Two Walls and a Roof

by John Michael Cahill

  As I got older, the fun started. I believe I was about four years old when I found the lemonade bottle full of paraffin oil on her stairs. I sat and drank it all down, not sure of the taste, but it seemed to be good at the time. Nannie spotted me and went into an immediate panic, shouting at Michael to get the doctor, “Quick, quick, he’s drank the paraffin, he’ll die. Run for the doctor will you”. She used to use this paraffin oil to light the fire and I had drunk it. I remember feeling no discomfort of any kind, and the excitement seemed to be great. She was hugging me and saying, “Don’t die, don’t die on me, please God spare him, save him dear Lord”. I don’t remember what they did next, but I do know that I was sure determined to drink more of this oil stuff at the first chance I got, just because of all the affection shown to me by them all. Michael was blamed for letting the oil on the stairs, even though it was the Nan that lit the fire each morning, and this blaming became a pattern for all of his life. He was always blamed for all things she did wrong, and praised for nothing good he did right, yet we would all have been lost without him.

  Even though my Nan presented a stern exterior to the world, she was a deeply superstitious, God-fearing woman of the old ways. She came from farming stock in Tipperary, and being from the country she knew all about faeries and pishogues and was scared to death of both of them, especially the ‘Evil Eye’. Armed with such knowledge, it has always surprised me that both she and my mother would ever take me to an area that was bounded by a faerie fort. They used to go for a walk down the Charleville road to a dog track that was run by a family friend, a man called Thomas Nash. There they would sit and chat for hours, while I played around in the field with a ball, but the field bounding the track happened to have a large faerie fort in it, and it was even known as the ‘Faerie Field’. Looking into this Faerie Field you could clearly see the large circular moat or lios that no one would dare to dig in, or excavate. This field was sealed off from the dog track by an old iron gate that had some bars criss crossing it, and I would say that it had never been opened.

  As a curious child I used to go over to that gate and peer through it every time I was there, wondering what was over across in the tall ditch that was the faerie ring. However, Nannie had me warned never to go through that gate, but I remember being curious about the place. One beautiful summer’s day, when I was about four or five years old, I was given a rare opportunity to partake in some real Irish myth and folklore at that field. We were at the track and I wandered off to the gate as usual and stood looking through it. No one will probably believe me, but when I looked through the old gate I distinctly remember seeing a small man dressed in a green coat and black breeches. He had a wide belt with a large shiny buckle tied across his middle, and he looked exactly like a faerie should, just as our folklore would describe them today. But at my age I had no idea about folklore or anything else either and I had never seen anyone like him before. It looked like he was very old: grey-haired, craggy-faced and bearded, with a small hat that seemed to flop over on the side of his head. He was smiling and beckoning for me to go to him. He used a gentle hand movement, beckoning and calling to me all the time, but I heard no sound in my ears, and I somehow just felt this calling. I believe I liked him, and even though his wrinkly face frightened me a bit, his smile was drawing me to him for some reason, and so I began to climb through the gate. Then the panic started. I heard Nannie screaming, but I ignored her. There is a scene in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, when the child is drawn through the cat flap to the alien ship outside the door, and that’s how it felt to me. I was powerless to stop myself from going through the gate. Nannie had seen me begin to climb through, and she instinctively panicked and started running to pull me back, shouting at Thomas Nash who was much closer. He caught me just as I was about to run to the faerie and pulled me back inside. We left immediately. I kept on telling them about the small man and how he was calling me and why couldn’t I go to him. This was really frightening Nannie and I do remember that both Nannie and my mother became very agitated. There seemed to be a real sense of dread going on between them, but no one told me why they got so upset, nor why I could not go to the small man. They never again went back to that track, and I was always warned, even as a teenager, to keep away from that place, without being given a single reason why.

  It was rarely discussed at home and if it came up, (it was usually me that brought it up) they always fudged the issue. I could never get either of them to talk about it much, and later on in life when I would persist, all Nannie would ever say in a dismissive kind of way was, “Ahh sure you just imagined all of that John, but tis better you stay away from that ould place anyway”. Then her frightened fidgeting look would give her lie away, and besides that, I know I could not have imagined what I saw on that day, because I was far too young to create such a picture.

  Apparently, had the faerie man managed to catch me, I would soon turn into a wrinkled, sickly baby and quite quickly die as a very young child. It was common enough in those days apparently, and I think the folklore people would have called me ‘a changeling baby’. No medical reason would have been found to explain my untimely death, and I suppose I would have been seen as a victim of the old Roman saying, ‘Those the Gods love, die young’. Somewhere I read later that when the faeries don’t get you, they leave you with a gift. I have no idea what gift they gave me, and after researching my life for this book, it may well be that they gave me the gift of a kind of protection from all the harm that nearly befell me over the years. This I do know; so far, their gift has not been that of gold coins.

  My next memory of early childhood was when I was about six or seven. I had begun to read avidly. The first book I can remember having an effect on me was ‘From the Earth to the Moon’, written by Jules Verne. This book was all about men landing on the moon for the first time, written at least ten years before they really did land there. It was inspiring to my imagination and from it began my love of science, space and my fascination with fire.

