Sister Kyran (1912–2006)
8 Davisville Road, London W12 — June 1963?
The only thing I knew for certain about this photo is that my great aunt Sister Kyran is holding the baby. When I first published this I wrote:
Not sure who the beautiful young woman is. Possibly one of my mum’s cousins over from the US — with their fancy colour photography! Okay, America, you were way ahead of us but there’s this band coming called The Beatles…
Then extraordinary happenstance my Mum’s cousin, Nancy, recognised herself (see comment) — leading to a lovely, if bittersweet postscript to our family story.
Mary Theresa Beirne was born into a tiny three room cottage in one of the poorest and remotest regions of an Ireland still more than a decade short of independence. According to the 1911 Census there were nine sharing the accommodation which would never have running water. Her early life followed a familiar trajectory: convent schoolgirl to convent to convent school teacher. This new life would lead to a new name: Sister Kyran. It would also involve a boat train from Carrick-on-Shannon Station.
My mother — also Mary Theresa Beirne later made the same journey. She had been a star student at the same school as my aunt but was not a happy camper there. At seventeen she faced the austere set-menu of austere career choices open to rural Irish women without a religious vocation. She chose London where she became a switchboard operator in 1947.
Her aunt, now Sister Kyan, was apparently a pretty strict chaperone. At one point Mum began seeing a Charlton Athletic supporter but Sister K vetoed the budding romance — not on footballing grounds (Charlton were much better then) but because the potential suitor who could not tick the ‘Practising Catholic’ box on his application form.
Tough on my mum and the south Londoner, but those were the rules — and only the big guy in Rome could change them. Almost forty years later Sister K asked me if my then girlfriend was ‘at least a Christian’.
Not exactly, Sister, I answered bravely.
We all loved Sister K. Yes, she was a little bossy (clue: she was a headmistress) and (ahem) a touch unyielding with regard to Church doctrine — but she was also very kind and stayed loyal to us through the darkest times.
I should declare an interest here — if the young man from Charlton had stuck around I wouldn’t have made it to the starting gate. And I was named after my great aunt (!) give or take a Y and an E.
That must be Jacqui in Sister Kyran’s arms — how old is she? Seven/eight weeks?
It bothers me that I can’t positively identify my sister in this photo. I have the same problem with what I think is the only surviving pic from mum’s childhood. Personal photos were of course much rarer in what my daughter laughingly dismisses as the Olden Golden Days. Not that Mum would have been posting Instagram snaps for the gang showing what went down on the maternity ward. She was not a selfie-stick person.
Did my mother take the photo? She certainly would have preferred to be on that side of the camera. I have the distinct impression that she only agreed to pose when it was unavoidable and was skillful at slipping out of the frame when it was not.
I have limited material to work when trying to construct Mum’s life in pictures.
I have literally one photo from her first twenty eight years — but it is a beauty. She is laughing impishly at the camera, which I think is being held by her Uncle Jimmy, visiting from America. Her dad is mysteriously dressed in a three-piece suit — must have been a Sunday
Then there’s her wedding album, in which she looks gorgeous and a few stiffly staged shots when Jacqui and I were toddlers. A couple of years ago her cousin Margie sent me two fantastic images from a family reunion in 1963 — but that was the last time she happily faced a camera.
After that Mum ghosts out, with not a single image from the last thirteen years of her life.
Think my visual memory is poor — not an uncommon male trait — but I am usually very good at recognising and recalling voices. Not when it comes to Mum, though. Nor Jacqui. Those tapes in my audio memory bank have been wiped clean.
There is no written evidence to help me, either. No letters or notes from either of them. All I have is the photos and Mum made sure she didn’t appear in many of those. But enough to draw her closer to me.
