Against the Tide Read online

  Her curses on our house and home completed, exhausted but happy, she slowly rose and, with imposing dignity, moved away, the crowd following her. Whatever my father’s real or imagined crime had been against her family, horror and damnation were facing us in reprisal. Looking at the life of each one of us since, much of it tragic, the peasant in me sometimes wonders about the power of an old lady’s maledictions.

  A country child’s introduction to life and death is rough, direct and inescapable. Infants are born and animals die, cruelly, deliberately, slowly or for whimsical reasons of sport. My father was a purposeful and pre-occupied man who made little attempt to detail or explain what he was doing. There might be a short conversation with my mother in the kitchen around the table at tea-time. . . . ‘She’s old, and hasn’t laid an egg for months’, he’d argue. Later came the action. He cornered a hen at the back in the dark black turf house, frightened, squawking, feathers flying as if she knew.

  He’d already made the preparation — the old dependable bone-handled hacksaw-edged knife; the preliminary sharpening; backwards-reverse-forward, backwards-reverse-forward, no explanation, just the business-like sounds of steel on the worn stone edge of the smooth back doorstep.

  Over to the blackened brass cold-water tap in the corner of the yard, now turned on, wastefully gushing down into the trap. I would see the reason for that soon. He wore his black trousers and countryman’s white striped shirt, open at the neck with its brass stud, the shirt sleeves rolled up. He had the hen clutched between his knees. There was a last glimpse of shining, terrified, tiny amber eyes. Her head was gripped tight, bent into a feathery half circle rainbow of copper red, pressed to the shining edge of the knife. A shudder, a strangled scream for freedom, the kicking yellow claws protesting hopelessly. Her neck was tougher than he expected, the knife blade not as sharp. He made a desperate sawing action. He surely disliked what he was doing. The pumping flood of crimson burst at last from the heart of the red feathers, held now quivering under the gushing tap. For years she had strutted the yard, behind the lordly cock, scratching and clucking over her little ones, tearing at the newly wet black soil for what she might fall on to kill and eat. With that blood down the trap flowed my childhood innocence.

  Beside us lived a widow called Mrs Bracken, who had already reared her own large grownup family. She had grey hair with a wisp that always seemed to straggle out, a reminder of a handsome curly-haired young woman; she was brisk and vigorous, with a Junoesque figure. It was difficult to understand her speech because she had so few teeth. She didn’t talk much, but smiled continuously, above all with her eyes. Her sleeves were always rolled up, revealing plump powerful arms, ready for action on her washing board, scrubbing a tubful of washing and wringing out heavy sheets or blankets on a permanently waving multi-coloured line of washing. As each of the Brownes came into the world Mrs Bracken would take over our house and family. So gentle and natural was her presence that we hardly noticed the loss of our mother, who was yet again committed to bed to add to our growing family.

  Mrs Bracken acted as mid-wife; we had no money for a doctor. As a new life took its place among us, we asked no questions and were told nothing. Blood-stained cotton wool in a corner waiting to be burned, and a new tiny voice crying at night; later my mother, pacing the floor with the ailing child. In our ‘big bed’ all of us, boys and girls, top and toed, would lie awake, tired and puzzled. There was a noiseless burst of violet blue flame as my mother lit the metal, spider-legged, methylated spirit lamp on the small side table, illuminating her white face, broad forehead and black hair. She would pace the room as she waited for the small saucepan to warm the milk needed to pacify the infant. Peace restored, the small metal cap dropped on the violet flame, darkness returned, and we all slept. My mother would go back to her cold bed, with its broken sleep. Was it we men who invented that mocking phrase, ‘the gift of a child?’

  Mrs Bracken had a daughter named Lizzie, who had the pale lemon skin of someone always indoors, and the bulging eyes of a goitre. Her voice was shrill, she smoked incessantly, and had greying hair. She was married to gentle, diffident Pat McKegue, but had no children. Poor Pat got the blame; it simply couldn’t be the fault of a Bracken. Pat was a nondescript man with putty-coloured grey skin, grey eyes, and uncared-for tousled grey hair.

