In a new story, Maeve Binchyresponds to Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as part of a series in association with Amnesty International to mark the 60th anniversary of the declaration
Article 17
1. Everyone has a right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
2. No one shall be arbritarily deprived of his property
JOHN O'BRIEN WAS born in 1980. He was the first child of Mary and Jack O'Brien, he was born in a pub because Mary had got the dates all wrong and said that the baby couldn't be due for weeks yet.
She was in a pub when John arrived because otherwise she wouldn't have been with Jack. He was a man who liked being in the pub. And even more so after his son was born. He said it would destroy a man's head listening to those bellows of lungs.
But soon Dublin pubs weren't far enough from the baby's screams, so Jack O'Brien went to England.
Mary O'Brien's face was set and hard and disappointed looking all through John's school days.
The only thing that softened those hard times was when her son did well at school. So John worked hard at his books.
It meant that he didn't go out playing games with the other lads, he didn't kick a ball around behind the school. He had no money to go to the cinema on a Saturday, instead he had a job in a garage.
His friends nagged at him, but he was firm.
"I can't lads, I just can't, she's on her own you see, my Dad did a runner, she's not strong. She can't earn much, the only hope is me."
"It's not much of a life," said John's friend Dekko.
"It'll get better," John said cheerfully.
It got a bit better. Not a lot better but a bit.John didn't get the scholarships he had hoped for, so his mother's face was set in further lines of sadness. But he did get a job in a newsagents and it worked out very well for him. He suggested that they do newspaper deliveries and he also stood at bus stops and Dart stations until he found the perfect selling place.
Mr Kelly was very pleased with him. Then Mr Kelly's daughter Orla came home from the training college where she was studying to be a teacher and she and John O'Brien fell in love. And that was wonderful altogether.
John's mother was not entirely pleased with this state of affairs, but she hid her panic that her only son might leave the nest.
But he had lived with her for long enough to read the signs. The night before he asked Orla to marry him, he told his mother that he was saving for a deposit on a house. And they would all move in as soon as he got one.
"You can't have your old mother to live with you," she said, hardly daring to hope.
"I'm not moving without you," John said. "Then we hope she'll say yes," his mother said with the first smile in a long time.
Orla said yes, her father said he was delighted and so a date was fixed, and the young couple went looking for a house. John's parents had never owned the house they lived in, nor had his grandparents. He was the first to become a house owner. It meant safety, security, rising in the world and a place where his mother would always be welcome.
They found the perfect place; it was in a small estate and was cheaper than any of the other houses they had seen. There was a downstairs room which would be perfect for his mother, all they needed to do was to put in a downstairs bathroom.
Mr Kelly said he would help with that as it showed they were a thoughtful young couple who might not abandon him either when his time came. There was no happier man in the country than John O'Brien the day they got the key of the house and he and Orla went in to inspect their new premises. They met the people next door, a worried-looking couple in their forties.
"Aren't you as brave as lions the pair of you?" he said admiringly.
"Why?" John began to worry, was there something he didn't know?
"We're selling up and getting out," said the neighbour. "And here you two are full of hope and plans."
Well?" John was at a loss.
"Settled they call them but there's nothing settled about that lot," the neighbour looked around him fearfully as he spoke.
Still John didn't know what he was talking about. "Tinkers, Travellers whatever you're allowed to call them these days. They're going to rehouse them in this estate, everyone else is running like stags and you two are delighted to be here," he snorted a very loud snort.
John was bewildered. "But if they want to settle down and if they are getting houses, won't they be delighted with them?" he asked.
"That lot only want a base to go robbing from, and a garden to store their broken bicycles and machinery that doesn't work. They'll have the place full of litter, and there'll be rats running over the estate before a year is out."
"I think you're wrong," John said. "They'll be so happy to have running water and electricity and maybe a chance to educate their children."
Orla agreed. "It's so hard on the children moving on every few weeks, they never get to catch up, it will be much better for them here."
The neighbour shook his head and said they would be singing a different song in a year's time, and if it was all the same to them, he'd sell his house to the council and just pray that whatever kind of gang might turn up wouldn't wreck the place.
Maria and Tommy McDonagh, a couple with two children, bought the house next door.They were dark-haired, handsome people and this was their first home. They had given their caravan to Maria's sister, they said wistfully as if it had been a family dog that they wondered if they could ever live without.
