The Village (5 page)

G
EORGE LOVED HIS
work. He was the local painter and decorator, and loved the work so much that he often celebrated his enjoyment with friends. Once after having painted one of the village pubs, he ended up owing the publican more than the publican owed him for the job. Life to George was a celebration of colour, and his sign-writing was executed with skill and artistry. Long hours of painstaking precision went into his beautiful lettering. One day as he put the finishing touches to a sign his friend the local doctor came along.

“Well, George,” the Doc quipped, “are you covering up your mistakes with the brush?”

“Spot on, Doc,” George answered him. “I cover mine with a brush, and a shovel and spade cover yours.”

George’s brush may have painted colourful words, but so did his tongue, and he enjoyed a battle of caustic comments with his friend.

For a man with a quicksilver mind he looked like a blissfully disorientated, absent-minded eccentric. He did not walk but dragged his heels along in a pair of woolly bedroom slippers, wearing a long, loose cardigan almost down to his knees, while a pair of rimless spectacles hung off his nose. In conversation he smiled beguilingly at you, waving his hands in the air to illustrate a point, and swaying towards you as if imparting a
blessing.

No matter to what height George’s job took him he always had time to appreciate his surroundings. One day while painting the high gable end of the corner house next door, he sat on top of his ladder enjoying the view over the old tower and the river. A rusty iron brad stuck out of the wall beside him and on this George hung his gallon of paint. It was a warm sunny day with white clouds drifting across a bright blue sky. Down the street came the doctor.

“What are you doing up there, George?” he called.

George swept his brush above his head and announced dramatically: “Painting the clouds with sunshine!”

“If you fall off, I’ll be painting your arse with iodine!” his friend assured him.

Later that day George was still painting happily on top of his ladder when the doctor’s warning almost became a reality.

Outside the village lived a very small man known as Mór.
*
Late in life he had acquired a Baby Ford car, but still he maintained a donkey-and-cart approach to driving. When he drove into the village, down the hill past the church to the corner which led onto the main road, Mór ground to a halt. He then got out, walked to the front of the car, and looked up and down the street to check for oncoming traffic. Having satisfied himself that the coast was clear, he lumbered back to the car, climbed in, and drove straight across the road. Often several cars would have passed between his traffic check and his eventual foray across the road, but by some miracle he had never had an accident, though he had many close shaves and nearly caused a few heart-attacks in his time. But the fact that he was slightly deaf gave Mór a certain immunity to the abuse of angry motorists.

On that particular day Mór chugged steadily down the hill and, having checked the traffic conditions as usual, he got back
into his car and started up. But by some confusion of gears the car shot into reverse and crashed into George’s ladder. Luckily George had observed Mór’s ground-manoeuvres from on high. He saw the old boy do a reverse barn-dance and had quickly anticipated impending disaster. Just as the Baby Ford made contact with the ladder he hastily transferred himself to the iron brad where he joined the gallon of paint. Mór then danced his way forward, leaving George hanging in mid-air, and drove straight onto the main road, barely missing a Bandon creamery lorry. He drove off, completely unaware that he had left George swinging like Tarzan off the brad twenty feet above the ground.

Paddy, who lived in a little house across the road from the corner, had been sitting on his window-sill reading the evening paper, but he lowered it now to observe the more immediate action.

“What are you doing up there, George?” he enquired innocently.

“Practising for the circus,” George told him, “but today’s show is over! Stop acting the clown and put up that bloody ladder. Get me down out of here!”

W
HEN YOU PUSHED
open the protesting door of Sam's shop, an iron bell clanged to announce your arrival. Sometimes Sam came out to greet you through the cluttered opening at the back of the shop, like a wren coming out of her nest. On other occasions his head popped up between the glass jars on the counter, its movement startling you. Sam blended so completely with his surroundings that one would often be unaware of his presence.

His was the nearest thing to a draper's shop we had in the village, but he did not limit himself to drapery. All sorts of goods cascaded down the walls inside and outside the counter, leaving only a narrow pathway between the boxes for customers and a tiny space inside the counter for Sam. Sunglasses jostled for room with hot-water bottles, and Irish linen tea-towels and yellow dusters hung from hooks in front of the shelves.

In conversation he had the habit of darting his finger at your face to emphasise his point, causing you to step backwards to preserve your eyesight. One day Aunty Peg and himself began a discussion inside the door of our shop, and every time that Sam made a point with his finger Aunty Peg unconsciously took a step backwards, with the result that the conversation took them all around the shop and back again to the door.

