Both Sides of the Fence

By Margaret Brooks

Margaret was born in London in 1938 but spent the majority of her earky years in southern Ireland. She returned to London to work and married aged 19 years. Margaret ran a successful business with her husband whilst raising her three children but always dreamed of writing a book. She attended night classes to learn computer skills and completed her story over a number of years. Unfortunately, Margaret passed away in 2005 before seeing her story in print, followed soon after by her loving husband.

This book tells Margaret's story as she remembers it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 30, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453576960

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Copyright © 2010 by Margaret Brooks.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010913681

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-7695-3

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-7694-6

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-7696-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

Cover art was painted from an original photo of Mag’s Grandmother and Mag by Nyree Reynolds—www.caminka.com.au

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

300693

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

PHOTO GALLERY

I dedicate this book to my mum and dad, the hard times

we had, and survived them all.

IMG_0824.JPG

CHAPTER ONE

I decided to write this book because all my life I have felt I was on both sides of the fence, understanding the feelings, the pressures of the family, and the traditions that made things how they were. From the time I was a small child, I was always fascinated by the stories of the past that our Granny Reynolds would tell us. I can see myself and my elder brothers Albert, Johnny, and Paddy gripped with suspense by all we were told. As children, the fright of it all never left our ears, and the stories have stayed with me all my life.

My father and his brothers and sisters always had a lot to put up with, which went back in time to my great-grandfather, George. He was in the British Army at a time of great unrest between the British and the Irish. As a child, I would imagine him in his red coat and black hat, crowned with the coloured feathers of his regiment, his sword and musket at his side, mounted on a wooden cart with spikes and bayonets. He would have to surge at the other side, perhaps at his own friends: there were so many bloody battles, with many dead on both sides. I could understand how difficult it must have been for him, and why he chose in the end to desert the army.

George fled from Dublin to Inniscorty and from there to Tramore, a small fishing village, where he remained in hiding for several years, under an assumed name. He then travelled to New Ross, not far from Tramore, and it was there that he met my great-grandmother, Mary. George was working as a fisherman, and Mary would come down to the boats to buy fish that she could sell on the quay to support her family. It was the only way they could survive. She was a beautiful lass with long blonde hair and blue eyes, fair skinned, small and slim, and George thought that he was seeing things when she first appeared on the quay in her long frilly dress, torn and tattered from the hard life she was leading. He couldn’t help himself, and ended up giving her almost all his fish for free. Before long, he started fishing night and day just to help her.

It was not long before they fell in love, but there were complications. Since George had deserted the army, life was very hard for him, and when Mary found out what he had done, she refused to have any more to do with him. But she had come to rely on him for the fish he brought her that she could sell for her family. Since she had started selling the fish that George gave her, things had started going so much better for them all, and she couldn’t bring herself to make things difficult for all of them again. Nor could she face going back to her old way of life, going to the quay every morning at four o’clock to meet the fishermen coming in on the big trawlers, waiting for the fish that they couldn’t sell for full price so that she could buy them cheaper. She had always been the first on the quay in the morning, cold and hungry for days and weeks on end. It was easier to go along with George, who was a tender and loving man, gallant, and strong in his beliefs—and in the end, Mary said ‘yes’ to him, even knowing the difficulties of his life as a deserter. But she was young and naive, and she didn’t know then what a hard time was in front of her.

When Mary and George married, things seemed good at first, until somehow it got out that George was a deserter, and he was started to be hounded. Again he had to leave, and this time he had to take Mary with him. Mary was devastated, having to move constantly from place to place and never able to settle for more than a short time. The worst of it was that she couldn’t support her family any more, and it nearly broke her heart. It was the time of the famine, and the suffering in Ireland was widespread. Mary would send her parents a little money when she could, but it was worse than when she was selling fish. George had to take any job that he could, from loading corn onto the ships to helping out on farms. Each time it would last a while, before questions would start to be asked: who was George really, and where had he come from? And he knew that it was time to move again. The stigma of being a deserter never left him.