John and Orla welcomed them and gave them tea. Tommy talked about his hopes that he would get a job as a mechanic in a garage. He hadn't any written qualifications but he knew all about machinery. Maria said that she was going to take the children up to the school, and Orla said she would meet her there and introduce her to people.
Orla and John explained that they were getting married next week, they were having 60 people, and if Tommy and Maria would like to come, they would be most welcome. "People don't usually ask us to weddings," Tommy said.
"Well, I suppose if you were on the move all the time, you mightn't have been there for it," John said, misunderstanding what the Travellers were saying.
Then the McDonaghs left because they had a lot of work to do, they said. They had to remove the garden wall.
Remove the wall? Oh yes, they needed to do that straight away.
And what for exactly? To make room for the caravans.
But hadn't they given their caravan to Maria's sister? Oh yes, they had given away their caravan, but some of their cousins might be coming to see them next week and they wanted to be ready for them.
Maria and Tommy came to John and Orla's wedding. They left their children with their cousins, who had indeed come to see them and were parked in their garden.
The hotel manager asked Tommy if there were going to be many of his kind coming to the wedding. Tommy said no, that he was a settled Traveller now and his neighbours had invited just them.
The manager looked relieved. "No offence, it's just that I have to look after my property," he said. "No offence taken," Tommy said in a flat sort of voice.
Orla's father didn't know that Tommy and Maria were from the Travelling community. He had just been told that they were neighbours.
"I hope that you all did the right thing buying in that estate. A few people coming into the shop tell me that the worst of the tinkers are establishing a kind of fortification for themselves."
Maria and Tommy were literally unable to answer. And as they stood there wordless, Mr Kelly the newsagent went on. "Nothing against them personally, as people that is. Some of them are very decent apparently, but as soon as they come into a place the price of property halves there and then. And everyone has a right to own property and not to see its value drain away in front of their eyes.
When Orla and John came back from their honeymoon, there had been a lot of fuss on their estate. People had come and demanded that Maria and Tommy build up their wall again. It brought the whole place down, having two trailers parked in their garden and a clothes line stretched around them.
Tommy said they were doing nobody any harm, and that he didn't object to them having people to stay or putting plastic gnomes in their gardens. The neighbours thought he was being a smart ass and said plastic gnomes actually brought the prices up. And it was all very unpleasant. People came and sympathised with John and Orla, and cast withering glances at the house next door. And John and Orla couldn't make new friends because it would be disloyal to Maria and Tommy to be mates with people who called them the scum of the earth.
So when John's van wouldn't start one cold morning, he didn't like to go to any of the other houses where there might be tow ropes or jump leads. Instead, he asked Tommy, who took the whole engine to pieces and reassembled it for him working perfectly.
The night she had the miscarriage, Orla had only Maria to call on to help her, and her shoulder to weep on when it was all over.
John's mother became frightened because there were so many confrontations outside the house when the other residents complained to Tommy, and the cousins in the trailers would answer back.
"But you like Tommy and Maria," John begged. It was no use. His mother had her view. "You worked hard to get property son, you have a right to enjoy it," she said over and over.
Orla's father felt the same. He would be retiring soon and intended to hand over the business to his son-in-law but not if he was still being so foolish about this whole matter of where he lived. As soon as John noticed that he was living in a tinker encampment and moved, then he could have the business.
And the sooner the better. Orla was pregnant again and nobody wanted her in any kind of situation.
It was useless trying to convince anyone that they were happy where they were. John and Orla were trapped. How to tell them? That was the problem now.
They could lie, say they needed a bigger house for the baby and for Orla's father to come and stay. But Tommy and Maria would know. Better be honest enough to tell them the truth. They would go around tomorrow night.
Next morning, Maria and Tommy came to see them. They were tired of it all. They were going to build up the wall, collect the caravan from Maria's sister and go back on the road. All they had wanted was a bit of peace and a little property to give them a sense of belonging. It hadn't worked out. Apart from meeting John and Orla, of course, that had been great. They would never forget them.
Orla and John stood unable to think of one sentence between them.
"You two might move on anyway," Maria said. "When the baby comes and if your father comes to stay. So we would have lost you anyway." Their coast was clear now, they could leave in good faith without abandoning good neighbours and good friends.
But somehow, it didn't feel good. It felt odd and confused. All anyone wanted to do was to own a small amount of property that they had bought and paid for.
That was a human right, wasn't it? And yet it seemed to have the seeds of World War three in it.
A lot of the sunshine had gone out of the day.