Dragonholder (8 page)

In 1968, Anne had been a staunch supporter of Robert Kennedy's bid for the Presidency. It had been a very personal blow to her when he was assassinated — she had known him at college. In 1970, Alec had to worry about his “Lottery number” for the draft — and ponder whether he would flee to Canada or accept service if worse came to worst.

Inside and out, Anne's family was battered.

 

T
he Secretary-Treasurer of SFWA had many responsibilities. One of the more enjoyable jobs was helping in the construction of the Nebula Awards. These were made from a lucite block encasing a disk-like galaxy spinning above a quartz crystal. Anne thought it would be fun for us kids to help make the Nebula galaxies. The Nebula galaxies were made by taking a clear lucite disk, putting spirals of glue on the top and sides, sprinkling silver sparkles on the glue, blowing off the excess and — voila! — a Nebula galaxy.

It was not as much fun at the time as it is looking back over all those years and realizing who got those Nebula Awards. Maybe Anne planned it that way.

You see, one of the other responsibilities of the Secretary-Treasurer is handing out the
Nebula Awards at the Nebula banquet. And that meant getting the Nebulas engraved with the
right names
before
the Awards' Banquet. So, as Secretary-Treasurer, Anne was one of
the very few people who knew the winners ahead of time.

Which was okay with her. Except that in 1969,
Dragonrider
had been nominated in the Best Novelette category. And it won — which meant that Anne would be the first Secretary-Treasurer to have the rather awkward honor of presenting herself with an award. She did what any wise science fiction author does in such circumstances — she chickened out.

She called Isaac Asimov. They had been friends for over six years and he lived in New York.

“Isaac, I need a favor,” Anne said.

“For you, Anne, anything,” he said. She explained the problem to him.

“No problem, Anne, I would be delighted to present you with the award,” Isaac gallantly
responded. “But I would like to say a few words first.”

Now I should warn you that Isaac Asimov was an accomplished tenor, raconteur, punster par excellence, as well as an incredibly bright, friendly, and talented person. All of which should have been for the best. But, as Anne subsequently says, “Never trust a tenor!”

At the banquet, a nervous Anne handed over the podium to Isaac to present the Best Novelette.
Isaac thanked her. He then started into a lengthy discussion of music, musicals, and his
favorite songs. This discussion turned into a monologue on names and how they lent
themselves to song. Isaac illustrated this by picking many famous science fiction writers'
names and putting them to popular songs.

“Which brings me to the recipient of this award,” Isaac finished. “The recipient has such a
mellifluous name that only the very best of songs could possibly fit it.” He paused, and
added dramatically, “I suppose you are all familiar with the tune of ‘San Francisco'.”

And, in his best Al Jolson imitation, Isaac belted out:

“Anne Mc-Caf-frey,

open your golden gates!

I can no longer wait!”

Red with embarrassment, eyes brimming with tears of laughter and joy, Anne leaped up from her seat and, as she made her way to accept the award, joked to the room, “Never trust a tenor! Isaac, I'll get you for this!”

And she did.

She had her opportunity a lot sooner than she expected — at Boskone, the local Boston
science fiction convention, about three weeks later. Isaac had been asked to give the E. E.
“Doc” Smith Award. Naturally, the occasion allowed him to make a few more remarks. He was
then going through a painful divorce and was nervous and depressed. His initial statement to
the crowd went like this:

“I am always happy to give awards though I'd be happier to receive some myself. Right now,
among all my societies, it is you … and science fiction … whose good opinion I
require. I want you to love me, love me, love me.”

With a sudden burst of joy, Anne from the back of the room shouted, “Live, Tinkerbell!”

Through the laughter, Isaac shook his finger at her. “Five minutes alone with you and I'll
prove that I'm no Tinkerbell!”

Which, of course, got even more laughs.

Anne says, “I can't remember now — though Isaac would, God rest the man — when we started our traditional duet of
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling
. It would have been at one of the New York City or Boston cons, but it became a feature. We were goaded to sing together at every convention we attended.

“Isaac always tried to pitch it higher than I could sing, but I could hit — on my good days — E above high C. There was a rough transition that ruined my voice — as I mention in
Crystal Singer
and
Killashandra
— but
Irish Eyes
was always lustily rendered whenever Isaac and I were together.”

