An Irish Christmas Feast (33 page)

Rather than sell the business he closed it on his ninetieth birthday and retired to a local old-folks home where he spent the remainder of his days. He regularly visited the premises where he spent his entire life and when he died his last will and testament revealed that the sole beneficiary from his estate was none other than Dotie.

When Bustler withdrew from his business the same notion of retiring occurred to Canon Cornelius Coodle – but he quickly dismissed the thought when it dawned on him that he would be contributing to the unprecedented scarcity of priests in the diocese. He told himself that he would be the last man to leave down the side.

‘I'll die in my harness,' he told the wrinkled face which confronted him in the mirror of his bedroom.

After late mass that night he withdrew to the sitting-room with Fr Sinnott. The canon raised his brimming glass of port and wished his senior curate the compliments of the season. Fr Sinnott responded and sipped from his tumbler of Jameson.

‘Ah!' he exclaimed as Dotie and Hannie entered, ‘the ladies are with us.'

Both priests rose and toasted the fresh arrivals who returned the seasonal compliments by touching the extended glasses of the clergymen with the delicate sherry glasses shapely and brimming. As they settled into their chairs the canon began to reminisce about past events in his life as was his wont on Christmas Eve. He noted, for all his pre-occupation with other days, that all was not well with Dotie. It was Hannie who explained that Dotie was facing up to the fact that she would not see her father again and worse still that she could not remember sitting on his lap when she was a little girl.

‘What age would he be now if he was alive?' Fr Sinnott asked with no little amazement.

‘One hundred and twelve,' Dotie replied without a moment's hesitation as the tears flowed down her face.

Fr Sinnott extended his hands in her direction after placing his glass on the floor beneath his chair. Dotie handed her glass to her friend Hannie and a new hope surged within her. The senior curate's powerful hands were still extended towards her, the same hands that had subdued countless ambitious full forwards and the same hands that once held aloft the county championship Gaelic football trophy which was his inalienable right as captain. In his lap Dotie looked up into his face and in a little girl's voice asked the question which had been troubling her so much in recent times.

‘Will I see my dad again?' she asked.

‘Of course you will,' Fr Sinnott assured her

‘But will he know me?'

‘Will he what!' Fr Sinnott shouted, ‘you'll be sore for six months woman for the squeezing he'll give you.'

A radiant smile adorned the tear-stained face of Dotie.

‘And my mother!' she directed the question at Canon Coodle.

‘Of course, of course,' Canon Coodle assured her, ‘she'll be there at the gates of heaven by your father's side and the three of you will enter heaven together.'

Dotie's eyes were closed in bliss. Fr Sinnott rose with his charge cradled in his arms. He walked round the room a few times humming softly and paused in front of his canon's armchair. ‘You take her for a while,' he said, ‘and I'll fill another drink.'

Canon Coodle placed her carefully on his lap and gently kissed her on the forehead. A succession of reassuring and audible murmurs escaped him before he cleared his throat and crooned a lullaby from the Gaelic. It had been his grandmother's song when he was a small boy.

There's many a regal gander no more than a skeleton in his pelt. How often did goose buyers find it out in the past to their cost? It's different these days when geese and ganders arrive on the Christmas market deprived of their downy raiments, their feathers and their wings. One can easily tell the elderly from the prime and if they are mass-produced itself the buyer will not be duped and if they lack the true flavour of pasture-land geese at least the flesh can be eaten if boiled or roasted properly.

Country people used to believe in those distant days that the shore gander was the best proposition of all because of his delightful flavour. His diet, apart from grass and his daily saucer of yellow meal, consisted mainly of molluscs, cuttle fish, slokawn or sloke and lavenworth. Is it any wonder there was such demand for shore ganders! It was also believed that the soup from boiled ganders of the seashore species was a priceless antidote for scrofulous diseases as well as being a proven booster for middle-aged and elderly males whose romantic input into their marital obligations was declining. After a few plates of shore-gander soup they generally excelled themselves.

