That afternoon the rain came down in sheets and turned the strand into a grey mist zone, and because I felt the need to be cosseted and by myself, I decided on a hot seaweed bath. The seaweed was collected from the Black Rocks when the tide was out and a bucketful thrown into the bath under a boiling hot water tap which burst the bubbles and drew the oil from the seaweed. The baths were attached to Mary Collins’s tea rooms on the strand. She told me that in her younger days she boiled the seaweed in a black pot over the fire, and she smiled to recall one old man from the Kerry hills who would put his head in the door and shout, “Mary, have you any trough empty?”
All was changed now, however, with endless hot water on tap and French and German accents blending with the soft Kerry brogue.
Stepping into the warm oily bath was a soft poultice to the mind and body; the floating seaweed touched my skin like the caressing fingertips of a black lover. Suffused in the moist, steamy little world, I listened to the rain beat on the galvanised tin roof and to the sound of the waves as they crashed on to the beach outside. It was almost like a return to the womb. The cubicles on either side of me were unoccupied, so there was no sound but the rain and the sea, and I drifted off to sleep. I awoke to the noisy clatter of two Dublin women coming into the cubicles on either side of me. They were obviously good friends and carried on a conversation over my head as the dividers in the cubicles were not ceiling-high. Both husbands, who were out playing golf in the rain, were discussed in detail, so much so that before the bath water had cooled, I felt that I had got to know Tony and Aidan very well.
The conversation then turned to the musical society they belonged to, and almost as if an unseen choir master had raised his baton, they both burst into song and rendered the drinking song from La Traviata in high, clear voices. I wished that I had a glass of chilled white wine to drink a toast to these two flamboyant, light-hearted ladies, but instead I turned on the hot tap and leaned back to enjoy this unexpected concert. Their repertoire was entertaining and varied, but when they broke into “Goodbye” from the White Horse Inn, I took it as the finale and stepped out of the cooling seaweed bath.
After dinner that night, the rain having cleared, I set out to walk along the cliff-top to the Nine Daughters Hole and the Virgin Rock. High above the incoming tide was a seat, so I sat there to watch the sea. I have always had a love-hate relationship with the sea, feeling sometimes that it has hypnotic powers that could draw one down into it. Silently one of my teenage sons slipped on to the seat beside me. Unusually for him he sat wordlessly gazing out to sea. After a while he said quietly, “Nanna is slowing down, isn’t she?”
Surprised, I looked into his young, troubled face and said lightly, “Do you think that she should be riding a bike around the strand?”
We both laughed and his face cleared. He was more sensitive to the shadows of old age than I had thought. We continued our walk, he threatening to throw me into the Nine Daughters Hole, which I ran past quickly as I heard the waves thundering in and out below.
Then we came to the little inlet known as the Nuns’ Strand, its entrance guarded by the gigantic Virgin Rock. A convent perched on this cliff-top gave the sheltered beach its name. Here the nuns bathed in the days when they did not share our world, before Vatican II opened the door between us. The Virgin Rock guarded their beach and I wondered had its name anything to do with the proximity of the convent. We sat with our backs to the wall and watched the sea roll in to the beach below us. The Virgin Rock, shaped like the lower half of a human body, had its hips and vaginal regions washed by the swirling waves. As we watched, the light faded and the sea changed colours and then the Clare lighthouse flashed across the water through the gathering darkness. The first day of our holidays was drawing to a close, and I felt myself relaxing back into Ballybunion like a hand into a well-worn glove.
THE NUN’S STRAND
The smooth sea swirls silently,
Lapping with a deep, quiet calm
Against the dark-faced headland,
Which opens a deep mouth,
And the soft white waves
Roll with a soothing monotony
Along its sandy tongue
Over the giant jaw-bone,
Leaving traces of yellow spittle
Around its black grinders.
AUNTY MARY’S HANDBAG
SHE CONSTANTLY ASSURED me that my children were badly reared and my husband badly trained. Husbands, to Aunty Mary, were in the same league as colts and puppies: they needed to be broken in and house-trained. She considered herself to be an authority on husband management and child rearing, and because she had neither husband or children there was no way that I could prove to her that her theories did not work in practice. She tried to convince me that the only reason her ideas did not work for me was because I did not see them through with sufficient determination. She had never been made pliable by the moulding demands of husband and children and was free to devote her entire life to acting as a marriage advisory counsellor to the extended family. In every pool of relatives there is one who creates ripples, and Aunty Mary was the one who kept our pool alive.
She visited us regularly and told us everything we did not want to hear. To bring a visit to a grand finale, she often left in a storm of protest after a blazing row with Aunty Peg. These two sisters were both strong-minded women and sometimes when they came together “the fur flew”, as Aunty Mary herself described it, but she was always the one to give the first tug. By nature controversial, she enjoyed swimming against the tide. She firmly believed that it was a woman’s privilege to change her mind constantly, and as she practised what she preached, Aunty Mary’s tide was for ever flowing in different directions.
