Sifting Read online

  Sifting

  Uncle Ned & Other Stories

  Mike Mac Domhnaill

  Contents

  Title Page

  Uncle Ned

  Uncle Malachy

  Writing for Joan

  You Give Witness

  Felix

  The Chalice

  It Was Noble Then

  Acquiescence

  The Search

  No Return

  The Student

  Geronimo

  Fog

  l’Intellectuel Irlandais

  One Christmas Eve

  Copyright

  Uncle Ned

  You tell and retell until the story is what happened. What happened only happened as it happened. The telling is what is and only now, the here and now, this story begins where we wish it to begin. Let’s say he looked back at the onion rows and the month is July. He had weeded the onions. Will we deliver sun? Yes, sun. July that year was good. Let the sun stream therefore from the south-east. Morning then? Morning. We’ll make it morning for all sorts of reasons. More cheerful. The arc is on the up.

  Let us say she is lying there how long. Do we ever know? No. Do we know of happiness? A little. The day before she had gone to the hairdressers. Always cheers a woman up, particularly my mother. Came back with stories. Looking spruced. Beaming. Even with stiffening arthritis. Deforming fingers giving rise to embarrassment. Unable to unlock. But still rolling out the bread. The stiff movement as we walk around the house. God? Throw in his will. Easier to accept. His will may drag us up into the hay barn of happiness. The promise of sweet hay for the long winter.

  The latchkey where we left it. Time to give the first call. Mid morning. You open the door and call … Call again, can’t you. Knock on the bedroom door. Harder for Christ’s sake. Harder.

  Now open and then … Lying there half dressed. As if laid back for rest.

  The general kerfuffle and disbelief. Ringing. Doctors. Priests. Relatives. Doctor, Doctor,

  something, anything? It’s as you see it, I’m afraid. Poor thing, all the pills and medication. She went well.

  Why would the sun stream in? Because the house faces south and the sun doesn’t care. The venetian blinds let in the bars of sunshine sprinkled through with bedroom dust. The air this morning … The air is now choking and the doctor is gone. Having said all that was to be said. The air is choking, the day is choking, the head is gone. The young priest saying we all wish for one more day. Gone.

  Soon they arrive. The heavy-set farmer, Uncle Ned, comes in with one of the younger sons. Was it Jim? ‘Oh, well, well. Oh well, well. Poor Kitty to be gone.’ And the story then begins. How did it and when and the shock you must have got an awful shock, shock, shock. My head.

  We move to the front room parallel. Equal sun. If sun it is we want. This day. Obligatory. We pour the whiskey. For him. The chair by the window. The fold-up chair obtained in the god-knows-when. Coupons after the war! Never too comfortable, left there in the bay window to gather books, magazines; lazily to accumulate and stack up amid its post-war dreams. The comics. Not all comic. What war but The World War, Blitzkrieg from the comics. The good Brits always finally downed the Huns, the bad lads from Germany, swoosh, Achtung up your arse, take that, hardly an Irish war; struggles – I’ll grant you, troubles, revolts at best, gunmen, killers, troublemakers, sub, what, sub, say it, subversives that’s us, those comics came from up the road, across the sea, never bought mind, never – maybe once when sick, Achtung and Gott in Himmel to save you from the mumps, the measles, and as he settles in … the sudden creak and tear and down flops Uncle Ned! The laughing as we pull him up. This day when laughs are scarce. But we imagine her laugh too. The room assumes a new decorum. Sit and reminisce and then the tears. Oh God. Waiting for the arrangements. This is Gethsemane. But they’re all watching one hour with me, hours becoming minutes and streaming back into hours through some strange egg timer. Once left on my own, time drops in pools, blobs in the lungs, choking for life, control, shivering like a leaf. Grip the door handle. Grip the door handle before emerging. There.

  They come and go. In a swirl. ‘Ah sure once they died there was no choice she had to take over’ – Uncle Ned again. ‘Just six weeks between them. She told you about the dog? Howling outside the window. As if he knew. She often talked about that dog.’ A soft laugh. ‘I don’t think he lasted long.’

  ‘Then ’twas all left to her. Oh the baking, the housework, the chickens, the calves – and me landed with the farm. No, no, she was older.

