The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll (5 page)

‘“Let me tell you, Brendan, if you have only enough money for two cups of coffee in a café, go into the best hotel and spend it on
one
. From the first you will leave full of coffee, from the second you will leave like a king.”’

Gerry O’Carroll helped with the kids as much as he could. But he seemed to be cursed by continual illness.

‘When I was still seven, but only just, I remember standing in a corridor of the Richmond Hospital in Dublin with Mammy. We were waiting to be joined by my father. The hospital was a creepy old place. I expected to see Florence Nightingale scamper across the corridor, lamp held in front of her.

‘There were moans and groans coming from somewhere and I was very, very scared. I squeezed a little tighter on my mammy’s kid-gloved hand. Not for the first time in my life, nor the last, Mammy calmly said to me, “Relax Brendan. There is nothing to fear here.”

‘So I did. Then a figure arrived from a doorway. A skeleton of a man. It was my daddy. He was wearing his tartan dressing gown, but it was wrapped around him in such a way that the side pocket was at the front. I looked at Mammy and she smiled at me, her loosening grip signalling to me to go to him. So I did. He stooped, and instead of picking me up as he would usually do, he hugged me as I stood on tiptoe.

‘“My God, you are getting so big,” he said, smiling.

‘He had no teeth. Daddy never had teeth. He had had them all taken out, as was the fashion in those days, and had replaced them with a set of dentures. He wore the dentures for a few days but abandoned them. He was also lying. I was not getting big. I was the smallest boy in my class, in the school; probably the smallest seven-year-old in the world.

‘I don’t remember too much more about my dad. I think it’s because the memories I have of him are of seeing him looking ill. And it’s not hard to see why I would have blocked them out.’

The smallest seven-year-old still needed space to grow.

‘Mum and Dad slept in separate rooms. How they had ten kids is beyond me. They must have had an extension cord.’

Brendan recalls his dad used to sleep with the door of the coal shed under his mattress. Gerry O’Carroll reckoned his bad back needed support. But the back pain was the result of something more sinister, which would be discovered two years down the line.

What’s confusing about Maureen O’Carroll is why a woman who had so much political ambition would burden herself with so many children.

Yes, Irish Catholics traditionally bred like rabbits. But why choose to have so many? Was Maureen out to create Walton’s Mountain in Stoneybatter?

Some years later, Maureen answered that question when put delicately to her by youngest daughter, Eilish.

‘What woman in her right mind chooses to have ten kids, Eilish?’

‘So why have them?’

‘Well, for all my education, I was very ignorant. I wanted my first child, the rest of you were mistakes. Not that I would send any of you back. No! Every child brings its own welcome. You see, I just didn’t know I had a choice. We didn’t have access to contraception other than rubber johnnies, and whilst we tried them occasionally, we felt so guilty. Besides, it wasn’t worth the bollocking we got from the priest at confession. The only form of contraception open to us was the rhythm method, or practise self-denial.

‘Well, the rhythm method failed me nine times and, as for self-denial, what a load of bollix that was. And your father and I enjoyed our sex. We had little else. We had little money. We couldn’t even afford a babysitter. Our only pleasure was ten Woodbines at the weekend, the odd bottle of stout – and sex.’

It was a speech so bold and honest it could have been made by Agnes Brown herself.

Brendan had certainly been born in a crowd. Now, he was determined to stand out, succeed. Whatever it took. It might have come from being the youngest in the family, the need to have a voice. But then the other younger kids such as Eilish and Michael didn’t have the same need to be heard. It seemed Brendan’s DNA was different from the rest of the O’Carroll kids’. He was enigmatic, challenging and imaginative right from the moment he was born.

He had an energy and a smile that his family warmed to. He did everything at double speed.

He wanted to achieve everything, to make people laugh, to be the centre of attention, to be the very best at anything he turned his hand to.