Every time there is a Christmas in the offing my thoughts unfailingly turn to geese. Some people prefer turkeys while more have a preference for ducks and drakes and cockerels but it's the goose for me, the roast stuffed goose preceded by giblet soup. My mouth waters as I summon up remembrance of bygone ganders. Just before this very Christmas I engaged two from a country cousin, a woman of impeccable credentials in the matter of geese and ganders. In dark moments and troublesome times I think of these very geese, browned and roasted, and my heart soars like an uprising lark.

If you have ever been taken down in the purchase of a goose, that is to say if you buy an old goose thinking it to be a young goose, you will never again engage geese hastily nor will you buy at random from any Tom, Dick or Harry. To be quite candid I would put the same amount of preparation and planning into the purchase of a goose as I would into the robbing of a bank. Too many times in the past I was taken down by otherwise honest people. In the countryside it was never considered a dishonest act to dispose of elderly or decrepit geese to gullible townies. Old geese must be sold and who better to sell them to than townies. Few townies knew the identities or dwelling-places of goose producers so the producer is generally safe from retaliation. In addition nearly all people who sold geese looked alike. That is to say they were possessed of kind, honest faces especially these who foisted off ancient birds on the unwary and unsuspecting.

In my boyhood Christmases you would always find the rogue producers in that corner of the market where the donkey and pony transports were thickest and the smiling saleswomen would always call you sir, even if you were the biggest rogue in the world. Luckily for me I have now, near the end of my days, accrued some experience in the engaging and purchase of geese.

At the tender age of twelve I was sent to the market-place in my native town having been commissioned to invest in a prime goose for an elderly neighbour who should have known better. She was too old to go herself and even at the age of eighty she still had a good deal of faith in humanity. It was foolishly presumed at the time that I was street-wise. The word had yet to make its way into our everyday vocabulary. Crafty was the word used in those days but unfortunately I was not crafty enough to match the wily and seasoned dealers anxious to dispose of ancient geese.

Earlier that morning I received a short instruction in the ways of geese. Old geese, for instance, like their human counterparts were somewhat listless. Their eyes too were lack-lustre. Their beaks were worn down and were of a darker hue than those of young geese. The laipeens were wrinkled and coarse. These were some of the better-known defects to be found in geese and ganders of advanced years. This information was conveyed to me by the husband of the good lady who liked a goose for Christmas. He reminded me too that young ganders were aggressive, raucous chaps who liked to flap their wings and intimidate people going about their lawful business. Armed with this vast array of knowledge and clutching two florins in my trousers' pocket I entered the market. In those days trousers generally accommodated only one pocket and the lining was never truly trustworthy. Holes infiltrated and coins disappeared. Heartbreak followed and hunger too and all sorts of deprivation especially if the sum was substantial.

Great was the clamour of geese and turkeys in the market-place not to mention ducks, drakes, hens and chickens. For once there were more women than men. It was held by even the most hostile of males in those days that turkey money was female money and should be used by females as they saw fit but the truth was that most of the money was spent on special commodities which would sweeten and brighten Christmas in the home.

As I moved here and there I was obliged to pick my steps. Ass- and pony-rails cluttered the scene. Everywhere bargains were being struck and satisfied clients were departing with cross-winged braces of prime fowl. So numerous were the geese on every side that I hardly knew where to begin. I was almost overcome by the great and colourful array of transports and country folk, by the quick-fire exchanges of notes and silver, by the back-slapping and hand-slapping as bargains were struck and by the many minor altercations which eventually came to nought. It was almost too much for me and I fervently wished that I hadn't been saddled with so much responsibility.

‘Ah!' said a friendly voice behind me. ‘It's yourself is it' – with that he thrust out his hand and almost shook it free from my elbow joint with the shaking he gave it. I had never seen him before in my life but the more I examined his friendly face the more I began to recognise certain familiar traits. I didn't know it then but what I recognised were constituents common to the universal face of roguery. It was the friendliness of his smile that disarmed me and exposed my defence.

‘I know what brought you,' he said, ‘you're looking for a turkey for your mother.'

‘No,' I told him, ‘I'm looking for a goose for oul' Maggie Sullivan.'

