Mrs Deborah Price-Parkinson was forty seven years old, and until this Christmas week had never taken a drink in her life. This, of course, does not quite explain why she was now sitting in an armchair singing ‘Silent Night’ in the front window of Price-Parkinson & Co’s Boutique, in Main Street.
Now, dear, gentle Deborah had never been one for demonstrative behaviour. On the contrary, her Wednesdays at the Chess Club, her hour of voluntary service for the Girl Guides and an occasional visit to the Writers’ Group indicated that poor Deborah was quite the small town’s ‘dullsville’.
Perhaps had she not occasionally taken to engage in quiet strolls down to the seashore, the overwhelming majority of the people might not even have been aware of her presence in this great big world of ours.
But let’s go back to the store. She is still in the chair? But, of course, would anyone dare dislodge the owner from such a position? She had been politely asked to withdraw from her position of prominence, by the store manager, one polite Mr Anderson, but this invitation had been declined and in the process, she had despatched a nice cup of tea and a slice of Christmas cake; in the general direction of ‘Lingerie’- Special Offer‘. She lay reclining in the chair, half asleep, but alert enough to foil any attempt to dislodge her.
Had dear Deborah been fully in tune with the Christmas parade in Main Street, she would have observed a number of bemused citizens gaping through the window, against which a driving wind, from the east, was hurtling seasonal snow.
This curious community comprised ‘corner boys’ glad to see a human touch added to the local big wigs of commerce; a Garda who felt that at Christmas some things are better neither seen nor heard, and a ‘wino’ who gave a jolly thumbs-up to one whom he thought was a fellow traveller with Bacchus.
All stared in wonder at the strange, if not sorry spectacle of Deborah Price-Parkinson lolling about in the chair with a fixed look of defiance on her face and her once lovely dark locks; now with whispers of grey, spread against the back of the bamboo armchair.
Some men, not too easily shocked, looked on with much amusement at poor, dear Deborah. But in their male way put down the ludicrousness of the situation to the menopause. They had found it easy to stare at Deborah. She had always kept her figure well with her walks and special vegetarian diet. And her essentially deep and sensitive nature which had attracted her to poetry readings at the Writers’ Group also now manifested itself in an aura which, despite that fixed look of defiance, almost shone through the by now darkening window behind which she sat.
So, despite the attentions of those in town, it emerged now that nobody was particularly over- bothered whether or not dear Deborah would spend Christmas in a shop window.
And that’s life and the way it is. And isn’t it amazing that you can put your whole self in a shop window and somehow nobody really cares… But on with our yarn.
And now this Christmas week it’s maybe an hour later, up in the other world in the window of Mrs Price Parkinson. She is stretching a little now, yawning and staring in puzzlement at her strange surroundings in the darkness of the window. By this time all the customers and staff of the boutique have gone home with a strange tale to tell their kin on this Christmas. Only the manager, polite Mr Anderson, a long-time and loyal employee, remains as a companion for the lady in the window.
Outside it’s still snowing and it’s been too cold for anyone to be standing around open- mouthed at the window. Anyway, even in small town in Ireland, you get used to even miracles. Deborah Price Parkinson sighs and groans with an unaccustomed headache. She groans because she realises her problem of problems has not gone away and anyway it is harder to think with a hangover. She accepts the proffered hand of polite Mr Anderson and descends with a little wobble from the elevated stand in the window. “Better?” Mr Anderson was as patronizing as ever. “That man is unflappable”, thought dear Deborah. “Oh, Mr Anderson. How long … oh dear”. She sat down in the chair in the office now. Then taking the glass of milk proffered by Mr Anderson she thought about what she could have done while drunk, if only momentarily, and again resumed her uneasy state which had propelled her into her first bout of unmitigated drunkenness. “I did a stupid thing, Mr Anderson.” Mr Anderson was infuriating. “Indeed, Mrs Price Parkinson”. Deborah felt, however, that she owed some sort of explanation, some gesture. … But all she could say was: “Isn’t it a little funny how you follow a charted course all your life and then for no apparent reason you throw maps to the wind…” She sensed his dutiful interest and decided to go no further. Again she felt that feeling of fury for the over accommodating boutique manager. But she spoke with fine dignity and composure. “I have two children, Mr Anderson, and in all my life, I never …my husband… and never… Christmas Eve and my little dears, Alan, Tracey, grew up and …now in America… It’s too late, I thought. Isn’t it? I mean ever… so dreadfully late. Do you understand?” Mr Anderson didn’t, but nodded in the affirmative, “I mean it’s so sad…”. The tears came to her eyes. “So utterly, utterly…” She stopped and cried for a moment into her handkerchief. “Does the world really care? Oh, I think not, Mr Anderson. I hope not”. The telephone rang and Mr Anderson lifted the receiver. “It’s for you, madam.” Deborah Price Parkinson hesitated, then took the receiver from the outstretched hand of Mr Anderson. “Yes…. Oh! Tracey!, Oh Alan… at the airport. In NewYork?Hello…the line is gone dead, Mr Anderson. Oh, isn’t it marvellous; my children are coming home! And I worried so much that they might not”. “I am happy for you, madam”, polite Mr Anderson informed her coldly. “My children are in New York and about to leave for Shannon and we will be a family again. Oh, I have not seen them for years and oh…” she bursts into uncontrollable tears.