‘I always had an earner. I sold sticks door-to-door, little bundles of kindling. I would spend the week gathering wood from factories around Finglas, then chop them up and bind them in bundles of six. By Saturday my barrow, which I made myself, was full, and I sold them at two bunches for a penny. I also washed windows, I’d clean shops. I always earned, and of course every penny went to Mammy.’

And his mammy was delighted at Brendan’s efforts to improve their lot. But not at all cost.

Jail Time

BRENDAN’S school was full of tough kids. But he didn’t become the class clown in order to survive. He might have been the smallest boy in the class, but only in terms of height.

‘I wasn’t one of those stereotypical kids that did all the funny stuff to keep the bullies away. I was well able to take care of myself, the bullies stayed away anyway.’

Meanwhile, Maureen O’Carroll might not have spent endless hours teaching her youngest spelling and arithmetic. But she taught him to think.

‘When I was only nine years of age, my mother would ask my opinion. And I didn’t know the answer, so I’d start to read the newspapers, watch documentaries, anything so’s I could have one. While other kids were watching
Tom and Jerry
, I’d be watching the
Seven Days
news show. “Dear Santa, Please bring me an Almanac this year.”

‘I’d listen to her talk about political demographics. And she’d say things to me like, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat”, and I’d ask her to explain what this meant.

‘My brother Finbar was a magnificent footballer. And I remember going to see him play once with my mother and heard her say, “Sure, your brother has natural talent.” And I said, “What do you mean by natural talent?” And she went on to say it was something you can’t learn, you can’t analyse it, you just dance to it.

‘Ever since then I’ve realised if something is funny, don’t analyse it. Just go with it. But these words of wisdom that passed my way were like nuggets. I hung on her every word.’

As did many people. Maureen now worked for Dublin Corporation, helping to establish a shelter for homeless women. But it was Gerry O’Carroll’s support that enabled her to do this. He was the glue that kept the family together. And theirs was a true love story. When Maureen arrived off the bus at 8.20 in the morning having worked during the night at the refuge, her husband would have her porridge on the steamer. She’d have his dinner ready when he came in at 6 p.m.

And, with the older offspring gone, the couple had more of a chance to enjoy their relationship. They’d go into the kitchen, smoke and talk. And if the kids wandered in for a cup of tea, they’d get frowning looks, exactly like those that Agnes often gives to her kids now. But Gerry showed increasing signs of ill-health. Visits to the doctors became more frequent. He had been hospitalised several times with respiratory problems. Maureen worried, and hoped for the best.

Brendan, thankfully, didn’t see much of this angst. Or at least he chooses to remember the happier times in Finglas.

‘I remember my brother Phil on his visits home from the RAF. He played trombone in the RAF band.

‘I remember my sister Martha’s wedding and the reception after it in a marquee in our back garden. She forced me to wear short trousers she had made herself. Royal blue, they were. And she cut my hair into a Mohican. I was mortified.’

There wasn’t a lot of money around, but Maureen O’Carroll was to the manner born. When her older sons moved out of the house, the young footballers would return to Finglas to play football, and afterwards enjoy a beer in the Cappagh House pub, near to the O’Carroll home. For the sake of convenience, they’d park their cars outside their mother’s house and go and have a drink.

Maureen would be seething that her sons hadn’t invited her along. It wasn’t because they didn’t want their mammy around. It was because she would only drink cognac.

‘If you only drink cognac, you can still keep your wits about you,’ she argued in her defence. The reality was, she was not a Guinness type of lady. She liked the expensive. And her youngest son didn’t grow up hankering after bottles of stout either. He liked to spend time at nights with ‘Mr Smirnoff’. Brendan’s dad had to pay the Electricity Supply Board every month. And, given the expense, he’d go round turning off the lights on a regular basis. But Maureen would argue the kids would go blind from not having the light to do their homework. Go into Brendan’s home today and the lights burn bright constantly. He never wants dark days to befall him again.

