Can My Pony Come Too? Read online

  My parents felt the move more than we did. I can only imagine my father’s feelings in leaving his wonderful childhood home – a home that had given so much, but taken as well. Eily must have felt this too. Little did we realise that we had taken the first step towards our new life in Australia.

  Unlike my siblings, I didn’t have a nanny, but often ate with Mary, the young maid and Brownie, my father’s worker on the farm and in the orchard, in the kitchen. I am still nostalgic for the heady aroma of baking, the warmth of the Aga with clothes drying above it on cold mornings, wet gumboots by the grate and Mary’s sweet smell of soap and onions.

  A large cobblestone dairy off the kitchen, where pails of fresh milk were laden with thick cream on top and the old wooden churner that we used to help Mary make butter with stood in the corner, led to the stable yards and workshops. Here we would annoy the ever-patient Brownie until he came and did whatever task we could beg him to do, whether it be to help catch the horses or mend whatever we’d broken before our parents could see.

  My father turned a small first floor room into a tiny chapel where he housed our statue of the Blessed Virgin. Likewise, a dining room eventually became a bed sitter for Eily when visiting from Dublin.

  On the shores of the lake my father built a jetty, much like the one he’d built in Drominagh years ago. I used to catch my legs between the wooden slats and I remember I had to wear a rubber swimming cap, which pulled my hair dreadfully. I also wore a red woollen swimming suit, which was immensely itchy and I seemed to spend most of my time in gumboots handed down from my older siblings. Even on Eugene’s First Communion day, as a photo of the day shows, I’m dressed in my Sunday best, with my gumboots on. Although, when I brought this up with my mother recently she assured me I did not go to the communion service in gumboots. Obviously they’d been prised off my feet before then.

  The jetty where we tied the row boats up became the centre of activities for us children as we played and swam amidst the rushes – with the older ones mucking around in the small row boat. I swam in the shallows inside a huge rubber tyre or was pushed around in a contraption my father made – called the ‘bog cart’, which consisted of a wooden platform on two drums, and created waves for the others to dive under, giving me the greatest excitement.

  Oh the simple joys of youth!

  Deborah (Dibs) and Gill were the ‘big ones’; Viv and I ‘the little ones’. Poor Eugene was stuck in the middle. Dibs and Eugene look very alike – their huge blue-grey eyes ringed by eyelashes as thick and long as hollyhocks (from my father’s side) – with the rest of us having the brown eyes of my mother’s side.

  When it wasn’t raining, our adored small brown mare, Peggy, took us in the trap to Sunday mass, with my father holding the reins and my mother beside him clasping her tweed hat in one hand, and her other arm wrapped around me. The rest of the family perched in the back. We were devastated to find Peggy dead in the fields from old age. She was tolerant of most games but hated double decking as Viv and I discovered one freezing morning when she dumped us unceremoniously on the ground, scaring my father, who came running to check for signs of life. ‘Fortunately,’ he said, ‘there was plenty of it and rather noisy it was too.’

  We also worshipped, but were somewhat wary of Merrylegs, a cunning and devilish grey Connemara pony, whose greatest trick was to fly under the nearest fence with whoever was on board. Years later I acquired another Merrylegs in our Australian Drominagh. She did exactly the same thing. Merrylegs at Clonmoylan could only be coaxed to move forward if Gill or Eugene banged on two cake tins with sticks, whereupon she would take off like a rocket, with whoever was on board hanging on for dear life.

  Powers Cross, two miles away, was our closest village, ‘village’ really being too grand a word for the one shop housing the post office. Viv, only five at the time, rode her small bike there regularly to do the messages, stopping off for a bite to eat at one of the farms on the way – a different and safer world then.

  When we were passing a donkey and a foal in a field on the road to Portumna, my small voice was heard from the back of the van: ‘Slow ’em down, Dad…want to see baby donkey.’