But it wasn’t until I visited Ireland in 1992 to research some of my family history that I understood that the stigma that the Reynolds family suffered went deeper than that. It was an old friend of my dad’s who shed a lot of light on the past.

George had one brother, whose name was Thomas Reynolds. He still lived in Dublin, where the family was originally from and was well-to-do; he had a business in hardware, and he mixed with the wealthy and influential people, travelling up and down the country to look for the best deals. One evening in the pub, Thomas ran into a lot of gentlemen whom he knew from business. It was a time of great unrest, undercurrents swirling as to what would happen to Ireland in the future, and the talk in the pub that night was of revolt and revolution. Thomas was drawn into the discussion and got caught up in his friends’ excitement, their belief in the importance of a united Ireland. The decision was made: they were going to revolt.

But after leaving the pub, Thomas started to have doubts. The conspirators met several times again to plan the uprising, and each time Thomas tried to persuade them not to go ahead. Perhaps there was a better way to work towards their goal of a united Ireland than through violence. Thomas was afraid that the repercussions of their actions would be very severe and could damage generations to come. He argued that they should think carefully about what they were planning to do because once it was done, it couldn’t be undone—but Thomas’s friends were determined to go ahead, and Thomas knew that all he could do was to end his own involvement before things got any worse.

At the next meeting of the conspirators, Thomas wasn’t there, but rumours started to spread. The men were concerned: where was Thomas? A knock came on the door and then again, very loud. The conspirators could guess what had happened. They tried to scramble the papers spread on the table, the evidence of their plotting, before the police broke the door down. They seized the papers and arrested all the men there. The next day Thomas too was arrested; someone had informed on him as he had been involved in the plans up until the last meeting. As the days went by in prison, Thomas made up his mind to do what he could to stop the revolution. He told the police everything he knew: the plot was now an open book.

Of course, it was not enough to save Thomas. He was put to death for his involvement in the plot, and his head was put on a stake outside the prison as a warning to all conspirators. His name was spoken as a traitor. In the dead of night, his wife went to the prison and stole Thomas’s head, wrapping it in a sack. It was buried secretly in an unmarked grave in Dublin.

So this was the family’s skeleton in the cupboard, the reason why whenever I asked people in Ireland about history, they seemed eager to tell me everything about the past but went quiet and cool as soon as the Reynolds name was mentioned. George Reynolds was a deserter and Thomas Reynolds, a traitor. Life wasn’t easy for those who followed.

*

My granny Reynolds was born Mary Hayden, and at the time she was growing up, times were hard enough, even for those without the stigma of a name like Reynolds. Mary lost a sister in the famine; her name was Bridget and she was only two years old when she died of starvation. It was the worst thing Mary had ever seen, and she swore then that she would take any work that she could get in order to survive. And she did. At one point when she was just a teenager, she worked from six o’clock in the morning until six o’clock at night washing steps and stairs, walking three miles each way, morning and night—and she was grateful for it, at least she didn’t starve. Sometimes kind people would give her clothes and food; sometimes she would have to steal. She always did what she had to do; no one in her family was going to suffer again the way that Bridget had.

Despite the hardships of her life, she grew to be a normal seventeen-year-old girl, with ideas of her own about what she wanted in a young man, dreaming of someone tall, dark, and handsome. But as she used to tell me, it didn’t quite work out that way.

Mary and John worked together as farmhands on Mr Daley’s farm. John was tall enough, but he was fair, and when he first approached Mary, she turned up her nose; he’s not my type, he’s not for me. Things only started to change a few days later, when Mary saw John again, but this time he wasn’t alone; he was with Mary’s friend Stella, having a bit of a kiss and a cuddle. Now Mary had a jealous heart in her chest, and she strode up to the two of them. ‘I thought you were after me the other day,’ she told John. As soon as she heard that, Stella slapped his face and walked off, as Mary laughed. ‘Serve you right!’

John wasn’t going to have that! He took off after Mary and chased her all the way through the fields, through the farmyard, and into the barn. And in the barn, well, you can guess what happened next.

