An Irish Christmas Feast E-Book

John B. Keane

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 807

Beschreibung

'Hilariously Irish, shrewdly accurate and richly creative.' —Irish Times 'Creates a charming emotional map of a fictitious but authentic-seeming place.' —Boston Globe  'John B.'s love of language was – and is – a joy to experience.' —Brendan Kennelly A collection of more than fifty tales by one of Ireland's liveliest and most popular story writers. Drawing on the rich folk culture of County Kerry, John B. Keane brings new life to old customs in his portrayals of the special holiday dreams and everyday shortcomings of not-so-ordinary country people during the Christmas season. With enough good cheer to warm the heart throughout the holiday season and all the long nights of winter, Keane's congenial volume revisits the Christmases celebrated by characters like Dotie Tupper and Johnny Naile , the deaf Canon Cornelius Coodle, the amiable spendthrift Aenias Mackson, and Hiccups O'Reilly, who disappears one Christmas Eve and is gone for seven years. Whether recounting 'The Miracle of Ballybradawn', 'The Great Christmas Raid at Ballybooley', or 'The Order of MacMoolamawn', whether telling the tales of 'The Magic Stoolin', 'A Tasmanian Backhander', 'The Fourth Wise Man' or the 'Last Christmas Eve of the Twentieth Century', Keane bears delightful witness to the trials and triumphs of the inhabitants of his eccentric corner of Ireland.

Leseprobe

MERCIER PRESS

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© The Estate of John B. Keane, 2004

ISBN: 978 1 85635 450 9

Epub ISBN: 978 1 85635 990 0

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 85635 991 7

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

To John and Dors

With Much Love

A Look Back

Don’t talk back to me about poverty. I remember a time when there was nothing anywhere. Only the very few had more than enough to eat. Only half the population had barely enough. The rest were simply hungry and broke. One of the saddest memories of my youth was the national school. The teachers were, for the most part, caring but often caring with too much force. The sad part of school was the hunger of small boys who came from impoverished backgrounds. I remember when I was first elevated to the upper classes, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh, I was approached by the smallest scholar on the upper floor.

‘Keane!’ he called listlessly, ‘any chance you’d bring us a cut of bread and jam.’

This was during the morning break. Every so often I would bring him something to eat. He died from diphtheria in the late 1930s. He was a lovely soul. His emaciated face is still with me. He had a voice like a lark and a spirit that was pure and free but he was no match for poverty and indifference.

At the time there was a saying ‘he’s out of all books now’ which meant that the garsún in question would have gone through all the classes in the national school, first book, second book, third book and so on. ‘He’s out of all books now,’ the mother of an aspirant would say proudly to a prospective employer as she tendered him for the inspection of a grocer or a hardware merchant or a draper.

I knew another boy in that school at the top of Church Street in my native Listowel who confided in me once that he had never eaten an egg, not even at Easter. When I looked at him in astonishment he declared that he had eaten the half of an egg all right on occasion, and sometimes a quarter of an egg and sometimes the cap of an egg but a whole egg never. Other things I remember about this boy were: (1) He never wore shoes; (2) He never wore an overcoat; (3) He never wore underclothes; (4) He always wore a smile.

There was a crude joke circulating at the time about a poor widow who was sometimes given to grandiose actions. She had seven children. Each morning she would boil an egg and distribute it between the seven before they went to school. The egg, of course, would be soft boiled so that the yolk could be spread over the faces of the offspring in order to give the impression at school that there were eggs galore at home. The reason I recall these incidents is to highlight the degrading, debilitating poverty forced upon a long-suffering people and to show how infinitely better-off we are in the new millennium. I know there’s still poverty at home but it’s nothing like what it was. I know because I was there and I saw it. Outspoken people would ask in anger if this was what Irish patriots went out for. Other folk would ask was this what Pearse and Connolly died for. You will find many historians who will tell you that there were no real solutions to the horrific problems of the last millennium on its countdown to its last gasp.

Surely, the Holocaust need never have happened. The story, however, could have been worse and the megalomaniac Hitler might have succeeded. I wish I could say that the Holocaust was the final chapter in man’s inhumanity to man. Alas more recently we have had the Serbian conflict and the barbarity of East Timor and there will be more because, as the old woman said when her husband threw her out into the cold of winter, that is the nature of the bashte.

The bashte in question is the raging animal inside us which has to be subdued every hour. If the dear and gentle reader finds me in a reflective mood he must make allowance for the fact that I haven’t touched alcoholic drink for several days in a bid to improve my lot and answer my correspondence. Writing on an empty stomach is dehydrating so I propose presently to take up my glass and empty it before it’s too late. There’s a time to drink and a time to drive but never at the same time.

The simple truth at the end of the day is that the people of this country never had it so good but like all people in such a position they don’t know when they’re well off. They lose weight so that they can put it on again. I decided that I was not going to walk into the new millennium nor was I going to run or gallop or tiptoe. Instead, I was going to dive in and fervently hope that I surfaced in another world surrounded by friends who were my enemies and without that accursed pain in my back.

There’s a man in this town who goes to bed in the early afternoon of Christmas Eve and does not rise until the following night. He does it, he once told me, because he doesn’t want to be happy. He mistrusts happiness because it always fizzles out on him and leaves him sick and sorry. Now I’m a man who wishes to be happy and a man who wishes happiness on everybody and this, remember, is the very same man who has hurled wild abuse at innocent football referees merely doing their job. Towards the end of the last millennium I desisted from abusing referees because of age and reduced voice power.

In my probe into that part of the millennium through which I have lived I recall a confrontation I had with a teacher in my final year in the national school. Our catechism told us that the world was four thousand years old and when I questioned this with another boy we were told that we were guttersnipes. Then, not long after, in the secondary school there was a priest who was also a teacher. If you mentioned to him the name of Charles Darwin he would strike you with his walking stick and if he hadn’t a walking stick he had an equally damaging fist.

