An Irish Country Girl Read online

  The hall was filled with a babel of excited voices as the children struggled out of their outer clothes.

  “Now hush. Hush.” Kinky had to raise her voice. “Do as I bid,” she said. “I’ll be up in a shmall little minute with more mince pies.”

  “Yo-o-o-oh.”

  She waited for quiet. “And then I’ll tell you a story of faeries, and the banshee, and the Saint Stephen’s Day Ghost, and if we’ve time—but remember I’ve a dinner to cook, so only if we’ve time—I’ll tell you how the Saint Stephen’s Day Ghost came back four years later.”

  2

  When she went into the lounge, she saw one empty armchair to the side of the fire. Colin, Eddie, Micky, Billy Cadogan, and Dermot Fogarty were sitting on the carpet in a half circle facing the armchair. Colin was closest to the fire. Arthur Guinness, Doctor O’Reilly’s black Labrador, lay flopped in the middle. The girls all had seats. At least, Kinky thought, the boys had some manners. Hazel was in one armchair. That wee opportunist Lady Macbeth, Himself’s white cat, had already made herself comfortable on Hazel’s lap. Jeannie Kennedy, Irene O’Malley, and the twins Carolyn and Dorothy Kyle had managed to squish themselves onto the sofa.

  Kinky squeezed between Dermot and Hazel and offered the plate of mince pies to the boys. “Take two apiece,” she said, “and then you’ll not be interrupting, looking for more.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Kincaid.”

  She’d let them eat for a while. Settle down before she started. That was one of the tricks she’d learnt from her Da. Wait until your audience is good and ready and eager to hear what you have to say.

  She’d not wait too long though. She’d promised them a story.

  Kinky moved to her chair by the fire, and as she walked she looked out of the bow window, through the swirling flakes, and across Main Street to the stone wall of the Presbyterian church opposite. Car tyres had dug dirty ruts in the drifts of the road, but the wall topped with the snow’s royal icing sparkled in the forenoon sunlight. Icicles like sharpened crystal pencils hung from the eaves of the church roof. They absorbed and magnified the rays and dripped gently as the sun warmed the ice.

  Two trotty wagtails, black-capped and grey-caped, strutted in tiny staccato steps along the top of the wall, wagging their long tails behind them. She’d always had a soft spot for those little birds.

  She smiled at the arc of children around her. They were all still tucking in, fidgeting, settling down.

  She knew how her Da must have felt when he faced an audience, waited for silence, and only then started to speak in his soft Cork tenor. He could hold them in the palm of his hand as he wove his tales, and just as Ma had passed on the sight to her, Da had seen the talent in his youngest daughter and had encouraged it.

  “Always remember,” he’d say to her, “when you’re telling a really good story, there’s no law to stop you making things up. If you’ve got their attention, they’re not going to be thinking about whether you actually know what one of your characters was feeling and thinking inside. They’ll believe you do if you say it convincingly. You’re spinning them a dream, and we all do love good dreams, so.”

  Today she’d promised the children a ghost story, and that was what they would get. And wasn’t she going to take Da’s advice? There were gaps she was going to have to fill in from her own imagination—especially in the first part.

  But hadn’t she been there herself, four years later, when the story came to its conclusion, and didn’t she know every last detail of that as a fact?

  She scanned the room. It was quieter now. Every eye was on her.

  “Now,” she said, mimicking the words of the hostess in the BBC’s popular afternoon kiddie show, Listen with Mother. “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.”

  The girls giggled.

  Kinky waited for silence. “Look at the snow out there,” she said. “Do you think it’s deep?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Kincaid,” Jeannie Kennedy said.

  “It’s deep enough I’ll grant you, but it’s only a sprinkle to the snow that fell on not one . . . not one, but two Saint Stephen’s Days in Beal na mBláth.”

  Micky Corry held up his hand. “Please, Mrs. Kincaid, what’s Saint Stephen’s Day?”

  These poor folks from the north. They never were taught much about Irish lore. “Saint Stephen was a martyr. He was stoned to death.”

  “Oooh, yeugh,” another girl said.

  “His day is celebrated on what’s known up here as Boxing Day.”

  “Is that the Feast of Stephen?” Micky asked. “When your man, King Wenclesslass, and his page went out?”

