The Mammy

by Brendan O'Carroll

  ‘I’ll see yeh, thanks.’ Agnes took hold of the go-car and pushed on. But the Frenchman grabbed her arm and stopped her.

  ‘Hello! My name ees Pierre,’ he smiled.

  ‘Eh, lovely. I’m delighted for yeh.’ Agnes went to move on but he wouldn’t let go. She looked down at his hand. No wedding ring. He let go.

  ‘What ees your name, ladee?’

  ‘My name is Agnes. Agnes Browne.’

  ‘You ees fery beeautiful, Agnes Browne.’

  Agnes blushed and pushed away from him. ‘You mind your mouth, yeh ... yeh ... Frenchman!’

  Agnes scurried down the street towards town. Just before she turned the comer she looked back. He was standing where she had left him, one hand in his pocket, and looking after her. He raised his other hand and waved at her. Agnes threw her head back indignantly and went around the comer.

  ‘He’s nice looking, Mammy!’ Cathy said.

  Agnes giggled and said, ‘Yeh, he is!’

  Buying the carpet was a cinch. They knew exactly what they wanted when they walked in the door of McHugh’s. It took all of five minutes. Cathy was a little disappointed, but she said nothing as she could see that Mammy was beaming.

  Chapter 14

  THE SUMMER BROUGHT A NEW WARMTH to Moore Street, in every sense of the word. It was busier for a start, and the wandering shoppers now strolled up and down the market street with a smile on their faces. The scent of strawberries and freshly picked raspberries hung in the air and the dealers’ melodious cries, interspersed with laughter, made Agnes feel good to be alive. No sooner had this thought passed through her mind than she glanced over at Marion and felt strangely guilty.

  ‘Are ye all right, Kaiser?’ she yelled across at her.

  Marion looked up at the sound of her nickname and when her eyes met with Agnes’s they smiled, the tiny grey dots turning to tiny grey slits. ‘How could you be all right with all this shite you have to put up with here?’ Marion gestured with a wave of her arm to the four shoppers that were picking through the fruit on her stall. Realising she was the target of the gesture, one woman shopper looked up and snorted. Marion snorted back at her.

  Yes, you’re all right, Marion, thought Agnes.

  ‘Pick me out three nice cooking apples for apple tarts,’ the woman ordered Marion.

  ‘Pick yeh out! D’ye want me to peel them as well? Sure, I’ve nothin’ else to do,‘ Marion replied.

  The woman was startled at first, but then seeing the cheeky grin on Marion’s face she burst out laughing and Marion joined in. ‘Here yeh are, Missus, three of me best and that’s ninepence.’

  The woman handed over the ninepence and moved on with a beaming smile on her face. Marion looked over at Agnes and gave a little wink.

  ‘I don’t know how ye get away with it,’ Agnes called.

  ‘Because I’m loveable and cuddly, and me apples is the best,’ answered Marion with a laugh.

  Agnes smiled to herself. Marion’s spirits never seemed to flag even though little by little as the days went by Agnes saw her deteriorate.

  Since that night in her prison cell Agnes had never mentioned the word ‘cancer’ to Marion, and Marion could boast likewise. Still Agnes’s heart sank a little every day. At first it was Marion’s skin colour. It had quite suddenly turned a yellowish tan. Marion explained this by saying, ’Ah it’s them bloody drugs I’m on, they have me banjaxed.‘ Agnes tried to get Marion to stay at home, to leave the stall for a while. ’Until you’re right again.‘ The lie stuck in her throat. But Marion was having none of it. Life went on as usual. Each morning at five o’clock, Marion would be there to meet Agnes and set off for a full day’s work. She worked as hard as ever and where at first Agnes would be watching her and worrying about her, eventually Agnes began to relax and just enjoy Marion’s company.

  ‘It must be that time,’ Agnes called again to Marion.

  ‘Yeh, it is. I’ll be over in a minute,’ Marion answered. There were only a couple of minutes now to the ritual morning break. They both looked forward to their morning chats. Agnes turned to serve a customer yet another 41b bag of potatoes. She often felt that her life was made up of nothing but 41b bags of potatoes. In all walks of life people measured their lives in different ways - well, Agnes Browne measure hers by 41b bags of potatoes. She made sixpence on a 41b bag, so if she wanted, say, a dress that cost £2 Agnes would immediately think: that’s 80 bags of potatoes I have to sell, and she would wonder was it worth it!

