Quench the Lamp

by Alice Taylor

  Having lived with the candle and the oil lamp for so long, we experienced the tilly lamp as a big breakthrough into a world of light in about 1950. It was a simple invention, still fed on oil but with a mantle replacing the wick and giving a much stronger light. It worked on the same principle as the gas lamps used now for camping, but with oil instead of gas as the source of power. Hot on the heels of the tilly lamp came the tilly heater, which brought warmth to rooms without fireplaces, a function that had previously been performed by cumbersome, evil-smelling oil heaters. For most of my secondary-school days my studying was done by the light of a tilly lamp in an upstairs bedroom heated by a tilly heater. Only necessities were catered for, and it was not deemed necessary to get a tilly lamp for the parlour, where bright light was less important.

  Soon after the advent of the tilly lamp to our home canvassing started for the Shannon Scheme, which was to bring about a much greater change in our lives. This rural electrification scheme had to be canvassed for because, strange as it may seem now, some people were reluctant to accept electricity into their homes. One of our neighbours hesitated to take it, but when he discovered that we could not get it unless he did he decided to give his approval rather than inconvenience us. Another old friend absolutely refused despite all kinds of persuasions, declaring that it could not be safe to boil a kettle from a hole in the wall.

  Teams of men went all over the countryside, digging holes for ESB poles which were dragged into position by horses. Electrical contractors came and helped people plan their house lighting, but it was all so new and difficult to get accustomed to that most people did not put in sufficient sockets. The light switches and sockets, a far cry from the sleek models of today, stood out on walls like ugly brown warts. Wires were not tucked away inside walls and above ceilings but could be traced all over the house as they crept around skirting boards like raised varicose veins, drawing their power from the heart of the big black meter above the kitchen door. Even before the power was connected I was afraid that if I touched anything electrical I might drop down stone dead.

  Many were cautious, too, about the way in which they installed and used the unfamiliar electricity. One man installed just one light on the upstairs landing of his house and told all his children to leave their doors open so that the light could shine in. When my father suggested to him that it would be bad for their eyes if they wanted to read in bed, he was told that they went to bed to go to sleep, not to read. Cost-cutting influenced people’s approach to installation. One thrifty individual, with a view to cutting down on initial expenses, installed just one light-switch, so that when he turned this on the whole house lit up like a Christmas tree.

  One of the things which electricity did away with was the primus, a little gadget fuelled by paraffin oil and lit by methylated spirits, which had to be kept clean with a primus needle to prevent it from shooting into yellow flames and sending smelly smoke signals all around the kitchen. The electric kettle was a great improvement and was the first electrical item to enter most houses, bringing the ease of a quick cup of tea without first having to light the fire or the primus. In its early years it was not, however, plugged in freely as that would have been considered the height of extravagance. A toaster soon followed the kettle into our house as my mother was always partial to toast. There were no pop-up toasters then, and the early days of electricity in our house were flavoured by the smell of burnt toast filling the kitchen and a fog of smoke billowing out from the toaster.

  The concept of labour-saving devices such as washing-machines and fridges was too strange for us to swallow quickly. The one luxury my father did indulge in was a mains radio, and he was delighted not to be at the mercy of run-down batteries, but he refused to buy an electric razor and still used his old cut-throat monster. However, first we had to get accustomed to the bright light that flooded the entire house, and one thing to be said in its favour was that it made the journey upstairs to bed much less frightening; it was now no longer necessary to check under beds for lurking spooks or to peer through shadowy doorways for silent figures waiting to pounce. The magic of touching a switch and the whole room filling with instant light was thrilling for the first few weeks, and I went up and down stairs for no reason other than to experience the joy of turning on lights. Nevertheless, there was no question of lights being left on when nobody was in the room, because my father had a new headache, the electricity bill, and soon we were constantly being reminded that he had no shares in the ESB.

  Out in the farmyard the electricity lit up the old cobweb-draped rafters of the stables and stalls and threw light on gynaecological interventions during calving time. It extended the working day, for jobs that had previously had to be completed before darkness fell could now be continued under artificial light. And although it made our working day longer it also made our lives easier in many ways. One thing was certain: it had changed our lives and changed them utterly, carrying us into a new world and leaving the old one behind.

  The Gladioli Man

  BEING THE YOUNGEST of five sisters had its disadvantages because it meant obeying many mistresses: they were all chiefs and I was the only Indian. As a consequence I spent more time and energy trying to avoid carrying out the instructions of older sisters than actually doing as I was told. My mother never dished out jobs because she worked on the principle that everything got done eventually: that when we got tired of looking at unwashed ware on the table we would get around to washing it; and that as we were sleeping in the beds it was up to us to make them, and to tidy our rooms. Never lecturing or nagging, she just left things undone while my older sisters took over and delegated household duties down along the line.

