An Irish Christmas Feast (37 page)

He woke several times during the night. It was still dark when he started to get ready for the train. As he shaved he winced at the smell of rashers frying downstairs. He prayed that his mother would still be away. Hardly home yet he told himself. She would have confronted him already. He could have spent another day at home, even two days, but his time had come. No money and no zest and no hope.

He put on a brave face as he went downstairs. He rushed out to the back kitchen when he beheld the enormous display on his plate. It was colourful as it was plentiful with cubes of black and white puddings, sausages nicely browned, a little burning here and there which was the way he liked them. He didn't deserve such sisters. Then there were tomatoes in abundance each sliced into equal parts, and liver. Where the blazes did they get the liver on a holiday morning and at such an hour! Gently he embraced sisters and brother, relishing their healthy appetites as he tinkered with the toast for which he had asked.

At the station the four Macksons stood dejectedly together. Aenias leaned over and whispered to Tom. ‘I am the sole owner,' he said, ‘of the worst headache any man ever had.'

‘I'll pray for you,' Tom whispered back. ‘From now on I'll pray for you all the time.

‘Pray for me!' Aenias was about to laugh but then it came back to him, something his mother had told him one day that last Christmas they spoke together. ‘Tom's teachers believe he has a vocation for the priesthood,' she had told him proudly.

As they moved towards the train which had silently entered the station Aenias whispered a second time to his brother. ‘I could do with a few prayers,' he said. He found himself shivering uncontrollably as the sisters handed him the suitcase. He felt like a man deserted and degraded as they stepped backwards, their eyes brimming with tears. The suitcase contained infinitely more on its return journey. There was a heavy pull-over and a shirt from his mother, socks, underwear and towels from his sisters and
The Oxford Book of Irish Vers
e from Tom.

Sam Toper always looked forward to Christmas. Sam's wife and family did not. Sam looked forward to Christmas because it was a time of free drinks. If one chanced to be in the right bar at the right time one was always sure to meet merry old gentlemen and, indeed, younger gentlemen who insisted in buying drinks for all and sundry. They would even buy drinks for people they had never before seen in all their lives. Sam couldn't understand it but because it was beneficial to him he totally accepted it. You wouldn't have any business explaining the spirit of Christmas to Sam and need I add that expressions like ‘peace and goodwill' or ‘come all ye faithful' would be meaningless to him.

Down deep he understood that there was an inexplicable chemistry at work, a chemistry which ordained that stingy oul' codgers who otherwise would not give him the time of day were prepared to press free drink on him at this particular time of year. If you were to suggest to Sam that he might more fully enter into the spirit of things if he himself bought drinks for people who were worse off than he was, Sam would be certain to double over in convulsions of laughter. From the look on his face after the laughter had subsided you would gather that it was one of the more preposterous proposals he had ever heard. Those who knew Sam well such as his wife and family and, of course, his neighbours were all agreed that Sam was a lousy creep, that he would not give you the itch if he had nine doses of it and that the idea of returning a favour was nothing short of reprehensible.

His employer, one Bustler Hearne, would have sacked him immediately after taking him on but for the fact that he could get no one else to work for him. Bustler Hearne was a bully and had beaten the daylights out of most of his previous employees for heinous crimes such as being late five minutes on wet mornings or for suggesting a rise in wages. It must however be taken into account that nobody else would employ Sam Toper because they couldn't motivate him the way Bustler could.

Bustler's business consisted of plucking and trussing fowl, particularly geese and turkeys, during the run-up to Christmas. For weeks before he would purchase his Christmas requirements from the fowl-rich countryside within a radius of ten miles. Of his regular employees, a Miss Dotie Tupper aged eighty-four was in charge of cash sales and another, our friend Sam, was fowl dispatcher and plucker-in-chief. Extra staff were taken on during the Christmas period. There was no such structure as a regular wage. One was paid for the number of turkeys plucked in the round of a day and woe betide the man or woman who damaged birds while plucking.

Sam was a model plucker when he put his mind to it and because he was possessed of an insatiable appetite for pints of stout he plucked like a man possessed, often earning three times as much as ordinary pluckers. Sam's wife Moya and their seven children had no great regard for Christmas. They loved their mother and each other after a fashion but because Christmas had never been kind to them they were never generous in their praise of it. There was no scarcity of food. The requisite share of Sam's weekly wage was put aside for Moya and would be collected by one of the older children when it fell due. Sam kept the balance so that he might satisfy his outrageous thirst.