  Within minutes Marion had arrived, the crates were upturned, the bovril was poured, the cigarettes lit, and the morning chat begun. It was Marion this morning who made the opening statement.

  ‘I was dead proud of you in that court room, Agnes, you were dead right.’

  ‘I was stupid!’

  ‘Stupid! No, you were right.’

  ‘Nah! Marion, the Judge or Justice or whatever he was was right. I should have gone to the Guards.’

  Marion thought about this, took a sip of her bovril and another drag of her cigarette, then shook her head and said, ‘No! If it was my daughter I would have done the same.’

  Agnes didn’t reply and for a couple of moments the two women glanced around the street. Although to the casual visitor Moore Street seemed to be a cacophony of voices, the two women could distinguish one from the other, and could easily pick out the response of Winnie the Mackerel when a customer asked if the fish was fresh. ‘Fresh!’ says Winnie. ‘Fresh! I guarantee yeh, Missus, if you bring that home to your fella ye’ll be putting him out with the cat tonight.’ They could hear Doreen Dowdall at her flower stall and the woman asking, ‘Do those flowers come from Holland?’ and Doreen saying, ‘No, love, bulbs. They come from bulbs.’ Even a hundred yards away they could hear the stuttering Robinson sisters as they yelled, ‘ripe st... st... strawberries! Ripe str... str... strawberries!’

  Agnes’s gaze was drawn back once again to Marion - her tiny frame always a bundle of energy, never an unkind word to say about anyone, oh yeh, always with a caustic remark but never a bit of harm. Agnes couldn’t imagine how she would have managed the first four months of widowhood without Marion by her side. The Browne children all called her Auntie Marion and she loved them as if they were her own.

  ‘Marion,’ Agnes asked gently.

  ‘What?’

  ‘D’yeh ever regret not havin’ kids - yeh know, more kids.‘

  ‘Aw Jaysus, I do. But after Philomena died, I dunno ... Tommy didn’t seem interested. It wasn’t for the want of trying, I suppose, but his heart wasn’t in it and I suppose mine wasn’t either.’ Philomena was Marion’s first and only child. Since Philomena died Agnes had heard a lot about cot deaths, but up until then she had never heard of it. She recalled the horrible memory of that winter morning eight years ago when Tommo stood at Agnes’s door saying, ‘Agnes, please come down, Marion can’t wake the baby up,’ and the pitiful sight of Marion sitting on the edge of the bed and rocking back and forth, humming and going ‘Shhhh’, and then humming again and then refusing to hand the bundle over to the ambulance men when they came. The memory would live with Agnes all her life.

  Marion leaned across and tapped Agnes on the lap, bringing Agnes out of her reminiscing. ‘Sure, I always have yours! God knows, they’re a big enough handful for both of us,’ and she smiled.

  Agnes jumped. ‘Jesus, speaking of mine - Mark’s off on a camping trip. It’s this summer project camp and I’m supposed to get him a tent! Where would I get a tent?’ Agnes looked around as if expecting to find one there on the street.

  ‘D’yeh have to get it now?‘ asked Marion.

  ‘Well, he’s going in the morning. Buddha said he would pick me up an ex-army one - no sign of it though. Marion, yeh wouldn’t keep an eye ... I’ll go and see if some of the shops have them!’

  “Course I will,‘ said Marion. ’Go on, take your time, love!‘

  Agnes whipped off her apron, said, ‘Thanks, Marion,’ and disappeared up Moore Street.

  As
it turned out, it didn’t take too long. Agnes was back within half-an-hour smiling from ear to ear. She waved across at Marion. ‘I got it! I was told they’d be dear but I got one for only fifteen shillings. Massive! And brand new as well.’

  Marion waved back. ‘Ah, that’s great. Mark’ll be delighted,’

  The summer project was a great help in keeping the young Brownes out of trouble. It was Father Quinn’s idea. He was a young priest who came to the parish six years before and with him he brought a lot of young ideas. It was Father Quinn who started St Jarlath’s Boxing Club which Dermot belonged to. It was Father Quinn who got Mrs Shields, the old woman who played the organ in the church, to start up the Sunday afternoon ballroom dancing classes which Cathy went to. And Father Quinn managed the Saturday afternoon schoolboys football team, City Celtic, which Mark played for. Agnes Browne and the community of The Jarro had a lot to thank Father Quinn for. This summer project encompassed a lot of things. There was a sports day for the kids in The Jarro. There were painting mornings for the younger ones, and he even trooped thirty-five children down to the Tara Street baths where they all splashed about for an hour.

