Looking Under Stones

by Joe O'Toole

  The school principal, Brother Lennon, introduced us to the Patrician Society and we met two nights a month. It was quite unique. The model was one of structured discussion, incorporating debate and argumentation. The themes were religious and we had to take sides on the issue of the evening. The five proofs of the existence of God kept us going for a month and I remember that the logic appealed to me enormously.

  ‘Look at this watch. Imagine the complexities of making it. Could you ever believe that something so complicated just happened to fall into place together? That nobody made it? That all the bits and pieces fell into place by accident?’

  ‘Of course not. It couldn’t happen.’

  ‘Remember then that the universe is many times more complex than a watch. There is no logic to thinking it just came into being by accident. There had to be a God to create it.’

  ‘That’s all very logical, but mustn’t we also ask the question: who started God? Who made God?’

  On it went. It’s mere speculation as to whether or not it deepened the religious fervour of those of us who participated. I think not, but it certainly did sharpen our approach to argumentation and articulation.

  I carried my taste for argument into the classroom. More than once I got carried away and got into trouble with teachers who, quite naturally, were tired of me and wanted to get on with the curriculum. Unfortunately, I didn’t bring the same enthusiasm to homework and study, which I found a real drag. I enjoyed all subjects, although I did have extraordinary difficulty in coming to terms with geometry – not the theorems, but the applied questions that related to the theorems. As I would be sitting my Intermediate Certificate examinations the following year, Myko and Teresa felt that a few grinds now might be a good idea, to get me up to speed. Teresa employed the services of Miss Healy, a teacher in Coláiste Íde, who lived in the Spa Road. I was most unenthusiastic, but under pressure I agreed to go for a few grinds. I sneaked over to Miss Healy’s, hoping that Pat Neligan would not see me. Grinds were an admission of failure, and very bad for the image. Thankfully, none of my classmates found out.

  Miss Healy was a highly organised, no-nonsense, delightful woman. I liked her immediately. She took me for about six geometry lessons. By the end of lesson one, she had drawn me completely into it. I could see where I was going now, and by the end of lesson two she had cracked it for me. I found myself looking forward to our third session. By the end of my time with her she had me convinced that geometry was the most interesting subject on the syllabus, a view I held for the rest of my schooldays. It would be no exaggeration to state that in two hours Miss Healy impacted on my whole life. It is a truth about all great teachers that their influence on their pupils continues long after they have parted.

  The monastery was a dominant building in the town. Made of red sandstone, it was surrounded by immaculately kept grounds. From the entrance gate on the Mall, the path stepped upwards along cascading lawns to the school. Madge Donoghue, the housekeeper, was a great favourite with both pupils and townspeople. She was a customer of ours and I regularly delivered groceries to her. There was an old-fashioned bell pull at the door, but it had not been in working order for years. One day I managed to repair it by connecting a length of wire from the bell to the pull. It was basic stuff, but Madge was forever grateful.

  At the rear of the monastery was a tiny but beautiful churchyard, the final resting place of Brothers over many generations. It was a quiet spot, shaded by a number of yew trees, and the graves of the deceased were marked by rows of neat black crosses, with the names printed in white lettering. My grandmother, Bridgy Fitz, maintained proudly that she had two granduncles buried there and that they had worked with Edmund Ignatius Rice, the founder of the Christian Brothers. As far as I can recall, one was a Fitzgerald and the other a Donoghue.

  One summer, Brother Lennon was trying to give a bit of holiday work to a few of the pupils and he asked Tommy to tidy up the little graveyard and to paint the crosses and names. Tommy was diligent and enthusiastic. The names were cut into the wood so it was a simple matter of painting the whole cross black and then carefully overpainting the indented lettering in white. For greater accuracy and to ensure that the white did not run into the black, Tommy decided to take up the crosses and do the job in the workshop.

  ‘An-mhaith, Tomás,’ said Brother Lennon when he saw what he was doing. ‘Nicely done. I suppose you kept a diagram of where each cross goes in the graveyard?’

