Anne's Song Read online

  I was born at Hollies Street Maternity Hospital in Dublin on 12 November 1950, and christened Anne Barbara Maria. I was the second child; Tommy had been born in July of the previous year. Eventually, there would be eight of us: six girls and two boys. My mother and I spent my very early childhood living with my maternal grandparents, Miles and Kathleen Breslin. My parents couldn't afford a house of their own at that stage and hadn't yet been allocated council accommodation. I'm sure they longed for us all to be together under one roof, although I never remember them saying this to us. Adults wouldn't discuss something like that in front of children back then.

  I loved living with my grandparents. My grandmother called me her Madonna. I was the first granddaughter in the family and she made a tremendous fuss of me, as did my Aunt Teresa. I was spoilt to death. I saw my dad and brother every now and then, but I can't say I missed them. My mum would sometimes go and stay with my father at his parents' house on the other side of the city. I don't suppose they found it ideal, but I was perfectly happy.

  Nana Breslin indulged me from dawn to dusk. I remember being fond of beetroot, for example, which she used to buy fresh from the market. She might be preparing it for a meal and I'd sit beside her and eat as much of it as I could, but she never told me off. My mum might come into the kitchen and say, 'Don't do that. It's Nana's,' but my grandmother would reply, 'Oh, leave her. She's fine.'

  Tommy and my dad lived with his mother, Mary Nolan, in a flat above a corner shop in Clontarf, quite a smart seaside resort to the north of Dublin. She was lovely and would always make me laugh. She'd wander round the house humming with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth. However, I think she'd been spoilt when she was young. Certainly, she wasn't happy if she didn't get her own way. She was given to throwing tantrums; she'd flounce out of the room and go and sit on her own in her bedroom.

  Her husband Thomas, by all accounts a kind, caring man, had died when my dad was twelve, leaving Tommy as the only male in the household – he had two older sisters, Shelagh and Doreen. I think his mother put a lot of pressure on him too young to transform himself into the man of the house, and I've often wondered whether what was effectively the loss of his childhood shaped the character of the person he later became.

  Gran Nolan and my mother never really got on. I don't think she thought Mum was good enough for her son, but then I don't think any girl would have been. Even so, she'd taunt my mother by talking about my dad's previous girlfriends. There was a particular one called Maud Quinn who was quite posh and belonged to the local tennis club. I think Gran Nolan would have preferred her as a daughter-in-law. Not that my mother took any notice of all this: it was water off a duck's back.

  I was four when my parents were given a terraced council house on the Ballygael Road in an area of Dublin called Finglas. Denise and Maureen had been born by then. Denise is two years younger than me and Maureen three and a half years younger. I'm as close to Denise as I am to Tommy, probably because they were born either side of me.

  Tommy's always been very extrovert, very funny, but if he has something on his mind that's worrying him, he'll either ignore it or blurt it out, pretending it's a joke when we all know it isn't. He's been like that for as long as I can remember. We fought like cat and dog when we were young, but we've always been very close. One Christmas, I remember, our parents bought each of us boxing gloves and we'd spar with one another. I usually won, not because I was stronger but because I hit Tommy with all my might while he held back because I was a girl. He's always been protective of me.

  Tommy was a very good-looking boy with dark hair and eyes to match and he grew into a handsome young man. As a child, Denise was very cute with dark curly hair and brown eyes; as an adult she's the one who looks most like our mother. She's very placid, very loving. She's the kindest person I know, someone who would never, ever forget a birthday or an anniversary. If it's someone's birthday, she'll be the one who arranges the party, who gets everyone together, who buys the cake. Every spare minute she has, she goes to visit our mum and she's not shy of keeping us up to the task, either. She can be fiery, and too sensitive sometimes for her own good which means she's always been easily hurt, but she doesn't hold grudges. Family means everything to Denise.

