Unfortunately, in our little town we didn’t have a great deal of access to books. We didn’t have a library. So, my mother decided at one point that that wasn’t fair either to her or to all the other inhabitants of Maghera. So, she decided she was going to start a lending library. And to do this, she contacted Belfast, our big city, and I don’t know how she did it, but she found a lending library that she could bring to Maghera. For tuppence a book, people could take out books that they wanted to read. So, it was great excitement. My father built her shelves along our hallway, and all these books were arranged. It was heavenly for me on vacations, because I could go along and pick out forbidden books. I would actually take them secretly up to bed with me.
But my mother’s library venture did not last very long, because she wasn’t a practical businesswoman. She was so happy to have everybody reading these great books that she would just pass them out without writing down who took them or where they were. So, they diminished and diminished and diminished. The shelves got emptier and emptier, and she would meet someone on the street – maybe red-haired Annie – and she would say, “Annie, didn’t I lend you one of my books?”
“Oh, no, no, no. I don’t have one of your books. Oh, if I had your book, as God is my witness, I would have brought it back to you.”
Well, then, we would go for a walk, and we would walk past Annie’s house, and her half-door would be open, and we’d look in, and there would be two or three of my mother’s books propping up legs of beds and legs of couches and everything else. So, that was a little bit of a failure.
But it’s a great memory that I have.
