The Teapots Are Out and Other Eccentric Tales from Ireland (19 page)

If ever a postmaster, sub or otherwise, belied his imperious title that man was Fred Spellacy. It could be fairly said that he was the very essence of deferentiality. He was also an abuseabsorber. When things went wrong his superiors made him into a scapegoat, his customers rounded on him, his wife upbraided him, his in-laws chided him. His assistant Miss Finnerty clocked reproachfully as though she were a hen
whose egg-laying had been precipitately disrupted. She reserved all her clocking for Fred. She never clocked at Fred's wife but then nobody did.

‘Yes child!' Fred Spellacy asked gently.

‘It's the postman's job sir.'

Fred Spellacy nodded, noted the pale, ingenuous face, the threadbare clothes.

‘What age are you?' he asked gently.

‘Eleven,' came the reply, ‘but it's not for me. It's for my father.'

‘Oh!' said Fred Spellacy

Dolly Hallon thought she detected a smile. Just in case she forced one in return.

‘What's his name, age and address child?'

‘His name is Tom Hallon,' Dolly Hallon replied. ‘His age is thirty-seven and his address is Hog Lane.'

Fred Spellacy scribbled the information onto a jotter which hung by a cord from the counter. He knew Tom Hallon well enough. Not a ne‘er do-well by any means, used to work in the mill before it closed. He recalled having heard somewhere that the Hallons were honest. Honest! Some people had no choice but to be honest while others didn't have the opportunity to be dishonest.

‘Can he read and write?'

‘Oh yes,' Dolly assured him. ‘He reads the paper every day when Mister Draper next door is done with it. He can write too! He writes to his sister in America.'

‘And Irish? Has he Irish?'

‘Oh yes,' came the assured response from the eleven year old. ‘He reads my school books. He has nothing else to do!'

‘Well Miss Hallon here's what you must get your father to
do. Get him to apply for the job and enclose a reference from someone in authority such as the parish priest or one of the teachers. I don't suppose he has a Curriculum Vitae?'

‘What's that?' Dolly Hallon asked, her aspirations unexpectedly imperilled.

‘The jobs he's had, his qualifications ...'

Fred Spellacy paused as he endeavoured to find words which might simplify the vacant position's requirements.

‘Just get him to put down the things he's good at and don't delay. The position must be filled by noon tomorrow. Christmas is on top of us and the letters are mounting up.'

Dolly Hallon nodded her understanding and hurried homewards.

Fred Spellacy was weary. It was a weariness imposed, not by the demands of his job but by the demands of his wife and by the countless recommendations made to him on behalf of the applicants for the vacant position. Fred's was a childless family but there was never a dull moment with Fred's wife Alannah always on the offensive and Fred the opposite.

Earlier that day he had unwittingly made a promise to one of the two local TDs that he would do all within his power for the fellow's nominee. Moments later the phone rang. It was the other TD. Fred had no choice but to make the same promise.

‘Don't forget who put you there in the first place!' the latter had reminded him.

Worse was to follow. The reverend mother from the local convent had called, earnestly beseeching him not to forget her nominee, a genuine vessel of immaculacy who was, she assured him, the most devout Catholic in the parish. Hot on her heels came others of influence, shopkeepers, teachers and even a member of the civic guards, all pressed into service by desperate
job-seekers who would resort to anything to secure the position. Even the pub next door, which had always been a
sanctum sanctorum,
was out of bounds. The proprietor, none more convivial or more generous, had poured him a double dollop of Power's Gold Label before entreating him to remember one of his regulars, a man of impeccable character, unparalleled integrity, unbelievable scholarship and, to crown all, one of the lads as well!

‘Come in here!' There was no mistaking the irritation in his wife's voice. She pointed to a chair in the tiny kitchen.

‘Sit down there boy!' She turned her back on him while she lit a cigarette. Contemptuously she exhaled, revelling in the dragonish jets issuing from both nostrils.

