The Woodcutter and his Family

by Frank McGuinness

  Pray tell me what they may be? I hear me ask of myself. Well, learn to cook, that’s one of them. You cannot boil water, my ears tell my hands. But we are willing to learn, if given instruction, they reply in my defence. You could not peel a tangerine, my feet blame my fingers. The skin of that fruit is soft and delicate, I should enjoy touching – in fact, I do enjoy it, my thumbs answer, for in their defence they point out how often they have stripped the flesh bare and let me taste its lush nakedness. You could not bone a chicken with me, the sharpest knife in the house declares, you would cut your fingers, your feet, your hands, your ears, you are so clumsy, I am quite discomposed to find myself abused by your lack of grace.

  I place the knife in a drawer to silence its attack, and should it care to listen, I tell in my defence the story of the duck stolen in Stephen’s Green.

  Our college fronted the Green, my alma mater. It had been founded, years before I attended, by a nun, Sister Henrietta Goodman. She had been born an Anglican in India and had grown to hate her religion. They say a toss of the coin decided her whether to become Buddhist or Catholic, and Rome won. The less kind of my countrymen intimated Sister Henry’s own resemblance to the Buddha might have swayed her decision, but this is to underestimate the depth of her piety, the tenacity of her beliefs, and the sheer strength of her zeal that all be brought enchanted to the one true faith she embraced with such proof and vigour. A sign of this proof lay in her remarkable mission to convert to her religious philosophy the entire population of the town of Chelmsford in Essex, picked at random, but its men and women were well known for their lax, indeed perverse, attitude to all matters sexual. So successful was this Chelmsford Movement, as it was known, swarms of followers from every religious and intellectual tradition of Britain gathered in that most corrupt location to change their spiritual allegiance and be swayed by the teachings of this brilliant mind.

  Not everyone was entirely supportive of the efforts of a woman who was, some declared, hell bent on sapping the moral fibre of the young men of the nation, scorning queen and empire perhaps to serve as minions in the armies of the Anti-Christ, as they called his holiness the pope. These calumnies wearied the poor woman to such an extent that when she heard the faith of the Irish was in dire need of reviving, didn’t she turn her attention across the water and set out for Dublin, there to establish a university that would produce gentlemen such as ourselves who would do our island proud.

  How did a simple nun pull off such a spectacular task? How does anyone succeed in doing anything in that lazy, accursed land of ours? Why, by working miracles, of course, and she did just that. Where was her first port of call when she had barely landed on this shore? Wasn’t it Croke Park itself where a football match – or was it hurling? – had been held up while in full sway, when, as an act of retaliation for the murder of two diplomats, a battalion from the British army threatened players and spectators with rifles ready to blast them to kingdom come, unless the crowd reveal where the perpetrators of this evil act were hidden amongst them and agree to name their names so fit punishment could be visited upon them.

  Nothing was forthcoming, and it seemed all would be caught in an unceasing stalemate, until the holy sister arrived and prayed that there be a resolution without more bloodshed, like good Christians. Well, it’s said her prayers were heard, didn’t the weapons of the soldiers – their guns – turn into lilies and sprout tall as trees, ascending suddenly from their hands and assuming the shape of the cross itself, falling in profusion on the mass grave where the handmaidens of the lord had suffered human sacrifice years before. Some expected these virgin martyrs would themselves rise and salute Sister Henrietta, but clearly she was not a woman who’d ask God for the impossible and drew the line at that.

  This skill ensured the fame of her good self, even with the Protestant authorities ruling Dublin at that time. Give her what she craves, that was the consensus, for there were many witnesses on many sides who swore she’d been working magic that day. Humour her for the love of fuck, or who knows what havoc she’ll unleash? What if she says she wants a cathedral in the middle of Merrion Square? Is that not over and above what we can afford? Wait and see, it was advised, and indeed that was not her request.