  ‘Oh they were … did she say that … Ah, the father was hard, ye never knew him, but maybe then he had to be. Different times. Ah well, well. Your mother was that bit wild. She told you about the dance! No, no,’ he laughed, ‘I was too young for that. Sure I wouldn’t take the chance. With him? Kit was daft! Out the window of the bedroom. And she was bound to be caught. Sure I told her that. Brought the stick down on her back. It went too far. But that’s the way things were and she was always that bit wild. She told ye that herself! Ah, she was a great card.’ He trailed off.

  ‘Ah, she was … and great to ye when your father died. Ah sure of course … too young. But that’s the way. Milking cows, out in all sorts. Ah ye have it soft today. Isn’t it true for me, too soft ye have it!’ We forced another laugh. A sip of whiskey. ‘Well, well!’

  Life summarised in these recorded facts. If facts they be. The many gaps. The bits we never know. The lines upon lines of handshakes, my aching back, to the point … wishing it to conclude, but yet another, knew her well, cousins in their droves. Flocking in out of the yard, the playing corners, back from other times, so that’s where you are now …

  This story and that.

  Oh that? Don’t blame me for that! We were all in it. Picking some passage from the Old Testament, or some Epistle, given a choice! And it was only up there reading it from the altar I realised it was for a young death, a young man, and I galloped on through it! I can see her laugh.

  The general ruaille buaille of arrangements. Hold. Hold on to this branch, hug this tree, feel this earth. Dust back to dust. Preferable, the comfort of the earth than out there in the blue. Best back here. Like the fox. Return. We to follow, so let’s cheer up.

  What if there is … no Well of Love. Love. Love divine, to overcome it all. Here we shuffle at the graveside, mourners coming in their droves. Are they coming out of the ground? Shake hands, shake hands, rattle your brains for a name. Bad at names, what a time to be bad at names. Eavesdrop for a hint. Sorry for your loss.

  The comics on that broken chair. The sedate post-war chair. The Dandy, Beano gave some fun but then ’twas more grown-up, on to Hotspur with its exploits of goals that shook the net. Roy of the Rovers, hoofing it into the top corner. And the British guns bring down the Huns, in the real wars, not troubles where you see the whites of the eyes, know the neighbours. Not ‘troubles’ like ours.

  ‘I like to ramble down the old boreen …’

  Now sing ‘Mc Namara’s Band’, sing ‘Mc Namara’s Band’. Clambering onto your knee, four or five of us, children and cousins, tugging and pulling. The Uncle Ned of old. Great to have an uncle a bit of a rogue. Those times. Now you sit there inside the bay window and we talk to keep the pain at arm’s length. ‘Ah, she often did. When the hay was in and the milk was dying back, September, she’d be off then with the friends. Off to Lisdoon. They’d cycle all the way. Stop? That now I don’t know. She told ye there was always one stop, in Limerick, to break the journey … Oh yes, ’twas Lisney’s! That was Lisney’s eating house. That’s where we all stopped. All the crowd from here.’ A soft laugh. ‘Ah now, that was a long time back. Cycle it now! Ye would in yere hat! What are you telling me, ye’d need the car to cross the road! Trials of strength? She told ye that
. Lifting weights and fellows jumping across the stream outside the spa. Sunday mornings. Who’d jump the farthest. I often saw lads getting soaked. How they weren’t killed. Half mad we must have been.’ The soft laugh. ‘Then cycle home again after the week. Back to the drudgery. Well you might stick to the books! Well, well. Poor Kitty to be gone.’

  All the ‘no mores’. Edging your vision above the grave. Back with your father and her favourite uncle. Gravestones all around. Beckoning. People gathering in knots. Uneven ground. Bright sunshine, she got that.

  ‘No, it’s years … Maybe in the loft. You’re welcome to it! That old gramophone. She’d say, “We’ll put it on, we’ll put it on tonight if no one calls.” She loved Mc Cormack. Him above them all.’

  ‘A chusla, a chusla, I hear someone calling …’

  Why don’t we play it now for her, you do the winding, nice and even. The old gramophone, needle scratching, endearing. Get Ned to put it on. Perching it there on the table. Brought out for the occasion. There by the fire. Make it an open fire, make it crackle. Now sit back and listen. Leave them to it. We’ll back out, gentle on the door handle. Just them. Before any of us. Before dreamt of. No arthritis-aching bones. No dead young husband. No moving into a cold house. The cows are milked. Hear Mc Cormack sing. Hear it out here, from the yard. Let innocence begin.