  My only abiding memory of living in Finglas is of the babysitter my parents would employ when they were out in the evenings on singing engagements. On one occasion, this girl – she can barely have been a teenager – got bored with sitting in our house and wanted to take me over the road to where she lived. The only problem was what to do with Denise who was just a toddler and who couldn't tag along like me. So she tied Denise to the bedpost by her hair. I may have been young but I wasn't standing by and letting that happen to my sister. I marched straight upstairs and released her. People who meet me might describe me as quiet, but that doesn't mean I'm timid. I'm a strong character and I know the difference between right and wrong. With one exception, I've never let anyone control me.

  Not long before we moved out of the house in Finglas in June 1954, my sister Maureen was born. Maureen's the one on whom everyone can offload their troubles. She doesn't get riled; she's the family peacekeeper, a person who never likes to think badly of anyone; she's been like that since childhood. She's also the family beauty, no question. She had hazel eyes and mid-brown hair with a slim figure. And she was always smiling. Anyone who met her was alwavs attracted to both her looks and to her

  We moved to the St Anne's Estate in Raheny when I was five. Finglas had a reputation for being pretty rough, but Raheny, while still a council estate, was a cut above; we were moving up in the world. By then, there were six of us: my parents, Tommy, me, Denise and Maureen. Hence the move; we were a rapidly expanding family.

  Ours was the corner house next to some sort of electricity substation fenced off behind a large locked gate. I was a bit of a tomboy and I'd think nothing of climbing over this gate, although it was forbidden and potentially very dangerous. There was also a big derelict mansion not far away, in a place we called Seven Hills. I'd be down there with my little group of friends, climbing in and out of its broken windows – or we'd go off to a new estate that was being built and get inside when the workmen had gone. We'd also shin up trees and then spit on people as they passed underneath.

  I was at the local girls' Catholic junior school where I made lots of friends and enjoyed my book work, but the highlight for me was always the school concert where we'd perform for the teachers and our parents. I can still recall the material of the dress I wore when I had to tap dance with a group of other six-year-olds. It was made of bright red net and covered in sequins with a skirt that stuck out. I felt like a film star, someone out of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. It's one of the best memories of my childhood.

  When I think back to my early years growing up in Ireland, I was rarely indoors. I'd either be at school or playing outside with my friends, often still eating the last of my tea as I ran out the door. I was meant to be in the street outside our house where I'd play hopscotch or skipping games, but, being a little wild thing, I'd be off and getting up to all sorts in the fields that surrounded our estate. We were never supervised, but life seemed somehow so much safer back then.

  I'd only come home again when it was time to go to bed: at seven in the winter, which I hated because it seemed so early, but eight in the summer because of the light evenings. In bad weather, we'd stay indoors and, if my dad was around, he'd read to us or we'd look at comics or draw or listen to the radio. There was always music and singing in the house. Each of us kids must have inherited Mum and Dad's musical ability because a song only had to come on the radio and we'd all start singing along, unconsciously able to pick up the right harmonies. In time, we were given little bits of homework by the teachers at school. It was a wonderful carefree kind of a childhood. Our parents were there if we needed them, but we were allowed to be what we wanted to be. We might not have been rich in terms of material possessions, but we were loved and we were h
appy. There's no price you can put on that.

  Sometimes Dad would take us in his old banger out to Howth Head or we'd go by steam train to the seaside at Bray, where we'd sit on the grass on the promenade and eat fish and chips; or we'd walk into Dollymount and buy sweets, and then stay on the beach all day and eat the picnic Mum had made: bread and jam washed down with bottles of water or lemonade for a special treat. We couldn't swim, but we'd play in the sea and we never came to any harm. It was an uncomplicated, contented early childhood with no foretaste of the dark days to come.

  When Tommy and I went to school down the road, we'd run home at lunchtime to listen to a radio programme, a daily soap opera, called The Kennedys of Castle Ross while Mum made the food. She was a plain cook. It might be sausages, beans and potatoes or, one of her favourites, a joint of gammon served with mashed potato and cabbage or curly kale. We loved her banana sandwiches, and I remember Denise was particularly partial to her rice pudding. At the weekend, she'd always make a huge pan of stew. I don't recall her teaching us how to cook, although, when we were older, we were taught how to bake. I remember my Dublin days as an idyllic upbringing for a child, even if money was tight – and that was something that children don't really understand, or need to, when they're growing up.

