Peeling Oranges by James Lawless Read Free Book Online

and gentle attractiveness of their example.’
    The main Mass in the Phoenix Park on Sunday the twenty-sixth of June was attended by one million people. Although Patrick noted that General O’Duffy gave his Blueshirts the day off for their competence in handling the occasion, he also records how:
    M lost her beige hat at the Mass. She was not too put-out by it. She brought me into Whitefriar Street chapel to show me the shrine to Saint Valentine. The saint’s casket was all aglow with light and flowers and worshippers praying for sweethearts. We walked back to the shop, hand-in-hand, flushed by hymns and candlelight. She allowed me to kiss her before I set out for Rathfarnham.
    ***
    England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity, or so we were taught at school.
    My aunt Peg perceived the abdication of King Edward V111 on the tenth of December 1936 (to marry the commoner, Mrs Simpson) as an opportunity to add more press cuttings and photographs to her royal collection.
    De Valera perceived it as an opportunity to delete the crown from involvement in Irish affairs internally at least. Britain was reluctant to argue with him at such a stage, as it suffered the embarrassment of the royal scandal.
    While the King had to be recognised at least symbolically by diplomats abroad, Patrick Foley perceived the abdication as an opportunity to attempt to advance in his career. This hopefully would be achieved by his helping to secure a separate and independent identity for Ireland abroad. Ireland’s affairs, asserted Patrick, must no longer be seen as simply an appendage of British foreign policy.
    He was posted to the new Irish legation in Madrid in 1935. Before this he had been granted short sojourns in Paris and Rome, but the Madrid position would be for a number of years, hopefully – suitable for a ‘family man’. He had another reason for wanting to get out of Ireland for a longer period than previously. The Civil Service at home was stagnating and simply replicated the British system. He wanted to escape from what he considered the ‘narrow and closed mentality’ in Ireland and search for opportunities to show innovation in a meaningful diplomatic sense. But rather contradictorily he writes: ‘My head rules my heart, but my heart is lonely.’
    Both he and my mother kept in regular communication.
    ***
    In June 1936, Martha Woodburn and Patrick Foley were married in Dublin in the church of Whitefriar Street. My mother wore a cream-coloured dress with intricate designs and a lace-frilled hat, and carried a spray of white heather (for luck) and orange blossom (for fruitfulness) in her bouquet of flowers. On Patrick’s side there were some people from External Affairs in Dublin, and doctor José Beltrán from Madrid who acted as best man. Peg didn’t like the look of Beltrán. My mother recorded her calling him ‘a shifty-eyed oul fella’.
    Muddy, now ailing and slow in movement, was there, and Peg acted as matron of honour. Some of Martha’s old friends from Jacob’s and Cumann na mBan were also present. Gearóid MacSuibhne did not appear.
    Of the presents the couple received, perhaps my mother’s most treasured one was a woollen blanket sent by Maud Gonne. The latter thanked my mother in a wedding card for her dedication in Cumann na mBan and for her charitable work in the tenements.
    On the day of their wedding the IRA executed three people who were pro-Treaty. As there was no republic looming, the revolutionaries began to despair of de Valera. The latter invoked special powers and set up tribunals – methods which he had previously criticised the opposition for adopting. Many IRA members were arrested, sometimes by former colleagues now in the Special Branch.
    Gearóid MacSuibhne was one of those arrested.
    ***
    My mother and Patrick Foley were among the first to fly the new national airline – Aer Lingus. Patrick records: ‘It is better to entrust oneself to the air than have one’s stomach constantly churned