  My father, being a soft touch as far as I was concerned, was eventually persuaded to allow Early Mist to become part of our family. Related to a mule, he was stubborn, but I loved him dearly, often bringing him up to the kitchen door to be fed scraps by the ever-patient Mary, once even bringing him inside by the Aga when it was very cold. He bluntly refused to do what I wanted. However, with his huge floppy ears, mournful eyes, and furry coat he had me wrapped around his hoof, so to speak.

  Viv was allowed to ride a somewhat easier addition to the family, Billy Boy, a chestnut Galloway but to my annoyance I was only allowed to ride him if being led. Viv was not allowed to jump him but did so frequently, swearing Brownie and me to secrecy.

  Dibs and Gill, being a bit older, rode for miles to join the local hunt and would often arrive home, soaked to the skin well after dark. Gill in fact got so lost after one hunt meet that she had to take shelter with a local farmer, where eventually my worried parents found her sitting by the huge peat fire drinking hot chocolate. No matter how cold the weather was we were always outside, even if there was three feet of snow covering the ground – when Brownie would attach Peggy to the snow cart and continue to do his chores with all of us helping.

  Viv was the adventurer of the family, always in one escapade after the other, usually with me, just 18 months younger, as her accomplice. She had the beauty of a princess with her dark curls, peaches and cream complexion and luminous brown eyes flashing brightly like polished chestnuts. Needless to say she could wrap anyone around her finger, particularly Brownie who called her ‘the worst girl in central Europe!’ Why central Europe we could never work out.

  Brownie went on in later life to win the largest lottery in Ireland. Yet, until the day he died, he still lived in the same cottage he’d built when we left him to come to Australia.

  ‘What would I be wanting to move for?’ he said, raising his hat and scratching his mop of thick grey hair when I last visited him. ‘Haven’t I got all I want here?’

  Inside his white-washed cottage I sat with him by the fire, sipping steaming cups of tea listening to him talk longingly of his days at Clonmoylan.

  ‘Sure, there’s never been another family like you lot,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘We were all devastated when you left for Australia. But look at you now. Who would have thought young Teeny would have turned into such a fine lass. And Viv… well,’ he laughed out loud. ‘Never in a month of Sundays would I have thought that one would have survived to be a teenager, let alone the grand lady she is now.’

  Although we children were finding Clonmoylan paradise, it was not quite the same for my parents. Once again they were finding it hard to make a living in these difficult times in Ireland, especially with five young children to educate. Being in an isolated part of East Galway, boarding schools were the only option – costing an arm and a leg.

  Somehow they scrounged the money to send Dibs and Gill to board with the Sacré Coeur nuns at Mount Anville at Dundrum in Dublin; Eugene to Killashee and then Blackrock College, while Viv and I managed to continue the Esmonde tradition of going through an amazing number of governesses at home in Clonmoylan.

  We were not the easiest of children to teach; many poor governesses came and left in a very short space of time. We spent hours thinking up scams to scare them off. On more than one occasion we were successful, much to the horror of my parents who’d spent many a day enticing these kind young women to up stakes from Dublin and come and work in the wilds of outback Galway in the first place.

  In the early days at Clonmoylan, on the occasions when we didn’t have a governess, the older ones would ride their bikes to the one-teacher school at Shragh some five miles away. Or if it was in the trap with Merrylegs, they’d set off with Merrryleg’s lunch in a chaff bag. She would then spend the day with neighbours next door to the schoo
l until they were ready for the return trip. A couple of times I was allowed to travel with them and sit in to see what real school was like. I didn’t go to a proper school until I was eight and in Australia.

  The local undertaker had a horse-drawn hearse, known as the Coff, often seen standing outside a Corpse House, where a recently deceased would be laid out for respects to be duly paid. We soon worked out that this was a great place for children to acquire sweets and other delicious treats, so a few times we’d drop in after school to pay our respects, hovering around until finally someone offered us something from the table. I remember thinking that the Coff horses were a bizarre combination, with not much thought going into matching them in size, colour or status. Sometimes a tiny pony was harnessed with a huge 17-hand workhorse, making for a comical sight, let alone a rather bumpy ride for the corpse in the coffin.

