong accent.

This was also the year that Denise made
her
First Communion. I behaved appallingly because this was her day. I'd been pampered when it had been my turn the previous year, but still I was jealous of all the attention she was getting. In a deliberate act of spite, I broke one of her dolls by throwing it on the ground and smashing one of its arms. When she found out, my mother smacked me on my bare legs, something I thoroughly deserved. I went stamping up to our bedroom and then screamed insults at Denise and my parents out of the window as they took her off to the Royella as part of her special day. However, just as Tommy was protective of me, so I usually felt the same about Denise.

There was a hut in a field near us for the local football team. Inside, it was divided down the middle so the two opposing teams could get changed into and out of their kit. When I was seven, a group of girls and another of boys dreamed up the idea of going to this changing room, taking off all our clothes and then one boy and one girl would step outside and show each other their bits and pieces. We knew it was naughty, but without really understanding why. Because Denise was my little sister, I wouldn't let her come on this so-called adventure. So she went to our mum to tell her that something bad was happening. The next thing I knew, my mother was dragging me home, a small hearth brush in her hand with which she was trying to whack me across the bottom as I dodged out of her range. As it happens, it hadn't reached my turn in the game to reveal all to one of the local boys. I dread to think what she'd have done if she'd witnessed that. She gave me a good smacking when we got home and I was sent to bed with no tea. I sobbed myself to sleep. After a little while, though – and this was typical of my mum – she came and woke me up with something to eat and gave me a big cuddle. I'd done something wrong. I'd been punished. It was all over.

I was seven when I first started getting pains in my legs. They weren't sharp, stabbing pains, more like dull aches, the kind of pains you'd get if you'd been cycling all day. They were never so bad that I'd be unable to walk but I would have to take painkillers to help me get to sleep. Nobody seemed to know what was causing them. Was it rheumatism? Growing pains? Polio? The doctors couldn't make up their minds. I was taken to the local hospital on a weekly basis where I'd be given a painkilling injection, but the pains persisted. In time, they did discover I had some sort of heart murmur, so then they thought I might be suffering from rheumatic fever, but I was never given any medication and nor did I feel ill.

The pains weren't bad enough to keep me off school and life carried on as before. In the summer of 1960, when she was pregnant with Bernie, Mum went on a trip to England where she stayed with her uncle, Joe Hayes. On her return to Dublin, she was full of her trip, and I remember her talking to my dad about it.

'It was lovely,' she told him. 'I met some really nice people. And there are so many clubs, Tommy. We could make a real good living there.'

Apparently, Uncle Joe had taken Mum to the British Legion Club one evening where she'd volunteered to sing a song. A man called Fred Daly, a friend of Joe's, was in the club that night. So impressed was he with my mother's singing, he tried to persuade her that her future lay on that side of the water.

Dad wasn't convinced. 'Where would we live?' he asked. 'Our home and friends are in Dublin. You can't just uproot a family like ours and dump them in the middle of a strange town in a strange country.'

Mum persisted. 'Fred said he'd put us up in his house until we found our own place.'

Dad laughed. 'And did you warn him we're like the tribe of Israel?'

'Be serious, Tommy,' she said. 'I mean it. You and me singing together? We'd clean up in the working men's clubs.'

'But what about my radio work?' said Dad. He had a regular weekday morning show on Radio Eireann on which he'd play records by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and so on as well as singing himself with a live band. 'It's a good income and popular enough to last a long time yet.'

For the moment, at least, his argument won the day and Mum appeared to drop the idea.

In October 1960, Bernie was born. She's always been petite with short blonde hair worn in a bob and bright blue eyes. She looked very similar to Linda, the sister immediately above her in age, although Linda is taller and a bigger build. Bernie was laid back as a child and less outgoing than Linda, although she won't take any nonsense from anyone. Having said that, she's the type of person who loves everybody and wants everybody to love her. She can sing like the rest of us, but she's also turned into a terrific actress.

The aches and pains in my legs meanwhile persisted. They didn't really bother me when I was playing with my sisters or my friends but I'd complain about them at the end of the day. The way I used to describe them was like having a headache in my legs. Eventually it reached a point where it was decided I should be put into a sort of hospital so I could be observed more closely. It was called St Gabriel's Convalescent Home in Cabenteely on the outskirts of Dublin, about an hour on the bus from where we lived. I never questioned what was happening. I was a child and it was adults who made decisions. I simply did as I was bid. Anyway, I was either told or I'd somehow worked out in my head that I was only going to be there for three days and then I'd be back home again. So I saw it as a bit of an adventure.

