We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It

by Tom Phelan

  Missus Fitz had such a miserable life with Yer Man that the only way she endured her lot was to coat it with laughter. She was a true alchemist who could change the vilest misery into fun.

  One of us always accompanied Missus Fitz out through the wicket door when she left for home. I often stood there looking at her limping up the lane with her two-flowered milk jug in one hand and her long body listing against the weight of the water bucket in the other. She could have been the leaning mast of a weather-beaten vessel holding gladly the port, though shrouds and tackle torn, as your man Milton said.

  In 1950, Mam, with her turkey profits, replaced the two-wicked wall-lamp in our kitchen with an Aladdin Mantle Lamp. About fifteen times brighter than the two-wicker, the new light was so bright that the children ran outside to look in through the window.

  On that winter evening when the lamp made its debut, Missus Fitz was sitting on the little hob. She clapped and exclaimed as the children oohed and aahed at the new crisp shadows on the walls.

  Missus Fitz said, “It’s like when Cosby Hall put up a windmill to make electric, and they had a light in every room on Christmas Eve. Everyone in Stradbally went by ass-and-cart or horse-and-cart or on shank’s mare up to the Windy Gap to admire the lights in Cosby Hall and to imagine they were looking at a ship as big as the Titanic on the sea before it sank. For hours we stayed there in the cold.”

  When Missus Fitz was leaving with her jug of milk on that night of the new lamp, Mam accompanied her onto the lane to her white enamel water bucket, which the children knew Boxer had polluted while waiting for his mistress.

  * * *

  THREE MONTHS LATER, Missus Fitz on the hob told us the further adventures of that night. “Didn’t the white light from the new lamp make me as blind as Tim Coughlin on his knees cutting his acre of oats with his sickle, one handful at a time? When Mam left me on the lane with me water and milk, I couldn’t see me nose from the brightness in the kitchen; all I was seeing was the white spot after looking at the sun. But I says to meself, I’d been up and down Laragh Lane six thousand times, and I could go home with me eyes shut, so off I went and the next thing everything changed in a flash. I didn’t feel any pain at all. I didn’t feel meself falling out of the sky. I didn’t know what happened to me jug and bucket. After a few minutes it dawned on me I was lying on my back on something cold. Then I was afraid one of Kitty the Hare’s fairies had picked me up and laid me down in the muck like it was laying out me corpse for its wake and I was not even dead yet. It was the smell that told me I was in the drain. Once a year your father cleans up that drain and everyone in Laragh knows he’s doing it because the stink spreads all over the place; the drain is full of the clay and rotting snags from the potatoes that flow across under the lane when yer father washes them in the trough at the pump for the pigs. But to this very day I can’t say how I got into the drain; it had to be a fairy. I said to meself, I better get out of here before the fairies think I’m dead and start winding the rosary beads through me fingers and tying me jaw shut with a rag and putting pennies on me eyelids. I struggled like an oul hen when you hold it by the head, but I couldn’t get a move out of meself. There I was, looking up at the dark. Then I felt the cold, wet muck seeping in through me clothes and through me hair, too, onto me poor oul skull. I thought, This is worse than lying on the floor of a pighouse where the pigs do their business.”

  * * *

  ABOUT HALF AN hour after Missus Fitz left for home on the night of the brilliant light, Dad came into the kitchen with the yard lamp hanging out of his hand. We children were all at the table doing our homework. With a wink and a nod of the head, he told Mam he needed to talk to her outside. We all cocked our ears, but Mam closed the kitchen door as she left. My little brother ran to the door, put his ear to it, and ran back grinning to his place at the table.

  “Dad said Tom’s a pig like this,” he said, and he pushed up his nose, exposed the inside of his nostrils. We all sniggered and oinked except my sister, who tsked in disgust.

  In the farmyard Dad asked Mam to listen for a minute because he thought he’d heard someone talking outside the high corrugated gate. Dad was afraid of the dark, afraid of creatures that might be in the dark, and afraid of whispered voices in the dark.

