An Irish Christmas Feast (20 page)

Could she but have taken a leaf out of the books of the countless wives in the neighbourhood who found themselves confronted with equally intemperate spouses she would have fared much better and there would be no need for recrimination on Christmas morning. Alas, this was not her way. She foolishly presumed that the swaying monstrosity before her was one of a kind and that a drastic dressing-down of truly lasting proportions was his only hope of salvation.

Whenever he tried to move out of ear-shot she seized him firmly by the shoulders and made him stand his ground. Drunk and incapable as he was he managed to place the table between them. For a while they played a game of cat and mouse but eventually he tired and she began a final session of ranting which had the effect of clouding his judgement such was its intensity. He did not realise that he had delivered the blow until she had fallen to the ground.

Afterwards he would argue with himself that he only meant to remove her from his path so that he could escape upstairs and find succour in the spare bedroom. She fell heavily, the blood streaming from a laceration on her cheekbone. When he attempted to help her he fell awkwardly across her and stunned himself when his forehead struck the floor. When he woke he saw that the morning's light was streaming in the window. The clock on the kitchen mantelpiece confirmed his worst fears. For the first time in his life he had missed mass. Then slowly the events of the night before began to take shape. He prayed in vain that he had experienced a nightmare, that his wife would appear any moment bouncing and cheerful from last mass. He struggled to his feet and entered his shop.

The last of the mass-goers had departed the street outside. Fearing the worst he climbed the stairs to the bedroom which they had so lovingly shared since they first married. She lay on the bed, her head propped up by bloodstained pillows, a plaster covering the gash she had suffered, her face swollen beyond belief. Shaun Baun fell on his knees at the side of the bed and sobbed his very heart out but the figure on the bed lay motionless, her unforgiving eyes fixed on the ceiling. There would be no Christmas dinner on that occasion. Contritely, all day and all night, he made sobbing visitations to the bedroom with cups of coffee and tea and other beverages but there was to be no relenting.

Three months would pass before she acknowledged his existence and three more would expire before words were exchanged. Two years in all would go unfleetingly by before it could be said that they had the semblance of a relationship. That had all been twenty-five years before and now as he walked homewards avoiding the main streets he longed to kneel before her and beg her forgiveness once more. Every so often during the course of every year in between he would ask her to forgive the unforgivable as he called it. He had never touched her in anger since that night or raised his voice or allowed his face to exhibit the semblance of a frown in her presence.

When he returned she was sitting silently by the fire. The goose, plucked and stuffed, sat on a large dish. It would be duly roasted on the morrow. As soon as he entered the kitchen he sat by her side and took her hand in his. As always, he declared his love for her and she responded, as always, by squeezing the hand which held hers. They would sit thus as they had sat since that unforgettable night so many years before. There would be no change in the pattern. They would happily recall the events of the day and they would decide upon which mass they would attend on the great holy day. She would accept the glass of sherry which he always poured for her. He would pour himself a bottle of stout and they would sip happily. They would enjoy another drink and another and then they would sit quietly for a while. Then as always the sobbing would begin. It would come from deep within him. He would kneel in front of her with his head buried in her lap and every so often, between great heaving sobs, he would tell her how sorry he was. She would nod and smile and place her hands around his head and then he would raise the head and look into her eyes and ask her forgiveness as he had been doing for so many years.

‘I forgive you dear,' she would reassure him and he would sob all the more. She would never hurt him. She could not find it in her heart to do that. He was a good man if a hotheaded one and he had made up for that moment of madness many times over. All through the night she would dutifully comfort him by accepting his every expression of atonement. She always thought of her father on such occasions. He had never raised his voice to her or to her mother. He had been drunk on many an occasion, notably weddings and christenings, but all he ever did was to lift her mother or herself in his arms. She was glad that she was able to forgive her husband but there was forgiveness and forgiveness and hers was the kind that would never let her forget. Her husband would never know the difference. She would always be there when he needed her, especially at Christmas.

One of my fondest memories of Christmas is a whistling milkman now passed on to that sweet clime where whistle the gentle winds of heaven. He would whistle louder, longer and sweeter at Christmas than at any other time of the year.

