We Were Rich and We Didn't Know It

by Tom Phelan

  Instead of entering our farmyard through the wicket door and risk waking my parents, he sloshed into the garden and went into the car shed by its back door. In the shed, he removed his shoes and socks and the rest of his clothing. Hungover, naked, and spattered with mud, he stepped into the farmyard, slipped into the kitchen, tiptoed through a room with two sleeping children, and got into his bed.

  When we arrived home from school that afternoon, my sister was sent up to Doctor Cosgrove’s house with a note. Paulie was sick.

  Doctor Cosgrove arrived two hours later in his black Austin Minor and parked in the middle of the lane outside the wicket gate. Cosgrove, a former rugby player, was a tall and gentle redheaded man. He was also drunk on arrival. When he came to the door he swayed, banged his head on the lintel, and stumbled down the two-inch step into the kitchen. He had to ask Mam to send one of the children out to his car for his bag. Mam showed him to Paulie’s room and then quick-stepped out to the farmyard to tell Dad about the doctor’s condition.

  Dad called for Eddie and me and led us out onto the lane. Without mentioning Cosgrove’s “disability,” he told us we were going to turn the car because the doctor might drive into the ditch when he was leaving. Missus Fitz had fallen into the same ditch six months earlier and broken her leg.

  “But he’ll know we turned it and he’ll be cross,” I said.

  “He won’t even notice,” Dad replied.

  Dad knew nothing about motor vehicles, would not have known if the car had been left in gear or if the handbrake was engaged. Eddie was put kneeling on the driver’s seat and told to turn the wheel when instructed. Dad and I took up position at the boot and pushed. The car moved forward in short jerks as if we were crossing a corrugated surface. From the rear to front, Dad and I traveled many times, with Dad whispering steering directions to Eddie every time he passed the driver’s window.

  We left the Austin Minor facing the town. Eddie and I ran into the haggard and climbed a pile of chopped wood so we could peep over the wall. Eventually, Doctor Cosgrove swayed out onto the lane, opened the car door, sat inside, and drove away.

  The drunken doctor had told Mam that hungover Paulie had developed pneumonia. It took Paulie a week to get back on his feet, and when he did, Dad sent him packing the next day.

  He had lived with us for nine weeks.

  39

  JIMSER SCOTT

  The local church, Saint Joseph’s, was a commanding presence in my young life, and the clock with its bell was the parish timekeeper. From miles away the church tower could be seen across the flat bogland.

  Into the town and surrounds, the call to pray the Angelus was sent gonging thrice daily, at 7:00 a.m., noon, and 6:00 p.m. At those hours, Millet’s painting The Angelus could be seen in tableau vivant on all Catholic farms. Then, if a parishioner had died, the bell would toll again, mournfully, and across hedges and streets and from donkey carts and bicycles, people would ask, “Who’s dead?”

  On Sundays and holy days the morning bell reminded everyone to begin the struggle into their Sunday clothes before setting out to mass on foot, on bike, in donkey-and-cart, in pony-and-trap, and by one Model T Ford with a corncrake-sounding horn that echoed the voice of its owner. “Don’t laugh at him, he has no roof in his mouth,” Mam said.

  On Sunday mornings the footpaths became moving streams with walkers on their way to obey the First Precept of the Church: “to respectfully and devoutly assist at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass on all Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.” To ignore this precept meant committing a mortal sin and roasting in hell forever unless you made it to confession before you expelled your final breath. Besides the fear of eternal punishment, there was social pressure to attend Sunday mass, so great moral courage was demanded of the stay-abed. Neighbors, fearful for the soul of a recalcitrant, whispered in priestly ears, and before long a clerical visit to the sinner’s home would be observed from behind lace curtains.

  Through one of our farmhouse windows Jimser Scott was seen every Sunday morning biking off to mass. Jimser, a one-horse farmer, lived with his ancient mother in a thatched, whitewashed three-roomed cottage two hundred yards beyond our house. Missus Scott regularly nagged her son, “Will you go to a dance, Jimser, and find a wife? I’ll polish your boots for you.”

  Jimser’s answer was always the same. “Ah shite, mother, I can’t dance.”