  ‘Bullets under the mattress! Had she that?’ The soft laugh. ‘Sure I was hardly born. Maybe now there was … I heard they raided a few times. Of course we’d have been burned out. She held it against them after that. Of course our side went with Collins. There wasn’t much time for them after that. They’d stay overnight, I often heard. Held it against them for leaving the bullets. Could have been burned out. But it’s all in the past. That’s where we should leave it. Of course ye had yere rows!’ The chuckle. ‘Held it against them all her life. Yerra, I remember none of that. Only all the old stories. She was mad for all those old stories … And then the Blueshirts!’ The soft laugh. ‘What was he again – O’Duffy? Sure we were all daft. Yerra, but that soon died off. De Valera, she hated him! Having to kill the calves. Ah, all that’s in the past. No wonder ye had rows. But you’re as bad, do you know that. You should have more sense. Bullets under the mattress!’ The soft laugh.

  What if the Tans … Mightn’t they have planted … ‘Ara, go away now out o’ that! That’s a twist your crowd might put on it! Of course we know who did it … And most of them only out for what they’d get.’ The laugh growing caustic. ‘Your mother had it right. Oh mark my words she had. She had indeed.’ This time no laugh.

  The broken post-war chair, when wars were wars, and not the cheek-by-jowl, the closeness of breath, the dinner quickly set, the moving off at dawn. The broken post-war chair obtained with coupons, standing there aloof, in the bay window, presiding over the delicate window fern. The broken post-war chair. The comics where the English beat the Huns. The ‘jolly good!’ The ‘chin up!’ The decent kind of chaps who played it fair and gave the world a decent kind of war.

  Then Uncle Ned goes crashing through it all.

  Uncle Malachy

  DIARY: 15 AUGUST 1973

  Life was flying past

  the nineteen-year-old youth.

  Re-reading … Yes … maybe. Frightening the way time passes. Uncle Mal and Freddy Gibbons here for dinner and chat. The usual. Freddy with the watch:

  ‘Now, Kitty, we’ll be leaving at 2:30. Then on to Feenagh. I must have this man back by five.’

  His 2:30! The hair coiffed. His Morris Minor, spick and span, kept to itself outside our gate. Talked hurling and football. Hasn’t missed an All-Ireland since Noah left the ark.

  ‘Ah but the tickets, Fred, how do you manage that? Every year!’

  ‘Oh, I have my contacts, shall we say, I have my contacts!’

  ‘Of course Freddy here …’ says Uncle Mal, smiling, benign, ‘Freddy’s the epitome of organisation! Right Patrick? You’re the one in college now. Epitome? Would you say we’re right there! Ah yes, Fred is the organised one. Thirty football All-Irelands and what is it? Twenty-nine hurling?’

  ‘God!’ I said. ‘What year did you start, Fred?’

  ‘Come on now, you’re the mathematician in the family, Patrick!’

  They can never call me Paddy, these uncles or their straight-laced friends, but I like Uncle Mal, always have.

  ‘Oh … 1943? Football! There now, what a record!’

  During the dinner we’d get Uncle Mal going on the Provos.

  ‘Do you know what it is, Kitty, I’m going to let the beard grow.’

  ‘What! You’re joking, Father Malachy, I can’t imagine you with a beard!’

  Of course we’d heard this already from the cousins in Dungeeha. Family joke. The bald, round-headed big man of the uncles to have a beard. But it was only imagination. He’d never do it – or get away with it – in the Order.

  ‘Yes, leave it grow and grow with no more of that bother of shaving.’ He gazed at the fern on the bay window. ‘When classes end I’ll be free as I please. I’m going to kick the traces, Kitty! Kick the traces!’

  He laughed softly as he went back to his soup.

  ‘Ah, that’s great soup, Kitty.’

  ‘Kitty always cooks a fine soup. You know that, Mal.’

  The crisp tones of Freddy. For everyone else it’s always ‘Uncle’ or ‘Father’. Freddy is in the inner circle. Wonder he never joined. Always with priests.