  * * *

  MISSUS FITZ ON the hob continued her saga. “If nothing else, it was the smell that made me want to get out of the ditch. But before I even made a stir I started fretting at what Yer Man would say when I hobbled into the kitchen at home, above smelling like the back end of a calf with the scour. But when I tried to stand up I knew me leg was broke. As well as that, I was so stuck in the muck that I couldn’t even sit up, the suction was so bad, like when your wellington gets stuck in the bog. As Kitty the Hare would say, I was as stuck as a tick in a tinker’s bum. I called for Mam, but I was three feet down in the ditch, and then there was the width of the lane, and then the wicket door, and then the kitchen door stopping me shouts. Boxer just stood there on the bank looking down, he wouldn’t even bark. I kept saying ‘Will you bark, you eejit? Bark, you useless bag of bones!’ I got so hoarse calling Mam that I nearly gave up, and I began to think I was going to die at the bottom of the ditch, covered with the terrible black muck, and no one would know what happened to me until your father cleaned out the drain the next year and found me preserved like the body of a saint. Saint Moll Fitzpatrick, and me with my picture on a holy card with me eyes turned up to heaven and me hands joined and a golden halo around me head. I would be the patron saint of people who fall in mucky ditches if there isn’t one already.” Missus Fitz swiped her nose with the rag she always carried in her right hand.

  * * *

  MAM TOOK THE yard lamp and led Dad to the high gate. They listened. They heard a voice saying, “Bark, you fucking useless bag of fucking bones!” Then she shouted, “Nan! I’m in the ditch!”

  “It’s Missus Fitz!” Mam rushed out onto the lane with Dad following. “Where are you, Missus Fitz?”

  * * *

  MISSUS FITZ SNIFFED at the rag in her fist and continued her side of the story. “When I heard Mam calling me, I said, ‘Oh, Jesus be praised! I’m over here, Nan.’

  “When Mam saw where I was, she handed the lamp to your father and lowered herself into the ditch, stepped across me, turned around, bent down, pushed her arms in under me oul bones, and lifted me up. The sound of the sucking of the muck! I was afraid your father would think I was blurting. Then she put me lying on me back on the grass verge. To your father’s credit he never said a word, didn’t ask me what I was doing in the ditch like Yer Man did later on.”

  * * *

  WITH MISSUS FITZ safely on the grass, Dad hurried into the kitchen and told us Missus Fitz had fallen into the ditch and hurt her leg. “She has brittle bones,” he said.

  He lit the old two-wicker lamp and said, “Gather up your books and come with me.” He led us into the parlor, then warned us, “Don’t be coming back into the kitchen until I tell you to.”

  * * *

  ATOP THE HOB, Missus Fitz went on with her version of the adventure. “By the time your father let youse out of the parlor, Mam was up at our house telling Yer Man what happened. Tom said, ‘The stink of you, Missus Fitz!’ And there I was sitting in the very chair Mam bought at the dead priest’s auction feeling like a pig that just came out of his mud puddle and feeling terrible sorry for meself. I looked like a witch with me long hair down me back because Mam had to open me bun to get out the dirt; me oul stockings were down around me ankles with the weight of the muck and me oul skinny legs no ticker than a briar on display. And Tom was right; I was pure stink. All the back of me was coated in black muck even though Mam had scraped most of it off with the edge of the bread knife. And ye all stood around me gaping and silent, and for something to say I says, ‘I broke me leg.’ And one of ye said, ‘What leg?’ and someone else said, ‘Did it crack out loud like a rotten stick?’ and another said, ‘Can we look at the bone sticking out?’

&
nbsp; “Mam arrived back in the kitchen and said, ‘Paud’s on his way, Missus Fitz.’

  “ ‘Did he say anything, Nan?’ I asked.

  “ ‘He did,’ Mam replied, but she did not tell me what it was.”

  * * *

  DAD BANGED IN through the kitchen door with two poles and leaned them against the wall near the clock. “About five minutes, Nan,” he said and left. I wondered what five minutes he was talking about.

  Mam got her old yard coat and gave it to me to hold. Then she began to pull Missus Fitz’s arms out of the sleeves of her stinky coat. Missus Fitz used the arms of the chair to lift herself off the seat and Mam slipped the coat from under her. “Oh, Nan,” she said, “don’t let the lads see me oul knickers.”

  Dad came back and said, “Everything’s ready. How’s the leg, Missus?”

  “All right, JohnJoe,” Missus Fitz said, and she made a face that she thought only Dad saw.

