Dragonholder (9 page)

Another welcome addition was our orange marmalade cat — the first family pet in
Ireland. We named him Isaac Asimov — and then realized that he had to be neutered,
allowing Anne to later joke in the family that she had had Isaac Asimov fixed. The real
Isaac was informed of the cat's name and approved — but we never informed him of the
“snippery” (of which he probably wouldn't have approved).

 

B
ack at the
Royal Marine Hotel
in the evenings Anne would
venture out to the local pubs, leaving the kids asleep or under the friendly eyes of the
hotel staff. At the Eagle House just up the street from the Hotel, Anne met Michael ‘Mick'
O'Shea. “You sound like a Yank,” Mick said when she had gone up to the bar to order. “What
part do you hail from?”

Mick introduced Anne to a wild group — some Irish, some English. There was Dominic and his girlfriend, Mick's girlfriend Ann, and Bernard Shattuck, a soft-spoken Englishman who was a first mate on a trawler working for his captaincy. Mick himself — a six foot red-haired, red-bearded giant — particularly in Ireland — claimed to have been in the Royal Marines and the Royal Air Force, both. Mick ran a car repair shop and helped Anne find an old black Morris four door sedan.

Equipped with a car, Anne and the kids would go roving on the weekends. She found a local
stables, Dudgeon's, and found that she could indulge herself and the children in riding
lessons. Anne's first instructor was a young American, ‘Mare' Laben. Mare had come over to
study horsemanship at Dudgeon's. They became good friends and, much later, when Mare needed
a place to stay, Anne invited her to stay with us.

 

A
nne had given David Gerrold an open invitation to come stay with them if he ever decided to investigate Ireland. David gladly accepted and arrived before Christmas. Unexpectedly, Anne's mother took a dislike to David. Her dislike was vicious, juvenile, and utterly unnatural. However, there was no way to overcome it. To spare Anne any distress, David decided to move out and rent an apartment.

Mick O'shea came to the rescue — he knew an apartment that was open two houses down from his.

The next day David phoned Anne, “Lessa is my landlord.”

“What do you mean?”

“
Lessa
is my landlord,” David repeated. “You have to meet her.”

At five foot nothing, and ninety pounds sopping wet, the brown-eyed, black-haired Jan Regan had all the feistiness, self-determination, and strength of Lessa of Pern. There being no dragons available, Jan had contented herself with exercising race horses. More than twenty years later, Jan is still a close friend of the family.

 

A
nne had not quite recovered from the shock of her mother's behavior towards David when she got another shock: the announcement from Wright that he was exercising his option to visit the children. He would come in the Spring and bring his new wife.

The children were stunned by the announcement. They had known nothing about Wright's romantic involvement, and were unprepared to see their father with a new wife.

Anne was amused to note that Wright's new wife was only eleven days younger than herself — and her name was Annett! Annett Francis was an editor with
House and Gardens
.

The visit was a disaster. Wright's attitude towards his ex-wife irritated his children, and his insistence that the children unequivocally accept his new wife turned the visit into a nightmare for everyone. Annett and Anne both desperately tried to smooth out the visit — they got along together very well — but their efforts could not counteract Wright's actions.

The visit left a pall that hung over the household. To break it, and to make her entrance
into British fandom, Anne planned to bring the kids with her to the annual British Easter
convention. That year it was held in Worcester, which is pronounced “wooster,” and the
convention was called Woostercon.

They took the car and crossed the Irish Sea by ferry to Liverpool. Dave Gerrold came, too. It was a magical trip. The British fans and writers were magnificent and made Anne and the kids feel very welcome. Anne had a marvelous time on panels with Brian Aldiss, Bob Shaw, and James White. I was introduced simultaneously to
The Hobbit
and
Dungeons and Dragons®
.

Many new lifelong friends were made at that first British convention. Dr. Jack Cohen was one of the most memorable. Jack holds a Doctor of Science in reproductive biology and had just started working on a male contraceptive pill. He also gave the most hilarious lectures — with slides — on reproductive biology. When Anne met him, he was on the verge of getting married. Anne invited him and his intended, Judy, to come to Ireland whenever they wanted.