 

L
ike the poor sailboat, spring storms swamped Anne's marriage. Many factors made it rocky — the boys were teenagers, Anne's career was taking off, Wright's career was stalled. In the hot summers, bitter arguments broke out across the dinner table. Wright would retire early to his room to play classical music and drink wine — to the relief of the rest of the family.

Wright's ideas of discipline were typical for a child of the Depression — a belt, a
shoe, a cane reed, and, only as a last resort, the back of his hand. As teenagers after “The
Summer of Love”, we found none of those methods to be welcome or effective.

The defining moment for Anne was different than the defining moment for me. Anne remembers
talking to me one night. She recalls that I said, “I know why Dad hits me so much —
Alec would hit him back, and he'd leave marks on Gigi's face.”

I
remember one night when we were all at the kitchen table after dinner, drinking
coffee. Dad and Mum were bickering back and forth, facing each other across the table. He
was nagging her to get a letter which she said she'd do when she had finished her coffee. He
kept nagging. She threw the dregs of her coffee at him. He responded by throwing the last of
his coffee in her face. Alec and I started up from the table, but Mum waved us back down.
“That didn't hurt,” she said. Then Wright threw the empty cup at her face.

This time Alec and I were on our feet before Mum could say anything. It didn't matter who did something like that — it was too much. It was Alec who told Dad he had better leave.

Not long after that, Wright moved out. In August, two years after coming back from her first trip to Ireland, Anne filed for divorce and flew down to Tijuana.

 

D
ivorce in 1970 was still considered uncommon and uncouth. Having accepted the inevitable and acted upon it, Anne was further unsettled when Peggy Isbell asked her to leave the huge house in Sea Cliff, when the school year was over.

Wright suggested that Anne move down to Princeton, New Jersey, where the school system was known to be good. He was an alumnus of Princeton University.

That didn't happen. Irish eyes were smiling. The Irish
Taoiseach
or Prime Minister, Charles Haughey, had just passed in 1969 a bill making resident artists and writers exempt from Irish taxes.

Harry Harrison, a science fiction writer who had just had one of his books made into the film
Soylent Green
, took residence in Ireland and was happy to extol its virtues. At the time the price of food, clothing, and housing were half the U.S. price.

Anne checked her finances. She couldn't make it — even with the contract for The White Dragon from Ballantine and the steady trickle of royalties from her three books. She was just about a book contract short. Magically, Betty Ballantine realized that Ballantine Books would be happy to publish a collection of recipes from science fiction authors — and would Anne be willing to edit such a book? Anne, who loved to cook and had a large supply of her own recipes was thrilled — and
Cooking out of this World
was born.

 

S
o in August 1970, divorced, Anne handed over the post of Secretary-Treasurer to Roger Zelazny, and packed to leave her home of five years and her country of birth. Todd and Gigi were coming with her: Alec, who was starting college, would remain behind.

Because of the lengthy (and expensive) six-month quarantine period, it was decided that none of the family pets would come to Ireland.

Ever since our original three cats in Wilmington, we'd had an orange marmalade born and
raised at home. The current one was not the best representation — we name him Maxwell
Smart (because he wasn't). Alec took him to Stony Brook. Unfortunately, Maxwell, lacking in
brains, did not recognize his good fortune and escaped, never to be seen again (I think his
defection broke Alec's heart).

Wright took the two cats, Tasso and Silky Blackington, and the family's French poodle, Angelo.

Labor Day weekend is the traditional time for a Worldcon, but in 1970 — as with every fourth year — the Worldcon was held outside North America, this time in Heidelberg. However, whenever the Worldcon is outside North America, a secondary convention — the North American Science Fiction Convention or NASFic — is held. In this case, the NASFic was held in Toronto. Anne was invited as co-Guest-Of-Honor with Isaac Asimov. Happily, the convention paid her way to Toronto. And it was cheaper to go to Ireland by way of Toronto.

It certainly was more heartening. Isaac Asimov and Anne had a great time trading “insults” to
the delight of the con-goers, singing duets, and generally having a marvelous time.

