An Irish Christmas Feast (3 page)

Two elderly women, shawled and praying, vacated the room the moment the priest bent his head to hear the sins of the dying penitent. The old man went on and on sometimes incoherently but mostly articulate as he recited the sins of a lifetime. He was well prepared for the ultimate shriving. He did not spare himself as the nauseating recall of human folly poured forth. Then suddenly he stopped, gasped and fell into a deep sleep from which, all present were agreed, he would never wake.

The ritual over, Father Canty left the house and entered his transport but not before he turned the bottom and dry side of the trap cushion upward. There was no sign of the brothers. The neighbours could not explain it. One minute they were in the kitchen standing with their backs to the dying fire and the next they were nowhere to be seen.

Agnes was on her feet the moment she heard the hoof-beats at the rear of the presbytery. When she drew the bolt and went outside the animal was standing still. In the trap Father Canty was fast asleep, the rain dripping from his hat. Gently she awakened him and led him indoors. She seated him close to the fire where she had drawn the kitchen table.

‘You're a life-saver Agnes,' he spoke with unconcealed fervency as he ravenously spooned the steaming giblet soup into his waiting mouth. She tip-toed from the kitchen and up the stairs. She lit the paraffin lamp and replaced the hot water bottle with another of more immediate vintage. As she silently descended the stairs she met him on his way up. He seemed to be overcome by drowsiness. She allowed a short interval to pass before knocking at the bedroom door.

‘Come,' came the voice.

‘You have it well-earned,' she assured him when he expressed doubt about his entitlement to the extra punch. She stood by while he swallowed and took the empty glass when it was extended to her. She quenched the lamp and closed the bedroom door behind her. Rarely did he snore but he snored now. The snores were long and profound. As she passed his bedroom door a short while later the snores were deep and even. She could not believe her ears when the irritating sound of the front door bell shattered the silence.

‘What now?' she asked as she hurried down the stairs lest the continuous tinkling disturb her master's slumber.

‘Who's out in God's name?' she called without drawing the bolt.

‘It's us missus,' came the unmistakable voice of the taller Maldooney.

Slowly Agnes Mallowan drew the bolt and opened the door.

They stood huddled together as they had on the previous visit. Agnes Mallowan folded her arms and spread her legs across the width of the doorway to prevent access to the hallway. The brothers, dripping wet, looked at each other and then at the housekeeper.

‘State your business,' she said coldly.

‘We want the priest,' from the taller brother.

‘Is it to pay him the Christmas dues you want him?' Agnes asked as the smaller of the pair snuffled and sniffled, sensing that there was to be no tea on this occasion.

‘We want the priest for our father,' he explained between sniffles, ‘he forgot a sin. '

‘And you expect Father Canty to get out of his bed and go back up the mountain to Farrangarry because your dada forgot to tell him he wet the bed.'

‘Oh now!' said the smaller brother, ‘'tis a deal worse than wetting the bed. No one will go to hell for wetting the bed but fornicating will get you there on the double.'

‘Fornicating!' the housekeeper's curiosity got the better of her.

‘And who was he fornicating with?' she asked.

‘Never mind who,' from the taller brother. ‘It's enough for you to know that he'll face the fires of hell on account of he deliberately failing to mention this particular one.'

Agnes found herself in a dilemma. If she called Father Canty the journey to Farrangarry and back could be the death of him. If she didn't call him and the man died with an unforgiven sin on his soul she would be guilty of sending a soul to hell. She came down in favour of her employer.

‘I'm not calling him,' she said, and was about to close the door when the smaller man pushed her backwards into the hallway.

‘You call him,' he shouted angrily.

Agnes stood her ground. Her mission in life was to protect her master. She decided on a change of tack.

‘There's no fear of your dada,' she assured them.

‘Without a priest he's bound for hell,' the taller brother pushed the smaller forward.

The housekeeper refused to be intimidated. Not an inch of ground did she yield.

‘Didn't I tell ye there was no fear of him,' she drew herself upwards and refolded her arms, ‘for don't it say in the Cathecism that hell is closed for the twelve days of Christmas and anyone who dies during that period goes direct to heaven.'

The brothers exchanged dubious glances.

‘'Tis there in black and white,' the housekeeper assured them.

The brothers turned their backs on her and consulted in whispers. After several moments they faced her secondly.

‘You're sure?' the smaller asked.

‘Why would I say it if it was a lie?' she countered.

‘Why then,' the taller brother asked, ‘did the priest come all the way up to the mountain if there was no hell?'

‘Mohammed went to the mountain didn't he?' Agnes replied with a straight face, ‘and there was no hell.'

