The Village (3 page)

Miss Brown and myself were on our own. The only light at the end of the tunnel was the knowledge that Sheila was due at lunchtime which was about two hours away. It was the longest two hours I ever put down. I did nothing to comfort Miss
Brown. Because she had always kept everybody at a distance, it seemed like an infringement of her dignity to touch her. Not that I wanted to touch her, but I felt that I should be doing something to help, except that I did not know what. With a great sense of relief I heard the door opening and Sheila’s light step on the stairs. I went out to the landing to prepare her for the situation inside.

“Oh my God! What are we supposed to do?” she asked in alarm.

“Wait until she dies, I think,” I said lamely, but I felt much better with somebody to sit with me. And so we sat, one on either side of the window, looking down onto a wet, deserted Sunday-afternoon street where a cold wind whipped a newspaper back and forth. In the bed beside us the breathing became more laboured and we knelt to say the rosary and the few prayers for the dying that we knew.

We heard the front door open and a friend of Miss Brown’s arrived. We were delighted to see her because she was much more competent to deal with the situation than either of us. When Miss Brown died at about four in the afternoon, the friend took charge. She dispatched Sheila to the undertaker for a habit, and told me that I would be needed to help her lay out the corpse. I was too bewildered to refuse and anyway there did not appear to be any alternative as this woman was fairly old and could not do it all by herself.

I was young and had never before seen anybody die, still less had I ever laid anyone out. My new acquaintance with death haunted me for weeks. I would wake up at night to the sound of Miss Brown’s tortured breathing and the feel of her cold, clammy body. But gradually my horror faded and later I regretted that I had been of such little comfort to a dignified old lady who had died alone with nobody to hold her hand.

There were many steps on the Bandon social ladder. The
old rich, the new rich, the old poor and the new poor, and on each of these steps were pockets of different religious denominations. It was like a chest of drawers, and while all drawers ran smoothly together, people were inclined to move around within their own compartment. When I asked Dan why this was so he commented tersely, “This was a garrison town; it leaves its mark.” Whatever the reason, it was interesting. At first I found the town cold and austere but gradually I grew to like the old place, with its narrow winding streets on hills and the footbridge across the river. Bandon was rather like a reserved old lady, I felt, and once I began to see behind the façade I learned to appreciate its qualities.

Occasional intrusions upset this air of faded gentility. We had our own town flasher whom we christened “Johnny Walker”. He crept around in a pair of knee-high wellingtons and a long black overcoat; a crumpled beret sat like an overgrown mushroom on top of his head. If you came on him unexpectedly on going around a corner, he whipped open his overcoat like double doors to display all. However, his tattered underclothes, which acted like lace curtains, rather defeated the purpose of the exercise.

At work we dealt at our switchboard with calls from smaller post offices; they passed their telephone calls on to us and we then connected them up. It all worked by numbers and nobody mentioned names, but a little old lady in one of the offices had the delightful habit of coming on when her parish priest wanted to make a call and announcing in a voice loaded with reverence: “Hold on for Fr O’Hara!” The tone of her voice suggested that we ought to genuflect in homage, and I always felt that her announcement should have been accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets.

In another office was a young man with a laughing voice who was always very pleasant, so we gave him great attention.
His name was Gabriel and sometimes if I was on early morning duty I would ring him for a chat when the switchboard was quiet. Soon after my arrival in Bandon I met him when I went dancing with some of my friends to the nearby village of Innishannon.

They had there an old parish hall with a very unusual dancing arrangement. The hall was small but they had overcome this problem by extending the dance-floor outside the building. This dancing space was known as “The Platform”. Early in the evening people danced outside and as it grew cooler they moved indoors, though the big old timber door was left open all night so that couples had the choice of dancing inside or out. When the main crowd was outside, any couple whose dancing gymnastics required extra space could dance in through the open doorway and have the entire hall to themselves.