  No, she wanted a school, a university, a Catholic one, yes, but she would call it after Victoria, the Queen’s University, Dublin. And so it took holy shape opposite Stephen’s Green, where Sister Henrietta Goodman founded her institution to enlighten the young in the principles of moral fortitude and in the guidance of holy truths, where the sacraments could be obtained without fear or favour and where learning might reflect the strictures of the commandments. Strong drink was not encouraged in any room of the cold establishment and, out of due respect for Sister Henry, no woman was allowed to sully the chaste atmosphere of reverent scholarship with their finery and fits of the vapours, as the holy lady herself once remarked, jocundly perhaps.

  She immediately corrected any sign of hilarity among the men assembled. She herself had witnessed too many such convulsions among her own sex to humour them or to wish ever again to clean up their mess. She did not divulge where this behaviour occurred, but the rumour was that in India, Henry’s mother spent her days in permanent hysterics, refusing to eat the spicy food or drink the boiled water, living entirely on a diet of the pages of bibles her unfortunate daughter had to wash in rum. The child interceded with the divinity for her mother’s release from this manifestation of, shall we put it kindly, Scottish eccentricity – Mother was born a Lennox in Aberdeen – and received no reply to her fervent pleas for divine assistance, until her mother absconded with a Hindu priest devoted to the worship of Ganesh, the elephant god, leaving behind for her daughter nothing but a full set of riding clothes she might one day grow into and a recipe for a more than usually revolting Scottish broth, celebrating the humble neep as the emperor of vegetables.

  After that, where next for the unfortunate child? The many arms of Kali might truly have drawn her, but she was, by temperament, more inclined to the serene Buddha, if she would grow entranced by the spells of Asia. She was, she claimed, saved from heathenism in a most strange manner. She heard the Buddha speak to her in a refined mockery of an Edinburgh accent, asking would she like to step out for a curry and a quick court. The maiden’s disgust at the statue was quickly replaced with seething fury against her mother, for the girl could distinctly hear giggling from behind the sacred statue, and though she had never, ever in her life witnessed her mother laugh, the child was able to put two and two together and make four, realising there was only one tartan bastard would find this funny enough to scare the hell out of her, by leading her to believe a prophet was speaking through his stone image.

  That instant decided her fate. If there was, she knew, one thing absolutely guaranteed to send the pack of Caledonian wolves that passed as her relations into paroxyms of rage, it would be that she’d decided to leap over the wall and join the other side who dug with the wrong foot and kissed the pope’s fat arse while they were leaping, an act of physical dexterity she could demonstrate if called upon to do so. Rub the salt in the wound even deeper – she’d become a nun. Take the name of Henrietta as a homage to her grandmother, a woman whose connection to the Orange Order was so tight she could peel the fruit of this name just by looking. That matron never travelled from her own house without carrying a lambeg drum, for who could know the day and hour when you might need one? And the last insult Henry added to their injury, she’d move to Ireland and live there, not among the beloved, saved brethren of the north – no, she’d go clodhopping down the south, lost in the array of Satan’s hosts, she, who had been washed in the blood of martyrs and had sung with the choirs of penitents who once dared pick flowers on a Sunday, risking damnation. That’s where she’d ply her works and receive due honour, while shaming all connected with her. Would she not stop and catch herself on?

  As a matter of fact, she wouldn’t.

  She continued doing so much. The Catholic Univers
ity was thriving. So as not to lose her, again they asked Sister Henrietta was there anything they could give her – anything she’d like? There weren’t ready for her answer, because she replied, I’d like the ducks in Stephen’s Green. Jesus, is she asking for Stephen’s Green? A professor of chemistry misheard, being slightly deaf and a halfwit. Is there no end to the woman’s notions about herself? Aren’t they all the same, Jesuits? She’s not a Jesuit, he was corrected, she’s a nun, and she’s only asking for the ducks, not the whole Green itself.

  Why? What is it about the ducks?

  I only ask they be protected, the woman clarified, that they be shown care and kindliness. Did you have one as a pet? she was asked. No, in my part of the world, such things were not encouraged, she enlightened them, dogs were for guarding homes, cats were to get rid of vermin, and horses always frightened me, although my mother doted on them and could get the most wild to do her bidding. My mother died, Henrietta shamelessly lied, having been thrown by her mount, jumping the most ferocious ditch, and she is buried in Kashmir. Maybe that’s why I settle for smaller creatures and choose ducks as my darlings.