  His great love was a sleek, well-fed, biscuit-coloured greyhound named Siki. Though he said little, and talked to no one, he once invited me to join him in exercising and hunting the dog. We walked down through the shanty part of lower Irishtown, over the railway bridge and out the Moate road until we came to the lanes and fields of the countryside. Behind us came the racing machine, Siki.

  As far as I was concerned this was an exciting change from marbles, conkers, hoop rolling and mock civil war battles, or sailing our toy boats on the Shannon. But there was a sinister purpose in our Indian file with Siki at the tail end. So quick was the movement behind me that I saw nothing, only the tiny screech of a death agony and a dog wagging its tail, delighted by the rabbit between its teeth. The deliberate movement of Pat ahead had led the creature to break cover and run straight into the ivory trap of Siki’s jaws. Death came in an instant of pain. The walk had lost me more of my childhood innocence. Unaware of my shock, Pat kindly showed me how to slice a hole with a knife in the heel tendon of the rabbit’s leg. Then he put the other foot through that slit and slung the rabbit over the walking stick, carried for just such a purpose. He brought home four dead rabbits; Siki had paid for her keep.

  Pat once invited me to go with him to a place just outside Athlone called Horseleap, where there was to be a coursing match. There were so many new experiences that day which bombarded my small child’s mind, but only one remains with me clearly, that of a man with a long leather lead with two collars in which were strapped the necks of a pair of quivering greyhounds. A silence fell on the crowd. All of us turned to watch the man as he ran backwards, tugging on the double leash. This had the effect of releasing the hounds. Together they burst after the hopeless scurrying puff ball of fur, twenty yards ahead, flying for its life. Two yelping hounds eager for the kill. Just as eager were the on-lookers with their own animal sounds, only deeper: they were men. The hounds reached the hare together, each furious at the other and mad for that spoonful of blood in the small body, as indeed were the baying human beings around me. There was a long death scream of pain that rose to a crescendo, and died in my ear. Like acid on a glass, that memory of the primeval ritual of a coursing meeting remains etched on my mind.

  Other country rituals would take their annual course. In the late summer and autumn, each farmer’s wife would churn the surplus milk and make butter to bring to Athlone for sale. The day would start for her at dawn with the long drive into town with her husband seated on the narrow plank in the horse and cart. The humiliating trail from door to door, where she was not always well received, would begin. The oblong basket, made from sally rods, could also hold eggs, a pair of bright-eyed pullets, or old hens past their best and meant for the pot. My mother enjoyed reviving memories of the butter-cup yellow country butter associated with her childhood, but we children were not as fond of the butter as she. It tended to be salty and go rancid easily.

  The bargaining was intricate and slow. The farmer’s wife was torn between anxiety to get a good price and the desire not to have to face another stranger at a door. She might even have to bring the butter home. Much depended on the price, but the taste was even more crucial. Many a farmer’s wife had a heavy hand with the salt; it depended on what she and her family liked. My mother would use the third finger of her right hand to scoop a shallow line in the soft surface of the narrow block of butter; this small fragment of butter she put to her lips. If the taste suited her family, then the haggling began; the usual price was around a shilling a pound. If a deal was closed I was sent into the kitchen to get a big clean white dinner plate. The butter was placed in the centre and brought into the kitchen. Sometimes it was marked by the wo
oden thistle-mould used by the more artistic farmers’ wives.

  Living in the centre of Ireland we were beside the Bog of Allen. Farmers, their own fuel needs looked to, would earn extra money by loading turf into the horse cart to be sold in Athlone. The usual shallow two-foot-high sides of the cart were increased in height by the addition of creels on all four sides, made of light timber slats and shaped like a cage. The turf was built up beyond the top of the creels and shaped inwards like a cock of hay, held in place by another cage made from ash or birch slips.

