Country Days (6 page)

A
S
I
STOOD
at the top of the stairs, the early morning sun peered in over my shoulder. It lit up the walls around me and highlighted the dust-laden cobwebs that draped from picture to picture. How long had they been there? During the long winter months, I had never noticed them. They had gathered in like a silent army all around the house.

If you are a collector of pictures or other useless articles that can be acquired at auctions, antique shops and craft fairs, then the price to be paid is the accumulation of numerous bits and pieces between which cobwebs can drape in comfort and on which dust can rest easily. If you then decide that they all have to be polished and kept in mint condition, they become a burden which takes all the joy out of your collection. My solution to the problem is to let them lie in comfort under their dusty jackets, which I delude myself gives them an air of shrouded antiquity. Occasionally, however, something happens to disturb my acceptance of their grey, restful mantles, and then a mental battle ensues. The sun
had started two strains of thought. The lazy side of me said that I should leave things as they were while the more industrious side advised getting my act cleaned up to welcome in the spring.

That morning the cobwebs were not only draped between the pictures: they were also draped along my brain cells. Spring sunshine was sending its coded messages, but my brain was still too deeply anchored in winter to unscramble them. I turned my back on the cobwebs and decided to look in another direction. Behind me was a window through which the offending sun was probing its way with determination. It needed that determination because the grime on the window was trying bravely to prevent entry. The window, like my mind, was reluctant to let in the spring. Then the curtains caught my eye and their
over-muted
tones told the story of a long grey winter when smoke from an open fire had occasionally lost its sense of direction and curled seductively around them. While we had warmed our toes to the comforting heat, the smoke had been wrapping its silent arms around our curtains.

I walked around the house making a mental assessment of winter damage. It was a depressing experience. Energy was needed to turn back this grey tide of winter dust, but the only energy I could muster seemed to be possessed by my eyes, which were determined that I should not miss a mite of dust. So intense was my mood of inspection
that I put on my glasses to enhance my vision. Shortsightedness had been my constant companion since childhood and sometimes it had proved to be a very desirable condition by eliminating unsightly views. That morning, however, I was not content to allow myself to shelter behind that comfort. But as I crawled around the house acting the martyr, a little voice of reason came to my rescue and coaxed me out into the garden.

Here the birds were singing and the cobwebs that draped across the shrubs glistened in the sunlight, proving that there is a place for everything. My mental cobwebs slowly drifted apart and a little light came into my mind. I examined the bare shrubs and found tiny buds just beginning to form. They looked delicate and vulnerable, not unlike my mental condition, and as I ran my fingers over their soft formation, I felt future flutterings within. The spring bulbs were bravely standing upright and their colour was in sharp contrast with the dark brown earth. A few weeks previously they had ventured up from their winter womb to bring a little colour into a garden suffering from the withdrawal symptoms of winter. Beside them the bridal wreath was cascading down over a stone bank, its snowy branches highlighted by the grass, bright after the rains of winter. The bees from the nearby hive were busy investigating this addition to their menu, a welcome variation after their long hibernation. During those cold months they had scarcely ventured beyond their
front running board but now they were flying back and forth. They had got the message that spring was in the air. As I watched their tireless pursuit of nectar, I began to feel slight pangs of guilt about my inertia.

The old garden seat looked very inviting, so I decided to sit in the sun just for a few minutes. Maybe if I sat still a reason for propelling myself into action might float into my brain. My garden is a place for thinking and relaxing and it has that appearance as well. The dogs were delighted and sat themselves down at my feet. The old one was content just to sit there, but the young fellow jumped up and down, slashing his long tail off my legs and whipping slobbering kisses across my face. He was full of the bounce of youth, but the old dog was content to lie and soak in the sun. I decided that I had a lot in common with the old dog. She believed in preserving her energy and only doing what was necessary. But suddenly, as the young fellow ran up the garden, she shot into action and tore after him. Even old bitches are not immune to spring fever.

As I sat in the sun, a solution to my problem presented itself. What I needed was to carry some of the garden life into the house to stimulate me into action. So I picked my first bunch of spring daffodils and arching branches of bridal wreath and carried them into the house. When they were arranged in a big jug in the centre of the kitchen table, they were like a crowd at a football match cheering me on, and
they stimulated me into action.

Because the kitchen is the heart of the home, that was the place to begin. I opened the windows to let in the fresh air and I whipped off the curtains and thrust them into the washing machine. I danced along worktops like a drunken acrobat and lifted down pictures, while ancient spiders ran for shelter. Hot, soapy water ran down the walls, eradicating the stains made by an erratic deep fat fryer that was supposed to have a self-purifying system, but alas the walls told a different story. My collection of ancient jugs, which, like myself, has grown larger with the years, was immersed in the sink. I was up to my oxters in suds and loving every minute of it.