Both brothers shuffled uneasily at this revelation. Comment proved to be beyond them. What she said was irrefutable. Also was she not well placed to be in the know about such matters. She was of the presbytery, therefore of the church and of the inner circle at that. The Catechism had always confounded the Maldooney brothers in their schooldays and this woman was confounding them now.

‘Go on away home,' she said, ‘and let yeer minds be at ease. If yeer dada is dead his soul is in heaven and if he's not dead it will be there soon.'

Slowly, sheepishly the brothers backed away from the door. Exhausted she shot the bolts and retired upstairs to the sleep of the just. On the Sunday after Christmas she was delighted to see the brothers in their customary positions outside the church as the holy mass proceeded solemnly within. Sidling up to the smaller of the pair she enquired in a whisper after his father.

‘He's sitting up,' came the happy response.

‘He's eating a bite,' the taller brother concurred.

‘Well I declare,' Agnes Mallowan joined her hands together as though she were about to pray.

The smaller brother cleared his throat and permitted himself a toothless smile as he disclosed in reverential whispers, out of respect to his surroundings, that the quickly recovering parent intended presenting himself at Cassidy's wren-dance on the following Saturday night, a mere six days away. Agnes made a mental note to enquire from one of her many parochial informants about the general goings-on at Cassidy's wren-dance and about the antics of Maldooney senior in particular.

She admitted her source by the rear door of the presbytery one week later. Maldooney senior had excelled himself, displaying a variety of fancy steps that put younger terpsichoreans to shame. He crowned his display by dancing a hornpipe at the request of a buxom lady from the other end of the parish and astounded all and sundry by enticing her to the well-filled hay shed at the bottom of Cassidy's haggard where they sojourned rapturously till the dawn's early light reminded them that it was time to go their separate ways. They promised to meet again while the sons, for better or for worse, did nothing but stand idly by and never once opened their porter-stained mouths to any member of the opposite sex.

The unique set of circumstances which preceded the arrival of John J. Mulholland merchant tailor into the world deserve to be recorded, at least according to John J. Mulholland.

‘I will,' he declared as we sat in Mikey Joe's Irish-American bar in the seaside resort of Ballybunion, ‘offer up a novena of rosaries for your intentions provided you adorn futurity with my peculiar beginnings.'

John J. was never direct when he could be diffuse.

‘My paternal grandfather,' he began before I could drain my glass and make good my escape, ‘hated Christmas and if he could lay his hands on Santa Claus he would surely dismember him. He used to stuff his ears with cotton wool to shut out the sound of Christmas bells and usen't he disappear altogether on Christmas Eve, moving off with a day's provisions at first light and not returning until long after dark.'

‘It's your face that attracts them,' a boozing companion had observed earlier in the day when a man I had never seen before shot from a shop door and seized me by both wrists. He was a powerfully built fellow but, alas, a victim of the most excruciating halitosis. He held me fast for several minutes while he recalled the treachery of the wife who had abandoned him without warning for an amorous greengrocer.

John J. Mulholland did not hold me by the wrists but his ample frame overflowed a bar stool between myself and the exit. He was pointing at his neck around which was a crimson weal which might well have been caused by a hangman's rope.

‘It's not what you're thinking,' he smiled grimly, ‘and if you are patient you shall discover how it came to be where it is.'

I indicated to Mikey Joe that I wanted another whiskey. If I was going to suffer I would do so in comfort. My nemesis had also brought his stool nearer, totally eliminating every means of escape. The whole business had begun with the aforementioned paternal grandfather, one Jacko Mulholland, a trousers' maker with a tooth for whiskey and a profound hatred of Christmas.

When our tale begins Jacko was a mere thirty years of age. Both parents had died young and from the age of sixteen onwards he was left to fend for himself. Neighbours would explain in their good-natured neighbourly way that a general resentment for all things tender and sentimental had set in shortly after the demise of his father and mother.

‘Say nothing to him about Christmas,' they would advise strangers who had no way of knowing about his bereavement, ‘and whatever you do, do not wish him the compliments of the season.'

As is the way with neighbours they were patient with him when he reacted viciously to the least mention of the Yuletide season. They told themselves that his grief would diminish with the passage of time and they would regularly trot out the old adages; time is a great healer and the years cure everything and so forth and so on but they were disappointed when, after fourteen of those very same years, he persisted in ignoring the arrival of Christmas.

His kitchen windowsills and his mantelpiece were bare. None of the accumulation of Christmas cards so evident in the houses of his neighbours were to be seen in the Mulholland home. When a card arrived from a friend or relative he immediately consigned it to flame in the Stanley number eight.

