From Bray to Eternity Page 9

  Our lives became pretty routine for a few years after Robert’s birth. With three young children to provide for, on one average wage, life was not a bed of roses, and we lost a bit of the passion that had made the first years of our marriage so memorable. Looking back on those years now, like the England and Poland game, they seemed to be lived in black and white, with not too much happening apart from the mundane. Naturally with three children under four we did not want any more for a while so we began practicing birth control again, but this time there seemed to be less need for it than previously. It’s probably in those years, the years of struggle, trying to provide for a young family with limited resources that a lot of marriages flounder. For a while ours was in danger of sinking in a sea of boredom and indifference. I was working late a lot of the time, simply to get enough money to make things that bit more comfortable and I also got involved in trade union activity in IMP which sometimes necessitated late evening meetings. Annette was busy with the children and after a long tiring day for both of us, we were exhausted by the time evening came around. We were not too interested in stimulating conversations, with the result that we drifted a bit. I can’t say with any degree of certainty how long this situation lasted but I do know that for a while even our lovemaking suffered. It was perfunctory and routine, not the spontaneous combustions it had previously been.

  Somehow or other we got through this negative period and Annette, when David started school and Gina playschool, got involved with Tallaght Welfare Society. This reignited the spark in her which in turn renewed my interest in this newly vibrant and interesting woman.

  The Seventies continued uneventfully. Annette got more involved with community activities but with all her involvement and commitment she always managed to put her family first, and never once was there cause for complaint that she was showing the slightest neglect of me or the children. After the period of drifting we got back to something like what our marriage was in the beginning and our love for each other was never in doubt. We also once more, gradually lost interest in birth control and reverted to a normal sex life, but Annette never gave birth again though she did we believe have a miscarriage when Robert was about two.

  As the Seventies gave way to the Eighties and Ireland went into recession I lost my job in IMP in 1981 due to the place closing down. I had been there eleven years by this time and got a fairly good redundancy package, six and a half weeks per year which after tax and all other deductions amounted to just over £6000. We had only been abroad twice since our honeymoon in 1968. In 1971 when Annette was pregnant with Gina we went to Majorca for a week with our friends Jimmy and Gretta Morley and on our tenth anniversary in 1978 we’d taken the children to Lloret-de-mar and stayed in the Santa Rosa hotel where we spent our honeymoon. So reverting to our carefree style of years past, and putting the search for a new job on the back-burner, we booked a holiday in Torremolinos with my redundancy money.

  I could continue on in this vein, chronicling our life year by year, but I think it would be boring. We did, and encountered the things most normal families do and encounter, the children grew up, made their Communion and Confirmation, left school, went to work, or not as was the case. We had weddings; my brother’s and Annette’s sisters. We were confronted by sadness; my parents died in the Eighties and Nineties, and our aunts and uncles died. Sickness befell us from time to time, but nothing serious, all the usual things that fill the lives of most families, and we had rows. So from here on I’ll concentrate on the things that mostly concerned Annette and me and detach ourselves from other distractions.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  After I lost my job in IMP in 1981, I worked at various part-time and short-term jobs, including the tote with the racing board, making and selling jewellery with my brother, and as a night operative with a yogurt manufacturing company. Then in 1984, I got a job as sales cashier with HB ice cream. This period in our lives was probably the most affluent and happiest of our marriage so far, though it also included the most serious and marriage threatening incident we ever encountered.

  I worked at whatever I could get from 1981 to 1984 with the result that the money, though smaller, did not stop coming in, and it was expertly managed by Annette. We managed to stay out of serious debt, so when I started with HB, on a reasonably good wage we were able to take the family on a holiday to France the following year. A most enjoyable holiday marred only by having to return from Cherbourg and sail into the teeth of hurricane Charlie. This necessitated me spending 30 hours on my back in the overcrowded lounge of the ship, unable to stand, as every time I did so I got violently sick. “Charlie” had no effect whatsoever on the children, who played, ate, and discoed through the storm. They got a great laugh at seeing their Dad prostrate on the floor of the ship, unable to move. While Annette was not in the best of condition she was able keep an eye on the children as they enjoyed the hurricane.

  The following year was the start of what was to become our love affair with County Kerry. We took a rail/bus rambler holiday sans the children. It took us first to Ballina in Mayo to visit friends of ours, Brian and Winnie Leonard. I had worked with Brian in Neasden Distributors and kept in touch with him for a while after. We then went to County Clare and from there to Killarney. Both of us were captivated by the beauty of the countryside and the mountains and stayed the rest of our holiday in Killarney. We hired bikes and cycled for days, all around the lakes and grounds of the national park, in the process falling in love with the county and its people.