Were there no solutions then to the evil procedures which governed us? I believe that the first place to look for a solution to injustice and inhumanity is deep within one’s own heart or better still look to the Sermon on the Mount according to Matthew beginning with:

Happy are the poor in spirit:

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Happy are the peacemakers:

They shall be called sons of God

Happy are those who are persecuted in the cause of right:

Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

As I look around me I don’t despair. The good in us marginally outweighs the evil so there is hope for the future and here to cheer you up is a quote from St Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians: ‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and for thy frequent infirmities’ and as my late and great friend Roger O’Sullivan used to say, ‘What profit it a man to gain the whole world and be wet in his shoes’. A sobering thought my friends, a sobering thought, but one that reminds us that we should look for the antidote of humour when we are threatened with evil.

The Course of Time

Edgar Guff, if one was to believe the observations of his parish priest Canon Coodle, was the possessor of an enormous appetite for whiskey. His puce-coloured nose would also bear this out as would his bloodshot eyes and unsteady gait.

‘He would drink whiskey,’ the canon informed his housekeeper Hannie Hanlon, ‘out of a senna saucepan.’

Hannie shook her head in disgust.

‘Otherwise,’ the canon continued, ‘he’s not a bad fellow at all and you could trust him in any enterprise that doesn’t involve whiskey.’

The pair had adjourned to the presbytery kitchen after the evening meal and, as was their wont, would discuss minor parochial business until the evening confessions commenced in the parish church which stood impassively next door where it dwarfed every other building in the town square.

Hannie Hanlon had, a few moments before, completed the dusting of the four ornate confessionals. As she neatly folded her duster she heard the muted but unsteady footsteps approaching along the side aisle where she stood admiring the copper plaque which carried the name of Canon Cornelius Coodle and was affixed prominently to the central door of the canon’s confessional. The canon’s box, as it was called, was greatly favoured by penitents of both sexes and all ages and not merely because he was somewhat deaf but also because he was tolerant, discreet and sympathetic.

‘Sure you couldn’t shock the canon,’ the more hardened sinners would assure themselves as they confidently made their way to his box.

Hannie did not have to look around to discover who the first arrival was. The creature’s light footfall indicated that it could be none other than Edgar Guff who, despite his surname, rarely expressed himself in public. There was also the fact that he always arrived at the confessional well ahead of the prescribed time, often by as much as an hour on busy occasions such as Christmas and Easter. Seating himself on the innermost extremity of the long wooden stool, which led to the confessional, he nodded respectfully in the direction of the stern-faced housekeeper. She acknowledged the salute with a solemn nod, decidedly discouraging and not in the least bit conducive to further exchanges.

People of the parish would say that Edgar Guff was an exceptional listener and could hear most of what the penitents said especially when they were expected to raise their voices or provide clarification for transgressions at the confessor’s behest. This was not often but when it occurred it was always interesting, not that Edgar would ever dream of betraying the confidences which his proximity to the confessional conferred on him.

Edgar was a professional sitter. That is to say, he was engaged by busy sinners such as lawyers, doctors and wealthy businessmen to hold places on their behalf next to the confessional. As soon as one of his clients arrived, always impatient and always in a hurry, he would hand over his seat near the confessional door and make his way to the far end of the wooden stool. For this service, he would be paid a half crown. From his lowly position at the end of the stool he would patiently wait as those who were seated nearer the confessional were shrived, thus allowing him to advance in the right direction. After a while he would find himself in the most prized position, right outside the confessional door. If his next client noted that Edgar was too far from the confessional the restless creature would exit to the town square and indulge in measured peregrinations until he judged that his sitter would be better placed.

During the busy seasons Edgar would spend nearly all of his waking hours on the stool. He was often asked by cronies if he was ever obliged to vacate his place due to a call of nature.

‘Never!’ he would answer firmly and then he would explain that he was always on the move so to speak in his earlier years when he was addicted to pints of stout. It was costing him too much in lost revenue so he changed over to whiskey which made hardly any demands because his bladder was never full.

When Hannie Hanlon returned to the presbytery kitchen she was asked by the canon if Edgar Guff had taken up his place.

‘Just a few moments ago,’ she answered.

‘That gives me the best part of an hour,’ the canon intoned happily as he settled himself comfortably in front of the gleaming Stanley. Later when the three curates arrived the canon was ready to lead his curates onward and outward against the forces of evil. From their confessionals they would keep the enemy at bay with forgiveness.

As the first penitents arrived, several at the same time, Edgar Guff, sitter-in-chief of the parish, fortified himself for the long hours ahead. He withdrew a voluminous handkerchief from his ample, inside pocket and gently blew on his purple proboscis after which he skilfully removed the cork from a noggin of whiskey, cleverly camouflaged by the handkerchief, and indulged in a modest swallow which instantly alerted him to his responsibilities.

Thereafter his clients began to arrive like clockwork. It was a boom time for sitters especially for Edward who had a large clientele, most of them generous if the occasion deserved it. Their contributions were nearly always doubled at Christmas so that Edward need not worry about the wherewithal required for the purchase of extra whiskey. He had already swallowed several half ones in the two public houses closest to the church and since these activities took place during intervals he wasn’t in the least befuddled. To employ one of his own phrases he was just warming up and would be quite capable of swallowing the two noggins in his pockets before confessions ended for the night. He would, of course, feel a little groggy later but he would find his way home without difficulty and enjoy a good night’s slumber before the noonday sittings of the morrow.

As the night wore on he started to grow drowsy, finding it difficult to keep his eyes open for long. The spirit of goodwill, luckily for him, was abroad and whenever he started to drop off he would be wakened by concerned penitents who sat near him. His clients came and went and not one neglected to pay his fee. He found his hands being opened wide on numerous occasions and almost always two half crowns were pressed against his palm.

