by Honor Harlow
Batt the postman brought Eithne a letter every Tuesday with thin, crispy sheets of paper full of writing and pounds notes stuffed in the middle of pages that came from Mr Ward. Around the times we were going to get holidays at Christmas or in the summer, Eithne would be happy and tell us, “Martin is coming home next week.”
That was great news for us because Mr Ward always bought us an ice cream cone on the day he arrived, even if the wind was blowing or it was pelting out of the heavens. He must have known we used to let Shelia and Ciaran into our singsong and dance concert in Kait’s backyard for free.
So, when we knew the day he was coming, we would hang around their house until we saw them heading to the station and trail behind and hang around with them on the platform until the train arrived. Mr Ward’s head would be stuck out the train window long before it pulled into the station. While the noise of the brakes was filling the place, he’d jump off the train and in a leap was beside the children. Dropping his suitcase, he’d pick up Shelia and Ciaran and swing them around.
We’d try to the lift the case, but it wouldn’t budge for us. He’d grab it when he put the children down and looked at Eithne. She would move closer to him and they would walk side by side as we left the station.
We followed them as they crossed over the road to Jimmy Moran’s grocery shop, knowing we’d soon have an ice cream cone, with a chocolate flake stuck in the middle of the soft, sweet, swirly stuff. It was smashing to watch how the white, snowy cream twirled and swished out of the machine into the wafer cone held in Mr Moran’s hand.
Eithne changed and became pretty while Martin was home. She wore dresses instead of the dark, blue overall, full of tiny flowers, that wrapped around her body. Mrs McLoughlin had the same type of apron that looked like it was a dress without sleeves when she was cleaning our kitchen or in her own house. Eithne must have hung it at the back of the wardrobe, like Daddy did with his Garda jacket, because we never saw her wearing it while Mr Ward was at home.
In summertime, they’d go to the bog together to bring home the turf, Kait Kenny’s father had footed for them. Mr Ward and Eithne stacked it in a reek at the gable end of house.
“Now darling, at least you and the children will be warm during the winter months. Every time I put a shilling into the slot in the gas fire, I think of ye and know at least you’re looking into a warm glow and not down on two bright bars.”
It seems like Mr Ward was around for ages but then, all of sudden, we were walking down to the station behind him, with the suitcase dragging his arm down. Ciaran and Shelia would skip along but Eithne looked heavy like the case. The daddy and the mammy dumped themselves onto the wooden bench in the waiting room while we ran along the platform and into the toilets. The man who sold the tickets sat in a small box with a window with no glass and a counter. He tore off a ticket from a roll and passed it out onto the counter ledge and took the pounds and coins people gave him.
“It’s coming, it’s coming.” We’d scream all excited as we leaned our upper bodies in the direction of where we heard the sound of the whistle.
“Be careful now and don’t go too close the edge,” Eithne would warn us but she and Mr Ward didn’t budge from the wooden bench, until the hissing and long screeching that the wheels made grinding to a halt, told them to get up.
They came out slowly walking close to each other. Mr Ward held on to the bar at the side of the train door, holding his case in the other and went up the steps like an old man. He turned his head and looked at us all below him as he pulled his body up the steps and into the compartment. We’d rushed to the wide window as he opened the top part and put his face into the long, narrow space and looked at the mammy. She kept smiling up at him, telling him she was fine. When the train started to move, she ran along the platform until there was no more platform left.
In a snivelling voice, coming from deep in her throat, she’d tell Shelia and Ciaran to keep waving to Daddy. We jumped up and down and kept moving our hands above our heads until the train got small on the track. As we’d walk out the station, Eithne took the hankie out of her sleeve and squashed it up against her face.
Kait’s daddy, Mr Kenny went away too, but we never went to the station to see him off because he was home again after a little while. It was always when we went into the new class with the new nun that he came back.
We knew when the leaves started fall, Kait would come to school with a new pair of boots instead of sandshoes, because her father was back from picking the praties in Scotland. He had money for her mammy and Kait got the new boots to wear for the cold weather.
