The Women

by Alice Taylor

  She kept track of all the animals on her farm and when preparing them for the fair she worked out exactly how much each was likely to fetch. Women did not attend the fairs as this was a men-only arena, but from her home base she controlled how things went, instructing Johnny on which tricky neighbours to avoid and which jobbers – cattle traders – were not to be trusted. Johnny knew exactly what the animal was expected to fetch and usually brought home the required amount. Her male neighbours knew that she was a force to be reckoned with and understood that just because she was a woman she was no pushover. She was very proud of the high productivity of her cows and kept a careful eye on her creamery returns. The creamery was also a male-dominated world from which she was excluded, but again from a distance she kept a wary eye on activities.

  Amazingly for such an independent woman, at the age of seventy she decided that she had done enough work and took to her chair by the fire, from where she supervised the comings and goings of the household and farm. A saintly girl called Mary came to help her with the kitchen and yard work. Sometimes I was dispatched back to stay with Nana Ballyduane and Mary was the guardian who protected me from my grandmother’s ire. Nana firmly believed that children should unquestioningly do exactly as they were instructed and if your performance was not up to her specifications she had an often-repeated reprimand: ‘What does a badly done job say? It says do me all over again!’ She did not countenance sitting down reading a book or gazing out the window at the sky when there was work to be done, and she often told me, ‘There is nothing got from idleness only dirt and long nails.’ The result was that I hid my books in the hay-barn and disappeared up there as often as possible. One time I was reading A Tale of Two Cities and felt that Nana would have fitted in very well in the period of the French Revolution and would have had no problem in whipping the head off a frilled, perfumed aristocrat whom she felt had wronged her of her livelihood and stolen her lands!

  But sometimes, late in the evening, she thawed out and lapsed into remembrances as she sat by the fire, and then it was lovely to sit and listen. Years afterwards I regretted not having paid enough attention, as she had amazing recall. She told of taking butter from her childhood home in Cullen up along the old ‘butter road’ to the Cork market, where there was a worldwide trade in butter at the time. Those were tough times and it was a constant struggle to keep food on the table.

  Occasionally during her later years she would decide that it was finally time to bow out, and she would summon the priest and doctor to verify her decision. If their diagnoses were different to hers she would be extremely annoyed but would decide to rise from her bed and resume life for another while. When she had one of these ‘figarioes’ as my father called them, my uncle would come for my mother and inform us, ‘Herself has a touch of Oliver.’ I have no idea what that expression meant, but it entered our family lore and if you were having a fit of the blues it was always termed ‘a touch of Oliver’.

  She had an insatiable thirst for political news and the daily copy of the Irish Press was her bible, but if it was sold out my uncle brought the local Cork Examiner, which she contemptuously referred to as ‘Crosby’s Blue Rag’, after the proprietor, and she shoved it under the kettle on the fire! She and my father had totally conflicting political views, so for the sake of family harmony they never discussed politics. I think my father felt at a disadvantage anyway, as, due to her age and the fact that she was his mother-in-law, they were not on a level playing field.

  When I was staying with her I always shared her bed, which was a high black iron bed with big brass knobs top and bottom. Over the wire springs at the base was a horsehair mattress and on that was a deep feather tick, covered by strong cotton sheets, and then layers of wool blankets; the whole thing was topped with a patchwork quilt and a mountain of feather pillows on which to rest our heads. To get into it I had to hoist myself up with the help of the bottom bedpost and then scramble up along the quilt and burrow down under the blankets. I was always in bed before she began her bedtime ritual and undressing ceremony.

  The only light came from the candle in the sconce on the deep narrow window, through which she peered out at the night sky to forecast the following day’s weather. Then she did a monologue on the state of the farm fields stretching out in front of her. She loved the land and in her nightly survey described the state of each field. The Clune Field was her favourite and the name rolled off her tongue like softly whipped cream. Beside it the Well Field stretched down the side of an adjoining hill and always had a great grass crop; in a shaded corner a deep well provided a non-stop supply of sparkling clear water. Up to the left was Andy’s Field, which got its name from a man of a previous generation who had lived there. In her nightly homily she blessed all her fields. That done, she went to the weights-and-chains clock beside the large fireplace and by some complicated manoeuvring she managed to draw down one chain, which drew up the other one that bore a heavy pendulum. This exercise, known simply as ‘winding the clock’, ensured that it kept going and pealed out musically on the hour and half-hour. Then she was ready for her undressing ritual.

