An Irish Christmas Feast (32 page)

Later in the hospital the doctors concluded that Shamus was in a coma and might well remain in that suspended state for a month or a year or forever.

***

Blossom O'Moone lived on the side of the street in a small house which fronted seven acres of arable land. The cows which grazed her pastures were never hungry nor were they ever smitten by disease. Blossom's maxim was that cleanliness was the answer to all ills. The milch cows, five in number, provided half of her meagre income. Odd jobs such as white-washing, scrubbing and part-time barmaid-cum-cleaner at Crutley's public house provided the other half. If she was liberal with her favours, as they said, she was also choosy. Her liaisons were short-lived and those who boasted loudest about ravishing her had never even spoken to her. Those who did not boast at all and those who kept their minds to themselves would be more likely to have received her favours or so the wise men of the locality were fond of saying.

‘Not so at all,' Mrs Crutley held opposing views, ‘Blossom is just a hot court. If she was anything else she would not be working under this roof.'

The house and land had been willed to her by her grandfather. Blossom's mother had succumbed to the ravages of tuberculosis in an era when there was no redress for victims of the disease. Her father's identity was a mystery.

Blonde and wispily formed she was possessed of what locals were fond of calling a quaint face. Rather was it a quizzical face. She seemed to be forever in search of mystical fulfilment although precisely what kind of mystical fulfilment no one was prepared to say. If they had been more observant they would have noticed that the quizzical look was replaced with one of concern whenever she found herself looking into the bright, blue eyes of Shamus Regan, captain of the Ballybee football team. Although twelve years his senior she felt that there was more than a mild interest. The fact that he also blushed unreservedly confirmed her suspicions. She stored him in a certain secret place in her memory and vowed to resurrect him at the earliest opportunity and she knew, however far-fetched it might seem, that opportunities always presented themselves, even on the most unlikely occasions. Presently, however, it seemed highly unlikely that there would be a moonlight tryst between them.

A small but vibrant river ran by one of the tiny fields at the rear of her house. she had planned to lure him there, to a sheltered grove near a small pool and there to bathe with him and run through the moon-lit fields with him till they fell exhausted into each other's arms but this would never happen now. It seemed certain that he would never waken from the coma in which he found himself.

The night frost had descended on the fields as she walked and whispered to herself: ‘This very river flows under his window in the hospital in the town and were I to strip now down to my pelt and wear just a garment like that old fur coat Mrs Crutley gave me twelve months ago this Christmas and were I to tuck it inside my corduroy trousers and were I to pull on my wellingtons what would stop me from straying along the river bank to the hospital and then to that small room at the back which overlooks the river. Without disturbing the drip which sustains him, slip out of my things and slip in beside him. He has no hope of coming out of the coma anyway and what harm would I be doing if I held him close and kissed his lips and stroked his curls till he stirred maybe and yielded to me? Why shouldn't I do it when there's no other hope for the poor boy? I know I have it in me to waken him. I feel a great force in me and it's driving me towards him.'

Blossom was shocked by her resolve and her intensity. Later as she moved gracefully along the bank of the shining river she recalled the many times since the football final in the summer she had made the same journey but on those occasions it had been to worship from a distance and to pray for the still creature in the lone bed of the dimly-lit ward.

***

‘She mightn't be the full shilling,' Dr Matt Coumer told his wife as they sat drinking one night after-hours in Crutley's, ‘but she has mystic qualities. In another age, in another place she might have been a priestess or a sorceress.' Blossom had just served them with a drink and bestowed upon them a most mystical smile, the smile that others called quaint and quizzical. Matt shook his head after he had sipped from his glass. ‘There's more to Blossom than flesh and bone,' he concluded and then he dropped the subject as they were joined outside the counter by Fred Crutley and his wife.

Blossom had little difficulty negotiating the stone steps which carried her from the river-side to the window of the ward where lay her golden boy. From a safe distance she could see all that was happening in the ward. Shamus Regan's mother sat at one side of the bed and, wonder of wonders, the Badger Loran sat at the other.

Blossom liked the Badger. He was tough, uncompromising and gnarled like an ancient thorn tree but he was respectful and in Blossom's eyes that was what mattered in a man when all was said and done.

After a while Mrs O'Regan rose and withdrew a hair brush from her coat pocket. The Badger lifted the young man's head and held it gently while Mrs Regan brushed the beautiful locks of her son's damaged head.

