by Alice Taylor
One night when I came in home after locking up the ducks, there was a hank of beautiful wool and a pattern for a pair of socks on the kitchen table, with a note from a friend who was into knitting. I was delighted to get it and ran my fingers along the silky soft wool and studied the pattern. I am not a knitter, but the previous year when I was too distraught to read or watch television I had got the idea that I would like to knit, which came as a bit of a surprise because I had not knitted for years. So I got needles and sat by the fire in the seomra ciúin and knitted a simple scarf, and I found the soothing rhythm of knitting comforting. In recent days again I had thought of knitting and the idea of making a pair of socks had come into my mind. It was a strange coincidence that here on the table was the wool and the pattern.
That night, Lena held the hank of wool between her wrists and I wound it into a large, soft ball, something that I had not done since I was a child. So, knitting the sock began, and once again the warm fire and the knitting eased me on through raw days. A close friend who is a farmer and a few years previously had walked the grief road had told me that the first thing she did every morning after milking the cows was to light the fire. “In some way,” she told me, “the fire was a comforter, and then when the summer came I stayed working in the garden every night until it was dark.” I did as she had told me and found out that she was right.
In bereavement, you need every crutch that you can grasp. One of my crutches was the support of my kind friends and neighbours. In grief, your family is grieving too and trying to cope the best way they know how, and they are able to cope with only their own sorrow. So you need the neighbours. Some wise person once said, “It takes a village to rear a child.” The same applies at the other end of life. You grieve as part of the community to which your loved one belonged. Gabriel had been part of our parish and now it was helping me to cope. The Blasket Island people were right: “We live in the shelter of each other.”
On the day before his anniversary, I planted a beech tree on the hill at the Kinsale end of the village. By choice I was on my own because the actual digging of the hole and the easing in of the tree and the shovelling of the earth around the young roots connected me in some indefinable way with Gabriel, and made me feel better. He had planted many trees around the village, including the lovely weeping willow at the foot of the Rock, and a few weeks before he died we had planted a companion for that tree by the grotto stream. There is an age-span of about thirty years between those two trees but in the life of a tree that span is soon eroded. The day after his funeral, we had planted an oak in the grotto and on the first day of the new year another oak in the church grounds. Eileen and Paddy, who are part of our extended family, had planted an oak on their farm in Farnagow, and Gabriel’s friends, Jim and Antoinette, had selected a golden ash for the western end of the village near the Valley Rovers playing field. A golden ash is a lovely tree, and its association with the hurley made it the ideal choice. That Christmas I had given each of our children a tree to plant in memory of their father.
On the morning of the anniversary, Fr John, who had been a friend of Gabriel’s, said the mass and that made things easier, and afterwards we walked across to the grave which was glowing with flowers; there we lit an outdoor candle as we had done on Christmas night. There is something especially comforting about a glowing candle in a sea of flowers.
After breakfast, we drove out into the depths of West Cork. It was a bright clear day; the majestic Beara Peninsula was wild, and its effect on my spirits was restoring. On the road to Allihies, a Buddhist temple has been built into the rock face, and when you sit there the sea stretches out in front of you and its immensity calms your soul. Down the road an ancient ruined lakeside castle was being rebuilt into a five-star luxury hotel, and further on was a tiny wayside church where Gabriel and I had once attended mass. We now visited and afterwards leaned over a stone wall, absorbing the beauty of the valley that sloped down into the crashing waves below.
On a visit to Kenmare a few years previously, Gabriel and I had enjoyed afternoon tea in the Sheen Falls Hotel, and besides the great food and the ceremony the staff made of the event, the view over the cascading waterfall and wood was what had really made this a memorable occasion. When we reached the hotel now, it was dusk, and the glowing fire welcomed us in; as we gathered around the table overlooking the waterfall, I came to the conclusion that Gabriel had been with us on our tour around the Beara Pensinula.
The days after the anniversary were hard, raw days, and I dreaded Christmas, but then something strange happened. One night I was alone in the house and decided to put up the crib. The crib has always held a special place in my heart; ours is a collection of Aunty Peg’s old crib figures and some of my own that the children had played with over the years, so now I had headless wise men and lame shepherds.
I have a belief that the original crib that humanity rejected was welcomed by the wild world, and over the years I have collected sheep, donkeys, cows and various other little animals and colourful birds. The result has been a menagerie of wild life. That night, I drew in the old bog deal and greenery from the garden and built the stable. When the stable was built, the lights would have to go in before the straw, the holy family and the rest of the entourage. Gabriel had always done the lighting but now I was on my own and clueless, but to my amazement every connection worked and the lights came on effortlessly. As the crib was laid out in the quietness of the empty house, a deep peace filled my heart and I felt a blanket of comfort enfold me. The hard lump of grief eased and Christmas was no longer a problem.
After Christmas, Diarmuid’s thoughts turned to his forthcoming wedding and he asked me to write something suitable for their invitation card. I thought about it and decided that rather than write something new, I would share with them something that I had written for Gabriel many years previously.