  Dad used the fireplace tongs to carry Missus Fitz’s coat out of the house. No sooner had he come back in and closed the door than an aggressive knock sounded.

  “Brace yeerselves, lads,” Missus Fitz said. “Here comes Josef Stalin.”

  Paud Fitzpatrick stepped in without removing his hat, and stood at the corner of the fireplace wall. He was dressed in the same brown wedding suit he had bought thirty-seven years earlier, which now served as his work clothes, waistcoat included. His shirt was collarless. Because his eyes were always slitted like a hunting cat’s, because his face muscles were always tense, because he was in perpetual need of a shave, I infused Paud with the personality of a viciously thorned bush. At five feet eight inches, he stood ramrod straight, which made him a freak in a countryside filled with stoop-shouldered farmers. Paud claimed to have been a member of a flying column of the IRA at the time of the British ouster, but Dad said all he ever did was steal porter from a Protestant shop and claim he had made a strike for Irish freedom.

  Paud looked at his wife like she was something the cat had dragged in. “What happened ja?” he demanded, his tone suggesting his wife had jumped into the ditch just to inconvenience him.

  “What happened me?” Missus Fitz shouted back. “Nan told you what happened me.”

  “Ya fell in the ditch.”

  “I fell in the ditch.”

  “Didja break the milk jug?”

  “Feck the jug, yowl shite! I broke me feckin’ leg!”

  Dad intervened to save the children’s ears. “Paud, we’ll bring Missus Fitz home in the horse-and-cart. Why don’t you go on ahead and get a good fire going so she can dry out a bit and not catch cold?”

  Paud threw a glance at Dad, then scraped the soles of his hobnailed boots on the floor like a challenged bull pawing the ground. “Maybe she’ll fall into the canal next time and get it over with,” he said as he walked out.

  * * *

  ON THE HOB, Missus Fitz snuffed and then continued her story. “I’ll live longer than Yer Man yet if it kills me. I was just glad that he didn’t say anything that you childers shouldn’t be hearing. And the minute he was gone, your father tied the two poles under the dead priest’s chair and made a litter like one of them things for carrying around queens, only theirs has sides and roofs and curtains and lads dressed up like clowns hoisting them over puddles and horse dung so they don’t get their dainty shoes dirty. And me in me litter and Mam behind and your father in front, I sailed up in the air and they took me out into the yard, and it was like I was on a magic carpet. Your father had the tailboard out and they lifted the litter and me into the cart like I was as light as a feather. And there I was, Queen Victoria herself on top of an elephant in India ready to set out on her grand tour only it was dark and the only light was the yard lamp.

  “Your father lifted two of ye up beside me to make sure I wouldn’t fall out of the chair. Wasn’t it all grand and me up there in the middle like I was Victoria herself and me leg killing me; Eddie out there in front in the middle of the lane with the lamp like Jesus looking for a lost sheep; your father leading Lame Mare by the winkers like Joseph leading d’ass into Egypt and missing the biggest potholes; Mam walking along with her hand on the sideboard just in case; the two lads beside me like page boys in Buckingham Palace and the girls behind carrying the queen’s drinks in case she got thirsty on the long journey to me house a hundred yards up the lane.”

  * * *

  YER MAN DIED a decade before Missus Fitz did. She was triumphantly happy “when he went toes up,” as she said. As Paud’s coffin was lowered into the darkness, she was heard to mutter, “Youl bollicks! If you think I’m going to be planted anywhere near you, then you’re still a ferocious feckin’ eejit.”

  Missus Fitz was true to her word. When she died, she was buried in a small cemetery on the far side of the Windy Gap, twenty-three miles from Yer Man.

  11

  THE ROAD TO SCHOOL

  When my siblings and I stepped out through the farmyard’s wicket door, there was Slieve Bloom, our blue mountain, five miles off to the west. Sometimes Slieve Bloom floated on a cloud of low, white mist. In wintertime snow covered her head while the rest of the world stayed green. In summertime, showers lit by the sun swept across her face like a lace mantilla. Some days she would hide behind a curtain of fog and rain. At evening time, when an enormous cloud the same deep blue color as herself rose up behind her, it seemed she was as high as Mount Everest.

