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- Herausgeber: Brandon
- Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
The third volume of Alice Taylor's unique memoir of life in the Irish countryside. A massive bestseller with universal appeal.
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ALICE TAYLOR
The Village
For the old people of Innishannon,
from whom I learned so much;
and especially for Billy of the forge,
who died as the book was going to press.
Contents
COMINGS AND GOINGS
THIS IS THE story of life in a village; it is the story, too, of a small shop and post office. There in the early sixties an old world was slipping out the back door while a new way of life marched in the front. Crossing the threshold of the village shop to begin my married life I witnessed the arrival of the new, and saw the last of the old world disappear.
Behind the post office a row of little houses clung together on a steep hill; in them lived old people, quite a few of whom were unmarried. Down on the main street, darned between family homes, a number of large houses were occupied by single elderly women. As one genteel old lady delicately informed me, “The best china is never taken off the shelf.” Some of the old people had lived here since childhood and had worked long, hard hours during their lifetime. Most of their entertainment was homespun. They knew each other very well, as only people whose families have lived side by side for generations can know each other. Change had come in their lifetimes but, because they had lived so long with the old way, they held onto it and took it with them when they died.
Coming as a bride to their village shop I was kindly received. A farmer’s wife who had herself come to the parish many years previously brought me one of her free-range chickens and a pot plant that was a cascade of pink flowers. An old man patted me on the head and said, “Good Lord! The children are getting married now!” Another viewed me appreciatively and smilingly informed me, “I’d live on one meal a day if I was married to you.” But one old lady, after sizing me up from every conceivable angle, declared, “You are very thin and delicate looking. I don’t know will you do at all.”
It was a period when career women had not yet established themselves and most women gave up their jobs to become full-time wives and mothers. Becoming one of these wives, I sailed into motherhood in the baby boom decade of the sixties when family planning had not yet become a reality. So this is also the story of an ordinary young wife and mother who was sometimes bored by the monotonous everyday routine of housework and children, and who in an effort to make life more interesting became part of the changing village scene.
WELL-HEELED
NO LONG HOURS of soul-searching went into my choice of job. Career guidance was not then considered necessary and during our Leaving Certificate year my classmates and I did entrance examinations to various banks, the civil service, county councils and other venerable institutions guaranteed to keep the wolf from the door. I was called to the civil service and instructed to go to Killarney to train as a telephonist.
At that time telephones were not part of the furnishings deemed necessary in Irish farmhouses, so up until then I had only ever been within waving distance of one. The priest, the doctor, the local creamery and garda barracks were all linked into the world of telecommunications, which was controlled by Jim on an old switchboard in the local post office. I went there to view this new dimension to my life. Jim sat me down at the switchboard, which had rows of small black doors that fell forward when a subscriber rang. He put a pair of earphones on my head and plugged me into this strange little dark mahogany bench which looked like a miniature piano. It felt as if a door had been opened into my head.
I left home in October dressed up in a pair of black suede high-heeled shoes belonging to one sister, a straight black skirt belonging to another, a short white wool coat which belonged to a third and a pink jumper of my own. Having four sisters all about the same size gave each of us an extended wardrobe and it took a combined effort of sisters to render me presentable for my first job. My mother hired the local hackney-car to escort her youngest daughter on her maiden voyage into the outside world. When we arrived in Killarney she contacted a neighbour who was working in the town, and she directed us to the home of a lady in St Anne’s Road for accommodation.
Behind a creaking black gate three steps led up to a concrete path which made a straight line for more steps climbing up to a white front door. On our left was a thick sheltering hedge and to our right a small green lawn. The woman who answered the sound of the black iron knocker was warm and welcoming and assured us that though she did not keep full-time guests permanently, I could stay until I got alternative accommodation. She invited my mother in for tea and as they chatted together I knew that Molly was a woman to whom my mother felt she could safely entrust her flighty daughter, confident that she would apply the brakes whenever she felt it was necessary.
On the left side of the narrow hallway a staircase led up to three bedrooms and a bathroom and two doors on the right-hand side of the hall opened into a sitting-room and kitchen. It was a warm, comfortable house and Molly whizzed around it full of good humour. It was almost as if I had never left home. We got on so well together that I stayed with her until I was transferred from Killarney.