Only once in that long night was he jolted into wakefulness and that was when Canon Coodle raised his mighty voice in anger in the nearby confessional. Edgar sat upright at once. It must be some sin of outrageous proportions if the canon raised his voice to a shout. Edgar Guff nor indeed any of the other penitents had ever heard anything like it before.

Edgar deduced from the trembling, plaintive utterances that the penitent in the box was female. She was in the process at long last, after years of neglect and suffering, of acquainting her parish priest with the behaviour of the perfidious wretch to whom she had been chained for more than forty years. Edgar had missed the earlier part of the poor woman’s disclosures but he gasped as he had never gasped before when she made the ultimate accusation. This was that she had not been in receipt of a single kiss from her husband for twenty agonising years. It was this that prompted Canon Coodle to shout ‘What!’ at the top of his voice. When she repeated the charge in broken tones he thundered the word ‘What!’ a second time.

Drunk as he was, Edgar Guff’s heart went out to the victim of this disastrous marriage. He longed to lay his hands on the throat of the monster who had treated her so abominably for so long. But no! He must never reveal what he had heard or allow what he had heard to influence any future actions of his in relation to this confession or any other. The secrecy of the confessional was sacred and it dawned on a drunken Edgar, not for the first time, that he was an officer of the Church. He would agree that he was not a very high-up officer, that he was below the rank of assistant-to-the-sacristan or even a common altar boy but he was a Church officer no matter what.

He sat fully attentive as he heard the movements in the confessional. The penitent’s door opened and there Edgar Guff beheld the dowdy clothes and tear-stained face of his wife, his one and only who had not qualified for a solitary kiss in twenty years. He sat stunned as she shuffled along the aisle and then she was gone.

Suddenly he sprang into action and dashed into the night.

Outside she moved slowly and carefully, picking her steps in the darkness. Gently he forestalled her and placed an arm around her shoulder, his drunkenness totally dissipated by what he had heard. She turned to look into the face of the person who had come to her aid. Suddenly her sobs filled the night so that passers-by turned to stare. Overcome by grief he shepherded her into a laneway where he held her in his arms until her convulsive sobbing ended and she stood silent and limp, totally dependent on his support.

He took her hand and led her homeward. The days that followed were filled with silence and when she accepted silently his offer of a walk by the river on St Stephen’s Day he knew that if he played his cards right there was a chance, just a chance mind you, that things might work out in the course of time.

Twelve Days’ Grace

Agnes Mallowan shot the iron bolts into place in the back and front doors of the presbytery. Then she did the rounds of the house upstairs and downstairs, securing the windows in the curate’s room but firmly resisting the temptation to inspect his belongings. She could have carried out the inspection with impunity if she so wished, she told herself, seeing that he was enjoying a short Christmas break at the other end of the diocese in his parents’ home.

As was his wont the parish priest Father Canty would read in bed until she brought him his nightcap after which he would fall fast asleep until the seven o’clock bell sounded.

There had been no exchange of Christmas presents. As always he had handed her an extra week’s pay but repeated his insistence that she was not to invest in a present on his behalf. From the beginning he had made it clear that there were to be no Christmas gifts.

‘The best present you can give me,’ he had warned, ‘is to keep your money in your purse.’

Neither would he let her spoil him. ‘Plain fare for me,’ he would raise his hand aloft, ‘and the plainer the better.’

The few luxuries he permitted himself were the nocturnal glass of punch and a glass of wine on Sundays with his dinner. He had partaken of wine earlier that day but only, he had reminded her, because it was Christmas. Sometimes she worried about his health. What concerned her most was the wheezing when he paused on the landing, having forgotten to take his time when ascending the stairs. She used every conceivable subterfuge lest he over-exert himself. Sometimes his irritability showed when he found the cob tackled and waiting preparatory to a sick call.

‘Who tackled the cob?’ he would ask pretending to be angrier than he really was. There would be no answer while she prepared him for the journey. There were times, he would reluctantly admit to himself, during epidemics as the calls came pouring in when he was grateful. Normally the chores of catching and tackling the cob would fall to the sacristan but such a post had been vacant for years.

‘The parish just can’t afford it,’ he had explained only the year before to the bishop who had intimated in his usual roundabout way that the elderly parish priest ought to be taking things easier.

‘I’m only seventy-three,’ Father Canty had retorted mischievously, ‘which makes me two years younger than my bishop.’

‘True,’ came the unruffled response, ‘but I don’t have to go on sick calls at all hours of the night and you do and that is why I am giving you a curate. You have been playing on my conscience a lot lately.’

‘We can’t afford a curate,’ Father Canty responded testily.

‘We’ll manage,’ the bishop had concluded blithely.

The curate, Father Scanlan, had proved himself to be a hardworking, likeable young man well able to generate income through football tournaments, card-drives, raffles and silver circles. The parishioners might protest about the cost but they quickly became involved in the new activities and were to wonder in the course of time how they had managed to retain their sanity for so long without such diversions. Unfortunately for him Agnes Mallowan saw the new addition as an interloper whose every act seemed calculated to usurp the authority of the ageing parish priest. She felt it her duty to protect her employer. The younger man sensed her hostility but was prepared for it and had been counselled by colleagues in the art of countering it.

‘Play second fiddle to the parish priest,’ he was advised, ‘and she won’t see you as a threat to him.’

In truth, the new curate presented a greater threat to the housekeeper. She knew this from the beginning. When Father Canty retired and retire he must, sooner rather than later, she would find herself unemployed. There would be no place for her in the Old Priests’ Home where elderly parish priests spent their declining years. No lay people were employed on the staff which was made up exclusively of nuns. With care, however, and unremitting attention to Father Canty’s welfare she would see to it that it would be many a year before he relinquished his pastorship. Please God they would sustain each other to the very end. It would not be her fault if his parochial duties were terminated prematurely.