‘How dare they!' he would mutter to himself before returning to the stitching of the rough and ready trousers in which he specialised. Sometimes he thought of Mary Moles who lived just down the street and who was still unattached although she need not be for she was a trim cut of a girl with pleasant features and a virtuous name. She could have been his. All he had to do was ask. It had been understood. Their names had been linked since he started to pay her court but she grew tired of his moods and his own attitude hardened the longer the rift between them lasted. She would not marry another and neither would he but they cherished each other no longer. Concerned neighbours shook their heads at the woeful waste of it all. The entire street felt the pain of it and the entire street prayed that it would come right in the end.

‘They'll be too old soon,' one old woman said at which another and then many others nodded sagely and concurred. In time the situation came to be accepted and the affair became part of the history of the street.

At this stage in the proceedings John J. Mulholland excused himself on the grounds that he had to visit the toilet. I could have vacated the scene there and then but I was hooked as indeed was my genial friend Mikey Joe. We spoke in undertones lest our voices carry to the toilet. Mikey Joe confided that he had long believed, as I did, that the disfiguring weal around John J.'s neck was caused by a hangman's noose but now we both knew better and hoped to be enlightened as to the true origins of the unprepossessing blemish before we were much older.

When John J. returned he resumed his position on the stool, swallowed from his glass and cleared his throat. We presumed foolishly that the clearing was the prelude to the remaining disclosures but not a solitary word was forthcoming. It was as though he had suddenly taken a vow of silence. Mikey Joe was first to get the message.

‘Finish that,' he indicated John J.'s almost empty glass. As soon as the refill was placed in his hand John J. cleared his throat a second time, sniffed the whiskey, frowned, pondered, approved and sipped. He proceeded with his tale.

Apparently his grandfather Jacko was not above taking a drink now and then in the privacy of his kitchen. He always drank alone. On the morning of Christmas Eve he betook himself to the woods which surrounded the town and did not return till dark. He took with him the usual provisions and spent the day observing coot and heron as well as mallard and diver. He would have fished had the season been open. He listened without appreciation to the wide variety of songbirds who poured forth their tiny hearts as though they knew of the great celebration that was at hand. When Jacko came to the river he sat on an oak stump and, not for the first time, considered the dismal solution the depths below offered. As always he dismissed the thought but he would have to admit that the temptation grew stronger as the years went by.

A shiver went through him when he imagined his lifeless body laid out on a slab in the local morgue where he had once seen the decaying remains of a boy who had accidentally drowned some years before.

‘I haven't the courage.' He spoke the words out loud and no sooner had they departed his lips than a hunting stoat wriggled its way urgently upwards from a small declivity at his feet before disappearing into the undergrowth.

He rose quickly, his dreary reverie suspended yet again. Shortly afterwards dusk began to infiltrate the woodlands. The face of the river darkened. Overhead the stars began to twinkle. The moon brightened as the sun dipped beneath the tree-tops to the west. From the depths of the woods came the unmistakable sounds of rooting badgers, heedless now that the evening shadows were merging into one.

Jacko Mulholland gathered himself and followed the river bank towards the lights of the town. A bell rang sweetly, its sacred tones carrying far up the placid river. Jacko Mulholland thrust his fingers into his ears and stood stock still. He would wait until the infernal pealing came to an end.

As he left the wood and entered the town the dark in all its fullness had fallen. In the kitchen of his silent home he stoked the range fire which he had earlier packed carefully with wet turf sods as well as dry to ensure its survival until his return. He lit the paraffin lamp and looked at the calendar which hung nearby. He took a pencil from the windowsill and crossed out the offending date, 24 December 1922. A few days now and the whole fraud would be over, the entire shambles brushed aside to make way for the new year. He decided to postpone his supper till nearer bedtime. Anyway he had eaten his fill in the woodlands before the arrival of dusk. He added several small dry sods to the fire and sat in the ancient walnut rocking-chair which had been in use since his great-grandfather's time and which was the nearest thing to a family heirloom one would find if one searched every house in the street.

There was a long night ahead. It would be the longest in the fourteen years since the disaster if normal progression was anything to go by. He rocked for a while in the vain hope that slumber would come. He knew in advance that it would be a futile bid. He rose and added some larger sods to the fire. Then from the recesses of the cupboard he withdrew a bottle of whiskey. He had purchased it in a nearby village after a football game to which he had cycled in late November with carrier bag attached for no other purpose. He shook the bottle thoroughly before uncorking. He stood it on the deal table for several minutes while he went in search of a glass. There was one somewhere, only one. He knew it wasn't in the cupboard. The people of the street kept their glasses, few as they were, in sideboards. Those who were not possessed of sideboards wrapped them carefully in old newspapers and arranged them loosely in a cardboard box which was always kept for safety under the parental bed.