Úna told us she’d get new boots when her mammy got the children’s allowance. Úna’s father didn’t go to Scotland for money. He worked in his house with a last and a small hammer. People from the road came with their boots and shoes when they needed a new sole or heels put on. Mr McNulty could fix a broken arm too because he was the seventh son of a seventh son and he had the gift of setting bones.
Úna didn’t get her new boots until we started going up the fields picking blackcurrants and red haws from the hawthorn bushes. The lads from the river, who lived in St Jarlath’s Avenue near Kilmartin Road, went too and we played with them. It was smashing rolling down the ditches and jumping between the cow dungs Moola Connors’ cows left all over the fields. On windy days, we ran with the wind pushing us and had races to see who got to the bottom of the field first. Before we went home, we’d go to where the blackberry bushes were growing on the ditches at the sides of the fields, and stuff ourselves full of berries. One day Kait scratched her hand with the thorns of the bushes. The boys told her they would gather the berries for her from then on and that way she wouldn’t get scratched any more.
Storm Debbie
Maybe Debbie didn’t like the bushes hurting Kait either, because a few days later she blew the bushes and trees down. People were talking about Debbie before she arrived. One day the man on the news said the big, windy woman Debbie might strike Ireland with strong gales but the next day the same man said she wouldn’t come near us, as she was on her way to France. Mr Delaney was saying Debbie was strong enough to cut the power off to the houses and we would all be left without the light.
Daddy put candles in all the rooms with matches beside them and piles in the small room where Mammy was. She was sick again and sleeping downstairs. If the lights went out, Daddy said we would be in total darkness and he gave Mammy two torches and told her to keep them close by. Dr Kelly said gusts of wind of more than a hundred miles per hour were on their way and would uproot trees and blow sheds to pieces. This information made Mammy worried. She wanted Daddy to stay at home to mind us, but he couldn’t. He and all the Garda had to be in barracks in case Debbie paid a visit to Ireland.
Even though people were hearing about Debbie causing damage in other countries, when she came, she wasn’t bold, only a bit noisy at the beginning but then she got really mad. She screamed and howled and threw things around the place in Drumbron and the countryside. The day she went wild, I was home from school sitting in the kitchen.
First, I heard her wrap herself around the house trying to make it shake but it held onto the ground. Then she took her spite out on the spades and forks and shovels, lifting them up and dashing them against the walls in the backyard. She made the buckets and cans rattle and fly through the air. She strew tree branches and rubbish all over the place and blasted sods of turf out of the reek, even though Daddy had put rope across it to keep the turf down.
I ran into the bedroom to Mammy and we held on to each other as bold Debbie hit the house and pounded on the walls. Mammy trembled when the light quivered and went out. We were left in darkness and the radio shut up. In the silence inside the house, the sound of Debbie battering the house grew louder. I didn’t hear the hens squawking, but Mammy must have because she cried out, “Día ar sábhául, the hen house!”
“What about it, Mammy?” I wondered why she was so worried about the hens that it had made her lapse
back into Irish.
“The roof will be blown away.”
“No Mammy, I heard Daddy telling Dr Kelly he had secured it down with ropes that had big heavy stones tied on to the bottom.” While I was saying that we heard the almighty crash of a tree falling.
“In ainm Dé!” Mammy screamed.
“It’s the tree across in the field,” I said to calm her. The crash came from the other side of Suileen Lane where there were no houses.
The room was dark, making Mammy worse so I asked her for the torch. She had it under her pillow. Switching it on, I went over to the dressing table and got the big, red Christmas candle and lit it with the matches Daddy had placed beside it.
“Mammy, let’s go to the kitchen. The range is in there.”
“You’re right, it will throw a glow and even if we run out of candles, we won’t be in total darkness.”
“Mammy, Daddy put candles and matches everywhere. There is a long, white one on the dresser, so let’s go there and light it. It will last a long time and not burn down too soon.”