Agnes heaved a great sigh of contentment as she poured the boiling water over the whiskey, lemon, sugar and cloves in the tall glass. The sugar began to melt instantly while the glistening lemon surfaced tantalisingly at the rim.

Agnes Mallowan inhaled the uprising steam and wondered, not for the first time, if she was placing her Confirmation pledge in jeopardy. Always she would reassure herself that there was no harm in steam and that the whiskey content therein was at such a minimum that it must surely be rendered ineffective before infiltrating the nostrils.

Just to be sure that her pledge remained intact she inhaled only once. She might have averted her head but then how would she identify the tiny foreign bodies such as flecks, specks and motes which needed to be extracted from his reverence’s punch before she deemed it worthy for delivery not that he would notice for he always kept his eyes firmly closed as he swallowed.

He drank noisily.

‘There is no satisfaction,’ he would explain, ‘unless I can hear myself drinking. It helps me relish the punch even more.’

From the moment he closed his eyes preparatory to the first swallow he would keep them closed, blindly extending the glass in her general direction, before drawing the coverlet under his chin. She always stood in close attendance while he drank and, upon receipt of the glass, would lower the wick in the shapely globe of the paraffin lamp before blowing out the flame. Then she would withdraw silently, closing the bedroom door behind her. Now, as she gently stirred the amber mixture with a slender spoon before embarking on the upstairs journey, the contentment departed her placid features and was replaced by a frown. It was a frown with which every parishioner in the remote, rambling parish was familiar. Agnes Mallowan was best avoided while the frown was in residence. Otherwise she was good-humoured and tractable. The frown deepened when the front door bell rang for the second time.

‘Let them wait!’ she spoke out loud and ascended the tarpaulin covered stairs. Gently she knocked on the bedroom door.

‘Come!’ the response was immediate.

She stood silently at the bedside while he closed the leather-bound copy of Ivanhoe without marking the page and placed it on the table near the bed. He liked to open the covers of his favourite novels at random and proceed from the beginning of the paragraph which presented itself.

‘It was a quiet Christmas thank God,’ he said as he accepted the punch. He swallowed without closing his eyes and she knew that he had heard the front door bell. He would ask about it. If only she had brought him the punch ten minutes earlier he would be fast asleep and the caller or callers could be fobbed off till morning.

Certain parishioners, especially the more isolated, had a habit of making mountains out of molehills as far as sick calls were concerned.

‘Better go and see who’s at the door Agnes,’ he spoke resignedly, ‘we don’t want to be the cause of sending some poor soul to hell for the want of a priest.’

‘Yes Father. At once Father,’ she answered dutifully. She could truthfully say that never once had she questioned one of his commands in all of her twenty years as his housekeeper. He was a good man. Others had not been so good, other employers after her husband had expired prematurely and left her with four young children, all now safely emigrated to America and corresponding regularly. Her husband had not been a good man nor had her father. Her two brothers had been good men. She remembered them fondly. No need to pray for them. She knew for sure they went straight to heaven when they died. She prayed every night for her husband and her father. God knows they needed prayers if ever a pair needed them.

In the doorway she addressed herself to the two men who stood together sheepishly, one waiting for the other to open the negotiations.

‘Where did ye get the rain?’ she asked coldly, ‘there’s nothing but a bare mist outside.’

‘That’s the thick mist up the mountain missus,’ the taller of the pair informed her.

She looked from one to the other without inviting them in. They wore tattered overcoats but no head-gear. The rain had plastered their scant grey hair to their heads.

‘How did ye come?’ Agnes Mallowan asked.

‘We walked missus,’ from the smaller man.

Agnes recognised him from the way he shuffled his feet. He indulged in the same motions when he stood outside the church on Sundays. From the age of fourteen onwards neither had entered the parish church. They came to church all right but only to stand with their backs to the outside walls while the mass was in progress. She would attest under oath that they never paid Christmas dues nor oats’ money nor any church offerings so that their priest could keep body and soul together and feed and pay his housekeeper and curate. Now, more than likely, they would have somebody sick, so sick, or so they believed, that a priest was required. Her worst fears were realised when the taller asked if the curate was available.

‘You know as well as I do that he’s gone home for Christmas and won’t be back until the day after tomorrow. In fact the whole parish knows it.’

‘Well then,’ from the smaller brother, ‘himself will have to do. Our dada is dying and he needs a priest.’

‘And who decided your dada was dying?’

‘Doctor,’ the taller responded smugly.

‘And when did he have the doctor?’ Agnes, a veteran of rustic interrogation, wasn’t going to allow the parish priest out on such a night till she had confirmed that death was imminent.

‘Two hours ago,’ came the reply.

‘And why didn’t the doctor get in touch with us?’ she asked.

‘’Cos,’ said the other brother, ‘him be gone to the other side of the mountain to deliver a baby and there’s rumours of a man killed when his horse and cart capsized farther on. There’s other calls too.’

‘Ye can bide yeer time out in one of the sheds for a while then,’ the housekeeper informed them, ‘till ’tis a bit closer to morning. Father Canty needs a few hours’ sleep.’

‘Our dada won’t last that long,’ the taller brother placed a leg in the hallway. ‘Him was gasping and us leaving,’ the smaller added, pushing the taller man forward.

‘Mind ye don’t wet my hallway that I polished specially for Christmas,’ Agnes Mallowan countered as she pushed the persistent pair to the outside.

‘Call the priest before we call him!’ The tone of the taller brother’s voice was unmistakably threatening.

‘Who is it Agnes?’ Father Canty called from the upstairs landing.

