The Village

by Alice Taylor

  “I think I do,” she answered in a surprised voice, as if she had just discovered the fact.

  “Well then,” I said firmly, “that settles it, because these are only holiday flats and we will be closing them down for the winter next week.”

  “Why?”

  “Because …” I started, but she was not really listening.

  “Do you own this place?” she asked. I told her that I did and introduced myself and asked for similar details.

  “I am Penelope Ann Carter Page,” she informed me grandly.

  As we returned to the front door she waltzed along ahead of me humming to herself. “Day-day,” she waved, smiling vaguely, and went out the door fluttering her fingers in the air like a baby practising its first goodbye. I went back to the kitchen and put the kettle on the Aga to make a cup of tea before going into Cork to do some shopping.

  When I came home that evening my seven-year-old met me in the front hallway, jumping with delight and bubbling over with his exciting news. “Mammy,” he shouted, “a lady booked in with a wheelbarrow.”

  “With a what?” I demanded.

  “A wheelbarrow, a wheelbarrow,” he chanted, running around the hall pushing an imaginary wheelbarrow in front of him to demonstrate the reality of the situation.

  “But what was in it?” I asked apprehensively.

  “A dog!” he announced with delight.

  “A dog?”

  “Sitting inside in the wheelbarrow between clothes and books and – and a saucepan,” he finished triumphantly.

  “Oh my God!” I gasped, raising my eyes to heaven. “Where is she now?”

  “Upstairs in the end flat.”

  “But who booked her in?” I demanded.

  “No one,” he said, surprised that I should be asking such a stupid question. “She knew where it was, and I took her books up for her.”

  “But this is impossible,” I protested, feeling that I was at the Mad Hatter’s tea-party. “She can’t move in just like that!”

  “But she is in,” he declared, “and she’s a nice lady and she likes it and I like her.”

  Enquiries to other members of the household bore out the truth of his story. On hearing of our unusual guest and her strange arrival the two older children thought that it was very funny, as indeed did some of the neighbours. If Lizzy May had been one of them, I thought, she would have concluded that I had opened a home for waifs and strays.

  Apparently Penelope Ann had stayed for a few days in a hotel outside the village and had borrowed their wheelbarrow to transport her belongings to her new-found accommodation. When she had herself installed, she pushed the barrow back down to the hotel with the dog sitting inside like a queen in a royal coach. She had not yet returned.

  Later, with the dog on a long lead, she swept in the front door and up the stairs as if she had been in the house all her life. I decided that I had better try to get things sorted out so I followed her up. But it was impossible to sort out Penelope Ann: she did not listen; she just gazed over my head. I could not get through to her because she shut a mental door against me.

  I rang the hotel to try to get some background to the situation. The manager told me that she had arrived a few days previously and had an English address, but he thought she had been in Ireland for a long time. “Actually,” he said, “she’s OK. It’s the dog that’s the problem.”

  How right he was! That dog became the bane of my life. His name was Junky and he was well christened, because if junk food is the lowest form of sustenance Junky, too, was well down the canine ladder of quality. Somewhere in his mixed genealogy a greyhound and a terrier had had a few moments of togetherness and Junky had inherited their worst traits; a sheepdog had also crossed his ancestral path somewhere back along the line. But if I thought that Junky was the lowest form of dog life, for Penelope Ann he was the reason for living.

  Junky had our backyard and garden to himself and night after night he pulled and played with everything that hung off the clothes-line. I collected torn sheets and towels from the four corners of the garden and prayed for patience. Penelope Ann refused all requests to tie him up at night and if I did so she promptly came down and released him. Nevertheless she lived in constant fear that he might escape from the backyard and run away, so in case anybody might open the back gate she collected dozens of crates from behind the shop and stacked them up inside the gate. When Paddy, upstairs in his house across the road, saw her do this he put his head out the window and shouted at her to stop, but she was deaf to everything but the needs of Junky. Trying to put a car into the yard we pushed vainly against the gate from outside but it stood unyielding, held firmly in position by stacks of crates. So then we had to come in through the house and shift all the crates. This drove everybody crazy when we had to do it time after time but, when we asked Penelope Ann to stop barricading our backyard, she just smiled and continued merrily on her way.