  Nannie’s house was a two-story building: a ground floor, a middle floor and the attic where we all slept. I slept with the Nan in the back room, and in the front room, Uncle Michael had his abode. Nannie long suspected that he smoked in bed, but she could never catch him at it. She had this genuine fear of being burned alive, and she was terrified of a fire in our home, simply because we had no escape from the attic of that house.

  We always had loads of books in the Nan’s house, and I was greatly encouraged to read even though it had to be by candlelight, as we had no electricity in the attic at that time. I’m sure it didn’t help my eyesight, but that’s another story. When it was my bedtime, Nannie would send me to bed and light the candle, warning me not to go near it. This candle was stuck inside a milk bottle which stood on an old table that had a small drawer in it, used for her secret stuff. She used to make a big pretence of looking for things in the drawer each night, and early on I realized that she was hiding the matches there. I filed this away for future use, as even at six or seven, her craftiness was already having an effect on me. As if to give her confidence and protection in the night, she also had a heavy, toy snub-nosed revolver sitting openly on this table. It was clearly a toy, but she used to say that if we were ever being robbed, “He’s useless (referring to Michael), and it’s up to me to defend us, God help us all”. I thought, even at my young age, that this was a bit optimistic, and I knew I would get far more fun from the gun, but she absolutely forbade me ever to touch it.

  Our bedclothes were an under sheet, which was old and rough, and our coverings were a number of heavy wool blankets that would eat you alive with the scratching. Sheer exhaustion was the only antidote for the itching, and I’m not even mentioning the nightly attacks from the savage fleas who, because of the Nan’s over use of DDT, had become immune to it. The survivors were hell-bent on giving us the plague by their bites.

  One night I was reading my moon book and it vividly described the rocket as it crossed the Mo
on. It told of a flame shooting out from the back of the rocket and how this flame was the power behind the flight. It fascinated me totally. Pretty soon I saw the resemblance between my candle and this rocket ship, especially the flame coming from the top of the candle. There and then I began my first adventure with fire, and it still fascinates me today. I reached out and took the candle out of the bottle and began to fly it about as I read. Soon the book described the hills and the craters, so I made my own ones by raising my knees, and continued to fly in and out between my legs. I got the odd singe of burn, but it was only when my ship went well behind the hills that disaster struck. The candle flame somehow set fire to the hairy wool blanket and in the flickering light I saw the first signs of a fire. I dropped the candle in total fright, which only added fuel to the fire, and jumped from the bed in terror. It was then almost pitch dark except for the glow from the bed, and to my great credit, I grabbed our piss poe and threw its contents onto the fire.

  It almost went out, but not fully. Then my last line of defence came into play. I clearly remember getting back onto the bed and standing spreadeagled over the spluttering glow and pissing like a petrified donkey down onto the fire between my legs. It went out, and then shaking with fright, I got the matches from the drawer and relit the candle.

  I surveyed the damage and to my utter relief, the burned area was quite small but very black and charred. However, the bed was saturated. Of all the things I could do to infuriate the Nan, wetting the bed was the worst of them all and I was sure to be killed by her for doing it. Then her craftiness came forth in me again and I got a brainwave. I decided to take off my blankets and swap them over to Michael’s bed, and this I did. Then later, sheer exhaustion set in and I fell sound asleep, still dreaming of the moon.

  Nothing happened for almost two days; then the row began. She was tearing into poor Michael, calling him a pig and an animal: saying that his smoking almost cost us our lives and that he was going to go, he was definitely going to go, and she’s not burning alive for his smoking. All this roaring and shouting was played out in front of me, as I was her sounding board. Poor Michael never said a word in his defence and he never broke faith on me either. He simply took her tongue lashing. She ranted and raved for an hour and her last words as he left were, “And don’t you come back. I won’t have you pissin’ in the bed, I wont. I’ll not have it I tell you”.

  The total insanity of her empty threats was that at that time, our only source of income was her widow’s pension and whatever few bob he earned from shoe mending and his writing for the newspapers. If he ever really took off for good, both she and I would be out in the street. Of course he returned later in the day and she didn’t mention the smoking again, but I kept far away from the candle after that.

  My Nannie.

  My Nannie came from the small village of Cullen in County Tipperary. Her people were farmers, and up until recently I believed that she came from fairly well off people, but that was not so however. Her mother, known to me as the Grey Nannie because of her white hair, always looked stern and old. The Grey Nannie had been married to a farmer who had been very wealthy once, before he took to the drink. His bad habit became worse and worse, and he proceeded to actually drink out their farm, leaving them totally broke. His family then bought them a second farm out of pity. By then the Grey Nannie had two young children, both of them girls. My Nannie was one of them and her sister Katie was the other. Their father soon drank the second farm out, and at that stage his people bought him a ticket for America, and he disappeared out of their lives. Katie was dispatched to a nuns’ convent, probably against her will, and ultimately she too ended in America in a convent in New York or Boston.

