The Cottage (Story - Part 1)

The Ivy hung raggedly around the entrance, shabby and dirty brown in patches like the unkempt tobacco stained beard of an old man. Once dazzling whitewashed walls, now dirty grey, flaking, mould defeated skeleton. Ancestral youth, now leprous with the scent of death. Empty hinges protruding, unemployed, like fingers searching ghostly timbers - long since fired.

No more the ‘Slan’ or ‘Failte’ creak or click of well worn latch!

I ducked under the lintel and entered gloom of the kitchen. I stood in the middle of the room and let my eyes wander from corner to corner. I stared at the corner beside the fireplace, now just a corner but once the huge bed had rested there – the bed where I first entered, not just the room but this world. Forty seven years ago I had taken my first breath in that corner, with the minimum of fuss.

I was the eighth baby born there, preceded by my six brothers and one sister. The joyous miracle of life had by then become almost a habitual task, akin to digging the potatoes or saving the turf. There would be four more siblings birthed in similar circumstances within the following six years (two more brothers and two further sisters). We were born into warmth that went beyond the heat from the highly banked turf fire, which doubled as the cooking area.

I thought I could see again the long ‘firm’, that stood in front of and parallel to, the side of the bed and where on many a winter’s night - with the Northwest gale howling and no light other than that from the flames, which flitted indiscriminately, throwing shadows at the ceiling walls and creating cave-like entrances to other worlds, in the corners of the kitchen - we children would perch side by side listening to ghost stories, expertly orated by my father. No designer could have created a more fitting atmosphere nor was there a storyteller more able to deliver the spine-tingling tales;

“…….and it was then that wraith-like figure floated from the door and stood there, (pointing) - just about where John is sitting! It was there, ‘She’ – for I believe the poor wretched soul had once been a woman of this earth - made the terrible prediction. She threw back her cloak, fixed her hollow tortured eyes upon the head of the house, slowly lifted her arm and pointing a long bony finger at him, wailed her morbid message. She screeched……”

At such a crucial juncture -when the hair on the back of our necks had risen like the quills of a hedgehog; our vertebrae had turned to jelly and our mouths became completely devoid of any kind of moisture – my father would, incongruously, notice that his pipe had extinguished. While we waited, barely breathing, he would prod the little clay bowl, while manfully drawing on stem as if trying to breathe life back into an old moribund friend. Eventually, Mary – it was always my little sister, Mary – would be unable to contain herself any longer and blurt out;

“Oh! Daddy, what did the creature say? What did she say? Tell us please.”

A smile would tug, almost imperceptibly, at the corners of the old man’s mouth and in hushed tones, and having invoked the required blessing, “God bless the hearers” he would slowly and solemnly iterate the chilling punch line.
This was the cue for my mother to interject;

“Ah, Paddy! You will have the creatures frightened out of their lives!”

After the initial “oh’s” and “ah's”, confirmation would be asked for, such as;

“Did it really come true daddy?” “Did he die daddy?”

Any kind of definitive answer was always deflected with the same, unvarying, reply;

“Time for the Rosary!”

The old man would fall to his knees, we quickly followed suit and after the habitual incantation;

“May the blessed virgin bless us and protect us from all harm!”

We would pray the rosary.

It was said that Ireland was at that time a country of greater faith. The reasons for this state of seemingly perpetual grace have been attributed to the fact that there was no television or electricity, families were larger; that the clergy were feared and respected and that the family habitually prayed the rosary together. I believed all the fore mentioned perceptions to be true. As I fingered the rosary beads in my pocket, I thought back on my own personal devotion, I think the fervour with which I prayed had much to do with those spine chilling stories of ghosts and ghouls, which sent me scurrying for protection from any readily available source.

My gaze moved to the space under the window, where once the long solid table had stood. I remembered the huge carved legs – were they really that huge, or was a child’s relativeness back then or indeed an old man’s exaggerated memory responsible for the massive girth? I think not!

The furniture in the room was minimal; the table, the bed, the dresser – that held all the crockery and utensils - , the firm; or bench which seated many (depending on their girth), and two large chairs; my mother had brought these chairs to her new home from her fathers’ house; we didn’t know why at the time but they were always special and mostly left in the corner, “out of harms way”. They would be brought out for special visitors; the priest, doctor, teacher and very few others. We, as children, could gauge the importance of guests by whether or not; the good chairs were taken out for them. There was also a milk churn in the remaining corner, beside the dresser.

The table, though, was the centre piece and dominated the room. It was covered with an oil cloth to, ‘keep it good’. The cloth only ever came off for that most special of occasions; the ‘Station’; when the priest and all the habitants of the village arrived, to celebrate ‘Mass’ in the house. Then, my mother would bring out (at the last possible moment) the beautiful, intricately crocheted and unbelievably white, lace cloth. Two highly polished silver candlesticks would also adorn.

The children (we) were scrubbed and dressed in our Sunday best; we even wore shoes. Warned to behave, because God was coming to our house, we sat or stood, as inconspicuously as possible; for fear of ‘getting in the way’ or, unwittingly becoming a nuisance. Our excitement was almost as great as that of our parents but for selfishly different reasons.

My mothers’ priority was simple; the house had to be in pristine condition. To this end, regular sweeping of the floor, dusting of the sparse furniture and the laying of turf on the fire- as opposed to throwing on – were the accepted and necessary requirements. Curtains freshly washed and ‘blue-bagged’, were wrapped in brown paper and hidden away until the morning of the ‘event’. For the children (us) the smell of bread being baked, the neatly stacked ‘sweet cake’ in the lockable cupboard compartment of the dresser, the extra pipe tobacco and the cups filled with the chalky clay pipes - that were part and parcel of any official gathering - hinted at the forthcoming celebrations and guaranteed excitement. It was like Christmas – only better!