The Woodcutter and his Family

by Frank McGuinness

  Hard to believe but nuts – nuts were a novelty then. Lovely in their strange shells. Hazels, Brazils, monkeys, almonds, walnuts – smelling of cats for some reason, the last ones I mentioned. In Paris you could buy them all the year round in any shop you’d enter. I made a show of us at one swanky dinner when come the meal’s end, they displayed the nuts and I asked, was it Hallowe’en or what? Sure those big noises – well, they thought they were – never heard in France of such a date, and I was given a look by himself that I’d better not start trying to explain. For once I did as he demanded, because that was the occasion when Suzie appeared in my mind’s eye, devouring slices of barmbrack, and all I could do was watch her eat.

  Would it be fair to say that Galway ones, we’re always ravenous? Are we, to a man, woman and child, always shovelling grub down our gullets? Let me tell you, everywhere I travelled – Italy, France, Switzerland – they can wine and dine without restraint in all destinations. I say more power to them. Were himself now capable of a morsel or two, I’d be the first to take pleasure feeding him. Maybe a slice of roast chicken, or a wing, a taste of salty ham perfumed with sugar and cloves on the skin, a wedge of chocolate cake sandwiched with apricot jam or a hefty slab of bread drowning in the best Irish butter, if you can get your hands on it off someone travelling from home. He’d relish the lot of that, make no mistake, and I’d be the happy woman to see him sated. I wonder did I ever pass on to him that expression of my grandfather’s – he would claim that, at the end of his days, he could lift nothing heavier than a knife and fork nor raise only a glass. I must not have, for he would have repeated it to me to check he had his wording of it accurate, and I cannot recall that ever happening.

  I recall my grandfather though – that man was a fount of knowledge about Hallowe’en. He was strong as an ox, able to break nuts just by squeezing them in his palms. Sometimes he’d do funny voices, pretending to be the shell squeaking as it broke, squealing in a high shriek not to be torn apart. As children we loved this performance, watching him like hawks, listening to his jokes, begging him to do it again, again, again. Then he’d stop and tell us to enjoy our party. We did because the bowls full of fruit, the baskets crammed with sweets – that would be a rare enough sight. We each had our two apples and an orange, a chocolate bar and a sherbet lollipop, four slabs of toffees and a bottle of lemonade. Paradise.

  Some of us saved bits and pieces to eat later on or the following day. Not me. I wolfed the lot, for I wanted to be out and about on the night that was in it, playing games of chasing.

  Were you chasing ghosts, or were they chasing you?

  Who said that? Jesus Christ, who spoke just then? Was is you, Dick? Richard, now don’t do this to me – did you speak to me? Or am I only imagining things? My mother said that might prove to be the bane of my life, having a lively imagination. Or being a liar, depending on who was describing me.

  I did hear his voice just now, didn’t I? It was him asking me about ghosts, wasn’t it? What did I say or do to rouse him? Was it just by referring to the night itself? Did the mere mention of Hallowe’en shake him out of his stupor, if only for a sentence? Should I answer his questions?

  The answer is, I don’t know who was doing the chasing. We walked about in gangs, doing some innocent badness. One year, myself and the same Suzie, we overstepped the mark with our games, and we knew we had. Half, if not the entire population of Galway is what we describe as being bad with the nerves. This can account for everything from not washing your windows to murdering your husband with a stout blackthorn stick, flattening his skull like a pancake, claiming it wasn’t him you were putting the kibosh on but a replica the fairies had left in his stead. The wife who tried that as an alibi got twenty years. When she got out, she still claimed it was worth it. Anyway, there was a neighbour, a Sam McGowan, who suffered badly from the shakes – though he never touched a drop – when the darkness descended on him, and the night he and his own dreaded most was Hallowe’en.

  Well, he had it planted in his head that there was among the McGowans a belief that a loud knock at the door was a terrible sign and that this had been historically proven. If it had been, then it was news to all belonging to him, but none could dissuade him. The poor fellow believed with all his heart, this knock was unlucky. Now what do you think was the consequence of this? All children love a bit of mischief, and who could resist at Hallowe’en the old habit of banging on a neighbour’s door and then running away like the hammers of hell before they opened it? Harmless enough, you would say, but not so if the man you’re tormenting thinks it’s the banshee dropping by with a Mass card for the soul of the departed and it’s his name she’s signed on the bottom.

