I once lived on Finaghy Road South in South Belfast, Northern Ireland in a spacious red-bricked bungalow called Alt-Na-Greig.
My father was an mechanical engineer so where he went, the family went - from Ontario, Canada to the beauty of Cobham, Surrey in England and then to the politically volatile climate of 1960's Belfast, Northern Ireland.
There’s a bridge over the railway line between Finaghy Rd. North and Finaghy Road South – a marker not only between the streets but between the faiths. The Protestants live on Finaghy North and The Catholics live on Finaghy South. The agnostic Andrews family lived in an upscale suburb of Belfast near picturesque Upper Malone / Lady Dixon Park district. But just down the huge hill where I used to ride my bike each day, to get white-bagged red-licorice Cherry Lips at the local Spar variety store, I soon discovered there was an entirely different side to Finaghy life. As I walked down to the bottom of the road, en route to Finaghy Primary School towards Lisburn Road, I saw the row upon row of tiny flats and I always wondered how people ever lived that way and still seemed so cheerful.
People would say 'top of the morning to you.' and I would shyly reply 'hello.'
Life for a young Canadian girl was very strange but at age 11 you take it in stride.
I had a lot crazy things happen to me in Belfast – going to ultra-posh girls' grammar school Richmond Lodge, learning to ride a horse, living next door to a Mormon compound, gypsies on our doorstep, and befriending a family of 15, two of their sons lost in the war a few years after we left for Canada– but that’s another blog. We left Belfast in 1969 - the year the war started.
But all these years later and being a fan of Irish playwrights, particularly Sean O'Casey I realize that I did see, firsthand, some of the poverty that O’Casey writes about in his Irish Trilogy. Each week we would travel through the working class district of Sandy Row where the papers reported daily unrest in the streets. We kept the car windows up and the doors locked en route to the weekly swim at Belfast's historic Ormeau Baths. The reward – Beattie’s newspaper-wrapped fish and chips for Tuesday night supper.
Sean O’Casey characters bring to mind my favourite cleaning lady. She was a tiny hard working woman with very few front teeth. She had a huge family of 12 who lived in one of these cramped little semis down Finaghy Rd. hill. Of course she loved kids, and became a member of our family too. When my parents went to Greece on holiday, my sister and I had several babysitters including our own …I’ll call her Mrs. B. and one night we came to her house for Sunday dinner.
The Andrews household Sunday dinner would alternate each week between roast beef, roast mutton, roast pork or BBQ spareribs - so different from our maid's repast. Mrs B's little kitchen was crammed with family members of all ages, everyone so jovial as they passed around endless plates and tea cups. There were shifts at the kitchen table. My sister and I sat with Mrs B’s girls, and we all had tons of mashed potatoes and gravy, baked beans, and a barely a sliver of roast beef with bread, butter, jam and tea. No complained and everyone was satisfied with the meal. That was dinner or Sunday “tea” as the Irish call it - a night I will never forget.
Sad to say, we had to let Mrs. B go sometime later as she had been pilfering in our closets and took a mint-green emu / mohair hair sweater that my mother has knitted for my sister. We knew it was Mrs. B because mum used to put a thin band of elastic at the bottom of each sweater so they would hold their shape. One day mum saw a young girl walking down Finaghy wearing the missing sweater. I guess Mrs. B figured we were rich Canadians, so what harm could it do?
At the time I was shocked and angry, and disappointed but now looking back, I realize that our wee workaholic domestic did this to survive, likely selling the sweater to keep putting roast beef, tiny as it might be, on her own family’s table. Though your actions were wrong, your intentions were honorable – a mother feeding her own.
Sláinte! Mrs. B. wherever you are.
