To School Through the Fields Page 6

  An Odd Old Codger

  OLD GEORGE WAS different from the other neighbours. He lived by the letter of the law and if you came into close conflict with him he could run you up the steps of a High Court before you knew how it happened. As far as I know he never studied law, but he knew exactly how far he could go without illegally infringing on anybody’s rights. He was meticulous in his ways. He drove into town in a pony and trap, the pony fat and well groomed, while you could see yourself in the gloss of the shining trap. He wore a dark suit and a black bowler hat and spoke in a slow, measured voice that gave one the impression that he checked every word before it passed his lips. He was not greatly liked, but he was part of the place and we accepted him for what he was, an odd old codger. Everybody kept well away from him: rather like our jennet, he was safer at a distance.

  A new Guard came to town and decided to flex his muscles with George. We could have told him that he was on a loser, but bright young men, then as now, know it all. He called on George to check on his dog licence. At that time the Guards kept a close watch on the canine population and if you were caught without a licence you were summonsed and taken to court. This young Guard asked George if he had the dog licensed and George said no, he hadn’t. The Guard cautioned George that he would be back in a week and wanted to see the licence then. A week later he was back and George gave him the same answer.

  In due course a summons arrived and George went to court. He loved going to court: maybe at heart he was an actor who loved a dramatic performance. The case was called and George was summoned to the witness box; the judge, remembering this client from previous experiences, decided to play it cool.

  “You appear to have an unlicensed dog,” he said mildly.

  “I have not,” George answered.

  “But that is the charge,” the judge said.

  “The charge is incorrect,” George announced.

  “But you do own a dog?” the judge queried in an effort to get things straight.

  “I do not own a dog.”

  “Well, who owns the dog in question then?” the judge asked.

  “My son Peter,” George answered, “owns that dog.”

  “And why is he not licensed?” the judge demanded.

  “That dog is licensed. My son Peter has got him licensed. I do not own him so I do not license him!”

  George enjoyed challenging the establishment. The priests at that time carried mighty clout, or so they thought. Every house in every townland had the Stations in their turn and it was the custom that the house due to have the Stations collected the priest’s suitcase from the house in the adjoining townland which had had the Stations the previous day. The suitcase contained the priest’s requirements for saying Mass and though this system probably originated when the priests travelled around on horseback it still continued with the arrival of the motor car. It suited the priest and nobody thought to question it: that was, until George came up against it.

  On the morning of George’s Stations everything was in readiness when the priests arrived. As was customary, the parish priest went into another room to hear confessions while the curate, who was an opinionated, middle-aged man, started to get his altar ready. He looked around questioningly for the suitcase which was usually in readiness. It was nowhere to be seen. “Where is my suitcase?” he demanded.

  Quite unperturbed, George replied, “I suppose, Father, it’s wherever you left it. That’s nobody’s business but your own.”

  From then on the priests carried their suitcases themselves.

  When George died after reaching a fine old age all the neighbours flocked to the house for the wake. His wife had died years before and his son Peter was a pleasant man who had often found his father’s approach to life a little perplexing. Wakes could often be sad occasions but George’s was almost a celebration: he was different in life so it was fitting that he should be likewise in death. After a night of storytelling and drinking, the neighbours decided to say the rosary in case it might look as if they had forgotten what brought them; Jim, who had worked with George for many years, decided to take charge. George’s sense of drama must have rubbed off on him because in order to give out the rosary he decided that he required an exalted position. He climbed up on the kitchen table where he knelt over all the others. “The man at the helm steers the ship,” he declared, and then proceeded to say the rosary in a loud, measured voice exactly like old George.

  Holiday Hens

  HOW DO YOU live to a ripe old age and still believe that this is a wonderful world and everybody in it as good as they can be? My mother never lost her faith in the goodness of human nature. If anybody wronged her she invariably excused them, reasoning that they would not have done it if there was any alternative open to them. Her simple logic often caused frustration. We had one neighbour who enjoyed a good gossip, and the juicier it was the better for telling: he believed that you should never spoil a good story for the sake of the truth. If he was really scratching the bottom of the barrel for a listener he fell back on my mother, and he always lived to regret it. No matter how startling his news, she was totally indifferent, remarking: “Never heard a word about it,” with the implication in her voice that if it had been true she would have heard it.

  “Blast it, Lena,” he’d say, “it could be on the tay bag and you wouldn’t hear it.”

  One day in desperation he dismissed her totally from his potential audience, telling her in a withering voice: “You are no company because you won’t say a bad word about anyone.”

  Despite this implicit belief in her fellow human beings she could still cut you down to size, but so gently that it might be ten minutes before the implications of what she had said would hit you. One of my sisters and I once had a long and complicated argument with her and finally were convinced that we had proved our point and totally outmanoeuvered her. She smiled innocently at us and said: “For a stupid woman, how did I have two such clever daughters?”