Some hours later Mr. Anderson, over a beer in the only hotel in town, was anything but polite in his comments. “She’s an unmerciful witch, that woman. Every Christmas it’s the same bloody story. A bloody charade. “Oh, Mr Anderson, I have a little fantasy I want to act out for my forthcoming short story for the magazine”. She got drunk and had me spend two hours looking at her in the window of the boutique. On the busiest day of the year! That woman is mad, I tell you. Utterly nutterly”. Mr Anderson helped himself to a glass of Christmas spirits proffered by an understanding hotel manager. The hotel manager asked: “Has she really got a son and daughter in America?” Mr Anderson scowled darkly. “Don’t you start. As a matter of fact I was not even aware she was married”. He chuckled at this as if a preposterous idea. Then: “As for the fictional Tracey and Alan, I have not a clue. Utterly nutterly that woman”. He assumed a pose, “Oh, Alan, oh Tracey’. Every Christmas the same for the past twenty-one years, and this year the drunken amateur dramatics in the window thrown in for good measure. Utterly nutterly”. He sipped at his glass and repeated his allegation, “Utterly nutterly.”
The handsome couple on flight 28 over the Atlantic seemed as excited as young marrieds. Although obviously very close, one sensed, however, they were not young lovers. They held hands but again, not as lovers, but as if sharing a great moment. Which, indeed, it was. For it was their 21st birthday and even more marvellous moments lay ahead. Now both wondered just what the woman in the small town would look like and how she would react to their presence. Both she and they had spent many years tracing one another, since she had abandoned them as babies in New York. “I’ll bet she’ll really go wild when she sees us”, said Alan. “Pure out of her mind”, said Tracey, twin sister of Alan Price Parkinson.
END
Tom Ryan, “Iona”, Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
First, a reminder that limited copies of Tom Ryan’s recent successful book “The Cuppa Sugar Days” are still available from bookshops in Thurles and Nenagh, Co. Tipperary, making same the perfect present this year for Xmas.
It had been Eileen’s idea to bring Seamus over to New York for the Christmas. It was probably, Tom figured, what the poor ould ‘divil’ deserved. After all, he had not been on a holiday in his entire life, outside the village back home. Not that New York weather was any better than Ireland’s at this time of year, for sure. But hell, Eileen was right, a middle aged bachelor like Seamus would not have much of a Christmas on his own in that old run-down family farm that had been home for all ten of them, before time had reduced the family to just the two of them now.
Sure, it was the least they could do for Seamus. The States had been pretty good to himself and his wife, since they opted to move out of the ‘Old Country‘ over twenty years previously. Oh, sure there had been the Vietnam business, but he’d managed to avoid combat with his job in the Police Department, that had also ensured he and Eileen would never want again like they had when they first came to the States. He looked around the apartment and smiled to himself as he imagined what Seamus would make of the relative luxury of it all.
Eileen had taken the car to the airport and he’d figured he’d catch up on some work for the Department, while he waited for them. Though he hated paperwork more than the Broadway beat he’d once pounded. He rose from the couch and decided on a quick shave with the electric razor.
As he looked in the mirror he noticed the wrinkles, the red blotchy eyes from too many nights of overtime in the office; the heavy protruding belly; the paleness of his cheeks. The years were catching up on him. It was like that in a foreign land. You figured on staying a while. You got opportunity and you got old, and pretty soon, what with the kids grown- up and working away from home, you began to realise that one way or another, you were stuck with the land of your adoption. But, he figured, it was better than being on the dole in Ireland, with constantly living under a rain cloud.