‘The Maldooney brothers looking for a priest Father.’

‘The Maldooneys of Farrangarry is it?’ Father Canty asked.

‘None other.’ Agnes threw a withering look at the unwelcome visitors.

‘Ask them in for God’s sake. I’ll go tackle the cob.’

‘Let one of these tackle him,’ Agnes called back as she withdrew to allow them access to the kitchen where the parish priest joined them.

‘No,’ he spoke half to himself as he took stock of the dripping brothers, ‘make them a pot of tea. I’ll see to the cob. Light a lantern while you’re at it Agnes.’

Obedient to a fault the cob, stout, firm and round, submitted itself to harness and backed itself docilely between the long slender shafts. Father Canty draped a partially filled oats’ bag around the powerful crest and returned to the kitchen.

The brothers sat amazed as the housekeeper prepared the parish priest for his journey. They were even more amazed when, childlike, he submitted himself to her fussy ministrations which began with the removal of his slippers and their replacement with stout, strong boots and gaiters. She then removed the short coat which he had worn to the stable and placed a heavy woollen scarf around his neck and shoulders. This was followed by a heavy woollen cardigan and a heavier short coat and finally on top of all came a long leather coat which reached all the way down to his ankles. With mouths open the brothers watched in wonder as she placed a wide-rimmed black hat on his balding pate and, finally, handed him the small suitcase which contained the oils, missal and stole. All that remained to be done was the collecting of the sacred host from the tabernacle and here, they were surprised to note, the housekeeper had no role.

‘You’ll find dry sacks in there,’ Father Canty indicated an outhouse. ‘They’ll cover your heads and shoulders.’

They were surprised when he opened the trap door for them. They would not have been dismayed if they had been called upon to walk behind. After three miles of moderately undulating ground they entered the side road which would take them to the Maldooney abode, three-quarters of the way up the mountain. It was a steep climb but not for a single moment did it tax the short-gaited cob. After the first mile when they left the presbytery there was no attempt at conversation. Despite repeated attempts to involve them Father Canty gave up. He found it difficult to stay awake without the stimulus of verbal conversation. He attempted a rosary but there were no responses forthcoming. Thereafter, he prayed silently to himself. He was not unduly worried. The cob had conveyed him safely in the past while he slept and could be depended upon to do so again. When eventually they reached the Maldooney abode some waiting neighbours came forward and took charge of the cob.

The old man lay propped on an ancient iron bed. His breathing was erratic but his eyes opened when he beheld the priest in the faint light of the three spluttering candles, precariously placed especially for the occasion on the mantelpiece, bedpost and windowsill.

‘You’ll hear my last confession Father?’

Father Canty was surprised. The voice was weak and spluttering like the candles but there seemed to be no doubt that he was strong enough to make himself understood.

Two elderly women, shawled and praying, vacated the room the moment the priest bent his head to hear the sins of the dying penitent. The old man went on and on sometimes incoherently but mostly articulate as he recited the sins of a lifetime. He was well prepared for the ultimate shriving. He did not spare himself as the nauseating recall of human folly poured forth. Then suddenly he stopped, gasped and fell into a deep sleep from which, all present were agreed, he would never wake.

The ritual over, Father Canty left the house and entered his transport but not before he turned the bottom and dry side of the trap cushion upward. There was no sign of the brothers. The neighbours could not explain it. One minute they were in the kitchen standing with their backs to the dying fire and the next they were nowhere to be seen.

Agnes was on her feet the moment she heard the hoof-beats at the rear of the presbytery. When she drew the bolt and went outside the animal was standing still. In the trap Father Canty was fast asleep, the rain dripping from his hat. Gently she awakened him and led him indoors. She seated him close to the fire where she had drawn the kitchen table.

‘You’re a life-saver Agnes,’ he spoke with unconcealed fervency as he ravenously spooned the steaming giblet soup into his waiting mouth. She tip-toed from the kitchen and up the stairs. She lit the paraffin lamp and replaced the hot water bottle with another of more immediate vintage. As she silently descended the stairs she met him on his way up. He seemed to be overcome by drowsiness. She allowed a short interval to pass before knocking at the bedroom door.

‘Come,’ came the voice.

‘You have it well-earned,’ she assured him when he expressed doubt about his entitlement to the extra punch. She stood by while he swallowed and took the empty glass when it was extended to her. She quenched the lamp and closed the bedroom door behind her. Rarely did he snore but he snored now. The snores were long and profound. As she passed his bedroom door a short while later the snores were deep and even. She could not believe her ears when the irritating sound of the front door bell shattered the silence.

‘What now?’ she asked as she hurried down the stairs lest the continuous tinkling disturb her master’s slumber.

‘Who’s out in God’s name?’ she called without drawing the bolt.

‘It’s us missus,’ came the unmistakable voice of the taller Maldooney.

Slowly Agnes Mallowan drew the bolt and opened the door.

They stood huddled together as they had on the previous visit. Agnes Mallowan folded her arms and spread her legs across the width of the doorway to prevent access to the hallway. The brothers, dripping wet, looked at each other and then at the housekeeper.

‘State your business,’ she said coldly.

‘We want the priest,’ from the taller brother.

‘Is it to pay him the Christmas dues you want him?’ Agnes asked as the smaller of the pair snuffled and sniffled, sensing that there was to be no tea on this occasion.

‘We want the priest for our father,’ he explained between sniffles, ‘he forgot a sin. ’

‘And you expect Father Canty to get out of his bed and go back up the mountain to Farrangarry because your dada forgot to tell him he wet the bed.’

‘Oh now!’ said the smaller brother, ‘’tis a deal worse than wetting the bed. No one will go to hell for wetting the bed but fornicating will get you there on the double.’