Fred sat with bent head, a submissive figure. He dared not even cross his legs. He did not dare to tell her that there were customers waiting, that the queue at the counter was lengthening. He knew that a single word could result in a blistering barrage.

‘Melody O'Dea,‘ she opened, 'is one of my dearest friends.‘

Her tone suggested that the meek man who sat facing her would grievously mutilate the woman in question given the slightest opportunity.

Again she drew upon the cigarette. A spasm of coughing followed. She looked at Fred as though he had brought it about.

‘Her char's husband Mick hasn't worked for three years.'

Alannah Spellacy proceeded in a tone unused to interference, ‘so you'll see to it that he gets the job!'

She rose, cigarette in mouth, and drew her coat about her.

‘I'll go down now,' she announced triumphantly, ‘and tell
Melody the good news!'

When Tom Hallon reported for work at the sub post office at noon on the following day Alannah Spellacy was so overcome with shock that she was unable to register a single protest. When Tom Hallon donned the postman's cap, at least a size too large, she disintegrated altogether and had to be helped upstairs, still speechless, by her husband and Miss Finnerty. There she would remain throughout the Christmas, her voice fully restored and to be heard reverberating all over the house until she surprisingly changed her tune shortly after Christmas when it occurred to her that the meek were no longer meek and must needs be cossetted.

Alannah Spellacy had come to the conclusion that she had pushed her husband as far as he would be pushed. Others would come to the same realisation in due course. Late in his days, but not too late, Fred Spellacy the puppet would be replaced by a resolute, more independent Fred.

Fred Spellacy had agonised all through the previous night over the appointment. In the beginning he had formed the opinion that it would be in his best interest to appoint the applicant with the most powerful patron but unknown to him the seeds of revolt had been stirring in his subconscious for years. Dolly Hallon had merely been the catalyst.

Fred had grown weary of being told what to do and what not to do. The crisis had been reached shortly after Dolly had walked out the door of the post office.

That night, as he pondered the merits of the score or so applicants, he eventually settled on a short list of four. These were the nominees of the two TDs, his wife's nominee and the rank outsider, Tom Hallon, of Hog Lane.

He had once read that the ancient Persians never made a
major judgment without a second trial. They judged first when they were drunk and they judged secondly when they were sober. As he left the post office Fred Spellacy had already made up his mind. He by-passed his local and opted instead for the privacy of a secluded snug in a quiet pub which had seen better days. After his third whiskey and chaser of bottled stout he was assumed into that piquant if temporary state which only immoderate consumption of alcohol can induce.

From his inside pocket he withdrew Tom Hallon's
Curri
culum Vitae and read it for the second time. Written on a lined page neatly extracted from a school exercise book it was clearly the work of his daughter Dolly. The spelling was correct but the accomplishments were few. He had worked in the mill but nowhere else. He had lost his job through no fault of his own. Thus far it could have been the story of any unemployed man within a radius of three miles but then the similarities ended for it was revealed that Tom Hallon had successfully played the role of Santa Claus for as long as Dolly Hallon could remember. While the gifts he delivered were home-made and lacking in craftsmanship his arrival had brought happiness unbounded to the Hallon family and to the several other poverty-stricken families in Hog Lane.

‘Surely,' Fred Spellacy addressed himself in the privacy of the snug, ‘if this man can play the role of Santa Claus then so can I. If he can bear gifts I can bear gifts.'

He rose and buttoned his coat. He pulled up his socks and finished his stout before proceeding unsteadily but resolutely towards the abode of Dolly Hallon in Hog Lane.

He had been prepared, although not fully, for the repercussions. The unsuccessful applicants, their families, friends and handlers, all made their dissatisfaction clear in the run-up
to Christmas. They had cast doubts upon his integrity and ancestry in language so malevolent and scurrilous that he was beyond blushing by the time all had their say.

One man had to be physically restrained and the wife of another had spat into his face. He might not have endured the sustained barrage at all but for one redeeming incident. It wanted but three days for Christmas. A long queue had formed at the post office counter, many of its participants hostile, the remainder impatient.