  The camping trip was to be the final event in the summer project and Father Quinn was looking forward with relish to the three days away, as were the forty children he was to take with him. Agnes was thrilled when she heard Mark say he wanted to go. God knows, he earned the five shillings it cost, she thought. She had been troubled with Mark since Redser’s death and now that school was over Mark said he had no intention of going on to technical school and wanted to get himself a job. This upset her because she didn’t want Mark to end up as another Redser, but she knew that open confrontation would only make him more determined - after all he was her son too. So she had decided that gentle persuasion would be the way to go, and every day or so she’d drop a little hint about how important further schooling was. Mind you, it didn’t seem to be working. Mark seemed to be determined. Maybe the few days away camping with Father Quinn would change his mind.

  Mark, as usual, was up at first light on the morning of the camping. He made a beeline for Agnes’s bedroom, shaking her gently. ‘Ma! Mammy! Ma!’

  Agnes stirred a little at first, then slowly turned around to him. ‘What love? What! What’s up?’

  ‘The tent! Did you get the tent?’

  ‘It’s outside on the kitchen table. It’s wrapped in brown paper and there’s two pieces of twine that you can slip your arms into so it’ll be like a haversack.’

  Mark liked the sound of that as he didn’t have a haversack. He had his swimming trunks and his towel ready, and some hard-boiled eggs, sliced bread and butter wrapped in tinfoil all packed into a plastic carrier bag. He sprinted out to the kitchen table and tried on the brown package.

  ‘Yahoo!’ He was delighted. He was like a real camper. He washed and dressed in ten minutes, slipped the brown package on to his back, took his carrier bag with all his stuff and made his way down the stairs towards the assembly point outside St Jarlath’s church with the rest of the adventurers. It was a beautiful fresh sunny day and Mark took long strides as he headed for St Jarlath’s. He arrived outside the church to complete bedlam. One group of boys were playing football up against the. side of the church while another group was fighting over God knows what. Two boys were sitting on the steps of the church taking big slugs of milk from pint bottles they had stolen from a doorstep on the way down.

  Father Quinn emerged from the Sacristy and soon knocked some kind of semblance of order into the children. Then he lined them up in two rows and they marched down O‘Connell Street like an army. Mark felt like a soldier. At the bottom of O’Connell Street they boarded the Blessington bus, two by two. Father Quinn decided who sat beside whom and despite pleading with Father Quinn, Mark ended up sitting beside ‘Number Eleven’. Number Eleven was David Molloy, and he got his name from the continuous stream of mucus that flowed from his nose. He was only called Number Eleven in the summer - in the winter the children called him Bubbles, for obvious reasons. Mark eventually sat where he was told to sit, but he kept a close eye on Number Eleven and every time Eleven leaned to the right, Mark leaned away, as if Eleven had an infectious disease. The trip was two hours long and Mark had to concentrate the whole time.

  Father Quinn knew one song only: ‘Where Have You Been All Day, Henry, My Son’ and the kids joined in with gusto. As they neared Blessington, he began the song for the eighth time and the children groaned. Finally, Father Quinn stood up and when he had got everyone’s attention, he began to speak: ’Now, children, we’re very nearly there and I will shortly be going around to give everybody sixpence to spend.‘ This was met with a huge cheer. The priest raised his hand and eventually got silence and continued: ’You may, if you wish, spend this on sweets, but please remember to make these sweets last, for, once we leave Blessington on our hike, we will not see civilisation again for three days.‘

  Blessington was ill-prepared for what was about to descend upon it. Although a picturesque little village, Blessington was not a sleepy little village and the residents and traders were well aware of their tourist potential, and although the Main Square or Diamond was dotted only with small shops, they did provide for all the needs of tourists. Across the street from where the bus pulled in was a tiny general store. Each summer morning the shopkeeper would come out early and hang up all his colourful wares on meat-hooks around the doorway. There would be inflatable rings for children going bathing, brightly coloured buckets and spades, footballs of all colours and little windmills on sticks gently twirling in the wind. To anybody else stepping off the bus this shop would be picturesque. To Father Quinn’s little army from The Jarro, it was a shoplifter’s dream.