‘Fornicating!’ the housekeeper’s curiosity got the better of her.

‘And who was he fornicating with?’ she asked.

‘Never mind who,’ from the taller brother. ‘It’s enough for you to know that he’ll face the fires of hell on account of he deliberately failing to mention this particular one.’

Agnes found herself in a dilemma. If she called Father Canty the journey to Farrangarry and back could be the death of him. If she didn’t call him and the man died with an unforgiven sin on his soul she would be guilty of sending a soul to hell. She came down in favour of her employer.

‘I’m not calling him,’ she said, and was about to close the door when the smaller man pushed her backwards into the hallway.

‘You call him,’ he shouted angrily.

Agnes stood her ground. Her mission in life was to protect her master. She decided on a change of tack.

‘There’s no fear of your dada,’ she assured them.

‘Without a priest he’s bound for hell,’ the taller brother pushed the smaller forward.

The housekeeper refused to be intimidated. Not an inch of ground did she yield.

‘Didn’t I tell ye there was no fear of him,’ she drew herself upwards and refolded her arms, ‘for don’t it say in the Cathecism that hell is closed for the twelve days of Christmas and anyone who dies during that period goes direct to heaven.’

The brothers exchanged dubious glances.

‘’Tis there in black and white,’ the housekeeper assured them.

The brothers turned their backs on her and consulted in whispers. After several moments they faced her secondly.

‘You’re sure?’ the smaller asked.

‘Why would I say it if it was a lie?’ she countered.

‘Why then,’ the taller brother asked, ‘did the priest come all the way up to the mountain if there was no hell?’

‘Mohammed went to the mountain didn’t he?’ Agnes replied with a straight face, ‘and there was no hell.’

Both brothers shuffled uneasily at this revelation. Comment proved to be beyond them. What she said was irrefutable. Also was she not well placed to be in the know about such matters. She was of the presbytery, therefore of the church and of the inner circle at that. The Catechism had always confounded the Maldooney brothers in their schooldays and this woman was confounding them now.

‘Go on away home,’ she said, ‘and let yeer minds be at ease. If yeer dada is dead his soul is in heaven and if he’s not dead it will be there soon.’

Slowly, sheepishly the brothers backed away from the door. Exhausted she shot the bolts and retired upstairs to the sleep of the just. On the Sunday after Christmas she was delighted to see the brothers in their customary positions outside the church as the holy mass proceeded solemnly within. Sidling up to the smaller of the pair she enquired in a whisper after his father.

‘He’s sitting up,’ came the happy response.

‘He’s eating a bite,’ the taller brother concurred.

‘Well I declare,’ Agnes Mallowan joined her hands together as though she were about to pray.

The smaller brother cleared his throat and permitted himself a toothless smile as he disclosed in reverential whispers, out of respect to his surroundings, that the quickly recovering parent intended presenting himself at Cassidy’s wren-dance on the following Saturday night, a mere six days away. Agnes made a mental note to enquire from one of her many parochial informants about the general goings-on at Cassidy’s wren-dance and about the antics of Maldooney senior in particular.

She admitted her source by the rear door of the presbytery one week later. Maldooney senior had excelled himself, displaying a variety of fancy steps that put younger terpsichoreans to shame. He crowned his display by dancing a hornpipe at the request of a buxom lady from the other end of the parish and astounded all and sundry by enticing her to the well-filled hay shed at the bottom of Cassidy’s haggard where they sojourned rapturously till the dawn’s early light reminded them that it was time to go their separate ways. They promised to meet again while the sons, for better or for worse, did nothing but stand idly by and never once opened their porter-stained mouths to any member of the opposite sex.

A Christmas Visitor

The unique set of circumstances which preceded the arrival of John J. Mulholland merchant tailor into the world deserve to be recorded, at least according to John J. Mulholland.

‘I will,’ he declared as we sat in Mikey Joe’s Irish-American bar in the seaside resort of Ballybunion, ‘offer up a novena of rosaries for your intentions provided you adorn futurity with my peculiar beginnings.’

John J. was never direct when he could be diffuse.

‘My paternal grandfather,’ he began before I could drain my glass and make good my escape, ‘hated Christmas and if he could lay his hands on Santa Claus he would surely dismember him. He used to stuff his ears with cotton wool to shut out the sound of Christmas bells and usen’t he disappear altogether on Christmas Eve, moving off with a day’s provisions at first light and not returning until long after dark.’

‘It’s your face that attracts them,’ a boozing companion had observed earlier in the day when a man I had never seen before shot from a shop door and seized me by both wrists. He was a powerfully built fellow but, alas, a victim of the most excruciating halitosis. He held me fast for several minutes while he recalled the treachery of the wife who had abandoned him without warning for an amorous greengrocer.

John J. Mulholland did not hold me by the wrists but his ample frame overflowed a bar stool between myself and the exit. He was pointing at his neck around which was a crimson weal which might well have been caused by a hangman’s rope.

‘It’s not what you’re thinking,’ he smiled grimly, ‘and if you are patient you shall discover how it came to be where it is.’

I indicated to Mikey Joe that I wanted another whiskey. If I was going to suffer I would do so in comfort. My nemesis had also brought his stool nearer, totally eliminating every means of escape. The whole business had begun with the aforementioned paternal grandfather, one Jacko Mulholland, a trousers’ maker with a tooth for whiskey and a profound hatred of Christmas.

When our tale begins Jacko was a mere thirty years of age. Both parents had died young and from the age of sixteen onwards he was left to fend for himself. Neighbours would explain in their good-natured neighbourly way that a general resentment for all things tender and sentimental had set in shortly after the demise of his father and mother.

‘Say nothing to him about Christmas,’ they would advise strangers who had no way of knowing about his bereavement, ‘and whatever you do, do not wish him the compliments of the season.’

