An Irish Christmas Feast (19 page)

The village of Ballyfurane consisted of one long main street and two small side streets. The windows of the small shops along the main thoroughfare were decorated with holly and ivy. Some boasted tinsel and fairy lights and a few sported homemade cribs representing the nativity.

With Christmas approaching there was an air of mild anticipation. Shoppers were plentiful and business, if not brisk, was reasonably good, which was just about as good as anybody could expect in a small place like Ballyfurane.

When the Angelus bell tolled in memory of the Incarnation, as it did every day at twelve noon, Badger MacMew found himself standing at the quietest of the village's four street corners. His hands were thrust deep into his trousers pockets and there was a faraway look on his unshaven face. He was, however, far from despondent. He had, but a bare five minutes before, delivered a bundle of high-quality kindling to Mary Agge Lehone and she had actually allowed her fingers to rest briefly on the back of his hand by way of appreciation. With recollection he concluded that it would be fairer to say her fingers brushed the back of his hand. Still it was a handsome advance on the smiles with which she had previously rewarded him.

As he looked into the distance he beheld for the first time the high-clamped rail of turf drawn by the black mare, guided by a turfman he had never seen before. He withdrew his hands slowly from his pockets and proceeded in a rambling fashion towards the oncoming transport. The Badger was possessed of the natural curiosity of all villagers everywhere except that in his personal case he was a curious fellow by nature and liked to know at all times what was happening in his bailiwick. As he drew near he was surprised when the mare drew to a halt at the behest of the turfman.

‘Excuse me sir!' the turfman respectfully addressed himself to the Badger. ‘I am looking for the premises of Danny Sagru.'

The Badger did not answer at once. The proprietor of the sought after premises was safely out of town and would not be back for some time, probably nightfall since he was partial to strong drink whenever he encountered fellow-members of the cattle-jobbing confraternity.

‘Follow me.' The Badger turned on his heels and led the way to the by-way at the rear of the main street. He kept a distance of forty yards between himself and the turfman and he walked along the pavements rather than the roadway so that it might be clearly seen that the turfman and he had no connection with each other. Firstly he led the turfman to a lane-way at the back of which was a by-way which would take them albeit circuituously to the backway behind the main street where the many lookalike turf sheds stood side by side. The backway was deserted save for a neighbourhood tomcat who sat on the roof of a shed and took no interest in the proceedings beneath him. In the backway the Badger slowed his gait so that the turfman might catch up with him.

‘This is the shed.' He indicated the rickety structure at the rear of Mary Agge Lehone's small shop. ‘I'll open the door for you and you can heel it in.'

In no time at all the rail was empty and the turfman on his way homewards by an altogether different egress, indicated by the Badger. It was an egress which would lead him to a little-used boreen which would lead him past the village and on to the main route to his hilly abode. Later that evening he and his wife and family would invest the turf money in their Christmas shopping and a happy and holy Christmas would be had by all.

As soon as the turfman had departed the Badger took it upon himself to call upon Mary Agge. A beaming smile was the essence of her greeting as soon as he entered. They stood there without exchange of words or the need for exchange of words.

‘You will find,' the Badger said after a short while, ‘a little Christmas gift in your shed and I hope it brings you the warmth and comfort you so richly deserve.'

With that he departed and did not appear on the street again until Christmas Eve. It was nightfall as he walked past her door and at first he thought that the sounds he heard as he went by were the chortlings of a dove but no, it was Mary Agge calling his name, gently ever so gently and but barely discernible even though the street was still. When he entered she closed the door behind them and led the way to the small kitchen where a glowing fire spread heat from the hearth.

‘You'll have a drop of whiskey,' she said with a smile, ‘and so will I,' and so they did and she invited him back the following day for his Christmas dinner and there was no word from Danny Sagru about his missing turf for he was vain in the extreme and would never give it to say that he had been taken down. It would never occur to him, in a score of years, that the Badger had diverted the turf and that Mary Agge Lehone had burned it.

