THE last time I wrote about Kinsale, I was commenting upon the Blue Haven Hotel and I remarked upon the deaths of two of its most esteemed residents, Vivian, the sexton of St Mutlose, and old Mr Coe. Write about Kinsale again, and the themes remain the same for since then the Blue Haven has been named Egon Ronay Irish Hotel of the Year, and Peggy Green, one of the greatest stalwarts in the town has died. It is hard to think of Kinsale without her.
In many ways, Peggy was Kinsale. She was the good heart behind so much of the town, especially its Gourmet Weekend, in which she was indefatigable and omnipresent. The lost property office, the cloakroom, ticket sales, guided tours, boat booking, shark fishing, hotel room reservations, car parking, getting a table in a restaurant; there was nothing which she did not do.
Cheerful and kind
She was sleepless and cheerful and kind; and she was hearty too, but not in an irritating hockey sticks way, but in a good Irish country way. She came from domnitable stock. She found the good side to all adversity. She had a smile at all times, and was imperturbable through a hurricane, even while a tidal Wave might be sweeping half the town away and a forest fire raged on the landward side. Nothing troubled her. She was the master of all situations.
She was one of those people like Michael Collins - endless bits of paper about her person and in her pockets told a complete picture, but one she alone understood. Did she ever snap at people? I doubt it. She had the lovely quality of quiet control and infinite patience. On the one hand her wrath was something one would properly fear. On the other hand, there was no evidence that she was ever wrathful. She was authentically a kind person - the sort of person whose kindness is so essential to their being that to have made her angry would have been to violate her. One wanted to please her because she was good, and it would have been unbearable that anybody might ever do anything to displease her.
Cheeriness ran to her core. It was the way she was. She had a cheery physique, with an amplitude of bosom that not merely bespoke a good heart but was in itself comforting. Sometimes that large female chest at a certain time of life suggests bossiness - one envisages soup kitchens, the deserving poor, the dowager bustling into a humble cottager's dwelling distributing bibles and sound advice on mains drainage. But Peggy's handsome big bosom was more redolent of fun, of laughter, of the enjoyment of things physical.
A maternal woman
In fact she was proud of her bosom, as well she might be. She was a maternal woman, but there was a roguishness about her eye, and a soft bawdiness about her humour, that bespoke a sexual woman too, though it was many a year since she had been a young woman. But one always suspected that she enjoyed to the full the pleasures of life, in all their categories. And good for her. I suspect this side of her personality has not been talked about before in public. I see no reason why it should not be. She was a human being, and a bloody good one.
And as good as she was, she was discreet about her achievements, and sought no fame nor applause for what she did. It is typical of her modesty that The Irish Times has no photograph of her. Yet, she was the town; and the town was her. She and her brother, Gary Culhane, started the deep sea angling centre nearly 40 years ago, at a time when Kinsale appeared to be doomed. Scores of buildings in the centre had become derelict, their owners unknown. Emigration was the logical step after school. Hope did not exist.
Well it did not exist until Peggy and Gary began to attract tourists, and she did so because what she offered was what all of Kinsale in time came to offer as well - efficiency, quality, hospitality. Ireland traditionally offered the last item, but not the other two; the ah sure 'twill do attitude animated so many people offering any service.
For Peggy Green, it most certainly would not do. Not good enough was simply not good enough. She set high standards for herself and for everyone around her. People absorbed her standards, perhaps unaware that they were doing so, but to please her was rewarding in itself, and so one pleased her and incidentally, grew better and more efficient in the process.
A reassuring face
Anglers came from all over the world to enjoy the deep sea fishing which Peggy provided. She never jeopardised anybody. Safety was paramount; and after safety, enjoyment. Just to see her big grinning face must have been reassuring to many a Dutch and German angler heading off to sea for the first time. That face, those cheerful, twinkling eyes, the sturdy physique - all would have been a comfort and a promise that this woman was to be taken seriously. She would not treat you frivolously in any way. You were important to her, your well being, your happiness, your enjoyment. It was a regard which she automatically found returned not to have regarded her, not to have sought her good opinion, would have been the mark of a fool.
Peggy ran the Good Food Circle for many years, the circle which has made Kinsale what it is, a town which prospers from competitive co operation. She helped restore the Kinsale Gift Houses, for use by old people and the last time I spoke to her, she promised to put one aside for me when the time came.
Those of us fortunate to have known her assumed that when her turn came she would see out her days in one of those fine old cottages, but that was not to be, instead, she spent her last days in the Kinsale Hospital and in the Kramers Court Nursing Home; and when death came, it was a release.
Si monumentum requiris, circumspice runs the epitaph to Sir Christopher Wren in St Paul's Cathedral - "If his memorial you seek, gaze about you." And so it is in Kinsale. Those who do not know Peggy Green's name will grow up to employment and a future in the town, thanks to her. She sought no other memorial; but it would be right for the town to raise a memorial to her, the greatest citizen Kinsale has ever known.