My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress

by Christina McKenna

  In the hall there was a hatstand with an oval mirror reflecting an effrontery of china and brass; several figurines and an ornamental kettle balanced precariously on its ledge, with an umbrella bucket by its side. Mother claimed that Helen could display all the frills and baubles she desired because she didn’t have a ‘clatter of youngsters’ to go upsetting things, which was undoubtedly true. Part of my fascination for the house was bound up in this medley of curios and knick-knacks.

  It was the parlour though that I loved the most. If it was raining we’d be put in there by the fire with a book or a jigsaw. Every five minutes Helen’s apprehensive mum would look in with a host of concerned enquiries, her well-meant intrusions making us uneasy. She was not used to having children around. We were an unexpected luxury in her unchanging days.

  The low-ceilinged parlour was a grand room and I felt special being part of it, like a decorous jewel that had been placed there to lend it a further polish. I remember that you stepped down into it because often I would forget and tumble in instead, causing Helen’s mother a brief spasm of alarm. The only life in the still space was a roaring fire that made its blazing statement on even the hottest day. Two china spaniels kept guard on either side of the mantelpiece and a gilt-framed landscape hung above it. In front of the window stood a highly polished round table. On its gleaming surface Helen would spill out a puzzle and I’d sit for ages trying to solve the riddle of its scattered pieces.

  In the corner of the room there was a china cabinet. The flames from the fire vivified a crowded display of teapots and silver, porcelain and glass. These were ancestral wedding gifts and sovereigns, pieces not intended for practical use but to be exhibited as proud reminders and evidence of past enthusiasms.

  My mother didn’t own one of these contemporary status symbols. Her humble wedding presents would not have run to filling a single shelf let alone a whole cabinet; besides, she was never allowed the money to ‘throw away on such nonsense’. She blamed the lack on her spirited offspring, but that was not really the case. Helen’s house held hoards of unbreakable beauty my poor mother could never aspire to: lengths of ribbon and delicate lace, lavender sachets in drawers of embroidered linen, crocheted place mats of deft needlepoint, all wrought by Helen’s clever hand.

  The main attraction for me was the flight of stairs. Going up them made me feel I was rising above myself. The twelve stairs in Helen’s home ascended mysteriously and enticingly to a corner of paradise: her bedroom. When I’d hear her coming in from doing her chores I’d run out of the parlour and sit looking longingly up those stairs. She knew the signal well.

  ‘Now,’ she’d say, ‘I wonder what you’re lookin’ up there for, Teen.’

  And I’d always say: ‘My face, Helen. I want my face pretty, Helen. Please, Helen, please.’

  She’d smile and tease me with: ‘But you have a pretty face, Teen, you wee rascal.’

  She knew that compliments would not placate me and, without further ado, she’d take me by the hand, to lead me up to her room to be transformed.

  Mother would surely have envied this room. It held a dazzling array of objects I’d never seen before. There were pictures in silver frames, biscuit tins stuffed with letters and old photos and, what arrested me the most: the jewellery and make-up, the mother-of-pearl hairbrushes and cut-glass bottles of scent that cluttered the dressing-table. Here was gathered together all the grandeur and glare of the accoutrement a women needs to amend God’s lapses.

  The wardrobe was stuffed with frocks, crinoline petticoats and pairs of white stilettos. At the weekend, when she went out with her fiancé, Helen would emerge from that bedroom a different woman; her hair brushed free, the nails and lips an urgent red; silver bangles crowding her wrist. The stiff, full skirt of her dress was as buoyant and generous as a ballroom dancer’s. Gone was the farm worker in the old wellingtons and tattered overalls, and in her place stood a movie queen.

  The highpoint of my day was my transformation before this altar to vanity. I’d sit up on her velvet stool before the mirror while Helen assisted me in the gaudy conversion of my face. First came the scarlet lipstick which she’d unsheath from the golden tube and help me hold steady. Then the shadow, which I could just about manage, stroked in splodges with a clumsy forefinger; after that a squirt of scent behind the ears and on the wrists.

