THE BROWNE CHILDREN WERE AS DIVERSE as it was possible to be. Although they had been loved almost equally by Agnes and ignored equally by Redser, they each developed an individual personality.
Mark, the eldest at fourteen years of age, was the apple of his mother’s eye. Like a lot of Dublin first-born children, he spent his early years living with his granny. A big, strong lad, Mark was not afraid of hard work. He loved to fetch and carry, and would do anything that he thought would please his mother. Mark was never to have his mother to himself as he grew up, with babies arriving in the house year after year after year. This he considered normal, and from the time he was six years of age, Mark was changing nappies and cleaning up after his younger brothers and sister. With the younger ones constantly pestering him, Mark never really appreciated babies. That was until after the gap between 1957-1964, when Agnes, for the first time in Mark’s life, was not pregnant. He enjoyed this time and marvelled at how beautiful his mother was without the bump she always seemed to have. Then, of course, in September 1964 along came Trevor, an unexpected interruption in Mark’s life, whom Mark hated before he was born, but once home Mark doted upon. For the first time, Mark really felt like a big brother. Now with the death of Redser, Mark would have to fill the vacancy of ‘Man of the House’. In many ways Mark was ready for it.
The Jarro had no such thing as a playground. There were no specific areas for children to go and entertain themselves, with the result that children made their own areas and their own entertainment. There was no park in The Jarro, so football was played on the streets. Two piles of coats would be put down for goals and the goalkeeper’s area estimated by the players. Each player, of course, had his own idea of distance, so whether the ‘keeper was inside or outside his area gave rise to the most animated of arguments, and even punch-ups. With England winning the World Cup the previous year and World Cup Willie instilling a fever in young Dublin boys, football occupied most of the boys’ time. Matches would be played in every lane, back street or main road, at all times of the day. Mark loved soccer and now at fourteen he was Captain of the City Celtic Under Fifteens football team. He was ‘football mad’. When he wasn’t working at one of his part-time jobs, Mark trained for or played football. Up to now that was his whole life.
Dermot, on the other hand, preferred boxing. The local curate, Father Quinn, had set up The Jarro Boxing Club, or the ‘Back Street Bashers’ as they called themselves, and Dermot was one of its first members. Dermot was not a tall lad, but for his size he was strong and had a heart like a lion. He was one of Father Quinn’s star boxers. Inside the ring or outside, Dermot was renowned as a great scrapper. Even boys some years senior to Dermot would be wary of taking on this little tiger.
Frankie preferred neither boxing nor soccer, but just liked hanging around with the local gurriers, the ‘ne’er do wells’. Frankie was one of those kids who had the knack of getting everybody into trouble but never getting into trouble himself. He would lead from behind, always coming out of tricky situations with his hands spotlessly clean, while those around him paid the price. It was clear from an early age that Frankie Browne would end up either a millionaire or in prison.
In The Jarro, the girls played skipping or chasing, and their agility at both was surprising. During daylight hours, chasing was for girls only, but in the evenings it was played by both girls and boys and became ‘kiss-chasing’. The rules of kiss-chasing were simple: the boys would chase the girls and when a girl was caught she must kiss the boy that caught her. Girls who were champion runners during the day ran a little less fast at night, depending, of course, on who was doing the chasing. Mind you, there were some girls who could walk around at a snail’s pace and never be caught!
Mark and Dermot were good chasers – both were handsome young boys and had no trouble catching any girl they chose to chase. Frankie never played. He preffered to spend his evenings playing poker with the other gamblers under the street lamp. He was a good poker player and rarely lost, which naturally made him unpopular. Rory liked kiss-chasing but found himself confused – he never knew whether to chase with the boys or run with the girls. Often, he simply gave up and went home to play with his dress dolls.
In every family there are children with minor afflictions, and, unfortunately for Dermot’s twin brother Simon, he had them all. On top of a stammer he had a lazy eye, with the result that when playing kiss-chasing Simon would seem to be looking one way and running the other and when he did catch a girl, by the time he got out: ‘Gi, gi, gi, gi, gimmie a kiss,’ the girl he had caught had got bored and gone off. To solve his lazy eye problem the eye doctor in the clinic had given Simon a pair of glasses with a leather patch over one eyepiece, but instead of straightening out his eye Simon now turned his head sideways, which gave the impression that he was hard of hearing, which he wasn’t. If he went to the local shop on errands for his mother, Simon would turn his head sideways to the assistant when asked what he wanted, and sta, sta, sta, stammer out his request. Simon spent his early childhood with shop assistants roaring at him and talking to him in sign language, thinking he was deaf.
Cathy was the only girl in the family and, unlike a lot of single girls in big families, Cathy wasn’t a tomboy. She was dainty, pleasant and terribly pretty, if a little unimaginative. For imagination she depended on her best friend – another Cathy, Cathy Dowdall. It was Cathy Dowdall who came up with ideas, like the one she had of collecting door-to-door for a wreath for the late Mrs Smith. The fact that Mrs Smith was alive and well didn’t bother Cathy Dowdall. The two girls collected two pounds and ten shillings and had a rare ould time for a couple of weeks.
These were the children of Agnes and (the late) Redser Browne. Through size alone the family was tightly knit. They would fight like cats and dogs at home, and call each other names, but outside the house they stuck together like glue. The rule in the Browne family was: ‘You hit one, you hit seven.’ Since March twenty-ninth and Redser’s demise, little had changed in the Browne house. If anything, the house was less tense, and for a short time the children enjoyed being the ‘poor little orphans’ of The Jarro. But that soon wore off and life went back to as near-normal as possible. Pity was short-lived in an area that faced tragedy from day to day.