 

A
nne's arrival in Ireland did not begin auspiciously. Gigi got terribly sick — maybe with food poisoning — and Anne's arm was ruined from lugging her IBM Selectric typewriter and three other pieces of hand luggage through the airport to the airplane. The plane was supposed to stop in Shannon and fly on to Dublin. But Dublin was socked in with fog, and Shannon only barely less so. We de-planed and waited for hours in the arrivals lounge while the airline figured out what to do.

Anne's first trip to Ireland had been much more pleasant, and the plane had gone straight on to Dublin. Perhaps it was the thinking of it, or just pure luck, but she glanced up in time to see Pat Brown, her chauffeur from her first trip. Pat was delighted to see her and pointed the airport nurse her way before reluctantly taking his own party on their tour. With some ginger ale, Gigi's stomach became less queasy, but she was still very ill. The airline finally decided that there would be no break in the weather at Dublin and so decided to bus all the Dublin passengers to the Shannon train station and then up to Dublin by train.

In all, what would have taken forty minutes by air, took over seven hours. They arrived Heuston station late that night in fog and light rain and took a taxi to their hotel.

The diminished family spent the next couple of days recovering. The
Royal Marine
Hotel
in Dun Laoghaire (“dun leery”) was a warm, friendly place and the staff were
quite convivial with the three “Yanks.”

The Irish culture, particularly in Anglicized Dublin, has a strong overlay of English culture. Both are different from the cultures in the United States. Anne and the kids first realized this when they were served cold toast. At first they passed it off as a fluke, but as the days went by they decided that the distance to the kitchen was so great that the toast cooled before it was served. Finally they began to wonder if the rumors of lazy Irish were true — only to discover that the staff would not rush to serve them toast because it had to cool! It was then that they learned that in Ireland and England, it's considered impolite to serve hot toast.

I was very worried about going to Ireland. It was a tremendous jolt, moving from the States after the divorce. On top of that, all I had were the Hollywood images of Ireland. I was convinced that I would have to explain electricity, and that we'd ride in carts all over the place. I was also terribly worried that they wouldn't have peanut butter, jelly, popcorn, or hot dogs.

Once I realized that a ‘Mars' bar was exactly like the American ‘Milky Way' bar, only better,
and that I was paying two shillings — twenty-four cents — for what would cost
thirty-five cents in the States, I became quite enamored of Ireland.

I soon also discovered that there was an ‘okay' peanut butter, that ‘Bramble Jelly' was an
acceptable substitute for Concord Grape Jelly, and that they did have popcorn —
although the Irish would sugar rather than salt it. Good hot dogs were hard to come by. But
when I discovered ‘Jelly Tots', I was quite willing to forgive Ireland that minor
inconvenience.

While our stay at the
Royal Marine
was marvelous, it was costly. Anne undertook to get the family into cheaper accommodations before the school year began. So, armed with maps of Dublin city, Anne rented a car and took the kids house hunting.

The Irish and English drive on the right side of the road — opposite from Europe and the States. The reason for this is historical: Napoleon Bonaparte decided that his soldiers should march on the right — and as he conquered most of Europe, Europe was forced to follow suit. Because all this took place in the early 1800's, the Americans followed the French — because they were still mad at the English.

What it meant for Anne was that every time she went to shift gears she'd bang her right hand
against the door until she remembered that the gear shift was on the left. It also meant
that driving required intense concentration. As the eldest child present, I took on the role
of map-reader and navigator, which took that strain from her — and she was very
gracious about the times I got us lost.

As we looked at houses for rent, we discovered another culture shock. Houses and the lands surrounding them were much smaller in Dublin than back on Long Island. While the rents were incredibly cheap by American standards, the rooms were pretty small; the kitchens were like closets.

We ended up settling on a semi-detached house in upscale Mount Merrion on 14 North Avenue.
Settling in, Anne finished
Dragonquest
and sent it off to Ballantine to be
published in 1971. She also finished two gothics —
The Mark of Merlin
,
reusing a plot she'd set up in her Freshman college year, and
Ring of Fear
.

Anne's mother arrived when the family had set up in 14 North Avenue. She had wanted to retire
from her real estate job, and Anne's re-settling in Ireland had given her an added impetus.
She was in her seventies, and found the weather a bit colder than she would have liked. But
“Bami” — as we kids called her — was a welcome addition to the household.