  Slieve Bloom was always there, a lying-down woman ascending out of the Central Plain, slowly lifting herself up to seventeen hundred feet and then sloping back down to the plain. She was our polestar. There was nothing beyond her but a breathtaking chasm. After spending the day picking clean the fields of the earth, an unending flight of crows meandered over our house toward the mountain to rookeries known only to them. Every evening a low-flying Aer Lingus plane, a green light on each wing tip, droned by on its jaunt from Dublin to Rineanna before skimming the top of Slieve Bloom and disappearing. On clear evenings the top rim of the setting sun clung to the top rim of the mountain until finally slipping away and leaving us in a long twilight.

  Grown-ups could foretell the weather by glancing at Slieve Bloom. But even as a child, I knew that certain clouds rising up over her head would come tumbling down her face, dropping veils of rain that would soon be falling into our farmyard. When the sky was clear and the mountain shimmered, it was a promise of sunny days to come. Whenever Dad announced on a winter morning, “There’s snow on the mountain,” we ran out to the lane to gape at the wonder that seemed five miles high and a hundred miles distant.

  Each morning of my early school days, when I left the cocoon of the farmyard and the protection of Slieve Bloom, I stepped into an alien world beset with traps and snares that I was too naive to recognize until I tripped them.

  Our house was at the halfway point on mile-long Laragh Lane, which came to an end beside a dunghill of mountainous grandeur at Durt Donovan’s front door. With its muddy tongue, the other end of our road licked the edge of the macadamed Harbour Street. Wide enough for a horse’s cart, the lane was a graveled track. The iron-shod wheels of carts and machinery gouged out deep potholes, and since the town end of the lane was used the most, it was there that the potholes were biggest. Throughout my childhood I longed for the county council to make our lane like the streets in the town. Then I could ride my bike without neck-snapping plunges into deep depressions; I would have a smooth surface for my whipping top; in summer I could run barefoot on the road beside the rim of a bicycle wheel and tap it along with a short stick; I could play “followers” without fear of losing the marbles in nettles and briars or having to feel for them in muddy, water-filled ruts.

  When it wasn’t raining, my siblings and I walked to school. If the lane was dry and dusty we watched out for fresh cattle plops. But after spills of rain it was the potholes of watery cow dung we were wary of.

  In the spring, the tiny buds on the hedges were as vivid as the green lights on an aeroplane’s wings in the dark; thrush
es sang, crows sniffed the countryside from on high, wandering along like dogs trotting from one scent to another. Cock blackbirds screeched and fought each other in the sky, and magpies hopped along the lane in front of us.

  A drain ran beside the lane, and in summertime wildflowers and weeds covered its banks in colorful disarray. In the spring its waters supported floats of frog spawn.

  “Frog spawn looks like tapioca.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Frog spawn is tapioca.”

  “I’m telling.”

  Past the tarred, wooden gate in the Meadow Field we meandered between the high bank on the left and the trimmed whitethorn hedge of the Back of Fitzes field on the right. At the beginning of autumn the wild strawberries growing among the grasses in the drain’s bank were picked by the finder, brought home in a handkerchief, mashed on a saucer, covered with that morning’s cream, sprinkled with sugar, and eaten in solitary greed while the others stood around drooling.

  During the leafy spring we kept watch on the nest-building birds in the bushes. Later we hoisted each other onto shoulders to look at the ugly, purple, hairy hatchlings, opening wide their beaks to what they thought was a parent coming with worms. Only a mother could love those scalds, but magpies and grey crows loved them, too, as hors d’oeuvres.

  In winter the hedges glittered with hips and haws. It was on this stretch of the lane one winter morning we met Fergus Horgan, a tall, strong man leaving his footprints in the inch of snow. He was crying.

  “My father died last night,” he said. “I’m going down to tell your mam and dad.” I looked after Fergus with my fingertips at my mouth. It was his tears rather than the death of his father that disturbed me; I had not seen grown-up tears in my Arcadia before.

  A hundred yards from the Meadow Field gate, we came to Missus Fitz’s thatched cottage. The colors and bouquets of her garden were a weak anodyne against her porcine husband, Paud. Once, as my brother and I were passing the house, Paud was standing in the front door lighting his pipe. He flicked the spent, still-smoking match at us.