  Well, no, actually. Tommy hadn’t thought of that.

  To give him his due, Lennon did not make a big issue of it. He claimed he knew the proper location for each cross, and I’m sure he must have known a few.

  Of course, we will never be certain of the truth of it, but is it any great harm if the prayer for the repose of the soul of Brother Donoghue is said over the grave of Brother Fitzgerald?

  Brother Lennon had his own way of doing things. There was a time when two of the younger teachers found it difficult to get to school on time after late nights. They might be only five minutes late, but it happened fairly regularly and Lennon was sick of it. Rather than address the issue directly with the teachers involved, he subjected the student body and the rest of the teaching staff to long lectures on the importance of punctuality. He hoped that the offending teachers would get the message; they did not. Lennon raised the heat by threatening to lock out any student who was not inside the door punctually for the morning start. The teachers still missed the point.

  One morning, he locked all the doors on the dot of nine thirty. Two minutes later our two heroes arrived. Finding the door locked, they used their wits and came in the primary school door, then climbed over the bannisters into the secondary area. They were at the top of the stairs almost as soon as Lennon. No words were exchanged, but they were never late again.

  So far, I had spent my whole school life with Pat Neligan and Thomas Lyne and Ronan Bourke, but after I did the Inter. Cert. things changed. Teresa and Myko had been talking to a few people about the importance of being mature at third level, and at the rate I was going I would still be a few months short of my seventeenth birthday when I was sitting my Leaving Cert. Teresa pointed out that Pat was a good nine months older than me. Would I mind staying back a year? I wasn’t too fussed; I had not found the year too difficult and the idea of a doss year appealed to me. When the exam results came out, Pat and myself had done quite well and he didn’t want me to stay back, but the arrangements had been made. So after the Inter. Cert., Pat and the others went on and I ended up with a whole new group of friends again.

  FAIR DAY IN DINGLE

  The biggest day of the month in Dingle was Fair Day, held on the last Saturday of every month. The town was a maelstrom, animals everywhere – dogs barking, cattle milling, sheep flocking, pigs squealing. And far and away the busiest were the July and August fairs, which were the two big sheep fairs of the year.

  For me, the fair began on the previous evening, when Uncle Benny and myself would bring in the sheep. We would head up to the Grove, taking the short cut between the Temperance Hall and Dineens’, through Moriartys’ farm, then past the Holy Garden to the top of Cruach a’ Chairn.

  ‘Lord have mercy on the dead,’ Uncle Benny would say as we reached the Paupers’ Graveyard, and he would remind me of all the poor souls buried there from Famine times, and how, during the Second World War, the German airmen whose plane crashed into Mount Brandon were also buried there. Further up Cruach a’ Chairn, as we walked along the New Line – an unfinished road built during the Famine times as a public works project – the whole town and harbour came into view.

  All the sheep had particular marks to identify ownership; Uncle Benny’s were the ones with the green-painted horns. One of his dogs, Toby or Sailor, would be despatched to round up the sheep. Then we would herd them down the hill, to be lodged safely overnight in the Holy Garden, an area that was reputed to have been the location for secret Masses during Penal times, when the celebration of Mass was illegal
.

  ‘Go to bed early, and be here at seven o’clock sharp in the morning,’ Uncle Benny would instruct.

  Shortly after seven on the following morning we’d be on our way down Chapel Lane and into Goat Street. ‘We should get a good stand inside the gate at this hour.’