  Electricity came to Clonmoylan early in the 1950s, causing great excitement. Before that we had kerosene lamps to read by and only the wood-fired Aga to cook on. When going to bed in the long dark winter evenings, we’d ascend the three flights of stairs carrying our small painted china lanterns firmly in our hands, carefully placing them on the table beside our bed where they’d remain until my mother or father came to say goodnight, safely blowing them out.

  In front of Clonmoylan was Friar’s Island to which we’d row over in the small wooden boat to explore with great delight. Alive with wild goats and feral cats it boasted a rat-infested ruin. The herd of goats started when Mrs Conary, our ironing lady, who lived at Powers Cross, would bring Eugene a kid goat as a present now and then, much to my father’s horror, who banished them to the island. Needless to say, before too long they were breeding in healthy numbers.

  My remembrances are of Irish summers of long golden twilights, picnics under the beech tree on the lawn, adults in deck chairs with children on thick blankets spread at their feet, the smell of newly cut hay and lavender, and the sight of mayflies and midgets jumping on the lake.

  I also remember wintertime at Clonmoylan fondly, the freezing cold, sometimes snow, when we loved to roast marshmallows and horse chestnuts in one of the huge roaring peat fires. Christmas was particularly magical when my father handed out presents from the huge tree which we’d cut down from the woods, standing next to the drawing room fire. A large traditional Christmas lunch followed where Brownie and Mary sat down with the family, with my grandmother, when she was in residence, presiding over all. Afterwards we’d rug up and go for a long walk, often in the snow, then come back inside to a delicious tea of scones and sandwiches (which my parents always had at about five, followed by supper at eight or nine) play cards, charades, or dress-ups. Later we’d fall into bed – exhausted, but happy children

  Tinkers were also a real fear for us children. They’d arrive up the driveway at Clonmoylan quite unexpectedly. Although we were sure they were coming to ‘get us’, they were in fact just selling their wares. The tinkers or gypsies of those days were an accepted part of Irish folklore; managing to survive by sharpening utensils, selling colourful rugs or doing odd jobs. Irish tinkers are mostly descendants of those who’d been forced to take to the roads during the great famines of the 19th Century, never resettling anywhere and often travelling in brightly covered horse-drawn caravans, much the same as tourists hire today to see the countryside.

  It was my great joy to help my father do the chores around the farm and in particular feed the chickens. I didn’t get my name ‘Teeny’ for nothing, fitting easily into a bucket, which he’d hang on the fence whilst he did his jobs.

  One morning when I was slightly older I ran ahead to open the chicken gate and called back in great excitement, ‘Daddy, Daddy…come quickly and look. The chickens are all asleep.’

  Needless to say, my father was not as thrilled as I was about this exciting find of mine for the dozens of chickens were more than asleep. A fox had killed the lot, and having had his fill, left the rest massacred on the ground. As this was one of our ventures paying well at the Galway markets, my father stood there devastated.

  ‘I think that nearly finished him. Me too,’ my mother told me, raising her eyes to heaven, ‘as sadly the apple crop had failed that year as well.’

  Maybe these setbacks contributed to why our life at Clonmoylan was about to come to a close. That year at the Dublin Horse Show my father was offered a job in Australia to manage a large coastal sheep property in New South Wales. For some time my parents had been considering migrating to another country. This job offer is what clinched it.

  Little did my father know what lay in store for him.

  The economy of Ireland at this period, and in particular on the land, was still not good. Educating five children at boarding school seemed insurmountable on the amount of money Clonmoylan was bringing in, even before the chicken and orchard failure. There were numerous enticing advertising promotions for Australia, South Africa and Canada in the Irish papers, encouraging the movement of many a family from their home country to a new and challenging life in a far-off land.

  We were about to take up this challenge.