‘If you are,' said he, ‘you'd better draw away from here,' and he winked in the most conspiratorial way you ever saw. I followed him past rails of gobbling turkeys, quacking ducks and hissing ganders.

‘Half of these,' my new-found friend announced, indicating the owners of the fowl all around us, ‘would nick the eye out of your head or,' said he in a loud whisper into my ear, ‘if you was innocent enough to stick out your tongue that's the very last you'd see of it.'

He stopped at a corner of the market where an elderly, shawled woman with a wrinkled face was attending to an ass-rail of geese. She had, I recall to this very day, the kindest and homeliest face one could wish to see. Her voice was soft and sweet and as near to Gaelic in sound and rhythm as English could be. More to the point she had geese for sale.

‘Stall-fed, every one of 'em,' she boasted, ‘and not one of 'em that isn't a Michaelmas goose for sure.'

I had heard of Michaelmas geese or Green geese before this. What the term meant was that they had matured and would have been ready to eat at Michaelmas which falls on 29 September. However for extra substance and flavour they would have been confined to stalls or small out-houses till it was time for the Christmas market. The confinement meant that they would be unable to move about as much as geese normally do in the grazing area out of doors. Consequently the thighs would be less muscular and far more edible when cooked and also that the breast would be possessed of more meat and would be more succulent.

My newly acquired friend was now standing in the rail conducting a closer inspection of its occupants. They hissed and honked as he lifted them one by one to make sure that there was no impostor among them. When he had concluded his examination he explained my predicament, how my purchasing power was restricted to four shillings and how I had been warned about dishonest vendors who would think nothing of fobbing off an elderly goose on an innocent townie.

‘Oh may the good God succour us all,' said the old woman, ‘and may God in his mercy preserve us, the young and the old and the innocent, from them that would wrong law-abiding people. May the flames of hell singe their yalla hides and may St Peter turn 'em back at the gates of heaven and keep them waiting for a hundred years.' She made the sign of the cross with her Rosary beads and would have continued with her excoriation had not my friend raised his hand to his lips to remind her that the evening light would soon be fading and there was a long road home.

‘This man is a townie,' he explained, ‘and you may be sure he has other business that needs looking after.'

‘What about this one?' my friend was asking.

‘No, no, no,' she was quick to reply, ‘that oul' codger only came along as a companion so's the others wouldn't be too nervous on the journey. There's a sweet young gander over in the corner,' she went on, ‘in the peak of condition and only out of the stall this morning.'

‘Is this the lad?' my friend asked as he lifted aloft a large, hissing specimen for my approval.

‘Oh the weight of him!' he cried, ‘and the tenderness of him! How much are you asking for him?'

‘Oh he can't be sold at all,' said the old woman, ‘he's engaged by the superintendent of the civic guards.'

‘Tell us what you're asking for him anyway?'

‘I'm asking four shillings,' she replied reluctantly, ‘but 'twould want to be handed over straightaway in case the superintendent comes along and demands what's rightfully his.'

‘Sealed!' My friend extended a grimy hand for my two florins and when they had been transferred to his I found myself with the gander in my hands. My friend hurried me out of the market by a circuitous route lest, as he put it himself, I wind up in the dungeon. All the time he kept his eyes open for the presence of the superintendent and his minions.

‘We'll do 'em yet!' he kept shouting, ‘we'll do 'em yet!' and so we did for in a very few minutes I found myself at Maggie Sullivan's door clutching my prize.

‘May God comfort us this night,' she cried out when she beheld the gander. She stood back from the pair of us to have a better look at my purchase.

‘He's one age with myself,' she wept, ‘if he isn't older and look at the beak worn away by him.' She called her husband and between them they set up a frightening lamentation. There was nothing for it but to return to the market, recover our two florins and invest in a younger specimen. In the market I led Maggie and her husband to the corner where the old woman had her rail but there was no sign of her. We searched the three other corners but she was nowhere to be seen. The bother was that all the old women we saw wore shawls and all had wrinkled, innocent, homely faces and you'd never believe from looking at them that any single one of them was capable of fobbing off an elderly gander on an innocent townie.