The Village (14 page)

B
LACK
N
ED SWEPT
in the door, balancing on the ball of one foot while swinging the other one like the pendulum of a clock. I had not seen him for six months, during which time he had had a hip replacement operation, but his gait was exactly as before. New ball joints or old, Ned’s natural rhythm was the same.

During the early days of our guest-house he and other steam-engine men had stayed with us for the Upton Rally. They were a friendly, good-humoured bunch who came together from all corners of Ireland. They drank, laughed and played outrageous pranks on each other throughout the entire weekend. Once when Ned boasted about his sexual prowess one of his friends slapped him on the back and said, “Ned, I’m sure you’re a terror in the bed,” and ever after that we referred to him as “the terror in the bed.”

Now he growled at me in his deep gravely voice: “You’re some bitch! Never told me that the Steam Rally was going to be on television.” His threw his long arm around me, nearly crushing half a dozen ribs in the process, tore his stubbly jaw across my face like a cheese-grater and planted a moist, porter-flavoured kiss on the top of my nose. “I shouldn’t call to see you at all after what you did to me, not saying anything about that programme. You know I’d have enjoyed watching it,” he complained.

“Will you quiet down,” I protested. “I have it on video so you can watch it in comfort.” As I led him along the corridor he chuckled loudly and slapped me across the backside.

“Women,” he told me confidently, and I sensed that he was trying to annoy me, “are like horses. You must handle them well and let them know that you like them.”

“And do horses like a slap across the rump?” I demanded.

“Undoubtedly,” he declared. “They are sensitive in that area, and women …”

“Ned,” I intervened before he could develop his point, “sit down there and try to stay quiet while you watch what you are complaining you missed.” He threw himself into the chair in front of the television and rubbed his long, brown hands together in anticipation.

As he watched the programme he laughed uproariously when he recognised his friends on screen and slapped his knee with one hand. One of the children brought him a whipped ice-cream from the shop and, looking solemnly at the surprised child, he demanded without a smile on his face, “Any bones in that?” When the programme was over he returned to the supermarket to do some shopping.

Back in the kitchen I put the kettle on the Aga, set the table and picked up a cake from the worktop which I assumed one of the children had brought in for Ned’s tea. As we had our tea Ned brought me up to date with all his news. Though he lived a good many miles away I knew some of his neighbours, as they had stayed with us over the years.

“Do you remember Dan Moran?” he demanded, leaning across the table.

“I don’t,” I said slowly, trying to place the man in question.

“Yerra, you should remember him,” Ned insisted forcefully. “A big awkward devil. He is the only fellow you ever saw to come in the door with his arse hitting the two sides of it at the
same time. If he sat across the table here from you he’d be the length of it.”

“Oh! I remember him.” Ned’s graphic description had brought him to life.

“Well now,” Ned continued, “last week he passed down in front of my place with a tractor and trailer and drove into one of his own fields. The brother-in-law was with him and they spent the whole day erecting two pillars and a gate onto the road. Could you imagine that now? Taking a whole day to do that and the two of them at it? Well, when it was time to go home in the evening the two of them sat up on the tractor and drove out the gap, taking the gate and pillars with them because the trailer was too wide. Could you bate that?”

I looked across at Ned. With his long black hair and sallow skin he had a Spanish look about him, and as he told his story there was no trace of a smile in his sloe-black eyes.

“The same Dan,” he continued, “went to the mart a few months ago and bought a pair of boots off the Chape Johns. When he was passing home he called in for the tay and when he was sitting across the table he took off one of the boots and handed it to me. It was eighteen inches long and had a pound of nails in it. ‘That’s a grand boot,’ I told him and he handed me the other one. I declare to God wasn’t it six inches shorter and had no toecap like the first one! ‘Dan,’ I told him, ‘they saw you coming. You haven’t a pair at all.’ ‘Well the dirty bastards,’ he said, ‘I’ll tear them asunder,’ and he went back to the mart every week for months but the Chape Johns were too smart for him, they never showed up there again.”

When Ned stopped to draw breath I asked: “Is Dan married?”

“He’s more than married,” he assured me, “to a power of a woman. When he got married first he got pneumonia. He was used to sleeping alone, you see, and he caught a chill after the sudden heat. She must be more than sixteen stone. A lot more
of a woman than you, now.”