As the dance-hall was on the side of the main road, passing motorists stopped and swelled the crowd as the night wore on. Many people sat on the stone wall across the road listening to the music and watching the dancers. The music was provided by records played over an amplification system. There was no entry fee but tickets were sold for a raffle if you wished to try your luck. The hall had a gay carnival atmosphere and I was delighted to have found this source of entertainment. The whole idea – a one-man show in aid of parish funds – was the brainchild of Gabriel: he provided the records, played them, made the announcements, sold the tickets – and succeeded in dancing every dance. On my first night there he swept me off my feet.

Being five foot seven I had often had to resort to flat shoes to counteract a lack of inches in my boyfriends. But after my second date with the six-foot Gabriel I bought the highest pair of high heels I could find in Bandon. It was an instinctive act of trust in our future, as I must have felt that we would at least wear out one pair of shoes together. From the day of my first
dance there, Innishannon was to become a very important place in my life.

I
NNISHANNON LAY ON
the banks of the river Bandon, cradled in a sheltered valley between wooded hills on the upper reaches of Kinsale harbour. Swans drifted back and forth behind the houses of the village and above them pigeons fluttered from the Gothic windows of an old church tower. This church had changed hands between different denominations down through history but now Catholic, Protestant and French Huguenots slept peacefully together around the ruins, serenaded by the dawn chorus and by the crows coming home in the evening to the wood across the river.

The Huguenots gave their name to the hill behind the forge, while midway along the main street a hill curved up to the Catholic church whose grey-white steeple looked down over the village. At the western end of the village a Church of Ireland steeple saluted the old square tower where once its faithful had prayed. On calm summer evenings the two elegant steeples and the tower lay reflected in the still waters of the river.

In medieval times an ancient ford beside the old tower had marked the first point at which animals and wagons could cross the river, so it became a major commercial route linking West Cork to the rest of the county. Innishannon developed around this ford, and grew into a large walled community surrounded by many castles. But when a bridge was built in Bandon in 1610 Innishannon was no longer vital to local commerce and soon
afterwards the Bandon garrison destroyed many of its castles. Innishannon was then granted by Cromwell to an Englishman named Thomas Adderley and he built the present village in 1752. He brought in a linen industry and gave free houses to the French Huguenots; he also introduced a silk industry, for which mulberries were grown around Colony Hill where a nearby house was known as Mulberry Cottage. Adderley was a Member of Parliament for the area and was also a member of the Wide Streets Commission appointed to lay out the new street plan of Dublin. This may account for the width and character of Innishannon’s main street. Adderley, however, went bankrupt and the estate passed into the hands of the Frewen family. Up to that time Innishannon House had been sited beside the river but the Frewens rebuilt it on the hill across the road from the Catholic church. This afforded them a beautiful view down over the village and the wooded river valley. Morton Frewen sat as an Irish Nationalist in Westminster and was married to Clara Jerome of New York; she was an aunt of Winston Churchill, who came to Innishannon on boyhood holidays.

Much employment was provided on the Frewen estate where local girls were trained in good housekeeping and cooking and the young men in the care of horses and gardening. Among the village people who worked in the Frewen gardens were Jerry the Pink and Tim. One day Tim decided to take things easy in a quiet corner of the garden and was stretched out enjoying a good rest when Morton Frewen came on him unexpectedly. “What are you doing, Tim?” he demanded. Because he had no alternative Tim had to admit, “Nothing, sir.” Walking along, Frewen came on Jerry the Pink leaning on his spade and enjoying the view down over the river. “What are you doing, Jerry?” Frewen enquired. “I’m helping Tim,” came the reply.

As well as Frewen’s house there were many stately homes around Innishannon. One of them, built beside the bridge at
the western end of the village, had a tennis court, while on the opposite bank of the river a Gothic castle set on the sloping hillside looked down on a croquet lawn. On summer evenings carriages swept up to the old stone bridge and while the local aristocracy played games beneath the sheltering trees on the banks of the river, village children earned six brown pennies for holding their horses.