Sam was the best-dressed man in the village. He wore a beautifully cut, hand-woven tweed suit with a matching cap,
and his tie picked up one of the flecks in the tweed while his shirt gave a muted background to this exercise in colour co-ordination. The ensemble was brought to life by a bright flower in his button-hole, while peeping from beneath his well-creased pants his brown leather shoes shone in harmony with the entire colour scheme. Though he was well past his prime his skin was clear and translucent, and his tapering, delicately formed hands were without a blemish. He was small and fine-boned with deep brown eyes and as he spoke his face was a vivid picture of changing expressions. Because he was so beautifully formed, I always thought that Sam was one of those men who would have gone far in the world of ballet.

Customers kept accounts in the village shops they frequented, and most people treated this system with respect. Occasionally, though, somebody took advantage of the situation, which left the shopkeeper out of pocket. Sometimes it was because they were hard-pressed for money and in those circumstances a compromise was usually reached, but in the case of Mrs Harding there was no question of scarcity of funds, just a straightforward case of abusing the system to her advantage. She had bought a big house outside the village and went shopping in beautiful clothes and flashing jewellery. Yet after running up bills she would refuse to pay, and there did not appear to be anything that Jacky or Sam could do about it.

She travelled regularly by bus and one day as she got on it outside our door, Sam and I were chatting at the corner.

“Do you see that bitch,” he said to me, “she's wearing my pink knickers and she never paid for it.”

Now the normal state of pay in the world of knickers at the time was ten shillings, but this was a luxury model costing seventeen shillings and sixpence.

“Well,” I said, “There's not much you can do now. You can hardly take it off her.”

“It's no joke, you know,” he snapped. “Bad enough if it was an ordinary pair, but to think she took me for the most expensive one in the shop! She is not finished with me yet, though,” Sam assured me.

The following week as she got on the bus, Sam moved into action. When she had taken her seat at the back of the crowded bus he followed her on board. Standing up at the front, he called out to her: “Mrs Harding, when you come home this evening, will you call in to me and pay for your knickers?”

All accounts were paid that evening. She had discovered that the village debt-collection strategy could be every bit as effective as Stubbs' List.

W
HEN
I
BECAME
pregnant I thought that it was a miracle. Dancing with delight around the sitting-room, I almost felt that this had never before happened to anyone but me. The euphoria lasted for a few weeks, until one morning, having jumped out of bed, a wave of nausea swept over me and the bedroom turned upside down. I sat down hastily and wondered what on earth was the matter with me. The queasy feeling lasted all day and that evening when the doctor came into the shop I explained my problem. “Morning-sickness,” he diagnosed happily.

“But I felt terrible all day!” I protested.

“Some people do,” he assured me.

“How long will it last?”

“Oh! about six to eight weeks,” he said dismissively.

“Eight weeks!”

I could not believe that this condition could continue for eight whole weeks. It was late October and the news that this misery would last until Christmas came like a terrible sentence of punishment. “Actually, the less notice you take of it the better,” the doctor advised me comfortingly.

But that was easier said than done. The following Sunday morning, halfway through Mass, my stomach churned and a tidal wave of cold perspiration engulfed me. Fr Mick started to waltz around the altar and then took off in clouds of swirling mist like
the Lord ascending into heaven. As he hovered in front of the stained glass windows high in the gable of the church, I clung to my seat like a swimmer trying desperately not to drown in the waves. Gradually things came back into focus. Fresh air was certainly required at that point, but as my sense of balance was temporarily impaired I stayed seated. Apart from that, to leave the church just then would have been a public announcement of a positive pregnancy test almost as effective as having it called out with the death notices. After Mass, instead of helping in the shop as I usually did, I went instead to the bathroom and studied my ashen countenance in the mirror. If pregnancy was supposed to be such a natural condition, I thought, how come I was feeling so unnatural!

I had felt the need to equip myself for the voyage into motherhood with all the knowledge that was available, so I had acquired a stack of books and magazines on pregnancy, but all the attention that morning-sickness merited was a few flippant sentences. If the misery I was now enduring was regarded as such a non-event by these experts, then how reliable were they going to prove as the further stages of pregnancy unfolded?

The tide of morning-sickness threatened to engulf me, and the only oars I found to help me ride the waves of nausea were the boxes of Rennies I chewed continually and glasses of cider vinegar, whose bitter taste gave temporary relief. I developed a total aversion to lipstick and perfume and a blinding passion for strawberries. “Morning-sickness” was a gross understatement for the day-long fog that enfolded me, but just when my feelings about pregnancy had reached their lowest point the fog lifted, and I was back once again in the normal world, able to eat, drink and enjoy life.

