The Teapots Are Out and Other Eccentric Tales from Ireland (11 page)

‘What can it mean?' he asked himself. Had there been an invasion of some kind? Had some unprecedented disaster struck the valley? He withdrew a poitcheen bottle from underneath the thatch and positioned himself on the pier of a gate the better to view the goings-on in the valley. Lights in their hundreds came and went. With over half the contents of the bottle safely tucked away the Cowboy decided that the activities
down below merited his personal attention. He decided to bring the bottle with him for company. By the time he reached the Fizzel farmhouse which had seemed to him to be the nub of the bustle he saw only the sleeping figures by the fire. Cautiously he entered and surveyed the scene. On the table standing out from several empty contemporaries was a full bottle of whiskey. Since he had long since emptied his own bottle he put this welcome find to his head and downed at least two glasses in one long, single swallow. It was quite palatable although a lightweight concoction compared to his own home-made draughts. He sensed rather than saw that the cause of all the earlier comings and goings was to be found in the room so romantically flooded by flickering candle-light. He was not prepared for the sight which met his eyes. He stood with his mouth open for several moments utterly overcome by the radiant loveliness of the smiling lady who occupied the bed. It was this very smile which gave him the courage to advance a step or two. The Cowboy Cooney up until this moment had always been the very soul of shyness. This was no longer the case. The smile on the face of this wonderful woman on whom he had never before laid eyes had given him poise and confidence. He could see that she wished him to sit on the side of the bed. This he did and at once launched into the story of his life. He wept throughout the tragic aspects and the smile on her face seemed to change to one of sympathy. Emboldened by her obvious fondness for him he took her hand not noticing the coldness.

‘Will you marry me?' he asked.

At this she merely smiled but he could see that it was a smile of consent. What a placid, sensitive, modest creature she was.

‘Then you'll be mine?' he asked. Again the affirming smile.

‘There is no need to speak,' he told her, ‘your smile has spoken for you.'

Gently he lifted her into his arms and staggered into the kitchen where he addressed the sleeping inmates.

‘I am taking this woman to be my lawful wedded wife,' he announced. ‘If any man here has anything to say let him speak now or forever hold his peace.'

He waited for a reply and was rewarded with an assortment of drunken snores which he took to mean approval. Triumphantly he blundered into the night. Next morning they were discovered by a group of school-children. Jule Fizzell was cradled in the arms of Cowboy Cooney. The serene smile on his face was matched only by that on the face of the corpse. He snored blissfully. She made no sound at all.

When, later in the day, the news was relayed to Dousie O‘Dea she smiled to herself. She had reached the final pinnacle. Her life's work was complete. For one man she had brought the dead to life. For this, in itself, she would be remembered beyond the grave.

Polly Baun did not hate Christmas as some of her more uncharitable neighbours would have people believe. She merely disliked it. She was once accused by a local drunkard of trying to call a halt to Christmas. She was on her way out of church at the time and the drunkard, who celebrated his own form of mass by criticising the sermon while he leaned against the outside wall of the church, was seen to push her on the back as she passed the spot where he leaned. As a result Polly Baun fell forward and was rendered immobile for a week. She told her husband that she had slipped on a banana skin because he was a short-tempered chap. However, he found out from another drunkard who frequented the same tavern that Polly had been pushed. When he confronted her with his findings she reluctantly conceded that the second drunkard had been telling the truth.

‘You won't do anything rash!' she beseeched him.

‘I won't do anything rash,' Shaun Baun promised, ‘but you will have to agree that this man's energies must be directed in another direction. I mean we can't have him pushing women to the ground because he disagrees with their views. I mean,' he continued in what he believed to be a reasonable tone, ‘if this sort of thing is allowed to go on unchecked no woman will be safe.'

‘It doesn't worry me in the least,' Polly Baun assured him.

‘That may be,' he returned, ‘but the fact of the matter is
that no woman deserves to be pushed to the ground.'

Polly Baun decided that the time had come to terminate the conversation. It was leading nowhere to begin with and she was afraid she might say something that would infuriate her husband. He flew off the handle easily but generally he would return to his normal state of complacency after a few brief moments.