The weeks went by, and Mary quite changed her mind about John. They met several times in the barn and before long, the inevitable happened: Mary started feeling sick. She was losing weight and couldn’t work as hard as she had before, so Mr Daley decided to let her go. Mary was horrified. How could she tell her mother and father that she had lost her job? It seemed impossible.

But Mary had no choice; if she didn’t tell her parents, then Mr Daley would: ‘I need people who can work’, he told her, ‘not just play around in the barn.’

Disgusted, Mary lost her temper. How had Mr Daley known about the barn? Had he been watching her? Her swearing was blue, and she accused him of everything under the sun, but Mr Daley was immovable. He just looked at her and said, ‘I’ll let your parents deal with you, girl.’

There was nothing else for it, and Mary set off for home, her long black skirt tucked up to her waist and her blouse dirty and stained from the work on the farm. The day was dark and dingy, and it started to rain as Mary walked and tried to work out what she would say to her mother and father.

She had no sooner walked in the door than the questions started.

‘What have you been up to, my girl?’ Mary’s mother demanded.

‘I just wasn’t feeling too good, Mam, so Mr Daley told me to go home.’

It was clear that her mother didn’t believe her. ‘I will wait until your father comes home before I ask you the question.’

‘What question?’ Mary asked.

‘Are you with child?’ Mary’s mother asked, her voice filled with anger.

‘Definitely not, Mother. I am a good girl,’ Mary insisted.

‘Well, we will see,’ her mother said.

But Mary couldn’t stop herself from crying. It wasn’t until she had heard her mother’s questions that she realised the truth: she was with child. Sobbing, she gave up all pretence, asking her mother, ‘What will become of me?’

‘I don’t know, girl’, her mother told her sadly, ‘we can’t even feed ourselves, let alone another mouth.’

Before long, Mary’s father was standing in the doorway. The room was dark, but he knew straight away that something was wrong: Mary was in the house, not at Mr Daley’s, and her mother was crying.

‘Paddy’, Mary’s mother said through her tears, ‘it’s a dark day for us now, if things were not bad enough.’

Paddy grabbed Mary by the wrists. ‘Why are you not at Mr Daley’s? I passed him on the road as I came home.’

‘Oh, never mind that man,’ his wife cried. ‘Your daughter is with child.’

There was silence as Paddy looked at Mary in horror. When he found his voice, Paddy ordered her, ‘Out you go, girl, and find the man who made you with child. Let him look after you.’

Mary had never seen him so angry. She was frightened for her life. Paddy was a tough man, and Mary was very frail at that time, weakened from the illness of early pregnancy. Paddy opened the door and threw Mary out, even as she begged him: ‘Father, don’t do this to me.’ And even in her distress, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking: How many times I have fed you and put beer in your stomach and helped clothe the children? Now I need help, and there is no one there for me.

‘Get out, you slut, you are not my daughter. Go!’ Paddy roared. He pushed Mary out of the door, and she fell to the ground. It was raining, and her long, fair hair dragged in the mud, filthy. What am I going to do? she asked herself. What am I going to do?

Mary did the only thing that she could think of: she went to look for John, although she barely knew where to start. As she reached Mr Daley’s farm, soaking wet and terrified, she tried to imagine what she was going to say to John. How could she explain? As she reached the gate, Mr Daley caught her entering. ‘You can’t come in here,’ he shouted. ‘No work for you, bitch.’ From the look on his face, Mary knew that he had known about the child, even before she had known it herself; he was a man of the world, after all, and Mary was still very naive.

‘You have done it now, lass,’ Mr Daley bellowed. ‘John won’t want you now. He doesn’t like responsibility. No ties. He’s gone!’ Mary stared at him in panic. No, he wouldn’t leave without me!

Mary searched for John, but he was nowhere to be found. Her heart sinking, she dropped to the ground, crying: ‘God, don’t do this to me! I am not bad, just naive and stupid like all girls of my age. I am only seventeen years old! God, help me, please.’ When she managed to drag herself from the ground and stand on her feet, she walked to the church. She couldn’t think of anything else to do. At least there she felt safe. Mary had no one to help her; John had gone, Mr Daley had told her so, and she believed him.

