An Irish Christmas Feast (17 page)

Big Bob smiled grimly as he watched his nimble grandson leap from mound to mound towards the grave and at the same time, as his grandfather's smile grew grimmer, to his first brush with those who would deny him and deny his friends their natural rights. He watched as the skinny figure made the sign of the cross and he laughed aloud when, at the end of his supplication, he leaped into the air a transformed person. He arrived breathless at Big Bob's side.

‘You feel better now?' his grandfather asked.

Bob's Bobby nodded.

‘And you feel bigger now?'

‘Oh yes. Much bigger,' came the reply.

‘All you have to do now is walk up to Pugface in the schoolyard tomorrow and invite him to fight.' Big Bob made it sound as if it was a run-of-the-mill task. His grandson nodded eagerly.

‘Now let us return to the camp and on our way I will tell you a few things which will make your job easier. Naturally you will keep these things to yourself or you'll lose your advantage before you begin.'

‘Naturally,' came back the positive response. That night the newly infused champion of civil liberties slept soundly and did not awaken until his mother called him for school. His breakfast consisted of a pannyful of sweetened oatmeal porridge and he devoured it with a relish.

As usual during the lunch break the schoolyard was crowded. Pugface stood in the centre surrounded by his fear-filled followers. Bob's Bobby swung him around sharply and invited him to fight after school at a particular place where schoolboys had fought for generations. The venue was an ancient, tree-lined lane which led to the river bank. Mostly the place was deserted although when darkness fell courting couples would converge on the area, sometimes reclining in amorous embraces against the trunks of the giant beeches and, other times, when the moon was visible, walking the river bank hand in hand.

Pugface was temporarily at a loss for words and while he futilely instituted a search for same a crowd of schoolboys began to gather. All eyes were focused on Pugface. Bob's Bobby stood with his skinny legs apart awaiting an answer, his great-grandfather's burning eyes fixed unwaveringly on those of the school's most notorious bully, still speechless and under mounting pressure to make a statement.

The laughter which should have surfaced at the tiny traveller's outrageous challenge was stifled by the intensity of his glare and by the rigidity of his stance.

Only a few moments before a rumour had spread like wildfire through the playground. Bob's Bobby, for all his insignificance and despite his tender years, had killed a grown man with a single kidney punch, a Tasmanian backhander, during a summer altercation at the great fair of Puck in Killorglin in the county of Kerry. It was certain that nobody in the school, the teachers apart, knew the precise whereabouts of the kidneys and it was even more certain that nobody, the teachers included, would ever before have heard of a Tasmanian backhander and how would they when the now oft-repeated phrase had, until that time, belonged exclusively to the vocabulary of Big Bob the traveller who had created it only the day before.

The story of the Killorglin massacre, started initially by Jonathan Cape, had now spread to every corner of the school ground and still, after all this time, Pugface had not responded to Bob's Bobby's challenge nor had he even decided whether he should take the challenge seriously. Finally he spoke.

‘After school,' he growled, ‘I'll kill you stone dead. First I'll tear off your ears and I'll keep them for my cat. Then I'll tear out your heart and I'll keep it for my dog. Then I'll break your legs and your hands and your head.'

‘After school.' Bob's Bobby joined his friend Jonathan who stood near the front of the onlooking throng. The pair decided to return earlier than usual to their classroom. ‘We will take this puffed
sciortán
from your withers,' Bob's Bobby assured his friend, ‘and that will be my Christmas present to you.'

It was his grandfather who had made the original statement regarding the
sciortán
, his final words, before his departure for his daughter's home in west Cork.

Through the branches of the great trees the sun's rays shed a mottled light on the riverside arena where two hundred schoolboys had gathered to witness the demolition of Bob's Bobby. They were not quite convinced that he had killed a man at the fair of Killorglin and, even if he had, it was certain that members of his clan were at hand to render assistance but every schoolboy would agree that the travelling folk were wily and fearless and there was no doubt about the fact that they would have a variety of ploys and stratagems to suit every occasion. They were most eager to witness, for the first time, the execution of the Tasmanian backhander. Some were sceptical but the majority would have seen the fighting men of the travellers in action at fairs and festivals where they would resort to the most outlandish stratagems in order to gain the upper hand.

‘Right, make a ring!' The curt command came from a senior boy whose father was a teacher in the school. It was apparent that some of the father's authority had rubbed off on the son for a ring was created almost immediately and a great hush ensued while the self-appointed master of ceremonies raised his hands aloft and called upon the protagonists to enter the circle. First in was Pugface, shadow-boxing as he entered and snorting like a regular professional as he delivered deadly blows from every angle. The onlookers screamed and shouted at the tops of their yet unbroken voices. Bob's Bobby's entry was less dramatic than his rival's. His approach was indifferent and even reposeful especially when his supporters, and they were in a majority, cheered him until their lungs were fit to burst.

