An Irish Christmas Feast (11 page)

‘Attention!' he called sharply. Immediately the wrenboys sprung to attention. They were, in a sense, uniformed men and was not the man who had barked the order also in uniform. Uniform is as uniform does and those who are bound must obey!

Furthermore, was not this man's uniform provided by the state and was not the state the highest authority. They stood, therefore, awaiting further orders and never, it must be truthfully said, did two out of place, out of time wrenboys need orders so badly.

The postman, wheeling his bicycle at his side, circled the elderly pair as though he were inspecting a guard of honour. He noted the stubble on the jaws and shook his head sadly at such a lapse in standards. He noted the stale odour of intoxicating liquor and the untied flies and the rakish tilt of the caps and the mud on the shoes and all the other things that an old campaigner bemoans as he conducts his tour of inspection.

‘At ease!' The order was given in a lighthearted manner and, explicitly, there came across the message that he was, difficult as it might be to believe, once a wrenboy himself. Who was to say, in fact, that he had not arrived late on the scene on some far-off occasion! He made a final circle around the now relaxed wrenboys, hummed and hawed a few times and asked who was the cashier.

The
bodhrán
player indicated that he filled such a post. Without a word the postman swept the cap from the
bodhrán
player's head and, allowing his bike to fall to the ground, thrust a hand into his trousers' pocket, located a sixpenny piece and dropped it into the cap. Then he moved among the many women who had gathered to agonise over the plight of the oldsters. Pence, threepenny pieces, sixpenny pieces and even a shilling were willingly contributed before the postman ran out of subscribers.

‘Now,' said he as he handed back the jingling cap to its rightful owner, ‘you will strike up a tune and you will march proudly with heads held high right into the very heart of the town and remember that a good wrenboy, like a good man, is never late.'

The tune, a rousing one, was forthcoming at once. The wrenboys drew themselves up to their full heights.

‘By the left quick march,' came the curt command from the postman. Sprightly and in step the wrenboys marched off in tune with the music.

‘Remember,' the postman called after them, ‘once a wrenboy always a wrenboy according to the order of MacMoolamawn.'

‘The order of MacMoolamawn!' they echoed the name, not knowing that MacMoolamawn was the first wrenboy of all the wrenboys. The postman mounted his bicycle and cycled outward with his bag of letters and satchel of stout.

I forget my exact age during the Christmas in question but I must have been at least seventeen for, dare I say it gentle reader, I was greatly addicted to cider and foolishly believed that I could drink any amount of it. Addicted though I was I drank it but rarely and always discreetly. My father had his suspicions but he never caught me in the act and always I made sure to steal into bed when I was intoxicated. With companions of my own age I would indulge in secret sessions on certain feast days and holy days about five times a year in all and once at Christmas. That would have been the Christmas I saw and heard the banshee.

The banshee was heard only when a person with an O or a Mac in the surname passed away. Originally my family were O'Kanes and none was surer than myself that this plaintive and panic-inducing apparition would not be duped by the minor deviation in name.

I had heard the banshee in the past. We would be sitting by the fire late at night, my mother darning socks, my father reading the newspaper of the day and we, the children, readying ourselves for bed.

‘Hush!' my mother would suddenly raise a hand for absolute silence. In moments the requisite hush would have descended and then, fully alerted, we would wait for the inevitable with looks of alarm on our faces. From afar would come the supernatural wailing, spine-chilling and pitiful, not belonging to this world. My mother would make the sign of the cross while we all followed suit except my father.

‘Another poor soul on its way to the great beyond,' my mother would whisper.

‘Another sex-starved greyhound,' my father would announce with a good-humoured shake of his head.

Time rolled on and the family grew. One month I would be five feet six and by the end of the following month I would be five feet seven. It was growing time. By the time Christmas arrived I was five feet ten inches and rapidly heading for six feet.

It had been agreed that my father, my mother and the girls would assemble in the kitchen at eleven-thirty so that all would be in time for midnight mass at the church of St Mary's. Earlier we had partaken of lemonade and biscuits in honour of the season. After the turkey had been trussed and stuffed in readiness for Christmas Day my father was declared exempt from further involvement in the household chores. He headed at once for the neighbourhood pub where most of his cronies would already have ensconced themselves. For days before I had strenuously argued that I had grown too old to be a part of the familistic excursion to the church reminding my parents of my great age and height and pointing out that all my friends had received permission to attend mass on their own or with their chosen companions.

My sisters took my part but my father was adamant saying it had come to his ears that the teenagers of the parish were more interested in cider and porter than in the pursuance of their Christmas duties. In the end he relented but only when my mother forcibly reminded him that he had been young himself.