  A fine strapping man, our Uncle Mal. Last Christmas when he filled in for the parish priest and was walking up the church in his vestments: ‘Oh look!’ says Hilda Finnerty, ‘It’s the moving mountain!’ Smirking out over her glasses.

  Poor Mother mortified. And of course the same Hilda knew exactly who he was all right. Is there any mercy in this adult world?

  We were on to the chicken.

  ‘Ah the stuffing, Kitty. What do you put in it at all! It’s the finest.’

  ‘I’m telling you,’ says Freddy, ‘this woman can cook! Sure amn’t I always saying it.’

  ‘Oh, go away with yerselves,’ – Mother, ‘indeed it’s only a small offering.’

  (I saw Uncle Mal put away one full apple tart once. Slice after slice!

  ‘Kitty, do you know what, that tart is wonderful.’

  And off with him with another slice. Mother said he mustn’t be fed at all up in the college. But a great worker. His holiday? Back at the home place, Dungeeha, out working in the meadows, digging the garden, anything not to be idle. Our Uncle Mal!)

  ‘Well, what do you think of the North?’ This was from Freddy.

  Great! Now we’re off. There was a pause. Then that timid smile.

  ‘Fred, I must tell ye a great one.’ He beamed at the prospect. ‘Out in the garden the other day with the students – of course I wasn’t meant to hear it. An IRA man arrives at the gates of heaven. Carrying a parcel. Out comes St Peter. “One minute now,” says St Peter, “but I’m awfully sorry – you’re not coming in here.” “What do you mean, coming in?” says our man, laying down the parcel. “Ye have five minutes to get out!”’

  There was a great chuckle. Of course I had heard it, but coming from Uncle Mal, sure I had to laugh.

  ‘Oh I don’t know, Father,’ came Mother, ‘all very well to be laughing. I gave this poor man a lift the other day coming back from the hospital in Croom – sure I could barely understand him with his northern accent. Whatever he was doing down here … He had a drop on him, the poor devil. And he went on and on that it would all come south and we’d have civil war. I wasn’t the good of it when he got out at The Cross.’

  ‘You’re a terror for giving lifts,’ – Freddy. ‘You should be more careful, Kitty. An amount of them came down you know, there a few years back when they were burned out. Bombay Street and those places.’

  ‘What a strange name for a street in Belfast – Bombay Street!’ – Mother.

  ‘You know the world is changing.’ – Freddy – ‘I’d watch who I’d be giving lifts to. And I thin
k they’re all gone mad up there. Shooting and bombing. Now I like that man, Hume, isn’t it? He seems to make a bit of sense. I like him.’

  ‘Ah yes’, came Uncle Mal, ‘but where did it get him on Bloody Sunday, Fred? All of those poor people …’ The voice wavering.

  There was respectful silence for a while before Uncle Mal broke in again.

  ‘But the British were always the same, wherever they went. Always divide and conquer …’

  Then he lightened up and there was the moist smile behind his glasses.

  ‘I must tell ye another one I heard from lads in the yard. They told me this one, so Kitty, you’ll like it! You know the way they talk up there, the accent you find hard to follow … Anyway … There were three ducks flying over Belfast. There they are, flying along in a row. And the duck at the back says: “Quack!” And then the one in front of him says: “Quack!” And the one in front turns back and snaps: “I can’t go any quacker!”’

  Again there was general chuckling. Of course I should have added: Would you say now they were Bombay ducks?

  ‘Well you know,’ says Mother, ‘when they’re there on the television I can’t understand half of what they’re saying. Now Father Mc Crum, isn’t he from up there? I can understand him perfectly when he’s around with you.’

  ‘Ah but he’s an educated man, Kitty,’ says Freddy, ‘The bit of education makes the difference.’

  ‘Well now …’ there was that shy smile on Uncle Malachy’s large round face, ‘when I’m finished with the teaching – and that’s just two years, Kitty …’

  ‘You’re not retiring, Father Malachy? Sure you’re as fit as a fiddle.’

  ‘Oh, I’m afraid I am, Kitty! I’m reaching that age – tempus fugit, what! And when I’m a bit freer’ – he handled the cutlery as a little distraction – ‘I’d like to help out … Those lads are out there, just like the flying columns long ago. They’re dying on the streets and in the ditches.’