He must have been sixty when I first heard him of a Christmas morning many years ago. He was a curly-haired, chubby-faced fellow who looked only thirty years old, although in reality he was double that age. He was that kind of person. Age, it would seem, made no impression on him.

Without doubt his fountain of youth was his whistling. First thing in the morning after the cocks had crowed and the last of the crows flown countrywards his exhilarating serenading could be heard clearly for long distances as he cycled upon his rounds.

What a happy man he must have been! He never whistled a drab melody. He excelled most of all at the stirring march and he would generously empty his heart to all and sundry at no charge whatsoever. Romantic airs were meat and drink to him and he would give his all in an effort to strum the sweet chords of love which lie dormant in so many people.

Dour veterans of the marital confrontation would relent and turn in their beds to celebrate sweet sessions of amorous rapture and all because of his incidental input. No nightingale ever sang so sweetly as he. No skylark ever plumbed the soulful depths for sensitive melody. The early morning, ushered in by the waning stars, was merely the backdrop for his princely renditions.

He contributed more to the rescue of foundering marriages than any human intermediary could ever hope to. It often seemed that he was especially transported from some heavenly sphere for no other purpose than the upraising of downcast hearts. Even his lightweight warblings would fritter away depressions and lift up the human spirit to its loftiest pinnacles.

Surely the pipings of that yesterday milkman had their origins in heaven although it was the orifice of his contracting lips that modulated and measured the bewitching torrent of empyrean sonority which charmed and delighted all those who happened to be within earshot. There wasn't a child in the street who did not try to emulate that dear, departed milkman.

I remember once of an icy morning before Christmas he fell from his rickety bicycle, spilling the contents of both his pails and breaking two front teeth into the bargain. His lips, poor fellow, were brutally lacerated. The tears formed in his eyes as he witnessed the streams of freshly drawn milk coursing irredeemably to the nearest channel but how quickly did he transform misfortune into triumph.

Supporting himself on his right knee and placing his left hand over his breast he pursed his shattered lips, oblivious to the agonising pain. Then extending his right hand to his unseen public he gave the performance of his life. Long before had he finished, the under-employed lips of couples in that once dreary street were never so utilised in the pursuit of loving fulfilment. For the listening lovers in the silent houses it was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. Some had never even dreamed of aspiring to such unprecedented ecstasies. Many had waited a score of Christmases for such a development.

If only the world and its people could wait long enough everybody would eventually be kissed by someone, be loved by someone.

This piece is just an informal salute to Christmas and to the memory of a forgotten milkman who made life more harmonious on a far-off Christmas morning for those within his round.

This is the story of the good corner boy. As stories go it is as true as any. To some it may seem improbable but I can counter this by stating that most true stories seem that way anyway. Enough, however, of the preamble. Let us proceed without further ado.

On 20 December 1971, Madgie Crane withdrew some of her savings from the bank. A tidy sum was involved: two hundred pounds no less, but then as she might say herself she had many calls. There were sons and daughters and grandchildren. There were neighbours and there were friends and relations. Of husbands she had none. There had been one but he had passed on some years before and she had come to terms with her grief in the course of time.

As she turned the corner which would take her to the post office she bumped accidentally into another woman who chanced to be returning from the same venue. As a result Madgie Crane's purse jumped from the grocery bag where it had been securely wedged between a cabbage and a half-pound of rashers. It landed at the feet of the corner boy in residence and that worthy immediately fenced it between his waiting boots where no trace of it remained visible to the searching eye.

The minutes passed but no move did our corner boy make. He looked hither and thither from time to time but if there had never been a purse between his feet he would have looked hither and thither anyway and he would have looked up and down anyway but he would never have bent to tie his shoes for in all the years that I have spent studying corner boys I never saw one bend to tie his shoes.

As he pretended to look after his laces his delicate fingers quickly opened the purse and his drowsy eyes looked inside. Two hundred pounds if there was a penny! Deftly he flicked the purse up the loose sleeve of his faded raincoat and rose to his feet. Even if somebody had been watching, and he was sure that nobody had, his actions could not possibly convey anything of a disingenuous nature.