  “Wenceslas.” She corrected him automatically, wondering why northern children always got the name wrong. “And yes, it is the Feast of Stephen.”

  “The snow was ‘deep and crisp and even’ then, so it was.”

  “And on the days I’m telling you about, Micky, it was deep enough to bury a sheep.” She paused and swept her gaze from one to the next. Their eyes widened. Eddie Jingles’s mouth hung open. “It was deep enough to bury a man. But the trouble started six weeks before the first Saint Stephen’s. It wasn’t snowing that day.”

  She could see that all the girls were leaning forward. The boys fidgeted and nudged each other. Arthur Guinness yawned, put his great head back on his paws, sighed, and drifted back to sleep.

  “I was there for both Saint Stephen’s Days. I was only little for the first one. I was quite grown up for the second. I knew the fellah it all happened to, a fellah called Connor MacTaggart, a fellah who paid no heed to the Doov Shee, the dark fairies.”

  All the kids sitting at the table leaned even closer. The boys stopped fidgeting. She heard a girl say, “Oooh . . . the little people.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “In Irish, the Dubh Sidhe, the dark faeries. And you should not ignore them. Connor found that out. Connor was a shepherd and a close friend of my big brother Art. They both played Gaelic Athletic Association games. He kept his sheep in his pasture, right on the bare top of a high hill near our fields, and he often passed our house on his way to and from his flock.

  “He’d pop in to see us, and he always had sweeties in his pocket for the younger children. He’d never mind giving a hand if there was a heavy job to do. And if our sheep that grazed with his needed moving, sure wouldn’t he laugh and say, ‘It’ll be no more trouble than giving you a smile, Fidelma.’

  “Fidelma was the next sister up from me. She was daft about him.” She saw how the boys scowled. They’d have no time for girls—not yet—but the girls giggled.

  “I liked him well enough myself,” she said, “and I remember him as if it were last week and not forty odd years ago.”

  She waited until the children settled down; instead of the English “Once upon a time,” she began in the time-honoured fashion of Irish storytellers: “And this is what it was . . .

  “Connor MacTaggart lived in the townland. He was a strong man, a brave man. He’d been in the First World War. He was a man who laughed a lot. He could play the uillinn pipes and dance slip jigs and reels ’til the dawn. He could drive a sliotar, a hurley ball, like no man for miles around. No man, nor no woman, had ever caught him telling a lie.” She paused to let all that sink in and saw by the way several of the children were nodding their heads that they understood.

  “No man nor no beast,” she lowered her voice, “nor no creature of this world or the other scared Connor. He half believed in the faeries all right, but he didn’t give a tinker’s cuss for them.”

  She lowered her voice until it was just stronger than a whisper. “Do any of you know what it might mean if you heard hands clapping in the dead of night and there was nobody there? Or if you heard the sound of sheep being sheared, but there was no sheep nor no shearer?”

  Every eye widened. No one spoke.

  “Those’re two of the noises the Bean Sidhe makes.”

  “The banshee?” Micky Corry grabbed himself by the throat and pretended to strangle himself.
“Aaarrgh.”

  “Well, Connor said he’d heard of her alright, but he’d only truly believe in the banshee when he saw one.”

  Jeannie was shaking her head. Dermot was mouthing, “Silly man.”

  Kinky waited until they had settled down, then said in her usual soft tones, “So I take it you all know about the banshee, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Kincaid.”

  “Well, so did Connor, but he decided to pay no heed to her nor to the Doov Shee, as you’ll soon find out.” She paused and smiled. She really had their attention now. “Not even when my Ma—”

  “The good witch,” Colin said.

  “That’s right. Not even after she’d warned him, not once, but three times.”

  3

  “I remember him sitting in our roomy kitchen one Saturday in November. I was fourteen and there was no school on a Saturday for me. Ma was pouring cups of tea.

  “That morning, when he’d been in his turf bog near the upper pasture, he’d noticed that one of our ewes had foot rot. He’d gone up with his donkey carrying two side baskets to bring down a load of turf that had been cut in the spring and left to season. Instead he’d loaded the sheep in one basket and brought it down for Da to look after.”

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Kincaid. How can you tell two sheep apart?” Dorothy wanted to know. “They all look the same to me. How did Connor know it was one of yours?”