  When I must have been no more than six, Nana Breslin died. It was a terrible shock. She had an asthma attack on a bus that brought on a heart attack. She was only fifty-two. I remember someone coming to our house when I was in bed. I heard voices at the front door and suddenly my mother let out a piercing scream. I could hear her sobbing her heart out, but nobody came to tell us what was going on or why she was so upset. So I got out of bed and called through the banisters, asking what the matter was. My dad said, 'Oh, it's just your mammy. She's fine now.'

  The next day, I asked him again. He said, 'Your nana's gone to heaven.' And that was that. I didn't really understand what I'd been told, but every time I tried to talk about it, someone changed the subject. I wasn't allowed to go to the funeral, so I never got the chance to say goodbye to her. Eventually, my granddad, Miles, got married again to a lovely woman called Madge.

  I think it took my mother a long time to get over the loss of Nana Breslin, but that is only a presumption I've arrived at with hindsight. She never, ever discussed her feelings with us. Instead, she was kept constantly busy round the house. If she was in a good mood, she'd let us join in and help her. She might suddenly shout out, 'Right. Who's for polishing the floor then?' You'd expect most children to make a dash for the door, but not in our house. The chorus of 'Me! Me! Me!' must have been heard halfway down the street as we rushed to volunteer. Mum would tie rags to our feet and we'd skate and slide the full length of the hall floor, polishing it in the process. If we'd been good, she'd give us money for sweets.

  There were two rooms on the ground floor on the right as you came in the front door. The one that overlooked the street was kept for best occasions; the other was a family room. There was a kitchen opposite. Upstairs, there was a bathroom with a toilet and three bedrooms. I shared with Denise and Maureen. Tommy and later Brian had the second room, and our parents had the other. It was a long time before any of us had a bed to ourselves and certainly never when we lived in Ireland.

  We girls used to play a game in our bedroom called Standing On Knees. Denise and I would sit on the bed and raise our knees. Maureen – and Linda later on – would take our hands and climb on, then we'd let go and they'd have to stand balanced on our knees without falling off. Or one of us would sit at one end of the bed with another at the other end and we'd join hands and rock backwards and forwards, like a swingboat. Of course there would sometimes be arguments, many of them started by me. I was a tearaway, happy to pick fights with anyone. I daresay there was a bit of hair-pulling, too – it would be surprising if that hadn't happened, as we were all living on top of each other – but we were very close, each other's best friends, which is how it remained throughout our career.

  Our next-door neighbours in Raheny were the McMahon family. There were seven children, the oldest a girl called Mary who was two years older than me. She taught me to ride a bike and I took my First Communion with her brother Padraic when we were both seven. It was a great and special day in my life with visiting relatives and friends showering gifts and money on us in the old Irish tradition. That night, Dad took me to the Royella, the nightclub where he was the resident singer. He sat me at the side of the stage where everybody made a great fuss of me; he bought me a bottle of pop and I was allowed to stay and watch his act. I felt very grown-up.

  It was also around this time that we got a black-and-white television, the first people on the estate to own a set. I was so transfixed by it that I was happy just watching the test card on the screen when I got home from school and before programmes started in the early evening. My favourites were The Flowerpot Men and The Woodentops; later on, it would be Emergency Ward 10 and Dr Kildare; I was deeply in love with Richard Chamberlain.

  My second brother, Brian, arrived after we'd moved to Raheny. He turned out to be as quiet as Tommy was noisy. He was shy and introverted to the point of being scared of his own shadow. He had a big fort and would spend hours playing with his soldiers on his own. In 1958, Linda arrived; that makes her eight years younger than me. I never remember my mother being pregnant and it was never discussed. It was just that every eighteen months or so, there was a new baby in the house. Linda was the polar opposite of Brian: an outgoing, sunny child we nicknamed Dublin Molly because of her deep voice and strong accent.