  One of my strongest memories of her is of her clothing. Women of her age wore a great array of clothes in multiple layers. The ritual of her undressing when going to bed had to be seen to be believed. As a child I found it fascinating. First off was her black bonnet, which was hung off the bottom bedpost, followed by the black crochet cape from around her shoulders, and this was placed carefully over the back of the high chair beside the bed. Then she returned to the window to view the fields one more time and began to ease open the long row of small covered buttons down the front of her black velvet blouse. As she did this she sometimes left the window view and rambled around the room from where she regaled me with stories of long-gone ancestors whose portraits still hung on the walls or were arrayed along the marble mantelpiece. The buttons undone, the blouse joined the cape on the back of the chair. With the removal of the blouse, rows of underwear, with their lower half disappearing beneath her long black skirt, came into view. Some pieces of underwear had long sleeves and others short, and they were laced up the front. She undid the large button at the back of her long black skirt, and it slid downwards in a black crumpled heap around her ankles. This revealed a bright red gathered petticoat and I always regretted that this beautiful daring garment was hidden by the dull black skirt. When I voiced this opinion once I was simply told to hush up. She stepped out of the skirt and it was laid carefully across the seat of the chair. The petticoat followed the skirt onto the chair and long pink bloomers that stretched from her waist down to her knees made their appearance. She eased up the legs of these knickers and snapped open the suspenders that were holding up her long black knitted stockings. This released the whalebone corset that held her tall and upright. She then turned down the top of the knickers and pulled open the hooks down one side of her body that held this coat of mail in place. All the hooks undone, she then drew the corset up out of the knickers and landed it across the bars at the bottom of the bed, where bone and suspenders hit steel with a resounding crack. At this point I could almost sense her body relax, like a prisoner released from jail.

  She now sat on the chair and undid the laces of her high black boots and then rolled down her long black stockings that were already beginning to collapse having been released from their moorings by the opening of the suspenders. Next off was her chemise, a long shirt-like flannelette garment with capped sleeves, and then a little vest that she called her bodice was on the agenda, and she unlaced it down the front and slipped it off over her shoulders. Then she disappeared behind the door of the large wardrobe at the end of the bed and the rest of the unveiling took place in private. When she reappeared she was swallowed up in a giant white nightdress and the layers that had just been removed joined the corset across the bottom of the bed.

  But the ritual was not yet complete. She sat on the side of the bed and applied Sloan’s Liniment for joint lubrication to her knees and
ankles. It had an intoxicating herbal smell and, if sniffing is good for the muscles, I benefited as well. Next she went to a deep narrow press behind the trailing chains of the clock, prised it open with a tiny key and removed a small blue bottle full of a most obnoxious-smelling liquid called Cascara, a kind of natural laxative made from tree bark. She carefully poured out a measure into a small glass that had marks etched up along the side. Then she slowly savoured it as if it were rare Midleton whiskey. After that she got her bottle of holy water and doused the room, including me in the shower.

  All done, she boarded the bed. Her bodily requirements had been seen to and now it was time for her spirit, and so began the Rosary and a long list of prayers. By then sleep was beginning to get the better of me, and when my mumbled Holy Marys trailed to a standstill I would get a poke in the ribs to stimulate wakefulness. But she finally gave up and I drifted off to sleep as invocations for heavenly blessings circulated around the bed.

