The Teapots Are Out and Other Eccentric Tales from Ireland

by John B. Keane

  As time passed and it became clear that the union would not be blessed with children Polly Baun became known as the woman who hated Christmas. Nobody would ever say it to her face and certainly nobody would say it to her husband’s face. It must be said on behalf of the community that none took real exception to her stance. They were well used to Christmas attitudes. There was a tradesman who resided in the suburbs and every year about a week before Christmas he would disappear into the countryside where he rented a small cabin until Christmas was over. He had nothing personal against Christmas and had said so publicly on numerous occasions. It was just that he couldn’t stand the build-up to Christmas what with the decorations and the lighting and the cards and the shopping and the gluttony to mention but a few of his grievances.

  There was another gentleman who locked his door on Christmas Eve and did not open it for a month. Some say he simply hibernated and when he reappeared on the street after the prescribed period he looked as if he had. He was unshaven and his hair was tousled and his face was gaunt as a corpse’s and there were black circles under his eyes.

  Then there were those who would go off the drink for Christmas just because everybody else was going on. And there were those who would not countenance seasonal fare such as turkeys or geese or plum pudding or spiced beef. One man said he would rather an egg and another insisted that those who consumed fowl would have tainted innards for the rest of their days.

  There were, therefore, abundant precedents for attitudes like Polly Baun’s. There were those who would excuse her on the grounds that maybe she had a good and secret reason to hate Christmas but mostly they would accept what Shaun said, that she simply discouraged it.

  There had been occasions when small children would come to the door of the kitchen while their parents searched for suitable hats. The knowing ones would point to where the silhouette of the woman who hated Christmas was visible through the stained glass of the doorway which led from the shop to the kitchen. One might whisper to the others as he pointed inwards ‘that’s the woman who hates Christmas!’ If Polly heard, she never reacted. Sometimes in the streets, during the days before Christmas, she would find herself the object of curious stares from shoppers who had just been informed of her pet aversion by friends or relations. If she noticed she gave no indication.

  Shaun also felt the seasonal undercurrents when he visited his neighbourhood tavern during the Christmas festivities. He drank but little, a few glasses of stout with a friend but never whiskey. He had once been a prodigious whiskey drinker and then all of a sudden he gave up whiskey altogether and never indulged again. No one knew why, not even his closest friends. There was no explanation. One night he went home full of whiskey and the next night he drank none. There was the inevitable speculation but the truth would never be known and his friends, all too well aware of his fiery temper, did not pursue the matter. Neither did they raise the question of his wife’s Christmas disposition except when his back was turned but like most of the community they did not consider it to be of any great significance. There was, of course, a reason for it. There had to be if one accepted the premise that there was a reason for everything.

  On Christmas Eve there was much merriment and goodwill in the tavern. Another of Shaun Baun’s cronies had given up whiskey on his doctor’s instructions and presumed wrongly that this might well have been the reason why Shaun had forsaken the stuff. Courteously but firmly Shaun informed him that his giving up whiskey had nothing to do with doctors, that it was a purely personal decision. The night was spoiled for Shaun Baun. Rather than betray his true feelings on such an occasion he slipped away early and walked as far as the outermost suburbs of the town, then turned and made his way homewards at a brisk pace. Nobody could be blamed for thinking that here was a busy shopkeeper availing himself of the rarer airs of the night whereas the truth was that his mind was in turmoil, all brought on by the reference to whiskey in the public house. Nobody knew better than Shaun why he had given up whiskey unless it was his wife.

  As he walked he clenched and unclenched his fists and cursed the day that he had ever tasted whiskey. He remembered striking her and he remembered why and as he did he stopped and threw his arms upwards into the night and sobbed as he always sobbed whenever he found himself unable to drive the dreadful memory away. He remembered how he had been drinking since the early afternoon on that fateful occasion. Every time he sold a hat he would dash across the roadway to the pub with the purchaser in tow. He reckoned afterwards that he had never consumed so much whiskey in so short a time. When he closed the shop he announced that he was going straight to the public house and this despite his wife’s protestations. She begged him to eat something. She lovingly entreated him not to drink any more whiskey, to indulge in beer or stout and he agreed and kissed her and then hurried off to surfeit himself with more whiskey. He would later excuse himself on the grounds that he was young and impetuous but he would never be able to excuse the use of his fist in that awful moment which would haunt him for the rest of his life. An oncoming pedestrian moved swiftly on to the roadway at the sight of the gesticulating creature who seemed to rant and rave as he approached. Shaun Baun moved relentlessly onward, trying to dispel the memory of what had been the worst moment he had ever experienced but he still remembered as though it had happened only the day before.

  He had left the pub with several companions and they had gone on to an after-hours establishment where they exceeded themselves. Shaun had come home at seven o‘clock in the morning. He searched in vain for his key but it was nowhere to be found. He turned out his pockets but the exercise yielded nothing. Then he did what his likes had been doing since the first key had been mislaid. He knocked gently upon the front window with his knuckles and when this failed to elicit a response he located a coin and used it to beat a subdued tattoo on the fanlight and when this failed he pounded upon the door.

