My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress

by Christina McKenna

  After the tea and sea it was off to Barry’s, the amusement arcade in Portrush. We’d clamber into the car and trundle off on the two-mile journey to this second paradise. To us Portrush was synonymous with Barry’s. We didn’t see much more of the town itself; father claimed it was a ‘black hole anyway’, by which he meant it was full of Protestants, and for him that was good enough reason to shun it.

  Getting us into Barry’s was no problem – we’d race inside like prize sprinters – but getting us out again was a nightmare of tears, tantrums and much dragging of feet. We couldn’t get enough of those moronic merry-go-rounds, sitting astride plastic ponies with mother urging us to ‘hold on tight’.

  Afterwards came the dodgems, the ghost train and big dipper. Sometimes on that stomach-lurching circuit those soggy sandwiches would take their revenge. We were denied nothing then. My mother reasoned, naively, that we could get too much of a good thing, and that if we had a go on everything we’d get so fed up we’d leave without a fuss. It rarely happened though. She had to resort to cajoling us with sweets of every description and the promise of ice cream in Morelli’s café back in Portstewart. The bribe of ice cream always worked.

  We’d drift along the promenade, licking the dripping ice-cream cones. In those golden moments we really did feel we’d died and gone to Miss McKeague’s heaven.

  Father would need his treat too. Before departing we’d follow him into a dingy pub – always the same one: The Slippery Eel on the promenade – and there he’d reward himself with a whiskey and a pint of Guinness. ‘The Eel’ seemed to be staffed by the same people and frequented by the same patrons year after year.

  True to form, father would examine the bar counter with his seasoned carpenter’s eye and give it a right good shake. Mother would note these disquieting indications, and shout out the order to distract him. ‘God,’ she’d whisper between gritted teeth, ‘you could take that man nowhere. Let you down a bagful, so he would.’ She was well used to his ways by then.

  We were always served by the same barman: fat, tattooed forearms; face like a lump of Play-Doh pummelled by a child throwing a fit; purple parsnip nose. He wore a tight tee shirt which gave him a rather unflattering silhouette. He shuffled his feet, mumbled his words, and brought us our drinks on a dented tray which had no doubt doubled as an instrument of defence and combat during the occasional Saturday night brawl.

  When we went to the toilet the floorboards shuddered. When a car whizzed past the window the drink in our glasses shivered. We got Fanta orange and mother had a Babycham, served in what looked like a glass saucer on a stem. With each sip her cheeks would go pink and she’d smile more. She’d frequently end up having a chat with the same woman every year: a middle-aged lady with a recent perm and red ears. Father would become more voluble, engaging some cap-and-braces wearer at the bar, who’d swerve with delirious uncertainty through a range of topics he knew little about. Those wise words of Lord Halifax come to mind now: ‘Most men make little use of their speech than to give evidence against their own understanding.’ And that surely went for father as well.

  And we children, having finished the Fanta with lightning speed, with the adults occupied and our day at an end, would quest about for further amusement. Since we were forbidden to move from the table, its surface became the focus of our ennui: we’d lever off sections of Formica with bored fingers and stuff the evidence of our vandalism down the crack of the vinyl sofa seat. When the adults had finally finished and father was on his feet he’d look at the table and remark: ‘God that Formica doesn’t stand the times atall, atall. Nothing but a load of oul’ British rubbish.’ And the barman would sigh heavily, shoot smoke from his purple nose and counter: ‘Aye, it’s the bloody sun that does it, so it does … curls it up like … need tae get a lock of curtains, so I would.’ With that we’d traipse out, experiencing the rare delight of having put one over on the adults.

  We slept most of the way home, reliving in our dreams the pleasures of the day, our joy tempered by the thought that we’d have to wait a whole year before we could do it all again.

  In childhood I climbed metaphorical mountains. Each year the terrain got harder and the ascent steeper. That one day by the seaside was the ledge on which I rested. Yet all the same it seemed that that one, red-letter, day repaid all the unnumbered days of sadness.