  “It was easy. Each farm had a colour, you see, and before you put the sheep into a common pasture you put a big blob of your dye into the wool over one hip on each animal. Connor’s was a bluey-grey. Ours was green. A green blob said, ‘I’m one of the O’Hanlon sheep.’

  “I think Connor picked his colour to match his own eyes. They sat in a forest of laugh lines because the man always seemed to have a smile on his face. Life amused Connor MacTaggart. Apart from his sheep, the hurling, and the Gaelic football, I don’t think he took anything else too seriously, and it showed on his broad face under black hair that stuck out like the bristles of a chimney sweep’s brush from beneath his caubeen. He needed a shave, and the stubble on his chin was inky blue.

  “I looked at him sitting at the table. He was a big man. More than six feet. He’d big shoulders under his tweed jacket. I’d seen him often enough with his sleeves rolled up, and his arms had muscles on them like you might see on a bull, and yet no one had ever heard of Connor lifting his hand in anger, or indeed his gruff voice either.

  “He pulled a dudeen out of his pocket—and before you ask, Hazel, a dudeen’s a wee short clay pipe. You’d not see one today, but most men smoked them back then. ‘Do you mind if I smoke, Mrs. O’Hanlon?’ says he to Ma, for he was a polite man, so.

  “ ‘Not at all,’ says she, taking the teapot back to the shelf beside the range. For a tall, heavy woman she moved lightly across the red-tiled floor.

  “I saw how the laugh lines deepened at the corners of her eyes, which were dark like anthracite. Ma’s normally ruddy cheeks glowed redder still from the heat of the range. Her mouth curved in a smile.

  “Connor stuck the pipe in his mouth, past what in those days was called an Old Bill moustache. I thought it made him look a bit like a walrus. He’d grown it when he’d been a soldier man.

  “He lit up. ‘Cold day today,’ says he. ‘My cottage was like one of those igloos this morning. I thought I might find an Eskimo girl had moved in, so.’

  “Ma and I laughed. He could make folks laugh, could Connor.

  “He’d have had room for someone to move in, for Connor lived on his own in a wee thatched, whitewashed cottage tucked in under the trees at the boundary of his land with ours.

  “ ‘When I got up this morning,’ says he, ‘my fire was out, and on the bowl of water I’d left out the night before there was ice as big as the berg that sank the Titanic.’

  “ ‘Go on with you, Connor,’ says Ma. ‘You’re a terrible man for the exaggeration, so. Never mind icebergs. Why didn’t you light your fire and put on more turf?’ She held out her hands over the range.

  “Her fingers were red from years of washing clothes, scrubbing floors, and kneading the dough for her baking. The knuckles were swollen with the arthritis that would one day stop her knitting. I think the warmth of the stove comforted her joints. They’d got worse since a couple of years ago. Sinead, my biggest sister, had explained to me that Ma was starting to go through the change of life.

  “I saw her wince, but in all the years I lived at home I never once heard her complain.

  “ ‘Sure, I’d only a few lumps left in the house,’ says Connor. ‘My turf pile outside’s running low and I shouldn’t have let it. I know that. I went to get a full load this morning for my peat bog’s near the pasture, but . . .’ He shrugged.

  “I knew he was too polite to continue, but it was obvious that with the sheep in one basket, he’d only brought half a load.

  “Connor let go a puff of tobacco smoke. ‘I’ve no desire to go back up there today, nor tomorrow either, because we’re playing Dunmanway at the football and I’d not want to miss the match.’

  “ ‘Help yourself to some from our pile,’ says Ma. ‘Sure can’t more turf come back anytime?’

  “He smiled. ‘That’s very kind of you, Mrs. O’Hanlon, but I’d not want to be beholden.’

  “That remark didn’t surprise me. I’d once heard him tell my brother he’d be in no man’s debt—not for anything. He was a proud man was Connor MacTaggart. Maybe a bit sensitive because he hadn’t a lot of money, nor many prospects of getting any. Sheep farming’s a hard life.

  “Says he, ‘I’ve no need to. There’s a great big tree in the field beside my cottage. It must be fifteen feet high. I pass it morn and night on my way to and home from my sheep. If I fell it today, the chopping of it will warm me, and once it’s down I’ll get a fire going and have enough wood for the weekend. And a few more days’ work with my axe and my saw, and I’ll have logs for the winter and to spare, and I can make myself a new shillelagh too.’