Blossom bent her own head over her hands and pressed her cold fingers against her forehead. A feeling of unbearable sorrow seized her as her entire body began to tremble. Then came the tears and with them a series of gentle but profound lamentations that helped to ease the pain within her. She dried her eyes with her cold hands and, still trembling, drew the fur coat tightly round her bosom.

In the ward the Badger was weeping. She had often heard people say of him that he was incapable of tears, that he could not express himself when sorrow assailed him, that's if it ever assailed him they said. If only they could see him now, Blossom thought. He sat on the side of the bed and shook his great shoulders helplessly when the widow placed tender hands thereon. She helped tease the anguish out of him. She had been taken by surprise, never having seen him shed a solitary tear until that very moment. ‘It's good to cry,' she whispered and allowed her hands to caress the sides of his craggy face.

As she watched, Blossom declared to herself that such a woman would bring great ease and solace to a man and to the Badger in particular for he had held on to his feelings for too long a time and they had become frosted and crusted but Blossom sensed that he would never surrender to despair again, not with Nonie Regan by his side to comfort him.

After a long, long spell she noticed how the Badger's powerful body began to compose itself once more. Blossom knew that every person who walked the earth was possessed of a sorrow that wreaked havoc on the human heart. Age often alleviated it and so did companionship but love, mostly, was the antidote although traces of it would always remain and visit the spirit, reminding the victims of long-forgotten sorrows stored in the memory.

The Badger heaved a final sigh indicating that he had put his grief behind him. Then with a flourish he produced the most voluminous handkerchief Blossom had ever seen. He trumpeted several times into its deep folds and returned it to his pocket. Then he rose and steadied himself before taking the Widow Regan in his arms. As they clung tightly to each other Blossom felt the last of her sadness leave. Then the couple bent and kissed the lifeless form in the bed. The Badger would compensate in so many ways for the illness which had destroyed all forms of normal communication between mother and son.

After they left the ward Blossom stood stock-still for a while. She had learned enough about the dark to know that it could throw up anything when one least expected it. She might well be under secret surveillance from some unknown source, good or evil. Such was the way of darkness. From the distant streets of the town came the strains of Christmas carols, gentling and purifying her spirit.

I will go now to his bedside she told herself and if it is in the power of a human heart to raise the siege of silence and lifelessness that overwhelms him it shall be done and no one will ever know what befell.

In the ward he lay still, his blonde curls still shining after his mother's ministrations. Making certain that the corridor was empty she readied herself for the loving task ahead of her. He lay still while she whispered words of endearment and womanly passion into his ear. She kissed him and caressed him and she called his name in rich whispers and then a secret smile appeared on her face. It was an expression of triumph, of surpassing achievement, a jubilant rejoicing for having attained the unattainable, for defying all the odds, for restoring life to where there had been no life and no hope of life. There should have been somebody in the wings, she felt, to emerge and ask her to take a bow. She had never in her life felt so elated. She had suddenly been transformed from a general factotum to a healer and if she never did anything else in her life this was sufficient in her eyes to justify her tenure in a world that sometimes just did not care but, mercy of mercies, sometimes did care.

As she drew her fur coat round her she heard voices in the corridor; one belonged to the matron and the other was the property of the poet Mental Nossery. Mental intoned in deep euphony the words of an ancient hymn. If the truth were known the composition wasn't ancient at all. It was Mental's latest. ‘It was composed,' Mental Nossery informed the matron, ‘in the year eleven hundred and ninety by the court jester on the death of his sovereign, Frederick Barbarossa.'

Suitably impressed the matron led the way into the ward where her most prized patient was sitting up in bed. If the matron had entered a few seconds earlier she might have witnessed Blossom make good her escape through the ward window, a window which she closed discreetly behind her before embracing the soothing moonlight which awaited her without. She received it eagerly and watched as the matron and Mental Nossery recovered from their shock.

The resurrection of Shamus Regan was the talk of the parish for evermore. Only two people knew the truth, Blossom and Mental Nossery.

Mental had arrived at the hospital only moments after Blossom but whereas she had entered by the back entrance he had entered by the front. When he arrived at the door of the ward he heard strange sounds, sounds which he would normally associate with another place in other circumstances. In the half-light of the ward he deduced that there was an extra body in the bed, most certainly, judging from the sounds emerging from her lips, a female.