  The turf loaded the previous night was ready to start for town shortly after dawn and timed to arrive as early as possible. Prospective purchasers, such as my father, started their watch early also. Most of them first generation small-holders, they knew a load of good turf — coal black, heavy and stone-hard in a well-filled high creel cart. It burned long and gave out great heat. No one wanted the light auburn turf that burned quickly with little heat.

  The practice was for farmers to parade the streets with their loads. Some might stand in the broad market place in front of St Mary’s Church, or just under the castle, near Custume Bridge. The purchaser went from one to the next, trying to beat down the price. The bargaining began as soon as my father was satisfied that he had the best turf. It was a sad picture, two desperately poor heads of families each trying to outwit the other for a matter of pence. Such were the imperatives of our competitive society; the farmers could not afford to agree among themselves on a fair price. The price usually was between five and seven shillings a load.

  With the deal made, the farmer wearily turned his tired horse into the short narrow lane up a slight hill that led to the yard at the back of our house. It needed skill and care to turn off the main street with the delicate load. The steel pins that held the tailgate in were knocked out, the belly band under the horse unshackled, the shafts of the cart tipped up and the black turf bricks tumbled out of the cart and through the gate. My father fed the turf into canvas sacks to be carried by us into the turf house. We were prepared for the worst that winter could do to us; at least we’d be warm.

  Out of all these memories looms the day my father bought a young kid goat. The austere spare lines of the body, the angular head with its amber slit eyes, the sharp spikes for ears and the emergent horns: to me a kid goat has all the fineness and purity of a Dresden figure. We treasured the new pet, troubled by the plaintive cries for its mother which we were unable to still.

  Then came the shock which blacked out all feeling. This lovely creature was not meant to be our pet but was to be butchered by our father and eaten by the rest of us. Any remaining figment of childhood innocence was at an end. My father prepared to cut its throat, skin it, and eat it. Loyally, we gathered for the butchering ceremony at the blackened brass tap in the corner of the yard. Memories crowded back of the old red hen. The infant-like scream from the kid goat strangled in its own blood seared my ears. I remember nothing more. In the end, though hungry, none of us ate it.

  Outside St Mary’s Catholic Church there is a spacious square with the national school and the secondary school, both run by the Marist Brothers, on one side, and the red ticket dispensary on a raised site directly opposite. In front of the dispensary on this raised site, visiting politicians would speak. Astride my father’s shoulders, I first heard Eamon de Valera speaking there on one of his visits to Athlone in the twenties. I could remember the man, so distinctive was he; I understood nothing of what he said.

  Directly below was a recessed site under the high wall, and with the low wall into Kane’s field on one side and the main road on the other, here would sit the stone-breaker, a small black-haired moustached man with a hungry sullen-looking face. It was his job to sit there all day in all weathers, and break stones. He rarely looked up from his work, which no doubt was assessed on ‘piece’ rates, and had a can of cold tea and a bread sandwich wrapped in paper beside him. Over his eyes he wore a pair of black fine wire mesh protective goggles. All day his hammers busily cracked and broke the stones, big hammers for the rocks, and small gracefully shaped light-handled hammers chosen to suit the size of the stones as they were broken down. He was like a mammoth snail, moving his sack seat inch by inch back along the heap of newly quarried granite rocks continually fed to him by horse and cart. There was no satisfying the appetite of the newly-made roads. Behind him stretched a three-inch high and three-inch wide miniature roadway of rough diamond-shaped newly cobbled stones. Thankless job, primeval artist, he sculpted miles of country roads with his hammers.

  Monthly Fair Days in Athlone were grey and wet. Streets lined with huddled horses, cattle, sheep, calves in rough pens, heads all turned away from their tormentors. Under-foot, the road was fouled with animal waste, straw and mud. The pungent smells; a pig’s scream; the questing moan of a cow newly separated from its calf; the distinctive metallic sound of solid steel cartwheel shafts on the well-worn oaken wheel hub slowly trundling through the rutted streets, all return to my memory. Wildly swaying masses of animals tried to stay together, to escape prods and slashes on undefended backs. Men’s voices, occasional noisy meetings and partings among bright-eyed weathered faces, each new fair day formless in shape, sounds and behaviour of animals and men. Few women to be seen. A cross between theatre and circus. The low-sided horse or ass carts had high creels and no tail gate. Young bonhams and calves slept uneasily in a straw bed. When it was needed the pig, its hind leg grabbed by the farmer, was dragged to the edge of the cart on its back. Held upside down by the leg, as if already a flitch of bacon in a grocer’s shop, it screamed helplessly.

