My father's mother's line is the most unclear. My grandmother was variously called Rose or Mary by her relatives. She died when I was eight, in a year when my life was shaken up in various other ways. I remember her, barely, as a short, chain smoking old lady who lived with my aunts Maureen and Madeline just south of Belfast in a town called Carryduff. I don't remember liking her very much. I knew, from my Dad, she came originally from County Louth, in the Irish Republic. We also drove once to a town called Blackrock, just south of Dundalk, where my Dad spent part of the war after the Belfast blitz and my Uncle Liam deserted from some arm of the British military. (Not as bad as it sounds. My Uncle Jack was in the Fleet Air Arm (British Naval Air Service), was shot down and captured, and Liam, 17 and in a fit of zeal to rescue his brother, signed up. My grandmother was horrified, put the entire family in a car, and took them south of the border. There was a family connection