What also made it quite exciting was that Maureen was admitted at the same time as me. She'd been told she either had a high blood count or hypertension, whatever that may have meant. These days, she'd have been given some pills. Back then, though, I think it must have been the fashion to encourage bed rest in the hope that whatever was ailing you would go away. It was a bizarre way of dealing with any physical complaint, especially when it involved children. As it was, Maureen remained in Cabenteely for a year while I was there for an astonishing eighteen months, never once being allowed out to visit home. Because so many grownups were telling me it was for the best, I simply accepted the situation as my fate, never questioning it.

When Maureen and I first arrived, there was a measles epidemic, so the nuns said we had to stay in the convent with them. We were put in a room on our own. Mum used to come and visit us twice a week, Wednesday and Sunday without fail, when she'd bring us what was called our 'pigeon' – biscuits and little treats, kept in your own individual tin box.

I only found out much later on that, during our first two weeks in the home, there was a bus strike in Dublin. Mum never said anything but, unable to drive and not being able to afford taxis, she hitchhiked across the city. Dad would come with her on Sundays, but he was working in the week. When we had measles, visitors were only allowed to look at us through a glass window. They couldn't come into the room in case they carried in germs from outside. I know Mum found that hard and I remember crying each time she left.

At the start, Maureen and I were told to stay in bed almost all the time. We'd be seen by a doctor once a week who might say that we could get up for, say, half an hour a day. Then it went up to an hour a day and so on, but if we ever did anything wrong, we'd be told we had to revert to just half an hour a day. It was all very strange. I never felt remotely ill, even though there was a more or less continuous dull ache in both legs – although not always at the same time. And still no one seemed able to explain what the cause was.

Once the measles epidemic had passed, we were then put on different wards according to our ages. Maureen was only six and I know she found it hard not having her big sister with her. In time, we were allowed to do pretty much what we wanted. I'd get up in the morning and play with the other children, or help in the kitchen and then deliver meals to the other patients. There were only girls in the home, and most of them around the same age as me. There were about twenty girls on my ward, many of them with heart conditions but all expected to make a full recovery.

We'd listen to the radio a lot; Cliff Richard and Elvis Presley were very popular at the time. Or we'd play draughts or snakes and ladders, if it was winter and we had to stay indoors. In the summer, as long as the weather was nice, we'd be allowed out in the grounds where we'd play tig or hopscotch or skipping games.

We were taught by a teacher who came in each day, a mixture of lessons including maths and Gaelic which was as much a mystery to me then as it is now. I'd see Maureen at playtime but I was horrible to her. I'd run away from her saying, 'You're not my sister.' I deliberately tried to make her cry. Then I'd go up to her and give her a cuddle and tell her I was only kidding, that I loved her really. I think I just wanted her to want me. So I'd goad her until she cried and came to me pleading, and then I'd hug her and make her smile and have the satisfaction of making her better again. I remember deliberately making my sisters cry when they were babies, just so that I could console them. It was a form, I suppose, of exercising control and I'm not in the least proud of it.

Although we were supervised, the staff were busy so we'd get up to all manner of mischief. I remember once borrowing knives from the kitchen and one of the other girls and I sat in the grounds scraping all the bark off a tree trunk. On another occasion, one of the other girls and I decided to run away. We weren't unhappy; we were doing it out of sheer devilment. After lights out, we grabbed our coats, climbed down the fire escape and made our way through the grounds and out of the main gates.

'And where do you think two young girls like you would be going at this time of night?'

The voice of the local bobby stopped us in our tracks about a hundred yards from the convalescent home.

'Dublin, Constable,' I answered with a bravado that I certainly wasn't feeling.

'Then I think you're going to have a long walk,' he replied, 'because you're on the road to Cork. Dublin is that way.' He waggled his thumb over his shoulder.

As a punishment, my friend and I were put on a side ward. There were only two beds in it and we had to stay put for a week, only permitted to get out of bed to go to the toilet. It was the isolation unit, screened off by glass from the main ward. I can't say it made me upset, just angry.

Of course I used to have the occasional bout of homesickness during all this time, but I've always had the ability, even as a child, to rationalise these things. I wasn't going home in the foreseeable future so what was the point of wasting my emotions on wishing I could be back with my family?

