Deirdre - My Irish Friend

The Beautiful Coast of Ireland

While we lived in Verona we lived an Italian life.  The children were going to Italian schools and our social life involved Italian friends.  I had one English-speaking friend. Let’s call her Deirdre. She was a sparkling dark-haired woman with chestnut eyes flecked with gold. We met at an American-British luncheon.  At that time there was an American military base near Verona including a school.  So there must have been many American families living in the town or on the base.  But I didn’t frequent them.

I remember Deirdre and I came out of the luncheon laughing together and exchanged phone numbers. A week or so later Deirdre invited me for tea.  She had two daughters who were older than my children.  Tall and gangly, they had long brown braids and dark eyes.  Deirdre was a strict mother, probably mimicking her Irish upbringing. The girls took my kids out to play on the balcony or downstairs to the open green areas between the apartment buildings.  We would sit in her kitchen, talk, drink strong tea and laugh and laugh.  Little by little the story of her life emerged.

Poetic picture of Ireland.

Deirdre was raised in a poor town in Ireland, one of a gaggle of kids. She was the eldest girl with one older brother.  From an early age she was responsible for her younger brothers and sisters.  The family had little money.  She once told me that her mother sent her to the store for 2 eggs.  When Deirdre came home with the eggs, her mom felt their heft, weighing them in her hands.  Then she said, “Take these back to the shop.  These aren’t fresh.  I want 2 fresh eggs.”  There wasn’t enough money for inferior eggs.

A village in Cork.

At 14, Deirdre went to work in a laundry.  She gave most of her earnings to her Mother and kept a small amount that she saved.  When she was 16 she ran away from home with another girl.  With her savings she bought a ferry ticket to Britain.  Their plan was to go to London and find her Uncle Joe.  Deirdre laughed at her naiveté.  She really had no clue how big London would be.  She thought she could find Uncle Joe by just walking down the street.

Deirdre landed a job in a hotel cleaning rooms. Life was exciting but she was ill-prepared for the  liberated London life.  Innocent and credulous she fell in and out of trouble. Once she drank too much and found herself in the street, her purse  gone. She was wooed by the handsome  assistant-manager of the hotel and found herself pregnant. Let’s call her lover Antonio.  He was in his 30s and Deirdre was barely 18.  Miraculously Antonio agreed to marry her although he continued to have a roving eye. He landed a job with a large European hotel chain and moved Deirdre to Verona with their baby. His family lived there; but he was often gone.  Antonio was moving up the corporate ladder and had posts in various hotels around Italy.  She knew that he had one affair after another but she stayed in Verona, comfortable in the bosom of his family.

Verona - Piazza Delle Erbe

One day I arrived and Deirdre was crying in the arms of her bachelor brother-in-law.  Antonio was in the hospital with a virulent form of bone cancer.  It seemed that it had progressed rapidly and he was dying.  Once I went with her to visit him.  He was moaning in pain.  Deirdre claimed that the hospital wouldn’t administer enough pain medication.  His family brought him bottles of Scotch to keep him drunk.

After Antonio died, Deirdre married her brother-in-law, a kind and gentle man.  She seemed happy with him; but some of her exuberance was gone.   Eventually they had a baby boy.  I hope that she lived happily ever after.  We didn't keep in touch after I moved away;  Deirdre wasn't one to write.  She was someone who lived in the moment.

I’ve thought that Deirdre’s life would make a nice novel or TV mini-series.