Amongst Women (14 page)

‘That boy thinks he can stroll in here any hour of the day or night he likes. I’ve warned him once and for all and I’ll not warn him again. He may not take heed and if he doesn’t I may need your help to bring him to his senses,’ Moran confided to Sheila during one of the weekends the girls came from Dublin. She nodded and listened. She did not want to know where the talk led. Tomorrow she would be back in Dublin. ‘To bring him once and for all to his senses’ was like far-off thunder that could promise any sort of weather.

Moran’s warning on the night he locked Michael out had little effect but to make him more calculating. For so many years he had been protected by the cushion of the others that he alone in the house had no residual fear of Moran. When he was going to be late he now made some excuse. Moran was often tired which was reason enough for him not to stay up to check the lateness. But the sorest point was his constant need of money.

‘You must think I’m made of money. You must think money grows on bushes. You must think all I have to do is to go out and gather money like a few armfuls of hay for cattle. I had no money at your age. And none of the others in the house ever had the money you want.’

‘Everybody at school has money, more money than I ever have,’ the boy said resentfully.

‘Then their fools of fathers must have more money than sense. I can tell you there’s no money here. I can tell you that once and for all and for good.’

Then Michael went to Rose. Again she gave him small sums. She was very fond of the boy, though by now, except for a coltish awkwardness, he was more man in height and strength than boy. All of them now looked forward to Christmas. Each night brought it one day nearer. The girls would be coming home and all of them would be together again under the same roof. Each dull night sharpened that anticipation.

Rose had already made the plum pudding. It lay wrapped in dampened gauze in the biscuit tin on top of the dresser. A week before Christmas Moran dragged a huge red-berried branch through the front door and dumped it in the middle of the room, filling the centre of the floor.

‘What’s that doing here?’ Rose asked in dismay.

‘Didn’t you tell me to look out for berried holly? You’ll not see much redder than that. I don’t know how it escaped the birds.’

‘I said a few sprigs not a whole tree.’

‘Easier to cut the branch than pluck here and there among the thorns. Can’t you throw out what you don’t want?’

‘Oh Daddy, we just want a few bits for the windows and pictures. But the berries are beautiful. It’s such a pity to destroy a whole tree for a few sprigs.’

‘It’d go to waste on the birds anyway. Better to have too much than too little.’ He went out pleased by the mild censure of the tree of red berries lying in the middle of the floor.

It moved Rose to decorate the house at once in order to be rid of the huge branch, and Michael helped. In an hour bits of berried holly were twisted in all the picture cords and left in rows along windowsills and shelves. ‘Daddy can never do anything by halves,’ Rose laughed as they hauled the branch outside. It still had enough berries to decorate several houses and they both laughed in indulgent amusement.

During these weeks at the prospect of his sisters’ homecoming  Michael returned to being a child of the house. He was poised on the blurred height, as eager to come down and be cradled and fussed over as to swagger and tomcat it out into the wild. Maggie crossed over to Dublin the night before Christmas Eve. She spent the day in Dublin and the three girls took the late train next day.

Moran left alone for the station. Michael stayed outside the house in the cold clear night until suddenly the lighted squares of the diesel train rattled across the darkness of the Plains. ‘The train has passed!’ he rushed inside to cry to Rose. In spite of the cold he kept opening the front door. Excited herself, and caught in his excitement, she had not the heart to tell him to keep it closed. ‘They’re here!’ he called to her as soon as the headlights turned into the short avenue, and leaving the door wide open they went to meet the car. By the little wooden gate there were hugs and cries, eager kisses, the calling out of names, Sheila, Maggie, Michael, Mona, Rose, Rose, Rose, Rose, each name an utterance of pleasure and of joy. They were home, they were home for Christmas. Moran’s family were all, almost all, under the one roof for Christmas. They had come to what they knew best in the world.

‘Look what I brought for Christmas,’ Moran laughed proudly when they were all inside. ‘Three fine women.’ Words rushed against one another from the two who loved to talk, Maggie and Sheila, came to a stop against one another, laughed in impatience at each block, and rushed on. Mona was silent or spoke quietly.

