To School Through the Fields Read online

  The night before the Stations had a special atmosphere filled with a sense of expectancy. The whole house lay in readiness, with fires set in all the downstairs rooms. Tables were laid with fine china and shining silver while bowls of lump sugar and dishes of butter rolls lay covered in the kitchen. In front of the fire was a row of polished shoes graduating from tiny tots upwards. We were all bathed in a big timber tub in front of the bedroom fire and we young ones were the last to be washed because our chances of getting dirty again were the greatest.

  I doubt that my mother went to bed at all that night and if she did it was for a very short period. The cows got an early awakening in the morning and the milk was carried out to the creamery bright and early. Dirty jobs finished, everybody put on their finery. The large kitchen table was raised with a chair under each end to act as the altar. My mother was very particular about the altar, as for her this was what it was all about. She was a deeply religious person and the honour of having Mass said in her house was something which she appreciated to the full. On the morning of the Stations she had about her a special aura of peace. All the fuss of preparation was over and now, surrounded by her family and friends, because all her neighbours were her friends, she was going to welcome the Lord into her home. They were the two most important things in her life: her family and her God.

  My father, dressed in his best black suit and shining soft boots – he never wore shoes – waited outside the door to welcome his neighbours and the priests when they came. It was grand to see the neighbours arriving, some having worked late with us the night before, but now all dressed up for the occasion.

  Finally the priests arrived to a flurry of handshakes all around. One priest said Mass in the kitchen while the other heard confessions by the fire in the parlour; it always tickled my fancy going to confession by our own parlour fire. There was a warm feeling about this Mass and communion, with all the neighbours gathered around the kitchen table. We had worked and played together and now we were sharing something much greater which formed a different bond between us. It was like the Last Supper.

  After Mass the confession priest joined the other and dues were collected. A volunteer was sought for the next Station, which posed no problem as every house took its turn and everybody knew who was next. Then the flurry started: feeding the multitudes, but instead of loaves and fishes there was usually an abundance of goodies. Everybody helped so there was no panic, only organised confusion, and all were fed in the end. When breakfast was over the priests left and that was the official end of the Stations, but in reality it carried on all day and far into the night. Neighbours who could not come in the morning and maybe were not in our Station area came in the evening or even that night. Relations of varying degrees turned up and as ours was a long-tailed family this meant half the parish.

  As well as a religious event it was also a social occasion. People came together who normally only worked together and visitors met old neighbours. Great talking was done. An impromptu concert often started up and anybody who could sing, and indeed some who could not, entertained the light-hearted gathering. This evolved into a dance with a neighbour providing music on a melodeon. There was no shortage of energy and you would think that we had been resting up for a week beforehand.

  After the Stations nothing could be found for weeks. Caps had disappeared and wellingtons were reported missing and many a man was left without his favourite old jacket. But who cared? We had had a great day and the house was fit to receive visitors from America for months afterwards.

  Beneath God’s Altar

  OLD NELL CARRIED her false teeth around in her pocket. Our most eccentric neighbour, Nell was often in trouble. Once my mother took her to Cork to visit a doctor and afterwards they went into the old Savoy for a meal. As soon as the waitress had placed the meal on the table out came Nell’s false teeth and into the ashtray. My mother never batted an eyelid and nobody would ever have known of this occurrence but for the fact that my sister, who was working in Cork at the time, had joined them, much to her regret. Why Nell bothered with the teeth at all was difficult to understand: she did not use them for eating and you had only to see her to know that, for her, appearance did not have a high priority. The truth of the matter was that she had paid good money for the teeth and regarded them rather like the new hat which she wore for special occasions. The fact that she ever acquired them in the first place was entirely due to the considerable persuasive powers of the dentist, because making Nell part with her money was like prising a stubborn barnacle from a rock. She was not short of money. She was the youngest of a large family who had all gone to America and done well and, as they did not have marrying blood in their veins, when they died Nell was the beneficiary.

  She lived in a little house with a sagging thatched roof where birds nested and swallows gathered every year. The house itself was like a birds’ nest and so overgrown with greenery that it was always dark inside. My father often tried to coax her to build a new house, but to her that was out of the question, and she would not disturb the birds by repairing the old one. While things remained unchanged my father often said that he hoped the house would last longer than Nell herself and, indeed, it did.

  Few of the neighbours called on her, not because they did not want to but because she did not want them to; she did not trust many people and preferred to keep to herself. Even when she called to our house she would start screeching from about a field away: we heard her before we saw her. My father would raise his eyes to heaven and say, “Nell is beagling again.” She had a high-pitched, quarrelsome voice and she shouted to you whether you were in the same room as her or a field away. When she came she was usually in a panic: the cows were after breaking out, or the donkey was stuck in a hole, or some other disaster had befallen her. And no matter what we were doing at the time we had to drop everything to go to her rescue. Nevertheless, she was not in the least bit grateful for anything that was done for her: as far as she was concerned virtue was its own reward. One day my father spent a few particularly tough hours trying to repair her thatched roof without disturbing her birds or falling through it himself. When he had finished she shouted out the door at him, “You are dressing a bed in heaven for yourself.” The implication was that he should be grateful to her for affording his soul such a golden opportunity.

