An Irish Christmas Feast (29 page)

She felt no sorrow for Wally. He was after all the twin brother of the man who had forsaken her and what sort of witless weakling was he, she asked herself, that couldn't hold on to his plain Jane of a wife! She had little sympathy for Maisie Hern either. She found her guilty by association. By dint of hard work she would erase the memory of her husband. By ploughing a lone furrow she would become independent of him until one day he would cease to be an impression on her lifestyle. She knew she would succeed in this. It made her work, hard and demanding as it was, enjoyable and satisfying. She would be self-sufficient no matter what. This was the goal that sustained her.

Six months were to pass before Wally Hern found himself responding rationally to the life around him. The grief remained but it was now in a secondary stage, less painful although no less lonely than the first. It was a change from the all-consuming heartache of the first months.

His mother revisited him for a few days the following spring. She found him haggard in appearance but otherwise healthy. He stayed up late and rose early but there was none of the fretful pacing of the first visit. Her concern for him kept her awake into the small hours. Of all her children he deserved to be hurt the least. Repeatedly she asked herself how they had reached such a dilemma. Carl's envy was the obvious answer but it wasn't as simple as that. If her husband had played his rightful role they might never have found themselves in this deadly predicament. Typically, she refused to absolve her daughters-in-law, particularly Carl's wife, whose initiative she interpreted as downright bitchiness. She could not or would not blame herself. She had done her utmost. Granted, this was not enough but no mother in a similar set of circumstances could have done more. She left for home after three days. Wally promised faithfully he would spend the summer holidays with her. She knew, however, that he would never leave the house, not even for a day, while there remained the faintest hope that his wife would return.

Sally returned on Christmas Eve after an absence of fifteen months. Using her key she let herself in silently and stood in the hallway not daring to go further. Wally knew from the unexpected draught that the front door had been opened. Only one other person had a key. He rose unsteadily from his chair, his heart thumping, not daring to believe that she might have returned. Mustering his courage he opened the kitchen door and saw her standing there.

‘Happy Christmas.' He managed to get the words out. He took her in his arms, smothering the apologies that sprung to her lips with loving fingers. Later, after they had made love, no matter how hard she tried he would not allow her utter a self-condemnatory word. For the first time since her absence he slept deeply. The morning after, he did not awaken till shortly before noon.

‘We'll have to talk,' Sally said after they had breakfast.

‘There's no need,' he told her. ‘All that matters is that you're back.'

He steadfastly refused to hear any sort of explanation, reassuring her with kisses every time she tried to start. That night Carl arrived. Wally it was who answered the door. Carl brushed past him silently and went straight to the kitchen where he confronted Sally. Ignoring Wally, who had followed him, he pushed her on to a chair.

‘Why couldn't you have told me?' He glowered down at her at though he were about to strike her. His hands hung by his sides, his fists clenched. ‘Why did you sneak off like that?' he demanded.

‘Watch how you talk to my wife,' Wally spoke menacingly.

Carl turned on him and spat on the floor at his feet.

‘Your wife,' he scoffed, ‘your wife indeed. I'm not talking to your wife brother dear. I am talking to my woman!'

He made every word sound more loathsome than the next. He raised an arm aloft but Wally seized him by both hands and held him in a vice-like grip. He forced him on to a chair. Carl fumed and ranted but he was powerless to move.

‘You're leaving here now and you'll never return,' Wally told him. ‘All my life you've wanted anything of value I ever owned, my dog, my peace of mind, my standing, my wife. There's an end to it now. You can take no more from me.'

‘I can take your life,' Carl spat back at him.

‘Be careful,' Wally warned, ‘that I don't take yours.'

Releasing him he put an arm around Sally.

‘Just walk out that door and go about your business. Let me to mine from this night out or you'll be sorry. Go now and a happy Christmas to you.'

Carl rose and addressed himself to Sally.

‘Look me in the face,' he screamed. ‘Look in my eyes and tell me I must leave.'

Slowly she raised her head until her gaze was level with his. She spoke calmly and unwaveringly. ‘This is my husband,' she said, ‘and this is my home.'

‘Is it?' he asked, his face distorted with rage. ‘Suppose I tell him what you've been to me, what we've been through together. You have no more right to this home any more than you have to him. You gave yourself to me willingly or was it a whore I held in my arms? Was it a whore? Answer me and I'll leave peacefully.'