  At length the door was opened to him and closed behind him by his dressing-gowned, bedroom-slippered wife. It took little by way of skill to evade his drunken embrace. She passed him easily in the shop and awaited him with folded arms in the kitchen.

  A wiser woman would have ushered him upstairs, bedded him safely down and suspended any verbal onslaught until a more favourable time. She did not know so early in her married days that the most futile of all wifely exercises is arguing with a drunken husband.

  She began by asking him if he saw the state of himself which was a pointless question to begin with. She asked him in short order if he knew the hour of the morning it was and was he aware of the fact that he was expected to accompany her to mass in a few short hours. He stood silently, hands and head hanging, unable to muster a reply. All he wished for was his bed; even the floor would have satisfied him but she had only begun. She outlined for him all the trouble he had caused her in their three years of marriage, his drinking habits, his bouts of sickness after the excesses of the pub, his intemperate language and, worst of all, the spectacle he made of himself in front of the neighbours. Nothing remarkable here, the gentle reader would be sure to say, familiar enough stuff and common to such occasions in the so-called civilised countries of the world but let me stress that it was not the quality of her broadsides but the quantity. She went on and on and on and it became clear that she should have vented her ire piecemeal over the three years rather than hoard it all for one sustained outburst.

  Afterwards Shaun Baun would say that he did what he did to shut out the noise. If there had been lulls now and then he might have borne it all with more patience but she simply never let up. On the few occasions that he nodded off she shouted into the more convenient ear so that he would splutter into immediate if drunken wakefulness. Finally, the whole business became unbearable. Her voice had reached its highest pitch since the onslaught began and she even grew surprised at the frenzy of her own outpourings.

  Could she but have taken a leaf out of the books of the countless wives in the neighbourhood who found themselves confronted with equ
ally intemperate spouses she would have fared much better and there would be no need for recrimination on Christmas morning. Alas, this was not her way. She foolishly presumed that the swaying monstrosity before her was one of a kind and that a drastic dressing-down of truly lasting proportions was his only hope of salvation.

  Whenever he tried to move out of earshot she seized him firmly by the shoulders and made him stand his ground. Drunk and incapable as he was he managed to place the table between them. For awhile they played a game of cat and mouse but eventually he tired and she began a final session of ranting which had the effect of clouding his judgment such was its intensity. He did not realise that he had delivered the blow until she had fallen to the ground.

  Afterwards he would argue with himself that he only meant to remove her from his path so that he could escape upstairs and find succour in the spare bedroom. She fell heavily, the blood streaming from a laceration on her cheekbone. When he attempted to help her he fell awkwardly across her and stunned himself when his forehead struck the floor. When he woke he saw that the morning’s light was streaming in the window. The clock on the kitchen mantelpiece confirmed his worst fears. For the first time in his life he had missed mass. Then slowly the events of the night before began to take shape. He prayed in vain that he had experienced a nightmare, that his wife would appear any moment bouncing and cheerful from last mass. He struggled to his feet and entered his shop.

  The last of the mass-goers had departed the street outside. Fearing the worst he climbed the stairs to the bedroom which they had so lovingly shared since they first married. She lay on the bed her head propped up by bloodstained pillows, a plaster covering the gash she had suffered, her face swollen beyond belief. Shaun fell on his knees at the side of the bed and sobbed his very heart out but the figure on the bed lay motionless, her unforgiving eyes fixed on the ceiling. There would be no Christmas dinner on that occasion. Contritely, all day and all night, he made sobbing visitations to the bedroom with cups of coffee and tea and other beverages but there was to be no relenting.

  Three months would pass before she acknowledged his existence and three more would expire before words were exchanged. Two years in all would go unfleetingly by before it could be said that they had the semblance of a relationship. That had all been twenty-five years before and now as he walked homewards avoiding the main streets he longed to kneel before her and beg her forgiveness once more. Every so often during the course of every year in between he would ask her to forgive the unforgivable as he called it. He had never touched her in anger since that night or raised his voice or allowed his face to exhibit the semblance of a frown in her presence.

  When he returned she was sitting silently by the fire. The goose, plucked and stuffed, sat on a large dish. It would be duly roasted on the morrow. As soon as he entered the kitchen he sat by her side and took her hand in his. As always, he declared his love for her and she responded, as always, by squeezing the hand which held hers. They would sit thus as they had sat since that unforgettable night so many years before. There would be no change in the pattern. They would happily recall the events of the day and they would decide upon which mass they would attend on the great holy day. She would accept the glass of sherry which he always poured for her. He would pour himself a bottle of stout and they would sip happily. They would enjoy another drink and another and then they would sit quietly for awhile. Then as always the sobbing would begin. It would come from deep within him. He would kneel in front of her with his head buried in her lap and every so often, between great heaving sobs, he would tell her how sorry he was. She would nod and smile and place her hands around his head and then he would raise the head and look into her eyes and ask her forgiveness as he had been doing for so many years.

