The Real Mrs. Brown: The Authorised Biography of Brendan O'Carroll Read Online Free Page B

rarity; people often presumed the parents didn’t get on.
    Most of the kids who roamed happily in their hordes around Finglas wore regulation plastic shoes, and when the plastic wore out, the shoes were filled with linoleum inserts. Most young people, especially girls, stayed only until they were old enough to move abroad to find employment.
    The O’Carroll household in the early 1960s was a little different from every other in Finglas, however, in that it had a telephone; Maureen O’Carroll insisted on that.
    And it was a happy household – thanks, to a great extent, to the laughing, energetic youngest child. But it’s often the saddest memories that stick in the mind.
    ‘My earliest memory of Daddy was not a nice one. It’s of him half dragging, half trying to carry me as I screamed and cried, the tears streaming from my eyes like a waterfall. I had scarlet fever and he was taking me into hospital. I now know that I was just three years old.
    ‘We were driven to hospital in a friend’s – Ina’s – car. When I came out of hospital my dad had bought me a little puppy, which I called Tip. What I do know is I never got into Ina’s car again.
    ‘Other than that traumatic memory, I don’t remember much about my dad. I remember how he would balance his right heel on his left knee when sitting, and how he would lie me with my arse in the triangle it made and my head on his knee. He would then puff away, watching the Saturday afternoon wrestling, cheering on Mick McManus or Billy Two Rivers, all the while tapping his left foot to make a rocking motion, putting me asleep. That triangle felt like a very safe place to be.’
    Michael, Eilish and Brendan were the youngsters in the family, and the rest began to fly the coop, with the females all moving to England or Canada. Phil joined the RAF, aged 14.
    ‘I recall once coming upon my father and my mother embracing as she cried. It was the night before my sister Fiona, Finbar’s twin, then eighteen, was to emigrate to Canada. I entered the dim hallway from the toilet. Daddy was holding Mammy in a big hug and Mammy was sobbing.
    ‘“I don’t want her to go, Gerry,” she was pleading as he held her tightly and rubbed his hand on her back.
    ‘“I know, love, but you have to let them fly, you must.”
    ‘Then the weirdest thing happened. Daddy noticed me standing watching and he pushed Mammy away, as if I had caught him in some compromising position.
    ‘“Up to bed, you young man!” he bellowed. So I did. Young man? I had to have been maybe five.’
    Brendan continued to be Maureen’s Special One throughout her life. He possessed the ability to make his mammy laugh loudest. She’d take him to see films and Brendan would cry with infectious laughter, and she was delighted.
    Maureen adored this funny little boy with the amazing imagination, and she was the first to recognise his talent. He spent ages drawing, but he’d also attach a story to his drawings. ‘That man with the rifle, well, he’s got a friend who was shot . . .’
    And, being a teacher, she loved his ability to learn.
    ‘I can remember back when I was five, she would sit me on the dinner table, look me in the face, pinch my cheek and say, “You can be anything you want to be.” I grew up believing, “Oh yes, I can. I can fly.”’ As Michael McHugh had once said to his daughter.
    Yet, Maureen hadn’t morphed into an Earth Mother after his arrival. Even though she had lost her seat in the Dáil (and suffered reduced status and income), she still had great fights to win, battling for women’s rights such as having the word ‘illegitimate’ removed from birth certificates.
    Fiona O’Carroll recalls being at school, listening to other girls talk about their mammies doing regular household chores on certain days of the week, and she’d be wishing hers was the type who did the usual things, like the laundry on a Monday.
    Not Maureen O’Carroll.
    ‘Her attitude was, the only thing you can