Seamus! heck, he hadn’t seen Seamus for ten years. He hadn’t been able to go back to the Old Land for so long what with the lease on the apartment, the kids, the job and just about everything. He figured there wasn’t much to go back to now.
But Seamus had been faithful to the last, to the Old Land, he mused. He loved that old cabbage patch of forty bog acres in the Midlands and worked it night and day, though with nothing to show for it but constant demands from the bank, the new enemy for many a struggling farmer in the new Ireland, he thought. Why the heck Seamus bothered to put up with it all instead of selling out and heading for the States, he never knew. Here in America you worked and you had something to show for it at least. And he knew Seamus would never marry. Stubborn, proud traditionalist and bachelor that he was, until he could afford it.
Well, Seamus was heading on for forty years of age now. It was time he settled down with a woman. Eileen had joked in this Irish pub in Brooklyn the other night that Seamus could soon find a match in New York. Lots of thirty-something Irish exiles who had not met the right Irish/American fellow yet. Heck, the women of New York, unattached and many loaded, could do wonders for Seamus. He laughed to himself.
The doorbell rang. He lifted the chain, partially opened the door and peered out to see Eileen smiling back at him through the aperture. He lifted the door chain and fully opened the door to see the bold Seamus; red faced from the winds and rain of the Irish Midlands; staring at him with a big broad grin on his ruddy complexion, singing “Sliabh na mBan”, all over the corridor. Seamus was going out of his mind, but in jovial form, nonetheless. “I stopped all the traffic with a wave of my hand,” he shouted to all of New York, with a sweeping gesture of his hands.
The sight of his brother there in his navy blue suit, probably purchased in the street market at home, with a great mass of tossed dark hair and the manly sturdy shape of a blacksmith, strong and resolute, despite the alcohol, amazed him. Or was it just himself getting older.
With great emotion which had lain dormant for many years, he hugged his brother who grinned into his face and asked where he, Tom, kept the booze. He knew Seamus was not a habitual drinker, but had probably got sloshed on the plane coming over to assuage his terror at the thought of flying over the thousands of miles of the Atlantic ocean. Eileen led Seamus into the apartment, happier than Tom had seen her in quite a while, and she began to join him in the chorus until the two of them were off on a drunken duet. For it appeared that Seamus had insisted on both Eileen and himself getting “some nourishment” in a bar in Brooklyn where Seamus said he “knew a fella”. Tom grinned at them both and asked Seamus what was he having. “Oh, anything at all to kill the terrible drought I got from that stuffy flying machine…Tom. I got to tell you something …You better use some influence down at the Department. We both got a booking for singing ‘The Boys of the Old Brigade’ and ‘The Rifles of the I.R.A’ down on the sidewalks”.
Eileen laughed at the recollection of the incident. “That bleddy cop must be the son of an Englishman”, chuckled Seamus. “I’ll go get something from the icebox”, said Tom. Seamus laughed out loud at this. “Ice box? Ice box? Do you know how I once used keep the butter and Guinness at home? Buried in a biscuit tin in the haggard. And that way no bright spark could take away my little supply while I was gone to the market! Joking, of course” “It’s a great country, America” Seamus continued, “Everything is so instant. Eileen tells me if I go down to Forty Second Street, I’d even get a woman in an instant. Well, isn’t that a terror”.
There were so many things he had planned on asking Seamus about the Old Country. He was a little disappointed that Seamus was probably not in the right frame of mind for that now. Still, he directed a perfunctory question at his brother. He mentioned a few names he’d known before he’d left Ireland. “Oh, you mention that Ryan lady, Tom. Did you know she married the Hurler Hennessey?Mary Ryan; Didn’t you take her to the ceili in Ballycullane many times…you old dog”? Tom reflected on this. Mary Ryan. Lord what a girl! He’d nearly married her. But wide eyed boyo he was, he’d nearly married every one until the thought of having to support a family on little or nothing, had led him and then, eventually, Eileen to the States.
Seamus slumped down onto the couch after first having inspected it with a reverential eye. “Eh, begod, this contraption is so classy looking you could sit down on the floor and throw sugar at it. Not like my old form beside the Stanley 9 range, back home. And I thought that was modern.”
