by Honor Harlow
“Exactly my feelings, John. Where is the modesty in that?”
“Mammy, when I’m better, can I go to see the girls dancing with the cans on the stage?”
“Mary, how many times have I told you children are seen, not heard? When you are better, you’ll go to school and not to see that French can-can dance.”
The new Pope was very bold too. He wasn’t dancing with cans, but they were always giving out about him.
The two of them kept giving out about people until Mr Delaney stood up and went to the sitting room window. He said, “The night is on us already,” and that meant he was leaving.
“Say good night to Mr Delaney. He’s off to a sodality meeting.”
“Alright. What’s a sodality meeting?”
“It’s for people who like to pray.”
“Where is it?”
“In the parish hall.”
“Does Daddy go?”
“He doesn’t but he makes sure to go there to play cards.”
“He showed me how to play twenty-five.”
“That’s your father for you. It would be more in his line to teach you to behave like a nice girl.”
“He does, he tells me to be a good girl.”
“Enough out of you. Will you have a boiled egg for your tea?”
“I want what Daddy is having.”
“Corned beef? You want some too?” I didn’t know what corned beef was, but I nodded my head. I looked at Mr Delaney, the silly goose, waiting for him to say, “You’ll never feel until Christmas is on us and we are plucking the turkey.” because that meant he had his overcoat on and was ready to leave.
One evening after Mr Delaney left, I said, “Will Daddy be here soon? I want to show him the page I coloured.”
“He will but don’t be tormenting him when he gets home. He had enough trouble this morning.”
“Was there a tinker’s funeral?”
“There wasn’t, but that nasty Cathal McHugh was throwing stones at the presbytery’s windows.”
“Did he break any?”
“He didn’t. He was too drunk to take aim.”
“Will Daddy put him in jail?”
“That’s what Cathal would like, fed and kept here in town with his friends around, but it’s in Ballinacora he’ll be locked up in.”
“Why?”
“To learn a bit of respect for the priests and the bishop.”
“How do you know? I didn’t see Daddy talking to you since the morning-time?”
“It was Mr Delaney who told me the goings on of that man and the way he can’t stand up straight with the amount of drink he takes.”
“Mr Delaney knows all the news.”
“He takes an interest in what is happening. Whist. I hear Daddy’s bike. Sit down and I’ll put the eggs on to boil.”
Dr Kelly let me back to school on the last day before the Christmas holidays, to see the crib outside Sister Anthony’s office. When I was in High Babies with Sister Paul, we made a line and went to look at the big a curly-haired Baby Jesus lying in a box with straw. The statues of Our Lady and St Joseph were kneeling behind the cow and ass because the animals had to be near the baby to blow their breaths on Him and keep Him warm. I wanted to see it again and kept tormenting Mammy to let me go to school and see it. In the end, the doctor said it wouldn’t do me any harm if Mr Delaney drove me and Mammy to the school and I wasn’t out much in the cold. We went in through the door, looked at the crib and we left straight away. I didn’t see my pals Úna, Kait, Brigid or Liam, only the table and the straw.
In the car Mr Delaney said, “Dervla, we’ll stop at the Royal Hotel for a Christmas drink.” He drove to the hotel on An Lár and parked the car in front of the hotel door, so I didn’t have to walk in the cold air. I stopped for a second to look at the bulbs of blue, red, green and yellow up in the sky. They were hanging on lines going from one side of the street to the other side near the hotel. I wanted to stay looking at them, wondering would a flying canister shoot across, like in the drapery shop, but Mr Delaney pushed me in through the hotel door.
He walked in front and we followed behind him to a room with a carpet all over the floor, spreading out until it hit the walls. We twisted in and out among round tables and chairs until we were standing in front of a low table near the windows. Mr Delaney pulled it out a bit and we sat in behind it on a long seat with cushions, the same colour as the curtains falling to the ground at the long windows. At the other side of the room, right in front of us there was a woman standing behind a short counter. She lifted a flap and came out and crossed the room to us.
