Quench the Lamp Read online

  Tufts of white bread were plucked from a thick cut or a well-padded heel of a loaf to line the bottom of a cup or a basin, depending on the size of the consumer. Some dressers boasted a colourful, flowery basin which was reserved especially for making goody. On top of the foundation layer of bread came a generous shake of sugar, and sweet-toothed people turned the sugar bowl sideways and poured freely. Then another covering of bread was added, and more sugar, and so on, layer upon layer until it rose, dome-like, over the rim.

  While this tiered miracle was being created a wary eye was kept on a saucepan of milk heating on a rake-out of hot coals by the fire. You forgot it at your peril; if you took your eye off it for one second it could erupt in billowing bubbles and overflow on to the fire, scattering ashes and filling the kitchen with an acrid smell. Experienced goody makers managed to get the two jobs to reach completion simultaneously. Then the boiling milk was poured gently in a circular motion over the soft, spongy bread and sugar, which sank with a subdued sigh beneath the scalding waterfall. Some discerning people liked to hold back the skim at the top of the milk, which might be flecked with turf dust and ashes, while other, less fastidious souls let it all pour in. Then, with a big spoon, the entire concoction was squelched up and down, the spoon making a slurping passage through the goody to meet the bottom of the bowl with a dull thud. As the mixing progressed the goody cooled and the connoisseur knew when the precise point for satisfying expectant taste-buds had been reached. Thus was created a soft, sweet, creamy bowl of delicious, slushy sedation.

  With this soothing, seductive mush babies were weaned off the breast and introduced to solid food. In later years the goody was there when no other comfort was available. Many a hardened bachelor, long in the tooth, coming home on a cold day from the fair and having no welcoming arms to erase the memory of a bad bargain, found his solace in a basin of hot goody. His blood chilled by a long trudge up a mountainy road with a cold wind whipping around his ears, he was rejuvenated and reheated by this bowl of warm comfort. Often an overly discerning lady, unwilling to wrinkle her linen sheets with what she considered the unsuitable manhood available, took a china cup of consoling goody to see her through the night. Happy couples, too, having bedded down their young after a hectic day, shared a bowl of warm goody before going on to share greater comforts. Then, in old age, when sensitive molars could send searing pain through brittle jaws, goody gently weaned them off solid fare with its delicate touch.

  Chewing, which rocked unsteady teeth in their shrunken rooting ground, was no longer necessary as goody slid effortlessly over flawed masticators.

  Goody was a source of consolation for all seasons. It was an infantile soother, a male menopause stress reliever, a female oestrogen replacer and, in old age, the last comfort against the ravages of time.

  Cow Time

  COME THE FIRST glimmer of light and the slight twitter that introduced the dawn chorus, the cock crew loud and clear. I imagined that he must sleep with one eye half open in case he might miss that little splinter of light in the dark sky. He was our alarm clock and his cock-crow was a call to arms and a salutation to the new day. There was nothing half-hearted or hesitant about it: his “cock-a-doodle-do” rang out bright and clear. The vibrant call cut through waves of muzzy sleepiness and was repeated every five minutes until the cock was assured that the coming of the dawn was not going to be ignored by those who lacked the sense of occasion he possessed.

  He was a fine-looking fellow, with a bright red cock’s comb which contrasted dramatically with his snow white feathers. His long, strong, yellow legs spread into gripping claws and he had a vicious beak; he used both beak and claws to keep his huge harem in submission. He strolled arrogantly around the farmyard and occasionally during the day he perched himself on top of a dunghill or on a shed and crowed out his superiority over his flock which was now scattered around the haggard and farmyard.

  Our first job after answering the cock’s morning call was to bring in the cows. They had no built-in mechanism like the cock’s to tell them that the time had come to head home for milking. Usually they were spread out around the field, some grazing, some lying down contentedly chewing the cud. They rose at their own pace when they saw you coming and meandered towards the gap. Rounding up cows in the early morning was a soothing experience. They looked at you out of large, moist, trusting eyes and obediently complied with whatever it was you wanted them to do. As you walked along behind their swinging tails they exuded a warm contentment with their lot that was contagious. The rhythm of their gait compelled you to slow to the relaxed pace of their bovine world. Arriving in the stall yard, each went to her own stall and put her head into her own place. While the sleepy-headed milkers arrived, some of whom were perpetually bad tempered in the morning, the cows stood impassively chewing the cud, with faraway looks in their big eyes as if dreaming of green fields and mossy streams. With their long tails they flicked away annoying flies.

  We had three cowhouses or stalls, and they were known as the new stalls, the middle stalls and the old stalls. The new and middle stalls had grain lofts over them and these my father had built. The old stalls, however, had been there for many generations in a lovely old stone building which was partly covered with ivy and had deep, narrow windows and a cobbled floor. Here in the crevices between the stones the swallows nested and swished in and out above the cows’ heads and in the straw loft overhead at the peak of each rafter were rows of nests.