The master of ceremonies now took up his position between the opponents.

‘Is it to be a fight to the finish?' he demanded in stentorian tones.

‘Yes. Yes!' two hundred voices answered frenetically before either of the principals had a chance to approve or disapprove.

‘I'll count to ten,' the master of ceremonies spoke shrilly, ‘and when the count is concluded the fight will begin and it will be a fight to the finish.'

He pushed the waiting pugilists well apart but before he could commence the count Bob's Bobby took off his tattered shortcoat and folded it neatly before handing it to his second who chanced to be none other than Jonathan Cape. He then spat on his hands while the onlookers remarked that they had never in their lives beheld such a look in any man's eyes before. The burning orbs fixed themselves on those of Pugface who bent his head, unable to withstand the baleful glare of the tiny traveller. The taking off of the shortcoat had unnerved him. Worse was to follow.

Spitting on his hands a second time Bob's Bobby took off his frayed shirt and folded it neatly. Again he handed it over to his second. The wily traveller then removed his vest until he stood bare from the waist up. He flexed his wrists as an excited murmur ran through the crowd. Could this be the prelude to the devastating Tasmanian backhander? They were never to find out, for Pugface's courage, already wilting after the divesting of the shortcoat, went into sharper decline after the taking off of the shirt. A cold fear gripped him when the last garment of the upper body was handed over to a grinning Jonathan Cape. Why was Cape grinning? Why was the traveller so cocksure? Why did his own hands shake and why did his knees weaken? Why did he wish he was somewhere else all of a sudden and why did the traveller's eyes burn like glowing embers so that his own eyes were blinded and he was unable to see straight? With a cry of indescribable passion the young traveller sunk his teeth into the side of his lower lip. The red blood spurted forth and ran down his chin, coursed down his neck and spread itself over his chest. With a second even more unnerving shriek he rubbed the blood all over his face and arms. Several faint-hearted onlookers took flight. Others, unaccustomed to the sight of blood, fell insensible to the ground.

Bob's Bobby now presented an absolutely hideous sight. The blood drained from the drooling visage of his disintegrating opponent and, worst of all, the shrieking, demoniacal, blood-covered impish traveller was about to launch his first attack. Pugface staggered backwards uttering strange sounds made up of gasps and whimpers and sobs. Then suddenly he turned and ran for his life pursued by Bob's Bobby and Jonathan Cape and a score of other victims of his vile intimidation. They followed him through the streets of the astonished town until he arrived at his own door, a wretched figure still slobbering and sobbing. He disappeared indoors without a single, solitary look behind and was not seen in public for a full week. When he reappeared he was a different Pugface, kind, thoughtful, considerate and courteous to young and old. He would so remain for the remainder of his natural life and when he died prematurely trying to save a drowning cat his was one of the largest funerals ever seen in the district. The travelling folk said of him that he went straight to heaven and that he was embraced three times by St Peter at the pearly gates. After the fight Bob's Bobby, accompanied by his faithful friend, returned to the grave of his great-grandfather where he ceremoniously returned the wiles and the heart he had borrowed. He would never seek a loan of them again for to have these precious things once, even for a short while, is to have them forever. The Christmas that followed was the best for many a year especially for small boys.

There are more noses blown at Christmas than any other time of year and, believe me, noses need blowing just as their proprietors need Christmas.

Let me put it another way gentle reader. We don't blow our noses just to clear them or to make loud or rude noises.

There are many hard-faced gents abroad, especially during Christmas, with soft hearts. These unfortunates are slow to express their feelings until they have a certain amount of intoxicating drink aboard. Even then they are reluctant to express their more profound emotions.

What they do instead is to produce large handkerchiefs into which they blow their real feelings. One has to listen closely. Nothing more is required. The baying and the snorting and the trumpeting to which the listener's ears are subjected can be interpreted as expressions of love and concern as fond and as genuine as any which escape all too rarely from the confines of the human heart. How's that William Wordsworth puts it:

Thanks for the human heart by which we live

Thanks for its tenderness, its joys, its fears.

To me the meanest flower that grows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Nose-blowing becomes the elderly more than the young and this may well be because elderly noses are larger and veinier and hairier and pucer. Give me an old nose any day of the week before a young nose. There are no reverberations when young noses are blown. In fact you have to tell young folk that they should blow their noses. Old folk blow like nobody's business which is good for noses and old folk alike.