For the next few months good health and boundless energy were mine and I began to think of pregnancy as a golden glow of well-being. But then a ferocious pregnancy itch, aggravated
during a very hot summer by the heat and the extra bulk of advanced pregnancy, almost brought me to a standstill. I decided then that spring babies were a good idea and that Mother Nature had got it right in the case of lambs and birds; I took note of it for future reference.

Waddling into the last few weeks of pregnancy I felt like a baby elephant, and one day I explained to Aunty Peg how cumbersome I felt.

“What weight are you, child?” she demanded.

“Ten and a half stone,” I answered.

“What on earth are you complaining about?” she said laughing, “I’m twelve and a half stone and I’m not having anything! You’ll lose that extra weight a lot easier than I’ll lose mine.”

Later, as I endured in hospital in Cork the agony of labour pains, I was not so sure I agreed with Aunty Peg. In the undignified position prescribed for childbirth, the pain I experienced bore little resemblance to the slight discomfort and pressure so delicately referred to in my manuals and magazines. This was sheer agonising pain, and the fact that the white-coated figures in the antiseptic production-line treated the top half of my body as purely incidental did nothing to make me feel that for them this was anything other than a mere exercise in time and motion. It was their time and I had to keep things in motion. The only thing to brighten my horizon was the sight of my ten toe-nails, which I had painted bright red before leaving home.

Because the labour was a long-drawn-out affair and I knew nothing about relaxation and breathing technique, the whole business became a nightmare from beginning to end. Chilly, wet rubber gloves investigated my lower regions and injections dulled my mind. The birth took place somewhere at the end of a long, dark tunnel and the only feeling to penetrate its density was the searing pain of the incision the gynaecologist felt was
necessary to allow proceedings to continue.

When I came back to the living world again I was in my bed in the hospital ward, but still for some reason groaning with pain. An irritable nun peered down at me.

“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded.

“Pain,” I muttered in agony, not sure if it was real or if my mental faculties had deserted me.

“You can’t be having pain,” declared the nun. “Your baby is born.”

I was too muddled to protest that I was not experiencing pain by some perverse choice. However, she investigated matters, then said in annoyance to a nurse she had summoned: “This one is clotting. Take her back up.”

And so I was rolled back onto the trolley like a bag of flour and taken up to the chamber of horrors I had just left. This time my stomach became a piece of pastry for moulding hands to flatten out, but my mind drifted down a long, hazy corridor and escaped thankfully into the world of oblivion.

When I came back to reality I was in a quiet room looking out over a beautiful scene. Pink fingers of mid-summer dawn stretched across the city, and the glass wall of the roof-top room made me feel that I was high above the world. Mist rested along the river and the rising sun illuminated the grey and cream stone steeples that rose over the hillside houses. In a strange way I felt that I could almost fly out over this heavenly view, but then I saw that one arm was strapped to a drip and another to a blood-transfusion bottle. Beside me a very young and beautiful nun in a snow-white habit stood motionless. She looked so cold and remote that her face could have been carved in white marble, but when she turned and looked at me her expression was full of concern.

“You are all right now,” she assured me gently.

“It’s so peaceful up here,” I said.

“Yes,” she smiled. “I love this place early in the morning.” As I drifted back into forgetfulness, she stood outlined against the city that rose out of the morning mists behind her, like an angel on the roof.

My newborn son was entrusted to my arms for the first time and I waited for the glow of maternal bliss that was meant to suffuse me. But nothing happened. The baby squinted up at me distrustfully, as well indeed he might, because at that stage I was far from sure of my suitability for the call of motherhood. Soon, I also began to question the suitability of one of the nuns for the vocation of maternity nursing. I christened her Sister Rasp.

The baby and I found it difficult to achieve harmony. He was not hungry when he was supposed to be hungry; he did not burp when he was supposed to burp, and he did not sleep when he was meant to either. All in all he knew nothing about routine or how to behave as a baby, but Sister Rasp was determined to mould both him and me into some kind of co-ordinated unit. Neither he nor I had a clue as to what was expected of us. I was further handicapped by a feeling of total inadequacy and fear at the awesome responsibility which, the abrasive sister assured me, was now mine.

One afternoon when my son should have been filling his stomach he decided instead that he preferred a siesta, and snuggled down for a sleep. Sister Rasp descended on us.

“Do you know something,” she declared, glaring down at me. “If you don’t straighten yourself out this child will die with the hunger when you go home.”