Molly lived alone and catered for the overflow of overnight guests from a local hotel. If the guests were too many for Molly’s bedroom accommodation she and I slept on foldaway beds in the sitting-room. On Saturday mornings we went down town to do the weekly shopping. The grocery shops were large and airy with fine white sawdust on some of the floors. Molly knew everybody both inside and outside the counter so they all stopped to exchange local news and I got to know the people through her. As it was winter time the tourists were gone home and it was possible to get to know the real Killarney. The people were jovial and friendly and as one man pointed out to me, “They are all the same height in Kerry.”
Every Saturday evening Molly’s two bachelor brothers from the home farm outside Killarney came into town to do their shopping and afterwards came up to Molly for their tea. They were smiling, rosy-faced men wearing tweed caps and belted gabardine overcoats and were full of good health and well-being. It was interesting to hear them report to Molly the week’s activities on the farm. They were very shy but after the first few weeks they became accustomed to seeing me in their sister’s kitchen. I looked forward to their weekly visits because as well as their friendly, wholesome presence they brought the feel of the farm into the house.
Shortly after my arrival Molly had an unexpected visit from her Uncle Mikey who had lived all his life in Australia. He was an elderly, slightly stooped figure who wore a grey hat which he never removed. He felt the cold intensely and crept around in a frozen crouch, or sat by the big black range in the kitchen which he kept packed to capacity with coal and logs. He opened all the dampers to the full so the fire roared up the chimney, turning the kitchen into a boiler-room and the rest of the house into a sub-tropical zone. Molly lived in constant fear of his burning the place down. This was a distinct possibility as Mikey was vague and absent-minded. He confused amongst other things the use of gas and electrical appliances.
Molly had a gas cooker in the corner of the kitchen and one day I came in to find that Uncle Mikey had the electric kettle plugged in and placed on top of the cooker with the gas-jet lighting under it. He was relaxing in a comfortable armchair before the red-hot range, wearing his wide-rimmed hat and puffing his big turned-down pipe. The kitchen was full of heat and steam. Uncle Mikey sat like a grey ghost shrouded in clouds of pipe smoke, totally oblivious to the conditions around him. It was difficult to know whether he would have been gassed or electrocuted, but he was certainly not going to be cold.
At that time the Killarney water supply was always giving trouble, a fact that never penetrated through to Uncle Mikey. One fine day he wrapped himself up well and went out for a short walk. When he came home he said to me, with a puzzled look on his face, “These Kerry women discuss their health problems very openly. I was coming up the street just now and one of them shouted across the road to her neighbour: ‘How’s your water today, Maggie?’”
Molly was a very religious person who went to 7.30 Mass in the cathedral every morning. She instructed me to go to 8 a.m. Mass in the friary, and as she would not be back in time to call me she always put the alarm clock beside my pillow before she went out. Though I protested about the early call and was reluctant to drag myself out of bed, I enjoyed the walk down Lewis Road. The early morning turf fires sent smoke curling upwards through the trees and filled the air with its peaty essence, while the mature gardens of the old houses provided interesting scenes inside each gate. The restful atmosphere and the smell of waxed wood in the friary chapel, where the long brown-robed friars glided around the altar in soundless serenity, gave a soothing start to the day.
Now for the first time in my life I had my own money in my pocket, though admittedly not very much. My pay was £4 15s and my digs cost £2 10s, so my balance of payments left me with £2 5s. I broke even most weeks and sometimes even had a slight surplus, and this I spared to buy a pair of shoes, but because they were cheap and hard they nearly crippled me. I was at the age when appearance mattered more than comfort. My biggest expense was going dancing and to the cinema. I soon discovered that although boyfriends cut down expenses they also limited freedom, whereas I enjoyed going places on my own with no strings attached. On one occasion my strings got knotted and the result caused complications.
I arrived back after the Christmas break on St Stephen’s night to be met at the door by a flustered Molly. “Had you a date tonight?” she demanded.
“No,” I answered in surprise.
“Well you have now then,” she said emphatically. “Two of them. One is in the kitchen and the other is in the sitting-room, and neither knows that the other is here.”
“Oh God!” I gasped, “how did this happen?”
“Well maybe,” she admitted, “I might be responsible for Sean because I met him down town and told him you were due back tonight, though he said nothing about calling up. But I am not answerable for Pat.”