With the convention over, Anne planned an itinerary winding through Wales to the southern ferry port of Fishguard. The first stop was Stonehenge — the most famous and one of the oldest rings of standing stones in the British Isles. In those days Stonehenge was just coming to be respected as a significant historical artifact. Visitors were allowed to wander freely on the site and through the stones. It was awe-inspiring.

About seventeen miles outside of Fishguard, on the narrow winding hill road, they heard a noise from the front wheel on the passenger's side. The winding roads through Wales had taken more time to cover than Anne had planned and there was a very real danger of missing the ferry, so Anne braved onwards — in spite of my pleas to pull over.

We made the ferry with only minutes to spare, but I made my mother promise to have the wheel checked at the first garage — service station — we found back in Ireland. When the mechanic took off the hubcap and we could see all the tire nuts firmly in place I felt rather foolish — until he pointed to the hub nut sitting in the hubcap! The whole front wheel, hub and all, had been held on only by the caliper brakes — the entire way through the winding hills of Wales!

Not long after, the Morris died completely. While Anne was searching for a replacement, Mick
loaned her any number of oddball cars. One of the oddest was a three-speed car which always
had to be push-started, but most memorable was the two-seater MG Sprite. It made a decent
two-seater, but was used as a family car — with the spare children lying behind the
passengers on the spare tire. It was a ‘gas' — a lot of fun.

 

A
nne wanted a horse. Anne had always wanted a horse, but finally she was in a country where she might actually be able to afford one. And she wanted to hunt. She found that the place to look for horses was in the Irish Field. And in early spring, she saw an ad for someone to ride a hunter for the rest of the season — a 16.2 hand-high dapple-grey heavyweight hunter.

After a trial ride, Anne got in touch with the owner, Hilda Whitton — a sprightly
horse-trainer with silver hair. Hilda had bought “Mr. Ed” as a yearling and brought him on
to be a heavyweight hunter. She wanted to find Mr. Ed a proper home — she'd hurt her
leg when she'd fallen after he'd been spooked by a JCB dumper and at her age would never
survive another bad fall.

Somehow a deal was struck and Mr. Ed went home with Anne. She stabled him at a private stable in Stepaside but she really wanted him just outside her door. Then, as Fall approached and she had to find a new rental, Anne got her wish in the most spectacular fashion: a two hundred and thirty year-old Georgian mansion on two acres. It even had an old barn where a stable could be fitted.

Meadowbrook House
was an amazingly good piece of luck. So good that, almost in recompense, Anne's luck dried up right after she signed the lease. Worse, so did her writing. She spent days staring at blank pieces of paper. Her gothic novel,
Year of the Lucy
, was not accepted by her editor at Dell and the expected money was not forthcoming. Money got very tight.

Anne became very good at cooking leftovers and leftover leftovers. Of course, Anne's leftovers would make a gourmet cook jealous. It was during this dry spell in writing that Anne completed
Cooking Out of This World
— including her excellent recipe for lamb stew and another for potato pancakes. At dinner one night, Gigi asked wistfully, “Gee Mom, wouldn't it be nice to have pancakes because we wanted them for a change?”

Relief came in the form of Anne's eldest son, Alec. Alec had done poorly at Stonybrook and
had not been invited back, so he joined us in Ireland. Bernard Shattuck introduced Alec to
several trawler skippers and one was sufficiently impressed to give him a try. When Alec
didn't toss his cookies in the fiercest gales Ireland had seen in twenty years, the skipper
decided that maybe he'd do. The money and the odd fish kept the wolf from the door.

Virginia was aware of the tight finances and did what she could. When she heard that Roger Elwood was looking for young adult stories, she told Anne. Anne spent hours wracking her head for inspiration. Finally she started a story about a young girl named Menolly … and it wouldn't go anywhere.