My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress (7 page)

When I recollect those distant days it's the silence that I remember most: the potent absence of noise out of doors; utter quiet, save for the mooing of a hungry cow or the stammering notes of a bird.

We broke that silence with our shouts and songs. We busied ourselves with the activity of play, climbing trees to pluck plums and pears, playing games of hide-and-seek in the cool, cavernous barns and having tea parties on tea-chests covered with flour bags.

Sometimes we'd be sent to a nearby spring to fill a pail of drinking water. This was arduous work for small people, for O'Neill's well lay at the far end of a distant field. The journey there was easy enough, but coming back was fraught with difficulty. When we got to the well we'd spend ages on our hunkers, gazing down into that circle of shimmering sky reflected in the water. I was annoyed by the midges that skimmed and pocked its surface, aware also that this was heaven's reflection and that I might be as close to it as mere mortals could get.
Then suddenly the midges would rise and heaven break as we plunged the bucket in. The hard part was drawing it up again: we would struggle with the weight of its gurgling rebellion, and heft it onto the grassy rim.

We'd break our return trip with many stops, all out of breath. The handle of the bucket was knitting-needle thin and would dig into our soft hands. We'd alter our grip, thereby slopping the water into our wellies. Usually we'd arrive home with a much-depleted bucket; mother would give us a good telling off and send us right back to do it all over again.

Through the shifting days of summer we roamed the fields and lanes around the house, busying ourselves out of doors so that our mother could find peace within. We lassoed jam jars with baler twine and set off to the nearby Moyola river.

Unwary sticklebacks trapped themselves in our glass prisons, wriggling and struggling for the freedom they would never know again. Sometimes we were very lucky and would capture two in one jar. Cupping hands carefully around our trophies, we'd carry them proudly home to show mother. She wouldn't allow them in the house, though, so we'd line the jars up on an outside windowsill, studying their captive occupants until we tired of them. But more often than not the poor fish tired first and would already have turned belly up in defeat before darkness closed in.

I delighted in the river. That active, surging mass of water moved me more than the fixed hedges and meadows that hemmed it. I loved to sit on the rocks that jutted from the bank and plunge my legs in up to the knee, marvelling at the refracting pull of the water's gravity. The sun would glitter madly, stunning my eyes, and my ears took the swell and sway of the water's release. I was alive to nature then, alert to the tender violation of all of my senses.

The river was a metaphor for fearlessness and risk-taking as it plunged along its path to freedom; being near it made me believe I could touch those same qualities in myself. My mother always warned me not to go in but, away from her watchful eyes, I invariably did. However fleetingly, I wanted to be part of that clamour that had the power to cleanse and quench and sometimes take life.

These were the idle wanderings of my childhood; with no television or books to distract me, my love affair with nature was guaranteed.

We trudged to and from school with the seasons; in winter capped, gloved and belted against the cruel sleet and bitter gusts, our shoulders hunched against the onslaughts, eyes and noses weeping. On rare occasions, prodded into action by my mother, father would come to collect us in the wobbling Ford Popular. He wouldn't drive all the way to the school gate, however, but stop a good mile down the road, making us stumble in sodden file the rest of the way. We were ‘bother' to him and this was his way of letting us know it.

Once in the car, we'd rattle home in silence. There were no enquiries from him as to how school had been or what we'd learned, just a morose and bad-tempered muteness that hung in the air like a poised axe. I'd sit in the back seat between my two brothers with the rising smell of damp wool and the sting of his cigarette smoke in my eyes. I wanted to talk but knew I dare not. As a rule you did not speak unless you were spoken to and father never initiated friendly conversation with us, only accusation and rebuke. So we'd listen to the drubbing of the rain on the car roof and the lazy swish of the wipers, gaze through the runnels of water and stippled panes that made a Seurat canvas of fields and trees, as the car shuddered its way home.

On our arrival mother would divest us of the soaking overcoats, arranging them on a clothes-horse by the range, where they steamed themselves dry.

Oh, how I hated those short, damp days of winter! In the evenings our kitchen took on a look of sublime squalor, like some Turkish den in the peasant quarter of Istanbul.