  I think it was also a case ‘that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence’. In this case the other side of the world. Other forces were at work too. My grandmother was still living with us and I think my parents felt it was time to do something on their own. Gargy was a great influence on us all, in particular, her eldest son. It was no easier for my mother at Clonmoylan, than it had been back in the early days at Drominagh.

  During this time at Clonmoylan my grandmother was becoming more and more demanding, which undoubtedly put a great strain on my parents’ marriage.

  As I write this story, however, I’ve great respect for the arduous job she had in bringing up her seven children on her own at Drominagh. And how she achieved a certain amount of fame with her writings; the talent she portrayed in her paintings; the many languages she taught herself; the strength she showed with the early death of her husband and then the tragic loss of her adored son, Eugene.

  It was a pity that I was just seven years old when I last saw her. If I’d been older, would I have appreciated her more? I surely think so. I look at the relationship I have with my five grandchildren today, and wish I could have had the same enjoyment with her. I’m glad, that like her, I have my story telling, and that she can play a part in it.

  However, I have no doubt in my mind that she played a part in my parents’ decision to move to Australia.

  Chapter 8

  A Time of the Raj

  Before we left for Australia, Lillian Mackenzie, my maternal grandmother, known as Granny Mac, also came to stay at Clonmoylan. At my tender age she appeared to be a softer lady than my father’s mother. Yet she was just as tough in many respects as Eily, but with a happier and more jovial nature. Even then she had beautiful dark hair, a peaches and cream complexion and the most amazing twinkling eyes.

  Granny Mac died many years after we came to Australia; but not before my mother had returned to Ireland to settle her into a private hotel in the seaside suburb of Greystanes where she could still enjoy a glass of sherry and a game of Bridge.

  ‘Even in her eighties,’ my mother told me, ‘she loved male company, refusing point blank to stay any place where she could not enjoy their presence. Every day, without fail, she strolled from the hotel down the road to the Copper Kettle, a small tea-shop, where she had a pot of tea and an iced cake with a few gentlemen who joined her at her table.’

  Sadly, I never met her husband, George Henry Louis Mackenzie, my grandfather. Only recently I unearthed a photo of him in his Scottish kilt and beret, eye monocle to his left eye. He looks more than impressive in an eccentric sort of way.

  At four years old my mother was sent to board at the Sacré Coeur Convent at Tunbridge Wells in England where she remained until her mother returned two years later from India for a two-year stay. When her mother went back to India my mother returned to Tunbridge Wells.

  ‘I never had a Christmas w
ith my father, who was trying to make his fortune in jute broking in India until I was seventeen, although my mother came home nearly every two years until I was older. Then I went for four years without seeing them at all,’ she told me.

  Many of her school holidays were spent with aunts and uncles in Ireland or remaining at Tunbridge Wells with the ‘good nuns’ or visiting school friends. She assured me that children of the time were quite often treated like her. With no planes, the only mode of transport was boats and the trip from India to England would have taken six weeks or so.

  Most of my mother’s parents’ generation living abroad had been brought up to believe that children must be sent home to good and very expensive private schools in the UK. Hence so many children, like my mother, rarely knew the security of a settled and permanent home.

  ‘It was the way things were,’ she said matter of factly. ‘For it was assumed that if children were not educated back in England, their accents and characters would be ruined by the Indian influences. An agonising experience for both children and parents. In a way I was lucky for I’d never known the warmth, colour and exotic aromas of India, and I loved my time at Tunbridge Wells. For some poor children the sudden immersion in the cold, grey corridors of England’s button-up society was sheer misery after the freedom of their adopted land.’

  She told me that most of her parents’ lives were lived either ‘well off or totally broke’. Jute broking was erratic – due mainly to the gambling on the Gunny market (raw jute). The British in India at the time were status-conscious and snobbish. The Indian civil service administrators were known as the ‘Heaven-born’ and then there were the armed services, followed by the businessmen or merchant class known as the box-wallahs, a class to which my grandfather belonged. Although trade was the reason why the British were in India in the first place, the box-wallah caste was the least prestigious.