  “I saw Ma frown. ‘A shillaylee? And what kind of a tree would it be, Connor?’

  “ ‘A blackthorn,’ says he. ‘That’s the wood you make them of. What of it?’ ”

  Hazel Arbuthnot pursed her lips, sucked in a breath, and shook her head. Her black hair rippled in soft waves. “Blackthorn? That’s what Jesus’ crown of thorns was made of, so it was.”

  “That’s not the half of it,” Kinky said. “You should have heard what Ma told Connor. She got very serious. ‘Don’t you dare touch that tree, Connor MacTaggart. Leave it alone entirely. Entirely, do you hear me now?’

  “He laughed. ‘Because the faeries, the Doov Shee, live under blackthorns?’

  “ ‘They do, Connor,’ Ma said, and I’d not seen her being so serious for a long time. ‘Blackthorns are sacred to them, and they do make their homes there, so.’

  “ ‘Och,’ says Connor, ‘I’m sure they’d not miss one. Ireland’s as full of blackthorns as a hawthorn’s full of berries in a hard winter.’

  “ ‘Ordinarily,’ says Ma, ‘the Shee’ll not mind if you pick the sloes in the autumn or cut a branch for a walking stick, not if you ask their permission first, but today’s different. You mustn’t touch as much as a twig today.’

  “I sat up very straight. ‘Why not today especially, Ma?’

  “ ‘It’s the eleventh of November.’

  “I frowned. ‘What’s special about November the eleventh? I know it’s Armistice Day, but why would the faeries bother about that?’

  “Ma shook her head. ‘They don’t. They have things of their own to mark. Remember the Shee are a very old race, and they still keep the old ways. Didn’t we just enjoy Halloween on the eve of All Saints’ Day?’

  “ ‘Yes, Ma,’ I said.

  “ ‘Long before Saint Patrick, the last day of October was Samhain, the feast to mark the end of the harvest.’ Her voice sounded hollow when next she said, ‘And November the first was Feile na Marbh, the festival of the dead, when spirits walk
the earth.’

  “ ‘Fayle na Marev?’ I felt all goose-pimply, but when I looked over at Connor, he was tapping his teeth with the stem of his pipe—and grinning.

  “ ‘Now,’ Ma said, ‘I can’t tell you why November eleventh came to replace the first for the festival of the dead for the little folks. I think it had to do with their refusing to recognize a change in our calendar made hundreds of years ago by a Pope Gregory. Their year is governed by the seasons and the solstices. It always has been. But whatever the reason, there’ll be spirits abroad today and tonight.’ She fixed Connor with a gaze that would have raised blisters on a plank. ‘And if you don’t want to join them . . . leave you that blackthorn alone today, and if you’ve any wit at all, Connor MacTaggart, leave it alone forever.’

  “Connor nodded, ‘Thank you for the advice, Mrs. O’Hanlon. I’ll certainly think on it.’ But I could tell by the tone of his voice she’d not scared him, even though she’d scared me. ‘I’ll have to be getting on home now,’ says he. He rose and came to me. He put his hands in his pocket and pulled out some peppermints. ‘Here you are, Maureen.’ ”

  Kinky paused and looked at the children. “Maureen’s my real name, by the way, but I don’t use it much.

  “ ‘Thank you, Connor,’ says I.

  “ ‘I’ll have to be running along now,’ says he.

  “ ‘And you’ll take a load of turf? Won’t you?’ Ma asked. It wasn’t often I heard a pleading tone in her voice.

  “ ‘It’s very kind, Mrs. O’Hanlon, but sure I’ll manage on my own.’

  “And I knew, I knew, that Connor MacTaggart was going home and was going to pay no heed to Ma, and later that day, as sure as the sun rises in the east, he was going to fell that blackthorn.”

  4

  Kinky shifted in her chair and looked at the eager faces. “Now imagine, children, how Connor called for his sheepdog, Tess, took hold of the donkey’s halter, and strode down our lane whistling to himself. He was always whistling happy tunes like ‘The Rakes of Mallow’ or ‘Courtin’ in the Kitchen.’ He was thinking he’d have time for a practice session on his pipes once he had the tree down, the fire blazing in his hearth, his supper eaten, and a wee half-un on the table.