We all congregated there in the cloying warmth, the air heavy with the smell of boiling potatoes and stewed tea. Frequently the cramped space was encroached upon by lines of washing. Four drying rails suspended above the range would be draped with everything from bloomers to towels. These stalactites of fabric hung dangerously close to the range and trembled in clouds of water vapour from the bubbling pot. All this moisture made the polished floor a hazard to walk on and the windowpanes clammy. When supper was ended and homework done, boredom would drive me to those panes and I'd finger-paint graffiti into the condensation. I hungered for something nameless – peace, probably, or freedom – and in my frustration would turn away from the noise of the family huddle, press my face against the glass, look out into the darkness, and listen to the wind singing round the corners of the house.

I don't know which was worse: being forced out of bed in the early morning, to trek though the elements to journey's end where you knew the Master waited, flexing his cane – or coming home to the wordless father and fretting mother in the gathering darkness of that house.

The ritual of those evenings was supper, homework, rosary and bed. We did our homework by the faint glow of a 40-watt bulb high up in the ceiling, young eyes squinting in the gloom. Homework not completed at the table was finished under the bedclothes by the light of a torch.

Schoolwork was a real burden to me, especially sums. I worried about not being able to do them and, if I managed to complete them, worried whether I'd got them right. All night long they roamed in my head, robbing me of the peace a child's mind deserves. The spectre of the tyrant Master would rear up in my dreams.

The rosary followed homework as surely as night follows day: all knees down on the cold, tiled floor, with sets of beads fumbled out of pockets and purses. My mother was the initiator. She took an aggressive interest in our religious affairs and felt it was her bounden duty to keep us all out of hell.

She'd commence by asking which mystery matched the day in question. We never knew, and would turn our mute faces towards her like a row of innocent pansies. Then she'd be off on a good five-minute's rant concerning our lack of religious knowledge.

Father would have taken up a comfortable kneeling position: arse in the air, elbows bogged in the cracked depression of that couch. He'd rouse himself – the hair, released from the restraining hat, standing up like a rooster's comb – and add helpfully: ‘Aye, thir larnin' nothin' at that school, atall, atall.'

Truth be told we learned little else at that school. But we knew better than to present the case for the defence at that juncture, our sense of self-preservation being as keen as a hunted stag's.

When we finally got going, my mother would lead like a hare out of a trap. The rosary itself was a protracted ramble through the solemn terrain of ‘decades', martyrs and saints. When this portion was exhausted, my father would already be hastening up the inside track with a non-stop version of the litany. His rapid delivery rivalled that of a southern Baptist preacher. ‘Pray for us, pray for us, pray for us' we'd chorus in unthinking unison.

And it wasn't over yet. A raft of saints was implored to get various souls in or out of purgatory. Well, not exactly ‘in' perhaps, but that's how it sounded sometimes to me. My mother had a list of names she routinely ticked off: those she obviously considered not quite fit to enjoy, just yet, the blissful reward of heaven. There was Aunt Jane, Great-aunt Mary, Uncle Willie, Great-aunt Mary Maggie, Great-aunt Biddy, Grandma Aggie Anne, Uncle Joe Paddy John, Aunt Minnie and – last but not least – Big Frenkie.

There was always a ‘Big Frenkie' lurking in my childhood. If he wasn't being prayed for, he was being talked about. I imagined the phantom Frenkie in stout, black coat and hat, moving slowly and ponderously with the aid of a shiny Malacca-cane. I wondered idly what he'd done to be the subject of such supplication and talk, but I never got to know. As a child you knew not to ask questions about things or people that didn't concern you.

Consequently I locked in and bottled up all inquiry. Silence seemed safest. We all became expert at hiding our true feelings; we were like little impoverished automatons, existing in a hard-edged world of cause and brutal effect. On reaching adulthood I found that speaking up for myself was a difficult art to master. Harder still was learning to place any value on that which I had to say. I had so much to unlearn.