  That term of affection was sufficient to ensure word got out that, not merely were the ducks to be protected, but that they were sacred as well, and must never be touched on pain of offending the nun and, perhaps, incurring her great wrath. So it was, with perverse undergraduate logic, a code of honour evolved that it became imperative when finals were at last completed, a duck must be slaughtered and served as centrepiece of the feast marking a farewell to the university.

  Stories of their capture were legion. Copious amounts of alcohol were downed to provide the Dutch courage necessary to pull off the exploit. The only time you could succeed, and not be identified, was in the dead of night. This aura of darkness added to the Satanic element of the creature’s capture. No blessed object could dangle on any part of your anatomy, lest a divine light shine from it and give the game away. To lessen the sense of sacrilege and to pin some blame at least on the object of the prey, the duck to be captured would be called Judas.

  The year we were party to the whole affair, more than a passing few of us were sick of this rigmarole, considering the preparation and execution an utter waste of valuable drinking time. I must admit I sided with the Carlow ruffian who said, Just catch the fucker and kill it, though I’m not risking it, I wouldn’t thank you for duck meat as my dinner, its fatness turns my stomach. But it was the done thing to be man enough to follow tradition, and it might be in its strange way an insult to the old nun if we didn’t make some fist of defying her.

  The dead of night, we set out on our adventure. The gates of the Green locked, the streets of Dublin deserted, and us climbing the railings, no one got as much as a scratch, walking quietly towards the pond, one stalking the other, and not a murmur shared between us, for we knew what to do and how to do it quickly, since there was a boyo with us from Monaghan who had slaughtered fowl in their millions on his farm at Emyvale. We reached the pond’s edge, and he was ready to wade in and catch the prize, but who did we see coming out of the shadows? The figure of the nun, waving a rosary beads, bidding us halt.

  Jesus, the shock – we were near fainting, but the Monaghan hero was the first to recover, telling this apparition we meant no harm, for we had no notion who this could be, since her shape was certainly not that of Sister Hen. She turned her back to us and then pulled up the skirt of her habit, displaying her white buttocks to the chilly air.

  Again the Monaghan man broke the silence, asking, Is that you, you Carlow fucker? I’d know that hairy arse anywhere. A guffaw greeted him, and we all copped on who indeed it was, the same messer who’d earlier declared he would have nothing to do with this lark. He also was brandishing not one but two ducks, on the grounds you could never have enough of a good thing.

  Bad tempers faded rapidly back then, and we saw the amusing side. Still, I was sorely tempted when he was having difficulty climbing back over the railing in his flowing dress to leave him dangling there. Luckily we got him down, for the next arrival on the scene was a policeman demanding to know what were we up to at this hour. Were you thinking of trespassing into Stephen’s Green? he demanded. Not at all, we assured him. You wouldn’t be after her ducks, the nun’s? he warned us. Again, not at all, we repeated, and if you don’t believe us, ask her. When he set eyes on the Carlow man begarbed in religious finery, it’s fair to say from the look on his face, he did not know what hit him. Sister, he sputtered, what are you doing in this company? Aren’t they the right little villains? the Carlow man declared, impersonating Sister Hen perfectly. Haven’t they finished their exams, and now they’re getting their bit of fun. Don’t worry, constable, no harm done, they won’t stray far with me watching over them.

  He didn’t disbelieve her. Nor did he want to know why she had two dead ducks in her fists. He was just another Irishman who believed a nun could not tell a lie. She was the same, my mother, Bridget. As was Bertha, when she was a girl in Galway. I know what put an end to her illusions, but Ma, did she go on believing in such innocence all the days of her existence? The days of her existence – why say that and not simply her life? Did she have one? And if not, did she turn her back on it? Did she reject it as being unworthy – herself being unworthy to do anything of note, anything that might impress on others she deserved a right to be seen and to be heard? Was she ever seen, was she ever heard, and if she were both, if she were either, then why can I not remember her face or her voice? Is that not a most damning comment on a son – he cannot summon a trace of his own mother? Will I be condemned to hell after this, my agony, not for all my sins, but for this omission of my mother from my memory?