Then there are certain young gentlemen who blow their noses when there is no need whatsoever to do so. They believe that it matures them. They remind me, in many respects, of those young men who sport moustaches and even beards which they hope will make them look older.

These undeveloped nose-blowings have a false ring to them. They are hollow-sounding. They are easily identified by the experienced ear or by anybody whose parents or grandparents were nose-blowers. I could always distinguish my father's nose-blowing from other nose-blows and whenever I heard him in the distance I was instantly reassured that all was well with the world.

Then there are gents who blow their noses in order to make themselves look more manly but it never comes off. The sounds are like those made by baby elephants who have become separated from their mothers whereas the genuine article, the full male outpouring from the facial proboscis, has all the powerful vibrancy of a rogue elephant.

I recall too when I was a boy there were severe-faced old gents of irascible dispositions who would blow their noses at people to intimidate them. It worked in most cases but never when the nose was blown at another nose-blower.

A nose blown properly and from the correct angle often put a man on the right road just as surely as a kick on the posterior did. In order to realise maximum effect, however, the nose should be blown in quiet or hallowed places where silence dominates. A nose suddenly blown at full force in a silent room can send a surprised assailant scuttling for shelter.

There is only one occasion when I find nose-blowing to be extremely shattering and that is when I am the proprietor of a hangover. I always run for my life when I see a nose-blower approaching. Let him blow by all means as long as I am out of range.

On the credit side I heard of a nose-blower in a distant land who once blew a hole in his handkerchief when his prodigal son came home and another who blew off his own hat when he sneezed on Christmas Eve after his grand-daughter had told him she loved him.

I am of the belief that no house should be without a nose-blower. A good, snorting, rattling, bellicose nose-blow will frighten away intruders far better than a barking dog. The criminal will always know that a bark came from a dog but with a comprehensive nose-blow who is to say that the blower is not a polar bear or a tiger or even an elephant!

However, it must be finally said that a good nose-blow into a voluminous handkerchief is the last refuge of the inarticulate, especially those shy souls who long to tell of their love and concern during the glowing days of Christmas.

Jack Frost wasn't as cold or as pinched as his name might suggest. No, he was bluff and hale and hearty, always ostentatiously and good-naturedly slapping down a large-denomination note on the collection tables which were strategically placed Sunday after Sunday around the entrance to the church on behalf of some charity or other. Yet Jack wasn't popular. He wasn't half as well-liked, for instance, as Dinny Doublesay who contributed very little to charities for the good reason that he didn't have an awful lot to give. Of course, Dinny had played football with the local team when he was in his heyday and he had a way with the girls or so they said. Also he was trainer-in-chief of the highly successful under-14 team year in, year out, so that he was highly regarded by parents and youngsters alike. Jack Frost did not like Dinny Doublesay. He once confided to his wife that he hated the sight of him although when pressed for a reason he couldn't say why.

‘Could it be,' she asked, ‘because everybody else likes him?'

‘It could be,' Jack replied peevishly, ‘and it could also be something else like he's lousy and warty and picks his nose and he's always chasing after women.'

‘But he's a widower,' his wife argued, ‘and there's no restriction on widowers.'

‘Shut up,' Jack Frost shouted at her and he drew the bedclothes over his head. Jack's wife laughed herself gently to sleep wondering how it was that there had never been an open confrontation between her husband and the man he despised. Certainly the town was small enough and how often did they drink in Gilhaffy's, the football pub where the game's players and aficionados gathered after every championship encounter!

She knew that Jack often tended to bide his time, always on the lookout for an opportunity to get even with somebody who had taken him down or with somebody he didn't like for reasons that he couldn't altogether explain.

She knew Jack Frost. She had been married to him and to the business for thirty years. Jack was sly for all his apparent heartiness and in business there was nobody as devious. He overcharged whenever he thought he would get away with it and as for giving proper weight and measure, well! All Jack's instincts would be opposed to such a dictum. Once when he had overcharged an elderly female for poor-quality sausages his wife had taken him aside and told him firmly that it was wrong.

‘Of course it is,' Jack agreed, ‘but it's also wrong for her to hide boxes of sardines in her cleavage every time she thinks nobody's looking and it's wrong for her to keep popping grapes into her mouth when she has no notion of buying any.'

The confrontation which Kate Frost had long anticipated and dreaded took place one late evening at the meat counter in the supermarket. Jack was, as usual, immaculately dressed in freshly laundered white coat and cap and greeted each and every customer as though they were long-lost relatives who had been sorely missed. His smile disappeared when he beheld Dinny Doublesay even though the latter had a twenty-pound note in his hand. Jack Frost accepted the note with a curt thank-you after he had wrapped and handed Dinny the four slices of lamb's liver for which he had declared a preference over chops, steaks and kidneys.