‘Very well so,' I remember his words well as he clasped his hands behind his back, ‘but if it comes to my attention that you place the consumption of cider before the fulfilment of your religious duties I will confine you to your room for twenty-four hours, without recourse to appeal, and in addition I will kick your posterior so hard that your front teeth will fall out as a result.'

‘Cider!' I spat out the word disdainfully as though it were the last thought in my head.

Two hours before midnight I slipped out of the house by the back door and joined my friends in Moorey's public house. The only light in the tiny bar was from a flickering candle. The limbs of the law were abroad on public house duty and Moorey spoke in whispers.

‘Happy Christmas!' he said and handed me a pint of cider on the house.

Moorey was old as the hills, grey as a slate, ribald, randy and irreligious but he was a generous soul and no other publican in town would serve us for fear of reprisals from parents and the custodians of the peace. Despite this my mother and the other matrons of the street liked him. They had known his late wife. He had apparently loved her dearly and had always shown it in his treatment of her while she was alive. He had not remarried although she had been dead for thirty years. Every Sunday he would place fresh flowers on her grave. Like ourselves he was addicted to cider with the difference that he would lace his pints with dollops of whiskey and yet we never saw him drunk. Sometimes there would be the barest suggestion of a lurch but nothing remotely resembling the phenomenal staggers executed by seemingly indestructible drunkards when the pubs were closed for the night.

While we sat quietly drinking pint after pint of cider we spoke for the most part about girls, sometimes maliciously and sometimes boastfully which is the way of youth.

As the midnight hour drew near we could hear the hurrying footsteps outside the window as young and old made their way to midnight mass. As if by common consent there was no conversation, no laughter, none of the raucous cries one associates with crowds or noisy clatter of boots and shoes. Such was the love and respect for the celebratory season that unnecessary noises were regarded in the same light as profanities.

At ten minutes to twelve Moorey announced that it was time to go. At such an hour, on any other night of the year, the session would only be starting but as Moorey explained gently: ‘Because of the night that's in it boys I think it's time to douse the candle.'

We finished our pints in the pitch dark promising to meet again on St Stephen's night. In turn we shook hands with Moorey and extended to him the compliments of season. Outside on the street only the stragglers remained.

We had earlier decided against mass for a number of reasons; if our parents saw us they would immediately recognise our state of intoxication. Then there was the possibility that one or more of us would be nauseated by the heat of the church and the burning incense, which could well bring on a fit of vomiting. Then there was the most important factor of all and that was the likelihood that one or more of us would be obliged to lessen the strain on brimming bladders and to do this it would be necessary to stand up in the full view of the congregation and make one's way to the end of one's pew and thence up the long aisle under the suspicious stares of friends, neighbours, parents and strangers. Many would smirk knowingly, aware of our plight and destination, which would of necessity be the convenient back wall of the holy sanctuary which was attached to the rear of the church. Our parents, of course, would be infuriated, knowing full well that we would have to be truly cider-smitten to run such a gauntlet!

We went our separate ways with none of the boisterous farewells in which we would indulge on less devotional occasions. At home the kitchen was strangely silent. On the mantelpiece the clock, unheard throughout the day, was having its full say at last. A burned-out turf sod crumbled softly into the overflowing ash-pan of the Stanley Number 8.

I suddenly felt a profound longing for the girls and for my parents. Supposing they never came back! I dismissed the terrible thought and counted the twelve intrusions which introduced the midnight hour. The final chime extended itself to the ultimate limits where silence lay waiting to receive its spirit. Then, from the rear of the house, came a long, low, wailing sound which made the hairs stand to attention on that area of the head nearest to my forehead. I had known these hairs all my life and I can swear that they never behaved in such a fashion before. While I waited for them to resume their normal stance there came, stealing through the partly opened back door of the kitchen, the same wailing sound. My hairs remained alert while my heart raced and my whole frame shivered. Suddenly I grew less tense. This new state was no doubt induced by a mixture of cider and youthful bravado!

The wailing started again, this time more protracted and pitiful, as though the soul of the voice box from which it originated had been recently drowned in the unfathomable depths of black despair.

Again my heart raced and the hairs already standing were joined by their brethren from every quarter of the head. Such was their consistency that they would have served as a bed of nails for a novice fakir. Only the wailing of the banshee could stiffen human hairs to such a degree.

