All the Spangled Host

by John A. Ryan

  John finished in the college in 1901. I remember that date well because it was the year Frances died. She was only seventeen, a pale quiet girl who seldom came out to join in our games, but helped Aunt Kate in the house. She didn’t talk much, ever, but at times she would surprise you with a sudden shy smile that lighted up her face and that vanished again as quickly as it came. I can’t explain how I felt when she died, why I didn’t grieve more. Maybe boys of that age – I was twelve – are too wrapped up in their own concerns, a kind of indifference to others, a selfishness, or are they not sensitive enough, or is it that they have no experience of grief, or don’t know how to express it or deal with it? I was more confused than sad. Our house was full of weeping. One day I came on Mamie and Jo with their arms around each other, crying, not saying anything, just crying. What I remember most is how small and still and white she looked in the big bed where she was waked. Someone had brought white roses, I remember that. And the candles, and the way their flames jumped when someone knelt down to say a prayer at her bed. Now I watched the grave still face on the pillow, the face that was, and was not, my sister; I knew that that face would never again light up with her little fugitive smile. ‘Where is she gone?’ I whispered to Kitty. ‘Where is she now?’ ‘She’s gone to heaven,’ Kitty assured me and I knew she was right, and the funny thought came that it’s much worse for the ones who are left than for the one who has died, who feels no pain, no worry or anxiety or regret or sadness. It was my first encounter with the great mystery. There was a queer empty feeling about the house after she was gone, and a silence. I think Rich liked Frances best of all: he wouldn’t go to her funeral, but sulked and gloomed for a long time afterwards, and then he took to going to the grave and sitting there for ages, just thinking or saying his prayers or maybe telling her he was sorry for not being at her funeral.

  When the County Councils were set up, sometime in the nineties, Daddy got a position as a land-valuer, which meant he would be called for advice now and again and might have to travel to different parts of the county. This work brought in a bit of extra money, but there was never any to spare; although our farm was fairly big, it was not good land, and there was such a big number of us depending on it. So in 1903, one of my oldest brothers, Pat, was sent to New York, where Uncle Tom, who lived there, would help him to get a job. It was a very exciting time with all the preparations for his journey. When he was gone, however, the house was very quiet, and Mam hardly said a word and the girls were quiet too, but it took a while for me to understand that Pat was gone and we would never see him again, it was like as if he had died. I was sorry then for being cross with him about the penknife, because you see, he got a new penknife from Uncle Johnny before he left, and he gave his old one to Ned, and I had expected to get it, but now I was sorry for being cross and it was too late to tell him.

  The corn was always brought to Cullen’s mill to be ground. I often went there and I knew it well. Especially I remember the last time Rich and I went. He and I set off, down the hill, along the New Road to the old Enniscorthy road and so down the leafy lane till we reached the mill, shady under the trees. Rich, as he always did, sat up very straight and held the reins high as I suppose he had held them when he drove the Bannerman horses. When the meal was ready and loaded, Rich handed me the reins. I was delighted. I was well able to manage our horses – I was sixteen then – but Rich had never before allowed me to drive if he was with me. So I held the reins high, like him, and said, ‘Ho, hup there, Dick,’ in imitation. (Dick was very old by then, but still as sound and reliable as ever).

  I hoped Rich would praise my driving, but he didn’t; in fact I remember now that he was very quiet on the way home, though I didn’t notice at the time. When we got home, we lifted out the sacks together and I helped him to unyoke the horse. But as he and I lifted the heavy collar up onto the wooden peg on the stable wall, he stumbled, fell against the wall and to my consternation slid slowly down till he lay in a funny shape on the straw and cobbles.

  I ran to the house and Mam came back with me. ‘Get Jim and Phil. They’re in the haybarn.’ When the three of us got back, Mam and Aunt Kate had put Rich sitting against the stable wall and he had come to. He insisted he was better and asked to be carried up to his bed over the stable. Aunt Kate prepared hot milk and goody and I was told to look out for him and make sure he was alright and to get him anything he wanted. He didn’t complain, but he seemed very weak and all the fight had gone out of him. The priest came to see him, and afterwards he conferred with Mam and Daddy and I heard some of what he said: ‘He’s very weak and resigned … it’s as if he knew … he’s all prepared to go anyway … maybe the doctor … but I don’t know … said I was to thank you for … he was very anxious that I’d tell you that.’ I didn’t like hearing them talk like that, I didn’t want to believe he was very sick.

  In ones and twos we went to see him. He smiled and shook hands with everyone, and thanked us over and over, and in an old-fashioned way he kissed Mam’s and Aunt Kate’s hands. I couldn’t believe but that he would be well in a day or two. No matter what I was doing, I remembered to go to see if he needed anything; I’d go to the middle rung of the stairs and from there I could see his bed, and if he was asleep I didn’t disturb him. Aunt Kate made hot drinks for him, and food that she thought he might like, but he ate very little. When I did speak to him, he took my hand, and spoke about ‘all the adventures’. His voice was weak and he stopped often as if to get his breath.

  Late on the day after the priest’s visit, I went to check on him as usual. I went half-way up the stairs and looked across at his bed. He seemed to be sleeping, but as I watched he suddenly sat up very straight, held up his two hands in that way he had of holding the reins and said in a loud clear voice, ‘Ho, hup there! Pick ’em up, boy! Hup, you beauty!’ and shook the reins and flicked his long whip, and then fell back on his pillow, and I knew he was dead. Don’t ask me how, but I knew. And even stranger than that, I wasn’t afraid, though I had never before seen anyone die. I wasn’t afraid because he looked so happy, as if his last journey had brought him to a place of shining peace.