“Howya, John? Great weather for this time of the year.”
“Tis indeed. We’ll never feel until Christmas is on us and we are plucking the turkey.”
“Never said a truer word. In less than a week, we’ll all be at Midnight Mass.”
“We will indeed.”
“The usual for yourself, John, and I suppose a glass of lemonade for this pretty little girl, and Mrs Blake, what will you have?”
“Mrs Blake will be having a glass of sherry and some of your trifle for the young lady, as well as the lemonade.”
She went off and after a while a man came carrying a tray and placed a small glass with a leg at the bottom in front of Mammy. It was full of brown coloured water. The lemonade was in a normal glass, but my trifle was in a glass with a leg like Mammy’s but bigger. The trifle was like jelly and custard but with wet cake at the bottom and thick cream on top and tiny, coloured beads that Mammy called thousand and ones. Mr Delaney’s glass was big and round like Santy’s belly, filled with black water and white, sudsy foam on top.
Mammy and Mr Delaney were talking away, so I passed the time looking at the people sitting at the other tables. An old man, who was sitting by the fire, winked at me and then got up and came over to our table. Mr Delaney asked him how he was.
“Better than yourself, John. Sure, I’ll see another few Christmases yet.”
“You will indeed, Mattie, and pluck many’s a turkey.”
Mammy had another sherry before we went out to the car. Outside, it was pitch dark with strings of shiny, coloured beads hanging on the neck of street. Someone had switched on the bulbs and they glowed like the fire in the grate. The square was gay and glittery as we drove home.
There were special things to eat at Christmas, like the brown pudding I helped Mammy make. Mrs McLoughlin always made us a Christmas cake so we could celebrate Baby Jesus’ birthday on Christmas Day. He was born in a stable. Everyone in Drumbron left the front door open on Christmas Eve, so the Holy Family would have somewhere to spend the night and not have to go back to the stable.
Even though Santa Claus was fat, he didn’t come in through the open doors, but he came down the chimney because he was magic and never got stuck in it with his bag of toys. He left me a teddy bear, just like the one I had seen in Byrne’s shop, a colouring book, two vests and two knickers and two pairs of socks. When I was upstairs in my bed with Teddy, I looked over at Will on the mantlepiece and wondered what Liam got. Christmas was smashing but I wanted to go back to school and see my pals and tell them about my measles and Teddy. I crossed my fingers so I could go back to school and then I did.
One frosty morning, Maura McLoughlin came to my house to take me to school because she was big. On the way there, she told me she was eleven, her brother Michael was ten, her brother Jim nine, her sister Catherine seven and her brother Paddy was four.
“Maura, do ye have a big, big house like Loretta’s, one for ye all to fit in?”
“I suppose we do because there’s room for us all and we have a cat too. Mammy and Paddy sleep downstairs in the front room, I’m in the upstairs front room with Catherine and Michael and Jim are in the back room.”
“Have you a parlour?”
“We don’t but we have a big kitchen. Mammy wants to buy a range when she has the money.”
“We have a range.”
“I know, Mammy cleans it out on
Fridays.”
“Where did your Mammy make the cake for us?” I wondered.
“In the pot on the grille.”
It being the same way Nanny Ward made her cakes, made me think of the nannas. I was working out in my head when I could go to see them as Maura was saying, “We have a back kitchen with a sink and another tap in the toilet, so we can wash our hands and face.”
It was smashing with Maura telling me about her house. Sometimes my feet slid on the crispy road, but I didn’t fall because Maura was holding my hand. Maura brought me to the door of my school. Before she left to go to her own school, which was the Mercy Convent further along the Cork Road, she told me to wait inside the door until she came for me.
It was funny being in school again. I hung my coat up in the cloakroom and crept into my desk keeping my eyes lowered. Sister Ignatius was at her table looking towards the door on the bad side because the children from the Home were filing in. I looked too. Brigid was there, shining and quivering with cold like the frost on leaves. I didn’t see Liam, so I supposed he still had the measles and wasn’t out of the woods yet and the doctor wouldn’t let him back for another good while. Loretta wasn’t in her seat and I wondered if she had the measles.
