As a widowed mother, Florence’s first instinct was to do everything she could to ensure that her two sons would have a normal upbringing and to have, as far as possible, all the opportunities available to the children of comparable two-parent families in the same social stratum.

Like the cobbler notorious for having holes in his shoes, William John Keery, solicitor, had apparently left no will. However, he had left sufficient money so that, even after some of the avoidable inroads of enormous death duties, there would be funds adequate to provide comfortably for his widow and two sons, at least to the completion of their education.

As things would turn out, whenever it looked as if additional funds would be useful – but more, I think, because she wanted to get out a bit into the world on her own – Florence always seemed able to take up work, particularly as a secretary/receptionist for well-to-do doctors. But such steps, particularly her re-marriage, were unimaginable in the immediate aftermath of Father’s death. At that time in Protestant South County Dublin the working mother was an unknown phenomenon unless you were an exotic like an actress or a lady doctor. The married teacher, for example, was unheard of.

John and I are immensely thankful and proud that Florence had the courage and tenacity to see through her programme for us. We know she saw us as an investment, but she never had need of such until relatively late in her life – and even then she always had some financial resources of her own.

I never told John of a rather strained exchange I once overheard between Florence and her sister Gwen. Gwen seemed to be suggesting to Florence that her standard of living, particularly her expenditure on quality food and holidays, could not be sustained indefinitely with all the potential expenditure on our education ahead. Florence had replied that her intention was to have nothing but the best for John and myself and that she reckoned that she could provide that at least up to the completion of our schooling. She more than achieved her goal, and survived such criticism from family and friends. That overheard conversation however, together with the sense of responsibility of an elder son, which I quickly acquired rather naively and precociously, meant that throughout my schooling I felt obliged to see myself as a candidate for prizes and scholarships.

In the immediate aftermath of Father’s death, I had a sense of being treated and spoiled. I remember at last travelling on the 12 bus from the top of Cowper Road to Nelson’s Pillar on O’Connell Street. Florence helped me up on to the open platform at the back of the double-decker and we sat at a window on the lower deck inside. The conductor was friendly, smiling and helpful and shouted out where you were each time you came to a bus-stop, hitting a chrome bell-push on the wall of the boxed-in corner where he stood beside the stairs at the back of the entry platform. The bell instructed the driver, one bang for stop, two bangs for go. It was also the conductor’s job to collect the ticket fares, the differently priced and coloured tickets were printed on light cardboard and displayed on a type of clip-board.

Each ticket sold was torn off and punched in a chrome gadget making a ringing sound, which was part of the equipment hanging over the conductor’s shoulders or from his uniform. Payment produced a tremendous searching for change as the conductor rifled through the pouches of the worn leather bag hanging at his waist.

I learnt that the different colour tickets were a collector’s item. I soon knew to try to pick up as many as I could and how to fold them so that if linked together they made a chain like the pleats of a tiny concertina. The real fascination of the 12 bus route was, however, the introduction it provided to the essential geography of my childhood. Over the years the route changed as circumstances changed; the introduction of the No. 13 nearby, the tearing up of the railway line running behind Cowper Drive, and so on.

The route engraved in my mind brought the 12 bus down Cowper Road on the first leg of its journey to the pillar, Nelson’s Pillar, or rather a granite column from which a statue of the famous admiral looked out over the General Post Office from the centre of O’Connell Street, Dublin’s main thoroughfare. How many trips did it take to make me familiar with the route? How did the various memory linkages develop?

Basic geography is always important. There was the right turn from Cowper Road and Belgrave Square down to Ranelagh. Ranelagh Road was a busy street of drapers, grocers, newsagents, chemists, hairdressers, pubs and so on and the bus followed it past Johnston’s pharmacy, where the family seemed well known, to pass under another railway bridge where there was a Carmelite convent on the right and, up to the left, behind a small grass paddock, the line of terraced houses known as Manders Terrace where grandmother, Florence’s mother, lived at number 5. (The detailed knowledge I acquired of that part of the route was almost certainly due to the fact that I had often passed the same landmarks being pushed in my go-car on a more direct route.)

After Manders Terrace the excitement mounted. There was the painted galvanised iron of St. Columba’s Parochial hall where Father was said to have played billiards. There was the Charlemont Street bridge-crossing of the canal and St. Ultan’s Children’s Hospital. There was Camden Street with its Bleeding Horse pub and with Cavey the grocer facing Cavey the car dealer. The street was often like a vegetable market with women in black shawls shouting from behind piles of fruit stacked on boards balanced on top of huge wicker baskets with metal wheels that could be pushed like monster prams.

Leaving Camden Street, there was Jacob’s biscuit factory and then Aungier Street. where I remember my mother explaining the scene outside the big Catholic Church there. She told me there was a funeral at the church. People were filling a dark entrance where candles were burning. There was a long glass-panelled coach in the street that I learnt was a hearse. At each corner of the hearse and on the heads of the two glistening black horses standing impatient for action were high black plumes which my mother said were ostrich feathers. The coachman was sitting very upright at the front with a top hat and a tall whip. I didn’t ask, but I somehow knew that father’s funeral would not have been like that.

Next on the route came George’s Street, famous for Haffner’s sausages, Cassidy’s and Winston’s fabrics, Dockrell’s hardware and Pim’s furniture. Then it was right into Dame Street, turning left into Westmoreland Street between the Bank of Ireland and Trinity College onto a nice-sounding wood-block surface. Past Bewley’s and the glimpse of Father’s Fleet Street Office, over the Liffey by O’Connell Street bridge and there you were at the Pillar.

I loved bus expeditions; indeed any expedition, and I associated being happy with learning about things. That is probably why I remember so much of what I saw, learnt or read. The facts.

What always troubled me was my behaviour; I wanted to be good and to please, particularly because my father was dead.

In the first year following Father’s death there were three markedly traumatic occasions on which I was the central player. For two I would like to apologize to the universe. For the third, finding the truth – certainly not now possible – would bring the relief of knowing whether or not I was falsely accused.

The first was when, playing in the snow-covered cul-de-sac with one of the little metal shovels from a fire grate in the house, I came under fire from snowballs thrown by some of the other children. Seeing red, and roaring, I flailed after my assailants – hitting a small blonde girl who fell to the ice sliding and screaming. I still feel with shame the clunk of the metal against her trouser-covered hip.

The second was, when dared by the same children, I went to the two milk churns standing on the low cart from which a milkman delivered to all the houses on the street and opened the two taps so that milk streamed down blue grey on the concrete surface. I think mother had to pay for the spilt milk but all I can remember is the confusion in my head which made any explanation impossible.

I have no recollection of, nor explanation for, the third incident. I simply remember the horror and shame of being told by Miss Sweeney in her room at Mount Temple that I was a bold boy who had been responsible for knocking another pupil off her tricycle. Oh the black weight of the girl’s parents talking to Miss Sweeney and mother. And, oh, the anger I have always felt because they would not believe me when I said I had done nothing.

That was how I learnt that self-control and responsibility were truly matters for me and for me only. That was when I first felt the difference between right and wrong.

Read on: 1948 – A Wedding