  Neither could he read nor write. After his mother was carried toes up to Acragar cemetery, Jimser spent the long winter nights alone, sitting on a wooden, straight-backed chair, looking into the fire until it went out. He cut the beaks off his hens because they were eating their own eggs. The hens soon starved to death and unsugared tea and shop-bought bread became Jimser’s daily fare, except when he helped out his neighbors on threshing days and was fed a dinner of bacon, boiled potatoes, and cabbage. Once, after eating a threshing meal his stomach was not used to, Jimser threw up. One of the more witted swains said, “Jimser strained his vomit through his teeth to save the bits of meat.”

  When part of the roof of Jimser’s “good room” fell in after a heavy rainstorm, Durt Donovan said, “Only Jimser’s roof is thatched, I would say he has a slate loose.”

  Like his neighbor Lar Dixon, Jimser was reluctant to leave his bed before noon. But on Sunday mornings at half-past eleven, freshly shaved and wearing his polished leather boots, his Sunday suit, and his good cap, Jimser meandered along the lane on his bike toward the town for the eleven o’clock mass. At the Convent Bridge, he stopped, leaned on the parapet, and looked down into the river. He waited until the people came out of the church at the end of mass, then turned his bike and free-wheeled down the bridge to Mansfield’s Pub. There, standing alone in an unlit corner, he quickly downed a pint of porter. Except for placing his order, he only once spoke in the pub, and that was to angrily say to the inattentive barman, “I didn’t ask you for froth!” as he pointed to the ill-poured contents of his glass.

  Because of poor eyesight, when Jimser heard footsteps on the lane or a cart approaching he sneaked into his haggard to peep out. But everyone passing by knew Jimser was on the far side of the hedge. Whenever Eddie and I went by his spy hole on our way to one of Dad’s fields, we loudly said outlandish things.

  “England sank into the sea last night.”

  “The moon fell out of the sky on Monday and landed in Durt Donovan’s River Field.”

  Jimser, believing in the evil influence of fairies, sowed his mangel seeds in the twilight of the day of the full moon in May, when he was sure the fairies wouldn’t be around. “They always go to the far side of Slieve Bloom on that night to play games and bull each other,” he said.

  One day, when Jimser’s mare lay down in her stable and couldn’t get up he sent out an alarm to the neighbors. “Me mare’s down! Me mare’s down!” Unless a collapsed horse is urgently brought to its feet it will soon die. Such a loss to a small farmer was disastrous.

  Dad, who had dealt with downed horses before, knew what limited resources Jimser had for hoisting the mare back onto her hooves. Dad didn’t even have to make a plan. While he collected a ladder and two poles, he told me to grab two burlap sacks from the boiler house and to ask Mam for the packing needle and the roll of binder twine from the dairy cupboard. On our way down to Jimser’s he told me to be ready to hand things to the men and to run home for anything they might need. “But keep out of the way, Tom. Don’t do anything brave and don’t talk.”

  When we arrived at Jimser’s stable Podge Nolan and Lar Dixon were already there. Dad sent Lar to our house for the two extra poles and the pulley wheels he had left inside the wicket door.

  The rafters above the fallen mare were reinforced with the poles propping them up from below; from the ladder, Podge Nolan tied the pulley wheels to the rafters. While supervising these operations, Dad slit the burlap sacks open along their seams. Then using binder twine and the curved packing needle, he sewed the two sacks together. Lar tied fist-size stones into the corners of the enlar
ged sacks. Slipknots at the ends of four ropes were placed over the stone-filled corners and pulled tight. Dad recruited Jimser to help Lar pull and push the mare onto her back. Podge Nolan and Dad, on their hands and knees, positioned the sling under the mare. Then Lar and Jimser rolled the animal back. Finally the two ropes on either side of the sling were made into one and passed over the wheels of the pulleys. It was time to raise the mare.

  Dad and Lar would pull on one rope and Podge and Jimser on the other—one strong and one weak man on each team. “Ready, lads,” Dad said. “Don’t jerk on the rope. Take it easy, an inch at a time. If you hear the rafters cracking, drop the mare. I’ll count to three.”

  The stable darkened as Durt Donovan, with watery eyes, stiff grey hair sticking out from the edges of his paddy cap, and wearing his eternal gabardine coat, appeared in the doorway.