Mary stayed in the church for what felt like hours, before suddenly, finally, she heard footsteps. As they drew nearer, she turned, expecting Father Cullitan coming to turn her out as it was time to lock up. But as she turned, she heard a voice that made her heart leap with hope. ‘Here you are, Mary! I have been looking for you all day.’ It was John. Full of joy and relief, she fell into his arms. They sat for some time in the church, and after all Mary’s concerns about how she could tell him about the child, the words just seemed to come out with no trouble at all. John wasn’t angry or upset, as Mary had feared. ‘I want to marry you, Mary,’ was his only reply. Mary was so happy that John was going to stand by her. She didn’t know if she loved him—she didn’t even know what love was—but he was going to stand by her, and that was enough.

They were married within the week. They had no home, nothing, but Mary felt sure that with John looking after her, they would manage somehow.

CHAPTER TWO

John left Mr Daley’s, and he and Mary went to live in a room in the town of New Ross. It wasn’t much, but at least they were together. There was precious little work around, so John worked the docks. It was hard, and he would come home late at night, tired and hungry. They would sip soup that Mary had made during the day and nibble on potatoes, but at least they had some food, and Mary didn’t complain.

By the time the rent had been paid, there wasn’t much money left and no money for clothes. Mary took in people’s washing to get extra money, but it still wasn’t enough. She was now eight months pregnant, and there was no money for doctors. She had to make a decision; she would have to go to the workhouse to have their baby. She was dreading it, but she knew that she had no choice.

According to the rules, Mary went into the workhouse a month before the baby was due. Along with the other women and girls there, she worked twelve hours a day. The nuns were very cruel. The girls washed, ironed, scrubbed floors, and polished corridors, starting at six o’clock. Before bed each night, they had to pray for two hours in a freezing cold hall, wearing nothing but their flimsy nightdresses, while the nuns were snug in their habits. Any complaint would end in punishment; the girls would be forced to bathe in cold water while the nuns stood over them or held them down in the freezing bath.

Some of the washing the girls were forced to do was for the priests and some were for the hotels. The nuns would get paid for the girls’ sweat, and all the girls got in return was porridge for breakfast and potatoes for dinner if they did as they were told. For the women who rebelled, some were never seen again. Babies were born and sold to well-to-do childless couples or sent abroad to be adopted. God knows what became of them.

The baby girls who weren’t sold or who were sent back for whatever reasons were brought up as nuns, God help. And the boys were sent to the monks, brought up as priests, or sold off to work at an early age. Those boys, who were kept, God help, were whipped, beaten, scalded, and starved. The priests and nuns did what they liked behind closed doors. Mary knew that it wasn’t God’s way, but she also knew that she couldn’t say anything. Even after she came out, who was she going to complain to, and who was going to listen to her? Her time in the workhouse haunted Mary for the rest of her life. ‘You didn’t speak out in those days, my girl,’ she used to tell me, with tears in her eyes. ‘I saw things that will stay with me until I die.’

Mary had only been there a little more than a month when her child was born, a little boy, and within two hours, it was back to the laundry whence Mary came. The steam from the pressing machine was hot in her face, and the sweat was flowing from her forehead. As she paused to wipe it, Sister Joseph shouted, ‘You are not working hard enough to stop to wipe your forehead! You have just had a baby and not in wedlock.’ Mary was aghast. How could the nun know that? She and John had married so quickly once they knew Mary was with child. Mary stopped to answer back, but she should have known that that’s the one thing you don’t do.

Sister Joseph lashed her across the back three times with a rope. It sliced easily through Mary’s thin dress and tore her skin, staining her clothes with blood. Shocked, Mary moved to clean the blood off her and got another swipe for her trouble. The pain was unbearable. Mary fought against it, determined not to let Sister Joseph see how she had been hurt, but black clouds blotted out her vision, and she fainted.