“You’ll be great company for us, Seamus. Christmas is quiet in New York, now that the family are all grown up,” ventured Eileen. “Ah, sure Christmas is quiet everywhere.” Seamus said: “Only a time for remembering, and I’m not sure that’s such a healthy thing. Life has to go on. Now, how’s about an ould song again, Tom? Would you have a drop of the craythur at all while I listen to it.” “Oh, sure, I forgot. Won’t be a jiffy”, said Tom “The man that made time made plenty of it. Go on, I’m parched”, Seamus replied.
Seamus had indeed quickly adapted to his new surroundings. “Any news from home?” Eileen asked, as Tom left the lounge to get the drinks. “Ah, the usual. Lots of deaths, a few marriages and little enough children nowadays, with the new form of family planning which says any more than two babies is not economical anymore. And of course the young ones are all building the nest first nowadays, before they manage to get the bird. Baw ways the country is going. But sure whatever keeps people happy is the important thing”, Seamus replied. “You seem happy enough yourself, Seamus,” said Eileen. “Too busy on the land for thinking otherwise”, said Seamus. “I keeps me head above water, just about. Short of nothing, if it’s little more than nothing itself I have. Farmers complaint, I suppose.” He laughed and went off with a verse of the song, ‘The Poor, Poor Farmer’.
Tom came back with the drinks and laid down the glasses on the table by the couch. Seamus and Eileen grabbed their glasses and Tom, glass in hand, toasted: “Merry Christmas”, and so the talk and the gossip and singing and drinking went on until the early hours.
In the days that followed the three of them hit the bars of New York where Seamus, fine tenor that he was, delighted the Americans and Irish Americans alike with his rebel songs, his tribal Irish jokes, his Fianna Fáil politics, which amounted to his assertion that the British were very fond of Ireland, for hadn’t they come here on a visit eight hundred years before and were slow to depart from a good thing.
Seamus had success with romance too. There was a secretary from County Mayo, a policewoman from Tipperary and a young hotel receptionist from Limerick were virtually his constant companions throughout his Christmas sojourn in New York. He even managed to get into a chat with the Governor of New York and told him a thing or two about budgeting, learned in the hard school of life on a small Irish farm.
The time with Seamus flew and Tom and Eileen laughed and sang like they had not thought it possible for them. It got so their phone was hopping with various sections of New York Society actually begging for them to send over Seamus to their parties. There were even job offers, including one from the New York Police Department which involved working with horses. “You know I don’t think he’ll ever leave us”, Eileen remarked jokingly to Tom one night when Seamus was out on his “constituency duties”, as he called his visits to various parts of New York.
It was when he returned from one of these forays into the nightlife of the city that Tom popped the question. “Seamus, would you ever consider selling out over there and coming over here? Sure, you have half of New York rootin’ for you“.
For the first time since his arrival in the States, Seamus, now ensconced on the couch with a bottle of whiskey in his hand, had a serious look at him. “Are you mad? Sure I’d die of loneliness in no time.” replied Seamus. “You are joking,” Eileen laughed. “No, Eileen”, said Seamus. “For I hold that a man may leave the land, but the land will never leave him. I know it’s a struggle and I could strangle my bank-manager as soon as I’d choke a chicken, but, God, woman, it’s the struggle that counts. Them bog acres could break your heart, fighting against them and only holding your own. But it’s more than many can do”, Seamus continued. “But you have nothing to show for it all, Seamus”, said Tom. “Aye, little you remember about the land”, said Seamus. “Sure it’s me life blood as much as it was for Scarlett O’Hara in that film, “Gone with the Wind”. I’m married to it for better or for worse. Besides, the ‘Old Country’ is not in the best of health, and with no family commitments the least I can do is to stand my ground for the flag and do what little I can. I’m lucky I can do that.”
Then Seamus laughed: “But I’m after having a great ould craic of a holiday, thanks to ye both. And say nothing but I’ll be bringing a certain secretary from Mayo home with me- to manage my farm accounts, you might say.” “You’re joking”, Tom laughed incredulously. “Divil a bit”, said Seamus, “She proposed and I didn’t oppose, but proudly accepted. She’s a grand woman. A farmer’s daughter who knows the land and a great ould laugh into the bargain. Even without the ould jar down.” “Honest to God, Seamus, but you’re the happiest man on God’s earth,” said Eileen. Tom smiled, looked around his luxurious apartment, and thought of the ageing face that he had seen in the mirror the other day and the long hours of work in a dingy downtown office to keep up a lifestyle in a country not his own. “Aye, Seamus”, he said, “That you are, the happiest man on earth.”
End
Tom Ryan, “Iona” Rahealty, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
The Laureate for Irish Fiction, Colm Tóibín, hosts ‘The Art of Reading’ Podcast in Cashel Library.