‘Say another word to her and I'll smash your face in,' Wally cautioned.

‘Are you afraid to let her answer,' Carl taunted.

‘You were warned,' Wally cried hoarsely as he smashed a mighty fist into his brother's face. Carl fell to the floor. Wally stood towering over him ready to knock him down again. The gun appeared as if by magic in Carl's right hand. Wally stood paralysed. He had never looked into the barrel of a gun before. On Carl's face was a look which sent the cold terror running through him. The finality in his brother's eyes was terrifying to behold. Suddenly Wally knew how it was going to end. He lunged forward in a despairing effort to restrain him but even as he moved Carl had turned the gun inward towards himself and fired it into his breast. The gun fell from his hand. The blood gushed outward in a spate as the force of the blast threw him backwards on the floor. Death came instantly. Wally knew the moment he lifted his brother's head that life had departed. Death had also removed the snarl from Carl's face and replaced it with a look of serenity that Wally had never before seen there. It was as though he had finally resolved the terrible enigma which had tormented him all his life.

You can't postpone the true urging of Christmas. You have to do it now. That's the acid test of the man who would be Christmas. If you're a drinking man go and have a drink and it will help you do the right thing. Even a roasting fire won't thaw a frozen heart but a glass of whiskey might. I've seen it happen.

I've also seen Christmas destroyed by whiskey for whiskey is a dangerous cargo without plimsoll line or compass. It must be treated as if it were dynamite.

Then on the other hand, imbued by the spirit of Christmas and a bellyful of booze, I beheld a man who normally would not give you the itch lift his phone and beg his estranged daughter to come home for Christmas. She came with a heart and a half and on both sides all was forgiven. He wasn't half as mean thereafter. So, my friends, taking Christmas by the horns can work wonders.

Don't ever be ashamed to be weepy or sentimental about Christmas because you might not get the chance during the year ahead to show your humanity to the world and what the hell good is humanity if it's suffocated by caution! That's what Christmas is for, taking from our natural stock of humanity and disbursing it where it will do the most good.

If you have to think twice about the impulses that move you to be forgiving and charitable and loving you'll miss the boat. Generosity diminishes the more one considers it. The milk of human kindness doesn't come from cows or goats. It comes from the human heart, that great institute of compassion and repository of human hope.

If a man only submitted himself once a year to the dictates of Christmas all would not be lost but we have some who acknowledge the birth of Christ by regarding it as a day, the same as any other, when they may kill and maim at will. However, no matter what they do, the spirit of Christmas will survive and they will be long forgotten.

The spirit of Christmas has survived the Stalins, the Hitlers and the Mussolinis and all those who have perpetrated injustices since the birth of Christ. It has survived human greed and human jealousy and every human failing one cares to mention.

All the moons that have waxed and waned since the birth of Christ will testify that nothing lasts like Christmas. Not all the inhumanity, nor all the greed, nor all the violence will reduce its message by a whit. It's here to stay and there's nothing that evil men can do about it and that's one great consolation.

Officially declaring Christmas non-existent can work only for a while. You can't keep Christmas down for long. It is the most buoyant of all festivals.

There are ways, of course, of destroying the Christmases of individuals, of families and of communities and the chief of these is to drive while you're drunk. You may drink after you drive but never before.

Just say to yourself: ‘I'll enjoy a few Christmas drinks when I arrive at my destination but not before. This will be my Christmas gift to my fellow man.'

You can start a row in a pub or a hotel and upset the Christmases of legitimate workers who have enough to contend with during anti-social hours. You can upset your home and your family by being too drunk or too mean or too intolerant or, worst of all, by being indifferent.

These are but a few. There are so many more. However, I know in my heart that you, dear reader, will do none of those heinous things. You'll try to do otherwise. Just try and since God loves a trier you're halfway there already.

Don't think I'm pontificating. I'm not. I'm trying to explain what Christmas should be all about. It's a time of opportunity. The climate is perfect for revealing our better natures. Just as the spring assures growth of crops so does Christmas assure growth of love.

It is not possible for man, because of his very nature, to be charitable and compassionate all the year round. Let us, therefore, make the most of Christmas.

Heap on more wood! the wind is chill;

But let it whistle as it will.

We'll keep our Christmas merry still.

