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Authors: Dervla Murphy
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broad daylight’, as our neighbour several times emphasised, unconsciously implying that had it taken place in a dark corner it would have been less culpable – the fact that this could have happened shows how well my parents had thus far protected me from Irish puritanism. But there are limits. The time had come to risk unhealthy repression and my mother told me that never again must I do such a thing because little boys are very sensitive to the cold around that area, and could get a bad chill if stripped in the open air. I was not, of course, deceived. I had got the message that the relevant area merited special treatment and indeed was, for some utterly incomprehensible reason, Taboo. This new awareness gave the physiological differences between boys and girls an extra fascination; but my investigations, from now on, were more discreet.
Soon Providence favoured me; newcomers took the house opposite and within hours it became apparent that their eight-year-old son was a professional exhibitionist. He had perfected a variety of ingenious urinating techniques and his penis was public property. We were an ideally suited couple. He performed, I admired, and it occurred to neither of us that his penis could be put to other uses. Almost certainly he was ignorant of the mechanics of reproduction, as he was without curiosity about the female anatomy (he had five sisters). And it would no more have occurred to me to initiate an experiment than to smoke a cigarette. In my mind a clear line was drawn between the activities of grown-ups and children, and for all my defiance I was never tempted to cross this line prematurely. The world was organised in a certain way. There was a pattern and one felt no impulse to disarrange it.
The South Mall had been skilfully planned. Looking due north from our hall door one saw, scarcely six miles away, the 2,900-foot main peak of the Knockmealdowns, its smooth blue curve rising directly above one of Ireland’s loveliest churches. A double line of stately lime trees led up to St Carthage’s Cathedral and the broad, grassy sweep between them, known as The Mall, made a safe children’s playground.
Four doors down from us, on the same side of the wide street, was a house rather like our own – but detached and in perfect condition – which had recently been bought by a family of outsiders who seemed no better than ourselves at integration with the natives. They were, however, devoted to children and during the spring of 1937 they regularly invited me into their garden to play with an exuberant young Airedale named Bran and a sentimental black cocker spaniel named Roddy. The garden covered two acres and almost every afternoon a few members of the Ryan family were to be found working enthusiastically beside the gardener. (Here I first discovered what fun it is to watch other people digging and pruning, mowing and raking.) For a month or so I could not be induced to enter the house, possibly because I was afraid of the hypochondriacal Mr Ryan, who never ventured out before midsummer but could occasionally be glimpsed peering unsmilingly through an upstairs window. Everyone, including his wife, called him ‘The Boss’ and regarded him with an unwholesome mixture of deference, resentment, concern and scorn.
Mr Ryan was a retired country schoolmaster, gruff, autocratic, keen-minded and at this time already in his seventies. Mrs Ryan – his second wife, much younger than himself – was gentle and placid with a subtle sense of humour. Beneath her placidity one could detect more positive qualities which if not repressed might, in the circumstances, have led to domestic disharmony. She, too, had been a schoolteacher and the eight children of their union had been brought up mainly by her unmarried sister, who never seemed in the least like a frustrated maiden aunt buthad a permanent twinkle in her eye. She smoked secretly – in the summer-house, to be well out of nose-shot of the Boss – and
Soon Providence favoured me; newcomers took the house opposite and within hours it became apparent that their eight-year-old son was a professional exhibitionist. He had perfected a variety of ingenious urinating techniques and his penis was public property. We were an ideally suited couple. He performed, I admired, and it occurred to neither of us that his penis could be put to other uses. Almost certainly he was ignorant of the mechanics of reproduction, as he was without curiosity about the female anatomy (he had five sisters). And it would no more have occurred to me to initiate an experiment than to smoke a cigarette. In my mind a clear line was drawn between the activities of grown-ups and children, and for all my defiance I was never tempted to cross this line prematurely. The world was organised in a certain way. There was a pattern and one felt no impulse to disarrange it.
The South Mall had been skilfully planned. Looking due north from our hall door one saw, scarcely six miles away, the 2,900-foot main peak of the Knockmealdowns, its smooth blue curve rising directly above one of Ireland’s loveliest churches. A double line of stately lime trees led up to St Carthage’s Cathedral and the broad, grassy sweep between them, known as The Mall, made a safe children’s playground.
Four doors down from us, on the same side of the wide street, was a house rather like our own – but detached and in perfect condition – which had recently been bought by a family of outsiders who seemed no better than ourselves at integration with the natives. They were, however, devoted to children and during the spring of 1937 they regularly invited me into their garden to play with an exuberant young Airedale named Bran and a sentimental black cocker spaniel named Roddy. The garden covered two acres and almost every afternoon a few members of the Ryan family were to be found working enthusiastically beside the gardener. (Here I first discovered what fun it is to watch other people digging and pruning, mowing and raking.) For a month or so I could not be induced to enter the house, possibly because I was afraid of the hypochondriacal Mr Ryan, who never ventured out before midsummer but could occasionally be glimpsed peering unsmilingly through an upstairs window. Everyone, including his wife, called him ‘The Boss’ and regarded him with an unwholesome mixture of deference, resentment, concern and scorn.
Mr Ryan was a retired country schoolmaster, gruff, autocratic, keen-minded and at this time already in his seventies. Mrs Ryan – his second wife, much younger than himself – was gentle and placid with a subtle sense of humour. Beneath her placidity one could detect more positive qualities which if not repressed might, in the circumstances, have led to domestic disharmony. She, too, had been a schoolteacher and the eight children of their union had been brought up mainly by her unmarried sister, who never seemed in the least like a frustrated maiden aunt buthad a permanent twinkle in her eye. She smoked secretly – in the summer-house, to be well out of nose-shot of the Boss – and