  The following year friends of ours were getting married the day before we were due to commence our holiday again without the children, in a rented house in Waterville, County Kerry. As they had not made any definite plans for a honeymoon we invited them to come with us. We all shared the house for a few days before they headed off on their own. Like the holiday we’d had with our mothers-in-law some years earlier, it was somewhat unorthodox but enjoyable. After Johnny and Ann left, and because Annette felt a bit uncomfortable in the rented house when we learned the owner had died a short time before we arrived and also it was a fair bit outside the village of Waterville, we booked into the Bay View Hotel in Waterville. It was a lovely comfortable hotel and we had a room facing the sea. We loved Waterville and cycled all around the area each day. In the evenings we relaxed in the local pubs and restaurants, enjoying meals in the Huntsman, the Lobster Pot and the Smugglers Inn. We enjoyed it so much that we went back for the next four or five years and all this time our love deepened.

  Those holidays became a big feature of our lives and something we looked forward to every year. It was an opportunity for us to be alone together, away from the tensions of our everyday lives. This was particularly true for Annette who was now very deeply involved in community activities and all the stress, emotional heartache and frustrations it brought her. She had a total commitment to alleviate the hardship and burden of others. Annette worked tirelessly for those she saw as less fortunate than her. Her actions were spurred on by her genuine desire to be involved with the community and to help in any way she could, and also her deeply held Christian faith. So when holiday time came around, Annette was more than ready to cast off her everyday cares for a while and relax and rejuvenate herself for what was ahead when she returned. Later in her life Annette composed a song When the summer comes around again in which she expressed her joy at what holidays meant to her. The times we spent together on holiday brought us closer together as a couple. We were able to relax totally in each other’s company and enjoy the expressions of love and intimacy we could indulge in.

  As Annette got more deeply involved in community work she began to compose songs based on what she saw going on around her. She had, from time to time, tried her hand at writing songs before as she was always interested in music. But then, using what she was learning and experiencing as a community worker, she began composing songs with social comment, songs like Mr. Community welfare officer a satire on the social welfare system and its disregard for the dig
nity of people who are in need of help; Mary’s life a sad parable about a young girl she knew for whom the system proved too much; and Two miles down about the effects of unemployment on the young. Listening to those songs now, in this new recession, they could have been composed today. Things are just the same for many people now as they were back when Annette composed them all those years ago.

  Apart from songs with social commentary, Annette composed “normal” songs. One in particular became hugely popular with her women friends and indeed with most people who heard her sing it. I need somebody to love me when I’m down is a country and western type song about the need for love in our lives. She was called upon to sing it at many a party and function we attended. Annette also composed a, as yet unproduced, musical based on the life of St. Patrick. The music from this became very popular with the choir in our local church, St. Marks, and some of the music is performed at Mass every St. Patrick’s Day.

  It was also the music I chose to be played at Annette’s funeral. I don’t want this to become a hagiography, but I do want to record the fact that Annette was a hugely talented composer, and I thankfully have a collection of her songs on a CD to prove it. None of Annette’s songs have ever been recorded commercially, which is a mystery to me because they are certainly good enough. Music was a big part of our life and we loved all kinds of music. There was many a night I remember just sitting in with Annette, listening to the Three Tenors, whom she loved, and enjoying a bottle of wine. That’s what I miss most now, the quiet nights of intimacy and togetherness that developed between us over the years, with no need to talk, just to be together. The looks, the touch, the silent communication as we sat together on the couch, with Annette’s head resting on my shoulder as I gently stroked her hair and face; knowing that each of us was happy and content just being in each other’s company.

  All that is gone now, the nights in with a glass of wine, the walk to the Plaza or the Belgard for a drink and a chat, the little things we took for granted and that gave us such pleasure, like the trips to Glendalough and the waterworks in Bohernabreena, simple pleasures, but all just a sad and distant memory now. They are receding with each passing day into the haze of memories that comprise the life we’ve lived, with me fighting hard to retain them and relive them. I try to somehow bring Annette back to be once more by my side, to hold her hand and to hear her voice, to relive what Annette used to describe as “our happy times”; times that are no more. They are the times that I can only relive by retreating into the recesses of my memory and meeting up again with Annette as I conjure up her image, her beautiful smiling face, in the misty haze of what was our past. This I do all the time, praying and wishing that somehow my hopes and prayers will be answered and I will be with Annette again, to relive “our happy times” once more.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  After our daughter Gina left school in 1989 she went to England to work as a nanny for an Irish family. But the following year Colette, the child she was minding, died. This affected Gina very much as she had nursed her for months and become very attached to her. Gina came home after Colette died and got a job in an office in Tallaght but found it hard to settle into a 9 - 5 situation. She gave up the job after about a year or so and went travelling again, this time to America. After coming home from the States for a while Gina then went to work in a hotel in Badenville, in the Black Forest area of Germany. Annette, Robert and I went over for a holiday in the summer.