It was no more than a formality to insert his hands into his trousers' pockets with the purse still up his sleeve. A gentle shake of the sleeve in question and the purse fell downwards into the waiting pocket. It was precisely at that moment that he was addressed by Madgie Crane. There was a tear in her eye and a quiver in her voice.

‘I suppose,' she opened tremulously, ‘you saw no sign of a purse.'

No answer came from the seemingly mystified corner boy. It was as though she had spoken in a strange tongue.

‘Every penny I had was inside in it,' she continued.

Still no response from the resident corner boy. He blew his nose and he looked hither and thither. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and he looked secondly at Madgie Crane. He noted the weariness and the confusion and he watched without change of expression as the tears became more copious. Her brimming eyes discharged them aplenty down the sides of her withered face. His hand tightened on the swollen purse and he inclined his head towards the channel which ran parallel to the pavement.

Hard as he would try afterwards he would never be able to explain why he did what he did because he needed money at that point in his life as he had never needed money before. He needed it for his widowed sister with whom he lodged and he needed it for her children whom he loved and he needed it to pay his bills. He needed it so that he might embark on a comprehensive drunk for a day or two for he believed that this was his entitlement because of the season that was in it.

Having inclined his head towards a particular spot in the channel he moved swiftly in that direction and pretended to retrieve the purse. Lifting it aloft he enquired of Madgie Crane if this indeed was the missing article. Madgie chortled with delight and clapped her dumpling hands together soundlessly. She stood on her toes for the first time in twenty years and graciously accepted her property from the hands of her benefactor.

She opened the purse and she proceeded to count her money. Never was there such an assiduous reckoning and never did anyone count so little for so long. Assuring herself that every note was present and correct she instituted a second count and finally, when that was satisfactorily concluded, she started a third count. It was during the middle of this count that she moved off in the direction of the post office where she had deposited her grocery bag with an obliging clerk.

The corner boy stood amazed. He had been stunned and shocked many times in his life but he had never been amazed. It was a strange and unnerving experience for a man of his years. A giddiness assailed him and he collapsed in an ungainly heap at the corner where he had stood rocklike for so long.

A half hour later he woke up in a nearby public house just as an ambulance arrived on the scene. He refused all forms of aid and was told that a doctor was on the way. He declined the publican's offer to wait in the snug but he did not decline the medicinal brandy tendered to him by the publican's wife. Exactly forty-five minutes after his collapse he returned to his corner and took up his usual position.

Word of his good deed spread and the community was shocked to learn that he had received nothing by way of reward from Madgie. No wonder he fainted, some said, and he was right to faint, more said. An ad hoc committee was formed and a collection made. It amounted to eleven pounds two shillings and seven pence half-penny. He wrapped it in his handkerchief and instructed a neighbour who chanced to be passing to deliver it to his sister. For the rest of the day, because it was Christmas time, he answered all queries from passers-by, directing strangers to the post office, the banks and the churches, often accompanying them to the extremes of his bailiwick and imparting his blessing on all. Also because it was Christmas he led the old and the feeble across the busy roadway, cautioning them to alert him whenever they wished to cross back again. Only at Christmas do corner boys involve themselves in the activities around them.

Then a second giddiness assailed him but this time it was accompanied by a sharp pain in the chest. He fell to the pavement where he immediately expired. When word of his passing spread, all who knew him agreed he had been a good corner boy. He never scolded children and he was the last refuge of wandering tomcats who took shelter behind him at night when cross canines might tear them asunder. He was devoted to his corner. Those who knew him would testify that he lived for nothing else and that it was because of his corner he never married.

When drunkards fought or scuffled on their way homewards he never interfered, thereby assuring the impoverished and the curious of free entertainment, unlike others who spoiled the fun by coming between the contestants. His corner would never be the same again nor would we look upon his likes again. Truly it could be said that he died at his post and surely it would be right and fitting to call him the good corner boy.