The Night Before Christmas

by Alice Taylor

  With the money from the goose market in her handbag, my mother started to make preparations early on the day that they were going to town to bring home the Christmas. First, the four chosen geese were brought to the kitchen where she wrapped them in white flour bags for the journey. She was always in a dilemma as to whether she should clean out the geese before delivery. She believed that the geese kept better if they remained intact until the day before Christmas, but on the other hand she felt that the recipients were more appreciative of a goose minus innards. My father cut short her deliberations by informing her how lucky they were to be getting a goose in the first place and if they were too damn lazy to clean her out then that was their problem. The next item on the agenda was the allocation of the geese: my mother felt that Cousin Nonie should get the best plucked goose because she was so fussy, whereas the general consensus was that for that precise reason she should not. My mother’s head and heart were often in conflict, but my father had no such qualms, and the better he liked, the more he gave.

  With each goose she placed a big brown bastable cake, and eventually everything, including my father’s potatoes and turnips, was stored in the cart behind the jennet. Much to his annoyance the jennet was brought out of hibernation for this trip to town, and he relieved his frustration by stretching out his long neck and trying to sink his teeth into anyone unwise enough to come within biting distance. He knew nothing about the spirit of Christmas or goodwill to all men. He only knew that while the horses, James and Paddy, were inside in the warm comfortable stables nuzzling each other’s necks, he was out in the cold tackled up for work. It was well known in town that “Taylor’s jennet” had to be kept at a safe distance, and whenever he stood tethered to a pole along the street he was given a wide berth by passers-by. His hooded eyes were always on the look-out for a likely victim. He would stand by the side of the street with his head down, pretending to be asleep, waiting for the unwary who ventured too close, and when absent-minded pedestrians came along he would whip his long jaw in their direction and sample an elbow, if he got them in time, or a bottom if they were moving away. Giving a kick was another of the joys of his life and he had the ability to swing his leg at extraordinary angles – indeed, he seemed to have the makings of a great set dancer.

  Before they finally left the house my father went upstairs to visit the money-box, which was always kept locked in a big brown timber trunk, the small silver key to which was either in my father’s pocket or behind the dish in the ware press. We were never allowed to put a finger into the trunk, but on rare occasions my mother could be persuaded to allow us a quick look. In it were old photograph albums, the christening robe, a watch that my mother had got from her mother, and her engagement ring. There were many other boxes in there that I always wanted to investigate, but my father maintained that in a house full of children there should be some corner safe from destructive little fingers. It was my idea of heaven to put my nose in over the edge of that trunk, to just breathe deeply and absorb its aroma. It smelt of tobacco, soft leather and old papers, because in there were family wills, deeds and documents, and in the middle of them all was the brown tin money-box. Into this during the year went the proceeds from the sale of farm animals and the fruits of the farm. The money was kept in different rolls and each roll was earmarked for a different cause, but the most important roll was reserved for paying Martin. He started on the first of February and finished on Christmas Eve and his wages were seventy pounds for the whole year. Often it worried my father that he might not be able to make the sum, and all through the year out of every sale of calves and bonhams, so much was put into Martin’s little bundle.

  Now my father opened up the brown tin box and took out a roll of red twenty pound notes. Today in town he would pay all the shops that had supplied us during the year. As he packed the roll of notes into the top pocket of his waistcoat I stood beside him to sniff their special smell. To me those big red notes represented riches beyond measure. While my father was collecting his money, my mother was rounding up her shopping bags, and when all was in order the last item to go in to the cart was a big double-department box of eggs. The money from these, together with the goose money, would help my mother to bring the Christmas.

  As they set off on their journey we all stood at the gate and watched them go. We accepted the fact that there was no question of any of us accompanying them, but though we remained at home we went with them in spirit. We knew that my father’s first port of call was to Jack, who provided everything that we wore throughout the year. He wrote it all into a big leather ledger and today he would have it all added up because he knew that the farmers all came to town before Christmas to clear their slates. The amount of this bill always took my father unawares, for no matter how much he expected it to be it always turned out to be more. He could never understand how it could cost so much to keep us all under cover, even though the bill only included bare necessities as my mother and grandmother made most of our clothes. Then he called to Ned’s, where we got our weekly messages, and then to the store that supplied the feeding for the pigs and bran for the cows and horses. His last port of call was the pub, but it was more than a pub because amongst other things Tom sold gramophone records. Here my father purchased new records for Christmas and a box of new brass gramophone needles. As Tom packed a box with bottles of porter and red lemonade, my father sat by the fire with others who were on the same mission and they shared a seasonal drink and discussed the year that was almost gone, while their wives shopped for the Christmas. There, too, he met his Uncle Andy who was a widower and usually came home with him to spend Christmas with us.