The next thing Mary knew she was in a dark cellar, freezing and soaking wet. But to her horror she realised that she wasn’t wet with water but with blood; she was haemorrhaging and didn’t even have a cloth to wipe herself. For two days, Mary was left alone. Afterwards, she never knew how she survived. All she could do was pray that her baby boy was safe from those wicked nuns and that she would live to see her child. Most of the time she didn’t know what was happening as she drifted in and out of consciousness. The time seemed to pass. At one point, Mary was certain that she was not in this world but was held in a very bright light as someone kept saying, ‘Don’t be frightened, Mary, it will pass.’ When she awoke she was convinced that God had been comforting her.

After that, Mary felt at peace. She was no longer frightened, certain that she had paid for the sin she had committed by being in that hellhole. When Sister Rita finally opened the door to the cellar to let Mary out, she was horrified. Mary was taken to the hospital in the grounds of the workhouse, where she was attended by the doctor. He told her that she had lost a lot of blood and had to rest for some days until the Sister Superior in charge decided to release her. To Mary’s disbelief, she found that she still had to work her time, with an added four days’ extra work for the time she had ‘wasted’, two days locked in the cellar and then two days in hospital. Altogether she stayed in the workhouse for three months.

When the time came for her to leave, Mary couldn’t help asking Sister Joseph how she had known that Mary was with child before wedlock as she had thought no one knew but only her John, Mr Daley, and her parents. Sister Joseph’s answer was, ‘We know all that goes on here in New Ross. Aren’t you a Reynolds?’

‘Yes,’ Mary said. ‘What difference does that make?’

‘Ask your husband,’ was all that Sister Joseph would say.

When Mary arrived home to the single room she and John shared, John was in the pub. Mary was bitterly disappointed; it was only six o’clock in the evening, and she had hoped that he might have been there when she came home. As Mary stood in the doorway holding her baby, an old lady passed by and sniffed. ‘Another Reynolds we have to deal with.’

Mary had no idea what she was talking about, but that didn’t stop her from biting back, ‘Go home, you old cow, and mind your own business.’

Inside, the room was dark and uninviting, but at least it was home. Suddenly, Mary thought of her mother. Would she ever forgive her for letting her down? What Mary had done wasn’t her mother’s way. All her mother ever wanted was to be able to hold her head up.

Late in the evening, Mary heard John coming up the road drunk as a lord, with his friend, Paddy Doyle. What a racket! Mary went to the door and just as she opened it, John fell in, rotten drunk. ‘How are you, my darling, where is my child?’ he asked. Mary was gobsmacked. With what she had been through, she had expected John to reach out his arms, give her a big hug and a kiss, and ask her how it had gone, as after all, it was Mary who had been in that place and endured it all. Instead, John picked up the child, gave him a big kiss, put him back in the drawer where he was sleeping, and made it halfway to the bed and fell asleep. Well, Mary thought, is this all there is to married life? She undressed and got into bed, blocking her ears to John snoring on the floor, and eventually she managed to fall asleep.

The next day was Saturday, but John still had to go to work. He hated working on the docks but there wasn’t any other work he could get. Unfortunately, it seemed that there was some trouble brewing between John and some of the other men.

John’s idea was that if he worked harder, he would keep his job compared to the men, who didn’t want to work that little bit more, but it seemed that some of the other men always wanted to pick a fight. One day John couldn’t take any more, and a fight broke out between him and Tommy Brown, who was carrying out a feud against John for some reason.

John fought back, and the boss man was called in. The other men stood up for Tommy Brown, and John got his cards. As John left, the men called after him that he was ‘a traitor like all the Reynolds family’. When John came home and told Mary that he had lost his job, her heart fell with anger and her mind went straight back to the workhouse. John had lost his two sisters to the workhouse, and he had sworn he would never let it happen to his own family, but it had. Mary knew that this was why he never wanted to talk about the workhouse and as long as Mary had been strong enough to survive it, that was all that mattered to him. But when John told her what the men from the docks had shouted after him, Mary was reminded suddenly of what Sister Joseph had said about the Reynolds family, telling her to ask her husband.

‘What is this curse that is on the Reynolds family?’ Mary asked.

‘Mary, I am so sorry I didn’t tell you before . . .’

‘John, just tell me, please.’

They were