  ‘I forgive you dear,’ she would reassure him and he would sob all the more. She would never hurt him. She could not find it in her heart to do that. He was a good man if a hotheaded one and he had made up for that moment of madness many times over. All through the night she would dutifully comfort him by accepting his every expression of atonement. She always thought of her father on such occasions. He had never raised his voice to her or to her mother. He had been drunk on many an occasion, notably weddings and christenings but all he ever did was to lift her mother or herself in his arms. She was glad that she was able to forgive her husband but there was forgiveness and forgiveness and hers was the kind that would never let her forget. Her husband would never know the difference. She would always be there when he needed her, especially at Christmas.

  9

  PROTOCOL

  I could tell from the expression on Timmy Binn’s face that he had come down from the hilltop on a special mission. Most times he called merely to pass away the winter nights. He would sit by the hearth with my uncle and his wife and maybe her father if the old man felt up to it. There they would exchange news and views until midnight when the party broke up after a cup or two of tea.

  My uncle’s house sat snugly in the lee of a small Sitka spruce plantation at the bottom of the hill whereas the Binn abode was almost at the top about a mile distant. At the time Timmy Binn was approaching his seventieth year which made him the youngest of three bachelor brothers and three spinster sisters who lived together in their ancient farmhouse which looked down on every other in the parish.

  The isolation suited the Binns. They were seen in public by early morning mass-goers only. These, for the most part, would be old and retiring like themselves, venturing forth weekly to the village church in order to observe the Sabbath.

  Timmy it was who did all the shopping. Every morning, Sunday included, he tackled the old black mare to the milk cart and guided her to the creamery with the tanks containing the daily yield from the twelve milch cows. When the milk was delivered he would purchase the necessary provisions and return home without further delay.

  On Fridays he collected the several old age pensions due to his brothers and sisters at the village post office. Half of the money was spent on luxuries like coil tobacco, snuff and mixed fruit jam. The other half was credited to a joint account in a well worn post office book. This was left untouched over the years so that it might meet wake and funeral expenses when, one by one, the Binns would be faced with the ultimate contingency.

  ‘Come up to the fire,’ my uncle called as soon as the door was closed.

  Timmy’s mouth opened to say something but he thought better of it and sat by the fire as instructed.

  ‘You’ll take a bottle of porter,’ the uncle said. ‘In fact,’ said he before Timmy could answer, ‘we’ll all take a bottle of porter.’

  Normally Timmy Binn would have been offered tea but Christmas was not long past and there still remained some bottled porter after the festivities. The uncle uncorked three bottles. He handed one to Timmy and another to his father-in-law. The third he kept for himself. No glasses were used.

  ‘Sláinte,’ said the uncle as he lifted the bottle to his mouth.

  ‘Sláinte,’ the others answered and they did likewise.

  Each went halfway down and as soon as Timmy Binn had placed his on the floor at the side of his chair he readied himself to make an announcement. None came however. From where I sat reading at the kitchen table I could see that he was under great strain. He wanted to come out with something but couldn’t. I was about to intervene and say ‘Let Timmy talk’, but I remembered that it was the custom to exhaust every other topic before asking for the reason behind any visit. I remembered that Timmy had arrived only a few weeks before on an errand for his sisters. He had spent nearly two hours talking in front of the hearth with my uncle and the old man. Finally when he was handed a cup of tea by the woman of the house he announced that he would not have time to drink it. He explained that he had been sitting in his own kitchen while his sisters were preparing supper when they suddenly discovered that there wasn’t a grain of sugar in the house. Timmy had been dispatched straightaway for the loan of a cupful till morning. He nevertheless allowe
d himself to be coerced into drinking the tea on the grounds that his sisters would have gone ahead with the supper anyway in view of his long absence.

  This time, however, an uncharacteristic agitation showed. He fussed and fidgeted but restrained himself, remembering that there was a ritual to be observed. Neither my uncle nor the old man commented on his restlessness. They presumed that he would withhold the reason for his visit as a matter of course until such time as he was asked. They knew quite well that he had come for a purpose other than sitting and talking but part of the proceedings consisted of endeavouring to deduce in their own minds precisely what that purpose was. The whole undertaking would be spoiled if he came out with his business straight-off. It mattered not how pressing that business might be nor did it count that he might be in a hurry back home. Tradition obliged him to sit it out until the proper time.

  ‘There are poor people sheltering this night without a fire.’

  The old man of the house swallowed the remainder of his stout after he had spoken. He handed the empty bottle to my uncle in such a manner as to suggest that the opening of three more bottles might not be inappropriate.

  ‘A good blaze is everything,’ his daughter said, lovingly laying three large black sods on the perimeter of the fire, ‘and I’ll tell you what is more,’ she went on, ‘a good fire will draw pain out of a body.’