The Village Page 4

  As a couple they were a good combination, because while Jacky was a sunshine person he needed the astuteness of Aunty Peg to survive in business. He bought eggs once from a local woman, and because he considered them too dear he sold them at a loss. Such practices were not conducive to a healthy balance of payments, but most of the time Aunty Peg succeeded in balancing his innocence with realism.

  In my brand-new husband I discovered that Aunty Peg had reared a young man who was totally self-sufficient around the house. Coming from a family where my father had never actually poured out a cup of tea for himself this was a great bonus. We had our own front door opening off the street into a long narrow hallway with a straight stairs on the left. The stairs led directly into the bathroom and to three small bedrooms over the shop. Downstairs, at the end of the hallway, a door opened into the shop and another into the sitting-room. A glass door led from the sitting-room into the kitchen, from which a door led into the garden.

  Gabriel was involved in every organisation in the parish, which meant that he was out most nights. I resented this at first because he knew everybody while I knew hardly anyone, but I solved my problem by going into the shop with Jacky where I got to know all his old friends who came in late at night for a chat. There was George who was always full of fun and stories, Paddy from around the corner whose threshold of tolerance was very low, Jimmy who lived across the road, Peter who was a cattle jobber and Jim who lived in a shed. A great sense of companionship had built up between them over the years, and listening to their stories and jokes about this place so full of history gave me the feeling that I, too, could grow to love Innishannon.

  Even so, when I entered this new family I walked gently for a few months in case I might do anything to disturb the peace. Despite this Aunty Peg sometimes let me know that I was far from perfect. This set me back a bit at first, until Uncle Jacky pointed out quietly that sometimes Peg had her bad days and then it was simply a case of bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. With this in mind, I learned to keep clear on such occasions. It was a system that had obviously worked well in previous years and it worked for me too. When storm clouds gathered we all kept our heads down until the sky had cleared. Then Peg was her old good-humoured self again and would bend over backwards to remedy any upset she may have caused.

  As we had an all-night telephone service in the post office somebody had to be continuously on call and this often meant jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to connect calls manually. Because there were very few phones in the locality, during the day the post office became a sort of social services depot. We held the farmers’ AI calls for the cattle breeding station, and the AI man collected them on his rounds. Some farmers just stood at the door of the shop and shouted in their calls: “Hereford: first time, noticed this morning.” One retired British colonel who had come to Ireland to farm had his own way of delivering his summonses. In a commanding military voice he would bellow across the counter: “Send out the man with the hard hat.” The first time I got this instruction I stood looking at him in wonder, but Gabriel unscrambled his code and after that I no longer needed an interpreter. An old lady with a man’s black hat pulled down over her ears was far more direct. She would shout at me: “Send out the bull.”

  People left messages for the doctor when he was out on calls, and he would ring or come in to check if anyone was looking for him. Once when he had a home birth pending he rang just as his very pregnant patient was doing her shopping, so it was possible to assure him that all was proceeding according to plan. We held calls for Fr Mick the curate when he visited his mother. He was a very cheerful man who put his head in the door and sang out, “Alice, hold my calls”; then he would tell Gabriel, Jacky, and nearly everyone else in the village when he was going so that everybody thought it was someone else’s job to know where he was. If anyone wanted to contact a person in the village or indeed within a radius of a few miles, they rang the post office, and we became the bearers of a variety of tidings, joyful and sorrowful. It was a collection point for all kinds of messages, from day-old chicks to bags of hayseed.

  Sunday was the big shopping day. The countrywomen handed in their message bags and shopping lists on their way to church, and Jacky had them packed and ready for collection on their return. The old people came on Friday for their pensions. They had been reared in hard times when there was no such thing as social welfare. Always very exact about their pension books, they had them safely buried in inside pockets or deep handbags. One day, a lady whose face was a portrait of contentment and serenity remarked, “I never had so much money in my life.” Another lady, who had reared a large family and worked hard all her life, burst into tears when she received a lump sum of back money due to her as a result of a delay in the processing of her pension. With tears streaming down her face she said, “What did I ever do to deserve this?” I admired the attitude to life of most of the old people, feeling sad only for the few who had grown bitter with old age.

  One old lady fascinated me for a time. Once every week she came in to do her shopping. She handed her shopping bag over the counter to Jacky, and a long conversation commenced which included no mention of her messages. When he had her shopping bag full he wrote her list – which was the same each week – into her book, and she paid him for the previous week, an amount that never varied. It was a ritual the two of them habitually observed. When I asked Jacky why the little book was necessary he smiled and said, “That’s the way we have always done it, and she likes it that way.” His customers were always right simply because he knew them very well and understood them perfectly.

  As a newcomer to the village I enjoyed getting to know the people, and the shop and post office was the ideal meeting-place because everybody came through there eventually. But it was the old people who gave me the flavour of the place. They were full of stories and unexpected comments. One gentle lady often made delicate references to the times “when the gentry were here”. When I asked her one day why they had come here in the first place, she smiled sweetly before informing me acidly, “Because the pickings were good, my dear.” Another old man came in every morning to read the paper but never bought it. After spending about two hours sitting on the long stool inside the window and reading every detail in absolute silence, he then threw the paper on the counter and walked out the door saying, “There isn’t a bit in that bloody paper as usual.” But it was George who lived next door and was blessed with a great sense of fun that I enjoyed best of all.