Buried inside in me is a charwoman who occasionally breaks out, and, when she does, nothing in the house is safe. The daffodils sat in the centre of all the chaos, willing me to bring everything to their bright and cheerful perfection. When it looked as if the kitchen might never again be restored to normality and I found it difficult to find a clear space to put a foot down, they stood there like an army of yellow cheerleaders. Flowers are beautiful but daffodils are special. They are the key that opens the door of spring, to tell us that it is time for a new beginning. When exhaustion threatened to overcome enthusiasm, they encouraged me to keep going, and gradually order was restored. The daffodils and the kitchen were at last in total harmony. Both were bright and beautiful, and I had
taken the first step to welcome in the spring. I stood there feeling virtuous and at peace with the world.

The following days I moved around the rest of the house like a white tornado and then out into the yard and garden. The spring enthusiasm of the bees had in some way communicated itself to me, and when my cleaning was complete, I went out into the garden to sit on the wobbly garden seat and watch them flying back and forth in a stream of activity. There is something very soothing about watching the bees as they go about their business with
single-minded
determination. With them there is no time for loitering, and if you put your ear to the back of their hive you will hear the hum of action within.

The birds showed a different approach to life, and in the ivy-clad wall behind the hives, they were busy getting their nests in order; unlike the bees, they took time off to sit on the branches of the nearby apple tree and sing with the sheer joy of living. Around the birds and bees the garden was waking up and rubbing the sleep of winter out of its eyes. The crucifixion of winter was behind, and they were getting ready for the resurrection. There was joy in the world of nature, and it awoke a responding chord in my heart. Even the old dog barked in delight as she chased the low-flying birds. She could never catch them and they both knew that, but spring is a time for flying a little higher than you thought possible and getting ready to dance with the sun on Easter Sunday morning.

A
RRIVING IN
B
ALLYBUNION
at one o’clock in the morning with rain lashing off the windscreen and flickering neon lights reflecting off the glistening street might not be everybody’s idea of the right start to a holiday. But as I left the town behind and pulled up in front of the pink-washed house perched high over the sea, the holiday anticipation of childhood awakened within me.

Waves thundered against the black rocks below, shouting an awesome welcome, while sea spray like natural holy water showered me in a returning benediction. The one-walled castle silhouetted against the black angry sea presided over the restless monster at her feet with the ghostly eeriness of another life.

The following morning, after sleeping the sleep of the holiday-maker, I awoke to a howling wind which invited me out to do battle with it along the empty strand and up over the cliffs. The sea was at its most aggressive, belting off the grim, black, forbidding rocks that faced it with towering arrogance while the sea shot sprays of contemptuous spittle into its dark,
brooding eyes.

Leaving turbulent nature behind, I arrived at the church where quietness was preserved inside the old grey stone walls and candelabras of flickering candles penetrated the gloom. People slipped in quietly. Women with gentle faces and elastic stockings, the hallmark of childbearing years. Professional men with greying hair and soft leather shoes, their faces wearied from absorbing a daily barrage of other people’s problems. Here they sat, relaxed in a temporary haven from their demanding world. Three priests came forth from the sacristy. It was to be a concelebrated mass, as holidaying priests swelled the presbytery staff: the first, a dark young man with the strutting arrogance of youth, the next a middle-aged one less assured, and finally an older man serene and confident that having come down a long road he was still going in the right direction.

Afterwards the people trooped out: the gentle women, the grey-haired men and others with tight, hard faces who had failed to find what they came for. Going into the paper shop across the road, I met the old priest coming out. We shook hands and chatted because we had known each other when he had been a young priest, I a brash teenager. We talked about the Ballybunion of my childhood, when people brought their own food and the guesthouse owners did the cooking. He told me how they had identified the different pieces of meat in the pots with bits of coloured ribbon. What gay pots bubbled
on the Ballybunion cookers in those days!

Breakfast over, my energetic brood departed for the beach and I walked with my mother, now in the winter of her years, up into the town. The old on holidays are far less demanding than the young, as they have slowed down in the restful waters of old age and draw you into their tranquil pace for temporary respite. Other old people walked slowly along, shepherded by middle-aged sons or daughters, the role of former years reversed. Sometimes the shepherd was a jeans-clad, sneakered teenager, and granny and grandchild laughed happily together as he made fun of her infirmity, the young infusing the old with their reckless energy and carrying them along on their wave of high spirits.