  BOMBS AND MOTORBIKES

  In 1970 the monster of political violence that would slaughter and slash its way across Northern Ireland for the next three turbulent decades was beginning to rumble and stir itself to life.

  The so-called ‘Troubles’ began in 1967 with the formation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). The movement called for equality for the nationalist population, among other things campaigning for the right of every person to have a vote, an end to discrimination in employment, and the need for a fairer system by which houses were allocated. Catholics had been denied these basic rights for decades within the one-party Unionist state, under governments that represented only the interests of the majority, Protestant, population.

  To the outside observer this might have seemed a gross injustice that needed to be addressed. The Unionist people, however, for whatever reason, chose to believe that the NICRA was merely a front for the Irish Republican Army, whose goal was a united Ireland. Never mind that the IRA was almost non-existent at the time.

  The more militant among the Unionists therefore felt justified in attacking any civil rights marches that took place. The thugs were supported by the mainly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who were supposed to be keeping law and order and protecting the demonstrators.

  One such march in 1969 proved beyond doubt whose side the authorities were on. I watched the television footage of peaceful marchers – both men and women, Protestant and Catholic – being attacked by the RUC at Burntollet Bridge near Derry city. I did not know then that this event would mark the point at which the Troubles went from being primarily a civil rights issue to a return to a more savage time, one in which religion and national identity were paramount. I could not have understood as I innocently watched the batons and bricks rain down – as my father swore and my mother crossed herself – that this outrage would lead to more than 30 years of conflict and the deaths of over 3,000 people. Burntollet had picked open the scab of tribal hatred so that the blood of intolerance could gush forth again.

  It was Belfast where the monster of sectarianism and bigotry thereafter chose to release most of its venom. Rarely having visited the city, my parents and country folk in general viewed Belfast as a war zone best avoided. The television brought the destruction close enough. Moreover each summer, usually on a Sunday, we received one of its citizens, a distant relative of my mother’s: Mr Edward Bradley, affectionately known as Eddie.

  In those phoneless days visitors could just appear out of the blue, which was rather distressing for mother, who could never keep a ready store of fancy food available for that unexpected guest, due to our skill at finding it. We’d discovered all the hiding places, so she’d simply given up trying.

  Mother always prided herself on her acute sense of hearing. On certain Sundays, as we all sat sated round the dinner table, she’d announce that she could hear Eddie’s bike in the distance. We’d all dash out to the yard and, sure enough, a couple of minutes later there he’d be, thundering down the lane on his big BSA motorcycle, the clouds of scree and dust billowing up extravagantly behind him.

  The bike was a bizarre spectacle to us: a precariously dangerous machine that only the most daring and courageous could handle. When we saw Eddie hurtling down the lane he might as well have been a Martian and the bike a skyrocket.

  We’d wait in suspense as he brought all that throbbing metal to a halt by the gable of the house, and watch in fascination as he performed the elaborate ritual of extricating himself from his biker’s gear. Off came the bat-winged leather gloves, then the little bald head was freed from the helmet. Finally he’d swi
ng a short leg over the rear of the machine with a pained expression that could only mean ‘bloody sore arse’ – and it’s only now that I realise what BSA could have stood for.

  Eddie was a crusty bachelor in his early fifties who could not relate to children. Yet I suspect that he secretly enjoyed all the attention he commanded in those moments when we stood around speechless, our eyes like saucers. He’d largely ignore us, not speaking until our parents appeared on the step. After handshakes and greetings he’d follow them into the house, creaking in his leathers, and we were left to inspect the bike. We smelt the petrol fumes and made faces in the reflecting belly of the tank, fighting for possession of the saddle as we took imaginary journeys with our very own vroomvroom sound effects.