Jack placed the note in the till and then sweetly, smilingly and mischievously handed his victim the change out of a ten-pound note.

‘I gave you twenty,' Dinny spoke matter-of-factly, not wishing to draw attention to himself.

‘You're sure it wasn't a hundred you gave me!' Jack Frost threw out the question for the benefit of everybody within ear-shot. Dinny pursed his lips and availed of the silence which had imposed itself with deadly impact all round.

‘I gave you twenty,' he spoke evenly, ‘and you gave me the change out of ten which means you've taken me down for ten pounds.'

‘Why don't you come in here and have a look at the contents of the till and then we'll see who's codding who?'

Jack Frost stood to one side in order to allow access to his accuser. A number of shoppers surged forward lest they miss the outcome. As the till drawers shot forward Dinny moved in to investigate but was forestalled by Jack.

‘Let's have a pair of independent witnesses.' The supermarket proprietor raised a hand and intimated to a pair of females that they should come forward and authenticate the outcome.

Dinny in their presence instituted a fruitless search which would be repeated over and over, at Jack's urgings, by the pair of female witnesses who would declare that there was no twenty-pound note to be seen. There were numerous five- and ten-pound notes but not a solitary twenty.

‘Satisfied Mr Doublesay!' Jack slammed the till shut and devoted his attention to the pair who had vindicated him. Dinny stood irresolutely to one side before shuffling his way towards the main exit. He was confused and embarrassed. He could have sworn that he had a twenty-pound note in his hand and that he handed it to Jack Frost. He decided to go home. His daughter would know for sure. Had she not handed him the money as he left the house!

In his wake Jack was escorting the two witnesses to the wine shelves where they would choose one of the more expensive vintages in return for their honesty and integrity.

‘Witnesses' expenses!' Jack had laughed aloud as he beamed on all and sundry. Word of the incident would later spread but nobody believed, the witnesses apart, that Jack Frost was innocent. There were many who would recall similar experiences. When he reached home Dinny sat on his favourite chair. His daughter, sensing that something was seriously amiss, sat on hers.

‘Did you or did you not give me a twenty-pound note when I left the house a while back?' Dinny asked.

‘I gave you a twenty-pound note,' his daughter informed him.

Later in the back room at Gilhaffy's Dinny's many friends in the footballing world commiserated with him, three of his closer cronies in particular. These would be the Maglane brothers Johnny, Jerry and Jimmy who once formed the nucleus of the local football team. They played at left half forward, centre forward and right half forward respectively and when they combined as a unit there was no holding them. They specialised particularly in long passes by hand or foot which often saw the ball travel over distances of forty yards where one of the trio would have surreptitiously removed himself so that he would be in a position to gather the pass and send it over or under the bar for a vital score.

They were, according to local newspaper reporters, imaginative, innovative, accurate and mercurial but it was their passing from improbable distances that set them apart.

Often in the back room at Gilhaffy's followers of the code would ask each other to nominate the best player that ever togged out for the team and invariably the answer would come back – ‘I don't know who the best player was but I know who the best three players were.'

The Maglanes were particularly close to Dinny Doublesay. Dinny was the team's full forward when the Maglanes were in the ascendancy. They put many a score his way, unselfishly passing from less favourable distances to where Dinny was disposed near the edge of the square.

‘Combine!' Johnny Maglane was fond of saying before championship finals. ‘Combine and nothing will beat us!'

‘Submerge yourselves!' Jerry would counsel, ‘and rise as one so that we will form an unstoppable wave.' Jerry was the poet of the Maglane family and in fact had composed several ballads about the exploits and triumphs of the team.

‘A team that doesn't play together won't stay together,' Jimmy would say as the fifteen players primed each other before running on to the field fired with resolve and gleaming with embrocation.

Uppermost in the thoughts of all those congregated in the back room at Gilhaffy's was how to get even with Jack Frost. Violence was outlawed since the team's greatest successes were achieved in the face of violence by the expedient of not reacting and by playing the game according to the rules.

As well as being poetic Jerry Maglane was also the strategist of the team. It was he who laid out the plan of play and it was he who might suddenly order a change of tactics which often turned defeat into victory. There is no element of humanity as potent or as loyal or as dangerous or as compassionate towards each other as the survivors of a once-successful football team. There is that quiet confidence in themselves. There is the certain knowledge that when they present a united front they can achieve anything. That is why none interfered with Jerry as he figured out a way to get even with Jack Frost.