Later, as Mental Nossery left the hospital grounds he was waylaid by Blossom. He told her what had happened.

‘I was about to enter the ward,' he explained, ‘when I heard the unmistakable sounds of wild oats being sown. There were two participants in this wonderful activity so I presumed that Shamus had awakened or been awakened from his long sleep. The great thing is that he'll be all right from now on or so the matron and the two doctors who arrived hot-foot assured everybody.'

‘It's a wonderful night entirely,' Blossom exclaimed with delight. She took Mental by the hand and led him to the river-bank, by which secret route they journeyed hand in hand to the abode of Blossom. First they walked her small fields under the light of an indulgent moon and then they withdrew to her cosy kitchen.

They married the following autumn and Mental Nossery no longer rented his lands. His proud wife who was an accomplished farmer in her own right saw to his verdant acres as well as her own. After some time Blossom produced a young son and not long after that Mental Nossery finished his epic. Canon Cornelius Coodle wrote the ten-thousand-words introduction and the poem was hailed far and wide. In that same summer Shamus Regan received his call for the county team and just before the September equinox of the same year the Badger Loran and Nonie Regan walked up the aisle together. As they left the church after the ceremony they were greeted by a jerseyed guard of honour consisting of members from the football teams of Ballybee and Ballybo.

When Dotie Tupper retired from the fowl business at the age of eighty-four she decided to take a holiday. The first thing she did when she arrived at her home on the very day she gave up work was to immerse herself in a bath of warm water and remain there for the best part of an hour. In so doing she was merely following the habit of a life-time. There were no toilet facilities at her place of work save an antiquated WC frequented solely by Sam Toper. She avoided it as if it was an execution chamber. Whenever she felt overpowered by the offensive stenches in her work-place or felt in need of a wash she made the short trip to her modest home a few doors down the lane-way. Her boss Bustler Hearne never objected. He knew that Dotie would more than make up for any time she was likely to spend off the premises.

Bustler was a bully, a rude, crude and highly aggressive employer who made life hell for two of the three members of his staff, Sam Toper, fowl executioner, plucker-in-chief and trusser extraordinaire, and Mannie Kent, dispatcher and part-time cleaner. Dotie Tupper was in charge of sales, wages and supervising. She also helped out when her staff found themselves unable to cope with the pressures of work or illness.

Her boss, Bustler, spent of most of his time in the countryside within a radius of ten miles of his business location. Before he left in the mornings in his horse-drawn crate-clamped dray and after he returned in the evening with crates of assorted fowl he made his presence felt by verbally and physically abusing his plucker-in-chief and by roundly cursing his cleaner. Never once during the long years that Dotie spent in his employ had he been known to direct a single harsh word at her. He also paid her a decent wage and why wouldn't he, his detractors would say, and she coining money for him on all fronts. Certainly it would be true to say that she had made him a wealthy man. She also made a name for him as a supplier of high-quality produce. She was courteous to customers and when part-time staff were taken on at Christmas she taught them how to truss and pluck. In an emergency Dotie could wring a chicken's neck in a flash and on occasion in a matter of minutes had been known to dispatch an entire crateful to their eternal rewards if such other-wordly consolation is granted to the souls of departed fowl.

Dotie was a deeply religious person and with the canon's housekeeper, the redoubtable Mrs Hannie Hanlon, was in charge of the floral arrangements behind the church altar, was a chorister in the parish choir and an esteemed member of the Trallock Parish Amateur Drama Group sometimes known as the Trallock Players. It could be said that Dotie was a participant in the game of life and not a mere looker-on. She gave herself unstintingly to all worthwhile causes and when she gave Bustler a month's notice on the first of May he went on his knees before her and begged her to remain. She shook her head firmly even when he offered her a substantial raise, shorter hours and longer holidays as well as bonuses, bribes and assorted perks.

‘I am eighty-four,' she announced firmly, ‘and I am no longer able for the work.'

Fortunately for Dotie, Bustler had contributed to a personal pension scheme on behalf of himself and his prize employee of over sixty-eight years. She had started off her poultry career with Bustler's father Toby, brought him from the verge of bankruptcy and set his son firmly on the road to prosperity.