  The weekly rota of jobs varied but one to which I strongly objected was the daily brushing of the upstairs floors and stairs. In performing this hated job I took regular rest periods and sat into a window-seat of one of the rooms to read a book, but when the sound of my busy footsteps ceased the silence told Sarah, my supervising sister below, that I was after taking one of my many breaks. She then took the handle of a brush and hammered on the kitchen ceiling to signal that progress should resume. But I figured out a plan to outmanoeuvre her. Instead of sitting down to read my book I walked back and forth producing the required noise and at the same time was able to enjoy my reading. It worked for a while until Sarah, wondering how it could take so long to do so little, crept up quietly one day, caught me unawares and discovered my ploy.

  My soul rebelled against the boring, repetitive jobs around the house, but no matter how good an argument I put up as to the futility of certain tasks – and I was better at arguing than working – no argument stood a chance against my sisters’ determination, so in the end they always won. Strangely enough, one of the weekly jobs from which I derived great satisfaction was cleaning the windows. This was done with newspaper and paraffin oil: the window was cleaned down first with an oil-soaked paper and then polished off with a dry one until it shone and I could see my reflection in it. The open fire accounted for much of the dirt on the windows and if the wind was in the wrong direction it might blow the smoke down the chimney, filling the kitchen. Then on the smoky panes of glass I would draw strange designs and create imagined scenes. I thought of the windows as the eyes of the house and that was probably why I felt such a sense of achievement when I cleaned them.

  Every Saturday there were plenty of jobs on the agenda in preparation for Sunday. The hob was whitewashed; all the sugán timber chairs and the two timber tables were scrubbed white; finally, the kitchen was scrubbed out with buckets of water drawn from the spout at the end of the garden. If the voluntary workforce started to protest we were coaxed along by our shrewd older sister, Sarah, with promises of a big, juicy apple cake for tea and, like the donkey and the carrot, we kept going. She always lived up to her promises, well aware that next Saturday’s tasks were only around the corner of another week. We often sang as we worked together; we laughed a lot and, like all gearrcaigh in the nest, we squa
bbled a lot as well.

  The first to fly from the nest of our home was my sister Lucy, who went nursing to London. My mother was very reluctant to let her first chick head away, but my father’s criterion was always: if they want to fly, let them go. Every week I wrote her long letters full of every detail of what had happened at home, and probably I wrote as much for my own satisfaction as for hers. All our lives had been so intertwined that I could not bear to think that she, who had been part of it all, should now miss out on anything. Caught up in her new life in London, she must often have smiled at the letters of a twelve year old with their vivid descriptions of how many chickens each hen had hatched out and the colours of all the new calves.

  She came home on holidays with suitcases full of lovely clothes and, oh, the heavenly smell of rare perfume! Sometimes friends came with her, speaking in strange accents, who had never been on a farm before. I loved escorting them out around the animals and watching the reaction on their faces, especially if they stood on what they thought was firm ground but which turned out otherwise. One girl who visited on several occasions had the unusual name of Joy Love, and it was a name which suited her wonderfully because she was full of gaiety and her Scottish accent was music to the ear. She and my brother spent a lot of time talking together because they were both interested in poetry, and she sent him a book of the complete works of Robbie Burns which I came to treasure myself. It had a deep red, soft padded cover with gold lettering and gilt-edged leaves, and it slipped into its own matching holder. The pages inside were thin and flimsy with beautiful red and gold lettering at the top of every page. It gave pleasure and satisfaction before a word was ever read, and I spent many hours trying to decipher the Scottish dialect without always succeeding.

  When home on holidays Lucy, who was very pretty, was never short of admirers eager to escort her. During one of these trips, in the course of which she had gone out several times with a local lad who was also home on holidays, she coolly announced that a boyfriend from London was coming to stay. Almost as an afterthought she added that she was thinking of getting engaged to him. This, as far as my mother was concerned, was completely out of line. In her reckoning, if you were that serious about one man you cleared the field of all other contenders. But her oldest daughter had other ideas, so a long argument commenced.

  “We know nothing about this fellow,” said my mother, with the implication in her voice that, since we did not, there might be something wrong with him.

  “Well, what do you want to know?” came the reply.

  “What does he do? What are his family like? What religion is he?”

  When my mother stopped to draw breath Lucy chimed in, “He’s a medical student in the hospital where I work; he has one brother and his parents are very nice; and he doesn’t believe in anything.”

  “Holy mother of divine God!” my father exclaimed as he grabbed his cap and made for the kitchen door to go out to his animals, which he found a lot easier to understand than his daughters.

  My mother was determined to get to the root of the matter. “How do you mean he doesn’t believe in anything? Where does he think he came from?” she demanded.

  My sister was too smart to get caught in a theological debate with my mother, so she soothed her down by asking her to reserve judgement until the subject of their argument appeared on the scene. An uneasy truce was agreed, which Lucy did nothing to cement when she went dancing again with her local friend that night.

