People still come with their stories

READERS of a certain vintage still have very fond memories of the original ‘Bray Bookshop’ with the late Helen Clear behind the counter of the Quinsboro Road shop.

Helen founded the Bray Bookshop in 1972 at the age of 55, having raised her seven children, six girls and a boy.

Her husband Kevin was a thinker ahead of his time, who not only encouraged and supported the business, but was responsible for its stock of psychology, and what would now be known as ‘selfhelp’ books.

Today, the rebranded ‘Dubray Books’ has its head office on Bray’s Main Street, with stores in Blackrock, Dun Laoghaire, Rathmines, Stillorgan, Grafton Street and Galway.

‘You get an awful lot of people still coming in telling their stories, particularly those who were children at the time,’ said Helen’s daughter Gemma Barry, who bought the business in 1988 along with her husband, also called Kevin.

‘People remember my mother giving them books. The author Emma Hannigan tells the story that her brother thought my mother was Enid Blyton!’

‘I don’t think there was any plan. She was 55 when she opened the shop, which was very unusual for a woman in those days. She did come from a strong retailing background from her own family.’

As well as a house full of children, Helen looked after her mother and a blind uncle of her husband’s.

‘Both my parents were really good readers so when the family were grown they decided to get back into reading. That was the thing she knew and loved the best and she would have had business acumen instinctually in her blood. I’m a fairly natural retailer myself. I’ve always looked at the business as retail as opposed to just loving and selling books. You have to do both.’

Many authors have made appearances at Dubray, from David Attenborough and Michael Palin to Paul McGrath, Katie Taylor, Delia Smith and many others.

‘One huge one here in Bray was Jack Charlton. It was absolutely enormous. He was so good and chatted to everyone. Everyone in the town was sort of coming together and being excited.

When the shop moved from Quinsboro Road to the Main Street and had a big opening, Delgany resident and Bray native Éamon de Buitléar hosted the launch and remained a great supporter of Dubray for the remainder of his life.

Gemma’s sisters, Felicity and Michelle, were the first two members of the family to be involved in the 1970s. Gemma’s involvement began in 1980.

‘I had done my career in reverse. I had two children in my early 20s, then went to university. I came out of university and the business was starting to grow but nobody was really looking after the administration and accounts.

‘It’s very handy when you have small children to be working for your mother, because she thought you should stay at home and mind them when they were sick.

‘I started doing a couple of days a week and it just grew and it grew.’

She and Kevin were amazed when turnover ‘ just doubled overnight’ with the move to the Main Street.

They tried to keep both premises open, but the original shop just fell away in the end.

The Clear sisters have all worked or remain working at Dubray. They are Olivia Clear, Maria Clear, Paula O’Shaughnessy, Michelle Clear and Felicity Clear. Their brother Louis went in a different direction and is a joiner in Wicklow.

Maria works in accounts, while Olivia works in the Blackrock shop.

A range of nieces and nephews work there periodically for summer jobs, special events and so on. Gemma’s sons Eoghan and Cormac live in America and Australia respectively, however they are involved in web design and finance for Dubray and ownership will ultimately transfer to them one day.

Paula came in while the shop was still on Quinsboro Road and developed the card and gift side. Later, they opened the gift shops ‘Swalk’.

‘Sadly, they didn’t survive the recession,’ said Gemma. ‘ The last one went into liquidation about two years ago. I think if they had managed to hang on just another couple of years, the climate is right for them again.

‘Certainly trading through the recession was a big challenge. If you look at the figures on paper it’s not possible to imagine that we are still here. It was just extraordinary. We were very worried. We have over 100 employees. These people are like family and a lot of them have been with us for a very long time.’

There has been tremendous support for the business in Bray, despite an early prophecy to the contrary!

‘My sister Maria, who is still working here, reminded me that on the first day my mother opened down the road a customer came in and said: “A bookshop in Bray? That’ll never survive”’

However, it has held its own through two recessions, several lots of roadworks and the closure of a car park.

They experienced a terrible blow with the sad and sudden death of Kevin Barry, Gemma’s husband, two years ago.

‘We worked terrifically well together,’ she said. ‘We had different skills which complemented each other, and the same values to do things to the best that you can. The devil is in the detail, mind the staff, mind the suppliers and keep good relations with people as much as possible. That stands to you as everything in Ireland is too small to ruffle feathers.’

The market is vastly different nowadays to that of the 1970s, but bookshops remain open. Gemma, herself an avid reader, thinks that ebooks and printed ones can survive side by side.

‘I’m in two book clubs and people have their kindle and books,’ she said. ‘If you’re travelling it’s the most natural thing in the world to take a kindle. But I think the experience is different than reading from a book, there’s a detachment.’

Her most recent read was Donal Ryan’s ‘All We Shall Know’. Ryan appeared in the Morrison in association with Dubray last week, for an interview with Rick O’Shea. Gemma remarked that Ryan Tubridy had endorsed the author’s novel.

‘You can’t buy that. Donal presents the work and is such a strong writer, but the endorsement of someone high profile like Ryan Tubridy is fantastic.’

She very obviously has a deep love of literature and storytelling, and doesn’t hang about for long before starting something new.

‘I like to leave about a day between books to absorb them. As a reader, I never read the back. I go into the first page and preferably like to have read it before anyone has told me anything about it. When my mother was here we never read a bad book. She was a fantastic reader and she would pass things on.’

This is just one of Helen’s traditions which continue today at Dubray, with the very useful staff recommendation section.

Helen, who had brought so much joy to readers of all ages, died in 2009 at the age of 89, just over three years after she finished working.