Bustler was a hot-tempered, intemperate thug or so it was claimed by those who maintained they knew him. He was possessed, however, of one virtue. He was a generous man and when Dotie departed she did not go empty-handed. During the years as an employee she managed to present a spotlessly clean appearance to the world. Not so her fellow-employees, Mannie Kent and Sam Toper. Sam's Sunday suit was mottled with the stains of partly erased fowl droppings and tiny traces of down and feathers while his workaday overalls had changed from light blue to off-white over the years.

Mannie also carried traces of down and other fowl specks from her place of employment on her everyday clothes. On the other hand Dotie, even while at work, presented a shining image to the public. Small and spare, she had a capacity for endless work. Without fail, no matter her disposition at the time, she always had a bath after work. When showers became the mode she showered on Saturdays and Sundays. She spent her summer holidays in the nearby seaside resort of Ballybunion. She always stayed at Collins' guesthouse and went for a hot seaweed bath every day of her richly deserved fortnight.

‘Regular bathing,' she once told her life-long friend Mickey Mokely, ‘is the only antidote for the job I'm in.'

For years before she retired she was invited by her dear friend Hannie Hanlon, Canon Coodle's housekeeper, to spend the Christmas holiday at the presbytery. Hannie had free rein at the parochial house but nevertheless thought it prudent to consult with the canon beforehand.

‘She's as near to an angel,' the canon had noted at the time, ‘as anyone we're likely to encounter in this world.'

So it was that in her eighty-fourth year she was still a welcome guest at the presbytery for the Christmas period except that this time she would stay for the extended sojourn of the Twelve Days. In the town she was a popular figure. Young and old called her by her first name, Dotie. ‘Ah she's a dotie girl to be sure,' Fr Sinnott the senior curate announced when he frequently picked her up, placed her under his arm and laid her on the bottom step of the stairs after doing the rounds of the presbytery with her. Her bright presence brought joy and goodness wherever she went and yet deep down she carried a great hurt. Hannie knew about the hurt and the absent-minded canon had his suspicions. Absent-minded the canon might be about inanimate things but when he cared for people he was ever ready to listen to their woes and extend the hand of compassion where it was needed.

‘There is a message clearly written on Canon Coodle's face,' Fr Sinnott once informed his bishop, ‘and what it says is this – “I am here for you my friend no matter how high up or low down you are. I don't care what you have done. I am always here for you”.'

‘I've seen it,' said the bishop, ‘and I thank God that it's there for all of us.'

The pair were returning from the all-Ireland Gaelic Football Final in Dublin chauffeured by a junior curate who neither drank nor smoked. He had been specially chosen by his parish priest, an astute gentleman who had seen both the bishop and Fr Sinnott play football and remarked more than once that he was truly grateful to his maker that he had never crossed the path of either on the playing field.

Among his other virtues, the junior curate in question was also possessed of sealed lips and subscribed to the ancient Chinese adage that a shut mouth caught no flies. If his Lordship and Fr Sinnott had a failing it was merely a shared love of an occasional indulgence in a few pints of stout, well, a good few pints of stout but not on a regular basis. Hence the necessity for an abstemious and close-mouthed driver.

On the Christmas of her eighty-fourth year Dotie arrived at the presbytery as usual. She was glad to be leaving her home for a while although a bright and cosy home it was and a home which she hoped to share with her dear friend Hannie should Canon Coodle pass on as indeed he must some day but as Hannie would say, ‘let us pray that it's a far-off day and that I will be there to look after him until such time as that day comes'. At the canon's insistence Dotie always had her meals in the parochial dining-room.

On the Christmas Eve of that eighty-fourth Christmas Dotie was, according to Hannie, down in herself.

‘Well then,' said Canon Coodle, ‘we must do all in our powers to cheer her up.'

The topic of conversation at the tea-time table had been the return of the presbytery cat, a battle-scarred chap who had, from the looks of him when he returned, surely forfeited his penultimate life of the nine lives granted to all cats. Fond of a scrap and fiercely possessive of his many female friends it was inevitable that he would meet physically more accomplished toms during his ramblings on moon-lit roof-tops under starry skies when only cats are abroad. He slunk into the dining-room and rubbed his racked body against the canon's left shoe.

‘Ah my friend,' said Canon Cornelius with a grim smile, ‘what a mighty confession you could make at this moment.'

