by Alice Taylor
On that particular night, however, the moon did not oblige so we were in complete darkness. Tucked up snugly in our comfortable feather tick we did not mind, but just as we were dozing off to sleep I realised that we had no statues to keep us company. We knocked on the wooden floor to summon help from the lower regions and when Frances came in answer to our call we explained about our statues. She went in search of them. After a long time she came back and tucked the statues under the bedclothes beside us.
I ran my finger over Baby Jesus and thought that he was a strange shape. Then Connie’s sleepy voice whispered to me in the darkness, “Saint Theresa has a very long neck tonight.” However, we were too tired to investigate any further and drifted off to sleep. We awoke the next morning to discover that instead of our two statues, which had gone missing, we were holding on to two bottles of porter.
I got my first doll the following Christmas, and Connie got a little cloth man he called Patsy. That morning I awoke and when I moved my legs something clanked off the bottom of the bed: it was a doll with a ware face, and we named her Katie Maria. We had many hours of fun with our new friends, Katie Maria and Patsy, but we did not abandon our two old pals who stood guard on our bedside table.
When summer came round again we returned to the grove and our tree house. We lived in a child’s wonderland and the harsh face of reality had never frowned on us. But then, suddenly, an icy draught blew around us when Connie got very sick. He had been part of my day and night, sharing every childish secret, and now suddenly he could laugh no more. He lay still and quiet like a little bird in the middle of the feather bed. I sat on the floor and played with Patsy and Katie Maria. I talked endlessly to Connie, feeling that even though he couldn’t answer he would know somehow that I was there. The doctor came every day and I shrank back into the corner while he examined Connie. My mother and the doctor had long discussions and I could see the pain in my mother’s face.
Then one day after the doctor had been, my mother told me that Connie would have to go into hospital and that he might get better, but she was not sure. Looking into my mother’s stricken face I feared that Connie would never come back. Since he had got sick I had felt that something terrible was going to happen and now the certainty formed a hard lump of terror in my heart. I went up into the grove and sat into our old tree. A black car came into the yard and through the trees I watched my mother come out with Connie in her arms. He was wrapped up in a white blanket but my mother’s face was whiter still.
I stayed in the tree house all day, feeling close to Connie there. Tears never came to my eyes – crying was something you did when you cut your finger. This was beyond all tears. Finally, as dusk came, I heard the pine needles crunching as someone approached. It was Bill. He sat outside the tree as he could not fit inside; just sat saying nothing, while the tears ran down his face. I crept out of the tree and on to his lap, putting my arms around his neck. And so we sat, Bill and I, locked together in our terrible grief – I silently, while my dear friend shuddered with great heart-broken sobs.
The next day Connie died. I did not feel any worse because it was as if it had already happened. I actually felt better because I decided that now that he had left the hospital and gone to heaven he would come back. Every day I checked the tree house a couple of times in case he would be there. When this did not work out, I decided it was back to the bedroom he would come. Our little room had been stripped bare and the curtains drawn, and a sulphur candle stood guttering and spluttering on our bedside table. The nuns in the hospital had given my mother a relic of Saint Theresa and a waxen pink rose which were also on the table. I hated that pink rose. In some way I had come to the conclusion that God had taken Connie and sent back this stupid rose. One day when I peeped in to see if Connie was there I could stand it no longer so I caught the rose and tore it up, petal by petal.
My refusal to accept the fact that Connie was gone must have added greatly to my mother’s anguish at that time. One day, in order to try to solve the problem, she asked me if I would like to visit his grave. I was delighted and tore upstairs for Patsy and a bag of Connie’s favourite sweets that I kept hidden under our bed: it took a long time to realise that heaven was, indeed, a one-way ticket.
Years afterwards I opened the door of a room in a strange house and the smell of a sulphur candle hit me with such an impact that a memory box in my subconscious snapped open and I was once again back in that little room. I stood rooted to the floor as tears streamed down my face while some of the anguish of those days washed over me.
Healing Place
The frosty, feathery grass
Crunched beneath my feet
As my warm valley
Caressed me in welcome;
Bejewelled with frost
The trees and grass
Sparkled in the morning sun
And across the river
The mothering mountains
Shrouded in a misty light
Stood ground. Not a sound
But the gurgling of the river
And the companions of the solitary
My feathered friends
Echoing my thoughts
Pour forth their ecstasy
In unrestrained delight.
Oh, to hold these thoughts
And this place for ever
In my mind
This beloved place
So much part of me.
