The bell tolls for Rose

Fr Jason Murphy transports us back in time in his memories in his latest column Let the Busy World Be Hushed...

The bell rang over the door as one entered in of a Saturday morning in the month of June. Cars, 35s and 135s were lined the both sides of the street without on Holborn hill as menfolk sat in battered Volkswagens and Escorts, impatiently awaiting their wives to appear from within the shop, to return to the baling on this warm June day.

To enter in as a child it was as if one were stepping into another world as Rosie Reilly from the foot of the Barrack Hill sat on a stool in the middle of the floor, a mug of tea in her hand, oblivious to the people who tried to squeeze by her to get to the further end of the shop. Marian Boles to-ed and fro-ed at speed around the shelves, keeping at bay the awaiting customers, filling Rosie’s cardboard box with groceries that the young John McConnell, the shop boy, would wheel down the hill at speed to leave at Rosie’s door as she sat on and ceilied. Frank Rice sat on the step within smoking a John Player Blue, turning the cigarette on his tongue inside his mouth as Peggy Grey, stony faced, tried to ignore his taunting.

Anthony - Anthony stood tall inside the door, baling twine around his waist, a cap on his head, sweat on his brow, the sweet smell of the byre on his wellington boots as he took a long swig out of a bottle of Lucozade, light relief from the dusty hayfields as he waited on his wife, Nellie, to get the finishing touches to her perm in Sheila Gorby’s down the street. Sister Carmel floated in the door with the easiest of steps, emitting a hue of the beeswax polished halls of the convent, enquiring in whispered tones for a bag of blu to steep the altar cloths in preparation for the procession on Corpus Christi. Cissie Connolly was bent low over to the side along the shelves mooching for canned pears and peaches that’d do for the dessert with ice-cream come the morrow.

Maura McDonald, one of the two sisters who ran the shop, held sway in the front window in full view of the cars that passed by, playing a melodious tune on the cash register as she totted up the bill for Mrs Farrelly from across the way, only to be distracted by the sight of the Canon’s car pulling up on the street, putting her into an odious tizzy as he stepped through the door to the ring of the bell, being summoned forth by Maura, not having him to wait too long, so to settle his account from one of many red notebooks held in a box beneath the counter.

It was in the midst of this frenetic activity, all hands on deck, that Maura’s sister Kathleen, oblivious to the panic, chawed on a lump of ham down the back, a bit that came away from the half pound she was cutting for Susan McGovern who had visitors a-calling; chalk and cheese, Kathleen and Maura, one laid back and the other all go.

They had come in to the town from the townland of Grilly in the 1950s, a farmer’s daughters, to take over Coogan’s shop at the top of Holborn hill and ran it for over 50 years until Maura died. Every week, be it on pension day or Saturdays or after mass of a Sunday, the people travelled on bicycles and tractors and worn out cars to gather in and meet their neighbours from Derryarmush, Derryerry and Coragaloo. All shapes and sizes in all manner of dress were given a hearty welcome and therein all matters under Heaven were discussed from a new ferret to new potatoes to drag hunts around the place, there were births, deaths and marriages broadcast there before the advent of Northern Sound and, if one was sent for a message up the town, the first question you were asked on your return home, “was there any news from McDonald’s?”...

Here in their midst one could stand for a half hour or more in wait, hoping that one of the ladies who worked there wouldn’t catch your eye for a while at least as you absorbed the sights and smells in the shop around you; the longer you stood with your shopping list written out on blue notepaper for one the ladies to take from you, the more stories you could repeat when you returned to home.

Their family came to help on fair days and busy days, their nieces and nephews, each in their turn, their sisters in law; Maggie from Tunker and Rose who lived in the homeplace, the last of the McDonalds to remain after all had gone. She was one who talked and talked at length to all who entered in, in a wraparound apron and a bun in her hair, lingering with each as if in her own front room. She seemed to serve me more frequently than any of the others as I stood with my list in hand each and Mam would say she knew when I returned if Rose had served me as I’d be much longer coming home than if it were one of the others. She knew the hiding place for McCaldin’s batch, kept for those who ordered, and knew well not to cut a fatty bit of bacon knowing it’d be sent back.

On occasion Maura left the till and special guests who entered in were taken up the stairs in the middle of the shop, especially after mass of a Sunday morning, close neighbours whom the two women knew well, Big Lizzie Fitz, Sissy Bawn and Pat McCaul to name but a few. One wondered as a child what delights lay in wait for the three honoured guests as they chose from the array of cakes and buns on the shelves below. I used to dream of one day ascending the stairs and being treated to tea in their parlour room as one could hear the laughter and bellows of Big Cissie through the floorboards as she recounted tales that bent the assembled company of friends in aches of two in the room above.

But one after the other each of them died, Big Lizzie, Sissy and Pat McCaul; Maura, then Kathleen, each in their turn and, with them, there followed customers in headscarves and peak caps a clad from Derryerry, Tunker and Clonocey too and with the coming of the Celtic Tiger and self - checkouts with no waiting to do. The shop on the hill, it closed too.

And so as the mist hung over the bottoms in the townland of Grilly on Wednesday morning last and the Charolais cows stood wondering at the gate opposite Rose McDonald’s roadside home, memories of the shop and all its characters came flooding back to mind as I knelt at her bedside in the early morn and recited the prayers for the dying with the last of that generation of McDonalds associated with the shop. It was humbling, all these years later, to serve her as once she had served me as a boy in the shop on Holborn Hill, the lady in the wraparound apron with the bun in her hair, before she turned the road in the mist of the morning, and joined the assembled masses of neighbours and friends in a corner of Heaven known as McDonald’s shop.

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