As is the way with neighbours they were patient with him when he reacted viciously to the least mention of the Yuletide season. They told themselves that his grief would diminish with the passage of time and they would regularly trot out the old adages; time is a great healer and the years cure everything and so forth and so on but they were disappointed when, after fourteen of those very same years, he persisted in ignoring the arrival of Christmas.

His kitchen windowsills and his mantelpiece were bare. None of the accumulation of Christmas cards so evident in the houses of his neighbours were to be seen in the Mulholland home. When a card arrived from a friend or relative he immediately consigned it to flame in the Stanley number eight.

‘How dare they!’ he would mutter to himself before returning to the stitching of the rough and ready trousers in which he specialised. Sometimes he thought of Mary Moles who lived just down the street and who was still unattached although she need not be for she was a trim cut of a girl with pleasant features and a virtuous name. She could have been his. All he had to do was ask. It had been understood. Their names had been linked since he started to pay her court but she grew tired of his moods and his own attitude hardened the longer the rift between them lasted. She would not marry another and neither would he but they cherished each other no longer. Concerned neighbours shook their heads at the woeful waste of it all. The entire street felt the pain of it and the entire street prayed that it would come right in the end.

‘They’ll be too old soon,’ one old woman said at which another and then many others nodded sagely and concurred. In time the situation came to be accepted and the affair became part of the history of the street.

At this stage in the proceedings John J. Mulholland excused himself on the grounds that he had to visit the toilet. I could have vacated the scene there and then but I was hooked as indeed was my genial friend Mikey Joe. We spoke in undertones lest our voices carry to the toilet. Mikey Joe confided that he had long believed, as I did, that the disfiguring weal around John J.’s neck was caused by a hangman’s noose but now we both knew better and hoped to be enlightened as to the true origins of the unprepossessing blemish before we were much older.

When John J. returned he resumed his position on the stool, swallowed from his glass and cleared his throat. We presumed foolishly that the clearing was the prelude to the remaining disclosures but not a solitary word was forthcoming. It was as though he had suddenly taken a vow of silence. Mikey Joe was first to get the message.

‘Finish that,’ he indicated John J.’s almost empty glass. As soon as the refill was placed in his hand John J. cleared his throat a second time, sniffed the whiskey, frowned, pondered, approved and sipped. He proceeded with his tale.

Apparently his grandfather Jacko was not above taking a drink now and then in the privacy of his kitchen. He always drank alone. On the morning of Christmas Eve he betook himself to the woods which surrounded the town and did not return till dark. He took with him the usual provisions and spent the day observing coot and heron as well as mallard and diver. He would have fished had the season been open. He listened without appreciation to the wide variety of songbirds who poured forth their tiny hearts as though they knew of the great celebration that was at hand. When Jacko came to the river he sat on an oak stump and, not for the first time, considered the dismal solution the depths below offered. As always he dismissed the thought but he would have to admit that the temptation grew stronger as the years went by.

A shiver went through him when he imagined his lifeless body laid out on a slab in the local morgue where he had once seen the decaying remains of a boy who had accidentally drowned some years before.

‘I haven’t the courage.’ He spoke the words out loud and no sooner had they departed his lips than a hunting stoat wriggled its way urgently upwards from a small declivity at his feet before disappearing into the undergrowth.

He rose quickly, his dreary reverie suspended yet again. Shortly afterwards dusk began to infiltrate the woodlands. The face of the river darkened. Overhead the stars began to twinkle. The moon brightened as the sun dipped beneath the tree-tops to the west. From the depths of the woods came the unmistakable sounds of rooting badgers, heedless now that the evening shadows were merging into one.

Jacko Mulholland gathered himself and followed the river bank towards the lights of the town. A bell rang sweetly, its sacred tones carrying far up the placid river. Jacko Mulholland thrust his fingers into his ears and stood stock still. He would wait until the infernal pealing came to an end.

As he left the wood and entered the town the dark in all its fullness had fallen. In the kitchen of his silent home he stoked the range fire which he had earlier packed carefully with wet turf sods as well as dry to ensure its survival until his return. He lit the paraffin lamp and looked at the calendar which hung nearby. He took a pencil from the windowsill and crossed out the offending date, 24 December 1922. A few days now and the whole fraud would be over, the entire shambles brushed aside to make way for the new year. He decided to postpone his supper till nearer bedtime. Anyway he had eaten his fill in the woodlands before the arrival of dusk. He added several small dry sods to the fire and sat in the ancient walnut rocking-chair which had been in use since his great-grandfather’s time and which was the nearest thing to a family heirloom one would find if one searched every house in the street.

There was a long night ahead. It would be the longest in the fourteen years since the disaster if normal progression was anything to go by. He rocked for a while in the vain hope that slumber would come. He knew in advance that it would be a futile bid. He rose and added some larger sods to the fire. Then from the recesses of the cupboard he withdrew a bottle of whiskey. He had purchased it in a nearby village after a football game to which he had cycled in late November with carrier bag attached for no other purpose. He shook the bottle thoroughly before uncorking. He stood it on the deal table for several minutes while he went in search of a glass. There was one somewhere, only one. He knew it wasn’t in the cupboard. The people of the street kept their glasses, few as they were, in sideboards. Those who were not possessed of sideboards wrapped them carefully in old newspapers and arranged them loosely in a cardboard box which was always kept for safety under the parental bed.

He found himself searching the sideboard in the small sitting-room attached to the kitchen. Eventually he found the upturned glass under a tea cosy. He could not recall how it came to be there. He returned to the rocking-chair and stretched a hand as far as the whiskey bottle. He poured the contents into the four-ounce glass until it was brimful. He sipped, spluttered and coughed. It was always like that, he recalled, with the first drop unless one was partial to whiskey diluted by water. In the street the menfolk never mixed spirits and water. When the whiskey was swallowed it was all right to swallow a mouthful of water after a decent interval but to mix it in the glass was regarded as far less edifying than the pure drop.