  It was in September that same year that Daddy got a bad wetting on his way home from Enniscorthy. The rain was light at first and he thought it would soon stop, but it got heavier and turned into a downpour, very cold. He could have waited at some friendly house, but by that time he was already wet, and he decided, unwisely, that he should press on for home. A wetting when you are working, or even when you are walking, is unpleasant, but at least you can keep warm. Travelling by trap is another matter; the pony is wet, but warm, the driver gets colder as he gets wetter. He caught a bad cold. He tried to ignore it, but it didn’t ignore him; by the week-end he had to give in. He hated being confined to the house, and worried about the weather and the crops that had still to be saved. Mam tried to calm and reassure him. ‘You can tell the boys what they are to do, and you know you can depend on them,’ she said, knowing as well as he knew that all his farming knowledge had been passed on to them and that they could be depended on without question. But he roamed from room to room, unable to be easy anywhere, became feverish, got in the way of the kitchen-work, but would not go to bed. But he had to give in eventually, and I think he must have known that he was much worse and that it was not simply a cold. The following day Mam sent for the doctor. I remember that when the doctor was leaving I was given the job of opening the lawn-gate for him and closing it after him. He stopped to say, ‘Thank you, son,’ and then stopped again a few yards on and called me. ‘Do whatever your mother wants you to do. Be good to her and help her any way you can.’ I didn’t understand why he said that; after all it was Daddy who was sick, not Mam. Now I know it was because he knew what no one in our house knew, and because he was a kind man. Some time during that day I first heard the terrifying word Pneumonia.

  He was cared for every minute of the day and night; if love and care could have saved him he would not ha
ve died, but we learned that love and care are not enough. He died on the 25th of September 1905, and was buried beside his son John, his little infant daughter, and our Frances.

  Everything changed then for all of us in that sad house, but it was the most sad thing that ever happened to Mam, and wouldn’t you think she would have got used to people dying and to losing members of her family? This was different; I suppose it was as if the whole world had slipped away from under her feet. Not long after the funeral I went into the dairy one day to get something or other and she was standing quite still by the window leaning on the table where she made the butter. She turned slowly and looked at me as if she didn’t see me. I could see she had been crying and that wasn’t like Mam at all – so sure, so competent, able for every situation. I thought she might be cross with me, but instead she held out her hands just as though she was asking me, without a word, to … I don’t know what … and pulled me to her and held me. I felt her sobbing and I was embarrassed and sad, and I was too young to understand or to help.

  It was in those dark days that I began to see that the life of our household had not revolved around my mother only, as I had supposed, but that it had been a happy partnership. She had married at the age of nineteen, and during the succeeding forty years had never been alone, cheered and re-assured by companionship and a sharing of responsibility. It was frighteningly clear to her that now she would have to stumble on as best she could, alone. She saw ahead only a bleak loneliness, never again the familiar face, never the familiar voice; there would be only the drudgery of days, the empty place, the weight of the many who depended on her, the long winter nights. She knew this and I think it broke her heart. That’s a phrase we use without meaning it literally or expecting it to be understood so, and yet if by “heart” we mean “courage”, it is true that my father’s death broke her heart. She was never the same brave soul again; she lost her gallant spirit that accepted all, even the inevitability of pain, grief and loss; she had encountered all of these and had faced them down. All except that final blow. She lost then her joy in life, her certainty of good.

  Was some of that joy lost to all of us when he died?

  I find it very strange in thinking back, that of the two who died in that unforgotten year, when, I believe, I stopped being a child and had to start growing up, it was Rich that I missed at first more keenly. But as the years go by, it is the memory of that other one, that quiet man who had no words to explain himself, who was unfailingly kind to every member of his family gathered about him in his little kingdom, as indeed to everyone he ever met, it is the influence and example of that gentle man that have become part of my thinking and of my life.

  Notes and Acknowledgments

  ‘And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright’ is from ‘On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity’ by John Milton.

  The stories are presented more or less in order of being written, the earliest in the 1960s and in every decade since, the latest in 2014.

  ‘The Heel of the Hunt’ was published in New Irish Writing, The Irish Press, 3 August 1974 and in Best Irish Short Stories edited by David Marcus, Elek Books Ltd, London, 1976. It won the author a Hennessy Literary Award in 1975. ‘Chapel Street’ was published in New Irish Writing, The Irish Press, autumn 1977. ‘The Long Consequences’ was published in New Irish Writing, The Irish Press, c. 1982. ‘Men of the World’ and ‘A Wild Goose’ were published in New Irish Writing, The Irish Press, 6 February 1982. ‘Dawn on the Boyne’ started life in Irish as ‘Brú na Bóinne’.

  ‘Growing Up’ is a longer version of the story ‘Rich’ and was written as a family memoir, not with publication in mind. It is set on the family farm in Ballygoman, outside Wexford town, between 1895 and 1905. The subject is the author’s father, who was aged six to sixteen at this time.

  The drawing at the end of ‘Siar Amach’ is by the author.

  Copyright

  Published in 2015 by

  THE LILLIPUT PRESS

  62–63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill

  Dublin 7, Ireland

  www.lilliputpress.ie

  Copyright © John A. Ryan, 2015

  ISBN 978 1 84351 661 3

  EPUB ISBN 978 1 84351 686 6

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced in any form or by any means

  without the prior permission of the publisher.

  A CIP record for this title is available

  from The British Library.