Mammy got up slowly. The back of her nightdress was red. “Mary, go to the kitchen and I’ll be there in a minute. I just want to put on some right clothes. If anyone came in and saw me in my nightdress, I’d die of shame.”
“Sure Mammy, everyone is at home, afraid to go out in case they get blown away,” I said as I lit two candles and left them on the mantlepiece, so she could see and then asked, “Where’s Daddy?”
“In the barracks. With the storm causing havoc, all the Garda are needed,” she said as she picked up some small towels from the box at the side of the bed.
After a bit she came into the kitchen walking shakily. We sat together at the table. I was colouring my book and Mammy took out her rosary beads from the drawer. She started praying for all the people caught out in the storm. After a while, the whistle of the kettle as it started to sing on the range, made Mammy lift up her eyes.
“Mary, will you wet a drop of tea?”
“A course I will, Mammy, and I’ll put some bread in case you’re hungry.”
She took two bites out of a slice and then said, “Hold me by the waist to help me walk back to the room, like a good girl.” She walked very slowly. “Mary, you sleep here with me. It’s better we are together.” The wind was howling but we fell asleep.
The next morning Daddy called in to see how we were.
“Dervla, sure Galway looks like it was hit by bombs. In Tuam most of the buildings in the town are damaged. The storm was raging there for hours.”
“William, when do you think we will have the light back on?”
“Hard to say. The ESB are working flat out.”
“Did the storm reach Cavan?”
“It did, a tree fell on a woman in a car.”
“The Lord save us from harm. Any word from Hazel?”
“Thank God, they safe and sound.” After cleaning out the ashes, Daddy put more turf into the range and then said he had to leave. “The worst is over, Dervla. Now stay in bed, I’ll get Mrs McLoughlin to call over and make you something to eat.”
When we went back to school after the storm, all we did was talk about Debbie knocking down trees and throwing things all over the place. Úna said Debbie blew slates from the roof of the Home and at playtime we rushed over to the Home Babies in the yard to ask them. They didn’t answer us. Evelyn said talking to them was like talking to the wall. Then she made us laugh by saying maybe a slate hit them on the head and knocked a screw out.
I told my pals about the tree in the field across from my house. In the evening, we went to see it. The roots were all up in the air, in a giant round circle of brown clay. It looked like a chocolate cake with creamy streaks going out from the centre and was big enough for Cuchulainn to eat.
After days of non-stop talking about Debbie, we forgot about her, like I was forgetting about Liam. I started forgetting about Liam when Mammy took away the colouring of Will, the little boy, from the mantlepiece. She told Mrs McLoughlin to put in the box where all my other pieces of art, as Daddy called the pictures I coloured, were. When I told him, we had drawing class two days a week in second class, he was delighted. One day Sr Kevin held my drawing up and said I had talent. When I went home, I told Daddy, “Sister Kevin said I have the makings of an artist in me.”
“You have the making of a little devil in you, aye, that’s what you have,” he answered, tickling me.
Mammy said with a vexed face, “Putting silly notions into your head.”
Sr Kevin put plenty of things into our heads. She taught us how to sound out a group of letters and put the sounds together to mean a word. One day I looked at the page and knew the letters in ‘tomorrow’ meant tomorrow without sounding it out. The same thing happened to my pals. One by one, we all began to know how to read.
Second class was smashing with no cats on mats or rats in hats but instead Sr Kevin told us stories from the Old Testament as good as the ones we saw at the matinees in the Odeon cinema on Sundays. The story about Joseph and his coat of many colours reminded me of Liam and his geansaí with the stripes of different coloured wool but the God in the Old Testament was always cross. He was like Sr Ignatius and chastising people. Jesus was nice. He helped people and made them walk again. He was like Sr Kevin.