  Despite all her precautions I awoke early one morning to calls of “Junky! Junky! Junky!” coming from the street. Penelope Ann stood on the white line in the middle of the road with traffic whizzing past her; annoyed motorists shook their fists and blew their horns, but she was oblivious to everything but the missing dog. Her cry of “Junky, Junky” rose to a piercing wail. A neighbour up the street called Julia thought that she was being called and came to her front door, and gradually most of the village emerged to witness the scene. I tried to talk her off the road but she ignored me, until finally Junky appeared. He looked quite pleased with himself after his escapade and was welcomed back like the prodigal son, though gently reprimanded and told to be a “better boy”.

  One day soon after this episode I met Lizzy May, who had evidently decided that I needed some counselling. “Do you realise, my dear,” she said, “that little lady with the strange dog is not playing with the full deck.” As Lizzy May was a serious card-player I got her meaning straight away, but I did not tell her that if the same little lady stayed much longer, I’d be minus a few cards myself.

  During the months that Penelope Ann was with us a “boy” was what I presumed Junky to be, because she always addressed him as such. But life around Penelope Ann was full of the unexpected. After the escape she kept Junky in her flat and absolutely refused to let him out in the backyard again. Occasionally they passed me in the corridor as she led him out for his regular walk. On one of these occasions I was delicately balanced on top of a chair reaching up to paint the ceiling with a big tin of white paint beside me, which Junky on his rush past promptly turned upside down. As I glared after him I noticed that he had grown decidedly plump and thought that Penelope Ann must be feeding him too well. A few days later I met Junky on the stairs again; he was drastically reduced in size. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I realised that he had a pronounced post-natal appearance. Was it possible? I stood halfway up the stairs, shocked to a standstill. As my mind grappled to change its concept of Junky’s sex, I realised too that if there were pups, they had to be hidden somewhere.

  I waited until she came back from her walk.

  “Where are they?” I demanded.

  “Come along and meet them,” she invited with a beaming smile, delighted to share the joy of motherhood with me. She waltzed into the bedroom and pulled a large brown suitcase out from under the bed. There, laid out like four fat black puddings, were Junky’s offspring, and Junky herself promptly jumped in and proceeded to give them their afternoon tea. Penelope Ann glowed with love and pride and was completely impervious to the incongruity of the situation.

  “They just cannot stay here!” I protested in horror.

  “Why ever not?” she questioned in amazement.

  “It’s an impossible set-up,” I declared. “You will have to give them away or else have them put to sleep.”

  “However could you be so cruel!” she cried in horror. “Would you give your children away or have them put to sleep?”

  Not for the first time since Penelope Ann came to stay, I felt that I wa
s walking up a stairs and some of the steps were missing. A few days afterwards the conductor on the Bandon bus must have felt the same way when Penelope Ann boarded his bus with a shopping bag overflowing with pups, their mother following on a lead.

  That weekend I had a phone call from a lady who introduced herself as Penelope Ann’s mother. She seemed a charming person and fully aware of what an unusual young woman her daughter was. In the course of the conversation I asked her why Penelope Ann was so far away from her family.

  “She likes Ireland,” her mother answered, “and being slightly eccentric, as Penelope Ann is, does not seem to pose such a problem in Ireland.”

  I was not sure if that was a compliment to our tolerance or a confirmation of our daftness; I was certainly beginning to feel that I was losing my grip. “She likes it with you,” the mother continued, “but she won’t stay much longer. She prefers to move on.”

  I had begun to think that she would never go and that my lovely flat would be turned into a kennel for mongrels. But one day, just as the pups were getting mobile and able to jump out of the suitcase, she knocked on the kitchen door.