  In every shop my mother called to on the day, she was presented with a token of appreciation of her custom through the year. These Christmas boxes really put the gloss on our Christmas and varied from big, soft barm bracks and seed loaves to boxes of biscuits and sometimes even an iced cake. Bringing the Christmas included necessities as well as luxuries, and so part of my mother’s shopping consisted of a chest of tea and a sack of brown and white flour. Normally my father and the jennet brought such necessities daily when going to the creamery, but with that journey cancelled for the winter provisions had to be bought. If the snow came long and heavy we could be cut off from the town for a lengthy period, and so, like the squirrel, we stored up supplies for the season.

  When my mother had her shopping done she met up with my father in Tom’s and together they went to distribute the geese and potatoes to the relations. Finally they loaded up the purchases. The last thing to be put on board was a gallon of paraffin oil for the lamps and the wet battery for the radio to keep us in touch with the outside world.

  When we heard them coming into the yard that night we nearly knocked each other down as we ran out the door to help them bring in the Christmas. We welcomed Uncle Andy with delight and swung off him, and he tousled our hair and said to each of us, “Hello, Bobba.” The sacks of flour were brought in first and, because they had to be stored in a dry place, the timber bin beside the fire was wiped out and the billowing flour was poured in. Then the chest of tea was taken to the bedroom over the kitchen, which was the dryest. After that my mother was very careful that we did not get to look into some boxes, but we were satisfied to see the big Christmas candles and to hear the lemonade gurgling in the bottles. The records, however, we were allowed to inspect and we poured into the parlour and surrounded the gramophone on the end of the old sideboard. We were cautioned to be careful and not to scratch the records and the caution was necessary because our record collection included a few croaking tenors who had been scratched out of recognition. Uncle Andy decided that records were no substitute for a live performance and we all returned to the kitchen to watch him dance a jig, the few pints that he had consumed in town giving height to his step. We always loved it when he came for Christmas because he was light-hearted and full of fun – and he was the only one who could boss my father, which was a great plus as far as we were concerned. From his i
nside pocket my father pulled a green-covered copy of Old Moore’s Almanac which was to be consulted throughout the year for prophecies of weather and disasters; but for now he stuck it behind one of the stair banisters because Uncle Andy was busy entertaining us with the the most enjoyable extracts from the more festive-looking Holly Bough.

  While Uncle Andy entertained us in the kitchen my mother had gone into the parlour where she stowed away parcels in the press beside the fireplace. Now at last Christmas was almost here, because it was locked into the big press, ready to emerge on Christmas Eve.

  The Gates of Heaven

  I SAT ON A LOW súgán chair beside Mrs Casey’s fire and watched her making her Christmas cake. The flames from her big turf fire curled up around the bottom of her black iron kettle, which was sending steam signals up the chimney and almost obliterating the crane overhead. Mrs Casey was getting the fire ready for her last Christmas baking session and she wanted it glowing and settled and the kettle boiling beside it so that she could make her tea without disturbing the bastable, which would shortly replace the kettle on the hangers over the fire.

  Our house stood on the side of a hill looking down over a valley; a long, winding boreen sloped up to the old road above and Mrs Casey’s cottage was along that road. My father always referred to being “up at the road” when he called in to see Mrs Casey. We never passed her cottage on our way home from town without calling in to see her. Her family had grown up and gone; as she used to say herself: “the chickens have left the nest”. But she did not suffer from an entirely empty nest since we regarded her as a second mother who was always on hand to dish out both practical and philosophical advice. For me she had solved the problem of where babies came from; my mother had given me a limited explanation but, being thirsty for every minute detail, I had gone to Mrs Casey and she had given me a full, unabridged version. She loved children and men, and regarded women as sisters in the battle of survival and child-bearing. “Give a married woman her full title,” she used to say; “she has it earned.” She dealt with the two great realities of life – birth and death – because she both delivered the babies and also laid out the dead. A corner-stone in our daily lives, she was never known to anybody by any name other than Mrs Casey.

  A small, creaking gate opened from the old road into the short, narrow pathway that led to her cottage. A high hedge arched over the pathway with a little opening on one side into her crowded garden, and a timber gate on the right led into her haggard, which was a hive of industry with a stall for two cows, a stable for the pony and a shed for hens and ducks. On her dresser in the kitchen during the summer there was always a big white enamel bucket full of eggs. As the weather grew colder the egg supply decreased and Mrs Casey had to threaten and coax her hens to continue laying and subscribe to her Christmas baking.

  Her ample figure almost obliterated the light coming in through the small, deep window over the table where she was busy cracking eggs into a white basin. It was a big table which ran the length of the wall behind the door as you came into her kitchen. The dresser was on the wall opposite and the pony’s collar hung over the open fireplace which extended along the gable end wall of the cottage. She always had a fine fire going, with her dog Bran stretched out in front of it and her husband Jack busy turning the bellows to keep the flames jumping. Today, however, there was no Jack to be seen.

