O’Herlihy (Née Noonan)

Photo by Stewart Black

On the second of April 1923 she was born in the main bedroom of the family home, in Drumcondra. Her colour was deep blue. The thundery richness of this blue, almost purple, with the yellow marbling of the afterbirth strung tight across it, caused the midwife to fear cyanosis. The midwife said nothing but took strong measures. She smacked the baby’s blood into motion with the flat of her hand, made loud entreaties. “Come along, come along, comealongcomealong,” she said. Mary’s reluctance to commence life, to acquiesce to the torment of existence, earned her the reputation of a slow starter, which she was to retain into old age. When at last she cried out from the midwife’s blows, she did so quietly, as if apologising for making her small dent in the surface of things.

The next day’s Irish Times carried the following announcement:

noonan—April 2nd, at 2 Glendalough Road, Drumcondra, the wife of P. J. Noonan, of a daughter.

The redbrick house had a shiny blue door and a brass knocker too high to reach. Beside the front door, the narrow beds of flowers (snow-drops, snowdrops, snowdrops) were guarded by hooped railings. Newly painted, they left a sticky horseshoe of white gloss on the back of that dress of giant cornflowers. Daddy gripped her under her arms and swung her away from them, up and away. Always in a suit, Daddy, and smelling of his pipe. Bristled smoke-smelling cheek laid against her own. In the mornings he closed the shiny front door behind him with one hand on his hat, his head slightly bowed. The door banged shut and you saw his hat and the white of his face momently in the wrinkles of the glass, flashing. And then it was gone. That dress was ruined. Years later Mother still complained, that dress of blue cornflowers which you spoiled with your leaning! Always resting, leaning, the slow starter, the blood sluggish in her veins. God bless that midwife.

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On the third of September 1929 her mother removed her banana toast before she had finished it and took her hand and led her to the bus stop under the wall of the Archbishop’s Palace. They travelled on the lower deck as far as Eccles Street, where her mother handed her to Sister Dymphna of the Dominican College. In later years she travelled to school unaccompanied, walked to the stop and waited for the swaying bus to come down the Drumcondra Road. On winter mornings the leaves on the footpath were crisp with frost; they arched their backs with cold. She wore a navy blue serge dress and white collar, detachable. Long black stockings, also.

The boys going to St. Patrick’s wore their cowboy uniforms: miniature ten-gallon hats, tasselled chaps, waistcoats of denim, and pearl-handled revolvers bouncing at their hips.

Sister Madeline checked your hat and gloves before you went home in the afternoon. The uniforms came from Clery’s, the school section, with its racks of blazers and high shelves of rolled scarves. Sister Madeline’s big teeth pressed her bottom lip when she smiled and said good afternoon to you. Her teeth hanging unevenly like badly pegged washing, Sister Madeline told the children in her funny old way that she anticipated with great pleasure greeting them again on the morrow.

On the second of June 1939 she received a prize for her essay “Dominic of Caleruega and the Albigensians,” written in her even, sloping hand on four sides of foolscap. The pages of the foolscap crisp with age. She accepted her prize on the stage of the school concert hall before her fellow prizewinners. The audience included parents of prizewinners and assorted members of the community, such as active sisters, affiliated Dominicans, and, occupying the rearward rows, more brightly coloured lay staff. For her prize book she chose The Concise Oxford Dictionary, on the flyleaf of which was pasted a prize certificate signed by Father T. P. Molloy, O.P. Over...