  “I’m moving on,” she said.

  “Where are you going?” I asked with relief.

  “To a guest-house in Cork,” she informed me. “Will you drive me in tomorrow.”

  “Certainly,” I said.

  Our car was in the garage for repairs and we had on loan a shabby green van which looked as if it might best be used for selling carpets door to door. The front passenger door was jammed, so all goods and passengers had to get in through the back door. The following day, with Penelope Ann calling instructions over my shoulder, I drove up in front of a gracious, imposing house which was to be her next abode. I wondered how many details she had given her future hosts, or, more important still, what she had decided not to tell them. As we braked to a halt a tall, distinguished-looking, grey-haired man came down the steps smiling. The smile froze on his face when, having left the driver’s seat, I opened the back door of the van and a procession emerged slowly. First Junky jumped out, wagging her tail in confident anticipation of a warm welcome. Then came one of my children, clasping two pups, and after him my sad-faced seven-year-old holding his favourite pup. Next out was the fourth pup and finally Penelope Ann, resplendent in a floppy red hat. The man’s face was a picture of astonishment.

  “My God! Is there any more in there?” he asked me in amazement.

  Penelope Ann took over with a flourish. Holding out her hand as if she were a visiting royal conferring on him a rare and wonderful honour, she announced in her most toffee-nosed accent, “I am Penelope Ann Carter Page, and I have come to stay.”

  THE VILLAGE SHOPKEEPER

  WHEN JACKY GOT his first heart-attack he was told to take it easy, but he could never be turned into a slow-moving person. Slim, fit and agile, he got things done while others were still thinking about them. Behind his counter he combined economy of movement, efficient service and a pleasant disposition. When his customers’ shopping bags were full he folded his arms on his side of the counter as they did likewise on theirs, and proceeded to discuss the state of the village, the parish, the country, and sometimes perhaps the world, but nearest to his heart was the state of the GAA.

  After a conversation with Jacky a person felt that life was good; he passed his joy of living on to them. Everybody, no matter what their station in life, was equal in his eyes. People did not always think as he did, of course. Once we had a titled lady living in the area who insisted on being addressed with all her handles attached. When one of the locals remarked that there was no way that he was going to do this, Jacky replied equably, “Sure if it keeps her happy, it’s no skin off your nose.” While he moved easily amongst people, he loved to have fun with the children. He gave them penny bars and lollipops and they came to him for ice-cream because his was the most generous cut of all.

  Every morning he ran around the village, popping the morning papers in through the letter-boxes, and in the evening he did the same thing when the bus had brought the Evening Echo. Old people who could not make it to the shop had their bread and milk delivered. Telling him to slow down was like trying to stop a mountain stream from flowing; quick-thinking by nature, his movements matched his mental agility.

  It sometimes worried me when I watched him shifting crates full of bottles in the shop and pushing his wheelbarrow around the garden. I mentioned it to the doctor who over the years had proved a good friend and shrewd doctor, combining humanity with medical expertise in his advice.

  “Well, Alice,” he said, “you can’t make an invalid out of him. If you take his independence you’ll kill him in another way.”

  I knew he was right and from then on I stopped trying to put a brake on Jacky, much to his relief. One evening as we were both tidying up the shop after a busy day we lifted crates together. At the time I was recovering from flu and looking at me he grinned and said, “Alice, the two of us together would make one good fellow.”

  As old age slowed him down slightly he withdrew gradually from the shop and spent more and more time in his much-loved garden. All the same, he continued to come into the shop in the evenings when it was quiet to meet his old friends. Every night they had an endless supply of stories to tell one another, but the group was dwindling as some had gone on to higher places.

  He went every morning to Mass and sometimes if I came on him unawares in a quiet corner of the house or garden he would be kneeling in silent prayer. For him there was no gap between morning Mass and daily life. Only somebody in spiritual communion with a higher level could have been filled with the joy of living which Jacky had.

