‘What is it Jack? What’s the matter?’ the neighbour asked anxiously.
Gathering the last vestiges of his vanishing strength Jack Fly-Low opened his mouth. ‘Florrie,’ he whispered triumphantly before falling back on his pillow. His body slackened, the lips sealed themselves again but now there was the semblance of a smile on the shrunken dead face.
3
GUARANTEED PURE
Willie Ramley came to Ireland for one purpose, to marry a virgin. In a New York tavern he had been informed by a man with a brogue as thick as a turnip that Ireland abounded in colleens of this calibre.
‘How will I know she’s a virgin?’ Willie Ramley asked.
‘You’ll know,’ the man with the brogue assured him.
‘But how?’ Willie Ramley persisted.
‘Take my word for it,’ the man with the brogue had said, ‘when the time comes all will be revealed.’ This had been the gist of the impartation.
Willie was halfway through his second month in Ireland and contrary to his expectations nothing whatever had been revealed. He had travelled far and wide but none of the girls he had encountered had appealed to him. The only one he had questioned regarding her virginity tagged him straight off with a right cross which would have done justice to a Golden Gloves middle-weight. He ruefully pondered the advice tendered by the man with the brogue.
‘All will be revealed,’ he had said. It had been late on Saint Patrick’s night. The man with the brogue whose name he had forgotten was regarded as something of a seer by the other patrons of the tavern. They treated him with deference and placed double whiskies in front of him from time to time for no apparent reason other than to bask in his favour. Willie could not remember how the conversation had started. All he recalled was that he had babbled out the story of his life concluding with the latest and most tragic chapter which contained the sordid details of how his latest girlfriend had been two-timing him. The seer had placed a hand on his shoulder and looked him straight between the eyes. With the other hand he handed him an untouched glass of whiskey.
‘Drink that,’ he had said, ‘and take note of what I tell you.’
Willie Ramley did as he was bade.
‘You see before you,’ said the seer, ‘a man who was once in the same quandary as yourself. My face is wrinkled now and my hair is grey but I was a sparkling fellow once eager for love and living. These same grey hairs and wrinkles have been acquired at immense expense. They, therefore, give me the right to advise a young chap like yourself, not to pontificate mark you, but to advise.’ Wiping a tear from his eye he handed Willie Ramley a second glass of whiskey.
‘Wait,’ Willie had said, ‘let me buy you one.’
‘No,’ the seer had countered. ‘All those who come bearing me drinks have availed of my sagacity at one time or another. Should you and I meet again and should my counsel have proved to be beneficial I will expect a whiskey or two by way of compensation but for the present please regard these drinks which you see before me as much yours as mine.’
Willie nodded in agreement not wishing to interrupt with facile thanks the verbal flow of this most gracious old gentleman.
‘When I was your age,’ the sage continued, ‘I jumped into matrimony with the first good-looking girl I saw. As a consequence the union was a disaster. It lasted three weeks. I was married secondly within six months and when that failed after a shorter period I vowed never again to marry. Oh vain resolve. In no time at all I was married again. You see my dear boy I was a martyr to matrimony. Seven times in all I ventured into the matrimonial stakes and seven times I came a cropper.’
At this juncture Willie Ramley felt constrained to put in a short spake.
‘I would marry only once,’ he said.
The seer was about to utter a caustic comment but something in the young man’s demeanour stayed him.
‘I know how you feel,’ he said, ‘but marrying only once might not be so simple.’
‘I realise that,’ Willie told him, ‘but I am determined to succeed.’
‘Then,’ said the sage placing his hand upon the young man’s shoulder for the second time, ‘you must be doubly careful.’
‘Counsel me please,’ Willie begged him. ‘Counsel me I beseech you before the years catch up with me and I am left to languish alone.’
‘This is what you must do,’ the seer said with a solemnity which became the problem. ‘You must betake yourself to Ireland from which sainted spot my mother, God rest her, emigrated to these less virtuous climes. She was truly an angel if ever there was one outside the sacred precincts of Heaven.’ Here the seer paused to acknowledge receipt of a wholesome shot of whiskey from a grateful client.