So wrote the great Walter Scott long before Dickens wrote
A Christmas Carol
which gives the lie to those who would say that Dickens invented Christmas as we know it. Christmas was never invented. It was born out of love and carries on out of love.

I once asked an old woman what she would do if there was no Christmas.

‘I don't know,' she said, ‘but I wouldn't be bothered with anything else.'

Personally speaking, I don't know how I would survive if Christmas were to be abolished. There would be no point in getting drunk because that would only remind me of Christmas all the more.

I could not imagine a more bleak world. I just cannot conceive anything of commensurate magnitude to replace it. We should, therefore, be down on our knees thanking God that it is there.

If there was no Christmas there would be no
Adeste
, no
Silent Night
, no carol singing, no Santa Claus. I could go on and on. There would be nothing without Christmas because it's the plinth on which the rest of the year stands.

Sometime when you are alone with nothing to do try to remember all the things that would never again be if we lost Christmas. There is nothing else with the power to move the human heart to its utmost capability. For God's sake don't take it for granted. If you haven't done anything about it yet for pity's sake do it now or you'll be guilty of the awful crime of trying to undermine Christmas.

Canon Coodle sighed happily. It was Christmas. He had just finished hearing confessions and to clear his head from the fog of sin, or what his parishioners believed to be sin, he had decided upon a walk around the church grounds which were as extensive as any you'd find in the country. His thoughts turned heavenward as they always did after a session in the confessional. He would have liked a glass of vintage port but it was still bright. He looked at his watch and came to the conclusion that darkness was imminent. Perhaps when the dusk surrendered its diminishing claims to daylight he would indulge, just one glass, no more. Before retiring that night he would consume two final glasses and then graciously surrender himself to the arms of Morpheus. Canon Coodle had spent eighty-two Christmases in the world but had never really felt the burden of his years. ‘I'll die in harness,' he informed his physician, ‘because I would hate to end up as a problem for someone.'

‘Oh you'll die in harness all right,' Dr Matt Coumer had assured him a few weeks earlier when the canon had called to the surgery for his bi-annual overhaul.

‘Is there something wrong?' the canon asked matter-of-factly as though it did not concern him.

‘Your blood pressure's up and your heart is tricky. I can think of no other word for that particular heart of yours. Apart from the fact that you should have been dead years ago there's little else the matter.' Dr Coumer put aside his stethoscope and indicated to his parish priest that they should both be seated. ‘You have only one problem canon.' The doctor leaned back in his chair and looked his elderly patient in the eye.

‘And pray what would that be?'

‘Two days hence on St Stephen's day you will have bands of wrenboys calling to the presbytery as they have been doing since you first came here. Your predecessors cleared them from the presbytery door for all the wrong reasons. You changed all that and we admire you for it but in one way you might be better off if the wrenboys stayed away from your door too.'

‘Never!' Canon Coodle rose from his chair.

‘Please sit down,' Matt Coumer spoke in the gentlest of tones as if he were reproving a wayward child. The canon sat and listened.

‘In the past you have been known to dance jigs and hornpipes with each of the bands on the steps leading up to the presbytery door. All I'm asking you to do my dear friend is to dance with only one band on this occasion. If you do as I ask there's a good chance you'll see one more Christmas at least. If you persist in dancing with all the bands you'll be in danger of a seizure. Promise me now like a good man,' Dr Coumer reverted to the gentle tones he had used earlier, ‘that all you'll dance on St Stephen's day is one hornpipe and one reel. Promise.'

‘I promise,' Canon Coodle forced out the words against his will. He rose and shook hands with his physician who, in turn, placed a protective arm around the old man's shoulder.

As the canon recalled his visit he regretted the promise he had made. Round and round the church grounds he walked as if he were competing in a race. ‘Promises were made to be broken,' he recalled the saying and then he smashed the fist of his right hand into the palm of his left, ‘but not by Canon Cornelius Coodle,' he concluded in triumph with the voice of a man who had never broken a promise.

He decided to return to the warmth of the presbytery sitting-room and therein to partake of his ration of port as he termed the measure. Later there would be the Christmas Eve masses and later still there would be a Christmas drink or two with his curates and two of the most amiable chaps imaginable he considered them to be. They would tease him of course about the flawed full forward line of the Ballybo Gaelic football team. The canon had first seen the light in Ballybo ‘and is he proud of it!' the curates would tell their families when asked what sort of priest was Canon Coodle.