As Christmas approached, the street shed its everyday look and donned the finery of the season. Polly Baun made one of her few concessions to Christmas by buying a goose. It was a young goose, small but plump and, most importantly, purchased from an accredited goose breeder. It would suit the two of them nicely. There were no children and there would be no Christmas guests and Polly who was of a thrifty disposition judged that there would also be enough for Saint Stephen's Day. She did not need to be thrifty. The hat shop behind which they lived did a tidy business. The tiny kitchen at the rear of the shop served a threefold purpose all told. As well as being a kitchen it was also a dining area and sitting-room. They might have added on but Polly failed to see the need for this. She was content with what she had and she felt that one of the chief problems with the world was that people did not know when they were well off.

‘They should be on their knees all day thanking God,' she would tell her husband when he brought news of malcontents who lived only to whine.

Shaun Baun sought out and isolated his wife's attacker one wet night a week before Christmas. The scoundrel was in the habit of taking a turn around the town before retiring to the pub for the evening. Shaun Baun did not want to take advantage of him while he might be in his cups and besides he wanted
him sober enough to fully understand the enormity of his transgressions.

‘You sir!' Shaun Baun addressed his victim in a secluded side street, ‘are not a gentleman and neither are you any other kind of man. You knocked my wife to the ground and did not bother to go to her assistance.'

‘I was drunk,' came back the reply.

‘Being drunk is not sufficient justification for pushing a woman to the ground.'

‘I was told,' the drunkard's voice was filled with fear, ‘that she hates Christmas.'

‘That is not sufficient justification either,' Shaun insisted. The drunkard began to back off as Shaun assumed a fighting pose.

‘Before I clobber you,' Shaun Baun announced grimly, ‘I feel obliged to correct a mistaken impression you have. My wife does not hate Christmas as you would infer. My wife simply discourages Christmas which is an entirely different matter.' So saying Shaun feinted, snorted, shuffled and finally landed a nose-breaking blow which saw the drunkard fall to the ground with a cry of pain. At once Shaun extended a helping hand and brought him to his feet where he assured him that full retribution had been extracted and that the matter was closed.

‘However,' Shaun drew himself up to his full height which was five feet one and a half inches, ‘if you so much as look at my wife from this day forth I will break both your legs.'

The drunkard nodded his head eagerly, earnestly indicating that he had taken the warning to heart. He would, in the course of time, intimidate other women but he would never thereafter have anything to do with Polly. For her part Polly
would never know that an assault had taken place. Shaun would never tell her. She would only disapprove. She would continue to discourage Christmas as was her wont and, with this in mind, she decided to remove all the chairs from the kitchen and place them in the backyard until Christmas had run its course. If, she quite rightly deduced, there were no chairs for those who made Christmas visits they would not be able to sit down and, therefore, their visits would be of short duration.

On the day before Christmas Eve the hat shop was busy. Occasionally when a purchase was made the wearer would first defer to Polly's judgement. This, of course, necessitated a trip to the kitchen. The practice had been in existence for years. Countrymen in particular and confirmed bachelors would make the short trip to the kitchen to have their hats or caps inspected. On getting the nod from Polly Baun they would return to the shop and pay Shaun for their purchases. Sometimes Polly would disapprove of the colour and other times she would disapprove of the shape. There were times when she would shake her head because of the hat's size or because of its rim or because of its crown. Shaun Baun's trade flourished because his customers were satisfied and the shy ones and the retiring ones and the irresolute ones left the premises safe in the knowledge that they would not be laughed at because of their choice of head-gear.

As time passed and it became clear that the union would not be blessed with children Polly Baun became known as the woman who hated Christmas. Nobody would ever say it to her face and certainly nobody would say it to her husband's face. It must be said on behalf of the community that none took real exception to her stance. They were well used to Christmas
attitudes. There was a tradesman who resided in the suburbs and every year about a week before Christmas he would disappear into the countryside where he rented a small cabin until Christmas was over. He had nothing personal against Christmas and had said so publicly on numerous occasions. It was just that he couldn't stand the build-up to Christmas what with the decorations and the lighting and the cards and the shopping and the gluttony to mention but a few of his grievances.