Then, for the first time in my entire life, my knees knocked and I was obliged to place my hands on the table for support. There came almost immediately a sustained high-pitched pillalooing of such intensity that I was obliged to stuff my fingers in my ears lest my hearing be permanently damaged. It was as though the ghostly proprietress of such unearthly vocal organs was endeavouring to reach notes never attained before. Their pitch seemed to far exceed the range of the most accomplished soprano and then, unexpectedly, came a collapsing and a crumbling followed by a mixture of base trebles and last of all by the most musical grunts and groans imaginable as though the banshee in question was about to give birth.

Emboldened by the cider I cautiously made my way into our back yard. The sickle moon shone fitfully, its pale glow frequently impaired by heedless clouds. Slowly I advanced towards the back door of the out-house where the winter's supply of turf was stored.

I had frequently heard of the silence of the grave when older folk spoke reverently of the dead and such indeed was the silence of the out-house at that point in time on that unforgettable night. I was not prepared for what happened next. I was standing close to the rickety door straining my ears for tell-tale sounds when I head the uneven breathing of some creature in the immediate vicinity of the door's exterior. On second thoughts, panting might be a more apt word. Then came a horrifying caterwauling as terrifying as it was unexpected. It exploded right into my ear which was pressed against the door. I was paralysed, my feet like hundred-weights of lead, my heart thumping as though, at any minute, it would burst through the walls of my chest. I would have taken off that instant but my legs refused to budge. I was tied down by my own terror. I prayed silently to the Blessed Virgin.

‘Mother of the Sacred Jesus,' I whispered imploringly, ‘come to my aid this night.'

Suddenly my natural courage, scant as it was, surfaced and with a mighty roar I opened the door. The creature tumbled in on top of me and we both fell in a heap astride the turf sods scattered around the floor. She persisted with her lamentations as she lay on the ground writhing and kicking out in torment.

It was as much as I could do to get to my feet. When I did I fell a second time on top of the black-shawled creature from the spirit world. I had accidentally stood on a turf sod which spun beneath my foot, capsizing me. This time I rolled over on my side in a desperate effort to escape the clutches of the hideous creature with the overpowering smell.

At that moment a wayward moon shaft entered the out-house through its only window and highlighted the features of the awful apparition which would surely tear my eyes out if she could but lay her filthy talons on me.

The moon shaft rested for a moment on the bloodshot eyes before drifting downwards to the almost toothless mouth, redeemed from emptiness by the presence of a solitary black fang from which venom dripped as she tried in vain to smite me.

In anguish I cried out to the heavens for help and the heavens in their mercy answered. I dived through the out-house window and into the back yard where my head struck a stone so that I was rendered half unconscious.

Fuming and screaming and uttering unmentionable maledictions she towered over me. A number of small bones materialised in her grimy paws. These she flung at me with all her might but most whizzed harmlessly by. One struck me just above the eye. There was no doubt about its origin. It was a human finger bone as were the others which lay scattered about the back yard.

I managed to crawl away from her towards the door of the kitchen. Curiously she made no attempt to follow me. On all fours, like a wounded animal, I made for the sanctuary of the kitchen.

I bolted the door behind me and ran up the stairs to bed where I pulled the clothes over my head without disrobing. I lay there shaking and moaning, beseeching the Blessed Mother of God to succour and comfort me.

After a while I slunk from the bed to the window which commanded a full view of the back yard and out-house. The moon had just unloaded a cargo of ghastly light. There was no sign of the banshee.

Making the Sign of the Cross I returned to my bed and promptly fell asleep. No doubt the shock of the night's happenings played a part in my sudden collapse into deep slumber. The next sound I heard was my mother's voice calling me in the half light of the morning.

‘Hurry!' she was saying, ‘and you'll just be on time for ten o'clock mass.'

I lay on my bed fervently wishing that I had not consumed so much of Moorey's cider. It was only then that the awful happenings of the night came flooding back. I hurried downstairs. My father sat at the head of the table smoking his pipe. He threw me a withering look before the commencement of his interrogation.

Before he had time to pose a single question I blurted out my story. Horrified, my poor mother clutched her bosom and flopped into the chair which my father had instantly provided lest she fall on the floor. As I revealed the full details of my horrific encounter my mother's face grew paler and paler. My father puffed upon his pipe at a furious rate. There was a cloud of blue smoke underhanging the ceiling by the time I finished.

‘The banshee you say!' My father emptied the bowl of his pipe into the ash-pan of the Stanley.

‘Without question,' I replied as we both waited for my mother to stop shaking her head. The shaking was accompanied by the most holy of spiritual aspirations, all directed upwards in thanksgiving for my salvation.

My father sighed deeply which meant that he was also thinking deeply. Without another word he filled his pipe while I waited for his verdict. There was none forthcoming. Instead he rose without a word and went into the back yard where he spent a considerable time. When he returned his hands were clasped behind his back.