Sr Kevin told us Ducking Night was really Oíche Samhain, a pagan custom, to celebrate the coming of the dark evenings. It was from the times before St Patrick came to Ireland and baptised us and made us Christians. Now it was changed to All Souls Day and was a Day of Obligation which meant it was like a Sunday and we had to go to Mass. Priests could say three Masses, she said as though that was very important, but the priests were always saying Masses. It was also a special day because people could pray and get indulgences for the souls in purgatory. You needed to say seven Hail Marys, seven Our Fathers and seven Glory Bes so a soul got an indulgence and got out of purgatory quicker. That was why the chapel stayed opened until late, and people went in and out of the church as often as they wanted and lit candles and prayed for their deceased relatives.
Mr Delaney and his mother knew plenty of souls in purgatory and spent all the evening going in and out of the chapel, getting indulgences for their friends and talking to people outside the chapel door who were going in and out too. None of my pals knew anyone in purgatory, so we weren’t worried about getting them out.
Lighting candles was good fun. Me and Ev queued up behind the line of people and let our penny drop to make the clanky sound. Then we lit our candle with the wick of one that already had a flame. We waited until the top burned and got soft and the wax overflowed and started sliding down, making knots at the side of the candle, before we stuck it into the slot on the golden table, with all the other quivering lit ones. Úna and Kait had no money so they couldn’t light a candle.
“We’ll get some pennies when we go to the houses with the candles in the turnips, but by then it will be too late to get one of the indulgences,” Úna said.
“It doesn’t matter anyway cos we know no one in purgatory,” Kait reasoned.
“We can go to the graveyard and pray for the dead, if ye want,” I said so Kait and Úna wouldn’t feel they weren’t part of the All Souls Day.
“Sure, we were there yesterday, remember I won all the time we were playing ‘I’m the king of the castle’ on top of the graves?” Ev said, “And besides, we need to finish cutting out the faces in our turnips.”
“Ya, and I have to look for something to disguise myself when we go out this evening in the dark,” I said.
“Let’s up go to Clonthu Hill instead of going to the graveyard,” Kait said.
“I have to mind Brendan and Teresa, so I’ll go home and get them and ye can go to the nannas houses afore me.”
We got to the house really quick and Ev started drinking tea out of Nanny’s tin mug. She reached her hand out for to take a piece of the barm breac but Kait told her, “Hey, greedy face, wait for Úna. Look, she’s at the bottom of the
hill and she might be the one to get the ring.”
Úna appeared with her brother and sister. Her mammy was in hospital having another baby.
“Will they be home soon, a rua?” Nanny asked as she buttered the brack and gave a big, thick slice to each of us.
“Tomorrow, I think.”
“A cratur, the fairies will be wanting the new baby. Say ‘God bless him or her.’ as quick as lighting if you hear someone praising the infant.”
“What for?”
“The daoine sibhe takes babies and leave changelings in their place.”
“What’s a changeling?”
“An ugly creature the fairies don’t want for themselves, a stóir, so remember my words and say, ‘God bless him or her’ every time.”
At that moment Kait let a screech out of her. She had found the ring. “Nanny, this means I am the one getting married.”
“It does, a stóir.”
“Will you marry Seán or Kevin?” Úna asked.
“None of them. The boy I’m going to marry is Jim Smith.”
“He doesn’t go to the river. Why are you marrying him?” Ev said.
“Cos he’s lovely.”
“Boys are not lovely,” Úna said.
“He is. He cured my leg when it got caught in the back wheel of Mary’s bike.” Kait’s big sister, Mary, worked in Smith’s house in the evening after school.
“One day Mammy was sick, and Mary had to take me to work with her after school because the doctor was in the room with Mammy all day.”
“Did you go in the house with Mary?”
“No, I don’t work in Smith’s and I stayed outside in the street.”
“Why didn’t you go into the house?”
“In case Mrs Smith was cross with Mary.”
“Mrs Fitzgerald gets cross with my cousin Lina,” Úna said.
“The street where the Smiths live is not like our street and no one goes into other houses.”