  My mother included all old neighbours as part of our household duties and because she was so tolerant she was often imposed on. One of her friends sent us her hens on holiday every year while she and her husband went to the seaside. Not alone did the hens come on holiday but they had to be collected by my father in the pony and crib, and this put him into a rage that lasted for the entire length of the hens’ visit. But if my father objected to the whole idea, it was nothing compared to the hens’ objection, for hens are settled creatures and do not like strange places. Neither do hens make good hosts, and our own hens made the visitors’ lives a misery and fought with them in every corner. In fact, the only one delighted with the situation was our cock. This extended harem brought new life to his flagging spirits but by the end of the month even he had had enough of this particular pursuit and was in a state of exhaustion from over-indulgence.

  Bedtime posed the biggest problem because, whatever about the cock, hens are very selective about whom they let into their beds. So, come dark, the residents retired to their hen-house while the visitors took to the trees. This might have been an ideal situation but for the wily fox, for when dawn came the foolish hens would come down off the trees and then he would strike. A loud squawking would wake the entire farmyard and out of bed we would all tumble, my father swearing vengeance on the hens and the fox and waving his gun. Total chaos reigned in the soft light of the new day. The horses objected to close gunfire at dawn and the complete bedlam woke all the other animals. Pigs, who had been sound asleep and cuddled up together comfortably, suddenly awoke with the clamour and decided that it must be much later than they thought and that they should be hungry. Hungry pigs set off a high-pitched repetitive peal which penetrates the toughest eardrums and tightens the most relaxed nerves. All hell broke loose and the culprits were, of course, the visiting hens.

  The only solution was to get them into bed, voluntarily or otherwise, every night. This could not be achieved until they had settled for the night. The spot of their choice was usually the tops of the
trees in the surrounding grove. The older and more submissive hens we had rounded up and driven into the hen-house at dusk. But a lively pullet determined to get away is not easy to pin down, so on the tree tops we had the lively young ones who had to be grounded and housed.

  When dark came and they were all settled we issued forth from the warm kitchen armed with brush handles and long sticks to poke the reluctant hens from the branches. We younger ones enjoyed the climb to the tree tops in the dark. Having grasped an unfortunate hen we sent her flapping to the ground where she was bundled up by an adult and thrust into the hen-house. This operation could take up to an hour, during which time my father cursed and swore at the hens, but not alone at them but also their owners – “Daft bastards tanning their arses in Ballybunion.”

  All this extra night-time activity took place in August at the peak of the haymaking and contributed greatly to frayed tempers on hot days in the meadow. If Dan was with us at this particular time he would announce at breakfast to all and sundry, and looking at no one in particular, that “People usually get what they deserve.” Dan had great respect for my mother and got on with her as well as his cantankerous nature allowed, but her easy-going ways sometimes drove him to distraction and he certainly blamed her for “these blasted hens” that were upsetting the whole home. After a month everybody had had more than they could take, so when the owners returned, bronzed and rested, my irate father packed their holiday hens into the crib, tackled the pony to it and brought home their charges. I often wondered how he resisted telling them what to do with their hens. But even though her calm acceptance of other people’s problems drove him to the outer regions of a nervous breakdown, he loved my mother greatly and would do nothing to hurt her family or friends. “Don’t upset the wife’s people,” was one of his favourite bits of advice.

  Open Spaces

  PAUL’S FARM STOOD on the hill across the river from our house. He had spent many years out in the Australian bush and was accustomed to the solitary life, having no desire for human companionship. His male neighbours he tolerated but women seemed to be outside the realms of his comprehension and he kept as far as possible away from them, viewing them as members of a dangerous species that threatened his safety.

  His neighbours respected his privacy and kept their distance, and if he needed help at any time he would stand on the hill outside his house and shout across the river. If trained in operatic circles his remarkable vocal cords might have brought him fortune, their volume and vocal range were so extraordinary. A neighbour almost as well endowed was Jack, who lived to the west of us, and it was not unusual for a long-range conversation to take place across the valley, and we used to listen happily to the shouted communications of what we called the Lisnasheoga telephone.

  Paul had long white hair with a matching beard and wore a loose white flannel waistcoat to his knees. In summer he peeled off his pants and went around in his white long johns. He presented a strange biblical appearance out in his meadow on a summer day. Once ever he was unfortunate enough to be taken ill and had to go into hospital. It was the small local cottage hospital where a domineering matron ruled with a rod of iron: that is, until she met Paul. For a man who had spent most of his life out under the stars, a rigid hospital bed was a new and unwelcome experience. The matron insisted, however, that the bedclothes be tucked in firmly, but as soon as her nurses had achieved this Paul whipped them out again. A battle of wits and words raged daily between Paul and this iron lady who confirmed all his worst fears about women. Finally, one day the matron herself tucked in the bedclothes so rigidly that Paul was almost strapped to the bed. In a glorious fit of pure rage he gave such a violent tug at the bedclothes that he turned the whole bed upside down. From underneath the bed poured a tirade of abusive language describing the matron in terms hitherto unheard. Paul won the battle and his bedclothes hung freely from then on: a free republican bed of defiance in a ward where absolute dictatorship was otherwise the rule of the day.