“Well, we’ll dispose of the one in the sitting-room first,” I decided, “and when he’s gone we’ll send off the other.” Molly agreed but before we could do anything the door-bell rang. She looked at me accusingly. “It just couldn’t be,” I said. But it was. When Molly came back from answering the door she said to me: “I said you weren’t back, so go upstairs now and lock yourself in the bathroom and I’ll tell two more lies for you.” When the coast was clear I came down.
Molly decided that the only honourable course of action in the circumstances was not to go out that night, so instead of the gala time I had anticipated I had to accept early retirement. The following morning she issued a proclamation that it was to be one boyfriend or none from now on. I settled for a quiet young man who had an interesting mind and of whom she thoroughly approved. He took me to my first formal dance at which I wore a long white dress borrowed from a more sophisticated sister. Soon afterwards my escort was transferred to Dublin, so I was back to square one.
I was the junior in the office. Many of the other girls had permanent boyfriends and took me with them to dances in the towns around Killarney. Usually another girl or two kept me company in the back of the car, though sometimes I would be on my own. One night there was a quiet, red-haired lad sitting beside me. I found it impossible to make conversation with him, so after a few gallant efforts I gave up and chatted instead with the two in the front. In the dance-hall I met several people I knew from Killarney and had a very enjoyable time. After the dance I met my friends at the car and we set out for home with the red-haired silent one back in his corner. Kicking off my shoes I cuddled up in the opposite corner and dozed off. A few miles out the road I shot into wakefulness to find two arms pinned around me and beery breath wafting up my nose. A sharp slap across the face and a tug of his red hair did nothing to dispel his enthusiasm. I reached down quietly for my high-heeled, stiletto shoe and brought the steel tip down on top of his kneecap with a hard, well-aimed crack. His reflexes were perfect: he reacted instantly, folding up in his corner in agony. We travelled the rest of the journey back to Killarney, he on his side of the seat and I guarding my virtue with my high-heeled shoe on the other.
After a six-month training period on the post office switchboard I was tested by a lady known as a “travelling supervisor” whose face seemed seldom to have worn a smile. She declared me qualified and ready to take up a permanent position.
Pleased to have passed the test, I was nevertheless sorry to be leaving Killarney, where Molly’s house had become a second home and the post office staff had been so good-humoured and friendly.
WORKING GIRL
ACATTLE LORRY brought me to Bandon on a cold grey morning in March. It may not have been a very auspicious beginning to a job in a strange town, but a neighbour was bringing calves to the newly established cattle mart and gave me a lift. That morning the Bandon river was black beneath the frost-glistening bridge beside the post office. Tall houses stood shoulder to shoulder like a guard of honour over the long, narrow main street of the town.
Bandon, despite its small size, catered for so many religious denominations that one of its most outstanding features was its variety of churches, some of which presided loftily from the summits of the hills around the town. It was on the top floor of a three-storey house on the side of one of these hills that I spent my first night there. The long, narrow room under the sloping slate roof absorbed the freezing night air, and a hard bed covered with time-worn blankets offered me little protection from the cold. I spent a restless night with my knees almost frozen to my chin; by 5 a.m. I had piled the contents of my scant wardrobe on top of me, thatched with a threadbare rug which I took off the floor. First thing next morning I went out and bought two hot-water bottles.
Six girls worked in the Bandon office with a colourful supervisor in charge. She had a voice like a singing bird and though quite elderly wore enormous quantities of startlingly bright make-up and a purple knitted cap. She was a gentle lady who tried to keep us all happy. She spent most of her day sitting at a large table, counting out telephone tickets in her sing-song voice and filing them away in a small press beside her.
There were not enough trunk lines to give instant service to the telephone subscribers at peak times, so we had to rotate calls. Sometimes a high-handed individual would demand to speak to the supervisor and insist on being put through immediately irrespective of the fact that other people had been waiting longer. The supervisor sometimes put them through if she judged it necessary. This annoyed us intensely but we could not win an argument with her; she just fluttered her eyelashes and waved her painted nails in the air like an exotic butterfly. She made grand pronouncements about priority calls and people of substance. To us they were just telephone numbers and we wanted to treat them all the same, but because she was an old native of the place, to her they were people with different needs and she treated them accordingly. She believed in personal attention.
As I was the junior in the office I was sent to post offices all over West Cork to do holiday duty, which merited very welcome extra pay. In one of these places the lady in charge made such regular pilgrimages behind the switchboard that I thought she must have part of her filing system there. There was an office cleaner in that post office who called us all “Girlie” as he was a bit confused by the ever changing number of female faces surrounding him. One night when I was working late he happened to be tidying up.