  These yearly visits served Eddie’s twin objectives of seeing mother and pursuing the salmon that teemed in the Moyola river. I say ‘pursue’ because, for all his fishing expeditions, Eddie never seemed to catch anything. He would squeak back to the house after three hours or so, empty-handed. We’d learn that he’d caught ‘one or two wee tiddlers like’, that he’d tossed back in again.

  While he was engaged in this fruitless exercise, mother would be away at the shop frantically buying an assortment of ‘sweet stuff’ for his tea. There was no getting away from the fact that Eddie had a very sweet tooth; he had the belly and dentures to prove it. So a sugary mess – a dentist’s nightmare – was laid on for his return. There were Mr Kipling’s French Fancies, Battenburg cake, jam tarts, Swiss roll, chocolate biscuits, custard creams, chocolate eclairs, the whole gooey lot assembled for his ‘highly refined’ palate. I would have loved one tenth of what was on that table, but mother was adamant that nothing would be touched until our guest had had his share. She was unstinting when it came to Eddie; after all, he’d come a long distance on that dangerous contraption, from the great hell-hole that was Belfast, just to see her.

  We children were exiled to the yard while he feasted and would take turns to go and sneak a look round the parlour door to see how he was faring. We lived in the vain hope that he’d leave a few morsels behind. He rarely did; maybe a half-eaten custard cream that his stomach had rejected in a final act of rebellion and good sense. We loved the ‘Yankee’ visits more than Eddie’s, with very good reason.

  After the binge he’d ease his ample little frame into a chair by the fire and place a lighted John Player in the corner of his mouth. There the cigarette remained, joggling up and down as he talked, the ash falling casually and unnoticed onto his lap. He’d sit there regaling the parents about the awful happenings in Belfast, his eyes watering and forehead pleating with the effort of his testimony.

  Eddie drew the dreadful pictures and my parents coloured them in. They were astonished at his obvious skill in dodging the bullets and bombs on a daily basis. My father would wonder how he’d managed to survive thus far without a mark on him. Eddie put it all down to the speed of his legs and a keen sense of detecting danger, though when you looked at his fat belly and short legs you did question his ability to walk fast, let alone run.

  His departure held for us as much fascination as his arrival. We all gathered in the yard to watch him get into the protective clothing. He now had difficulty buttoning the leather jacket. Then he’d don the helmet and gloves, and revert to the mysterious being from another world.

  My parents’ parting words included warnings. ‘Look after yourself in that wild place,’ mother would say, ‘and safe home, Eddie.’ And with that he’d trot with the bike a bit, before jumping astride it and away they’d go, farting blue smoke and playing merry hell with the gravel and dust. We’d remain standing in the yard to hear the last of that roaring farewell.

  ‘God, that could be the last time we see wee Eddie,’ my mother, ever the optimist, would say, ‘what with all that bother in the city.’

  Yet he’d be back the following year without fail, having survived the onslaughts to tell us yet more of his grisly tales. My brothers looked forward to Eddie’s visits in the same way we sisters looked forward to seeing the Yankees. To them that motorbike was the embodiment of masculinity, just as those elegant stilettos were the epitome of womanhood for me.

  Sadly, all good things come to an end; in the case of Eddie’s visits the end came as abruptly as those of the Yankees. The circumstances were, however, far less traumatic.

  It all started when two of my sisters landed jobs in the great city of Belfast and went to live there. They discovered to their bemusement that it was not the fearful war zone Eddie had painted. In fact they could live in relative safety. There was the occasional bomb in the city centre. There were also isolated pockets or flash-point areas where violence erupted more frequently, but you avoided those places if you could.

  Eddie had also claimed that he worked as a civil servant in Stormont Castle. This had really impressed the parents, Stormont being the seat of the Unionist government.

  For a wee Taig like Eddie from the Falls Road to actually get a job at the very heart of the Establishment was no mean feat. My mother claimed that it was a miracle in itself and proof – if proof were needed – that her humble relative could climb the career ladder without missing a step.