‘If,' said Canon Coodle the well-beloved parish priest, ‘there is even a solitary half-penny missing from Moya's share of your wages I will raise you aloft and turn you inside out after which I will truss you and singe you and cast you into the depths of the quarry.' It mattered not to Canon Coodle that there was no water in the quarry hole nor had there ever been. It was the way he used his deep voice that made the hair stand on Sam's head.

There was another reason why the young Topers had no great affection for Christmas. They were constrained by their father to work as part-time goose and turkey pluckers during the Christmas holidays when other youngsters were roving the countryside in search of holly and ivy for the family cribs. They were made to work from dawn till dark and deprived of their rightful wages by their drink-crazed father. It was too late when Sergeant Ruttle heard about it but when he did he presented Sam with three deep and accurate kicks on his booze-fattened posterior and threatened him with life imprisonment if such a malpractice ever occurred again.

After that the children started to enjoy Christmas especially when Canon Coodle found them suitable employment for a few days before Christmas. The money would be spent on inexpensive gifts before their father found out about it and demanded that it be handed over so that he might slake his unquenchable thirst.

When the three older children arrived into their middle and late teens they made contact with aunts and uncles in England and the United States and eventually wound up in New York where they found gainful employment. They would save most assiduously from their very first wage packet with a view to bringing the entire family, father excluded, to New York where they might start life afresh.

Naturally the three eldest went first. They kept their departure a secret from their father. When he found out he locked the remainder of the family out for several nights. They found refuge with neighbours until Sergeant Ruttle was informed. On this occasion, although by no means a violent man, the sergeant doubled the number of posterior kicks normally implanted. Afterwards Sam took a pledge against drink which lasted for twenty-four hours.

Life went on and then an elderly neighbour died. He was one of two brothers, pint-sized cobblers who eked out the most meagre of existences in a tiny, one-storeyed house five doors up the lane-way from the Toper abode. People who came with shoes to be repaired had difficulty in telling the brothers apart. They were aged seventy and seventy-one, always slept in the same bed, never argued, were invariably kind to each other and never missed eight o'clock morning mass in St Mary's church in the centre of the town. Let there be hail, rain or thunder, let there be sleet, snow or storm the brothers faced the elements each morning with happy faces and cheerful hearts.

The Toper children spent much of their spare time during the winter months huddled around the diminutive peat fire in the cobblers' shop listening to the many folktales which had been passed on from generation to generation and which now reposed in the fabulous memory of the compact cobblers of Cobblers' Lane for it was by this name that the lane was known.

All would change in a few short years. The last of the cobblers passed on to that happy clime where wax and heelball, thongs and laces were as plenteous as the green grass on the lush pastures of planet earth and where the shining steel of lasts and awls lighted the surrounds as far as the eye could see. People no longer slept on straw mattresses and there would be no more fleas. Urban councils everywhere would provide sturdy homes with baths and toilets and sufficient rooms for modern families. But there would always be people who would look askance at houses for the poor, holidays for the poor, subsistence for the poor and enough to eat for the poor.

The cobblers of Cobblers' Lane went by the names of Mickey and Mattie Mokely. It was Mattie who died one night in his sleep. When Mickey felt the cold form he knew that something was amiss. He called his brother gently by his name and when that failed to elicit a response he tapped him gingerly on the shoulder. He slapped him on the back but there was no reaction so he rose from the bed and lighted a candle which he held under Mattie's nose and then under Mattie's mouth but not the least flicker did the flame design. The younger brother donned his clothes, for now there was irrefutable proof that his brother was dead. As soon as he was dressed he bent over his brother's ear and recited the final act of contrition. Then he called the neighbours, one of whom went for the doctor while two went for the priest because it was the custom that a lone man or woman should never go for the priest unless there was no one else available. It was believed that a lone person might be more susceptible to the wiles of the devil and might be diverted from the presbytery where the priest was always available. Old people would recount instances where loners were found drowned in nearby rivers and streams while others fell foul of unseasonal mists and were tumbled inexplicably down precipices and into crevices where they might be found many years later or not found at all. On the other hand a pair of stout men with goodwill in their hearts and rosary beads wrapped round their fingers were known to be proof against all evil.