In the early days of my marriage, when Aunty Peg considered me to be far short of perfect, Aunty Mary championed my cause and declared me to be a wonderful addition to the family circle. Over the years, however, as Aunty Peg and I became good friends, Aunty Mary changed her mind and decided that maybe I was after all a bit of a disaster. She was totally unpredictable and so one could never anticipate what stance she would take in any situation. But she had one great virtue in that she never nursed a grudge. It was not that she was all-forgiving but simply that she forgot. Once the storm was over she set her sails in another direction and was ready for the next challenge.
She was a wonderful cook, but as the temperature in the kitchen rose, so did Aunty Mary’s temper. But because she was such a genius in the kitchen, she was in great demand by top-class hotels where she reigned supreme. She worked during the summer months only and rested for the winter, when she visited all the family and gave us the benefit of her advice. She seldom worked in the same hotel for two successive seasons, because she never finished a term without telling the manager or owner how they should be running the establishment. Even if asked to return, she seldom did so as she liked a change of scene.
At the beginning of every summer it was our job to drive her to the hotel of her choice for that season. Sometimes we were summoned to make a hasty return if there was an immediate clash of temperament with a manager who would not fall into line with Aunty Mary’s way of thinking. She had a very low opinion of the male species, and when a bachelor brother, with whom she had lived, died and did not leave her his house, she felt that her opinion had been vindicated. It was not the loss of the house that upset her as much as the satisfaction she would have got from promising it to different members of the family and constantly changing her will. It would have provided an excellent source of entertainment in her old age.
As she grew older she became a dedicated hypochondriac, and her large black handbag grew into a mobile pharmacy. The bag was so big that in its earlier years it might have been an elegant overnight case, but those times were long gone, and in its later days it developed the contours of an overweight man trying to fit into boyhood clothes. It bulged and stretched to accommodate all Aunty Mary’s medical needs, and when she had them packed in she snapped the two ancient brass b
ars together across the top and the two brass clasps locked into each other. It defied the laws of measured capacity in that it actually held all that was forced into it. It was packed with plastic phials and little glass bottles guaranteed to cure insomnia, headaches, indigestion, blood pressure and a multitude of complaints imaginary and otherwise. Some of the tablets were her own but many she had collected from friends and relatives over the years. She had a mania for collecting other people’s left-over medicines and passed on her cures to anyone willing to receive them. From her many visits to various doctors, she considered herself to be a semi-professional and was anxious to practise her expertise on any guinea pig who came her way. If, on the other hand, a doctor or nurse happened to cross her path, they were a mine of untapped information that had to be quarried.
Once when she was on one of her visits to us, my friend Frances, a nurse, called to see her. To Aunty Mary it was a golden opportunity, so she took over the kitchen to conduct a medical conference and enter into a general analysis of her handbag. In the course of the consultation, she poured the entire contents of her mobile medical chest on to the large kitchen table. Out poured a colourful waterfall of little bottles and containers sparkling with bright red, yellow, green and white tablets. Frances surveyed this phenomenon with unbelieving horror etched into every line of her face. Aunty Mary demanded that she identify all the tablets and advise on the dosage to be taken. Frances was experiencing a situation which in the controlled world of hospital life would have been unthinkable. I walked away and left her to the mercy of Aunty Mary, who was like a cat with a fat mouse in her clutches.
Many hours later Frances came to me with a glazed look on her face. “I never saw the likes of it,” she declared.
“Of what?” I asked innocently.
“That woman’s handbag,” she answered in a voice filled with horror.
“What’s wrong with it?” I queried.
“There’s enough tablets in there to kill half the parish,” she announced. “They could blow the head off her.”
“How?” I asked.
“She’s taking too many tablets, and most of them are for complaints that she hasn’t even got.”
“But she’s been doing that for years,” I said.
“But she has even got morning sickness tablets in there!” my friend protested.
“I’m sure that they won’t do much harm at this stage,” I assured her.
“Well,” Frances declared, “she must have the constitution of a horse, because what she is doing should be lethal.”
Despite the pronouncement, Aunty Mary proceeded merrily on her way. During her visits she tried to introduce “law and order” into our house. Because she was a dedicated cook, meals got priority consideration in her world, and she believed that when a meal was ready everybody in the house should drop whatever they were doing and all sit down together. With a shop attached to our house, that was impossible in our lives; we ate in relays and meals were movable feasts. This casual approach to eating annoyed her intensely and she assured me regularly that I ran a very “trína chéile”* house. Never having been accustomed to having children around her, she could not understand the confusion of a home full of children, some of them noisy teenagers. She proclaimed them to be bad-mannered and badly behaved and told them and me that regularly.
For their part they took her in their stride, having been used to her coming and going all their lives. However, she stretched her luck and their patience to breaking point one year when, just as the All-Ireland Hurling Final was about to begin, she announced that lunch was ready and promptly turned off the television. They knew if they opposed her she would get the better of them by turning on her hearing aid, which could give out a piercing shrill whistle and drown the sound of the television. So they gulped down her beautifully prepared lunch with no sense or word of appreciation. We came home that night from Dublin to a state of cold war.