  If you met Nell without being prepared for the shock she would frighten the wits out of you. She had long black hair which she never washed and which was stiff with a combination of grease and soot. She had a straight black fringe, a little like Cleopatra’s, except that Nell’s was perfumed with smoke. A strange combination of dress and overall covered her from neck to ankles and down to her wrists. Her virgin skin never saw the light of day. She wore black knitted stockings and black leather boots laced above her ankles. Her face was almost as black as her hair and if she happened to have her teeth in they emphasised her overall blackness because from lack of use they were as pearly as the day the dentist gave them to her. When they were not in her mouth or her pocket, they were soaking in a jam pot on the dresser, the only bright spot grinning in the semidarkness of the kitchen.

  I thought that Nell was a kindred spirit. Every day I called to her house and stayed there for hours. With that strange affinity which often develops between the very old and the very young, we were in perfect accord. She did not comply with normal acceptable adult behaviour and in my eyes that brought her almost into my world, for to me she was more a child like me than an adult. We went to town in the donkey and cart and I was allowed to guide the donkey, who had a mind of his own, so we sometimes ended up in places far from where we had intended going.

  With Nell, I saw my first corpse. Some old woman who had gone to school with Nell had died many miles away, so we tackled up the donkey and set out. It was a lovely warm day and as the donkey stopped for a feed of grass whenever he got the notion it took half the day to go and the other half to come back. When we arrived at the wake house we were ushered into the room
where the corpse was laid out; I had never before seen anybody dead and it scared the daylights out of me. Whatever she had been like in life, in death this old lady looked forbidding and aggressive. She was propped up in bed wearing a blue, high-necked frilled gown and her abundant hair was swept high on her head. Her face was grey and rigid. She looked as if she had spent her life giving out and that at any minute she might start again. I was glad when we made a hasty exit. Nell did not go in for social niceties and so, without exchanging any formalities with the other mourners, we boarded our donkey and cart for the return journey. I was half nervous that the old lady might be coming after us. I looked back. Everybody at the wake was out in the road looking in our direction. Nell had not bothered to say who she was and, as this was in a different parish, they had never seen her before. They probably thought she was the devil.

  The only other regular caller to Nell’s house was an old half-blind man called Tim Joe. He lived further back the valley and brought her any news that he thought she should hear; it was he who had brought her the news of the old lady’s death.

  Despite her lack of visitors, Nell decided that she would have the Stations when her turn came. She was not expected to have them but, contrary as she was, that was sufficient reason for Nell to do so. She sent word to all the neighbours via Tim Joe that she did not want them eating her out of house and home when they came, however. Undoubtedly they got the message, for none of her neighbours were involved in Nell’s Stations or the preparations, apart from Tim Joe and me. And, compared with what went on in other houses, there were almost no preparations at all. My mother worried more about Nell’s Stations than did Nell herself, but she was powerless to do anything as Nell, when she put her mind to it, was as unyielding as steel. The colour of Nell’s altar cloths and the lack of anything for the priest to eat caused my mother sleepless nights, but they did not cost Nell a thought.

  The day before the Stations, Nell and I brushed the kitchen and threw out the ashes that sometimes accumulated if Nell did not get the urge to shift them. We whitewashed the inside walls and any parts of the outside not covered by ivy and, having washed out the floor and cleaned the windows, we thought the little place was a palace. Indeed, the cats and dogs that I had put out for the clean-up were nearly afraid to come back in. After our strenuous efforts Nell made tea and to my delight produced a currant cake, but while we were having our tea-party she saw through the window a curious neighbour approaching and straight away hid the cake behind a bucket of milk on the table. It was Nell’s belief that it was more blessed to receive than to give.

  After the tea, down from the smoky rafters she took a timber box. Before we had time to open it a brown mouse shot out between our fingers; his ancestors had probably moved in years previously and generations of his kin had been reared in the box. They were, of course, forced to live in such high places because of Nell’s collection of cats which now gave chase and put a sudden end to the long, undisturbed tenancy. There was plenty of evidence of the mouse family in the box but apart from that and a few gigantic spiders, the box was a store of treasures. It contained some lovely old lace cloths and brass candlesticks. We shook out the cloths and discovered that they had some gaping holes; these, however, did not bother Nell and she selected the two best ones to act as altar cloths. She had two hens hatching in boxes under the table, but she decided not to disturb them; anyway, when it was covered by the white cloth the hens disappeared from view. And though the cloth was not perfectly white after long years in the box, we thought that it was perfect, and we also used the candlesticks, feeling no need to polish them.

  On the morning of the Stations I arrived before the priests to find that Nell had no fire lighting: she refused to light it because the birds were not used to such an early fire and she would not upset them. Such reasoning could not be argued with: the priests would be there for only one morning, the birds were always there.

  The parish priest was a kind, wise old man who, after evicting a few of Nell’s cats from their warm bed, sat himself down on the chair beside where the fire should have been. The curate, Fr Kelly, knew Nell well and had a good working relationship with her: he agreed with everything she said. As he set up his altar I prayed that the hens would stay put and that he would not stand too close to the table as one of them was very cross and could stick out her neck and bite.