Togetherness
Kept apart by busy days
We who belong together
As the interlaced fingers
Of praying hands
Come again at quiet times
At peace in our togetherness.
That poem was written after a stolen weekend. At the time, Gabriel and I were bogged down with a busy shop, a guesthouse and five children. Our bank manager was not a happy man because those were the days when they loved black bank balances, and we always seemed to be building and extending, driving up our overdraft to what he considered a dangerously high level. There were times when I thought that we would never get our heads above financial water. I was in charge of accounts, and each night as I counted the tills and checked the books I ate a giant Mars bar. It was my cigarette, my glass of brandy, my tranquiliser, my soother, and it should have turned me into a large fat lady, but because I was rushed off my feet, feeding children, checking deliveries and stocking shelves, it did not happen.
Life was so hectic that we sometimes forgot each other’s birthdays, and one year it was a week after the date when we remembered our wedding anniversary. It was a time when I thought that it would be a great luxury to be able to stay in bed when I was sick. But that had not been possible as all the balls had to be kept in the air. On one of her visits, my mother, who was calmly stirring a tapioca pudding on the Aga, said to me: “Alice, of all my children, you were the one least likely to end up with such a busy life.”
One of my less tactful sisters was more direct: “Well, there is no doubt about it,” she told me emphatically, “that until you got married you were pure useless. You dodged every job when we were all growing up together at home. You were always up in the black loft, reading books. Gabriel made a great job out of you!”
Aren’t sisters wonderful? Who else could be so brutally honest and get away with it? But whether she was right or not, we certainly had a busy schedule. There was no time or money for holidays and the only break was the All-Ireland Finals, to which we went with different children in tow.
I had cherished a hidden hope. It was that one weekend th
e two of us would steal away without chick or child and stay somewhere wonderful, pretending that we had no children, no dogs, no shop, no guests, no meetings. No one in the world only us! And the dream became a reality, because one warm, sunny Saturday in June we sat into the car and drove down to Kerry. When time is short, there is no time to waste on long travel and we had only until Sunday night. I think that God decided we deserved a break because it was a heavenly weekend. We had booked into the Parknasilla Hotel in Sneem, and, on the drive down, the heavy armour of work and responsibility slid off us as the Kerry mountains threw a warm blanket of relaxation around us. Our hotel room was up in an attic—if there is such a place in these hotels—and when we looked out of the window, we felt that we were sitting on top of the world.
We spent the day wandering around the woods that surrounded the hotel and when we reached the sea, we sat on a rock and chatted. It was great! No shop bell, no phones, no problems! That night we drove over to the Park Hotel in Kenmare and because everything was meant to go right, it did. We got a window table overlooking the river and, as we ate the moon came up across the water, which reflected the blues and purples of the surrounding mountains. It was a magical night and I remember thinking that it was great to be so happy.
The following morning, we had breakfast in bed. A pair of waiters arrived, bearing two silver trays laden with cooked breakfasts surrounded by exotic fruits and juices and sending out the whiff of fresh toast. This was breakfast in bed in style—this was luxury! Afterwards we walked along by the sea, and all that day we meandered around Kerry. We even bought an oil painting from a roadside artist. The bank manager was going to be yelling, but tomorrow was another day. That night, after we had come home, I wrote “Togetherness”.
Now it was time to pass it on to the next generation.
CHAPTER 20
The Oldest Swinger in Town
“Wouldn’t it be lovely to have a dog again?” Lena suggested. “I loved Lady and Bran.”
“They were great,” I agreed.
“Your favourite was Captain,” she said.
“He was indeed,” I agreed. “I loved Captain.”
An elegant black Doberman with the brains of Einstein and the bodywork of Naomi Campbell, Captain was so smart he could almost figure out what you were thinking. But he had one big weakness: he loved Flakes, those crumbly chocolate bars in yellow wrappers. He would sit in wait behind the back door of our shop, and when one of the staff unwittingly left it ajar he would nose in quietly. Then, fast as black lightning, he would sneak straight up to the chocolate stand, very delicately picking up a Flake and vanishing out the back door in a flash. Then he would go up into the garden where he would hide behind a shrub and open the wrapper so expertly that he did not even tear the paper. There he would chew away happily, and later the wrapper would tell its story.
One day on going into the shop, I met a startled customer, looking down the shopping aisle with a confused expression on her face.
“I’m not sure if this actually happened or did I have a hallucination,” she told me in amazement. “Could a big black Doberman have darted in here and whipped a bar of chocolate?”
I assured her that she was not hallucinating. If it happened today, I might probably tell her that she was, because “health and safety” would close us down if they heard of such an occurrence.
Captain was king of the backyard; all the delivery men treated him with great respect and kept him at a safe distance. But Captain considered himself a superior animal and would not contaminate his jaws by biting a mere mortal. He was a gentleman and we all loved him. But one day he got very sick and Gearóid took him to the vet who thought that he had parvovirus and referred him to a vet in West Cork who was an expert on the disease. Despite all efforts, Captain died. He was buried in the grove with all the other dogs and cats who down through the years had passed through the house.