  The jewellery was next: strings of fake pearls and a sparkling, rose-shaped brooch that I adored. Then the bangles and a pair of earrings whose grip almost made my eyes water, but the pain was worth it just to see the lineaments of my plain little face changed so wonderfully. The nail polish was too demanding so Helen would put a tiny dot on each nail and help me down off the stool and into the finishing flourish: a pair of high heels. I was a princess then, a Yankee; with a few bold strokes I’d been restyled as one flashy lady indeed.

  I’d clip-clop around for an hour or two, giving my brothers looks of jaded condescension, until all that beauty took its toll in straining legs and wounded earlobes and fading colour. At that stage, with the greatest reluctance, I’d give in and allow Helen to relieve me of my finery, standing forlornly while she went to work with a damp facecloth, stripping me back down to my colourless self. I often wept at this point, barely hearing her soothing words that promised we could do it all again very soon.

  As compensation she’d sit me on the sun seat outside the parlour window and give me a shoebox of discarded wool and a pair of knitting needles. She always did the hard part of ‘casting on’ which I could never manage and start me on yet another multicoloured scarf; very soon the hurt of that earlier infraction was forgotten as I toiled with the needles, knitting out my frustrations.

  Helen’s life was not an easy one. Her ailing father hobbled around on crutches, the onset of rheumatism having retired him early, so all the back-breaking farm work fell on the shoulders of his only daughter. Mother said that Helen was doing the work of ten men, which was probably close enough to the truth. She not only kept more livestock than we did, but half her fields were under crops of all varieties.

  Despite everything she never complained. She was a thoroughly decent woman who proved to be a crucial adjunct to my mother’s otherwise barren social life. Whereas today’s women swap the banalities of the current television soaps, mother and Helen swapped recipes and knitting patterns; their hands and heads were their creative strength. Activity beats passivity any day; it’s what kept them both sane.

  They confided in each other, these exchanges carrying them over the rocks and rapids of their lives. They both had awkward men to deal with. Helen’s father was not a happy man; even as a child I could sense his severity. I suppose that trailing around those withered legs between crutches was hard, but the burden of that injustice was felt just as acutely by the two ministering angels at his side: his daughter and his wife.

  Helen was a Presbyterian who took her faith seriously. The fact that she was my mother’s closest friend says a lot about her courage and open-mindedness in a climate of religious zealotry and intolerance. She went to Sunday school, attended the Young Farmers Association dances and was a member of the Women’s Institute.

  Once a year the WI ran an outing – or rather a shopping expedition – to a city either within or beyond the province. Helen would often invite mother along and when I got a little older I was inveigled into accompanying her for moral support. These outings brought me inside the world of grown-up women and gave me my first taste of religious bigotry, albeit in a mild form. Mother and I were usually the only two Catholics on the excursion bus. I remember especially those trips to the town of Ayr in Scotland, not least because I was taken outside Ireland for the first time.

  It was a lengthy journey – coach, ferry crossing and coach again – and we had an early start. The ladies, cheerful and animated, would assemble around 7am in the village square of Tobermore. There was a real buffet of beliefs in this congregation: Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, both ‘captive’ and ‘Free’.

&nbs
p; This diversity has always made me think of our monolithic Catholicism as boring, all of us supping from the same doctrinal cup. At the same time, though, God is God, a singular and consistent deity, so why do we feel the need to take so many routes to His door?

  It was clear that mother and I carried the wrong label, which made us outsiders in the eyes of the WI ladies. They showed a marked restraint in their greetings and chitchat. These ladies who carried Sunday service hymnals in their handbags and such evident disfavour in their hearts did not share Helen’s candour and compassion it seemed. Looking back, I have to give credit to my mother who, vastly outnumbered by the ‘other sort’, was attempting the building of bridges across the religious divide at a time when such ideas had not yet entered the collective consciousness of Northern Ireland. Nowadays leaders of nationalist parties, following the example set by the illustrious John Hume, talk about the necessity of ‘parity of esteem’ between Catholics and Protestants if the political process in Northern Ireland is to have any hope of success. ‘How can we move the process forward?’ our politicians often ask. I feel proud that Helen and my mother were attempting to do exactly that even then, when there was no sign of a ‘process’ and not much hope of a ‘forward’ in sight.