  The milkers went to their own stalls and milked their own cows. There was never a worked-out arrangement about who was to milk any particular cow: the system just evolved whereby certain people liked to milk certain cows and that was it. The full buckets of warm milk were carried out of the stalls and across the yard to the stand where twenty-gallon chums stood on a concrete base, and into these the milk was poured and strained through a white muslin cloth tied around the top of each churn. My father left the stalls early to catch the pony and have his breakfast. Pony tackled to the creamery cart, it was backed in beside the stand and the covered churns were rolled into it.

  When the cows had been milked and let out again the only other job that was usually done before breakfast was feeding the calves. They were by now bellowing their heads off: having heard the rattle of the milk buckets, they knew that breakfast time had come. All the small calves were individually fed and each one would be at a different milk strength; there were calves on pure fresh milk, calves on a mixture of fresh and sour, and calves on sour milk only, and bearing in mind each calves requirements was a bit like preparing the feeding bottles in a hospital nursery.

  Before opening the door of the house to feed them you had to be thoroughly organised as their bucket manners were not well cultivated and each had just one aim in life: to get its head into a bucket, any bucket. Sometimes you might finish up with two heads in one bucket and a spare bucket with no head in it. But to get a calf s head out once it was in was almost impossible, as the only lever you had to pull them by was their ears and, pull as you might, this had no effect. When the calves were finally matched with their correct feed, the bucket had to be held firmly while the calf was drinking because calves had a strange habit of butting with their heads, almost as an expression of appreciation. They could turn the bucket upside down or, worse still, give you a pair of black and blue shinbones as a result of a belt of a bucket.

  After wrestling with the calves we took a break and fed ourselves. When breakfast was over the rest of the morning jobs were done, but somehow they never seemed to take as long as the evening ones, which was strange because the routine was almost exactly the same.

  In the summer, as soon as the first evening shadows stretched their slanting fingers across the fields, all the animals converged on the farmyard. Hungry animals are noisy animals and the only ones who were not hungry were the cows but they bellowed too because they wanted to be milked. The demanding clamour could be deafening. Permanently stationed in the yard was a house of pigs in for fattening an
d they now gave off a shrill, demented scream as they jumped against their door and rattled their empty iron trough around the house. In the next few houses baby bonhams might be squealing for their mothers who had been out eating grass and rolling in mud. Two large gates led from the fields into the yard and these were closed at this point to bring a bit of law and order to the situation. Outside one gate the big calves, who had spent their day out in the fields, were now bellowing for their supper with long, plaintive maa-maa-maa sounds that went on non-stop. Outside the other gate the returning sows screeched with continuous determination. Already in the yard were hens, turkeys, ducks and chickens, all adding to the chaotic chorus of wailing animals and birds. It was pure and absolute bedlam.

  First to be dealt with were the hens, because they were everywhere, jumping into the other animals’ feed and scurrying around between your feet, so you had to get rid of them first. A bucket of oats was taken to the front of their house and a call of “tioc, tioc” brought them clustering after you. The oats were scattered on the ground and they pecked it up. Next came the ducks, who would actually eat anything, which my father maintained was the reason why their eggs were not up to the same standard as the hens’ eggs. The turkeys, however, were a finicky lot and the baby turkeys were actually fed on scrambled eggs and nettles. Sometimes they got a strange complaint called the gapes and then they were put under a cardboard box where a pink powder was blown around them. Turkeys were delicate and demanding, but the turkey-cock was a colourful old boy who would fan out his bright feathers and huge wings and dance sideways like an excited matador going into attack. And attack he would, because he was an aggressive devil and would fly at you with wings spread out in full flight.

  The fowl quietened, the background wailing still continued and the pigs were the next to be tackled and reduced to comparative silence. In the yard was the “mess house”, as it was called, but no serried ranks of soldiers dined in this place where the pigs’ mess was mixed in a timber tub with a long-handled shovel. Ration was shovelled out of jute bags, mixed with water to a sloppy consistency, and then taken in buckets to the pigs. Facing into a house full of hungry pigs required a certain amount of courage, brute force and timing, and the timing was the most important element. Hungry pigs shrieked and jumped at the door in waves, and the trick was to get in the door and reach the trough while they were still between waves, building up for a renewed assault. If you did not get your timing right they could take the legs from under you and then you would emerge highly perfumed with a concentrated essence of pure toilet water. The homecoming sows outside the gate were now screaming to high heaven and trying to lift the gate out of the way with their snouts while their bonhams, hearing them, squealed in hunger, but once they were let in the noise died down

  The calves now provided the final chorus. An iron trough set in a cement base was used to feed them and iron dividers separated each head. The trough was filled with sour milk, which had been brought home earlier from the creamery and stored in two large tar barrels in the corner of the yard. The milk was drawn by bucket from the barrel until the trough was full and then you opened the gate and stood well back to avoid being knocked down in the ensuing stampede. Sometimes the bigger calves were held back for a few minutes to give the small ones a chance to get a head start. Once fed, the calves went back to the fields.

  The peace that descended on the farmyard when all the demanding, clamouring animals had finally been fed was emphasised by the volume of the noise that had preceded it. It was such a relief to have them all quietened down that you could almost feel the silence. This daily routine was called simply “doing the jobs” and in some ways was separate from the milking which, because it involved so many more people, was considered the biggest event of the day.