Ned could talk for hours. However long he talked I was content to listen, but he had a long road ahead of him so reluctantly he finished his tea. Then he went to gather up his shopping. “Where’s my cake?” he said.

“What cake?”

“The bloody cake I bought in your shop to take home to the missus.”

“Oh! My God, Ned,” I gasped, “we’re after eating it.”

“Well, Jasus,” he said, “’twould take a Cork woman to give me my own cake for my tay!”

I
F EVER
I decide to sue for divorce I will cite Dev's coat as co-respondent. Clothes, my beloved believes, should not be cast aside but allowed the dignity of dying of old age. He has a pre-marriage overcoat, a pure wool ankle-length model, which would be very suitable to wear if he intended to creep out on dark foggy nights to pounce on innocents from the shadows of alleyways. With no reflection on the nocturnal habits of the man in question, we have christened it Dev's coat. Every few years when I become infected with spring-cleaning fever I bravely bring it out of the wardrobe with a final farewell in mind for it. I hold it up hopefully, but yet again I hear, “There is many a man would be glad of that fine coat.” What I am reluctant to tell my nearest and dearest is that that man died about twenty years ago! So back into the wardrobe it goes again.

Teenage sons are like octopuses in that they grow interests in all directions, and attached to each interest comes an extraordinary amount of gear. The football stage brings boots, shin-guards, helmets, footballs and hurleys of all sizes, strengths and suitabilities. Add to that the fact that their father has been chairman, treasurer and secretary of the Valley Rovers and many other clubs, and over the years has brought home all the paraphernalia of high office, some of which remains permanently to choke our drawers and to fall on top of us from
high shelves. Glorious years of refereeing gave a statue of Our Lady a referee's whistle dangling on a black shoelace to wear around her neck. Sometimes another one hung off the leg of the bed, which caused me to think that he might penalise me for unfair tackling. Yet whenever a match was to be refereed both whistles disappeared simultaneously. Every drawer in the house was turned upside down, to a background chant of, “Why don't ye let things where I put them? No one could find anything in this bloody house.” As I helped search boxes and rummage through cupboards, I eyed Our Lady accusingly, and wondered where she had hid the whistle this time.

The music stage left behind a collection of records and record players, tapes and tape recorders in various stages of disrepair. One son took his love of music a step further, and this resulted in a few stringless guitars propped drunkenly behind the seldom-opened door of a dumping room. If you burst in they fell in front of you and you nearly broke your neck falling over them. Add to this a Rolf Harris play-by-itself gadget, a piano-accordion that was meant to turn an enthusiastic twelve-year-old into a tuneful Dermot O'Brien, and a silent piano standing accusingly in the corner waiting for a renewal of that interest which was once a burning desire to become a concert pianist. Another relic of the music phase were pop magazines fronted by bare-chested guitar players grinning in agony as if suffering was a delightful experience. Every inch of wall-space was covered with wild-looking rock groups.

The call-of-the-great-outdoors period resulted in an assortment of fishing rods draped across one wardrobe, waiting to take the eye out of you, while a shotgun stood menacingly behind the door, inviting me on bad days to put an end to it all. A burst of enthusiasm for model railways ran rings round one bedroom. Tracks were laid along the wall and down a steep hillside between bunk beds to the floor; branch lines, points and
signals stretched from window to door. This was the consuming interest of the two older lads and they planned their railways against a very realistic background of mountains and towns. So realistic was it in fact that one night while their two older brothers were out the two younger ones decided to test the ability of the landscape to handle flooding. Unfortunately there was no Ark on hand, and everything was lost in the deluge. This led to the Thirty Days War in our house, with father on the side of the stronger, older forces and the female protecting her young. So it has been since time began.

Under each bed were boxes of past interest, but the one that had held all minds was the one containing little plastic model soldiers with accompanying artillery. Lego had been used with these to create military layouts that took hours of planning and military manoeuvres. But my young generals, contrary to all army procedures, had often abandoned the battlefield. On many an early morning visit to the bathroom I had squealed in agony on treading barefoot on a Russian soldier poised for action and attacking me from an unfair angle. My hoover had sucked up several lost soldiers who had wandered away from the main force, and had subsequently gone AWOL in the bin. The obsessive interest in war raged for a few years; binders full of The World at War and the Battle of Britain packed the shelves. Model kits were purchased and replicas of huge British bombers flew across one ceiling. When you entered that room you tended to duck automatically to avoid enemy fire.