  “Hold on, lads,” he said. “You’re doin’ this all wrong. Let me tell ye. . . .”

  The four men, like runners with their feet in the blocks, their bodies and brains in a high state of tension, ignored Durt. Dad called out, “One, two, three . . . gentle, lads, very gentle.”

  At first nothing happened. “If yeed only listen to me,” Durt said.

  Dad, as if telling Durt to feck off, sternly said through his teeth, “A little more, lads. Easy now! That’s it.” The pulley wheels squeaked for want of oil, and the mare’s belly moved. “Easy, lads!”

  The rafters groaned.

  “That’s not goin’ to work, men,” Durt said.

  The mare’s belly moved like a sackful of guts as she was slowly lifted. Her head hung down as if her neck had no muscles. Then, her legs slowly swung into place beneath her, and the men could feel slackness in the ropes. “Keep a steady pull, lads . . . she might stumble. Keep her steady.”

  “You’re wastin’ yer time, lads. That hure’ll fall the minute ye let go of the ropes.”

  The mare tested her legs, shook and trembled, and raised her head. “Keep the pull on, lads,” Dad said.

  The animal lifted her tail, and a stream of long-imprisoned, green-yellow urine poured out of her like the flow from an overturned bucket.

  “Put your lip under that vitriol, Durt,” Podge Nolan said. “It’s full of great stuff for the brain.” Under his breath he muttered, “You oul bollicks.”

  “And get out of the door, Durt. You’re blocking the light,” Dad said.

  Jimser’s mare lived four more years, but the death bell tolled for Jimser a lot sooner. When Doctor McSharry said he died of malnutrition, Mam was horrified. Her only experience with malnutrition was photographs in the Irish Independent of children in faraway countries with swollen bellies, ribs visible, and knobby joints beneath skin with no flesh.

  “Malnutrition is not starvation,” Dad told her. “All Jimser ever ate was bread; not even spuds and butter. He was like a calf fed on nothing but hay.”

  It was only at the wake that Dad learned about Jimser’s Sunday morning pint in Mansfield’s Pub.

  40

  BILLY

  Spilling rain came one autumn and the fields were sodden. All the farmers in the country were caught with their cereal crops still on the stalk ready to be harvested, but the ground was too soft to bear the weight of a McCormick reaper. So Dad had to use its more primitive precursor, which meant that each sheaf had to be tied around the middle by hand with a straw rope made on the spot in a matter of seconds.

  After a few dry days, Dad harnessed our three mares to the old mower and set out with Uncle Jack and Podge Nolan for Pillsworth’s Field. Eddie went along in case the men had to send him home for a forgotten tool or anything else they might need.

  Dad sat on the front seat and drove; Podge, sitting right behind him, used a wooden rake to separate the falling wheaten straw into sheaves and push them off the cradle behind the blades; Uncle Jack ran from one corner to the next in the boot-sucking mud, keeping the corners of the field clear of the sheaves so the horses and machine could turn without damaging them.

  “Hupp! Hupp! Pyoh! Go on!” Dad continually talked to the animals, urging them on with flicks of the reins when they showed signs of faltering. Foamy white sweat lathered the mares’ rumps and thighs. Podge was like an Indian in a canoe in the pictures, paddling nonstop with a heavy oar. Eddie sat on a folded overcoat on the bank of the hedge.

  Instead of the men coming home from the field for their dinner, I was sent to Pillsworth’s with the ham sandwiches and sweet tea Mam had prepared. “Make sure you don’t break the mugs or the bottles,” she warned as she showed me out the wicket door.

  An hour later, Mam was washing the delft in the white enamel basin when the latch of the wicket door rattled.

  “Who could be coming?” Mam said. She dried her hands on her apron as she sped to the little window to peek out. But before she got there a big man darkened the doorway.

  “Billy!” Mam said.

  “Nan!” he said, and they shook hands while Billy was still standing on the step that Mam was always warning people not to trip over.

  “I didn’t know you were coming home,” Mam said. When she turned around there were tears on her cheeks. Billy followed her.

  He was dressed in a navy blue suit and black shoes. His tie was bright blue. When he removed his paddy cap his black curls leaped around his head like springs.

  Mam pulled the wooden armchair into the middle of the kitchen.