By the time tea was taken everyone was quieter and each of them speaking naturally. All they had to do was observe the happy rituals: help prepare the turkey, remove the curtains from the front windows and light a single candle in each window, kneel to say the Rosary together, dress and get ready to go to midnight Mass. As they knelt on the floor, Moran began, ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost we offer up this most holy Rosary for the one member of the family who is absent from the house tonight,’ and the dramatizing of the exception drew uncomfortable attention to the disturbing bonds of their togetherness.

The three girls, Rose and Michael packed into the small car which Moran was driving to midnight Mass. They sat on one another’s knees and joked. ‘I think you’ve put on weight since you went to Dublin.’ ‘Your knees haven’t got softer anyhow since,’ laughing and chattering away the discomfort of the physical constraint. Single candles burned in the windows of all the houses they passed and pinpoints of light glittered as far as the first slopes of the mountain in the sea of darkness.

Once they crossed the bridge the church appeared like an enormous lighted ship in the night. There was something wonderful and moving about leaving the car by the roadside and walking together in the cold and darkness towards the great lighted church. The girls clasped hands in silence and drew closer together as they walked. Once they passed through the church gates several people came over to them to welcome them home and to wish them a happy Christmas, whispering how well they looked as they bowed away with little nods and smiles. The church itself was crowded and humming with excitement. There were many others like the Moran girls who had come home for Christmas. They would all be singled out as they came away from the altar rail after Communion and discussed over hundreds of dinners the next day: who was home and where they were living and what they worked at and how they looked and who they got their looks from and what they wore last night as they came away from the rail. As good-looking girls in their first flowering, the three Morans were among the stars of the Communion rail that Christmas night.

‘I’ll leave you to this cackle,’ Moran said indulgently as soon as he finished his cup of tea after they got back to the house. ‘But my advice is to go to bed.’

‘I suppose we should all go to bed,’ Sheila said vigorously as soon as Moran had left but no sooner had she said the words than she launched into, ‘And did you see Mary Fahey?’ which led on to more people and clothes and positions and looks, until Rose said with her apologetic little laugh, ‘We could go on like this the whole night and Daddy will wonder what on earth we were talking about all this time.’

When she was gone, the heart of the talk was broken; and then to Sheila’s ‘I suppose we should go to bed’, they went.

Because of midnight Mass the whole house was able to sleep late. Once they rose the day was set. There would be no surprises,  pleasant or unpleasant. No visits would be made or received this day – it was considered to be improper to leave one’s own house on Christmas Day – and the day would climb to the glory of the feast of turkey and stuffing and then slip back again to night in card playing.

‘I suppose there’s not much use inquiring about that brother of yours,’ Moran asked awkwardly. ‘Anybody normal would be with his own family at Christmas.’ It was as if he wanted to get all unpleasantness out of the way early in deference to the day and feast.

‘I didn’t see him very much. He lives the other side of London. It takes over an hour to get there on the tube,’ Maggie said carefully.

‘What’s he doing with himself for Christmas?’

‘He said he was going down to Kent. He has friends there.’

‘What kind of friends?’

‘People he works with.’

‘Has he got himself a decent job then?’

‘He’s started a business with people he got to know. They buy old houses. He says he has to spend too much time in the office now. He’d sooner be out and around the sites.’

‘That’ll all blow up in his face one of these days. You have to depend on too many people. There are plenty of rogues about but of course you can’t tell that gentleman anything.’

‘He doesn’t talk much about it.’

‘He’d be afraid I’d hear too much. How does he look himself?’

‘He looks much the same as he always did.’

‘Well, I’m glad you go to the trouble of seeing him even if he doesn’t act as if he’s still a member of my family. All the members of my family are equal even if they think otherwise. They should never be looked down on or excluded. Not even if they want to exclude themselves.’

The room was already full of delicious smells. Two tables were put together out from the window and covered with a white cloth. The places were set. The huge browned turkey was placed in the centre of the table. The golden stuffing was spooned from its breast, white dry breadcrumbs spiced with onion and parsley and pepper. There were small roast potatoes and peas and afterwards the moist brandy-soaked plum pudding.  Brown lemonade was squirted into the glasses from syphons with silver tops.

