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       Our wedding day in Rossmore was just great.
       Canon Cassidy did the actual wedding bit, but the new curate, Father Flynn, was very helpful too. And we had a reception in the hotel, where people made speeches.
       My dad said that as far as he was concerned his beloved wife, who had been cured by St. Ann, was in this room with us to celebrate the day and I was the best son in the world and would be the best husband and indeed father too when that time came.
       I made a short speech and said that I wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. I wanted people to know that I knew that's what they said. But I was the luckiest knife. I had got everything I wanted all my life and I could ask for no more.
       And Clare said that she would like to make a speech. She knew it wasn't usual for the bride to speak but there was something she wanted to say.
       I had no idea what it was going to be.
       She stood up in her beautiful dress and said to everyone in the room that the drawers were full of sharp awful old knives. So many that she had almost despaired of opening a drawer again. And that then she had found me and her whole life turned around. And as I looked around the big room in the hotel I saw everyone was half crying as they clapped and cheered and it was simply the happiest day of my life . . .

Gold-Star Clare

    When I was at school at St. Ita's, Rossmore, I used to get the gold star every week.
       Once when I had the flu, another girl, my friend Harriet Lynch, got it but otherwise it was always mine.
       I used to take it off my school tunic every Monday morning and lay it back on the principal's desk and then an hour later, when the gold stars in each class were being read out, I would get it back again.
       It was a reward for a combination of good marks, good behavior and school spirit. You couldn't just get one for studying hard. No, you had to be an all-rounder, a balanced person, as they saw it.
       And it was easy, really, to make them see it like that. Because I liked being at school. I was in early and I left late. They had plenty of time to see me and my good school spirit in their environment. I mean, if you came from my home, any environment was preferable. Who wouldn't prefer to be at school than at home?
       It wasn't entirely my mother's fault. Not entirely.
       Women were different then, they did literally everything not to rock the boat, no matter how dangerous and unpleasant that boat was. Any marriage was better than no marriage, any humiliation was better than the ultimate humiliation of being an abandoned wife. They went up to St. Ann's Well to pray that things might get better but they didn't try to make them better themselves.
       And I wasn't the only child in the school that had trouble like that at home. There was a poor girl—Nora something—who was a bit soft in the head. In her case it was her grandfather who bothered her. And she got pregnant and she said that it was some fellow she had met at a dance, but apparently the fellow brought all his brothers and proved that he was never with her alone. And poor Nora went to the nuns, had her baby and gave it up for adoption and her grandfather went on living in that home. And they all knew. All the time. And said nothing.
       Like they knew about my uncle Niall in our home. And said nothing.
       I put a lock on my bedroom door and no one asked me why. They knew too well that my father's brother fancied me. But he owned most of the farm, so what could they do?
       I asked God a lot if he could stop Uncle Niall from trying to do these things. But God was busy back in those days or there were a lot of cases worse than mine, I suppose. The really hard thing was that they all knew and did nothing. They knew why I did my homework up at the school lest he approach me when the house was empty, and why I didn't come back until I was certain that my mother had come back from the creamery where she