  The WI sorority were a well-rounded bunch. They were childbearing, cake-baking, husband-tending toilers, who like my mother were the overworked consorts of lesser men: farmers and tradesmen, with the odd doctor’s wife thrown in to elevate the assembly. The wife of a professional man always stood out because she was usually leaner and richer and therefore more elegantly turned out than the rest.

  The ladies’ dress code created a showcase for synthetic fabric. At least poor mother felt comfortable with that. There were acrylic cardigans and polyester slacks, sometimes a Norman Lynton frock (designed for the fuller figure) with a boisterous splash of flowers and spots. The ladies’ accessories harmonised the whole: the fake pearls and brooches worn high on neck and breast as a nod to Her Majesty; the plastic sandals and handbags in dependable, take-you-anywhere, go-with-everything beige.

  There were other bags as well: carrier bags full of comestibles for the long journey. It seemed, too, that every half-hour the coach would make a comfort stop; it was as though the twin acts of satiating and ‘titivating’ could not be neglected in case some sort of irreparable injury resulted. So the driver would pull over and, after a prolonged tussle with bags and Tupperware, a silence would descend and the ladies would tuck in.

  After the food, the toilets, involving a rather prolonged period of waiting; all that peeling down and rolling up of elasticated hosiery took its time. Then it was back on the bus for the interminable roll-call. Those ladies had allowed themselves to be so subsumed into the hegemony of their husbands that as well as forfeiting their surnames the first names had gone too. There was Mrs David Alcock, Mrs Ivan Baillor, Mrs Lester Paddock, and on and on it went. We could have been to Ayr and back twice over by the time this rigmarole was completed after every stop.

  Mother could identify with our fellow travellers on an emotional level if not a religious one. Their bodies were like hers, swollen from giving birth and eating too much. Their once slender fingers now wore wedding rings sunken into flesh, the hallmark of unstinting service and union. They were encumbered by the choices they had made. Even though they attended different churches, they all sang from the same hymn sheet and genuflected at the patriarchal altar.

  Those annual outings were usually to either Ballymena or Fermanagh, or perhaps to Lisburn; all good, secure seats of the Unionist ethic. For the WI ladies the diversionary coastal resort of Ayr was safe too. Scotland was the country from which their Protestant forebears had migrated, to plant and flourish in Ulster. They therefore felt safe amongst their own kinsfolk.

  There were much more accessible and varied places to visit across the border in the south of Ireland, but to stray into the foreign Republic was never an option. I can hear them discussing this possibility:

  ‘You mean you want us to walk among those Gaelic paddies and spen’ time and money bolstering the economy of that Provo den? Are ye mental?’

  ‘But we’d save a lot of travellin’ time and ha’ more time to dander round the shops if we went somewhere nearderhan.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’d rather spen’ a whole day on the bus than go near that hole. Sure it’s full of clatts and you wouldn’t get a decent bite anywhere. Give me good Ulster produce any day. At least y’know what yir gettin’ and I’ll tell ye something else, Mildred … nivver trust a Taig. Thir throughother and lazy and they’d fight with thir ow’ shadow, so they would. Sure look how thi’ve ruined our Ulster.’

  And so to Ayr, which turned out to be as drab as any provincial town. It seemed we weren’t very well rewarded after all that bus-ing and boating. There was the additional complication of a dialect no one could understand, since the Ayr folk mostly sounded like their hero Rabbie Burns, or wee Andy Stewart. We usually ended up using sign language in shops as our thick Ulster vowels and dialect brought looks of equal bewilderment from the natives.

  After wading through the shops for an hour or two, we’d break for high tea at a family-run hotel. Generally I find that such establishments are not a good idea because they are usually staffed by the offspring of the owners, who do not share the parents’ enthusiasm for success or profit.