  Paul attended no Sunday services. His God was out in the fields with him and as he did not think too much of his fellow human beings, he could not see how they could be of any assistance in getting him into heaven. Our saintly old parish priest accepted Paul’s thinking but he moved to another parish and a new priest arrived who believed that conformity was the road to salvation. He rode a saddled horse and one day called on Paul. Without even showing him the courtesy of dismounting, this priest lectured him from his superior position in the saddle. Paul listened wordlessly, but when the priest hesitated in order to gauge the impact of his words, Paul raised the stout crop that he always carried and brought it down sharply on the horse’s rump. The startled horse bolted out the gate and was halfway back to town before the priest succeeded in bringing him to a halt. He had discovered that Paul might send him to heaven a lot faster than he could get Paul there.

  Paul lived to a ripe old age and despite his innate distrust of women it was one of that dreaded species, in the person of a kind cousin, who cared for him lovingly at the end of his days. One hopes that heaven has open spaces for someone like Paul, who never liked to be fenced in, or maybe his spirit is free to ramble along by the banks of the Darigle river where he herded his cattle and saved his hay.

  Back to Simplicity

  Oh, clergyman all dressed in black,

  What a mighty church is at your back.

  We are taught that by your hand

  We must be led to our promised land.

  Jesus is locked in your institutions

  Of ancient laws and resolutions,

  Buried so deep and out of sight

  That sometimes we cannot see the light,

  Behind huge walls that cost so much

  Where simple things are out of touch.

  But could it be He is not within

  These walls so thick, with love so thin?

  Does He walk on distant hills

  Where long ago He cured all ills?

  Is He gone out to open places

  To simple people, all creeds, all races.

  Is Jesus gone from off the altar

  Catching fish down by the water?

  Is He with the birds and trees,

  Gathering honey from the bees?

  Could it be in this simple way

  That God meant man to kneel and pray?

  Mrs Casey

  MRS CASEY LIVED two fields away from our house. She had never heard of Women’s Liberation but she was herself a liberated woman. She was an integral part of our lives and attended our coming and going as she laid out the dead with dignity and love, and welcomed new-born babies with open arms. Babies at that time had the luxury of being born at home, where they were welcomed not alone by parents but by grandparents, aunts, uncles and caring neighbours.

  Eight generations of our family have lived in our house and Mrs Casey was present to welcome the first of the seventh generation when my parents’ first-born arrived. Waiting with my father on the night in question were my maternal grandmother and my uncles, but when the nurse finally brought the new-born son into the kitchen, it was Mrs Casey who, with her great feeling for place and tradition, stretched out her arms and said, “Welcome to Lisnasheoga, James Nicholas!” This was no wrist-tag baby whose name was as yet open to question: this was a child whose grandfather’s name was waiting for him and whose roots in this very house stretched back through many years.

  After that first son my parents had five daughters, which Mrs Casey regarded as rather unfortunate; baby girls she accepted but did not rejoice in. Then, on a cold January night, my younger brother Connie was born. Mrs Casey had a healthy respect for the spirits of the dead and the “little people” as she called them, so, when my father called to her on his way into town for the nurse and the doctor, she lit a blessed candle and holding it high above her head she walked from her cottage to my mother’s bedside with the candle still lighting. “They came with me when I had the blessed candle,” she told my mother.

  She had a
strong, implicit faith. Once, she was very ill just before Christmas, and the doctor told her to stay in bed; however, on Christmas morning, as she afterwards told my mother, “I felt that I’d get up and go to Mass, so we tackled the black pony. When I went into the church I went to the holy water and washed my face and hands in it and the strength flowed back into me.”

  She was her own faith healer. She held nothing in awe, only the spirits of the dead and the “little people”. She was convinced that the “little people” of the fort helped our family. But it was not within the power of man or animal to frighten her. Most women find rats a frightening sight but when one made an unwelcome intrusion into her bedroom she bundled him into a towel and choked him.

  She regarded being childless as one of the worst afflictions that could befall a couple, and when this was the case with a neighbouring couple she ascribed it to the fact that when the husband went to bed he went to sleep. As a little girl I remember her making this pronouncement to my father, who was highly amused, while I was intrigued and felt that it had implications beyond my grasp. She was very tolerant of the weakness of human nature and if the first baby arrived ahead of schedule to a newly married couple she always smiled kindly and said: “Wasn’t it great to have so much done before they got married.”