  We stayed for four days in the hotel Gina was working in and we were very well looked after. Myself and Annette were given a suite and Robert a room overlooking the forest. After our four days of luxurious living we came back to what we were more used to when we moved on to Switzerland, Lake Lucerne to be precise, and stayed for ten days in a caravan on a camp site beside the lake. It was a great holiday, with great weather, which, while we loved Waterville, whetted our appetite for more holidays in sunny locations. Gina came down to visit us for a day or two before we went home. We all went for a boat trip on the lake and went to the top of Mount Pilatus, where some of the James Bond film Moonraker was shot. Gina came home for another while at the end of the season before packing her bags again, this time for Australia and Vietnam where she remained for over a year. She returned just after my mother passed away in November 1996.

  In 1991 Annette’s hard work for the community was recognised and rewarded when she was nominated for an award at the Tallaght Person of the Year ceremony. It came as a huge surprise to Annette when she was invited to the ceremony as a nominee for the award. She was amazed that anyone took the slightest notice of what she did, in what she saw as, the hidden life of the less fortunate in the community.

  On the night of the awards we went to the ceremony simply to have a good night out as Annette really did not expect to win. Indeed she was terrified at the thought of winning as she would be expected to make some kind of speech. We were sitting with friends of Annette, the friends who had nominated her for the award in fact. The mood at the table, in everyone except Annette, was one of huge confidence. They were sure that she would be called on to accept the award from the guest of honour, the President of Ireland, Mary Robinson. As the night went on and people relaxed with the help of a few drinks the mood lightened and there was a lot of banter and laughter about the various nominees and the merit of their respective entitlement to the award. But then the time of the presentations came and all chatter stopped.

  The nominees for the various categories were called out and the awards distributed. Annette had been nominated for community work, but when the winner of that award was called it was not Annette, at which point I think Annette was happy and began to relax. As she had not won anything Annette thought she was not a contender for the main award, Tallaght Person of the Year 1991. As President Robinson stood beside the chairman of the community council, Annette could not have been more relaxed as she waited for the winner to be announced. Then Patricia Bryan, standing beside President Robinson, opened the envelope, she moved closer to the mike and to a tumultuous roar, simply said: “Annette Halpin.”

  Annette was too shocked to stand up. She was engulfed by her friends at the table and from others stampeding across the hall. President Robinson had to wait a while before Annette was extracted from the crowds around her and brought to the stage to accept her well earned and deserved award. And incidentally she made a great speech of acceptance, highlighting the needs of Tallaght and its people.

  While all this commotion was going on I ran to a phone in the hall and rang Annette’s sisters in Ballyfermot with the news and they immediately made their way over to Tallaght to join in the celebrations. I then ran the short distance from St. Mark’s GAA club home to waken Gina and Robert (David was not there) with the news and they also came to join the celebrations. What followed was probably the most joyous night the Tallaght Person of the Year awards ever witnessed. We danced until the early hours of the morning, before going home in a state of euphoria.

  The next morning Annette proudly began her term as Tallaght Person of the Year by accepting the warm good wishes of our neighbours, some of whom called with a bouquet for her. In my opinion Annette became the quintessential holder of that office as she attended functions all over the area, many of them with me one step behind. To each event she brought her unique charm, grace and beauty, her interest in people and their doings. Most of all she brought her calm dignity and sense of occasion that gave to each event she attended an air of prestige and importance, to her and to those organising the event.

  Annette also Internationalised the position by having the courage to host the British Ambassador in Tallaght at a time when trouble was still at boiling point in the North. She paid a return visit to the British embassy for the Queen of England’s birthday celebrations later that year, at which party I distinguished myself by drinking for Ireland. It was a great year for Tallaght to have such a worthy and deserving person to represent the community. No one deserved it more.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN


  After many years holidaying in Waterville the weather got to us, and in 1996, the year my mother died, we went to Minorca for a week. This was our first taste of all-inclusive holidays, and we loved it. It rekindled our taste for sun holidays and we came home determined to take more. That holiday was in September and in November my mother died. After the rather tentative start to the relationship between my mother and Annette, by the time she died, my mother and Annette were like mother and daughter. My mother told Annette things about our family she never told me. Indeed I learned quite a lot about my extended family from Annette.

  When we came back from that holiday my mother and Annette had an afternoon out together in the Royal Dublin hotel at which my mother, maybe conscious of the fact she did not have a lot of time left, told Annette her life story. Many of the things she told her I did not know, nor I suspect did my brother. Annette told me later that she was filled with admiration and love for my mother when she learned of the hard and sometimes sad life she had lived. I think my mother saw in Annette the daughter she never had and Annette was more than happy to be that daughter. My mother’s death hit us all hard but none harder than Annette, who that Christmas did not want to celebrate at all. She felt we should not ask anyone into the house as we normally did at Christmas time. Only now, as I am writing this, and recollecting the relationship that developed between them, am I beginning to understand the reason for what happened on the night of my mother’s twelfth anniversary, November 2nd, 2008, in the Plaza hotel Tallaght, shortly before Annette’s illness became apparent. I will be saying much more about that strange night and the events that followed later.