I wrote Fathers Come First sitting in a whitewashed bedroom in Tanzania, bougainvillea tapping at the window screens while I bashed away on my portable green Olivetti. For two hours every (early) morning I closed Africa – its throb and heat, its whistling cicadas, and lizards the size of Rottweilers – out, and zoomed inwards and back, to 1960s Ireland.
To big, unforgiving stone convents where we comely lasses of the upper and middle classes were in training to be Nice Girls (ie bitches), to bizarre sex advice from the nuns for dates with the opposite sex – “as soon the key goes in the ignition the mortal sin begins”, to freedom, to boyfriends, to modelling, to more boyfriends, finally to Mr Right himself, and disaster.
Dear o dear.
I told nobody what I was up to. Not even my brand new husband. Barely even myself. I’d learnt that lesson at least in the (in)famous literary pubs of Dublin, the Bailey, McDaids, Davy Byrnes; those who talk about writing a book never actually write one.
Early each morning, when brand new husband had four-wheeled up the dirt road and off to the UNDP offices (7.30am and already baking), I sat at the desk cum dressing table, tap, tap, tapping. My two hours done, I leapt onto my little green motorcycle and ripped off into the town centre and the offices of the Daily News where I worked on features.
When I’d finished my manuscript, my heroine Lizzie having achieved her denouement, I wrapped the typed pages up in a brown paper and string parcel and sent it off by post to London. To be fair, brand new husband was genuinely impressed when my agent airmailed back six weeks later to say Michael Joseph wanted to publish. Impressed that I’d written a novel. Impressed that I’d told no one. And really impressed Michael Joseph was going to publish. Wow. We drank beers and ate crisps with a friend in the local beach bar to celebrate, the cicadas and bull frogs going absolutely apeshit in the bush crowding in all around.
But why was I writing a novel, and why on the beautiful east coast of Africa, in a suburban flat complex in Dar es Salaam, was I writing about Ireland? And, why was I writing about that Ireland?
The Ireland I had just left was in the throes of some of the most triumphant (and tumultuous) years for women. The Irish Women’s Liberation Movement (IWLM), of which I was a founding member. had led to extraordinary social upheaval, and concrete social developments for women – the contraception debate was propeprly opened up, the Rape Crisis Centre founded, a hostel for “battered wives” opened and the myriad laws and social practices that discriminated against women were all given a thoroughly good whacking. The Forty Foot was invaded by Irish Women Unite. Neary’s snug was invaded by Nell and co. The marriage bar in the civil service, the hire purchase restrictions (everywhere), the right of a married woman to her children and her home, allowances for widows, single mothers and “deserted wives” were all being fought for – and mostly won. The Women’s Movement in 1970s Ireland – all factions included – dragged Ireland into the twentieth century, with thousands of women from all walks of life and of all ages joining enthusiastically in the struggle.
Meantimes, out in Africa, I was living a thoroughly schizophrenic existence. At the UN parties I was the wild young feminista from Ireland. At home I was often confused and angry. How could Prince Charming turn out to be such a bastard?
Outwardly I was doing everything the "Sisters" back home would have approved of. I had a job, I didn't wash his socks, I kept up my subscription to Spare Rib, but when he accosted me for having a brief (and very lovely) affair, I didn't walk out the door saying, tarah mate. No, I did not. I was learning what Simone de Beauvoir called "the existentialist dilemma of absolute freedom vs. the constraints of circumstance".
Or the reality that men still held most of the power in the world; and in the home.
There was another nasty little truth that I couldn’t yet face, that I had married Prince Charming not only because he was the most beautiful, intelligent, irreverent, sexual creature I had ever even dreamed of, but also because he had some of that power and rather than have the guts (and conviction) to go out and make my own power, I thought I’d get a share in his.
O, the labyrinths of insecurity and inequality.
Now, 40 years later, Prince Charming and his very, very objectionable self thankfully well gone, my wonderful children Chupi and Luke both successfully adult and happy, my Fathers Come First story, bashed out in that whitewashed room in Africa, has just, extraordinarily, been republished as a modern classic by the Lilliput Press.
Treble wows.
Of course I wrote Fathers because I wanted to see if I could (write a novel). Perhaps subconsciously I also wrote it as a sort of prequel to the domestic scene unfolding; a palimpsest for the marital present I couldn't quite get a handle on.
And I wrote it because I'm a writer. To see Fathers back in print with its gorgeous new cover and clean-as-a-whistle layout, is joy unalloyed. The fact that it's brought up the past for a bit of spring cleaning is welcomed. In these times of 24/7 waterfalls of digital information crashing through our lives every moment of every day, a book is a delightfully solid package. A time capsule holding a record of what happened then. With clues to why.
Please, enjoy!
Fathers Come First by Rosita Sweetman is published by The Lilliput Press. Sweetman's others works include On Our Knees: Ireland 1972 and On Our Backs (1979)