Indeed the Badger and Mary Agge shared all their Christmas dinners thereafter but not as friends or lovers or anything like that but as man and wife and there need be no worries about their living happily ever after because that was exactly what they did.

Polly Baun did not hate Christmas as some of her more uncharitable neighbours would have people believe. She merely disliked it. She was once accused by a local drunkard of trying to call a halt to Christmas. She was on her way out of church at the time and the drunkard, who celebrated his own form of mass by criticising the sermon while he leaned against the outside wall of the church, was seen to push her on the back as she passed the spot where he leaned. As a result Polly Baun fell forward and was rendered immobile for a week. She told her husband that she had slipped on a banana skin because he was a short-tempered chap. However, he found out from another drunkard who frequented the same tavern that Polly had been pushed. When he confronted her with his findings she reluctantly conceded that the second drunkard had been telling the truth.

‘You won't do anything rash!' she beseeched him.

‘I won't do anything rash,' Shaun Baun promised, ‘but you will have to agree that this man's energies must be directed in another direction. I mean we can't have him pushing women to the ground because he disagrees with their views. I mean,' he continued in what he believed to be a reasonable tone, ‘if this sort of thing is allowed to go on unchecked no woman will be safe.'

‘It doesn't worry me in the least,' Polly assured him.

‘That may be,' he returned, ‘but the fact of the matter is that no woman deserves to be pushed to the ground.'

Polly decided that the time had come to terminate the conversation. It was leading nowhere to begin with and she was afraid she might say something that would infuriate her husband. He flew off the handle easily but generally he would return to his normal state of complacency after a few brief moments.

As Christmas approached, the street shed its everyday look and donned the finery of the season. Polly Baun made one of her few concessions to Christmas by buying a goose. It was a young goose, small but plump and, most importantly, purchased from an accredited goose breeder. It would suit the two of them nicely. There were no children and there would be no Christmas guests and Polly who was of a thrifty disposition judged that there would also be enough for St Stephen's Day. She did not need to be thrifty. The hat shop behind which they lived did a tidy business. The tiny kitchen at the rear of the shop served a threefold purpose all told. As well as being a kitchen it was also a dining area and sitting-room. They might have added on but Polly failed to see the need for this. She was content with what she had and she felt that one of the chief problems with the world was that people did not know when they were well off.

‘They should be on their knees all day thanking God,' she would tell her husband when he brought news of malcontents who lived only to whine.

Shaun Baun sought out and isolated his wife's attacker one wet night a week before Christmas. The scoundrel was in the habit of taking a turn around the town before retiring to the pub for the evening. Shaun did not want to take advantage of him while he might be in his cups and besides he wanted him sober enough to fully understand the enormity of his transgressions.

‘You sir!' Shaun addressed his victim in a secluded side street, ‘are not a gentleman and neither are you any other kind of man. You knocked my wife to the ground and did not bother to go to her assistance.'

‘I was drunk,' came back the reply.

‘Being drunk is not sufficient justification for pushing a woman to the ground.'

‘I was told,' the drunkard's voice was filled with fear, ‘that she hates Christmas.'

‘That is not sufficient justification either,' Shaun Baun insisted. The drunkard began to back off as Shaun assumed a fighting pose.

‘Before I clobber you,' Shaun Baun announced grimly, ‘I feel obliged to correct a mistaken impression you have. My wife does not hate Christmas as you would infer. My wife simply discourages Christmas which is an entirely different matter.' So saying Shaun feinted, snorted, shuffled and finally landed a nose-breaking blow which saw the drunkard fall to the ground with a cry of pain. At once Shaun Baun extended a helping hand and brought him to his feet where he assured him that full retribution had been extracted and that the matter was closed.

‘However,' Shaun Baun drew himself up to his full height which was five feet one and a half inches, ‘if you so much as look at my wife from this day forth I will break both your legs.'