  A huddle of men stood around three young calves penned in a corner. As with the cow, except louder, the calves protested miserably. They had no hope of being pitied in that company of farmers, dealers, horse copers, and cattle tanglers. Farm animals, for the most part fed only for slaughter, learn to fear the wanton cruelty of their farmer owner. Uncharacteristically, a calf on weak young legs staggered across to one big farmer to be comforted. Possibly surprised, the man drew back the bony knuckles of his closed fist and struck it across what he knew to be its tender nose and mouth. As he did so, he muttered, ‘someone’s oul’ pet’. With the calf I felt the pain, and I wondered how long does it take a farm child to grow up and become like that. As children we were not restricted to the house on fair days until late afternoon when the streets could become dangerous, not because of the farmers, drinking to their pain and pleasure in shiny black pint glasses, but because if tinkers flush with money made from selling tin cans had too much drink taken there could be a flare-up of old faction fights; the Joyce clan, I recall, right or not, was often blamed. These I watched from the safety of our front parlour window, listening to the wild cursings of tormented unhappy men, hopelessly trying to exorcise the frustration of the empty wasteland of their lives; ragged trousers tied at the middle, bare hairy chests slashed with streaks of blood made with knives as they battled up and down the now empty street.

  I never tired of watching the formalised transactions of the sale of an animal. It was one of the features of an Irish country town that children were unnoticed on such occasions, and saw a lot more than was intended. I once witnessed the strange pre-sale preparation of a sleepy-looking chestnut gelding that took place up the street from our house. While one man held the head, the owner mixed a succession of substances in the palm of his hand. I don’t know whether I overheard or was told that among the ingredients were mustard, well-chewed black cut plug tobacco and ginger. He worked the mixture into a paste, using spit as lubricant, and rolled it between his palms until a hazelnut-sized chocolate-coloured ball was ready. The second man lifted the horse’s tail, allowing his friend to push the concoction into its rear end. Before long the onetime drowsy horse was transformed; head up, he became as sprightly and restless as any young cob.

  Soon a purchaser arrived. The horse’s teeth were examined; from its knees down to its hooves and upwards the prospective buyer thumbed and fingered for rings, curbs, s
pavins, signs of ‘firing’ or old injuries or scars. Then the horse must show its paces. Its owner tugged at its head and surreptitiously tapped its flanks with his ashplant. He had no need to. This horse was vibrant with life, trotting up and down the centre of the street. Then there was the ritual walk away in disgust by the buyer at the price expected, and the equally disgusted attempt by the owner to drag his horse home because of the miserable price offered. At last both were brought together by the ‘tangler’. With a continuous quick patter he groped anxiously for each man’s semi-reluctant but readily available wrist. Raising his voice to attract nearby witnesses to his skill and success, he shouted the price, then violently slapped his hands into each of the other two men’s open palms. Luck money is paid over as the tangler gets his cut; the innocent victim, the horse, has a new owner. No doubt the horse, rid of the irritant at its rear end, soon became once again the tired old animal that had been dragged to the fair.

  As children we spent a lot of our time on the Ballymahon Road, which encircled the fair green where we played football and where Duffy’s Circus pitched its tents every year. Speechless with excitement, for I had never done it before, I once led the small giddy circus pony down from the railway goods yard where the animals had arrived — ‘Hold her by the ring, in the bit, and you’ll be alright’. She was so different from Molloy’s donkey, frisky even after a day’s work; unsure of myself and the pony, I was relieved to be rid of her. Promised a ticket for the circus on the morrow, credulous child, I learned not to believe grownups always — there was no ticket.