G
REAT-AUNT
R
OSE AND THE
G
OAT

A
s the gloom of winter gave way to spring, our journeys to and from school would become more tolerable. Progress home was slow as we dawdled by the hedgerows, plucking and examining anything of interest. We also understood the respite our weary mother enjoyed in our absence, and were in no hurry to even
glimpse
the dismissive face of father. So we trudged together, my two brothers in front and me trailing behind with my classmate Marie.

Marie was tall and kind and smart. Her face was stippled with a mass of orange freckles and crowned with a shock of russet hair that sprang out furiously from her head. With Marie I plundered the hedges for primroses or bluebells to carry home to mother, ignoring the objection of briars and nettles that tried to frustrate my trespass. And even if sometimes I did end up with the scratches and stings of my endeavours, it was worth all the pain, just to see my mother smile, which was all my heart desired.

There was something special about those sunlit journeys, as we lingered on the hot road, when the wind held its breath and the bees buzzed alongside us. The sun seemed hotter then: a glorious, golden gasp that caught the opulence of nature and held it close for my inspection. I saw it all with the clarity of an optometrist inspecting an iris. So close to everything at three foot ten.

The boys would amble on ahead, getting farther and farther away, pivoting round from time to time to urge me on. I'd see them whirling and shouting, but I was too engrossed, and they'd give up; the shouts of protest dying in the act of their turning back to the road.

As the days grew hotter we plodded and sweated under the cumbersome weight of schoolbags. We'd often heave them off and sit by the sunstruck roadside, eyes intent on the bubbling tar. Few cars or mortals plied the roads in those days so we had the country lanes to ourselves. The density of that reflected silence was ours as well:

Absence with absence makes a travelling angle,

And pressure of the sun

In silence sleeps like equiloaded scales.

That silence was broken only sporadically by birdcalls and the needling hum of a tractor. The fields marked our progress, and throughout the year we marked theirs, from glossy upheavals of winter soil to calming intervals of green. The swathes of ripened corn in summer gladdened our hearts most of all; the golden prize of the long holiday was finally within reach.

Occasionally we'd be delayed by a strapping lady on a bike, grey hair standing on end and a navy-blue raincoat billowing out in concert with the breeze. We'd hear her approach, her breath coming out in great gusts of effort as she laboured up the hill behind us. We were a little afraid of her, so none of us dared look round until she spoke. Then she'd heave herself off the mighty conveyance and continue on foot beside us, wheeling the bike as she talked.

Mary Catherine was a pious lady who always enquired as to how we were, and assured us with breathy conviction that whatever day she happened upon us was the feast-day of a favourite saint.

She invariably had an oilcloth shopping bag, patterned with red and grey diamonds, swinging from the handlebars. When she had finished her spiel, she would hoke in it for a few moments while we waited expectantly, and produce a crumpled bag of brandy-balls. We were then each rewarded for our patience and indulgence.

There were many Mary Catherines in those days: rural women who, without the distraction of a husband and children, could devote their time to venerating the Sacred Heart and marking off the feast-days of saints on calendars. When I now consider my mother's demanding life, answering everyone's needs but her own, I realise how much more fortunate those single ladies surely were.

Yet Mary Catherine was gregarious in her own way. There were dwellings I passed on those journeys that had the power to intrigue and entice me: whitewashed hovels at the end of winding lanes that willed me to stop and look for signs of life. They were inhabited by strange, solitary individuals who, I suspect, lived on windfalls and tins of corned beef. These people were generally ignored by the community because they had not married and had children.

One such house belonged to an eccentric named Jamie Frank, a bachelor who wore a cap way back on his head and seemed to exist in a mysterious, interior world. When we'd meet him on the road he was barely aware of us, so engrossed was he with his own inner dialogue.

Sometimes when we'd pass his house we'd see him unhook the half-door and emerge, bearing a lidless teapot to empty on the dung-hill. He had the queerest walk; his pelvis jutting out, legs straying way in front, with head and shoulders lagging behind, like some sort of ambulant chair. Jamie never seemed to have company. Unlike Mary Catherine he hadn't found the need to call on the friendship or protection of saints; that
protracted discourse with the self seemed to serve him just as well.