  Chapter 3

  A Great Pair of Hands

  When Aunt Kate came to stay she took over the parlour and turned it into an Aladdin’s cave. The large table at the centre disappeared under a mountain of material for the multiplicity of creative transformations that were about to take place. Aunt Kate could sew, knit, embroider, crochet, make lace, quilt and do patchwork. While many of the neighbours were skilled in some of these accomplishments, Aunt Kate had mastered them all, and my grandmother used to say that she was blessed with a great pair of hands and a brain to match. The morning after her arrival, down from the black loft came Aunt Kate’s trunk – in our old farmhouse the attic was graphically known as the ‘black’ loft because that is exactly what it was, with one tiny window dimly illuminating its dusty interior. Up there were the abandoned cradle, retired milk churns, half-made beehives, newspapers that my mother planned to read when more leisurely days came her way, and everything that she deemed might come in handy some day.

  Hidden under the sloping roof was Aunt Kate’s trunk, waiting to be dragged out of hibernation when she came to stay. She usually came twice a year, midsummer and midwinter. On her midsummer visit, the doors and windows of the parlour were thrown open and the aroma of the garden filtered in, and sometimes Aunt Kate took her chair outside and did hand-sewing under what we called Andy Connie’s tree. Andy Connie was an uncle of my father, and when he came to stay he always claimed that all night this tree swayed in the breeze and sang ‘Andy Connie, Andy Connie…’.

  If she was under the Andy Connie tree when we came home from school she would patiently show us how to put up stitches on our small knitting needles and teach us how to do ‘under, around and over’ until we finally got the hang of it. If we lost a knitting needle she introduced us to the skill of creating one from the quill of a goose wing. Learning to knit at school had been a stress test, but Aunt Kate turned it into a labour of love.

  On her winter visit the window and door of the parlour were closed against cold and draughts. When the fire was lit the room was filled with the whiff of the burning logs and turf and of the great array of materials airing in the heat.

  Getting Aunt Kate’s trunk down from the black loft and into the parlour was not a job for the faint-hearted. Leading from the loft down into a room off the parlour there was a steep stairs, which had many missing steps that my father planned to replace one day, but in the meantime you had to have the agility of an acrobat to arrive safely at base. Manoeuvring the heavy trunk down this treacherous incline was paramount to mastering the challenges of a steep ski slope. If my father was involved, it was a miracle that the trunk did not go on fire, ignited by the flood of inflammatory language that accompanied its descent. The descent wasn’t made easier by the fact that the trunk was made of wood, edged with brass, and was quite weighty in its own right. Then, throughout the year, lots of things had been thrown into it – sheets with see-through patches, threadbare blankets, all sorts of worn knits, dresses deemed too short, too small or too tight, and any item gone past its wear-by date. When my mother was in doubt about what to do with any abandoned garment, Aunt Kate’s trunk solved the problem. Its cavernous depths swallowed all! So it was almost impossible to lift it and it had to be shunted along in stops and starts. However, with many thumps and bumps it would finally arrive at its destination.

  Once the word went around that Aunt Kate was in residence the local women gathered like bees to a honey pot. Now was the time to go into their press under the stairs and rescue that abandoned piece of knitting that had proved too complicated. Aunt Kate would cast her experienced eye over a half-knit sock and with a quick flick of the needles and a swirl of the knitting wool would begin to turn the complicated heel or close the reluctant toe and gently guide the knitter back into action. She could knit all kinds of everything. Plain, purl, Fair Isle, cable all ran off her needles like a continuous waterfall. While doing the most complicated Fair Isle patterns, involving a stream of different-coloured wools pouring through her fingers, she could unconcernedly carry on the most interesting conversation or keep her eye on a meandering toddler. She had a stack of old knitting patterns and the local women checked them out and brought some of their own patterns to discuss the pitfalls, merits and possibilities involved in following them. This exchange of ideas and knitting patterns often turned into a tea party.

  Most husbands and children at the time were togged out in hand-knit socks and jumpers, and knitting wool was sold in Denny Ben’s draper’s shop in town. Wool came in long hanks and had to be wound into balls for more convenient handling. Winding the thread, as it was known, involved two people, one with outstretched arms, like a supplicant in prayer, holding the hank from wrist to wrist so that the winder had easy access to the stretched-out wool while winding it into balls. This could lead to weary arm muscles if the holder did not have great muscular strength. Sometimes a protesting male, not otherwise occupied, could be hauled in to hold the hank. If no willing body was available, you had to make do with the backs of chairs and drape the hank across two of them. The súgán kitchen chairs with their upright ears were well suited to this job. Almost every household boasted a knitter and knitting tastes fluctuated between plain, Fair Isle and cable. Balls of leftover knitting wool were exchanged between the women to be used for darning, which was an ongoing necessity as toes, heels and elbows were constantly making undesirable public appearances.