  The fair was held in ‘the brewery’, a field on the Spa Road near the creamery, on the edge of the town. ‘Tom the Boy’ and ‘Minnie the Brewery’ lived in a little house in the middle of the field, and Tom directed affairs at the gate on the day of the fair. At the really big fairs in July and August the flocks spilled right back along the Spa Road, halfway up Main Street and John Street and down the Mall. Each flock would be guarded by a farmer, with his young son and an alert sheepdog. Every square yard of footpath would be utilised. The man, boy and dog would have been on the road from ‘sparafairt’, before the first crack of dawn, sent off with a blessing from the woman of the house and a bottle of cold tea with a crust of buttered bread. After the long spring of lambing came the early summer shearing. They would shortly get the wool money, buíochas le Dia. All week there was only one topic of conversation – the price lamb was making. Discouraging rumours of low prices circulated from fairs in Annascaul and Castlemaine. ‘H’anam an diabhal, but those jobbers are robbers.’ Still, they remained optimistic, and the previous night the household would have shared hopes of selling at a good price. It was important to get to Dingle early, as prime selling positions would be staked out well before dawn. There were no fixed divisions in the open fair field. Each little flock of animals was carefully herded by the owner who was constantly keeping them in order, settling them down and separating them out from those of the next farmer. As we waited for the buyers to appear, neighbours talked with neighbours, everyone feeling the tension.

  The jobbers, as the buyers were always known, strode imperiously through the fair in their cavalry twill trousers, tan boots and soft tweed hats. These weren’t locals, but dealers from up the country. Mainly they were loud, rude and boorish, conscious of the power they wielded. The small farmers would be apprehensive and perhaps even fearful. There was an awful lot hanging on doing a good deal at the fair: their winter livelihoods, the cost of Christmas, and much else. They were never greedy or grasping. A fair return for their labour and product was all they sought. But fairness did not enter into it, this was the free market, naked. If they had to face back the long road home with their animals unsold, it meant a hard winter, or maybe having to sell even cheaper next month. The buyer would poke contemptuously at the animals, muttering unflattering comments.

  ‘What are you asking for them?’

  ‘One pound, two and six each for the ewes is my price, sir.’

  Whatever price was named, his inevitable follow-up was: ‘You’ll be lucky to get the half of it,’ as he walked off. It was a game calculated to soften and break the seller. First the query that showed interest and raised hopes, then the response that dashed them again. But the ritual had started. The seller had been here before, too; he knew there was interest and that the buyer would return. He did. An offer was made and rejected. The various stages were played out: outrage at the offer, astonishment at the response, establishing the gap, narrowing it and the penultimate scene of stand-off. The jobber would leave again in high dudgeon and loudly carry on business with another farmer, complaining about the unreasonableness of all around him. Then came the intervention of a third party, a deal-maker, usually a friend of the farmer’s. ‘What’s between ye? Ye’re not going to fall out for the sake of a ten-shilling note!’

  Shortly after the buyer had raised his offer by five shillings a head, the mediator would intervene again, cajoling. ‘Would you not do the decent thing, split the difference and offer him seven and six?’

  ‘H’anam an diabhal, take the seven and six, Míchéal. Sure you don’t want to take them home again for the sake of half a crown.’

  On it went. The jobber, under no pressure to buy, held all the trump cards and played the farmer like a fish on a hook. It was always a buyers’ market. It was always an unequal match. The overbearing buyer, loud, well-fed and paunchy, and the needy seller, hungry and spare.

  Now the offer was tempting: too low to accept and too high to refuse. It would pay the bills and the young lad’s Confirmation. If it could just be edged up another bit …

  No deal was complete without the ‘luck penny’, a token amount per beast, which the seller gave back to the buyer for luck. There was an unspoken rule governing the importance and sensitivity of negotiating the ‘luck penny’ without actually asking for it. It was all done by nods and hints. Then came the final scene, the big gesture. The buyer would spit in his hand, hold it up at the ready, and offer a final shilling of movement. ‘Put out your hand. ’Tis my last offer.’

  Slowly, reluctantly almost, the farmer stretches out his hand, palm upwards. The jobber claps his bespittled hand hard down on the farmer’s. A done deal and honour satisfied. Nothing written, nothing signed. Their word was their bond. Those were different times.

  In the early 1950s farmers were lucky to get a pound note for a sheep. It was poor reward for hardship.