“Ever wondered, Girlie, what was in the cabinet behind the switchboard?” he asked.
“The accounts,” I said in surprise.
“All kinds of accounts, Girlie,” he answered, and unlocked the cabinet. He removed the stacks of telephone tickets and account books to reveal a sparkling row of small whiskey bottles behind.
In another office out-manoeuvring a randy postmaster became an exercise in agility. If he happened to be coming up the stairs after you, you needed to move fast, or else kick your heels back hard to prevent his pudgy fingers catching you by the leg. When summoned into his office your aim was never to let him come between you and the door. We constantly compared notes on his strategy. Because he was the boss he had a certain advantage, but because we were younger and fitter we could always out-run him and we took great satisfaction in hearing his laboured breathing as he panted up the stairs, knowing that he could not catch us.
After a few months in Bandon two friends and I moved into a flat together. We had enquired about finding one from many people but there had seemed to be nothing available until one evening, as we were out walking along North Main Street, we looked up at a tall house across the road and noticed that the windows on the top floor were clouded with dust and cobwebs.
“I wonder would they let that out as a flat?” I said to Nellie and Eileen.
“Let’s ask,” Eileen suggested. A few minutes later a surprised middle-aged lady assured us that she had never thought about the idea, but to call back the following night and she would let us know.
Two weeks later we moved in. The house was a large, rambling three-storey building where the couple lived on their own. We had two of the three rooms on the top floor, and the bathroom, with its one cold tap, was on the floor below. The rooms were big and sparsely furnished and the floorboards creaked, which made coming in late at night a bit unnerving. But the comfort of having our own fire was wonderful. The old timber fireplace had a deep grate set high off the floor and fronted by curved iron bars. It gave out great heat and the brass fender at the front had two little seats with soft leather tops at either end, and here you could sit and toast yourself on a cold evening after coming home from work. Between our kitchen and bedroom was another room which was let out a few weeks later to a young man who was teaching down the street. He had a girlfriend who lived on a farm outside the town and she brought him presents of fresh eggs and brown bread from which we benefited as well. On weekends when he and I were alone in the flat, we left both our bedroom doors open and held long-distance conversations across the rooms.
Gradually other parts of the house filled up with tenants. An old couple who had given their farm over to their son moved into one section. Every day the husband dressed up in his good suit and walked the streets of the town, but he had about him a dejected air. He sat sometimes in the garden where he looked like a trapped bird. My heart used to ache for that old man who had spent all his life with the soft fields beneath his feet and who had been accustomed to the open spaces of his farm.
One day as I came down the stairs I heard him whistling happily. I had never heard him whistling before so I stopped in surprise. “I’m going back to the old place,” he said to me with a smile. Apparently the son to whom he had given the farm was building a new house, so the couple were going back to their old home. The old man looked twenty years younger and there was a new light in his eyes.
We settled happily into our flat but sometimes had to tread carefully as parts of it were suffering from age and decay. One morning as I eased open the large kitchen window, the weather-beaten frame crumbled and the entire window dis-appeared before my eyes to crash onto the pavement three floors below. I stretched out through the opening in the wall in amazement and peered down. Luckily nobody had been walking past at the time.
Though we were on the top floor we spent a lot of time in the kitchen on the ground floor with Dan and Mrs O’Brien. We were always welcome to call in for a chat, and they did little acts of kindness for us, such as bringing in our washing off the clothes-line in the garden. Dan was very interested in politics. At night his friends gathered into the kitchen and long political discussions were held while he sat in his high-backed chair, puffing his pipe and pronouncing upon the questions of the day. As each of us became eligible to vote he made sure that we were registered. When a general election came around he called the three of us into the kitchen on the night before polling day and with a sample voting card showed us the correct way to vote. But more important still from Dan’s point of view, he instructed us to give No 1, 2 and 3 to his favourite party.
We got to know the people in the houses along the street, which included two pubs and a little shop where we bought our groceries on our way home from work. One of the publicans had a few different sources of income, including an undertaking business and a milk round. One frosty morning the milk van would not start so Billy put the milk into the hearse and gave some sleepy housewives a surprise awakening to the day. He had working for him a handyman called Jack whose job it was to dig the graves. In between jobs Jack slept in an old hay loft in the backyard. Sometimes he covered himself with hay so that Billy could not find him to give him extra work. If Jack refused to answer to prolonged calling Billy got a pike and went around poking it through the hay to root Jack out. After a few close shaves with Billy’s pike Jack hit on a better plan. He crept into one of the coffins that stood waiting for a permanent tenant and slept soundly. This ruse worked on many occasions until Billy discovered his sepulchral resting place.