Model car fever was an illness to which they all fell victim. In later years this led to the purchase of an old banger; scrap was collected from surrounding dumps and cluttered up the back porch before finally being welded into a model of dubious vintage. This car mania saw stacks of car magazines rise steadily and gather dust under each bed. Posters of model cars vied for attention with pictures of less mechanical but much more
curvaceous models. Motor-bike madness soon followed. Black leather boots reminiscent of Hitler's jackboots tripped up unwary people along the corridor; crash-helmets made comfortable beds for stray cats and their padding and straps exercised the jaws of our two badly behaved dogs. Black leather jackets finished off the macho look, which was only finally abandoned when my young man in his flying machine shot over the roof of a hesitant motorist and landed head first in Billy's forge.

On the death of Jacky and Peg we inherited enough religious pictures and statues to furnish an entire monastery with objects of pious zeal. In our irreverent household these objects of religious devotion were elevated to a corner of the attic but they made annual pilgrimages downstairs when the fervour of May altars and Corpus Christi processions hit enthusiastic twelve-year-olds. Such wide-eyed innocence turned to unbelieving cynicism with the sophistication of teenage years. Statues and holy pictures were pushed under beds and hidden at the back of wardrobes to gather dust.

In contrast to all the male military power my daughter's room was a haven of curly-haired dolls and cuddly teddies. Some of the older ones, admittedly, had been loved to exhaustion, but to throw any of them away would have amounted in my girl's eyes to murder. My resolve never failed to weaken when faced by rows of her dilapidated furry friends.

My husband – and the father of the previous offenders – is a man who believes that nothing should be thrown away because “it might come in handy” some day. Maybe that is why I am still around, so perhaps I should be grateful for his philosophy. It has, however, resulted in a build-up of all sorts of outdated objects in our house – and I am not including myself amongst them.

When I go on a spring-cleaning rampage I succeed in disposing of very little of our rubbish, because a wary eye is
kept on me until the fever has burned itself out. Then they know that they can all rest easy again amidst their comfortable and familiar clutter. Naturally, when I come to my own room I do not throw away a single item. Everything in there will, I know, definitely come in handy some day!

I
F YOU DRIVE
though our village late on a winter’s evening and take the wooded road towards West Cork, a warm glow salutes you through the open door of a small stone building with a roof mellowed by time and weather. Huddled beneath a large beech tree beside the bridge at the entrance to Dromkeen Wood stands Billy’s forge, where five generations of his family have shod horses, passing on their trade from father to son down through the years.

Billy began work as a lad of fourteen, learning alongside his two brothers the skills of the blacksmith from their father, Denis, who was known affectionately as “Poundy”. It cost five shillings then to shoe a horse, and they turned out eight sets on a good day. They worked on an anvil over 150 years old which Poundy had bought as scrap when the old Bandon railway yard had been closed down in the thirties.

The handling of horses comes naturally to Billy. He has worked with them all his life and treats them as individuals. Their shoes are made in his own forge and once he has fitted a pair he can make them afterwards from memory. From a tall and narrow chimney white smoke drifting up through the trees signals that work is in progress. An infinite variety of iron pieces hang off the stone walls and lie scattered around the floor. Billy wears a brown knitted jumper and comfortable tweed cap, and fastens a leather apron around his front. A small, wiry, agile man,
he folds himself over the long legs of frisky horses and soothes them with a special kind of one-to-one communication. Flaring nostrils and quivering ears soon ease into relaxation under Billy’s deft touch and steadying words. In this small building horses take precedence over people, and consideration for them and their comfort is the first priority. Over time Billy has built up a wealth of knowledge on horses’ ailments, and often he effects a cure when veterinary medicine has failed.