After the 1916 Rising many of the village people who worked in these big houses were caught in the crossfire of divided loyalties. Five large Ascendancy houses, including the home of the Frewens, were burnt. When life returned to normal some of these workers found jobs in the factories and shops of Cork and Bandon, and many took the boat to England and America.

The village was a self-sufficient hive of activity. In the centre of Innishannon the focal point of activity was the mill to which the farmers came, their creaking timber carts laden with bags. In the bags were wheat, barley and oats. The wheat was milled and taken home to make the “wanway” bread that was the staple diet. Crushed oats were fed to horses and hens, and the barley to the pigs to produce sweet bacon. Two men hauled the bags up into the mill with a pulley; one was known as Jerry the Miller while the other had earned himself the title “Try-me” because whenever he was asked if he could do a job he answered simply, “Try me”.

The six houses on the riverside had large gardens with steps leading down to the river; across the road the houses had long hilly gardens that climbed up to the boundary of the Frewen estate. A forge at each end of the village kept the horses shod and a harness-maker known as Happy Mickey looked after their tackling and made leather belts. Other leather work was done by the shoemaker Robin, who constantly stitched the leather sliotars
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of the children on their way home from school. Two
carpentry shops made household requirements and built farmers’ carts with large, spoked wheels. They also made baby baskets and coffins, so they saw things through from beginning to end. Burly was the name of the man who supplied them with nails, recognisable as his by their large flat heads.

A laundry service was maintained by an industrious woman who washed, starched and neatly ironed the village’s clothes. Up the hill Robin’s sister Lizzy darned and patched, while Tommy the tailor sat cross-legged at his large timber table stitching up suits for the men. He also replaced seats in trousers and turned overcoats, as garments were not thrown away until they had finally gone beyond redemption.

Innishannon’s four small shops were supplied with bread by the village baker. A fowl buyer kept a shed where hens, chickens, ducks and rabbits were bought and sold. Milk was supplied by a woman whose husband kept cows in a field by the river. You brought along your gallon or jug and she filled it up using a tin pint measure. Her husband also sold potatoes and vegetables, though most of the village people tilled their own gardens. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, a fair was held when cattle from the surrounding countryside poured into the village. The country women brought in homemade butter and eggs packed with hay in timber boxes. As some women had earned the distinction of making better butter than others, it was sold in the shops under the maker’s name.

Behind the four village pubs were large cobbled yards with stabling facilities for horses. The animals were tied up while their owners went shopping, drinking, to the mill or the church. Law and order was maintained by a sergeant and three guards in a barracks at the end of the village, and two schools, each adjacent to their respective churches, catered for both religious denominations.

Boats fished regularly on the river. On Sunday afternoons
they became pleasure cruisers for the locals, who rowed down to Colliers’ Quay, where there was a riverside pub to quench their thirst, or continued to the little quayside village of Kilmacsimon. Heavier boats were used to ferry coal up from the harbour to a large stone store beside the river. In a riverside field opposite the Church of Ireland church greyhound racing was held with a mock hare on most evenings, and the village children raced along with the dogs to bring back the hare for the next race. This field was known as the Bleach because in Adderley’s time the linen had been bleached there.

Nobody followed in the footsteps of Robin the shoemaker and Happy Mickey the harness-maker when they died; the secrets of their trades went with them. Nobody took over from Tommy the tailor when he passed on, and the village lost another service. Mass-produced furniture came on the market and when Jer, one of the village carpenters, retired he was not replaced, while the owner of the other carpentry shop emigrated. Horses were being used less and less on the land so one forge became sufficient, and as methods of farming changed the mill became no longer viable.

The pubs and the shops, however, continued to prosper. The oldest shop in the village was attached to the post office and had been run by the same family for five generations. It was known simply as “Jacky’s”.