  The upshot of all this was, of course, there was a queue of us lining up to persecute Sam. Why didn’t he just leave his door open and catch the culprits? Well, he lived with his mother who was crippled with a bad chest, and Galway at the end of October is no Riviera. You daren’t leave a window ajar unless you plan to entertain a dose of pneumonia.

  So, Sam was ripe for the mocking. But this year it was rumoured he could take no more taunting. Maybe tonight he might not relent from getting the police – maybe you would be behind bars at his insistence. That was the risk you undertook should you try to get a laugh or a chase out of him.

  We’d better try nothing, Suzie cautioned, leave him this year. I was shocked at her. Since when had she turned into such a yellow belly? It was always me being the cowardy custard. But not this time. I said if she wouldn’t knock at McGowans’ door, then I would. You do, she challenged, and you best be ready to run like a scalded cat, and if you don’t, I’ll tell everyone. Better to be laughed at than to dirty yourself out of fear, and I could tell from the jumping in my stomach there was a strong chance of that happening. I decided it best I get a quick move on. No use hanging about trying to hear if he’s pacing inside, waiting to leap immediately on whoever dares this night to disturb whatever peace the poor man could ever summon for himself.

  I ran to the house, and then, shocking myself as much as anything or anyone else, it wasn’t a knock I gave but raising my brogue, I kicked the lining out of the wood.

  The sheer force of it must have stopped him stone dead, for the door didn’t spring open and I had a bit of time to dash, followed by Suzie, who was laughing herself to death. We heard him deliver a mouthful of oaths after us, with his old mother telling him calm down – Sam, calm down, they’re not worth following, leave them be, son. I don’t know for sure if he took her advice for we were too blinded by fear to look back and see was he on our trail. Suzie and her people knew the warren of streets in all arts and parts of the city like the back of their hand, so I trooped after her, happy to let her lead me through highways and byways and nooks and crannies of Galway, for we met, thanks be to Christ, no one who would know us, and I sincerely hoped Suzie would be able to find her way home.

  We’d been warned all our lives about the river and the quays and beware of ships and sailors, never listen to them. Here now was where we found ourselves. If I’d thought about the danger I would have been petrified, too scared to take a step, yet I knew it was most urgent I keep my wits about me and be ready to race away should there be need to escape. We walked hand in hand, feeling we’d be safe if we stuck together. Nothing seemed untoward. The place was dark but quiet. We were feeling a little brave when we heard a voice ask us, what are you two girls looking for? You’re wandering here at this hour of a Hallowe’en night, why?

  We did not know the man who spoke, nor did he claim any acquaintance with us. I felt no lack of manners in telling Suzie under my breath not to speak to him. His accent sounded funny, foreign even, but then I realised where he was from. The Aran Islands. Wasn’t the English language alien to them, so well versed in Gaelic, speaking nothing but that among themselves. We had an Aunt Rose on my father’s side who’d married a fisherman from Inishmore, I think – and he took her to live there, never letting her back to the mainland. She claimed she didn�
�t miss it, all you could want in life she had it where she lived, and her family believed her when she said that as she looked around her at the state of the world, she was the happiest of the whole lot of them. At one time her husband would call to us for his cup of tea when he’d come to the city, but that stopped. It was believed some offence was taken, but he would not reveal what and nobody wanted to know. He is reputed to have told his relations in Dominic Street that he believed we binned every cup he drank out of whenever he’d walked from our door. Does that buck eejit think I have money to burn, my mother asked, to throw away china just because his lips touched it? Let him go to hell and no longer bother me. His wife’s as odd as two left feet, and so is he. Well matched, the pair of lunatics.