From upstairs came the woebegone cronawning of his obstructive spouse and when the cronawning ceased there came, down the stairs, shower after shower of the most bitter recriminations, sharper and more piercing than driving hail. He was very nearly at the end of his tether.

‘Yes!' he asked of the beaming face which now stood at the head of the ever-lengthening queue. There was no request for stamps nor was there a parcel to be posted. Dolly Hallon just stood there, her pale face transformed by the most angelic and pleasing of smiles. She uttered not a single word but her gratitude beamed from her radiant countenance.

Fred Spellacy felt as though he had been included in the communion of saints. His cares vanished. His heart soared. Then, impassively, she winked at him. Fred Spellacy produced a handkerchief and loudly blew his nose.

The bog was a mixture of browns and greys, grey where the sun had bleached the exposed turf banks and the misshapen reeks of yesteryear which stood along the margin of the roadway. In the moonlight the grey turned to silver but the brown remained sombre even when stars danced and the heavens seemed on fire. When the weather was fine the bog was my playground. Every goat-path, bog-hole and goosenest was as familiar to me as the lanes and streets of the nearby town where I lived. I knew the titles of the turf banks and the names of the reek owners. I knew the sod depth of every bank and the quagmires where asses and ponies sank to their haunches. This was because I spent most of the summer days with two ancient relatives who lived in a tiny thatched house on the edge of the bog. They were brothers. Their names were Mr Chamberlain and Sir Stafford Cripps. These, of course, were not their real names. Rather were they sobriquets invented by the locals on account of the resemblance the pair bore to the British politicians Neville Chamberlain and Stafford Cripps. The Second World War was well under way when I discovered the bog and there was an abundance of Rommells, Montys and McArthurs so christened because of forecasts they might have made regarding the outcome of the war or because of certain characteristics relating to the famous generals.

Mr Chamberlain was the older of the two brothers. He was lean as a whippet, bald as a coot and reticent to the point of muteness. Sir Stafford on the other hand was as talkative as he
was outgoing. Both were on the old age pension. It was Sir Stafford who tackled the ass and went to town on Fridays to cash the pension vouchers. Mr Chamberlain would not demean himself with such mundane matters and only went to town on Sundays to attend Mass. The pair got on famously. Sometimes there were disagreements but these were shortlived. I remember one such. It was early September. The turf was harvested and new reeks were beginning to appear daily on the roadway. The brothers had earlier cut, stooked and restooked two sleans of turf and this stood now in donkey stoolins in the bog on the heather-covered turf bank which had supplied them with turf for generations. It would have to be transported from the bank to the roadway where it would be built into a reek.

Mid-August to mid-September was the recognised time for drawing out. The passages to the turf banks were dry and firm but later they might be rendered impassable by heavy rains. When this happened the turf remained in the bog until the late spring of the following year and the owners had to make do with the remains of old reeks and occasional sacks laboriously drawn on their backs from the stranded stoolins.

‘It's time,' Mr Chamberlain announced as we sat on the low wall which fronted the house.

‘And I say it's not time,' Sir Stafford countered.

‘And why so do you say that?' Mr Chamberlain asked, ‘when I say otherwise.'

‘I say that,' said Sir Stafford, ‘because the man on Hanafin's wireless made a forecast of rain.'

‘And what do he know?' Mr Chamberlain asked derisively, ‘that couldn't tell one end of this bog from the other no more nor the ass.'

‘He knows plenty,' Sir Stafford persisted.

‘There will be no rain tomorrow,' Mr Chamberlain spoke with finality. ‘The wind is from the right point and there's heating in it and if there's heating in it then by all the laws the sun will be along after the wind.'

To give confirmation to his belief he raised his head and turned his thin, sensitive nose into the wind. I did likewise. The sea was less than five miles distant as the crow flies and sometimes there was a tang of salt in the air. Other times, especially after high tides, there would be a strong fragrance of sea wrack. Often there was the unmistakable odour of decay but it was always possible for a man of experience and judgement to smell out any rain that might be likely to move inland in the course of time.