He found himself searching the sideboard in the small sitting-room attached to the kitchen. Eventually he found the upturned glass under a tea cosy. He could not recall how it came to be there. He returned to the rocking-chair and stretched a hand as far as the whiskey bottle. He poured the contents into the four-ounce glass until it was brimful. He sipped, spluttered and coughed. It was always like that, he recalled, with the first drop unless one was partial to whiskey diluted by water. In the street the menfolk never mixed spirits and water. When the whiskey was swallowed it was all right to swallow a mouthful of water after a decent interval but to mix it in the glass was regarded as far less edifying than the pure drop.

He placed the glass on the table next to the bottle and removed the mud-covered boots. He would clean them in the morning. Nobody could clean and polish boots like his late lamented mother. Nobody could untie lace knots like her. He used to call her his knot-ripper-in-chief. He recalled how his father had laughed loud and long when the title was first conferred. Ah those had been happy days!

The tears flowed down Jacko Mulholland's face, remembering his father and himself squatting on the workbench, his mother attentive and obedient to their wants. It was she who delivered the finished trousers when, for one reason or another, the customer failed to call. She never came back empty-handed. When she returned without the money she always brought the trousers home. She never extended credit. Sooner or later she would get her money. Alterations were child's play to her.

Jacko extended a hand for the bottle and refilled his glass. He could not bring himself to resurrect past Christmases. The memories were too painful. He found a block of cheddar in the cupboard and cut himself a slice. His thoughts turned to Mary Moles as they did at the same time every year. He wondered if he would be any happier if he had taken her for a wife. Too late now. He had seen the grey hairs on her head and the puckered face of her through his window as she passed up and down. Hers was a stately walk. She would have to be granted that. Never looking to left or right she moved with the grace of a swan. It was her natural gait. Everybody in the street would agree that she was one unflappable female, maybe a mite too steady and maybe a trifle too demure and maybe somewhat conservative but she was the kind of girl one could present anywhere. Certain people in other streets considered her dull but this assessment had to be based on ignorance. Her true worth was known only to her neighbours and they would swear in any court in the land that Mary Moles had a touch of class and they would also swear that class was what really mattered in the long run.

She lived with her father, a cantankerous old man, a martyr to lumbago and catarrh, who chided his only child day in day out. His wife, or so the neighbours maintained, had simply given up the ghost having been subjected to twenty years of withering criticism, all undeserved. The only respite she enjoyed was when she visited the church. Who could blame her if she spent as much time as possible in its hallowed precincts, kneeling and praying and savouring the blessed silence no end.

Jacko Mulholland surveyed the glowing fire. If it held together without collapsing it should last till bedtime. Next he surveyed the whiskey bottle and was pleased to see that more than half of its contents remained. There is nothing as consoling or sustaining to the half-drunken imbiber as the presence of a whiskey bottle more full than it is empty. It is as comforting as hidden battalions are to a field commander whose forces have been decimated by a succession of foolhardy charges. It is akin to the feelings of a man who, upon waking in the morning, expects to be confronted by rain and storm but instead finds the sun shining through his window.

Jacko Mulholland refilled his glass and swallowed copiously, gasping for breath as the amber liquid set fire to his innards. Then he began to sob as he recalled other days – his mother's voice in the morning as she prepared breakfast, her gentle singing of the ancient songs, her lilting of dance tunes, hornpipe, jig and reel, her dulcet call from the foot of the stairs; fishing with his father and the delight when one or the other hooked a trout, sitting in the lamplight late at night watching his father tying flies. The sobbing became uncontrollable. Nobody heard for such was the extent of the celebrations in the neighbouring houses that no external sound had the power to penetrate the old stone walls. It was the same in every other house on the street save that of old Mick Moles and his daughter Mary. They sat silently at either side of the hearth. Sometimes he would call upon God to relieve his aches and other times he would call on the Blessed Virgin but if they heard they failed to bring him relief so that he rounded on his daughter before going to bed, falsely accusing her of concocting watery tea and burning his toast.

Jacko Mulholland was now at that stage of drunkenness where the victim starts to natter to himself, grinding his teeth as he recalls all the injustices he has suffered since first entering the world. He turned his attention to the whiskey bottle and, blurred though his vision had become, he was sorry to note that more than two-thirds of its contents had been consumed. He mourned its passing with a series of deep sighs and tedious lamentations after which his head began to droop. Vainly he strove to restrain the slumber which seemed set to overpower him but he was a poor match for its stupefying subtlety. Soon he was snoring.