  “Once he had the fire right, I sent him to town for a few pints to keep him out of my way,” she explained. She had a smiling face with two rosy cheeks and her white hair was tied in a knot at the back of her head. When she laughed, which was often, she threw back her head and great peals of laughter filled the kitchen as her short, blocky body shook with merriment. She was my idea of what Santa Claus would look like if he was a woman and she had a great big heart which made her very suitable for the job. She wore a long black skirt down to her toes and when she went to town she wrapped a black shawl around her shoulders.

  Now the shawl hung off a hook on the back of the door; she had on a dark red blouse, the sleeves rolled up, and her sturdy arms were buried in flour. Scattered around the table were basins of sugar, whipped eggs, cream and Ned’s muscatel raisins. Mrs Casey worked by instinct and threw handfuls of different ingredients into the tin baking pan. On the window-sill stood a redundant cookery book which had lost its cover years previously and was illustrated by years of egg-yolk and butter staining. It was propped up by a bottle of porter but was never consulted, for Mrs Beaton was just the guardian angel of the Christmas baking.

  When Mrs Casey had the cake almost ready, she swung the kettle off the hangers and replaced it with the black bastable which she tilted forward, covering the base with a light sprinkling of flour. Then she lifted the cake in her two outstretched hands and laid it into the oven and made a cross on it. Then she put on the cover and covered it with coals.

  “Now,” she said with satisfaction, “I think we deserve a cup of tea.” She cleared a small corner of the table and we sat there to have our tea and some of her crumbly brown bread. As we ate we chatted and I told her about Nell’s Shep having pups and how Nell was mad with Dan because she blamed his mongrel Prince for the unexpected litter.

  “If ever a dog had an inappropriate name, that Prince has, but then Dan is an old rogue,” she said indulgently.

  “Nell thinks that he is a right ruffian,” I told her quoting Nell’s words.

  “Ah, Nell,” she said philosophically, “there was too much gall in her mother’s milk.”

  This was a bit beyond me so I did not pursue the subject and asked her instead: “Mrs Casey, do you love Christmas?”

  “Well, you know,” she answered reflectively, “Christmas can be a sad time for people too. It’s a remembering time for us older ones. We remember the people who are gone.”

  “Oh, I never thought of that,” I told her in surprise.

  “Well, that’s youth for you,” she said; “you don’t start to look back over your shoulder until there is something to look back at, and around Christmas I tend to think of Christmases past and the people gone with them.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Well, I suppose at Christmas the people who have gone during the year are especially with you, and then there are the people who have gone over the years – you tend to look back and think about them as well. Then I always think of Richard Brown, down the road: he had been sick for a long time and then on Christmas night I was out closing the hen-house and I looked up at the sky and saw a star falling and I knew then that he was gone to heaven and that they would be sending for me, and sure enough the son was here within the hour.

  “I always remember your own grandmother,” she continued, nodding her head, “old Mrs Taylor. She died on a Christmas Night.”

  “Oh,” I said shivering, “I wouldn’t like to die on a Christmas Night.”

  “A good night to die,” she smiled; “they say that the gates of heaven are open on Christmas Night.”

  “I never knew that,” I said in amazement.

  “Yes, indeed,” she said, “so your grandmother died on a holy night, as did your Uncle Barry who died in Boston a few years before her. He was the eldest of the family and he emigrated when he was very young and he never came home again – people didn’t in those days, you know.”

  “Gee, I think that was awful sad,” I said.

  “Well, life was like that then,” Mrs Casey said quietly, “but Barry never lost touch and he took out many of the neighbours’ children who needed to go, and you couldn’t go there without having somebody to more or less sponsor you. He took out one of the Lane girls down the road and she actually nursed him when he was dying. He was a young man when he died. Did your father ever tell you about the Christmas Night that he died?” she asked.

  “No,” I answered, my eyes glued to her face.

  “Well, it was a strange night, so it was. That Lane girl who was looking after your Uncle Barry in Boston left his room to go downstairs to have something to eat
while he was sleeping quietly. When she came back up he was getting back into bed, and she was amazed because he was quite weak at the time, and he said to her: ‘I’ve been on a long, long journey.’ Well, that same night down in your house your father and your Uncle Bill were sleeping up in the attic – they were only young fellows at the time. Some time during the night something woke your Uncle Bill and there was a small dark man with a beard standing at the foot of the bed. The hair stood on the top of your Uncle Bill’s head and he shook your father who was in the bed with him, but when your father woke up there was nobody there. The following morning Bill told his mother about it, though your father was trying to convince him that he had dreamt it. But she questioned him about the appearance of the man. ‘That was Barry,’ she said. ‘The description fits exactly.’”

  “But why didn’t Uncle Bill recognise him?”

  “Well, that time the eldest was often gone before the youngest was reared, and that was the case with Bill and Barry. But I met your grandmother soon after and she was worried: ‘There is something wrong beyond,’ was what she said to me. She was right. Soon afterwards they got the letter saying he was dead, and when the Lane girl came home that summer, they pieced the whole story together.”