  During the summer many of the farm buildings were empty by night. The cows were “out on grass” from early summer to late autumn – how late depended on the weather – and the horses only used the stables in the winter. The farmyard late of a summer’s evening had a whispering life. Swallows swished in and out through the open doors and the farm cats stretched out in the mangers, where the horses would not tolerate them during the winter. Pigs, normally curled up together for warmth, now lay far apart to keep cool in their warm houses, giving little grunts and snorts as if reliving memories of rolling in cool mud. An occasional muted quack came from the duck house and even the troublesome turkeys chirped quietly to themselves. The hens, sitting in rows on their perches in the whitewashed hen house, gave occasional clucks and gurgles before burying their heads under their wings. Even his majesty the cock was taking it easy, sitting on the top perch and keeping a beady eye on his rows of ladies-in-waiting.

  The Missioners

  THE MISSIONERS WHO thundered into the parish church most summers were to us as exciting as a travelling roadshow. We loved these tall, graceful men in long, sweeping black gowns whose black, sectioned birettas clung precariously to their polls and whose giant wooden rosary beads clanked around them like horses’ traces. They were larger than life and we saw them as visitors from another world – a world of incense, long, polished corridors and continuous prayer. To me the missioner on the altar provided a one-man entertainment, which was all the more exciting when he strode back and forth shouting; it was high drama, and better again when he thumped the altar. Usually coming in pairs, these missioners generally comprised one quiet, holy one and a cross, dramatic fellow. Different orders had different levels of ferocity but we preferred the fire and brimstone brigade.

  There was a great sense of togetherness in the parish during the mission week. We all shared the same schedule, as farm activity had to be wound up early in the evening so that everybody could converge on the church. If you were late you might be left standing outside and miss some of the excitement or, worse still, the free missioner of the night might come around to the back door and march you up along the church until he found a seat for you. He pretended he was doing you a good turn but in actual fact both he and you knew he was not.

  In backyards around the town ponies and traps were tied up and bicycles were lined against the church railings. Young children living near the church had great fun stealing rides at breakneck speed down the high hill on the bikes of mountainy bachelors who did not have the filling of a trap for the mission.

  Up one side of the churchyard, against the iron railings, was a long row of mission stalls called “standings”, from which holy pictures, statues, holy-water fonts, rosary beads and a wide and varied selection of medals, some with encased relies, were sold. Anything thought to have the power to cultivate devotion was available and the items were international in origin but not, of course, interdenominational. We savoured our examination of everything on offer and adorned ourselves with anything that could be pinned or hung on. We hung brown and green scapulars around our necks, and Blessed Martin and Saint Jude competed with each other for pride of place on our woollen vests, but as Blessed Martin’s was the first black face I had ever seen I felt protective towards him, in case he might feel lost in this strange place, so he was always first into my safety-pin. The general favourite was St Christopher bearing the Child on his back, perhaps because everybody felt the need of a St Christopher to carry them over the rough patches of life.

  The colourful statues stood in rows high on the back shelves of the stalls. We studied the different facial expressions: the soft, pleading eyes of Our Lady; the dark, inscrutable ones of St Theresa. But the cherub faced Child of Prague was my favourite because I liked his happy look. Various statues of the Child of Prague came into our house over the years but always they lost their heads and we had all sorts of strange beliefs concerning him. We believed that it was lucky if his head fell off; also, that he liked a prominent position, being averse to hovering in the background; and if you wanted a fine day you put him out the night before. I believed that there was a logic of sorts to everything and supposed that the reason for this was that the draught would catch him when he
was left out overnight and he would need the sun the following day. Anyway, all the sideshows and their attendant beliefs and stories had the welcome effect of adding colour to the mission and enhancing our appreciation of it.

  Like most children, I relished ideals, and the higher the better. So the mission to me was a big spiritual clean-up, a bit like getting the house ready for the Stations, only this time the house was within my mind’s four walls. My heart bled at the sermon on the passion and I felt I could identify with Christ carrying his cross along the hot, dusty road to Calvary. I felt so sorry for Our Lady, pregnant and tired on that cold winter’s night, riding on the donkey into Bethlehem. But the missioners lost me when they came to the sins of the flesh and waxed eloquent in explaining the finer details of the sixth and ninth commandments. It was all so complicated that I wondered what on earth they were talking about.

  One night, after a sermon distinguished by a tirade on sins in marriage which had me absolutely fascinated, trying to figure out how such sins could be achieved, we gave a lift home in the pony and trap to a woman who lived near us.

  “That man tonight,” she announced, “wants to take all the fun out of life.”

  My mother at this point tried to change the subject, surrounded as she was by children of varying ages, all of whom were listening with open mouths.

  “For God’s sake,” the neighbour continued blithely, “what else have Mick and I to pass the long winter’s nights?” She threw back her head and laughed heartily, slapping my father on the back, but this time my mother was determined that enough was enough and turned the conversation firmly in another direction.