  The second heart-attack came in the middle of a freezing cold November night. When Aunty Peg called from the foot of the stairs to come quickly, we knew that it had to be serious. Jacky was lying back against the pillows white-faced and shaken. The doctor came and sent him to hospital right away. As Gabriel drove him in I sat with Peg while the grey dawn seeped in the window of their living-room. We both knew that there was no comparison between this heart-attack and the one several years earlier. That had been only a rumble; this was the full earthquake. Gabriel came back and tried to make a bad story sound as good as possible. He told me later that Jacky had said on the way to the hospital, “If God took me now I would be happy to go.” But God did not take him. He hovered between life and death for a few days; then, on the evening that he recovered consciousness, his first question was: “Did Cork win the match?” They had played in the national league that Sunday and he had not heard the result.

  He was in hospital for six months and the nuns who cared for him could not have been kinder. Every night when we went to see him I marvelled at his capacity to endure pain cheerfully. When I heard the news that the surgeon had been forced to make a decision to amputate his leg to prevent gangrene I dreaded the effect the news would have on him, but he was still his old happy self and I came home feeling better than I had been going in. He was giving comfort rather than asking for it.

  During this trauma Aunty Peg suffered with him but despite this she never lost her sense of humour. She did not like being on her own so one of our children slept in Jacky’s bed. In their long, narrow bedroom over the shop, which had lovely old furniture that a friend who was a cabinet-maker had made for them, Aunty Peg taught Sean the names of all the saints in the rows of holy pictures that lined the walls. She herself seldom went to visit Jacky as she did not like hospitals, but she wrote to him every day. No matter how depressing the news from the hospital, she never gave up hope. Her friends from all around the village visited her regularly and drank tea with her, or something stronger if that was to their liking.

  Eventually Jacky came home with an artificial leg and two crutches. It was terrible to see this man who had always moved as nimbly as a mountain goat now slowed almost to a standstill by this heavy, awkward artificial leg. The weight of it was incredible; it pinned him to the ground. But Peg was absolutely thrille
d to have him home. Steps were a problem, so he slept in the little front room that had a window opening onto the street, and in the early morning he could watch from his bed the people passing by. It was summer then, so during the day he sat out in the garden where he read all the papers while his little dog Topsy stretched out in the shade beneath the garden seat. There was a general election campaign in full swing, and the political wrangling, the count and the post mortems that followed all passed away the time for him as he had lost none of his interest in politics.

  The artificial limb was awkward and cumbersome and though Jacky must have found his limited mobility very frustrating he did not complain. He was scheduled to go to the remedial clinic in Dún Laoghaire for special training and he hoped that he would achieve a certain measure of flexibility which would give him back some of his independence. The call came in late July. Gabriel was to drive him up but at the last minute Aunty Peg said to me, “Alice, why don’t you go with him?” We set out on a warm sunny morning for Dublin. As we debated where we would stop for lunch I realised for the first time the problem steps present to the disabled. We sat around the table laughing and chatting, and I could almost convince myself that we were having a day out together, but our arrival in Dún Laoghaire in the late afternoon brought me back to reality. The visit to that clinic was a chastening experience for it was a world where brave people swam against the tide.

  We settled Jacky in and said goodbye to him in the dining-room where he sat having tea with people who had far greater limitations on their freedom than he. As I held his hand he looked up at me, and there in his eyes I saw for the first time his suffering and fears, and his sadness that we were going home and leaving him there alone. As I walked out the door my eyes were blinded with tears.

  During the week that followed we got a cheery letter nearly every day, assuring us that he was doing well and mastering the leg. Everybody in the village was interested in his progress and called to see Aunty Peg, bolstering her belief in his recovery. Fr Seamus called regularly but cautioned me: “Don’t expect too much.” Aunty Peg and I wrote to him daily and posted on the Cork papers. We painted the house as a surprise for his return, and Gabriel planned to visit him on the Sunday when he was up for the All-Ireland Final in which Cork was playing.