‘I’m so hungry I could eat a young child,’ Moran said and everybody laughed. He sat at the head of the elongated table. Before Rose came he always ate alone at the big table. The meal was ringed by the Grace he recited before and after.

Then, after the washing-up and tidying, it was a slow struggle to get through what remained of the day. Mona and Sheila read. The others played the long card game of Twenty-one for penny stakes. Moran won the most. There were stifled yawns while tea was made after cards and Moran made loud and exaggerated yawns for comic effect. The whole house was glad to slip away early to bed after the Rosary was said.

As if to make up for the sealing of the house on Christmas Day all doors were thrown wide open on St Stephen’s Day. People continually trooped between houses, bringing presents or friendly words or just making calls. Not many visitors ever called to Moran’s house but the girls were fêted everywhere they called to. ‘You’re home! You’re home for Christmas!’ and hands were gripped and held instead of shaken to show the strength of feeling. Michael went with the girls to some of the houses but had to travel very much in their shadow. Tired of being ignored he went home with ill-grace to Rose. They both went to the door together whenever the wren-boys knocked, local children in gaudy carnival rags wearing masks or warpaint. Few could dance or sing or play properly. Usually they performed a painful parody of all three while they rattled coins vigorously about in a tin canister. Michael lost his grievance as he began to enjoy their incompetence while trying to identify the children underneath their colourful disguises. Between the motley bands of children, the real wren-boys came on the Arigna coal lorry. The girls made sure that they were in the house. Many of the wren-boys did not bother to wear disguises. An accordion struck up as they swarmed from the lorry, then more accordions, fiddles, fifes and a drum. Dancers skipped up the path and caught Rose and the girls and danced them round the room in perfect time. There were screeches of laughter and provocative cheers to the music. Everyone went silent when an old song was sung in a pure tenor with bare accompaniment; then more music and dancing and clowning. Moran liked the traditional music and handed them a larger sum than usual. Before the Ardcarnes left they urged everyone to come to the big dance in the barn that night. As usual all the money they lifted would be spent on whiskey and porter and lemonade and sandwiches and cake and tea. The same musicians would play. All would drink and eat and dance. The little party ended as suddenly as it began with murmurs and clear words of thanks and warnings of
Don’t let us miss you tonight
; and then the melancholy sounds of the instruments being packed.

Rose and the girls tried to prevail on Moran to go with them to the wren-boys ‘dance in the barn that night but the one time he had gone with Rose had been more than enough.’ There’s a time for dancing and a time for being out of sight. Why don’t you go with the girls?’ he said to Rose.

‘You know I’ll not go unless you go, Daddy,’ Rose said. ‘You know there will be people far older than us there.’

‘That’s their business,’ Moran said and shuffled out of the room.

In their excitement all the girls looked beautiful dressed for the dance but none was more excited or more carefully dressed than Michael. The girls hardly noticed him. Though tall he was reed-like and they still looked on him as a child. Moran drove them to the dance. They would walk or get a lift home: there was the unspoken sexual excitement of meeting someone who would see them home.

There were no lights around the gates and shuttered gatehouse when they drove up the narrow avenue. They found the big house in darkness but round the back among the sheds the enormous barn was all lit up by lines of naked electric bulbs strung up on poles. Inside, it was already full. Three musicians who had come on the Arigna lorry to the house earlier in the day played reels on a platform of raised planks but no one was dancing yet. Girls were drinking tea and talking in groups at trestle tables set around the walls. Older women drank whiskey with men their age. Around the porter barrels stood crowds of young men. It hardly changed from year to year and could have been the same scene as Rose and Moran had walked in on.

At once Michael joined one of the crowds and took a glass of stout. None of the Moran girls drank. They were as much shocked by the confidence with which Michael moved about among the men as by his actual drinking. Their little brother had grown up without their noticing. He moved loudly among the men as the alcohol went to his head. The men merely turned their backs on the boy’s show of masculinity. Catching his sisters’ stares of disapproval, he waved his glass to them across the floor and started to survey the women.