The drunkard nodded his head eagerly, earnestly indicating that he had taken the warning to heart. He would, in the course of time, intimidate other women but he would never thereafter have anything to do with Polly Baun. For her part Polly would never know that an assault had taken place. Shaun would never tell her. She would only disapprove. She would continue to discourage Christmas as was her wont and, with this in mind, she decided to remove all the chairs from the kitchen and place them in the backyard until Christmas had run its course. If, she quite rightly deduced, there were no chairs for those who made Christmas visits they would not be able to sit down and, therefore, their visits would be of short duration.

On the day before Christmas Eve the hat shop was busy. Occasionally when a purchase was made the wearer would first defer to Polly's judgement. This, of course, necessitated a trip to the kitchen. The practice had been in existence for years. Countrymen in particular and confirmed bachelors would make the short trip to the kitchen to have their hats or caps inspected. On getting the nod from Polly they would return to the shop and pay Shaun for their purchases. Sometimes Polly would disapprove of the colour and other times she would disapprove of the shape. There were times when she would shake her head because of the hat's size or because of its rim or because of its crown. Shaun's trade flourished because his customers were satisfied and the shy ones and the retiring ones and the irresolute ones left the premises safe in the knowledge that they would not be laughed at because of their choice of headgear.

As time passed and it became clear that the union would not be blessed with children Polly became known as the woman who hated Christmas. Nobody would ever say it to her face and certainly nobody would say it to her husband's face. It must be said on behalf of the community that none took real exception to her stance. They were well used to Christmas attitudes. There was a tradesman who resided in the suburbs and every year about a week before Christmas he would disappear into the countryside where he rented a small cabin until Christmas was over. He had nothing personal against Christmas and had said so publicly on numerous occasions. It was just that he couldn't stand the build-up to Christmas what with the decorations and the lighting and the cards and the shopping and the gluttony, to mention but a few of his grievances.

There was another gentleman who locked his door on Christmas Eve and did not open it for a month. Some say he simply hibernated and when he reappeared on the street after the prescribed period he looked as if he had. He was unshaven and his hair was tousled and his face was gaunt as a corpse's and there were black circles under his eyes.

Then there were those who would go off the drink for Christmas just because everybody else was going on. And there were those who would not countenance seasonal fare such as turkeys or geese or plum pudding or spiced beef. One man said he would rather an egg and another insisted that those who consumed fowl would have tainted innards for the rest of their days.

There were, therefore, abundant precedents for attitudes like Polly Baun's. There were those who would excuse her on the grounds that maybe she had a good and secret reason to hate Christmas but mostly they would accept what Shaun said, that she simply discouraged it.

There had been occasions when small children would come to the door of the kitchen while their parents searched for suitable hats. The knowing ones would point to where the silhouette of the woman who hated Christmas was visible through the stained glass of the doorway which led from the shop to the kitchen. One might whisper to the others as he pointed inwards, ‘that's the woman who hates Christmas!' If Polly heard, she never reacted. Sometimes in the streets, during the days before Christmas, she would find herself the object of curious stares from shoppers who had just been informed of her pet aversion by friends or relations. If she noticed she gave no indication.

Shaun Baun also felt the seasonal undercurrents when he visited his neighbourhood tavern during the Christmas festivities. He drank but little, a few glasses of stout with a friend but never whiskey. He had once been a prodigious whiskey drinker and then all of a sudden he gave up whiskey altogether and never indulged again. No one knew why, not even his closest friends. There was no explanation. One night he went home full of whiskey and the next night he drank none. There was the inevitable speculation but the truth would never be known and his friends, all too well aware of his fiery temper, did not pursue the matter. Neither did they raise the question of his wife's Christmas disposition except when his back was turned but like most of the community they did not consider it to be of any great significance. There was, of course, a reason for it. There had to be if one accepted the premise that there was a reason for everything.