Maura Barrett, Cashel Library, Reports: –
The ‘Art of Reading’ is a monthly book club hosted by Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet Colm Tóibín, the Laureate for Irish Fiction. It is available to library book clubs across the country and offered as an online event for readers and booklovers everywhere on the last Thursday of every month.
Since February, the Laureate has met a different library book club each month to discuss a novel by an Irish writer, highlighting outstanding Irish writing and celebrating the reader and book clubs.
In November 2022, Colm Tóibín comes to the bookclubs in Cashel Library, where he will record live his podcast that will be aired live on the last Thursday in the month, through the Arts Council website and social media
The selected titles include new work by contemporary Irish writers as well as novels from the past, that the Laureate wishes to bring to a new generation of readers.
Readers, book lovers and book clubs everywhere are invited to join in the Art of Reading with the Laureate, to read these outstanding books and to engage in reading in a deep and focused way.
The Poet Laureate will discuss Elizabeth Bowen’s ‘The Last September’ with noted Cork Novelist and Poet Thomas McCarthy, before opening the discussion out to the Book Clubs.
Note: There are a limited number of spaces available to interested readers for this event and early booking is advised. Please contact Maura Barrett in Cashel Library on Tel: 062 63825, to secure a place at this event.
Colm Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in 1955. He studied at University College Dublin and lived in Barcelona between 1975 and 1978. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of books and a contributing editor at the London Review of Books. Between 2006 and 2013 he was a member of the Irish Arts Council. He has twice been Visiting Stein Writer at Stanford University and has also been a visiting writing at the University of Texas at Austin. He taught at Princeton from 2009 to 2011 and was Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester in 2011. He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia and Chancellor of Liverpool University. He is President of Listowel Writers Week and a member of the Board of Druid Theatre. His second collection of stories ‘The Empty Family’, published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor Prize. His book of essays on Henry James ‘All a Novelist Needs’, appeared also in 2010. Also, in 2012, his novel ‘The Testament of Mary’ was published and short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. In April 2013, ‘The Testament of Mary’ opened on Broadway, with Fiona Shaw, and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. In 2013 it was released as an audiobook with Meryl Streep. Colm Toibin’s novel ‘Nora Webster’, published in 2014, won the Hawthornden Prize. His ‘On Elizabeth Bishop’, published in 2015, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His ninth novel ‘House of Names’ appeared in 2017. In May 2017, he co-curated ‘Henry James and American Painting’ at the Morgan Library.
By Scottish Novelist, Essayist, Poet and Travel Writer Robert Louis Stevenson. (1850 – 1894).
I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me, And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head; And I see him jump before me, when I jump into bed.
The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow, Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow, For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball, And he sometimes gets so little that there’s none of him at all.
He hasn’t got a notion of how children ought to play, And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way. He stays so close beside me, he’s a coward you can see, I’d think shame to stick to nursie, as that shadow sticks to me.
One morning, very early, before the sun was up, I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup, But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head, Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.
Bullán stones (From the Irish word meaning a bowl, describing the bowl-like depressions in the stone), were used as ‘Cursing stones’ or ‘Curing stones’. They consist of a stone with one or more depressions in it and date from the Neolithic period. They are sometimes located near early monastic sites.
As ‘Curing Stones’ women sometimes cured people by rolling these stones.
However, when used as a ‘Cursing stone’; did you know the last time the stone were ‘turned’ on Inishmurray Island, latter 7km off the coast of Co. Sligo, they were ‘turned’ to curse Hitler and resulted in the fall of the 3rd Reich?
Did you know the ‘Cursing Stone’ was ‘turned’ against the HMS Wasp, when it tried to evict non rent paying families on Tory Island, latter off the north-west coast of Co. Donegal, during the Great Famine (1845- 1849); same resulting on the ship being wrecked on the rocks, with just 6 of its 48 passengers only being saved?
“We in Cashel Library, would be delighted to see you, if you can make this informative lecture. I’ve done a lot of research on this subject, so all are welcome on Friday morning, October 28th next @ 11:00am, to Cashel Library, but do remember to RSVP Cashel Library by Telephone please, to 062-63825.”
In the meantime, should you accidently stumble across ‘Cursing stones’ that may have been previously overlooked, be sure not to disturb same, as they may already have been cursed. Warning: Turning these stones anti-clockwise or against the sun, who knows what could happen.
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