When they finished with Ballybo they would start about Celtic and their run in the Scottish League. The canon's first curacy had been in Glasgow. He would be a Celtic fan till the man above blew the whistle and called him from the field of play. He always favoured a melodramatic turn of phrase when arguing football with curates. it was what they expected of him and he would never let them down.

As the trio savoured their drinks in the brightly lit sitting-room they were joined by Mrs Hanlon, the housekeeper, who drank not at all but who, the curates suspected, would play her customary role of timekeeper as the clock ticked merrily on towards twelve. On Christmas night and New Year's eve, of all the nights of the year, she would stand benignly by, as Canon Coodle put it, and suffer silently the yearly massacres of ‘Danny Boy' and ‘The Last Rose of Summer' as the canon also put it, by himself and his specially invited colleagues from parishes near and far.

She sat now silently and most reposefully while the sacred hour approached. It was her favourite time, a time to savour, above all other times, for the birth of Christ was at hand and downstairs in the kitchen her turkey was ready for the morning oven with bread stuffing and potato stuffing close by, with ham cooked and glazed, with giblet stock prepared for soup and gravy, with the primed fortified special trifle at the ready and the plum pudding waiting to be steamed. It could be said that her cup was running over. Her drowsy eyes blinked but barely when the glasses of her three charges clinked.

‘It's the sort of night,' she reminded herself, ‘when a drunk is bound to show up at the front door looking for the canon or one of the curates to drive him home. Only six miles. Couldn't get a taxi. Wife and kids at home with no one to fill the role of Santa. On the other hand it might be an even more drunken wretch looking for a priest to give the last rites to a mother who was far healthier than he was.'

As ill-luck would have it the presbytery's inmates would not be left in peace until the sacristan rang the warning bell well in advance of first mass on the morning of Christmas day. A surprise lay in store.

‘Now lads!'

Mrs Hanlon raised first her head from near her lap to where it had drooped with the weight of drowsiness and secondly her body from the chair which was ever so narrowly withdrawn outside the priestly triangle round the fire.

Canon Coodle was reminding his listeners of the time his uncle, a country schoolmaster, had shared a public house counter for a short period with Hilaire Belloc while the latter had been visiting Dublin.

‘The poor man,' the canon continued with a chuckle, ‘never spoke about anything else for the rest of his life.' The canon suddenly rose, extended his right hand and quoted from his uncle's acquaintance:

Dons admirable! Dons of might!

Uprising on my inward sight

Compact of ancient tales and port

And sleep and learning of a sort.

As the trio rose the housekeeper faded into the darkest corner of the room from where she would emerge to see to the fire and lights after the priests' departure to their upstairs rooms. The canon led his curates to the foot of the stairs, both hands extended now as he quoted once more from Belloc:

I will hold my house in the high wood

Within a walk of the sea

And the men who were boys when I was a boy

Will sit and drink with me.

Before they exchanged goodnights the trio said that it was the gentlest night of Christmas ever spent by any of the three. They had, they felt, effortlessly introduced the real spirit of Christmas into their midst and prepared themselves for the feast day that was to come.

No sooner had Canon Coodle eased himself into his bed than the housekeeper appeared at the bedside after first knocking on the bedroom door. On a tray she bore his nightcap, a small measure of whiskey topped up with boiling water and flavoured with cloves and lemon. She waited till the very last drop was swallowed, after which she drew the curtains and waited for the first low-key snore of the night.

As the canon slumbered so did he dream of his mother. She had passed on to her eternal reward shortly after his ordination. He was still young enough at the time to shed abundant tears for many months after her burial. Then with the passage of time as the grief melted into fond recall he could recall their times together without sorrow. She had once asked him, not long before his ordination, if there was a girl. He had shaken his head but of course there had been a girl. Hadn't that been the case always and wasn't it the case for many years thereafter but these were merely girls of the mind and with these phantom creatures all men must contend before sleep dulls the senses. Always the canon would spend his last waking moments thinking of his mother. Other nights he would dream of Gaelic football when he saw himself soaring above the heads of his opponents, reaching into the heavens where only the doughtiest and most agile of footballers soared in search of the pig-skin as it was known in country places in the days when Corny Coodle could out-field any man in the seven parishes. He was denied a place on the county team but only because his alma mater, Maynooth College, frowned upon high level commitment on the grounds that the sweet taste of physical glory might out-weigh the spiritual and the mystical. It happened all too often and it was believed by many that those who surrendered the spiritual to the physical turned their backs on the Roman collar and would always be deficient in outlook and aspiration.

