Writing is a peculiar business.
There I was, aged twenty-four, newly married and sitting in a whitewashed room in Africa, swags of bougainvillea tapping against the mosquito screens, writing about nuns, boys, boarding school and Ireland.
It was 1973, and I told no one, not even my brand new husband, what I was up to. I’d done enough time in McDaids, The Bailey, Davy Byrne’s, seen enough novels-in-the-making talked into oblivion over hot whiskies, to be wise to that one. Oh yeah.
In ‘silence, exile and cunning’ I tapped away on my little aquamarine Olivetti and, manuscript completed, tied it up in a brown paper and string parcel in the post office in Dar Es Salaam, and sent it off to (impossibly faraway) London. A few weeks later a contract arrived from Michael Joseph. My tale of nuns and Ireland, boys and broken hearts, was going to be published.
Wow.
In Africa I was learning feminism backwards, frequently with rage attached. My brand new husband’s recounting of sexual adventures, did not mean sauce for the goose being equally okay for the gander. Definitively not.
Outwardly I did all the things the ‘Sisters’ would have approved of – I had my own job, I didn’t do his laundry, I talked the equality talk. Inwardly I was confused, angry, hurt. How could Prince Charming turn out to be such a bastard?
Unintentionally, I was living the reality of my heroine in
Fathers Come First.
Looking back now, forty-two years later (forty-two!), it seems unbelievable that we convent-educated ‘Nice Girls’ were sent out into the world in such a state of naivety.
And, while Feminism had arrived in Ireland in the 1970s, it seemed few people actually believed in it. Feminism was a bit like bidets – all fine and good for a few ‘poshies’ in Dublin, but nothing to do with us ordinary people.
In real life it felt as if all of the rules favoured men. If a girl let a man (in truth usually a spotty boy) ‘have his wicked way’ on the first date i.e. touch her breasts, she was a whore. If a girl didn’t let a guy touch her she was a ‘frigid Brigid’. If a girl rang a guy after a date, she was ‘fast’. If the guy didn’t ring the girl back after a date, she was suicidal.
All the power in the world seemed vested in men, with the only access route to that power via men.
The men had the jobs, the money, the cars, the bank accounts.
We had sensationally short mini skirts (Is that a pelmet you’re wearing? my darling Dad asked one sunny morning), and lots of feminist attitude, but in terms of worldly wisdom we were largely clueless.
What fun it would be to go back and tell my heroine Lizzie in Fathers that all will be well.
Oh Yes indeedy.