‘Because you are pure yourself,’ the sage continued after he had sipped from the fresh bumper, ‘you seek a creature of equal purity.’
Willie Ramley nodded eagerly. All his instincts firmly intimated that he had stumbled at last upon an authentic oracle.
‘Do not,’ said the sage, ‘let yourself be carried away by the first pretty face nor by some coy damsel who will seem to be the answer to all your dreams. Be patient and the right girl will show herself. There will be something about her, something special that will set her apart from all others. This particular something will be as much in evidence as the nose on your very own face. It will be as clear as though it were stamped upon her back. Go now and keep your wits about you. Be continent in your ways and true to your ideal and she will make herself known to you in the manner in which I have indicated.’
So saying the sage lifted both hands in an elaborate flourish indicating that he had said all he was going to say. Willie Ramley departed the scene and for weeks was fully absorbed by all that he had been told. He finally resolved that there was nothing for it but to travel to Ireland and it was thus that he found himself after six weeks, as far from attaining to his aspiration as he had been when he first set foot on the green land of Erin. Now, with less than a fortnight’s time remaining to him he began to grow anxious and despaired of ever achieving his goal. So we find him in this despondent mood seated on a turt6g of snipegrass overlooking the vast beach of Ballybunion on a bright afternoon in the month of June.
Overhead seagulls mewed in the scented seaside air whilst around the human race disported itself as though fine days were at a premium. Elders paddled in the shallow shorewater whilst young men ventured beyond their depth endeavouring to test the concern of those inshore females for whom they had a special eye. Toddlers toddled, back and forth to the tide. Small boys and girls breathlessly shaped castles of sand with shovel and bucket whilst a golden-skinned lifeguard lorded it over all who sported in his domain. In short it could be said that everybody was happy except Willie Ramley.
Tired of sitting in one place he decided to venture uptown with a view to imbibing a cool drink in one of the resort’s many excellent hostelries. As he dandered along idly kicking empty cigarette and matchboxes with newly-purchased sandals he was almost run down by a bus. Had it not been for the fact that a passer-by hollered an alarm he might well have been injured. He managed to catch the barest glimpse of his benefactress, a shy young female who immediately averted her not unpretty head the moment she found his gaze turned in her direction. For a moment he stood unresolved outside the door of a popular tavern. The words of the seer came drifting back to him. He decided to investigate further. The young lady was by now out of sight but it seemed to Willie that she was one of a party of females which had been on its way to the beach. He proceeded at a lively pace until he found the party once more within his ken. It consisted of five members. He followed at a discreet distance not wishing to overplay his hand and thus destroy his chances altogether. The party descended a stone stairway to where an array of ancient bathing boxes stood facing the shimmering sea. There followed some brief negotiations with the proprietor after which the five took possession of a similar number of the rust-wheeled wooden structures.
Willie Ramley carefully noted the box into which
his Lady Fair had disappeared. There was nothing for it but to wait until she came out. A strange sensation began to assail him, a composition of excitement and expectancy. He guessed that the five were country folk. He deduced this from the way in which they had looked around and about when they arrived at their destination. It was also apparent from their simple apparel and the way they carried themselves that they were daughters of the soil. He had expected a chaste emergence from the bathing boxes but he was totally unprepared for the sight which met his eyes. Each of the five was decked out in a long shift which fell to the toes and which concealed all the shapeliness thereunder. The shifts were off-white in colour and the material lightweight. What Willie Ramley could not know was that these full-length costumes were the common bathing attire of the people of the countryside. Thrifty souls that they were these frugal females rarely visited emporiums for the material which went into the making of their underclothes and beach attire. The flour which was used for the making of the daily bread came, as a rule, in calico bags of one hundred and twelve pounds or one hundredweight. When the flour was used up the bags were thoroughly washed and dried. The textile was used to make shifts, slips and knickers not to mention football togs and bedclothes. While the numerous town and city people on the beach might regard the calico-clad countrywomen with some amusement they, nevertheless, refrained from showing it. This could well be because they themselves had only recently emerged from country backgrounds.