It’s fair to say that the O’Carroll house was constantly chaotic. Football boots were dumped in doorways to the point that the girls were reluctant to bring friends home. But they did, anyway. Maureen loved having people around. The more the merrier. Maureen’s boys were always her priority, though. Sunday dinner would go on hold if the boys were playing football. Maureen would often quote Shakespeare, paraphrasing it with lines such as ‘My sons, my sons, my kingdom for my sons.’ And she wasn’t joking. But her youngest son, the Special One, was the centre of her world.

While Brendan joined his older brothers in playing football, he was the only one writing poetry, some so clever that Eilish, who left school at 12 to attend commercial college, would type it up and show it to her friends.

‘Look,’ she’d yell out, ‘this kid is nine! He’s a genius.’

He was also well-mannered.

‘Manners are very important to me. That comes from my own upbringing, from my mother. I could murder six nuns in my own home, but if I said “Please” and “Thank you” and opened the gate for them when they were coming in, my mother would forgive me anything.’

Perhaps Maureen O’Carroll was a little too forgiving of her youngest son. He had been an altar boy since the age of eight, but outside of the chapel, and the home, he was becoming a little feral.

‘I was attracting some interest from the Garda Siochána, the police. I became a bit of a tearaway. Growing up in Finglas was tough so, in order to “fit in”, one had to accept the responsibility of a little petty crime from time to time.

‘I could drive by the time I was eight, and ours was the first call neighbours made if they happened to be locked out of their car or house. But I never stole a car or burgled a home in my life. However, like all children then, I was partial to a little shoplifting.’

But there would be a price to pay. When he was almost nine, a new supermarket finally opened in Finglas and Brendan, with a couple of pals, decided to check it out. Or rather they decided to attempt their very own version of
Supermarket Sweep
.

‘That 17 September 1964 was a beautiful sunny day. The day held much promise, for my treat every birthday was that Mammy would take me to Bewley’s Oriental Café, where I was allowed a cappuccino and two chocolate éclairs. It was exciting and today Mammy had me dress in my best clothes.

‘But not for the birthday treat. You see, before we could paint the town red, there was the little matter of a court case.

‘Let me explain. I had been caught – you always are – and I had on me a roll of Sellotape and a bicycle lock. I had nothing to stick, nor did I have a bike, so don’t ask me why I lifted them, I have no idea. They were there.’ (Maureen O’Carroll couldn’t afford to buy Brendan a bike, but the following Christmas his brother Michael, now working, saved all his money and bought his little brother the bike he craved. ‘And it wasn’t even stolen,’ Brendan would boast to his friends.)

‘Yet, the court case could have been avoided. My mammy had enough pull to get it overlooked and for the store to accept an apology. But she had a different thought. She knew that the crime was so petty that I would only be scolded by the judge and given the benefit of the Probation Act.

‘And she truly believed the day in court would frighten the daylights out of me and deter any future crimes. It was a good plan.

‘But what she had not figured into the equation was a judge whose appointment she had objected to. I was sent down. Three months in a reform school in County Laois.

‘It was a strange day. We left the courtroom that morning, Mammy smiling. Outside I asked her what had happened. She brushed the question off with a “Don’t worry about it.” So we headed for the bus into town to celebrate my birthday.

‘What an amazing day we had. We laughed and laughed that day. I was always able to make Mammy laugh heartily and nothing ever gave me more pleasure. In Bewley’s, they would normally bring to the table a three-tiered plate that had on it two cream slices, two cream buns, two cream puffs, and two chocolate éclairs. But not today. I saw Mammy whisper something to the waitress, the woman smiled and the plate arrived with eight chocolate éclairs on it. I can still see the picture in my mind, the waitresses in their black uniforms with white lace headdress and aprons, standing in a circle singing “Happy Birthday, dear Brendan” and before me
just
éclairs.

‘Mammy prompted me on until I had eaten every one of the eight. No problem. We then went to Barney’s, a slot machine and game palace. We played every game and in the photo booth we got our strip of shots done while Mammy howled with laughter. Today, these are the only remaining photos I have of the two of us together while in my childhood.