Her hearing aid was the bane of her life and a cause of constant frustration, which she often used to her advantage. If you were telling her something that she did not want to hear, she promptly turned it off and you finished up talking to yourself. Sometimes, thinking that she had it turned off, you might shout at her, only to be asked in annoyance, “Do you think that I’m deaf or something?”
She was for ever tampering with her hearing aid, which caused it to do things that no hearing aid should do. Sometimes, when it was supposed to be turned off, it sent out ear-piercing whistles which would put the hair standing on top of your head. When this happened in the middle of the night, somebody had to get out of bed and go to her room to “turn Aunty Mary off”, while she slept peacefully through the whole racket. Despite all the trials and tribulations she inflicted upon us, one had to admire her because she had great spirit. When she arrived she took complete control of the kitchen and ran it like an army barracks. She laid down the law and we all fell into line.
She seldom stayed more than a week, because a week was as long as she could stand us. Then she donned her dark green velour hat and boarded the bus for home. However, as she grew older, her visits grew longer. Finally, when she became too old to be on her own, she came to stay permanently. We gave her a bedroom on the ground floor to spare her the effort of climbing the stairs. At first she came back and forth to the kitchen and lectured us when she felt we were getting out of hand, but gradually she became unable to do even that and stayed in bed completely.
In case we would not be able to hear her in the kitchen if she called, I gave her an old brass bell to summon help. I should have known better! Aunty Mary with a loud brass bell at arm’s length was in her element. My God, but she used that bell! She was like the bells of Shandon, but instead of ringing on the half hour she rang almost non-stop. Even my neighbour from across the street wanted to know what the blazes was going on. Aunty Mary was delighted with her clanging bell and having given it to her there was no way I could take it off her.
She became obsessive about colds and draughts. Her room, which was quite small, was warmed by a large heater and she had an electric blanket and two hot water bottles. When you opened the door you were met by a wall of heat and sitting with her was like having a sauna. Changing her hot water bottles became the theme tune of her days. The bell rang constantly with requests to change them. Even when they were too hot to handle she wanted them changed. One of the children who became tired from journeying back and forth to the kitchen with the bottles devised a plan to limit the journeys. He would take them out into the corridor, where he would sit down quietly. Then, when he felt that a sufficient amount of time had elapsed, he would take them back in to her again. She never noticed the difference. The windows had to be kept firmly closed, and she complained of draughts coming from every direction, even out of the wardrobe. One evening after a long day of bell ringing, I stood in the kitchen grasping the two hot bottles and said to myself, “Alice, which will you do: laugh or scream?”
When I went back to her room with the two bottles I had to laugh because she pulled a bottle of whiskey out from under the bed saying: “Alice, will you take that bloody bottle of whiskey and make us two strong ones.”
“That’s a great idea,” I told her.
“There is only one way to handle this blasted old age,” she declared, “and that’s with a bottle of holy water in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other.”
She had a restless spirit and had always been free to go when the spirit moved her, so now it was very constricting for her to be confined to one room. She vented her frustration on anyone unlucky enough to come at the wrong time. Visiting relatives could never be sure of their reception as it depended on the prevailing mood. One old cousin whom she did not like very much came to see her. She was asleep as I ushered him into the room, but she opened one eye as he sank heavily into a chair by her bed.
“Who’s that?” she demanded, though I was convinced that she already knew because she had been prophesying his arrival.
“It’s Mic
k,” he announced.
“What brought you?” she demanded.
“I came to see you, Mary,” he told her.
“You could have spared yourself the trouble then,” she assured him.
“I heard you weren’t well,” he told her.
“You mean you heard that I was dying,” she snapped at him.
“I did not,” he assured her.
“You did so,” she insisted, “because you would not be here otherwise. You were always a coffin chaser.”
“Mary,” he said changing tactics, “there is nothing wrong with dying.”
“No,” she told him, “as long as it’s not you that’s doing it.”
I decided to withdraw and let them at it, but I had hardly reached the kitchen door when Mick caught up with me and shot past me with a face like thunder, muttering about “that cantankerous old bitch”. Aunty Mary was in great form for the rest of the day because she had won that battle. She never lost her fighting spirit.
When our local doctor told me that she could go very quickly, I really did not take him very seriously. But time proved him right. It was late one evening when a certain quietness came over her and the bell no longer rang. Frances, who years previously had been confounded by Aunty Mary’s handbag, called in and we sat with her. Frances had always told me that she was only good at two things in life: making a good curry and comforting people in their last hours. Whatever about the curry, she there and then justified her second claim. She was a revelation to watch. She held Aunty Mary’s hand and talked to her in a soft soothing voice. As she gently massaged the dying woman’s face and eased her hair back from her forehead you could see the tension leave Aunty Mary and all the wrinkles of old age fade away. When she died peacefully a few hours later, her face had shed the ravages of time and she looked as she must have done as a young girl. She was tranquil and beautiful. It was one of the most extraordinary changes that I had ever seen. I knew that it would have given Aunty Mary immense satisfaction to carry off her final scene looking so well that even Mick would not have the satisfaction of saying otherwise.
Country Days Page 7