Once hairy-hoofed farm horses clomped in here to have their heavy shoes replaced, but horses were no longer used on the land after the late fifties and early sixties. For a while Billy diversified into welding to fill the gap but gradually riding and racing stables were started up around the county and a different kind of horse found its way in through the forge door. Now horse-boxes from a wide circle of riding and racing stables park outside, and slender-legged and elegant thoroughbreds dance in high spirits on the floor of the forge. But though the type of horse has changed, everything else remains the same. Billy loves his work and finds in it fulfilment: the satisfaction of a job well done he has always held in higher regard than the making of money. He knows his trade as if by instinct, his hands holding the secrets of his craft. When he goes out to assess a job he never uses a measuring tape, but simply runs an experienced eye over the project while his fingers do the measuring. Then, with a few apparently casual belts of the hammer, he moulds red-hot iron into precise, exact shape.

Testimony to Billy’s craftsmanship stands all around the countryside – in the gate for the old graveyard which he welded free of charge, or the railing which he designed and made for the stage of our new parish hall. He offers this labour to the community with a heart and a half.

As well as being a place for shoeing horses the forge has always been a focal point in the social life of the parish; people
from the surrounding countryside seldom go by without calling in to pass the time of day. When the horse was the backbone of farmwork farmers met here and exchanged news. A wet day especially, when it was considered too miserable to work in the fields, was often set aside for going to the forge to shoe the horses. Then when the horse was replaced by the tractor farmers continued to come here by night or on bad days. It became a kind of men’s club and the only requirement for membership was to have had a long association with the place.

Late at night as Billy continues to make shoes in preparation for the following day, they come here, soft-voiced and easy-going countrymen. They sit around on pieces of iron or lean against the walls, smoking and discussing horses and racing, the crops and the weather, the state of things generally in the farming world. Billy is not one for long-winded dialogue himself; he is content just to throw in a passing comment here and there as the conversation flows around him. If you pass in the gathering darkness it is a pleasant picture to see through the open doorway the orange outlines of the men illuminated by the dancing glow of the flames. But as the years go by the number of friends who visit is dwindling, as many have passed away.

Anything that stands firm in the changing passage of time gives a stability and continuity to the flowing tide of life that surrounds it. So it was not surprising that the forge became a reference centre for visiting Americans wishing to trace their ancestral roots. If Billy himself was unable to remember who their relatives might have been, he would check it out. Whereas modern heritage centres record facts in computer memories, Billy searched for family history in local minds with legendary memories and sometimes they came up with interesting details not to be found in filing cabinets or data banks. Strangers looking for directions, too, are told to make the forge the starting point of their search. It stands like a lighthouse in the parish, the roads
beaming from it into the heart of the countryside. Billy gives a welcome to all who call seeking his advice or attention. When he was Taoiseach Charles Haughey paid him a visit, accompanied by a clatter of television cameras; the cameras returned later that year when Billy shod Carty, the horse Tim Severin used in his journey retracing the path of the Crusades. Billy took all the publicity in his stride, regarding it as something not to be taken too seriously.

Only when the big race meetings are on is the forge door closed, for horses have always been both the work and pastime of this family. Billy’s brother Paddy was a blacksmith in the Curragh and on retirement became our school bus-driver. He was the ideal man for the job. Patient and understanding from long years of handling horses, the children loved him. He became the bosom pal of my young daughter. One evening during her first year at school she was walking down the hill when a few of the older boys started to jostle each other below her. Afraid to pass by them she started to cry. Paddy, driving past in the bus, saw her problem and stopped to pick her up. It was the start of a firm friendship. When he died she got a mortuary card which had a photograph of Paddy on it, and it took pride of place on her bedroom wall between rows of pony posters. Paddy is in familiar company.

Down through the years village children have gone to Billy with small wheelbarrows and broken bikes, and he welds them back together again. Older children waiting for the bus take shelter in the forge, and if they come late Billy flags down a reliable motorist to see that they get to school. When my young daughter and her friends used go to Dromkeen Wood on picnics I would tell them to tell Billy where they were, because I knew he would keep an eye on them.

The horse is so much a part of Irish life that there will always be a need for shoeing facilities, but a forge such as Billy’s will
not provide it. He is the last in a long line of blacksmiths, and his way of doing things will go with him. The glow from the fire of his forge is the last flicker in a way of life that is almost gone.