It was the first genuine laugh that Dotie had enjoyed in several weeks. Her woes had really begun when it began to dawn on her that she would never see her father again, not in this world anyway. Always, up until her eighty-fourth birthday, she cherished the faint hope that he would one day return. She remembered him only vaguely. She had been six years of age when he disappeared a month after her mother's death. There were ugly whispers abroad that while he was of unsound mind after his bereavement he might well have eased himself into the flooded river in the belief that he might be united with the woman who had been the love of his life. Then there were rumours that he had been seen in places as far apart as Glasgow and Chicago. Each night, from the age of six onwards, Dotie prayed for his safe return. At first she could not believe that he had walked out on her. She had missed her mother terribly at the time but with the passage of the years it was for her father she longed. She had seen other girls out walking with their fathers. She had bitten her lip in anguish when she saw small girls being lifted into the air by the one man they loved above all others in the world. She had cried herself to sleep on countless nights. Her aunt who had come to look after her and who slept in the adjoining room would silently slip into the bed beside her and do her best to console her. There were times when she thought she saw her father but it was always from a distance so she could not be certain.

‘I don't have any doubt,' the district inspector of the RIC had made clear at the time. ‘His behaviour was strange to say the least for days before his disappearance. He was seen by the river-side at a point where once in, it would be impossible to change one's mind. He knew what he wanted to do and he did it. That is my conclusion and it is the conclusion of all the other investigators involved.'

Dotie steadfastly refused to believe that her father was not coming home and now at eighty-four she knew in her heart that she would not see him again.

‘One would imagine,' she told herself, ‘that I would be over it by now but I will never be over it,' she cried out in the confines of her kitchen. The worst was that she could not remember sitting on his lap while he sang.

‘I remember the pair of you well,' her aunt recalled, not realising how deeply wounded Dotie became at mention of her father. ‘He used to sit on the old rocking chair on the porch and you would climb aboard his lap. He had a light tenor voice but he never sang after your mother died. He never meant to leave you. He wasn't himself the Lord be good to him and how could he after his terrible loss? We must pray for him. We must always pray for him.'

All through the years from the age of six to eighty-four she simply could not reconcile herself with his disappearance. In the early years she convinced herself that he was a victim of amnesia. She invented other excuses when the long decades went by and he failed to show up. At length she resigned herself to the sad fact that he was gone forever.

‘He would be a hundred and twelve years of age next Saturday week.' She forced a laugh as she disclosed the information to Hannie Hanlon. Hannie had remained silent not knowing what to say.

‘I was reading lately in one of the Sunday papers,' Dotie continued, ‘that the oldest man in the world was one hundred and eleven years of age. I was going to write to the editor and tell him that if my father was alive he would be the oldest man in the world and then I thought how foolish I would look if he decided to publish the letter.'

Still not knowing how to respond Hannie waited for her friend to continue. Dotie's voice was no longer steady as she spoke. ‘Imagine it took me all those years before I finally realised he was well and truly dead and not coming home any more. I always cherished the hope that he might somehow make his way back to me but at a hundred and twelve it would be out of the question. I still have his photographs, one in particular, the one taken before he shaved off his moustache. My but he was handsome and so tall. I don't know where they got me because my mother was a tall woman too. If I could be sure I would see him again, see the two of them again somewhere someplace, I would die happy.'

Hannie placed a hand around her friend's shoulder but she could not find the proper words of consolation so she steered her out of the room and into the hall-way.

‘I don't remember sitting on my father's lap while he sang to me and that's the hardest part.' Dotie was weeping now. ‘I know for a fact that my aunt saw me sitting with him but I have no recollection of it.'

Dotie had just reached the age of sixteen when her aunt died, a victim of tuberculosis, the same disease that accounted for her mother. Relatives and friends decided that it would be best for Dotie if she emigrated to the United States where her only surviving aunt was settled but when Toby Hearne offered her a job Dotie had no hesitation in accepting. Neighbours and friends feared for her well-being at the hands of such a man but Dotie had no qualms. She was possessed of that rare quality which always brought out the best in people and like so many others Toby quickly fell under her spell. When he would rant and rave at others Dotie would look on in amusement knowing that his rage would expend itself in a few short minutes. Over the years she managed to temper his and Bustler's outbursts and around the time she decided it was time to retire Bustler's nature had assumed a mellow side which eventually won out over his dark side. She went so far as to suggest to him that he retire. The business was but a shadow of what it used to be but Bustler had made his money particularly during the period of the second world war and he had invested it wisely always acting on Dotie's advice.