My mother had a brooch in her bag that needed repair, so we set out for the jewellery shop at the far end of the town. Over the years she had brought stopped watches, alarm clocks and even bigger clocks on holidays to be repaired by an old man in this shop. He had been a wonderful watch and clock repairer and over the yearly holiday encounters had become a friend. He had died during the previous winter and now his son was in charge, so she was sailing in uncharted waters. When we arrived in the shop, she slowly opened her bag and took out a matchbox. The puzzled jeweller and I viewed the matchbox, but gradually the story unfolded as she eased it open to reveal an ancient brooch within.

Before the efficient young man could voice any
disparagement about the article for repair, she told him serenely, “I bought this years ago from your father. He was a fine man and a splendid man for repairs. Built up his business that way, you know.”

The young man was beaten before he started and he knew it. Examining the battered brooch with the faulty clasp, he promised to have it ready the following day.

Next on her agenda was a lady from home who had a pub in Ballybunion. When we called she was gone to the hairdresser, so we decided to have a drink in a quiet corner.

Around the pub were brown-legged yuppies in Bermuda shorts and fit-looking teenagers stretched across pool tables, displaying expanses of tanned backs above sea-blue denims. Sitting on a high stool in the corner of the counter in front of us was a man of indiscernible age with the assuredness of having been there when this pub had had a snug and before all the surrounding bodies had sailed in. This was his pub. A muddy-coloured gabardine overcoat with the look of many winters enveloped him and the high stool. A greasy cap which showed that it had been dried regularly beside a turf fire was pulled down firmly over his eyes and edged out over his black pint like a thatched roof. His nose was the only visible facial feature and it protruded between his pint and his cap like the beak of a giant crow. He sat ruminating on his stool, oblivious to these people who were not of his world.

Silently in beside him slipped a strange-looking little man. My eyes had wandered around the pub and when they returned to the most interesting point, there the little man had appeared like a genie out of a bottle. He wore the coat of a suit belonging to a much bigger man, which reached almost to his knees, swinging over spindly legs encased in long grey socks pulled up outside his pants to his knees. The little man had enormous black boots laced
half-way
up his shin bones. His shrunken face had yellow, leathery skin stretched tautly across sharp bones, giving his eyes a prominent frog-like appearance. His crowning glory was a sparse crop of hair, so well oiled that little rivulets ran down his bony face like mountain streams between brown rocks.

A glamorous blonde barmaid approached him.

“My tay and bread and butter,” he demanded.

She looked at him as if he had just crawled out from under a stone.

“He always gets it here,” asserted the man from under the cap, with the implication in his voice that they had both been here before she was ever seen or heard of in this pub. Before she could decide on a course of action, a grey-haired man wearing the look of the owner came up along the bar. The little man relaxed visibly when he saw him.

“My tay and bread and butter, Boss?” he enquired.

“Of course, Jack,” the boss assured him.

“Go over there,” the man under the cap ordered, pointing to a corner seat and casting a contemptuous
look at the pert barmaid. She was probably on holiday relief and he wanted to educate her as to who counted around here.

“She’ll bring it over to you,” he continued, making sure that she got the message.

The little man headed for the corner seat, his message bag slapping against his legs. I had not seen one of those bags for thirty years. Made of hard twine with a red band running around the middle, it had two strong cord handles. They had come out during the war and had been hung from the handlebars of bikes transporting household needs from country shops into the depths of rural Ireland. Very few could have survived this long, but here was one that, judging by the look of it, had served its owner well and developed a character of its own in the process. Years of rain, sunburn and miles of mud splashing on mountainy roads had given it a well-travelled, road-wise look. This little man and his message bag belonged together.

The problem solved, the man on the stool resumed his transcendental meditation. Suddenly, in the door came a man cycling without a bike. Almost as if the mechanism of his hip joints were faulty, he lifted his legs in a semi-circular movement high off the ground and they fell heavily by themselves. It was either that he had spent years cycling up against steep hills or that he lived in a very untidy house and automatically lifted his legs to get across miscellaneous pots and pans. Dressed in a dirty fawn suit, he had the face of a
laughing gnome. He peered up at the man under the cap. They could only have come from the same hill. No salutations passed between them.

“Would you say that you’re sixty-one?” was his opening remark.

“More,” from under the cap.

“Sixty-two,” he tried.

“More,” came back from under the cap.

“Sixty-three?” in surprise.

“More,” in the same tone.

“Sixty-four!” in disbelief.

“More,” came back the toneless reply.

And so it continued until the fawn man said in amazement, “Sixty-nine!”

“Next spring,” came the answer in a tone which implied that wonders would never cease.

That topic of conversation exhausted, from under the cap came the announcement, “Tom is taking the paper to court.”