Despite the poverty of the times Mattie Mokely was waked well with three different varieties of whiskey, with port, sherry and rum, with Dutch gins and imported snuff. If memory serves me correctly I remember once to have overheard that vodka had yet to make its presence felt in the lanes and streets of Ireland. Mattie was laid out in his Sunday best. This consisted of his Clydesdale-blue suit, his low shoes or slippers as they were called. These had the brightness of polished ebony thanks to the ministrations of Mrs Hanlon, Canon Coodle's housekeeper. She admitted afterwards that she would perform such a chore for nobody else – the canon excepted.

‘Mattie Mokely,' said she, ‘was always a gentleman and I would be remiss if I didn't send him shining to the gates of heaven.'

During the wake, food was handed round. All would be paid for without fail when the obsequies were over and every penny would come from the life-savings of the Mokelys. Seven pigs' heads boiled almost to jelly were sliced and sent upon the rounds. There was ham, lamb, ram and jam the neighbours boasted afterwards. There were barm bracks and seed loaves and home-made scones by the score all provided by generous neighbours to whom the Mokely brothers would have shown kindnesses over the years. Credit was always extended to the hard-up and no one went without a pair of half-soles just because he was temporarily penniless. In spite of this there was little or nothing owing to the Mokely brothers. Only one man abused their generosity and failed to meet his commitments. That man you know already but his wife and family would do their best in the course of time to cancel his debts.

Sam's wife and family were held in high regard by all who knew them whereas no one was held in lower regard than Sam and yet it was the very same Sam who, in the early stages of the wake, consumed three times as much whiskey as anybody else and who, may God forgive all gluttons, devoured two heaped plates of pigs' head, plates which were destined for other folk who were too considerate to look after themselves. When Sam had eaten his fill and drunk his nuff he retired for a few hours to his abode where he stretched himself on his bed so that he might be prepared later on in the night for a second assault on the booze and comestibles.

Many people in Cobblers' Lane and further afield had predicted for years that Sam would have a bad end, that he would simply burst one day and that would be the end of him. Dr Matt Coumer knew better. Once when Sam had a drunken fall and needed some stitches the doctor, without Sam's consent, conducted a thorough check on this money-on candidate for a speedy demise. Matt was amazed by his findings which he passed on to none save a few select colleagues. Blood samples had been taken, pulse and blood pressure checked and rechecked, heart and lungs exhaustively recorded for flaw or failure but at the end of the day Matt was obliged to concede that for his age, weight and debauched habits Sam was the nonpareil of the local medical scene.

While the wake continued unabated Sam slept soundly and snored not at all. It was the practise of the period for poor people to set aside money on a regular basis for a decent wake and funeral lest they be disgraced in the eyes of the world. They would be able to say afterwards that they had met their obligations. ‘We waked him well,' they would say or, ‘we waked him dacent God be good to him.'

They would see to it that none of the mourners left the house in a sober state or with an empty stomach. To this end Mickey Mokely had spent every last shilling of his and his brother's savings. It never occurred to Mickey that should he pass on prematurely there would be little or nothing left to pay for his wake and funeral. The county council, of course, would provide enough to pay for a coffin and he would be in a position to share a free grave courtesy of his brother but there would be no drink and there would be no food. The way Mickey saw it was that he would survive long enough to put aside the cost of a decent wake and funeral for himself.

As the night wore on the more magnanimous grew the tributes to the dead man. These would be forthcoming anyway whether the deceased was a good man or not. They cost nothing and it brought some degree of consolation to the relatives. The praise came mostly from the elderly female neighbours who sat near the deathbed. With nodding heads they counted their beads between glasses of sherry or port. The ritual recital would go on for hours. When one group had exhausted their superlatives, another group would take over.

The words of praise had replaced the lonely keening which dominated such proceedings from time immemorial. The keeners were drawn from certain families who were held to be more professional than genuine mourners who might let down the side by not crying at all, who would be too stunned by the loss to give vent to any sound save an anguished sighing which could hardly be heard. Others would be too shy or too backward while others still were too heartbroken. There were more who felt that prayer heaped upon gentle prayer for hours on end was the appropriate method of mourning. The keeners had nothing against prayer. What was keening after all but a form of chanted or sung prayer! True professional keeners would shed tears when ever required and assume facial expressions so tragic that the very sight of them would trigger off fountains of tears from over-crowded wake-rooms. Some cynical mourners would argue that it was no bother at all to cry when one's gut was filled with whiskey or wine but the truth was that these were exceptional women and in the old days a wake without their ilk was like a bastable without a bottom.