  JOB SATISFACTION

  GEORGE LOVED HIS work. He was the local painter and decorator, and loved the work so much that he often celebrated his enjoyment with friends. Once after having painted one of the village pubs, he ended up owing the publican more than the publican owed him for the job. Life to George was a celebration of colour, and his sign-writing was executed with skill and artistry. Long hours of painstaking precision went into his beautiful lettering. One day as he put the finishing touches to a sign his friend the local doctor came along.

  “Well, George,” the Doc quipped, “are you covering up your mistakes with the brush?”

  “Spot on, Doc,” George answered him. “I cover mine with a brush, and a shovel and spade cover yours.”

  George’s brush may have painted colourful words, but so did his tongue, and he enjoyed a battle of caustic comments with his friend.

  For a man with a quicksilver mind he looked like a blissfully disorientated, absent-minded eccentric. He did not walk but dragged his heels along in a pair of woolly bedroom slippers, wearing a long, loose cardigan almost down to his knees, while a pair of rimless spectacles hung off his nose. In conversation he smiled beguilingly at you, waving his hands in the air to illustrate a point, and swaying towards you as if imparting a blessing.

  No matter to what height George’s job took him he always had time to appreciate his surroundings. One day while painting the high gable end of the corner house next door, he sat on top of his ladder enjoying the
view over the old tower and the river. A rusty iron brad stuck out of the wall beside him and on this George hung his gallon of paint. It was a warm sunny day with white clouds drifting across a bright blue sky. Down the street came the doctor.

  “What are you doing up there, George?” he called.

  George swept his brush above his head and announced dramatically: “Painting the clouds with sunshine!”

  “If you fall off, I’ll be painting your arse with iodine!” his friend assured him.

  Later that day George was still painting happily on top of his ladder when the doctor’s warning almost became a reality.

  Outside the village lived a very small man known as Mór.* Late in life he had acquired a Baby Ford car, but still he maintained a donkey-and-cart approach to driving. When he drove into the village, down the hill past the church to the corner which led onto the main road, Mór ground to a halt. He then got out, walked to the front of the car, and looked up and down the street to check for oncoming traffic. Having satisfied himself that the coast was clear, he lumbered back to the car, climbed in, and drove straight across the road. Often several cars would have passed between his traffic check and his eventual foray across the road, but by some miracle he had never had an accident, though he had many close shaves and nearly caused a few heart-attacks in his time. But the fact that he was slightly deaf gave Mór a certain immunity to the abuse of angry motorists.

  On that particular day Mór chugged steadily down the hill and, having checked the traffic conditions as usual, he got back into his car and started up. But by some confusion of gears the car shot into reverse and crashed into George’s ladder. Luckily George had observed Mór’s ground-manoeuvres from on high. He saw the old boy do a reverse barn-dance and had quickly anticipated impending disaster. Just as the Baby Ford made contact with the ladder he hastily transferred himself to the iron brad where he joined the gallon of paint. Mór then danced his way forward, leaving George hanging in mid-air, and drove straight onto the main road, barely missing a Bandon creamery lorry. He drove off, completely unaware that he had left George swinging like Tarzan off the brad twenty feet above the ground.

  Paddy, who lived in a little house across the road from the corner, had been sitting on his window-sill reading the evening paper, but he lowered it now to observe the more immediate action.

  “What are you doing up there, George?” he enquired innocently.

  “Practising for the circus,” George told him, “but today’s show is over! Stop acting the clown and put up that bloody ladder. Get me down out of here!”

  * Big

  STUBBS’ LIST

  WHEN YOU PUSHED open the protesting door of Sam’s shop, an iron bell clanged to announce your arrival. Sometimes Sam came out to greet you through the cluttered opening at the back of the shop, like a wren coming out of her nest. On other occasions his head popped up between the glass jars on the counter, its movement startling you. Sam blended so completely with his surroundings that one would often be unaware of his presence.

  His was the nearest thing to a draper’s shop we had in the village, but he did not limit himself to drapery. All sorts of goods cascaded down the walls inside and outside the counter, leaving only a narrow pathway between the boxes for customers and a tiny space inside the counter for Sam. Sunglasses jostled for room with hot-water bottles, and Irish linen tea-towels and yellow dusters hung from hooks in front of the shelves.

  In conversation he had the habit of darting his finger at your face to emphasise his point, causing you to step backwards to preserve your eyesight. One day Aunty Peg and himself began a discussion inside the door of our shop, and every time that Sam made a point with his finger Aunty Peg unconsciously took a step backwards, with the result that the conversation took them all around the shop and back again to the door.