I stood
And let the essence
Of this balm of my growing
Soak into the inmost regions
Of my soul,
To be printed
On the back pages
Of my mind,
To be re-read
In some far distant hour
When my need
Would be great
And I could no longer
Come to this
My healing place
A Touch of Oliver
MY GRANDMOTHER WAS a formidable old lady. She was six feet tall and, dressed in flowing black with a crochet shawl around her shoulders, she carried herself with grace and dignity. In later years she used a walking stick, but she walked with regal bearing until the day she died at ninety-eight years of age. It could be that she needed the stick to maintain law and order when she was unable to move as fast as she wanted, for while grandmothers are supposed to be loving and soft-bosomed, mine certainly did not fit into that picture: she was strong willed and domineering and ruled the house with a rod of iron. Her husband was dead with years so she ran the large farm herself and thrived on it. She was a forerunner of the struggle for equality and she was confident that most women could run a business as well if not better than men. She did just that, but in her time she was no ordinary woman. She killed her own pig and seldom sent for a vet as she could dose cattle and repair fractures like an expert. Some of her mother’s people were doctors so she maintained that medicine was in her blood and, indeed, when one of her workmen was gored by a bull, her fast, skilful action saved his life.
Though in some ways she was ahead of her time, in others she belonged to the era of the French Revolution. When our revolution came and the Black and Tans rampagedaround the country my grandmother, a staunch Republican, was in the thick of it. Anyone on the run knew that they could get safe harbouring in her house. The Black and Tans knew this as well and many nights when the family were fast asleep the lorries drove into the yard, loud banging started on the door and the house was searched.
One night a young man called Larry, who was on the run, was asleep upstairs in the same room as her young son. Her two daughters were in another room. Suddenly the loud knocking started and she woke up. Realising that they had not heard the warning noise of the lorries, she got out of bed slowly, hoping to give Larry time to get away, but she did not know that the house was surrounded. She still delayed in answering and the knocking turned to banging, demanding that she: “Open in the name of the King!” Eventually she opened the door and the soldiers trooped in p
ast her. They searched the house thoroughly, even turning the bedclothes out on the floor, but, finding nothing, they became very annoyed because they seemed certain that there should have been somebody there.
My grandmother was a tough woman who did not know the meaning of fear: she asked them to leave now that they had searched her house. She refused to get drawn into an argument with them but stayed tight-lipped – which could not have been easy for her as silence was not one of her virtues.
The officer in charge, who had called many times, looked at my grandmother and remarked, “You remind me of my mother.”
“Well, indeed,” she snapped back, “your mother must not be up to much to raise a blackguard like you.”
At last they left, warning her that they’d be calling again and that she’d be caught eventually. She went to the door and listened to hear the lorries starting up in the lane; then she put her children back to bed and sat by the fire for a long time. Opening the front door she checked in the half light of the dawn to make sure there was nobody about. It had happened before that the Tans had doubled back, hoping to catch them unprepared. Eventually, when she was convinced that they were safe, she stood in the middle of the kitchen and called aloud: “In the name of God where are you?”
Beside the fire in the kitchen was an old settle bed which appeared to be a timber seat when it was closed up. The Tans had checked it but when the cover did not rise they had assumed that it was just a seat. Out of this, with his face white as a sheet, rolled Larry. It had been a narrow escape. She was convinced that the Tans had known that somebody was there that night so they must have been tipped off; she suspected a family further back the valley and she never forgave them. If ever their name came up in conversation her face would darken and she would say, “Bad blood there.”
When I was young I never stayed at her house as I was half afraid of her though, gradually, as she got older, she grew a little bit more mellow, or else I got braver with the years. Working for her in the house was a saintly girl called Mary, who often stood between me and my grandmother’s wrath. Once my grandmother had boiled a chicken and she loved the chicken broth which she had cooling in a jug on a table at the bottom of the kitchen. I decided to do a big clean up and finding this jug full of water – as I thought – I threw it out the door. When she discovered what I had done I had to spend the rest of the day out on the farm with my uncle.
As my grandmother grew older she spent more time sitting on a chair beside the fire, from where she talked non-stop. Later I regretted that I had not paid more attention to her as she had a tremendous memory and a great mind, with crystal clear thinking to the very end. She was a constant reader of the Irish Press which my uncle brought to her every day when he went to the creamery. When he came in the door she would say: “Give me that paper until I see what old Brookeborough is saying today.” All her life she took a keen interest in politics and was a fanatical supporter of de Valera. As my father was on the other side of the coin she was always slightly suspicious of him; however, politics apart, they had great respect for one another.
My grandmother had one strange chink in her armour: every couple of years she took to her bed and decided she was going to die. Admittedly this idiosyncrasy did not begin until she was over seventy so on the law of averages she could have been right. But she was no average woman and when the local doctor came he always annoyed her intensely by telling her that she was fine and had years to live. She got over this problem by contacting one of her own relations who was a doctor in the next parish. He understood what was expected of him and prescribed tablets and told her that, yes, she was quite ill and should stay in bed. My uncle regarded all this with great amusement and referred to these outbreaks as “a touch of Oliver”. Why he called it this I do not know, but when he came to our house and said that “herself has a touch of Oliver” we all knew what he meant. But perhaps the doctor understood more than he got credit for. This strong woman, who never showed any softness, needed to go to bed and be comforted occasionally, and after a few days she would be back on her feet again.