We didn’t look at the cat on the mat in the first pages of the reading book but went to see a boy and a toy on page twelve. In catechism class we were learning about the Holy Ghost, who was everywhere but you didn’t see him. I wanted to know about him in case he was a cousin of the Coster Bower. I didn’t fidget but I think he was only the son of God and the brother of Jesus and the three of them were stuck together.
We put on our coats before we went out to the yard. I rushed over to Úna and Kait. They asked me if I was better and I asked them about Ducking Night.
“Arlene, it was great spraoi.”
“It was, so it was.”
“I blackened my face with soot and put my cardigan on inside out and Kait wore one of her mother’s old dresses.”
“I did, so I did, and our lanterns were smashing. Úna’s baby brother got frightened when he looked out the door and saw all the scary eyes and mouths swimming along.”
“The street was jammed with everybody carrying lanterns and poor Brendan nearly jumped out his skin when he saw the lit-up faces in the dark.”
“We had to show him our turnip with the candle inside, so he knew it was only us.”
“Did ye get any pennies?”
“No but we got five halfpennies between us.”
“Ye did?”
“We did but that auld, stupid pig Mr Delaney said we were using Ducking Night to beg and ran us away.”
“I told my big brother, and he got the mean yoke back.”
“What did he do?”
“He stooped down and crept up to Delaney’s door and tied a piece of fishing gut to the knocker.”
“What for?”
“To pull it and knock on his door.”
“But he’d see your brother when he opened the door.”
“No, silly goose, they ran and hid behind the hedge outside his railing and he couldn’t see them in the dark.”
“It was great spraoi to see him opening the door and nobody there.”
“We pulled the string a few times and then cleared off when he came out with his dogs.”
“He was going to set his dogs on us, so he was.”
“He’s awful, so next Ducking Night we will do plenty of door slamming to madden him.”
“I betcha even the spirits don’t come back to visit Mr Delaney’s house, so they didn’t.”
“Did ye get any sweets?”
“We didn’t but we got barm breac and hazelnuts from plenty of people.”
“That’s cos the big boys go to Castle Hackett woods and get nuts, so they do,” Kait explained.
“My brother went as well, cos he wanted to see the woods near Cnoc Maa,” Úna said proudly.
“Did he put salt in his pocket?” Kait wanted to know.
I was wondering why they had to put salt in their pockets and asked, “What for?”
“That’s why,” Kait said cos she didn’t know why.
Úna, who was big, knew and told me, “So the fairies don’t take you away with them.”
“Do they not like salt?” I asked surprised.
“I don’t know,” Úna answered.
Kait tried to show off she knew everything, saying, “If you don’t have salt in your pocket, they’ll take you away because Queen Maeve lives in Cnoc Maa.”
“I know she does cos Mrs McLoughlin told me,” I answered, putting my face up near hers to show her she wasn’t the boss of me.
She didn’t know how to answer and only said, “Nan and Nanny said you are to come to see them, so you are.”
“I will when I can. Tell Prince I was asking for him.”
Lent
Maura was waiting for me and I was glad because it was still half black in the street. I caught her hand and held on to it. “Maura, are you going to come for me every day now?”
“Only for a while. Mammy got me a job in Wynn’s shop and I’m starting on St Brigid’s Day.
“You’re too small to work in a shop.”
“I’m working upstairs in the house minding the children. In no time the evenings will start getting bright and you can go home on your own.”
“I can cos I’m big. When is St Brigid’s Day?”
“Very soon and after that it’s St Patrick’s day.”
“What is St Patrick’s Day, Maura?” I asked. She told me we had no school that day and we could eat all the sweets we liked. I was surprised people couldn’t eat sweets the other days and said, “I can eat sweets all the time.”
“Because you’re small but when you make your First Holy Communion, you get big and do things the big people do.”
“What do they do?”