Hughie, who collected waste from the shop for his harriers, told me one day: “My collie bitch is in pup and when the pups are hardy, I’ll bring you down two.” On a cold January evening, the pups arrived, two absolutely adorable balls of black and white fur. We christened them Lady and Bran.
Lena was two at the time and an instant love affair burst into full bloom. They grew up with her, and wherever she went, they went—sometimes upstairs, where she hid them under her bed. Lady was a light-boned little bitch with a small, pointed, intelligent face, while Bran was a much bigger and stronger male but not as clever. They were inseparable and worked as a team, Lady constantly on red alert and Bran the solid back-up. When they became sexually active, steps had to be taken and, on the advice of Jim the vet, we took them to the veterinary clinic to have them neutered. After an examination, the vet on duty said to me, “Now, when these two are done, she will be the same dog but he will put on weight and become far less active, so maybe we might let him.”
As I drove home with Bran relaxing on the back seat and my poor Lady behind in the clinic, waiting for her operation, I looked back at Bran and told him, “It’s a man’s world.”
Later there were times when I regretted not having had Bran neutered because trying to keep him under restraint when a bewitching bitch was sending out signals of compliance was often a tug of war between two bitches. Philip, who lived in Bóthar na Sop and was the owner of a gorgeous Labrador that was any dog’s fancy, would ring up and patiently inform me: “Bran is here again.” Then I had to run over and drag the ardent lover, jumping with hormones, reluctantly home. Eventually we erected a wire fence along the penetrable part of the garden boundary, and that curtailed his ardour.
Within the fence, however, another problem raised its muddy head. Lady was a rooter, and any plant that went into the ground by day, she decided to uproot that night. As well as that, she slept in a different tub of flowers each night. She was a very clever dog and I could never understand why I could not get it into her brain cells that this was unacceptable behaviour. My father had an old saying: “O man of learning, thou art wrong, for instinct is more than wisdom strong.” It certainly applied in Lady’s case. When I decided to bark mulch all the flower beds, my gardening neighbour advised covering the earth beneath it with layers of old newspapers to improve its effectiveness. It sounded like a good idea but I discovered that we had two dogs who loved their morning papers. Before breakfast each day, the lawn was covered with discarded shredded newspapers. Gardening with Lady and Bran was a constant battle of wits—which they usually won.
They had one big terror in life, which they never overcame: thunder and lightning scared them senseless. When a thunderstorm came, they went berserk and sometimes ended up in the press under the stairs, and once when we were out during a thunderstorm, Lady took up residence inside the counter of the pub next door. In the end, a thunderstorm was Bran’s undoing because one summer’s night they were out in the garden when a sudden storm broke; Bran disappeared and we never again saw him. In his terror, he must have cleared the wall, and, despite intensive searches around the parish and ads in the local paper and on radio, we never found him. In his flight he could have run under a car or truck because it was as if he had disappeared into thin air. For months afterwards whenever I saw a dog with his colouring I had a second look in case it was Bran. But we never again saw or heard of him.
Lady pined after him and never again went into the doghouse they had shared. When she died later, she too was buried in the grove at the top of the garden. I wrapped her in one of Lena’s long-abandoned baby blankets and put a little headstone over her; that evening, when Lena came home from school, I had to tell her, and we both cried. But then Lena announced, “I never saw you crying since Nana died.”
“Well, Nana wouldn’t think much of that,” I assured her, and we both laughed through our tears.
Lady and Bran had been with us for about fifteen years. Lady was my last burial in the grove and I sometimes smile to imagine that if on the last day a resurrection of animals takes place, there will be a big uprising a
t the top of our garden and a large army of dogs and cats will march out of the grove. Then we will find out what happened to Bran, because surely he will be reunited with his best friend Lady, and Lena will finally know the answer to her dilemma—“Did Bran go to heaven?”—because after he disappeared, when any friend or neighbour died, her first question was, “I wonder did they meet Bran?”
For many years after Lady and Bran, we remained without a dog. Lena and the boys had left home and I had turned into a gardener; the thought of a dog rampaging through Gabriel’s green lawns and uprooting my plants, not to mention flattening my flower tubs, was more than I could entertain. On her regular holidays home, Lena sometimes said plaintively, “I miss the dogs”, and one son would occasionally comment: “’Tis hard to get used to this place without a dog.”
When Lena returned home, the talk of a dog resurfaced and I began to think that it might not be such a bad idea. It would have to be a smart dog, I thought, and the concept of a collie or a Doberman began to blossom in my head. We had loved Captain and the thought of another Captain appealed to me, but Lady and Bran had been great as well, so I dithered around with no final decision on the breed. We visited dogs’ homes in Clonakilty and Cork, but a dogs’ home is the wrong place for a ditherer, and I came home more confused than ever and decided to forget about the whole idea. Then the thought would resurface and I would look up the dog pages in the Evening Echo; I even made a few phone calls about Doberman pups but never quite got around to deciding anything.