On Christmas Eve there was much merriment and goodwill in the tavern. Another of Shaun Baun's cronies had given up whiskey on his doctor's instructions and presumed wrongly that this might well have been the reason why Shaun had forsaken the stuff. Courteously but firmly Shaun informed him that his giving up whiskey had nothing to do with doctors, that it was a purely personal decision. The night was spoiled for Shaun. Rather than betray his true feelings on such an occasion he slipped away early and walked as far as the outermost suburbs of the town, then turned and made his way homewards at a brisk pace. Nobody could be blamed for thinking that here was a busy shopkeeper availing himself of the rarer airs of the night whereas the truth was that his mind was in turmoil, all brought on by the reference to whiskey in the public house. Nobody knew better than Shaun why he had given up whiskey unless it was his wife.

As he walked he clenched and unclenched his fists and cursed the day that he had ever tasted whiskey. He remembered striking her and he remembered why and as he did he stopped and threw his arms upwards into the night and sobbed as he always sobbed whenever he found himself unable to drive the dreadful memory away. He remembered how he had been drinking since the early afternoon on that fateful occasion. Every time he sold a hat he would dash across the roadway to the pub with the purchaser in tow. He reckoned afterwards that he had never consumed so much whiskey in so short a time. When he closed the shop he announced that he was going straight to the public house and this despite his wife's protestations. She begged him to eat something. She lovingly entreated him not to drink any more whiskey, to indulge in beer or stout, and he agreed and kissed her and then hurried off to surfeit himself with more whiskey. He would later excuse himself on the grounds that he was young and impetuous but he would never be able to excuse the use of his fist in that awful moment which would haunt him for the rest of his life. An oncoming pedestrian moved swiftly on to the road-way at the sight of the gesticulating creature who seemed to rant and rave as he approached. Shaun moved relentlessly onward, trying to dispel the memory of what had been the worst moment he had ever experienced but he still remembered as though it had happened only the day before.

He had left the pub with several companions and they had gone on to an after-hours establishment where they exceeded themselves. Shaun had come home at seven o'clock in the morning. He searched in vain for his key but it was nowhere to be found. He turned out his pockets but the exercise yielded nothing. Then he did what his likes had been doing since the first key had been mislaid. He knocked gently upon the front window with his knuckles and when this failed to elicit a response he located a coin and used it to beat a subdued tattoo on the fanlight and when this failed he pounded upon the door.

At length the door was opened to him and closed behind him by his dressing-gowned, bedroom-slippered wife. It took little by way of skill to evade his drunken embrace. She passed him easily in the shop and awaited him with folded arms in the kitchen.

A wiser woman would have ushered him upstairs, bedded him safely down and suspended any verbal onslaught until a more favourable time. She did not know so early in her married days that the most futile of all wifely exercises is arguing with a drunken husband.

She began by asking him if he saw the state of himself, which was a pointless question to begin with. She asked him in short order if he knew the hour of the morning it was and was he aware of the fact that he was expected to accompany her to mass in a few short hours. He stood silently, hands and head hanging, unable to muster a reply. All he wished for was his bed; even the floor would have satisfied him but she had only begun. She outlined for him all the trouble he had caused her in their three years of marriage, his drinking habits, his bouts of sickness after the excesses of the pub, his intemperate language and, worst of all, the spectacle he made of himself in front of the neighbours. Nothing remarkable here, the gentle reader would be sure to say, familiar enough stuff and common to such occasions in the so-called civilised countries of the world but let me stress that it was not the quality of her broadsides but the quantity. She went on and on and on and it became clear that she should have vented her ire piecemeal over the three years rather than hoard it all for one sustained outburst.

Afterwards Shaun Baun would say that he did what he did to shut out the noise. If there had been lulls now and then he might have borne it all with more patience but she simply never let up. On the few occasions that he nodded off she shouted into the more convenient ear so that he would splutter into immediate if drunken wakefulness. Finally, the whole business became unbearable. Her voice had reached its highest pitch since the onslaught began and she even grew surprised at the frenzy of her own outpourings.