When she had come to live on the home farm after getting married, her mother-in-law, father-in-law and a brother of her husband’s were already in the house before her. The brother-in-law later got married and had two children before leaving to set up in business. Despite this extended family living together under one roof, complete harmony prevailed, and all attributed this fact to my grandmother. She was a woman of many parts. She had a constant flow of visitors, including one old friend who always brought her a present of a bottle of whiskey which he drank before he went home.
She was very lucky in the fact that when my uncle married she got a splendid daughter-in-law. I was there the first morning she took over the kitchen and I was open-mouthed in astonishment at her efficiency. Grandmother had great admiration for capable people, so if the daughter-in-law had been lacking in ability it could have caused a problem. My uncle was a happy, bighearted man who lived very comfortably between his two remarkable women. He was a sociable person who visited us regularly and always loved to have us call when we were home on holidays. In later years when television came and he had acquired a set, he put it in a cupboard. When the television was on, naturally the cupboard was opened, but as soon as anybody came in visiting he turned it off and shut the cupboard. He maintained that television should be kept in its place and never take precedence over people.
When my grandmother died it might have been expected that some of her old pictures might be taken down off the walls. However, when I called some years afterwards I was surprised and delighted to see the same old great-grandaunts and uncles still smiling down at me. Her daughter-in-law remembered the old lady with love and affection.
As my grandmother was such an overwhelming personality there was a danger that she might have overshadowed her only son but this, however, was not the case because, while she was forthright and domineering, he sailed through life on a sunshine cloud. They were two very different types of people. My uncle believed that life was for playing hard and working hard, and he never did anything by half measure. Sitting at the top of the kitchen table he would bang it with his fist and sing, “I’m sailing along in a trolley. I feel like a big millionaire.” And indeed he was very generous; when we stayed with my grandmother he never came from town without something in his pockets for us.
He put me on a pony for my first time, gave the pony a slap on the rump and set her galloping across the field with me clinging on for dear life. Finally, all the tackling which was on the pony – she had just come from the creamery – slid off and I came with it. I kicked him hard on the shins in retaliation, but he only laughed and said, “Get back up now again.” In a temper I did just that, but became so thrilled by this new experience that I rode the pony bare-backed all day and could not sit down for a week afterwards.
One winter we had very heavy snow which stayed on the ground for almost two months. There were drifts over six feet high along the fields and, as if this was not bad enough, a very severe ’flu came at the same time. When some of our family caught it we found it difficult to try to keep the cattle fed, but my uncle arrived on horse-back every day and stayed until all the work was done, even though he had to go home then and see to his own animals as well. He had a great sense of family loyalty and togetherness. “That’s all that counts at the end of the day,” he told me once.
On the morning of his wedding we were walking down the passage from the house on the way to the church. Suddenly, he shot in a gap and fled across the field. When I caught up with him I asked what all that was about.
“Very unlucky, Alice, to meet a foxy woman the morning you’re getting married and Kate was coming around the next corner.”
Kate was a red-haired woman of the roads whom we met every day, but my uncle was taking no chances this morning.
The only time I ever saw him sad was the day that Connie was buried. He sat in our kitchen, pale-faced and silent, one of the images t
hat impressed on my child’s mind that this was a terrible day. I suppose that small children, to whom death is incomprehensible, can only judge its seriousness by the reaction of familiar adults. I decided that anything that could wipe the smile off my uncle’s face must be disastrous.
In his autumn years my uncle developed terminal cancer. I visited him in hospital after his operation and was shattered by what illness can do to a great-hearted man. His wife nursed him in his last months and it was awe-inspiring to see the dedication and care which true love can create.
Walk the Fields
When I go home
I walk the fields,
The quiet fields
Where the warm dew
Had squelched between
My childish toes.
To sit beneath
The cool oak and ash
That sheltered
My adolescent dreams.
These trees stand
With leafy arms
Outstretched
Like lovers’,
Not in passion
But with gentle
Sighs of contentment.
I watch the cows
Graze peaceful
Beside the river
Curving its way
Through furzed inches
Into the woods beyond.
This is a holy place
Where men have worked
Close to God’s earth
Under the quiet heavens.
A Country Child’s Christmas
CHRISTMAS IN OUR house was always magical and for weeks beforehand my toes would tingle at the thought of it. The first inkling of its reality was Santa’s picture in the Cork Examiner: we pored over him, loving every wrinkle in his benevolent face. At first his was a small face peeping from an obscure corner, but as Christmas drew nearer his presence became more reassuringly felt as he filled a larger space on the page.