  And it was his voice I could hear in the stranger now speaking to us, wondering what we were doing here. He repeated the question and this time before I could stop her, Suzie replied, we’re minding our own business, and so should you be. Bold as brass that one, when she wanted to be. Aren’t you the courageous girl, he retorted, hasn’t that put me in my place? We don’t care where your place might be, though we can make a guess, I added, just leave us alone. Another smart colleen, where would you guess my place is? he challenged. We don’t have to answer any of your questions, Suzie reminded him, now will you be so good as to allow us make our way to home? Such politeness, the island man complimented her, haven’t you the dainty tongue in your head?

  She has a dainty toe in her boot, as have I, I warned him, take care it’s not firmly planted up your hole.

  Would you credit, what he next tried to palm off on us? He said to us that if we were to give him even the inkling of a court, it could well be the last one he’d ever enjoy, so would we not soften our hearts and let him have a hint of a feel? I looked at Suzie, who was looking at him saying nothing, but I came out with, Well now, Mister, you’re scraping the barrel and no mistaking, have you not the slightest dreg of shame?

  What shame is it for a dying man to implore? What shame in pitching for a last favour before kicking the bucket? Have either of you a heart inside you at all? he wanted to know.

  Indeed I’ve a heart, I let him know, and a hard one it is after hearing every sob story could be thrown in a body’s face, listening to the lies of Ireland pouring out of a prize chancer’s mouth. Your very teeth are turning green with shame spinning such awful stories as you’re now doing.

  Is it for that reason I tell you I’m dying? he asked. Would you leave off with that nonsense, said I, you’re as healthy as the next man. Then didn’t Suzie pipe up, What has you on your last legs? Is it a sleeping sickness or the tuberculosis that’s taken half, if not two-thirds, of the men of Ireland? His answer was not what either of us expected.

  He had been placed under sentence of death by a creature he’d met in the sea while fishing on his currach. You’ll be telling me next it was a mermaid, I said, bursting out in a laugh, would you ever catch yourself on? Who’d fall for such nonsense? Was it a mermaid? Suzie wanted to know, and I swear she was in earnest asking. Would you like it to have been? he smiled at her so sweetly you’d think they were stepping out together. Was it a mermaid? she repeated.

  Why are you so anxious to know this? he asked her out straight. Because I think that’s what I am, she answered him. No, not a mermaid, he said calmly, there was nothing maidenly about the creature who passed on to me that fatal news. Suzie asked, was it a bird then? Some white gull that singled you out to hear and understand what it was cawing? Aye, he agreed, it was a fowl of some order or other, and it flew straight into my lap and took its ease there, as tame as a dove – but that’s not what it was, for how could a dove survive the wet and winds of the Aran Islands? Then what was its species? she wondered.

  I can tell you that, it was a sand martin, he said, there in all its glory, the brown head and rump, its white belly and throat, smelling of the Sahara whence it might have just flown, for it was singing in a strange language that could have been Arabic or Aramaic, I can’t say, I know neither, but I followed its refrain for there was no mistaking the rattle at the song’s end, convincing me that, for the two of us, the game was up. Now, do you not regret you weren’t beside me on my boat?

  Your currach, I corrected him, but she, Suzie, had clammed up. After what seemed like an age, she asked the two of us, You won’t tell anybody what I said, will you? They would kill me. Who would? I asked. My people, she said, for they’re not my people. It’s why they hate me. Why they’re so cruel. They found me and took me from the Atlantic, and as I grow older, funny enough I remember more clearly now than closer to when it happened as I was hauled out of the waves, my mother wailing to them to give me back, but they left her to weep on the shore. It’s said you could hear her crying there at night for years after, raging, searching for her lost little one.

  How for the love of the crucified Christ, were you ever a mermaid? I observed, haven’t you feet beneath you, and not the tail of a fish? I can explain that, she said. Then the floor is all yours, I invited her, away you go. It’s all a question of belief about what you see, she declared, do you believe or not in mermaids? I do not, I told her honestly. Do you believe in them? she asked the island man. I do believe, he said. Then that precisely accounts for the difference, she insisted, you don’t believe, and so you see feet. He does believe, so he sees the tail. He knows what I am, don’t you? she said turning to him.