Some mornings we walked across town to early morning Mass. This required careful timing as one priest was always late and extremely slow while the other was a few minutes early and got through the ceremony very fast. If you arrived to find no priest on the altar it was difficult to be sure if the slow fellow had not started or the fast fellow had finished. The speedy one brought Holy Communion regularly to an old man who was confined at home. This jolly old man used to remark that, “As soon as I hear his car stop I stick out my tongue.”
We joined the Legion of Mary which was involved with helping old people and we became very friendly with some of them. One lady called Miss Brown impressed us particularly. In her eighties, she was over six feet tall and so thin and erect that her long clothes hung straight down almost as if they were still on the hanger. She favoured knitted grey cardigans over brown blouses and long black skirts, so she moved around the house like a faded ghost. On Sundays the brown blouse was replaced by a cream satin one with a cameo brooch at the neck. She was imperious and demanding and seemed to be totally alone as she never mentioned any relatives, except “my cousin the bishop” who lived in Australia.
Her overgrown garden was more than matched by her house which was crowded with dark Victorian furniture. Her front room was congested with sideboards, foggy mirrors and sagging sofas. In dull silver frames, faces yellowed with age rested on the mantelpiece, while moth-eaten red velvet curtains kept the room in a state of permanent semi-darkness. The kitchen further back along the gloomy stone corridor was from another era. Everything appeared to have lain untouched for years; the rusty range was never lit and the cooking was done on an archaic primus which sat on top of the table and coughed out black smoke when it was not handled carefully. Beneath this enormous table a smelly, long-haired old dog growled; stubbornly refusing to make friends, it responded only to Miss Brown’s commands.
I moved around that kitchen in a state of perpetual nervous apprehension. Old newspapers were stacked on wobbly chairs and if I shifted anything out of my way enormous spiders were disturbed into action. One day as I moved warily around the kitchen a rat scuttled across the old range into a box of newspapers. I froze to the floor in terror, but the old dog sprang into action and cornered him in the box. When I recovered my wits I ran up the street to a friend who was also in the Legion, and while he prodded the box with a brush I stood on top of the table from where I could see but still be at a safe distance. Each time the rat poked his head out of the box the dog barked, I screamed, and Ted made another swipe with the brush. While all this pandemonium was taking place Miss Brown – who was fairly deaf – sat in her front room sewing buttons on one of her blouses. Finally Ted turned the box sideways and the rat made a dive for freedom, but the old dog – more by accident than design – turned him upside down and Ted finished him off with the brush. Every time I had to go into the kitchen after that I first peered cautiously in through a slit in the door.
Despite the fact that she had very few facilities to make her later years more comfortable, Miss Brown strove gall-antly to cope and behaved always with great finesse and dignity. We dared not tidy the house as she would have resented it deeply. When she suddenly became ill we took turns at preparing her meals. The key to her front door hung on a string inside the letter-box, so we just fished it out and let ourselves in.
As my friend Sheila and I left the house late one Saturday night we arranged that I would prepare the breakfast the next day and she would take care of the lunch. The following morning when I opened the front door the old dog was whining in the hallway and there was a curious stillness in the house. I ran up the stairs two at a time and pushed open the door to Miss Brown’s bedroom. She lay half in, half out of the bed. A strong smell of vomit filled the room. I eased her back into bed and cleaned things up hastily. She was breathing heavily and I knew at once that this was more than I could handle on my own. I ran to the phone across the road to call the doctor and the priest, so shocked by what I had discovered that my hand shook as I rang the numbers and my voice came out in gasps.
When I came back to the house I could hear the old woman’s breathing as I climbed the stairs. I was so frightened by the sound that I stopped for a few moments outside the door summoning up the courage to go in. Crossing the room I stood at the bottom of the iron bed grasping the brass rail, just looking and listening. I had no idea what to do.
The doctor came first. He clattered up the stairs and breezed into the room. “How are you, old girl?” he asked her cheerily. But Miss Brown was in no state to respond to cheerful salutations. After a brief examination he cocked his eye at me and said: “A few hours at the most.” He snapped his bag shut and left.