  How could this have happened? Why has it? I see in long procession the lines of my sisters and brothers. Each one blames me, pointing, that I insulted my mother, me, her first-born, her most beloved. She would have starved herself to give you the bite out of her mouth, they chide me. She barely had a change of clothes to dress herself, so that you would be warm, her that once was swathed in the finest furs, silks and laces, turned into a beggar maid so her lovely son would show the world he wanted for nothing, when it came to finery. Did she ever raise a hand to check you in all your fits and tantrums but calmly took you by the hand and caressed you, when the world was shouting what that brat needs is a hiding with his father’s belt, and if the father isn’t inclined to do so, then it’s up to the mother to break the boy like the bad weed he’s growing from, Christ between us and all harm. I do remember her, I declaim, for all to hear, I remember her, I have not forgotten her. Then why insist you do and leave yourself a laughing stock to anyone fool enough to listen?

  I don’t know, I admit, I never have known why I take such pleasure in denying my own. I have always done it. Preferred the company of those with whom I share no connection. Took great delight in making strange, particularly with the parents who reared me. When as an infant I wept, I calmed more at the touch of a stranger whom I’d never set eyes upon before, torturing the poor creature who gave me birth. What instinct made me hurt her? Or was I hating her? O mother forsaken, forgive your son. I was a child and did not know what I could do.

  – I think you did, my fine lad, I think you knew too well.

  Who’s there? Who speaks, who is it? What voice is it condemns me? Don’t say that, now I’m dying, I have raised him from the dead, old companion, old chancer, old creator of my soul? Father? What do you want from me? Who let you loose inside this room? What do you bring? What havoc will you cause now – is it Christmas? What’s that beneath your oxter, a football or a pudding, a plum pudding? Have you been kicking it round the city, taken it for a walk the length and breadth of Phoenix Park, sliced it for refreshments to feed your drinking cohorts and tried to patch it up again as if we could sit down and dine on it this holy day, rather than doing with it what it deserves, and what it deserves is playing it like a melodeon? If melodeon, it should play itself on its own accord, then give us a song, one of Balfe’
s, not that Gilbert and Sullivan tripe – the only time I feel sorry for the old queen is when they force Victoria to listen to their caterwauling they believe passes as music.

  Father, sit down and eat your dinner.

  He does so. And I say to my mother, without speaking, because she is adept at reading my lips, since we must never give away our secrets, why did you give him back the money? She gives the trace of a shrug, and makes the slightest move with her left hand, which reads, what else could I do? I am an honest woman. And if he had ever found out you chanced on that bundle of notes, and I’d taken a penny without telling him, would I have had the living of a dog? He would have had me hanged by the neck.

  I nod, for she is right as she extracts from the measly turkey the lashings of stuffing that must make up this year the bulk of our festive fare. He suddenly starts to eye the pair of us, and we decide just to say nothing, for in this mood the least mumble provokes him, and every dish on the table, every dish in the house, could end up against the wall, so even if he’s wondering why is this silence between us, there’s better chance of a quiet time than if we were foolish enough to entertain him with a fight. I’d found the roll of notes on the stairs – how in Christ he came upon it we do not know nor do we want to – and I woke her to show them as she lay beside him in his stupor.

  She nearly jumped out of her skin at the size of the amount. She took half and told me, as I expected she would, put the rest under your pillow, tell him that’s all you discovered, when he wakes up and sees it all gone, I’ll tell him. He will be so grateful it’s not all missing he’ll say nothing. She whispered, do you know what you’ve to do? And I nodded.

  It all went as she said. He was nearly in tears searching for what he’d lost. He woke her and asked did she see it? He told her he was saving it for a pal and there would be hell to pay if it was not recovered. She said if he’d dropped it in the street, he could kiss the lot of it farewell. Maybe, though, he should ask the boy if he’d found anything.