In memory of a man who contributed so much

He sat late into the night his head bowed o’er the blue writing paper beneath the light of a bakelite lamp set on a table in a corner of the room which looked out o’er the row of neatly kept gardens along Dublin’s Calderwell Road where he lodged in number 29.

With a pen held between his finger and thumb, he told of his days spent behind the bar of Hardigan’s pub on Leeson St. where he served his time in the shadow of the masters of the art of listening to the poetry of conversation spoken in accents peculiar to those who hailed from this place of song and story along Gardiner’s Street or from the one roomed bedsits of the Georgian houses such as on Merrion Square. Men who spent their days still fighting for the cause of Ireland's freedom over vast abyss of the bar counter and two pints of porter for their shield.

These accounts of the minutiae of his days were posted on the following morn to a house in the Lawn, Belturbet, the home of his cousins, the Fannings, who knew well that the blue envelope which dropped through the letter box on to the red tiles of the hallway floor addressed in his handwriting was to remain unopened in the drawer of the hall table until a young lady would call on her way. She was but 18 years, the daughter of a tailor and his musings were intended only for the eyes of this young girl whom he had known, prohibited from fraternising with boys at her tender age. The only quiet space she could find to read the detailed retelling of his encounters was from behind the bolted door of the bathroom in her home along the Main Street in the town. In those letters he entered the world of the mind’s eye describing in detail the characters with whom he met along the streets of his imagination as his roommate slept dreaming of matches won and lost from the bed in the corner opposite.

On those nights beneath the light of a lamp he thought often on his father and mother and the imprint they had laid on his life in the fleeting years of his childhood, how had they been taken from he and his siblings whilst they were but children; recalling time and time again in his mind’s eye the morning he awoke to find uncles from Leitrim standing around in the kitchen, speaking in lamentations, Kimberley biscuits on side plates laid out on the table lain with a linen cloth in the season of Lent.

As he retreated to his room and sat on his bed, crying, he knew he would never again see her walk through the front door untying the scarf from off her head, her kindly face windswept after cycling the miles of road from Corcandis school without in Milltown, never again from the morning, she left, coughing, for the county home. Oh the devastation, her death it had wrought, consumption he remembered the men saying in whispered tones for fear the children heard, ‘an odious wetting on the bicycle’.

Five little children left adrift without their mother, he, the eldest, but twelve years of age, the memory of their aunt Baby in the kitchen baking currany bread to distract their little minds on the day the hearse passed Corcandis school on its way to the graveyard in Carrigallen. His father too was taken but four years later as he gathered his three sons around his bed and shook their hands, telling them to be good boys and with his demise their childhood days came hurtling to a close.

Days they had spent fishing under the Railway Bridge, swimming along the river, playing cowboys and Indians on the Falls, the endless games of pool in the clubrooms and the illicit games of poker in the shadows with the older lads when the Curate’s head was turned. He reflected as he wrote on how the world he had known came crashing in upon him as his brothers were packed off to live with relations in America and his sisters to live with their grandmother in Carrigallen.

He stood forlorn, the debris of his life scattered around him at just 16 years of age, the loving bond of parents and siblings now but a distant memory of a time past, like a fairytale told of an idyllic childhood once had on Kilconny’s hill. Overnight, he was pushed headlong into being a man taking on men’s ways beginning work in Woodhouses’ grocery and hardware store, observing the characters that there came in, faces that occupied his mind as he sat in those lodgings in the months that were to come and thereafter taking the bus to Dublin to take up lodgings with Rose McManus from County Fermanagh and a recommendation for a job in Hardigan’s Bar.

Having served his time in the bar trade, he then took up work in a telephone exchange with the Post and Telegraphs, connecting calls across Dublin’s city, reading between calls as people spoke in whispered tones across telephone wires in the depth of the night. As he read letters from his brothers in America telling of their time in college and from the girl, he hoped that one day he might marry, was studying in Liverpool, he knew he had to find a way to quench this yearning for education he had deep inside.

He took up a new position with CIE on the Dublin buses as a bus conductor and one night in serendipitous conversation with a colleague Paddy Gavin over tea, he learned of Graduates giving tutorials to willing students to help in passing the matric exam to enter university. At the age of 24 years, having worked to earn his keep since leaving primary school, the young Brendan McCann entered the doors of UCD to study History and English.

He thought on his poor mother and what she might say as he sat in the great lecture halls of Earlsfort Terrace in the midst of students and how he wished his parents could see him having reached this juncture along the road despite having had many hills to climb. To this very day the boy who stood forlorn at just 16, the shattered pieces of his life scattered around him, stands as a shining example of one who despite all that life could throw at him surmounted its many challenges in the pursuit of a dream, for in the September of 1968 having graduated from university, the boy that once was, became the first male teacher on the staff of Loreto College, Cavan in all of its history at 28 years of age and in the years thereafter the first lay principal of a Loreto school; some achievement for one who took the bus to Dublin to serve his time and a testament to the power of education to change lives coupled with the belief and encouragement of a girl who for all those years was a constant, to be forever at his side, for all his years to come.