I made my Confirmation in the convalescent home and Maureen made her First Communion. I was ten; she was seven. It was at about that time that I went to Lourdes. We had a neighbour in Raheny who worked for an organisation that sent sick people there, and Mum asked her to put my name on the list. However, my mother couldn't come with me. I was put on a stretcher and lifted on to a night train, sleeping in a couchette enshrouded by a privacy curtain. When the party got to Lourdes, I stayed in a hostel with other young people. I was perfectly capable of walking although, on the occasion I was taken to the Basilica, I was placed in a wheelchair and pushed by one of the Boy Scouts. I didn't mind. I was an obedient child even though I was spirited, too. To be honest, I think I rather enjoyed the drama of it all. I remember it very clearly. There was a procession in the evening when hundreds of people carried candles down a hill to the village, an absolutely amazing event for a ten-year-old girl who'd been stuck in a home in Ireland. All you could see were candles in every direction. All you could hear was beautiful singing. Eventually, I was taken to the grotto, dressed in a special robe, and told to get out of my wheelchair and walk through a sunken stone bath filled with freezing water. At the other end, there was a statue of Our Lady. I was told to kiss her feet and, as I did so, I was dunked under the water. The strange thing was that, the moment I climbed out of the bath, I was completely dry in a matter of seconds.

My mother said she was convinced I was cured while I was there, but of what no one could rightly say. It occurs to me now that I could perfectly well have told the doctors in the convalescent home that the pains in my legs had stopped and then maybe I'd have been allowed home – but that wouldn't have been true. They ached in just the same way before, during and after my trip to Lourdes. Anyway, I wasn't desperately unhappy there, so why pull a stunt like that? Maybe, if I stayed a little longer, they'd discover what was causing the trouble and then I'd be cured and released.

There never was a convincing explanation and, to this day, I still get aches and pains, immediately below my knees.

In the summer of 1961, Mum made another trip to England and her enthusiasm for moving to Blackpool was reignited. Again, Dad was reticent. He loved Ireland. Why would he want to move to England? But then Fred Daly, who she'd met on her previous visit, decided to come over to Dublin to convince my father to change his mind.

Fred was the managing director of a company called Union Printers. He had no connection whatever with show business, but he'd heard Mum sing, and I think he was rather smitten, of course by her looks but especially by her voice. They were chatting afterwards and she told him all about my dad, and Fred was insistent that they should bring the family over to England. There was a huge network of clubs in the UK that simply didn't exist in Ireland. Fred was convinced they'd be a big success because there was a greater scope for the type of music my parents were singing.

He was tall and slim with a kind face and a nature to match. He was divorced when my mother first met him, although he did have a girlfriend at the time. He may have fancied Mum, but I also think he was genuinely struck by her talent and potential. I was later to grow very fond of Fred, giving him the honorary title of Uncle. He was very kind to me because, apart from my recurrent aching legs, I also suffered from blinding headaches and he would massage the side of my head until I fell asleep. He was a big supporter of Blackpool Football Club and he and my dad took me to my first football match, the start of a lifelong love affair with soccer.

Uncle Fred must have done a pretty good job of convincing my father that the family's future lay in England because the decision was made to move there in June 1962. He only had a three-bedroom semi, so it was a pretty unusual offer to encourage two adults and seven children to come and live with you. Actually, it was two adults and six children. I was still in the convalescent home – Maureen had just been discharged – and the doctors were not prepared to authorise my release.

My parents nonetheless decided to move without me. I remember the whole family coming to say goodbye. It was a very sunny day. And then they all left. I was usually accepting of my fate, but I did cry then. I felt so alone. Although I'd seen my brothers and sisters on my Confirmation in the convalescent home chapel, as well as on my birthday, I'd known that Maureen was on the next ward and that the rest of the family were returning to the home I knew and loved. But when they left to travel to England, I felt very flat. When would I see them again? And where? I couldn't imagine my mum making the long journey back to Cabenteely, just to see me. Whichever way I tried to rationalise it, it felt a bit like I was being abandoned. I remember being very tearful for the first couple of days after they'd said their goodbyes. But I was a tough, resilient little girl and, gradually, I rallied. I told myself that this had been a difficult decision made in my best interests. Also, somewhere deep in my heart, I knew that nothing lasts for ever. One day, although I didn't know when, the situation would be bound to change. Wouldn't it?

That was the June of 1962. I was eleven and I had no idea what the future held. When they'd discussed leaving, my parents were told that Maureen was fine, they could take her – but if they also took me, the doctors could not guarantee what would happen to me. It would be Mum and Dad's decision and on their own heads be it. That's why, they said, they didn't want to risk it. But it didn't stop them moving to England.