  This was also the year that Denise made her First Communion. I behaved appallingly because this was her day. I'd been pampered when it had been my turn the previous year, but still I was jealous of all the attention she was getting. In a deliberate act of spite, I broke one of her dolls by throwing it on the ground and smashing one of its arms. When she found out, my mother smacked me on my bare legs, something I thoroughly deserved. I went stamping up to our bedroom and then screamed insults at Denise and my parents out of the window as they took her off to the Royella as part of her special day. However, just as Tommy was protective of me, so I usually felt the same about Denise.

  There was a hut in a field near us for the local football team. Inside, it was divided down the middle so the two opposing teams could get changed into and out of their kit. When I was seven, a group of girls and another of boys dreamed up the idea of going to this changing room, taking off all our clothes and then one boy and one girl would step outside and show each other their bits and pieces. We knew it was naughty, but without really understanding why. Because Denise was my little sister, I wouldn't let her come on this so-called adventure. So she went to our mum to tell her that something bad was happening. The next thing I knew, my mother was dragging me home, a small hearth brush in her hand with which she was trying to whack me across the bottom as I dodged out of her range. As it happens, it hadn't reached my turn in the game to reveal all to one of the local boys. I dread to think what she'd have done if she'd witnessed that. She gave me a good smacking when we got home and I was sent to bed with no tea. I sobbed myself to sleep. After a little while, though – and this was typical of my mum – she came and woke me up with something to eat and gave me a big cuddle. I'd done something wrong. I'd been punished. It was all over.

  2

  Abandoned

  I was seven when I first started getting pains in my legs. They weren't sharp, stabbing pains, more like dull aches, the kind of pains you'd get if you'd been cycling all day. They were never so bad that I'd be unable to walk but I would have to take painkillers to help me get to sleep. Nobody seemed to know what was causing them. Was it rheumatism? Growing pains? Polio? The doctors couldn't make up their minds. I was taken to the local hospital on a weekly basis where I'd be given a painkilling injection, but the pains persisted. In time, they did discover I had some sort of heart murmur, so then they thought I might be suffering from rheumatic fever, but I was never given any medication an
d nor did I feel ill.

  The pains weren't bad enough to keep me off school and life carried on as before. In the summer of 1960, when she was pregnant with Bernie, Mum went on a trip to England where she stayed with her uncle, Joe Hayes. On her return to Dublin, she was full of her trip, and I remember her talking to my dad about it.

  'It was lovely,' she told him. 'I met some really nice people. And there are so many clubs, Tommy. We could make a real good living there.'

  Apparently, Uncle Joe had taken Mum to the British Legion Club one evening where she'd volunteered to sing a song. A man called Fred Daly, a friend of Joe's, was in the club that night. So impressed was he with my mother's singing, he tried to persuade her that her future lay on that side of the water.

  Dad wasn't convinced. 'Where would we live?' he asked. 'Our home and friends are in Dublin. You can't just uproot a family like ours and dump them in the middle of a strange town in a strange country.'

  Mum persisted. 'Fred said he'd put us up in his house until we found our own place.'

  Dad laughed. 'And did you warn him we're like the tribe of Israel?'

  'Be serious, Tommy,' she said. 'I mean it. You and me singing together? We'd clean up in the working men's clubs.'

  'But what about my radio work?' said Dad. He had a regular weekday morning show on Radio Eireann on which he'd play records by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and so on as well as singing himself with a live band. 'It's a good income and popular enough to last a long time yet.'

  For the moment, at least, his argument won the day and Mum appeared to drop the idea.

  In October 1960, Bernie was born. She's always been petite with short blonde hair worn in a bob and bright blue eyes. She looked very similar to Linda, the sister immediately above her in age, although Linda is taller and a bigger build. Bernie was laid back as a child and less outgoing than Linda, although she won't take any nonsense from anyone. Having said that, she's the type of person who loves everybody and wants everybody to love her. She can sing like the rest of us, but she's also turned into a terrific actress.