Despite the lack of design the shifts sat well on their owners as they moved in stately formation from bathing boxes to shore with their heads held high to show how little they cared about what others thought. Their leader was a formidable, mightily-busted lady of late middle years, tall and broadshouldered with aquiline features and a bearing which suggested that she was capable of defending herself and her charges in the unlikely event of an attack. The others were younger by far, late teens or early twenties so that Willie could not be blamed for concluding that the matriarch was more than likely the mother of the four. They walked demurely behind her looking neither left nor right. The girl who had prevented Willie’s collision with the bus brought up the rear and it was clear that under the shapeless shift there was a body as beautiful as the imagination could conjure up. Reaching the water they proceeded along its edge to a spot where no other human soul was in evidence. Here, prompted by the matron, the young ladies entered the sea and after much skipping, leaping and shrieking accustomed themselves to its cold but salving wavelets. Then, dutifully while the matron kept a lookout in the background, the four faced themselves to the distant horizon and lifting the fronts of their shifts liberally sprinkled the exposed part of the anatomy with handfuls of cleansing sea water. The matron herself did not enter the water at all, content in her role of mother hen, repelling the curious with the most intimidatory of looks and doughty of stances. As soon as the girls had finished they chastely lowered their shifts and turned their backs to the very same horizon. The first exercise was repeated until the matron was satisfied that each was adequately bathed. Mustering her charges in a single file she resumed her position at the head of the column. Proudly and gracefully they returned the way they had come. Willie Ramley decided to make a closer inspection. He strode seawards with what he hoped was a casual air, pouting his lips into an indifferent whistle, giving the impression that he was an innocent holidaymaker lost in a private world of his own. Warily he circled round the matriarch as she led her brood to the boxes. His aim was to keep pace with the group from the rear so that he could better observe the lady of his choice. As he neared completion of his arc their eyes met ever so fleetingly but in that split-second exchange he lost his heart irrevocably. Again he recalled the seer’s advice, ‘Do not let yourself be carried away by a pretty face.’
There was more, however, to this young lady than a pretty face. Of that he was certain. He fell in behind and then he saw for the first time the word ‘Sunrise’ imprinted in faded red letters on the back of the shift. Willie Ramley would have had no way of knowing that this was the brand name of the popular variety of flour greatly favoured by the country folk of the time. The letters were in large capitals and underneath there was a longer inscription in faded black italics.
Anxious to acquaint himself with its contents he closed the gap between them until the lettering was easily legible. ‘One hundred and twelve pounds,’ it said, ‘guaranteed pure.’
He repeated the words over and over again to himself but it was only when the object of his interest had disappeared into her bathing box that the full significance of the latter part of the seer’s advice impressed itself upon him. What was that he had said again, something about a special mark or sign that would set his wife-to-be apart. But what were the precise words? Slowly they came back to him.
‘There will be something about her ... It will be as clear as though it were stamped upon her back.’ Those were the exact words as far as he could recall. No further evidence of the girl’s character was needed. He waited impatiently for her reemergence.
For the remainder of his holiday Willie Ramley embarked upon a consistent and most earnest suit. Morning, noon and night he waited upon her. The girl’s mother was impressed by his undeviating devotion and when at length Willie had prevailed upon the young lady to say yes the mother approved unreservedly and the pair were married. The honeymoon, as was to be expected, was spent in Ballybunion and on the first night of what turned out to be a most blessed union the blushing bride presented herself to her husband clad in nothing but the long shift which carried on its back the inscription: ‘One hundred and twelve pounds. Guaranteed pure.’ And indeed it must be said here that never was a product so truthfully advertised.
4
‘THE TEAPOTS ARE OUT’
‘I was present,’ Dinny Colman boasted, ‘the day the first shot was fired.’
‘It wasn’t a shot was it?’ my mother prompted, noticing my bewilderment.
‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Dinny replied, ‘but in all wars household or otherwise, someone has to start things off. The wrong word in the wrong place at the wrong time will do just as nicely or suppose people was taking their supper and if someone was to get fat meat who didn’t like fat meat while others who didn’t care whether they got fat or lean was presented with lean that would do it. I seen it happen. It may seem a small thing but in the eyes of the victim a great wrong has been done. A man’s supper has been destroyed and in this Godforsaken countryside a man’s supper is about the only diversion he has before drawing the clothes over his head for the night.’
He flicked the reins and called ‘Giddap!’ The bobbing rump twitched. The ears pricked. The paces stretched and quickened. The wind sang in our ears and we had to raise our voices to be heard. We were travelling on the flat. It wasn’t till the pace slowed as we climbed the first of the forbidding hills on the road homeward that I found the composure to ponder Dinny’s remarks.
The house we had just left was a thatched, one-storey farmhouse like our own. Indeed it was like every other farmhouse in the countryside with the difference that on the one we had lately vacated the thatch was hoary and rotten, retaining not a glimmer of the rich burnished yellow which it once boasted. The white-washed walls were long since brownstained by the stinking, blackened rainwater which oozed and seeped from the reeking thatch. The small, deep-set windows afforded little or no light to the interior. Add to this the fact that they had not been cleaned for years save where the imprint of a palm had smoothed a lookout from which occasional visitors might be vetted. The run-down farm had been let year after year to a neighbour while the byroad from the main road to the house was no longer distinguishable from the rushy fields through which it ran. Famished, underfed bullocks stood waiting for hay in a large bawling herd just inside the main gate. They looked as if they hadn’t eaten for days! The general picture was one of casual decay
‘The teapots was out when we landed and out when we left.’ Dinny was speaking to my mother.
; The farm was owned by Neddy Leary. With him in the kitchen during our visit had been his wife Dolly and his sister Bridgeen. Because they had been partaking of some afternoon tea we had surprised them. Each was seated at a different table, Neddy at the large, main table which stood in the centre of the kitchen, his wife and sister at either side of the turf fire which smouldered under a large, black iron kettle. Each had wet and drawn their separate pots of tea and withdrawn with them to their respective positions. Bread, milk, butter and sugar were communal and could be had from an appointed area at the end of the main table. The remaining space was restricted, the preserve of Neddy Leary. In truth the smaller tables were no more than glorified butter boxes which had been upturned and covered with patches of spare tarpaulin.
We had heard the sounds of discord quite plainly as we neared the house. All three were involved. It had reached hysterical proportions just as my mother knocked upon the door. Suddenly there wasn’t a titter to be heard. A grimy face appeared at the window and shortly afterwards a voice called, ‘Come in.’ By this time, however, Dinny Colman, who was never a man to stand on ceremony, had the door open. The disarray was quite evident.
‘God bless all here,’ he used the benediction to camouflage his extreme curiosity. Hastily Dolly Leary and her sister-in-law Bridgeen departed the hearth clutching their teapots and other relevant accoutrements. They disappeared soundlessly into an adjacent room.
‘Come in, come in,’ Neddy Leary cried as though there had never been a word of disagreement. Dinny Colman made immediately for the hearth and stood with his back to it so that the whole kitchen could be kept more easily under observation.
‘Servant boys don’t know their place no more,’ Neddy Leary addressed himself to my mother at the same time rising and ushering us both to the hearth where he bade us sit on the chairs which had just been abandoned. This left Dinny with no choice but to move to one side. Using heavy black tongs Neddy Leary set himself the task of re-arranging the turf fire. This he managed to do with a surprising degree of skill. In seconds it was a tastefully-constructed pile of glowing embers, quite pleasant to behold and radiating welcome warmth. He delicately banked it with sods chosen from an ancient tea-chest which stood nearby. He declined, however, to sweep the hearth and surrounds clean of ashes. He managed to give the impression that this was a chore beneath his dignity.
The Teapots Are Out and Other Eccentric Tales from Ireland Page 3