‘Hogwash!' was the only comment Canon Coodle would offer when such opinions were aired.

He would remember a classmate in his final year, one Tommy Henley, who withdrew from the race within weeks of his ordination because of pressure to stay away from county football. He had played under a variety of assumed names but when the college authorities discovered this duplicity they determined that he would abide by the rules or withdraw. He had opted for the latter.

Canon Coodle fondly remembered Tommy's marriage to MaryAnne Fogarty. It had been a joyous wedding and were there not now twelve Henleys from that glorious union, all doing well in the world and was not one of them ordained. Canon Coodle stirred in his sleep. He found himself tussling for a ball with a Corkman named Tyers. The ball eluded both at their first attempt but Coodle got a hand to it to stop it from going over the line and wide. it fell to Tyers to raise the ball into his grasp with his right foot and so it went on until blows were very nearly exchanged. It was precisely at that moment that the canon opened his eyes to find himself being manhandled by his junior curate.

‘Wake, wake, for God's sake canon!' the curate cried out.

The canon sat upright in his bed wondering if he was playing host to an unwelcome dream.

‘It's the crib canon!' the curate threw both hands high in the air at the monstrosity of the entire business.

‘What about the crib!' the canon asked calmly, ‘is it on fire or what?'

‘No, no, no!' the curate was screaming now. ‘They are trying to wrest the boy scouts' box from the wall beside it.'

‘But dang it!' the canon exclaimed disbelievingly, ‘the boy scouts' box is part of the chapel wall.'

‘Well they have a pick-axe and they have a hammer and chisel and they're hacking away like hell and they're drunk to boot.'

The canon had moved himself to the side of the bed where he sat momentarily.

‘And where is the senior curate?' he asked.

‘Fr Sinnott is on sick call,' he was informed by a now more composed junior curate.

‘Where is Mrs Hanlon?' the canon asked fearfully.

‘She's rung the civic guards,' he was at once informed, ‘and now she's keeping an eye on the robbers till help comes.'

‘Well help is at hand,' the canon raised his great voice and demanded his dressing-gown.

‘Follow me!' he called. The canon would have been happier had the junior curate's role been reversed with that of his senior. He had seen Fr Sinnott on the football field, a tough customer who revelled in rough play and was not above planting the occasional consecrated wallop on the jaw of a would-be blackguard.

‘Ballybo forever!' Canon Coodle shouted out the war cry of his native place as his six feet two inches, fifteen stones and eighty-two years bore down upon the sacrilegious wretches who dared tamper with his boy scouts' box, a veritable treasure chest which was now held in the arms of an emaciated cut-throat on his way to the door which he had earlier broken in. He was followed by two henchmen armed with pickaxe, hammer and chisel.

‘My strength is as the strength of ten.' Canon Coodle issued the warning before crashing headlong into the wielder of the pick-axe. The wielder fell, winded and semi-conscious. The bearer of the chisel and hammer was to suffer a worse fate for as soon as he intimated that he meant business he was struck to the floor and rendered unconscious by Fr Sinnott who had just entered via the sacristy. At that moment the canon challenged the gang's ringleader.

‘Drop that box,' he warned, ‘or suffer the consequences. By the double dang,' the canon went on as he raised himself to his full height, ‘you're for an early grave sir unless you yield.'

Yield the scoundrel did but it was not because of the canon's command. Rather had his trusty housekeeper edged her way behind the ringleader and embedded her knitting needle in his unprotected posterior. He dropped the boy scouts' box as though it were a box of adders and ran screaming into the night, leaving his henchmen to the tender mercies of an enraged Fr Sinnott. When the civic guards arrived as they did almost immediately after they had been summoned their main worry was the containment of the senior curate. It proved to be no easy task for Fr Sinnott was as strong as the proverbial horse. After a while, aided by the canon's mollifying tones and the housekeeper's tender words, they managed to seat him in a pew. Then and only then did the junior curate appear. He had taken up his position in the crib, next to St Joseph from where he had hurled sacred candles at the invaders.