  One fateful day mother decided to pay Eddie a surprise visit at his place of work. To her astonishment she bumped into him emerging from the ladies toilet, steering a trolley laden with cleaning agents and a mop bucket. The embarrassment of this unexpected meeting proved too much for poor Eddie, and sadly we never saw him or his mighty BSA again.

  ONE FRIEND, MANY STRANGERS

  Throughout the trials of raising us virtually single-handedly and putting up with the mood swings and demands of an uncaring husband, my mother attempted to achieve some sense of dignity and balance in her life. But it was extremely difficult. Father could sulk for hours over a trivial matter: at the dinner not being hot enough – even though he had delayed coming to the table when called. Whatever she cooked was never right; it was too hot, too cold, overcooked, underdone. ‘You’d swear that man had been raised in Kensington Palace, so you would,’ my mother used to complain to a neighbour.

  His behaviour was that of a truculent child. When he was out doing the farm work, there was a tenuous kind of peace indoors, but on his return the air would darken and our talking cease. Whatever elation we had been experiencing we’d gather in again, and we’d trim our sails before the coming tempest.

  Father did not like to see us happy; he found displays of happiness offensive. Consequently we learned to modify our behaviour to suit his moods. For him life was for enduring, not enjoying. In father’s presence hope receded, intention died, ambition cracked. He liked to show the underside, forever turning up the fissures and the faults as if to say: Look, this is how you really are, all frayed and flawed just like me, so don’t even try.

  One day he came into the bedroom I shared with my sister Rosaleen and tore down all our posters. It had taken us quite a while to collect and display all our favourite pop stars, yet he could not afford us this very minor indulgence. We dared not ask why he’d done it. So we remained quiet while he vandalised our little treasures and cried silently when he’d gone.

  He’d interrogate mother over the amount she’d spent on an outfit she’d bought. She therefore learned to adjust prices for his benefit in order to keep the peace. She knew from experience that honesty meant a sullen silence that could last for hours. Often she’d end up hiding her purchases rather than face the inquisition.

  My mother had one ally during these trying years. She was something of a surrogate sister, and her nearest neighbour.

  Helen lived across the road from us with her elderly parents in a big, pebbledashed house. She was the dutiful daughter to a possessive mother and father. Helen, like my mother, was rarely idle. She did not have children but she did have a farm which she managed by herself. In addition she was the cook, cleaner, carer, gardener – and did whatever other work demanded her attention in the course of a busy day.

  For me she will
be for ever 25, this being the age she was when the toddling me became aware of her. I have a photo of the teenage Helen. Her mother is seated and Helen, wearing a Fair Isle cardigan, is resting her hands on the older woman’s shoulders, like two loving epaulettes. The women cannot bear the intrusive lens and gaze off with feigned interest at something out of frame. They were private individuals, not used to being the centre of attention: guarded, passive, unassuming.

  Helen’s appearance did not alter much with the years. She had curly auburn hair and wore harlequin glasses which made her look deceptively serious. She was all goodness and dependability, with a kind and gentle demeanour much like that of my teacher Miss McKeague. She was one of those rare adults I could connect with as a child. Her look and smile seemed to say: Yes, I know all about you: the pain and joy of all the stages you will go through: the present child, the future girl and – far off – the woman you’ll one day become.

  Helen was an only child, the product of a late marriage and thus hindered by over-protective parents. She was caught between a wish to marry and not wanting to desert them; this inner clash kept her bound and committed to their needs until they died. In her thirties she was finally free to marry, and she did so to a lovely man, at last experiencing the happiness that was her due. Now and then, when my parents had a day away, mother would entrust my two youngest brothers and me to Helen for safekeeping.

  I loved Helen’s house, a large mysterious place with many rooms, stairways and secret passages. There are certain features of it that will not fade. They stand out as familiar reference points in what was really a home from home; the polished boldness of the kitchen floor, with the same range and scrubbed table as mother’s; the armchairs by the fire with the limp, crocheted cushions, where Helen’s mother sat and knitted and her father smoked or dozed.