  I don’t, he shocked her. Why not? she demanded. Because you’ve told us, he informed her, and such a secret must be forever under lock and key until it’s either taken to the grave with you, or you go back to the depths of the ocean. You’ve done neither, so I think you have just been lying through your teeth, trying to trick me, a poor fisherman. The pair of you, go back to your ma’s fireside, warming your arses before you hit the hay, safe and snug in your own shakedowns.

  Suzie looked at him as if he were lice. Then she opened her mouth and spoke very lowly. The sand martin spoke the truth, she said, you will die, it will be soon, and no creature from the sea or air will step in to save you when the currach sinks, as it now must. Am I to understand you are placing a curse on me? he wanted to know. Understand what you like, she snapped.

  They say no curse is ever heard without it rebounding on the one who spoke it, leaving her, who was without mercy enough to cast it, coming one day to look for the very same mercy she lacked, and being refused it. It’s a smart woman knows this is a weapon to be used sparingly, if at all. When I think of Suzie and wherever she might be wandering at night, through what city, Cardiff or not, what streets, what docks, what piers, does she remember that uncanny conversation, and her believing she was what so obviously she wasn’t, yet ready to argue otherwise till the cows should come home? Does she ever imagine what she said attacking that Aran man would affect all she’s done to herself? What has she brought on her two shoulders, her and her alone? Isn’t she the unfortunate?

  And me – me, am I the same? No, I’d argue the opposite. I would say when push comes to shove, I’m doing all right. Maybe more than that even. Blessed, if you’re inclined to look at things in such a light – and we’re not, as a family. We would be united on that. We’re united on most things. We have our ups and downs. But we stick together. Or we try to. I’d be the first to admit that not everything has been easy going. The struggle for money when we were starting, that was a rough station. Neither himself nor myself were the best at providing for rainy days, but my excuse is every day in Galway the heavens bucket down, what else would you expect? We held body and soul together best as we could. A few friends had to put their hands into their pockets and bail us out, that is very true, but they believed in his genius, as did I, and they gave us the necessary to survive at times. You pay a price for struggling, though. Some would declare the price we paid was our daughter.

  A difficult girl, no denying. Her father’s ruined her. His little darling. His pride and joy, he might declare. And I’m not afraid to admit the many ways she knows and always has known h
ow to wrap him round her little finger, her smart ruses to snare him – she daren’t try such machinations on me – they have me heartbroken at the way she could destroy the lot of us, if I were not up to her, for haven’t I seen the like before? Is there a family in Galway that doesn’t have one in it – usually a female – who could cut the legs from under you with their letting on they need special attention, when a good thrash on the fat arse might prove the most effective of all cures needed to calm them down. But of course, if you say that out straight, you’re the worst in the world, so, against my nature, I keep quiet on the subject of that lassie, certainly in front of strangers.

  Not that any vow of silence applies to the same young lady. There are tribes I hear tell out foreign in the darkest part of the earth where they tie some sort of handkerchief about the faces of girls to stop their finding fault with whatever is their lot. It’s said they pull their teeth out to make sure that any speech is sore, very sore indeed and you’d think more than twice before you’d be so bold as to give your opinion on this, that or the other. There was a family not that far from us where the father bred the fear of God into all his youngsters, but especially his womenfolk, where they’d feel the weight of his hand across their mouths should they ever make a comment that could in any way be construed as contradicting him. Wouldn’t I have been the smart woman if I’d followed suit with that most troublesome offspring rather than honouring her every whim? Of course I could only do as I was allowed, and for that I have to blame himself who would let her burn the house down if that was what she demanded.

  I speak with some authority on that matter, having seen her in action with fire. To her a box of matches was some kind of plaything. Strike a match, set a curtain ablaze, watch the pretty shades melting. How many times did I stop her in time? How many times did I accordingly stop myself from letting the world know something was wrong – seriously wrong with what we were rearing under our roof? Why did I not brave her father’s wrath when he’d roaringly dispute that any sign of weakness in the head could not happen where one of his was concerned? Eyes see what they want to, ears hear as they please, there’s no persuading some, but at least I can spare myself the biggest of blame when it comes to pointing the finger at who should stand most accused for not facing up to the worst. I would have got none or next to no thanks had I said how much she was in need of treatment.