He placed the glass on the table next to the bottle and removed the mud-covered boots. He would clean them in the morning. Nobody could clean and polish boots like his late lamented mother. Nobody could untie lace knots like her. He used to call her his knot-ripper-in-chief. He recalled how his father had laughed loud and long when the title was first conferred. Ah those had been happy days!

The tears flowed down Jacko Mulholland’s face, remembering his father and himself squatting on the workbench, his mother attentive and obedient to their wants. It was she who delivered the finished trousers when, for one reason or another, the customer failed to call. She never came back empty-handed. When she returned without the money she always brought the trousers home. She never extended credit. Sooner or later she would get her money. Alterations were child’s play to her.

Jacko extended a hand for the bottle and refilled his glass. He could not bring himself to resurrect past Christmases. The memories were too painful. He found a block of cheddar in the cupboard and cut himself a slice. His thoughts turned to Mary Moles as they did at the same time every year. He wondered if he would be any happier if he had taken her for a wife. Too late now. He had seen the grey hairs on her head and the puckered face of her through his window as she passed up and down. Hers was a stately walk. She would have to be granted that. Never looking to left or right she moved with the grace of a swan. It was her natural gait. Everybody in the street would agree that she was one unflappable female, maybe a mite too steady and maybe a trifle too demure and maybe somewhat conservative but she was the kind of girl one could present anywhere. Certain people in other streets considered her dull but this assessment had to be based on ignorance. Her true worth was known only to her neighbours and they would swear in any court in the land that Mary Moles had a touch of class and they would also swear that class was what really mattered in the long run.

She lived with her father, a cantankerous old man, a martyr to lumbago and catarrh, who chided his only child day in day out. His wife, or so the neighbours maintained, had simply given up the ghost having been subjected to twenty years of withering criticism, all undeserved. The only respite she enjoyed was when she visited the church. Who could blame her if she spent as much time as possible in its hallowed precincts, kneeling and praying and savouring the blessed silence no end.

Jacko Mulholland surveyed the glowing fire. If it held together without collapsing it should last till bedtime. Next he surveyed the whiskey bottle and was pleased to see that more than half of its contents remained. There is nothing as consoling or sustaining to the half-drunken imbiber as the presence of a whiskey bottle more full than it is empty. It is as comforting as hidden battalions are to a field commander whose forces have been decimated by a succession of foolhardy charges. It is akin to the feelings of a man who, upon waking in the morning, expects to be confronted by rain and storm but instead finds the sun shining through his window.

Jacko Mulholland refilled his glass and swallowed copiously, gasping for breath as the amber liquid set fire to his innards. Then he began to sob as he recalled other days – his mother’s voice in the morning as she prepared breakfast, her gentle singing of the ancient songs, her lilting of dance tunes, hornpipe, jig and reel, her dulcet call from the foot of the stairs; fishing with his father and the delight when one or the other hooked a trout, sitting in the lamplight late at night watching his father tying flies. The sobbing became uncontrollable. Nobody heard for such was the extent of the celebrations in the neighbouring houses that no external sound had the power to penetrate the old stone walls. It was the same in every other house on the street save that of old Mick Moles and his daughter Mary. They sat silently at either side of the hearth. Sometimes he would call upon God to relieve his aches and other times he would call on the Blessed Virgin but if they heard they failed to bring him relief so that he rounded on his daughter before going to bed, falsely accusing her of concocting watery tea and burning his toast.

Jacko Mulholland was now at that stage of drunkenness where the victim starts to natter to himself, grinding his teeth as he recalls all the injustices he has suffered since first entering the world. He turned his attention to the whiskey bottle and, blurred though his vision had become, he was sorry to note that more than two-thirds of its contents had been consumed. He mourned its passing with a series of deep sighs and tedious lamentations after which his head began to droop. Vainly he strove to restrain the slumber which seemed set to overpower him but he was a poor match for its stupefying subtlety. Soon he was snoring.

There are few snores with the depth and resonance of whiskey snores. They rebounded from the walls and filled the kitchen to overflowing. The only danger to the whiskey snorer is that, more often than not, his slumber is disrupted by one of his own creations. In this instance it was another sound which infiltrated Jacko Mulholland’s malt-induced insensibility. At first he stirred irritably, grimaced and then groaned before opening bleary eyes. The first object to catch his eye was the mantelpiece clock. The hands indicated that he had slept for several hours. There was that annoying noise again. It sounded as if somebody was knocking at the front door but who could be knocking at twenty past one in the morning? He decided to ignore it.

From time to time over the years he would be roused from his slumbers early on the mornings of religious festivals and football matches by agricultural labourers who would have specially commissioned new pairs of trousers for such occasions. He never minded, provided payment was forthcoming, but this was different. Twenty minutes past one on the morning of Christmas was downright uncivil to say the least. He decided to ignore it, certain that the knocker would become discouraged after a while. He reached out his hand for the whiskey bottle. This time he dispensed with the glass and lifted the jowl to his lips. The whiskey bubbled and gurgled as he upended the bottle. Just at that moment the knocking started again. He lowered the bottle and placed it on the table. The knocking persisted. He had never been subjected to anything quite like it and yet it wasn’t loud nor was it sharp and still it grated to such a degree that he was obliged to place a finger in either ear. Normally this would succeed in at least diminishing the sound but not in this instance for the harder he pressed his fingers into the well-waxed canals the more piercing the knocking became. Perplexed he withdrew his fingers. Reluctantly he moved towards the door. He did not open it at once. He peered through the curtains of the sitting-room window in the hope of catching a glimpse of the knocker. There was nothing to be seen.