  “Sit there, Billy,” she said. “It’s grand to see you.”

  When Billy settled himself in the chair, he looked around and saw four pairs of eyes staring back at him.

  “Are them the childers?” he asked.

  “All except Eddie.” Turning to us Mam said, “This is your uncle Billy, home from England.” Then she marched us one by one to say our names and shake hands with this stranger. His hands were even rougher than Uncle Jack’s. “Billy is my brother and Meg’s and Peg’s and Kit’s and Paulie’s and Jack’s brother, too.” Mam sat on the little hob that was Missus Fitz’s roosting spot.

  The children retreated behind the kitchen chairs.

  “How’s Mudd?” Billy asked. Mudd was our granny.

  Mam gave him a look not meant for us children to notice. I sensed that he and Mam were speaking secrets over our heads. “She’s all right, Billy,” Mam said, and she changed the subject abruptly.

  “Are you home for long?” She blew her nose.

  “It all depends, Nan.”

  Mam gave him that look again. “It’s bad, Billy.”

  Neither of them spoke for a long time. Mam’s eyes became watery, and Billy swiped at his nose with the back of his hand.

  “We’ll talk again,” Mam said, and she stood up, took hold of the tongs and stirred the fire into life. The ever-hanging kettle broke into quiet song. Billy quickly ran a red handkerchief around his face. Until then I had thought all handkerchiefs were white.

  Mam placed two turf sods on the fire and sat back on the hob. Billy looked over at the children, “I have a new song,” he said. “Will I sing it for ye?”

  We children stared silently. A man singing in the house was as strange as Dad laughing out loud.

  Billy cleared his throat and launched into “Noreen Bawn,” a dirge about the “curse of emigration” that would have any pub anywhere in the world trembling on its foundations from the sobs and cries and table-pounding loneliness for home and the sadness for the daughter who contracted TB because she went to America to make a living and came home to die. Before he reached the end of the first verse, Billy had moved himself to tears, and they ran down his face in two streams. By the time he had left Noreen’s dear old mammy weeping over her grave in a glen in old Tír Chonaill, there was a shake in his voice and Mam had disappeared from the kitchen. From my place behind a chair I gaped at Billy because I thought only children who skinned their knees cried.

  Billy bent forward, pulled out his hanky again, and blew loudly. Mam slipped back into the kitchen and poured a mug of tea for her brother. Turning to the chil
dren she said, “Everyone go out in the yard and play.”

  She was met by a chorus of “Aw, Mam!” This uncle who sang and cried and kept a red handkerchief in his pocket and dressed in a suit and tie and new shoes in the middle of the week was too exotic to be separated from so soon.

  Before Mam could repeat herself, Billy asked, “Where’s the men?”

  “Down in Pillsworth’s at the wheat. The ground’s too wet for the reaper and they’re killing themselves with the old mowing machine.”

  “Sure, why didn’t you tell me, Nan?” Billy said, and he stood up so quickly that his chair scraped on the floor behind him.

  Within a few minutes I was one of the children trotting to keep up with the pied piper clad in wellingtons, old trousers, a coat belonging to Dad, and his damp hanky tied around his neck. With his wild curly black hair and ragged clothes Billy looked like a well-fed tinker.

  We passed Jimser Scott’s house in silence because we knew he always hid behind his haggard hedge to eavesdrop. When we reached the spot where years earlier a man had fallen dead off his bike into the drain, Billy stopped, took out his penknife, and jumped across the drain. He pulled down a stout ash sapling and nicked it where it was bent. Then with one quick jerk he snapped it off and leaped back onto the lane. As he continued toward the field he nicked off the branches until he was left with a twelve-foot pole. We each picked up a leafy branch and moved it through the air like the people in holy pictures waving palm fronds as Jesus rode by on an ass with no winkers.

  We stayed outside the gate when Billy went into Pillsworth’s. He stood beside the abandoned McCormick reaper, the ash pole in his hand like the soldier holding the spear after sticking it in Jesus’ side. We could hear Dad shouting and could see him, too, sending encouraging reins along the backs of the horses, Podge rowing, and Uncle Jack trotting to catch up. So taken up were the men with their work that they didn’t see Billy until they came to the end of the swath, and even then, Billy had to yell and wave.