  Twenty minutes later the troop marched up the mountain path from the village, each boy with his pockets full of sweets, postcards, biscuits, tins of salmon, firelighters and cigarettes. They were led proudly by Father Quinn, while back in the shop the shopkeeper was scratching his head and looking at the five shillings he had managed to drag out of the boys. Four miles into the mountains and three more puffing blasts of ‘Where Have You Been All Day, Henry, My Son’ from Father Quinn and the group came to a lake. Father Quinn turned to the boys, gestured with his arm proudly, and announced: ’Boys, I have led you to the land of milk and honey.‘ From somewhere in the group a tiny voice said, ’It looks like fuckin’ water to me,‘ and this was followed by a ripple of laughter.

  The group marched into the field, then down to the edge of the lake. Father Quinn gathered the boys around and said: ‘Boys, put down your baggage and first things first - everybody must collect wood for the bonfire.’ There was a large cheer and the children scattered in every direction. ‘Make sure it’s dead wood,’ Father Quinn called after them and when the wood arrived back in dribs and drabs it was indeed dead - some of it dead so long that it had been turned into a door or picket fence! Two of the boys even arrived back with their wood in a wheelbarrow. When Father Quinn asked where they had got the wheelbarrow, they swore they had found it, just like the boys who brought the door and the fence. Father Quinn couldn’t shake off the feeling that they had taken the wheelbarrow from somebody’s garden and were able to get it out easily because the picket fence was missing! He was afraid even to imagine where the door had come from.

  By eight o‘clock that evening the boys started to get tired and Father Quinn decided to let everybody put their tent up. He paced out sites five feet apart and ordered them to begin. Mark gleefully took his brown paper packet and began to undo the tape, while beside him Sean O’Hare was unpacking his. Sean O‘Hare’s tent was a standard army one-man tent bought in a second-hand shop in Dublin - khaki green with two short poles and a ground sheet. When Mark unfolded his package it had eight poles!

  ‘Sean!’ he shouted, ‘should a tent have eight poles?’

  ‘Only if you have four tents,’ said O‘Hare.

  But Mark quickly grasped that the poles slotted into one another and instead of
eight poles he had four long ones. Again he turned to O‘Hare for advice.

  ‘Sean! I have four poles - is that better?’

  ‘It is if you have two tents,’ said O‘Hare. ’Take out the tent and open it out, then you’ll see how many poles you need.‘

  Mark opened the second brown bag. The first thing he noticed was the bright orange colour of his tent fabric. As he unfolded the fabric and spread it across the ground the next thing he saw was the red Indian markings that were painted on the outside.

  O‘Hare scratched his head. ’What the fuck is that?‘

  ‘It’s me tent,’ said Mark.

  ‘Are yeh sure, it’s not a frock?’ O‘Hare said and laughed loudly. The bright orange colour of the tent was now attracting attention from boys within a twenty-yard radius and they converged on Mark to see what kind of tent he was erecting. It was Number Eleven who spotted it first.

  ‘It’s a bleedin’ wigwam,’ he screamed and all the boys laughed.

  ‘Don’t be stupid!’ said Mark, ‘it’s me tent!’

  ‘I’m tellin’ yeh,’ Number Eleven went on, ‘it’s a bleedin’ wigwam, I seen them in the toy shops.’

  It took only seconds for Mark to realise that Number Eleven was right. It was indeed a wigwam. Bright orange with Indian paintings all around the sides. Agnes had bought her son a teepee. And so for the three nights they spent in the Wicklow Mountains Mark Browne slept in a sitting position, and got himself the name ‘Sitting Bull’. A casual passer-by would look down at the lake and see all the khaki tents laid out in military fashion with a priest marching up and down, and in the middle of them all a bright orange wigwam.

  When Mark returned from his three-day adventure his mother’s advice was less welcome than it had ever been, and any thoughts she had of stopping him going to work and encouraging him back to school went out the door with the wigwam so t‘speak.

  Chapter 15

  THE OTHER BROWNE KIDS HAD THEIR SUMMER outings too, and thanks to the St Vincent de Paul charity they even managed to get themselves a holiday. They had a two-week stay at the ‘Sunshine Home’ in Skerries. Not for the first time did Agnes bless the Vincent de Paul.