Even in a comfortable South-Dublin suburb in neutral Ireland the ending of the war was a significant occasion. It is hard to imagine any corner of the globe left completely unaware of, or unmoved by, the confrontation of Allied and Axis powers. In Ireland the war was officially known as “The Emergency” and I clearly remember specific indications of that emergency in our cul-de-sac.

At the entrance to the cul-de-sac, on the near side of the footbridge over the railway, was what was known as “the horse box”. That indeed is probably how it began life but I knew that behind its padlocked doors were all sorts of exciting things like steel helmets, grey blankets, maps, fire extinguishers, a stirrup-pump and a hose-reel. I got a look in one day when Paddy Carroll’s father had some business in the horse box. My mother said it was part of the ARP, which I understand to be air-raid precautions, initials linked in my mind to the small rubber gas mask I was given and a much more interesting book about fires showing people in gas masks brushing flames into buckets.

On the far side of the railway, beside the footbridge, concrete walls enclosed a large space which was kept filled with water. I was never tall enough to look into it and had difficulty in seeing it from the footbridge. My mother told me it was kept full of water in case firemen might need extra supplies. She often got annoyed when bigger boys excitedly trying to throw stones and bits of branches down into the reservoir made it difficult to cross the bridge.

The war also meant there were very few motor cars around. Apparently this was due to the shortage of petrol. There was a car in the garage beside our house but it was immobilised on concrete blocks and I had to be lifted up to see into it. Doctors and others seemed to have cars, some with funny looking stove-type gadgets on the back and others with what looked like a big square balloon on the roof. Apparently these cars were gas rather than petrol driven.

Two of the families in the cul-de-sac always seemed to be able to use their cars. These were the already mentioned Carrolls and their next-door neighbours the Caveys. Both these families had children around my age and I was always curious to see inside their houses. The Carroll’s house was very like our own except that it had a huge rick of turf piled up in the front drive to supply the fireplaces in the house. The rick was almost like another house compared with the two crude lean-to sheds covering the turf stocked in the corner of our own back garden. The Cavey’s house was quite different, made of cement rather than brick and with a flat roof. They had very big cars and had to have the gate pillars leading to their garage widened to let in one of them. In their house they were very particular to do what was described as “blessing themselves” each time they went in the front door. My friends had been told I didn’t have to do this because I was a Protestant.

That was the backdrop to what I remember as the end of the war. I can still see not just the young Carrolls and Caveys, but the Blenerhassets from next door and the Barrons from further down on the opposite side of the cul-de-sac running around shouting and jumping because something big had happened.

Knowing now that Mr Carroll was already a senior police officer, that Mr Cavey was of a prominent motor, tea and wine importing family, that Mr Blenerhasset was on the senior management of the Irish Independent newspaper and that Mr Barron was in a Jewish legal firm, I can imagine the adult emotions in the rich diversity of that street.

The end of the emergency meant that the car in the garage was taken off its blocks as quickly as possible. My father, who had a reputation for being an extraordinarily hard-working solicitor, often took Florence, John and myself with him when he went to visit clients on Saturdays and Sundays. My supposedly exceptional sense of direction and my knowledge of Dublin have their origins in those weekends. That was the bonus. I still remember the excruciating boredom of these business trips which served not just city and suburban clients, but clients as far north as Sutton and the Baily and as far south as Bray.

It must have been very difficult for Florence to keep two little boys distracted while her ailing husband spent what must have seemed like hours and hours with his clients. It was easier when the whole family was invited in and there were interesting things to see or other children to meet. I remember seeing my first stuffed birds under a glass cloche in a house on the side of Howth, my first caravan of carved wooden camels in the lounge of the Parkgate Street Hotel near the Phoenix Park, and meeting the Hammond children in Bray, when my father must have been advising on the launching of the Maple Leaf Ballroom. (Little did I know that one of the Hammond girls was at one time the best friend of the girl from Bray I would marry.)

I remember distinctly what was probably my first visit to father’s office; in Fleet Street over Bewley’s Oriental Café. The office had a large window with a view into Westmoreland Street and I recall being held up to the window to see the cavalry passing in what must have been the inaugural procession of President Sean T. O’Kelly.

Read on: 1946 – Father’s Death