  Sam was the best-dressed man in the village. He wore a beautifully cut, hand-woven tweed suit with a matching cap, and his tie picked up one of the flecks in the tweed while his shirt gave a muted background to this exercise in colour co-ordination. The ensemble was brought to life by a bright flower in his button-hole, while peeping from beneath his well-creased pants his brown leather shoes shone in harmony with the entire colour scheme. Though he was well past his prime his skin was clear and translucent, and his tapering, delicately formed hands were without a blemish. He was small and fine-boned with deep brown eyes and as he spoke his face was a vivid picture of changing expressions. Because he was so beautifully formed, I always thought that Sam was one of those men who would have gone far in the world of ballet.

  Customers kept accounts in the village shops they frequented, and most people treated this system with respect. Occasionally, though, somebody took advantage of the situation, which left the shopkeeper out of pocket. Sometimes it was because they were hard-pressed for money and in those circumstances a compromise was usually reached, but in the case of Mrs Harding there was no question of scarcity of funds, just a straightforward case of abusing the system to her advantage. She had bought a big house outside the village and went shopping in beautiful clothes and flashing jewellery. Yet after running up bills she would refuse to pay, and there did not appear to be anything that Jacky or Sam could do about it.

  She travelled regularly by bus and one day as she got on it outside our door, Sam and I were chatting at the corner.

  “Do you see that bitch,” he said to me, “she’s wearing my pink knickers and she never paid for it.”

  Now the normal state of pay in the world of knickers at the time was ten shillings, but this was a luxury model costing seventeen shillings and sixpence.

  “Well,” I said, “There’s not much you can do now. You can hardly take it off her.”

  “It’s no joke, you know,” he snapped. “Bad enough if it was an ordinary pair, but to think she took me for the most expensive one in the shop! She is not finished with me yet, though,” Sam assured me.

  The following week as she got on the bus, Sam moved into action. When she had taken her seat at the back of the crowded bus he followed her on board. Standing up at the front, he called out to her: “Mrs Harding, when you come home this evening, will you call in to me and pay for your knickers?”

  All accounts were paid that evening. She had discovered that the village debt-collection strategy could be every bit as effective as Stubbs’ List.

  ANGEL ON THE ROOF

  WHEN I BECAME pregnant I thought that it was a miracle. Dancing with delight around the sitting-room, I almost felt that this had never before happened to anyone but me. The euphoria lasted for a few weeks, until one morning, having jumped out of bed, a wave of nausea swept over me and the bedroom turned upside down. I sat down hastily and wondered what on earth was the matter with me. The queasy feeling lasted all day and that evening when the doctor came into the shop I explained my problem. “Morning-sickness,” he diagnosed happily.

  “But I felt terrible all day!” I protested.

  “Some people do,” he assured me.

  “How long will it last?”

  “Oh! about six to eight weeks,” he said dismissively.

  “Eight weeks!”

  I could not believe that this condition could continue for eight whole weeks. It was late October and the news that this misery would last until Christmas came like a terrible sentence of punishment. “Actually, the less notice you take of it the better,” the doctor advised me comfortingly.

  But that was easier said than done. The following Sunday morning, halfway through Mass, my stomach churned and a tidal wave of cold perspiration engulfed me. Fr Mick started to waltz around the altar and then took off in clouds of swirling mist like the Lord ascending into heaven. As he hovered in front of the stained glass windows high in the gable of the church, I clung to my seat like a swimmer trying desperately not to drown in the waves. Gradually things came back into focus. Fresh air was certainly required at that point, but as my sense of balance was temporarily impaired I stayed seated. Apart from that, to l
eave the church just then would have been a public announcement of a positive pregnancy test almost as effective as having it called out with the death notices. After Mass, instead of helping in the shop as I usually did, I went instead to the bathroom and studied my ashen countenance in the mirror. If pregnancy was supposed to be such a natural condition, I thought, how come I was feeling so unnatural!

  I had felt the need to equip myself for the voyage into motherhood with all the knowledge that was available, so I had acquired a stack of books and magazines on pregnancy, but all the attention that morning-sickness merited was a few flippant sentences. If the misery I was now enduring was regarded as such a non-event by these experts, then how reliable were they going to prove as the further stages of pregnancy unfolded?

  The tide of morning-sickness threatened to engulf me, and the only oars I found to help me ride the waves of nausea were the boxes of Rennies I chewed continually and glasses of cider vinegar, whose bitter taste gave temporary relief. I developed a total aversion to lipstick and perfume and a blinding passion for strawberries. “Morning-sickness” was a gross understatement for the day-long fog that enfolded me, but just when my feelings about pregnancy had reached their lowest point the fog lifted, and I was back once again in the normal world, able to eat, drink and enjoy life.

  For the next few months good health and boundless energy were mine and I began to think of pregnancy as a golden glow of well-being. But then a ferocious pregnancy itch, aggravated during a very hot summer by the heat and the extra bulk of advanced pregnancy, almost brought me to a standstill. I decided then that spring babies were a good idea and that Mother Nature had got it right in the case of lambs and birds; I took note of it for future reference.