“Why?” asked the fawn man.

“They called him a jailbird.”

“Well,” with caution, “he was in jail.”

“Only once, and once doesn’t make him a jailbird,” came emphatically from under the cap.

That gave the fawn man something to think about, and having thought it over with a look of intense concentration on his face he finally pronounced, “Tom is in trouble with the paper, in trouble with the guards, in trouble with herself…” and with utter conviction he finished up, “Tomeen is in trouble
with himself.”

The man under the cap was not convinced. “The just man falls nine times,” came the proclamation.

It is difficult to argue with a man who thinks bigger than God, so the fawn man knew that he had lost that round. His next shot was, “You’d be getting the dole all the time.”

The man on the stool straightened up with the arrogance of movement that gave his rusty gabardine the air of a crimson cloak, and his burnt cap took on the splendour of a jewelled crown. The majesty of the Kerry hills was in his bearing as he spat out the words, “Never drew that in my life!” Stepping down from his high stool he had the dignity of a king descending from his throne and he swept out the door with the grandeur of a great actor taking his final curtain call.

I waited for the applause, but none came. Then I returned to reality and realised that this was not lunch-time theatre but real life, and I had been privileged to be present at a private viewing.

Later that morning my strong-willed seven year old bulldozed me unwillingly into a chilly navy-blue sea that splashed threateningly against my ankles of the same colour. In a navy-blue swimsuit I blended in perfectly with my surroundings. My daughter dived under scurrying waves and yelled at me to join her. As I high-stepped gingerly over the oncoming waves, I prayed that God might turn on a giant immersion somewhere out there in the Atlantic and take the
murderous chill out of the freezing water. Having closed my eyes to add fervour to my prayer and to control my chattering teeth, I was taken unawares when a high-jumping wave swept over my head and showered me in its salty essence. Suddenly, as I came up gasping, the sun burst forth like a light in a darkening room and lit up the whole scene. The sea sparkled and white horses swept towards us wrapping us in their swirling tails. Looking out across the leaping waves that went on and on and reared higher and higher in the distance, I felt an overwhelming sense of exhilaration. Holding out my arms I felt part of a great creation and thanked heaven for the seven year old who had dragged me back into her sparkling world.

That afternoon the rain came down in sheets and turned the strand into a grey mist zone, and because I felt the need to be cosseted and by myself, I decided on a hot seaweed bath. The seaweed was collected from the Black Rocks when the tide was out and a bucketful thrown into the bath under a boiling hot water tap which burst the bubbles and drew the oil from the seaweed. The baths were attached to Mary Collins’s tea rooms on the strand. She told me that in her younger days she boiled the seaweed in a black pot over the fire, and she smiled to recall one old man from the Kerry hills who would put his head in the door and shout, “Mary, have you any trough empty?”

All was changed now, however, with endless
hot water on tap and French and German accents blending with the soft Kerry brogue.

Stepping into the warm oily bath was a soft poultice to the mind and body; the floating seaweed touched my skin like the caressing fingertips of a black lover. Suffused in the moist, steamy little world, I listened to the rain beat on the galvanised tin roof and to the sound of the waves as they crashed on to the beach outside. It was almost like a return to the womb. The cubicles on either side of me were unoccupied, so there was no sound but the rain and the sea, and I drifted off to sleep. I awoke to the noisy clatter of two Dublin women coming into the cubicles on either side of me. They were obviously good friends and carried on a conversation over my head as the dividers in the cubicles were not
ceiling-high
. Both husbands, who were out playing golf in the rain, were discussed in detail, so much so that before the bath water had cooled, I felt that I had got to know Tony and Aidan very well.

The conversation then turned to the musical society they belonged to, and almost as if an unseen choir master had raised his baton, they both burst into song and rendered the drinking song from
La Traviata
in high, clear voices. I wished that I had a glass of chilled white wine to drink a toast to these two flamboyant, light-hearted ladies, but instead I turned on the hot tap and leaned back to enjoy this unexpected concert. Their repertoire was entertaining and varied, but when they broke into
“Goodbye” from the
White Horse Inn
, I took it as the finale and stepped out of the cooling seaweed bath.

After dinner that night, the rain having cleared, I set out to walk along the cliff-top to the Nine Daughters Hole and the Virgin Rock. High above the incoming tide was a seat, so I sat there to watch the sea. I have always had a love-hate relationship with the sea, feeling sometimes that it has hypnotic powers that could draw one down into it. Silently one of my teenage sons slipped on to the seat beside me. Unusually for him he sat wordlessly gazing out to sea. After a while he said quietly, “Nanna is slowing down, isn’t she?”