“The nuns will tell you all about it so don’t be asking me questions like Catherine and Jim are always doing.”
“Alright, I won’t,” I said real quick, so she wouldn’t get vexed.
Maura was right. One day after school when I went out to the street it wasn’t dark. As the days got longer, I started coming home on my own and after tea, going out to play with my pals. As the evenings were getting brighter, everyone was getting happier and talking about stretch in the evening, but John Delaney was a silly goose saying, “It won’t be long until Ash Wednesday is on us and we’re wearing the ashes on our foreheads.”
I asked Daddy about the ashes because he smokes and would know.
“Arlene, the only thing you and I will be doing on Shrove Tuesday is eating pancakes.”
“I know, Daddy. Everyone in Drumbron has pancakes for tea.”
At school, Úna and Kait were saying they were dying for Pancake Tuesday to come so they could stuff themselves with pancakes.
On Ash Wednesday, Mammy went to Mass with Mr Delaney and came home with her forehead dirty because the priest had pressed a cork against it and left a dirty spot that was supposed to be a cross.
At school Sr Ignatius didn’t talk about pancakes, only about the forty days of Lent. It was when people didn’t eat meat on Fridays, and they did penance for their sins. There were lots of sins. They had different names to be able to tell the priest about them in confession. Before, no one knew the names of the sins, so God wrote ten commandments on two big stone slates and gave them to a man called Moses. The commandments were things you could not do and if you did any of those things written on the stones, you had committed a sin. We were learning the commandments off by heart so we wouldn’t break them and commit a sin. The fourth one was very important, “Thou shalt love and honour thy parents.” It only meant we had to be good and not give cheek to our mammies and daddies.
Daddy, Mammy and Mr Delaney were in the kitchen talking about Lent. Mammy had given up sweets and sugar. Mr Delaney wasn’t going to eat any more biscuits. Daddy didn’t say anything, so I asked him, “Daddy, are you giving up smoking?”
/> “I amn’t but John is giving up Chester cake.”
Mammy gave Daddy a vexed look and Mr Delaney opened his eyes wide and said nothing. Later on, when he got up to leave, he said, “It won’t be long until Easter is on us and we’re eating the eggs.”
Daddy answered, “Aye but we’ll have St Patricks first.”
Mr Delaney was always in our house and that’s why I asked Mammy if he was a relative and part of our family.
“Whatever put that into your head? Of course he isn’t, he’s Daddy’s friend.”
I was surprised because Mr Delaney seemed more like Mammy’s friend with the way he was always talking with her, nearly like an old woman. Daddy liked to go to the parish hall to play cards and talk about the game and the beef factory with Dr Kelly, while Mammy and Mr Delaney were always talking about girls going to their aunts.
“Dervla, that Kelly one’s mother is saying the daughter is off to England to stay with her aunt.”
“I’m not surprised, she was a wild one,” Mammy would answer nodding her head and looking cross.
“Her aunt, mar dhea. There’s too many like that Kelly one around.”
“There is indeed.”
The two of them used to get cross about girls going to their aunts in England. I suppose Mammy liked him because he helped her choose the new curtains and carpets for the sitting room and always went to Sligo or Galway when she needed to buy new clothes. I hated the guts out of him but there was one good thing about him – when my mother was talking to him in the parlour, she didn’t notice that I went out to play with my pals. As soon as I ate my bread and butter with the sliced hard-boiled egg or ham, I went to the nannas low thatched cottages on Clonthu Hill but didn’t bother telling Mammy.
In my mother’s mind some people were above her, like Mrs Fitzgerald and others were beneath her, like my pals. I knew that because one day when I wanted to sit on the same side of the chapel as Úna, Mammy put a vexed look on her face and told me we couldn’t sit with those rough and ignorant people. I never told her about my pals Úna and Kait and besides, Daddy used to say it was better not to tell her certain things, so as not to vex her. I didn’t bother telling her about the nannas so as not to vex her. But she was a silly goose because the nannas were smashing altogether.