There was another gentleman who locked his door on Christmas Eve and did not open it for a month. Some say he simply hibernated and when he reappeared on the street after the prescribed period he looked as if he had. He was unshaven and his hair was tousled and his face was gaunt as a corpse's and there were black circles under his eyes.

Then there were those who would go off the drink for Christmas just because everybody else was going on. And there were those who would not countenance seasonal fare such as turkeys or geese or plum pudding or spiced beef. One man said he would rather an egg and another insisted that those who consumed fowl would have tainted innards for the rest of their days.

There were, therefore, abundant precedents for attitudes like Polly Baun's. There were those who would excuse her on the grounds that maybe she had a good and secret reason to hate Christmas but mostly they would accept what Shaun said, that she simply discouraged it.

There had been occasions when small children would come to the door of the kitchen while their parents searched for suitable hats. The knowing ones would point to where the silhouette of the woman who hated Christmas was visible
through the stained glass of the doorway which led from the shop to the kitchen. One might whisper to the others as he pointed inwards ‘that's the woman who hates Christmas!' If Polly heard, she never reacted. Sometimes in the streets, during the days before Christmas, she would find herself the object of curious stares from shoppers who had just been informed of her pet aversion by friends or relations. If she noticed she gave no indication.

Shaun also felt the seasonal undercurrents when he visited his neighbourhood tavern during the Christmas festivities. He drank but little, a few glasses of stout with a friend but never whiskey. He had once been a prodigious whiskey drinker and then all of a sudden he gave up whiskey altogether and never indulged again. No one knew why, not even his closest friends. There was no explanation. One night he went home full of whiskey and the next night he drank none. There was the inevitable speculation but the truth would never be known and his friends, all too well aware of his fiery temper, did not pursue the matter. Neither did they raise the question of his wife's Christmas disposition except when his back was turned but like most of the community they did not consider it to be of any great significance. There was, of course, a reason for it. There had to be if one accepted the premise that there was a reason for everything.

On Christmas Eve there was much merriment and goodwill in the tavern. Another of Shaun Baun's cronies had given up whiskey on his doctor's instructions and presumed wrongly that this might well have been the reason why Shaun had forsaken the stuff. Courteously but firmly Shaun informed him that his giving up whiskey had nothing to do with doctors, that it was a purely personal decision. The night was spoiled
for Shaun Baun. Rather than betray his true feelings on such an occasion he slipped away early and walked as far as the outermost suburbs of the town, then turned and made his way homewards at a brisk pace. Nobody could be blamed for thinking that here was a busy shopkeeper availing himself of the rarer airs of the night whereas the truth was that his mind was in turmoil, all brought on by the reference to whiskey in the public house. Nobody knew better than Shaun why he had given up whiskey unless it was his wife.

As he walked he clenched and unclenched his fists and cursed the day that he had ever tasted whiskey. He remembered striking her and he remembered why and as he did he stopped and threw his arms upwards into the night and sobbed as he always sobbed whenever he found himself unable to drive the dreadful memory away. He remembered how he had been drinking since the early afternoon on that fateful occasion. Every time he sold a hat he would dash across the roadway to the pub with the purchaser in tow. He reckoned afterwards that he had never consumed so much whiskey in so short a time. When he closed the shop he announced that he was going straight to the public house and this despite his wife's protestations. She begged him to eat something. She lovingly entreated him not to drink any more whiskey, to indulge in beer or stout and he agreed and kissed her and then hurried off to surfeit himself with more whiskey. He would later excuse himself on the grounds that he was young and impetuous but he would never be able to excuse the use of his fist in that awful moment which would haunt him for the rest of his life. An oncoming pedestrian moved swiftly on to the roadway at the sight of the gesticulating creature who seemed to rant and rave as he approached. Shaun Baun moved relentlessly
onward, trying to dispel the memory of what had been the worst moment he had ever experienced but he still remembered as though it had happened only the day before.