  By then, penniless and homeless, the Grey Nannie began working as a servant girl taking care of an old lady who owned the farm known as Gortnabearna. When the old lady died, she left a codicil in her will stating that the Grey Nannie would always have a room in that house till she too died. It said nothing about her daughter, my Nannie, having such a room as well. So a great comedown had befallen my Nannie and her mother, and they were left in a very precarious financial position, when out of the blue her husband returned from America. My great grandfather, the drunkard, now returned from America after doing well for himself, and begged his wife to go back to America with him. Twice bitten, twice shy, and even with no proper home for her and her daughter, she heard him out in the back seat of the local church before calmly telling him to clear off. He did and was never heard from again, but unknown to us all, somewhere in America I may yet have lost relatives named Ryan.

  Nannie grew into an attractive girl in Gortnabearna and life seemed to be getting better when she dropped a bombshell on her mother by falling in love with a British soldier stationed in the area. At a time of great political unrest and during the forthcoming Irish Rebellion, to fall for a British soldier was very bad news indeed for the Nan and her mother. It was especially bad news when the house they lived in, in sufferance, was also an IRA safe house, and her relatives had actually begun our War of Independence. This was not the thing to do, but love is blind and before it all came to a head, the soldier was shipped off to Flanders to fight in the First World War. He was soon wounded and shell shocked and sent home to England. Nannie found out about his plight and decided to go see him against the wishes of her mother, the Grey Nannie, who told her that if she left, she could never return. Nannie showed her spirit and temper, and even though she was still a young girl, she took off for England and found her man. He told her to forget him and to go back to a homeless Ireland, which she did. To this day, my mother believes that Nannie’s heart was broken because she had lost her one true love in life, and it would never be the same with any man from that day on.

  On returning home, as predicted, she was thrown out of her home by the Grey Nannie because of the shame she had brought on her family. She was ostracized by them all and a cousin actually threatened to kill her, and he meant it. She left the area and went working as a barmaid in a small village called Hospital in County Limerick. There she was befriended by Jack Mahony, a shoemaker, who quickly took a great shine to her and I believe after three days he proposed marriage and she accepted. As they were both misfits, I am sure she accepted his proposal probably out of sheer desperation, hoping that love might come later. He sold a house that had been willed to him and they decided to go to America to make a new life for themselves in the land of dreams. They bought their tickets and began their trip to Cobh and to the liner taking them to New York. My grandfather, Jack Mahony, who had been born in America, just had to say goodbye to his brother who was stationed in the British Army Barracks in Buttevant. They agreed a day’s visit and no more. The town of Buttevant was only a minor diversion, but leaving for America was a very final act, so an emotional parting began. The two brothers drank and drank, and before Nannie could do a thing, her husband sold their tickets promising to go later, but by then it was obvious that they were staying in Buttevant. When I look back on all of that drama, I think of how close I came to being born an American, and from then on a link with that great country was genetically forged, even though I did not even exist at the time.

  They started a shoe mending business and Nannie soon bore her husband four children in quick succession. Tragedy struck early on though, when Jack developed a heart condition and he died a very young man, leaving her as a widow, with no social welfare and no one to work the business. By then she had not alone lost her husband, she had lost one of those four children earlier as well. Today I look back on my Nan’s life and think of how tough it was for her always. Her pride was what kept her going. She also believed in secrecy. “Tell no one your business John, ever”. That was always her motto and she lived by it every day.

  She had few friends. Han Motherway, a widow like herself, was one, and a few others such as Nellie Garvan from next door. Nellie was the shipping agent for the liners to America, and it’s no accident that for the formative years of my life, every day I s
aw a large cardboard cut out of the Statue of Liberty and the American flag in Nellie’s window, as well as a selection of tickets for the boats on the White Star Line.

  When my Nannie ran short of money, I would be dispatched across the road to Peggy Corbett’s drapery shop with a note. It would read as follows: ’Give bearer the loan of a pound until Friday’. She would not demean herself by saying please, she never used my name in it, and never said thanks. Nor did she use her name on it either. My Nan made it feel almost like we were doing Peggy the favour, but religiously she paid back the pound from her pension on the Friday. When she needed a top up, she resorted to her secondary bank, the Bank of Liz Connell who came from the butcher shop across the road. Again, she always paid Liz as well. It was an admirable system that worked very well, but I still hated taking the notes, and I always felt like I was a beggar.

  As I got a bit older I noticed how frightened she was of lightning. When we had a thunderstorm she would cover every shiny object in the house, especially the mirror, and start throwing the holy water around so much that it was drier outside than inside. I had no fears of lightning and would be driving her mad with my bravado taunting God to strike us if He could. This would make her go crazy. She would scream at me in rage, “The Devil is stuck inside of you, and if we survive this day, you’re out, you’re out I tell you, out of here, God forgive you. You’ll burn in Hell for this yet”. Then the storm would pass and the Nan that I loved so much would cry and say, “Why did you do that to me John, you know I’m afraid of the lightning. Tis only by the will of God and my prayers that we survived at all, now do my head, and be a good boy”.