He sat, isolated, humming and hawing to himself, scratching his nose, his forehead and his jaw in turn. He pulled upon his ear lobes as though they were the handles of pumps which would send mighty ideas gushing to his brain. From time to time they surveyed him anxiously.

‘Ah yes!' he announced triumphantly at the end of his deliberations, ‘I see it all now.'

Johnny Maglane placed a pint of stout in his brother's hand. Nobody knew better than he of the strain to which Jerry had been subjected while he deliberated. None would ask him to reveal his plan. All would be known in due course and this made the prospect of restitution all the sweeter.

Later when the lights had been dimmed in the back room and only the nucleus of the town's best-ever team remained, Jerry told of his requirements.

‘I will need,' said he, ‘our two best fielders and our best long passer. No more will I say till the deed is done and our comrade's honour is avenged.'

Here he laid a hand on the shoulder of Dinny as a tear moistened his eye and the lips that issued many a stern command on the playing field trembled with emotion.

‘All I will say to you,' he addressed himself to the former full forward, ‘is that under no circumstances are you to buy a solitary item for Christmas nor are you to utter a solitary word to any man or woman until our business is done.'

The nights passed slowly thereafter and as they did the Christmas fever mounted until its spirit was everywhere abroad. Two nights before the blessed event there was an extension of shopping hours until nine o'clock.

Shortly before the extension ended Johnny Maglane and his wife Pidge arrived at Jack Frost's supermarket ostensibly to purchase some groceries to tide them over the Christmas holiday.

‘I want you,' Johnny informed Pidge, ‘to engage Jack Frost in conversation. Make sure that his back is turned to me at all times.'

Pidge nodded eagerly. She was well aware that there was something afoot and she was only too eager to be part of it. Dinny ranked high among her friends and she was as anxious as the other conspirators to see the score settled. Also she had no doubt about her ability to engage and absorb Jack Frost in a long and interesting conversation. Jack, for his part, had often cast a longing eye in the direction of the footballer's wife.

‘Dang it!' he often whispered to himself, ‘I will never understand how those danged footballers with nothing in their heads wind up with such good-looking women. I mean,' he would continue to confide to himself, ‘what have they got that I haven't got and yet the best of women fall for these so-called athletes who, more often than not, kick the danged ball wide.'

It was a question that he would never successfully answer. When Pidge approached him and suggested they remove themselves to a quiet area he jumped at the opportunity and when they arrived at a secluded spot behind the dog-and-cat food pyramids he waited eagerly for some heart-lifting revelation. For a while she did not speak, for the good reason that she could think of nothing to say.

‘Well!' Jack Frost moved from one foot to the other.

‘Well!' Pidge echoed the question as she racked her brains for something to say.

‘Oh yes,' she said in a confidential tone as though what she was about to say had slipped her mind and had suddenly presented itself again.

‘I was wondering,' Pidge opened, ‘if you would consider joining our drama society?'

Jack Frost was astonished.

‘Me!' was all he could say.

‘I don't see why not.' Pidge was in full flight now. ‘I mean you have the appearance and you have the carriage. Carriage is ninety percent of acting. Then you're sharp. I mean you wouldn't have any trouble remembering lines. I'm sure you know the price of everything on those shelves and if you can memorise such prosaic things as prices you can memorise anything. Then there's your voice. It's so seductive and yet so resonant. Then there are your eyes, those come-to-bed eyes. Man dear you were born for the stage!'

It was at this stage of the conversation that the object whizzed by overhead.

‘What was that?' Jack asked, looking up anxiously but seeing nothing.

‘What was what?' Pidge asked although fully aware that something had passed by in the space above them.

‘Never mind, never mind!' Jack dismissed the intrusion and wished only for his unexpected veneration to continue. It was, in fact, a ten-pound trussed turkey enshrouded in plastic wrapping which had passed. It had been thrown by Pidge's husband Johnny who had lifted it from a display case and, when he was certain nobody was looking, flung it a full forty yards out through the main exit where it was beautifully fielded by his brother Jerry who passed it at least fifty more yards to the third Maglane brother Jimmy who fielded it with great skill before placing it in the open booth of his car. There followed a ham, cooked and wrapped, and if the Maglane brothers had fielded well in their respective heydays they fielded magnificently now but the skills of Jerry and Jimmy were shortly to be put to an unprecedented test by the oldest brother who, for good measure, had lifted a bottle of Cuvée Dom Perignon 1985 from the wine shelf, had lovingly handled it feeling its weight and balance and dispatched it faithfully and accurately into the waiting hands of the much-lauded fielder, his brother Jerry, who flung it in turn to the third brother Jimmy, who placed it beside the turkey and ham in the car booth.