But at that stage I felt that I might be dead before him. By the time each feed was over, perspiration and exhaustion were overwhelming me. I felt that having just mastered one marathon, another one was now beginning. Extensive stitching in delicate areas meant that getting in and out of bed was a feat in balancing and climbing with caution. Some of the chairs had
removable bases, and this made it possible to sit down. I soon developed a sense of perfect positioning.

I shared the hospital room with a fine robust woman who made me feel distinctly inadequate. She jumped in and out of bed like a steeplechaser, and her baby was a solid ten-pounder who gulped down his feeds, belched like an old man and slept like a log. I felt that if she had given him rashers and eggs for breakfast he would have polished them off. She was designed for child-bearing and motherhood, whereas I had decided that I was designed for neither.

When the time came to go home I was delighted, feeling that I might function better on home ground with the moral support of Gabriel. But whether in hospital or at home the baby was a miniature time-bomb. He could choke, he could stifle, he could stop breathing. The potential for disaster was endless and I thought that it would be nothing short of a miracle if we both survived. On that first day at home I lurched from one crisis to another. Having got the first feed into him he promptly shot it up all over me, so we both had to change from the skin out. It was the first time I had ever changed the clothes of a tiny baby. His little bones looked like brittle twigs and I was so afraid that I would snap them that my movements were slow and hesitant. During the entire proceedings he yelled until his face was purple and waved his matchstick limbs madly. As he continued to cry I thought it best to change his napkin. That was a major operation, so I laid a book with instructive diagrams beside him on the bed. I was amazed that something which looked so simple could in fact be so complicated, but eventually the job was finished, and though the end product looked far more lumpy and untidy than its diagrammatical equivalent he was at least safely wrapped up in a napkin. But still he cried non-stop. I put him down. I picked him up. I walked around with him, but all to no avail. The wailing reached a crescendo
like an orchestra in full flow. It filled the room, it filled the house and it filled my head until I thought it would explode.

Sister Rasp had been right: he was going to die. I would be the first woman ever whose baby died because his mother lacked the capabilities that every normal mother possessed. In the midst of all this self-inflicted psychoanalysis the phone rang. It was my sister.

“How are you getting on?” she enquired cheerfully.

“Dreadful!” I wailed louder than the baby. “I fed him, he vomited; I changed him and I walked around with him, and he hasn’t stopped crying for two hours. I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”

“You have no time for that now,” my sister informed me. “Wait until he’s gone to sleep. Did you feed him again?”

“No,” I answered.

“Well do,” she said, “he’s probably hungry.”

I did as instructed and blissful, wonderful peace descended upon me, just when I was beginning to think I would never hear the sound of silence again.

During the weeks that followed the baby dominated our every waking hour. As I moved around in a constant stupor of exhaustion, behind which a backlog of old tiredness continually built up, my unobtainable dream was simply to have a full night’s sleep. Often, in the small hours of the morning, as I sat on the old ottoman in the baby’s room, the quietness of the dark broken only by the sound of an occasional car, I wondered if there was anyone else awake in the village besides me. I began to think that I would never again have a life of my own.

Gradually order encroached upon the chaos of first-time motherhood. Married sisters offered practical advice on the phone, the most valuable example of which was: “Put that baby into the pram and take him out the road every day for a walk. Not for his sake: for your own.” Eager to find ways to cope, I
did so, and on one of the first of these walks I met Lizzy May, who had assured me on my arrival in the village that I was so thin and delicate that I would not do at all.

Now she sized me up once more, and declared with the greatest satisfaction: “That baby is after making a woman out of you.”

The lady in the village known simply as the Nurse lived a few doors up the street; she called regularly to help and advise but most of all to assure me that the things I was worrying about were all part of the normal pattern, and that babies were a lot tougher than they looked.

As I gradually gained in confidence I stopped my constant checking to see if my infant was still breathing and slowly it dawned on me that we were both going to survive. After about three months he was sleeping round the clock, and as I no longer suffered from exhaustion I began to enjoy him. Gabriel proved very capable and took caring for the baby in his stride. Uncle Jacky adored him; I would often go into the baby’s room to find him looking down at the child in wonder. Never having had a baby in the house, he was absolutely fascinated by this new arrival, and so was I now that I had stopped worrying so much.

Soon my enthusiasm swung too far in the other direction. One day one of my sisters looked me straight in the eye and said: “He is a beautiful baby and you find him very interesting, but don’t forget that to the rest of us he is not as beautiful nor as interesting – so for God’s sake don’t be boring me stiff with non-stop talk about him! There is nothing as dull as women who can talk about nothing but their children.” Only a sister could tell me something like that and remain a friend, and from then on I tried to remember her tart advice.