  It was a peaceful sunny morning and the dogs lay asleep around the floor and the cats were curled up in the pool of sunlight on the doorstep. We had a heavenly choir as the birds chirped from their nests in the thatch and sang in the bushes and trees that grew wild and free close to the door. God smiled on us all that morning: it was a beautiful Mass and I saw a tear slip down the face of the old priest.

  Suddenly, in the middle of the last blessing, the curate exclaimed, with extra vehemence, “Christ!” The old priest nodded kindly, but I knew that the hatching hen had struck when I saw her head disappearing back through the folds of the altar cloth.

  Mass over, the problem of breakfast reared its ugly head. In order to boil the kettle we had to light a fire, and lighting this fire was something of an ordeal. There was a hole under the open fire to create a draught and the bellows lay just beside it to blow air into it. The problem was that ashes got into this hole and it had to be cleaned regularly, but Nell never cleaned it at all. Fr Kelly decided to tackle the problem. He lit bits of newspaper and pushed them in under Nell’s black turf; they flickered feebly and, in order to encourage them, he went down on his hands and knees to blow at them. Unfortunately, Tim Joe chose that precise moment to turn the bellows, sending a shower of ashes over the head of the kneeling curate. Nell, who was chatting with the parish priest – or rather, shouting at him – then solved the whole problem in two seconds by pouring a jam pot of paraffin oil on the fire and set it roaring up the chimney. In no time the kettle was singing and Nell made tea as strong as porter. We boiled eggs in a black tin saucepan over the open fire, which was now glowing red and ideal for toasting bread. At last the five of us sat down and had a companionable breakfast, during which the hatching hens decided that it was time to stretch their legs and trotted out the door, leaving evidence of their passage on the floor behind them. When Fr Kelly saw them, a look of understanding came over his face and he smiled in amusement. Perhaps he had not realised until then that forces other than divine were under Nell’s altar.

  When breakfast was over and we were relaxing in the sunny kitchen, Nell retired to her usual chair by the fire and after a few minutes sent out a loud snore. The priests took the hint: their time was up. Nell was not accustomed to visitors and she had had enough for one day. I went to the gate with the two priests. The parish priest put his hand on my head and said, “Little girl, God is found in strange places. Try not to forget this morning.” I never did.

  Animal Nanny

  IN THE FARMYARD the gift of new life came with the spring. After Christmas, when we had celebrated the birth of the child Jesus, the baby calves were the first to arrive in the animal kingdom. We had watched the cows heavy with calf trample daily through the winter mud; indeed, I had sometimes witnessed the commencement of this saga in the coming together of the bull and cow.

  At night the cows were tied up in the warm stalls on beds of yellow straw and every night before going to sleep my father lit the storm lantern to go and see them. The lantern was filled with oil and had a lighted wick surrounded by a glass globe which protected it from the weather; this lamp hung from a long handle so that it could be carried comfortably by hand. In checking the cows nightly, he had to be able to ascertain if any of them were going to calve during the night. He needed to be a bit of a gynaecologist as an unattended cow could get into difficulty calving and the result might be a dead calf in the morning. Many a night he went out in the cold of winter to check.

  I loved to watch the baby calves arrive though I hated to hear the cows groan in pain; however, like all mothers, they recovered quickly once it was over. The new-born calf was put
under the mother’s head and she licked it dry. Soon it stood on its spindly legs and wobbled around before being picked up and carried to the calf house where it was put in a section by itself. The cow, after a feed of warm bran, would be milked and the beastings, as this milk was called, fed to the calf. At this stage he was not quite sure how to drink, so you put your fingers into his mouth and he sucked the milk off them. The cow never again saw her calf, which seemed cruel to me though it did not appear to bother her.

  The calves were kept in their house during the cold weather where they were fed, morning and evening, with buckets of milk warm from the cows. It was one of the first signs of summer when the calves were left out – and they were so accustomed to the limitations of house life that it took a lot of gentle persuasion to coax them into the bright sunlight. When we brought them through the haggard into a big green field they could not believe their eyes: they spread their legs and put out their noses, expecting to meet a barrier; then they took a couple of steps and tested with their noses again. They did this a few times until gradually it dawned on them that there were no more barriers: this was freedom. Then they took off, whipping their tails high into the air and galloping around the field with sheer abandon.

  Each night they were brought back to the farmyard to be fed. They drank from a communal trough and had to be watched closely or they would drink too much as, like most teenagers, they still had to learn when to put the brakes on. One night I was supervising the feeding when one strong whiteheaded bull would not take his head from the trough despite all my efforts. Later on, while milking the cows, we heard a low bellow of pain coming from the haggard. My stubborn whitehead was prone on the ground with a swollen belly, his tongue hanging out and his eyes rolling in his head. Quick action was needed and my father pulled out his penknife and lanced the exact spot in the whitehead’s belly. It receded like a balloon deflating and within minutes he was back on his legs. He had gone almost past the point of no return and I viewed his recovery as if he were Lazarus rising from the dead. My father took on a new dimension in my eyes.