  Most clothes, especially the children’s, were made at home and material was carefully chosen in Denny Ben’s on a Sunday after Mass, when remnants were also picked up to patch and extend the life of many items of clothing. Nothing was thrown away and every piece of clothing had a reincarnation into another life after a temporary demise in Aunt Kate’s trunk. Aunt Kate could merge two small dresses together and create one lovely dress. We never had any misgivings about her creations because they were always smart and flattering. At the time if your legs grew too long for your coat or dress and it was deemed too short, the solution was to add a piece along the bottom. Usually this looked exactly what it was, a tack-on job! But Aunt Kate had the skill to pick up a colour already dominant in the garment and make it appear like deliberate colour coordination. In contrast, my grandmother never achieved the same effect because she believed that all that mattered was serviceability and practicality. Her dressmaking creed was: ‘Make it large enough and they will grow into it’, which did not lend itself to well-fitted elegance, whereas Aunt Kate had a sense of style. My grandmother held Kate in the highest esteem and perceived her as having totally mastered what she termed ‘the art of making do’. My grandmother’s judgement of a bad housekeeper was that she could ‘not even face a shirt’, but Aunt Kate turned frayed shirt collars back to front to give them a longer life, and the good back of a shirt was often transferred to replace the battered front.

  She also extended the life of sheets with see-through middles by cutting them up the centre and bringing the sides to the middle. This was termed ‘turning the sheets’. A turned sheet would live to serve a few more yea
rs, though the seam down the centre had to be taken into consideration when positioning your lower regions at night. Throughout the year my mother collected large flour bags that came from the mill. These were made of good cotton and when well washed and boiled were turned to many uses. They became aprons, tea towels and pillow cases and when sewn together made sheets that were slightly abrasive and could also provide a stimulating skin massage! These bags were also used as a trim along the tops of blankets to prevent fraying.

  Aunt Kate turned coats and jackets inside out, giving them a whole new look, and she perked up faded dresses with a smart new lace or crochet collar. She could crochet effortlessly, but lacemaking required more concentration as she stitched the fragile material delicately back and forth. Knitting and sewing came easily to most of the neighbouring women, but they were eager to master the art of crocheting and lacemaking with Kate. The delicate table centres and lace runners that she helped them create brought a touch of elegance to houses where frugality was, of necessity, the way of life. They stitched some of their lace and crochet pieces on to pillow cases and this gave their beds a well-dressed appearance when special visitors came to stay.

  But the most challenging undertaking was quilting, which was a communal activity. The old quilting frame was brought down from the black loft and once this was opened out it had to be left in situ until the job was done as it was a difficult task to get the whole thing in place. First to go on the frame was a well-worn blanket or good heavy twill sheet that was to be the back of the quilt, which could later, if desired, be covered with another fabric. Sheep’s wool was stitched onto this with good strong thread, using a good strong needle. Usually the No. 10 reel of thread was the man for this job. Thread at the time was not easily come by due to rationing, so No. 10 was used with great care. This was slow, exacting work, as you had to make sure that each piece of wool was firmly secured in place. When this was achieved, the wool was covered over with another sheet or a piece of fabric. Then came the skill of patchworking, when old dresses and shirts were cut into pieces and carefully colour coordinated before being sewn together. This was when the contents of Aunt Kate’s trunk came into their own. The exercise resembled the making of a colourful jigsaw and Aunt Kate, who had a creative eye for colour coordination, quietly directed the whole operation. The pieces were stitched together by hand and then sewn onto the quilt. As the pieces were cut and sewn, stories were told about the different garments and the whole session turned into a storytelling saga interwoven with tea breaks. The entire undertaking could spread over weeks. When the quilt was complete, not only did it keep the family warm in the future but it also told the story of the family’s past.