  A few days later our man from London arrived and revealed himself to be a very precise, English gentleman of few words, who had probably never seen a cow in his life before. I was fascinated by him. Anybody who did not believe in God was a great novelty and it was rather disappointing to find that he looked ordinary enough, except for his well-cut country tweeds, which might have been very suitable for an English hunt but not for Irish country roads. After a few days he began to thaw out and we discovered a very charming young man beneath his crisp, correct exterior.

  When he returned to London he sent my mother a huge box of flowers. They were the first she ever got that she had not grown herself, as my father had never been inclined to say it with flowers. Their arrival at the local bus-stop created a bit of excitement. There was a pub at the bus-stop where the kindly publican, Jim, looked after all sorts of miscellaneous objects, from parts for ploughs to bundles of blankets, but a box of fresh flowers added a new dimension to his responsibilities for, while most things could be left there indefinitely without creating a problem, these had to be shifted before they started to wilt. Another difficulty was that most merchandise arriving by bus had been sent for and the person who had ordered it would come and collect it. The arrival of the flowers, however, had no precedent and was totally unexpected. But we, like everyone in rural Ireland, possessed a local communication system which soon solved the problem. Jim sent a message to Pat in the Post Office to tell Martin the postman to call to us the following morning to let us know that the flowers were lying in state on the pub counter. It probably took the flowers longer to get to our home from the bus-stop than it took them to come from London, but we got them in the end.

  My father collected them on his way from the creamery the following day and the huge oblong box stretched like a cardboard coffin across the three churns of milk. On his arrival home the box was borne aloft into the parlour, where it was laid out on the big oak table. The entire household, including visiting cousins and helpers, gathered to witness the opening ceremony. My mother untied the ribbons with the air of reverence she normally reserved for her rosary beads. She gently folded back the layers and layers of soft, white tissue-paper and there they were, rows and rows of the most gorgeous gladioli. My sister Phil spoke all our thoughts when she breathed, “That guy certainly knows how to impress!”

  For days afterwards we had gladioli standing upright in every vase and jug, filling the parlour and kitchen. In later years whenever I saw gladioli I remembered the man my sister might have married.

  The Royal Wee

  THE MIRACLE OF modern plumbing is difficult to appreciate for those who have never known its predecessors, but for those of us who grew up with the chamber-pot and po for companions the flush toilet came as a modern marvel. Indeed, if there had been an award for the invention that best filled a gap in the market it should surely have gone to the man or woman who invented the flush toilet.

  One came into our house shortly after the advent of electricity when my father harnessed a free-flowing spring that poured down the hill behind the house and put it to a more practical use. Old Tom, when he viewed it in action, declared, “Be the hokey but that’s a mighty yoke when you can flush everything down a hole. That could give a man the idea that he is no longer responsible for his actions.”

  When Jim in the local pub installed an outdoor model that operated by pulling a chain it created great excitement. One old man sat on it for the first time and pulled the dangling chain, quite unprepared for the consequences; in his ensuing panic he ran into the pub, his trousers at half mast, shouting that the whole place was going to be flooded.

  Its ancestor, the humble po, led a sheltered existence in obscure corners and shadowy places. It was seldom mentioned in polite society, yet it was the one household item that straddled all social barriers and was essential in every dwelling, from the humble cottage to the royal palace. But even within the po democracy there were different social layers. At the bottom of the ladder came the humble white enamel model with a navy blue or red rim and matching handle. This was the poor man’s po. They could be stacked on top of each other and could withstand rough treatment, though when this happened and the enamel got chipped care had to be taken lest adjoining enamel become embedded in vital points of the anatomy, causing a certain amount of discomfort. Next on the social ladder came the plain white ware model, but in recognition of its middle-class status its title changed from plain “po” to rather more euphonious “chamber-pot”. The chamber-pot was a fine, solid, serviceable
job. It had no tendency to chip and only if you dropped it on the hard stone floor did it crack. My grandmother opted for one of these, but because the ordinary po position was beneath her dignity she ensconced it in a mahogany chair called a commode, which had a false bottom into which the chamber-pot withdrew.

  The chamber-pot had as working companions a large ware jug and a basin. Because there was no water on tap this jug was filled from the rain-water barrel daily and the water was then poured into the large bowl for washing when necessary. You washed in cold water unless you had a retinue of servants to draw hot water for you. After washing, the water was poured into a white enamel bucket and later taken out and emptied.

  All this action took place at the dressing-table, which might have a circular hole on top into which the basin fitted or, more commonly, it might have a marble top and a colourfully tiled back. Underneath some dressing-tables was a closed-off section with a little door, inside which the chamber-pot lived in seclusion. Beside the jug and bowl on top there were usually a matching soap dish and shaving mug, and sometimes a bone container for the male’s studs.

  At the top of the market a high-class chamber-pot blossomed into flowers, usually pink roses or blue forget-me-nots. Its bedroom companions sported the same colours and were quite decorative; some were colour co-ordinated with paint-work as well. Some boasted embossed flowers and were works of art in the variety and intricacy of their design and colour. In some houses a special chamber-pot, ornate and not intended for ordinary bottoms, was reserved for visitors.