  As well as the buying and selling, which was the main business of the fair, there were numerous hangers-on and diversions: hucksters, stall-holders, spongers and the inevitable fights that broke out when drink was taken and old scores were resurrected. I’d be looking for any excuse to leave Uncle Benny and wander around the stalls that displayed wares from all over the world. There were sets of cheap Japanese screwdrivers that fit snugly into each other, bicycle pumps, hammers and an ingenious, multi-size German spanner, which, it was claimed, would fit every nut on a bicycle. The clothes stall was festooned with woollen drawers, trousers and rolls of material. And, inevitably, there was the loud guy shouting and roaring at people to buy ‘the best delph at give away prices’. I was always wary of getting too close to him.

  In those days Dingle was not equipped to meet the needs of tourism or travellers. There were no restaurants or cafés, not even a sandwich for sale. There was, of course, Benners’ Hotel, but that was strictly the preserve of commercial travellers, visiting dignatries and wealthy foreign tourists, and definitely off-limits to ordinary folk. Country people in town for the day’s shopping had to rely on the welcome of relatives or the hospitality of shopkeepers to get a mug of tea or a bite to eat. But there was one exception: Fair Day. On that one day in the month, McKenna’s in the Dykegate Lane sold tea and sandwiches, and Griffin’s Pie Shop on Main Street opened for the sale of Dingle pies. A Dingle pie had the look of a steak-and-kidney pie about it except that it was filled with mutton, and served in a large soup dish swimming in mutton broth. The hot, steaming plates of Dingle pies were a huge attraction on Fair Day. As they say, there was ‘’atin’ and drinkin’’ in them. No wonder there was a queue of customers out the door and down the street by the time the shop opened in the late morning of a fair day.

  On the afternoon of Fair Day, my grandmother was at her busiest and I was under instructions to be available to her as soon as I had finished with Uncle Benny – to run messages to the tailor’s, to help customers with their shopping, or to search the pubs for their errant husbands. Like my mother, Bridgy Fitz went by her maiden name; their married titles were only ever used by polite strangers or ‘blowins’. Bridgy Fitz’s tiny shop would be teeming with customers. Suits of clothes ordered, wellington boots sold, caps and hats being fitted, Confirmation and First Communion outfits being readied. It was non-stop. Men were involved only when it was an item of attire that required them to be present and even then they were reluctant and reticent participants. Rolls of cloth were laid out on the counter – navy, brown, dark grey with a bit of a line running through it, but nothing flashy. The women felt, squeezed and studied.

  ‘Stand there, Jim, and let me hold this against you.’ A roll of suiting material would be draped from his shoulder. ‘What do you think of it, Bridgy?’ Other customers would join in, uninvited, and o
ffer their tuppence worth.

  ‘The grey suits him, doesn’t it, Mary?’

  ‘I’d like to see that brown one on him.’

  The whole process would start over again, with the entire shop now focused on choosing the cloth. Everyone is canvassed except the poor man himself. At this stage he would settle for a shroud just to get away. No chance. At least he’s in off the street, where the pals can’t see him being made a fool of.

  ‘Step outside the door there, Jim, and we’ll have a look at it in the light.’

  Mortification multiplied. The decision finally made, he bolts for the pub next door with no clue in the world as to which suit length he finally agreed upon.

  When the husband was out of the way I would be privy to the exchanges between Grandma and the wife. For all that she was criticised for being bossy and imperious, Bridgy Fitz was generous and charitable to a fault. She was always genuinely interested and concerned, and regarded her customers in that small but thriving shop as an extension of her family. She passed on to them the same sort of advice that she would hand out to us.

  ‘How is Maura getting on in Springfield? Did she call to my brother John? What kind of work is she doing? A lot of the Kerry crowd are going to night schools over there. Would she think of it at all, sure she was very bright.’

  And Bridgy provided other services, too. The small farmers who had concluded the sale of their animals were now burdened with the responsibility of carrying in their pockets the most money they would handle for the entire year. These hardy but gently dignified men would edge into my grandmother’s and stand there until she asked: ‘Did you sell? Did you get a good price?’

  Having established the situation, she would enquire, ‘Are you carrying all that money around in your pockets, and I suppose you’ll go drinking now?’

  A sheepish nod.

  ‘Here, give me the money until Máirín comes in on Tuesday.’