  So, under the glum gaze of these youngsters, we’d file into a room of refectory tables and sit waiting to be served. More often than not the fare was the reliable old salad – expedient, seasonal and therefore cheap – consisting of a few leaves of sad lettuce bedecked with a halved tomato, a quartered egg and a suspiciously shiny slice of ham. There’d be a complimentary glass of orange squash – or rather orange water, which smacked of mother’s picnic formula: one part squash to 20 parts water. There was no alcohol in sight, it being considered the devil’s buttermilk; on all those trips not even a glass of wine ever passed our lips.

  The ladies never seemed to notice the shoddy quality, though, and would coo with delight when presented with this ‘healthy display’.

  They all seemed to be on diets – it was the main topic of conversation – and greeted the low-calorie fare with the triumphant-defeatist notion that by being ‘good’ with the main course they could ‘sin’ afterwards, free of guilt. Most eyes were on the sinful bowl of sherry trifle and fresh cream that invariably sat, wobbling and glistening, on the sideboard.

  Losing weight was a good, gelling topic that helped mother ingratiate herself with her sisters. It seemed that she and everyone at the table was on the F-plan diet. Mrs Lester Paddock was ‘very well reduced’ and tangible proof of its efficacy, if any were needed.

  So the ladies would discuss dieting with gusto, each trying vainly to recapture the figure of the carefree bride in the wedding album. But the fantasy would remain just that; without knowing it they’d pushed themselves out of the picture, to put husband and children first. For brief moments on the return journey I saw flashes of the girls they must have been. The ladies would let themselves go, waving at men as we passed through towns and collapsing in giggles when the men responded. They sang songs and clapped their hands, high on the oxygen of having been set free for the day.

  Finally, after the return ferry crossing, when the bus drew to a halt in the village square, there were the menfolk: husbands or sons waiting in purring vehicles to take the women back home to their real lives; back to cook and to wash, make beds and clean, to toil under pictures of England’s fair queen.

  Leave-taking was a great orchestration of shouting and waving and arranging to meet again. There was always a bring-and-buy sale, or a guest tea or jumble sale at the parish hall to be getting on with.

  These rare appointments with freedom and gaiety were what those women lived for. Those outings, simple and uneventful though they were, lifted their spirits, however fleetingly, into happiness.

  The 1970 excursion did my mother a power of good. It was just as well, because not long after sh
e’d need all the strength – both physical and spiritual – she could muster. Our home was to experience a truly bizarre and frightening episode.

  THE HAUNTING

  There are certain things which defy logic. We journey through life so attuned to the realities of the material plane that we blind ourselves to the manifestations of the incorporeal. But sometimes the spectral universe clamours for our attention to such a degree that we are forced to acknowledge its reality. I was compelled to confront this reality when I turned eleven.

  Up until then I had never thought much about death or dying, much less about ghosts or spirits. When a child I had listened to stories from the mouths of old-timers about wailing banshees and menacing fairies, and always been careful to vitiate the terrible endings with fingers stuck in ears.

  Although I was aware of the existence of these ethereal visitors, they remained incomprehensible abstracts. They were as elusive as the heavenly firmament that I roamed in my dreams, or that piece of sky I tried to trap in my cupped hands as I lay on my back in the sunlit garden.

  All my innocent musings were to undergo a dramatic shift in the autumn of 1970, and my notions of life, death and the hereafter would be altered for ever. Late one evening an extraordinary visitor arrived in our midst, unannounced and unrecognisable. It remained for six harrowing weeks, rupturing the calm, amber days and ripping through our senses with an urgency and vigour that is unforgettable.

  The story begins with the waning of Great-aunt Rose, and that in turn was preceded by another occurrence: the raging goat that had driven us to her door on that hot May day. These things held the genesis of an awesome future event. For one fateful hour old Rose had been forced to exhibit unthinkable kindness; offering us tea and cake had stirred her heart and quelled our terror. It was the first and last time she’d shown such generosity of spirit towards us, and we were not to know that it came with a price. As I’ve remarked before, benevolence and compassion were not features of my father’s forebears.