Let the busy world be hushed: Lady of the gatehouse
- Fr Jason Murphy -
The downy feathers of the freshly plucked turkey clung to the branches of the Hawthorn tree which stood bare but for its berries that had hitherto survived the winter as other fluffy flecks of downy white fell onto the bare black ridges where upon sat the odd turnip and winter cabbage and the gangly stalks of Brussel sprouts awaiting their heads of tightly packed leaves to be plucked, one by one, for the Christmas dinner in the days to come. The bright rays of the mid-winter sun shone low through the dark branches of the tall beech trees which o’er hung the village that lay below, this village beyond the high walls of the demesne which ran from the Mill Damn and out the Scothouse Road.
Here inside the back door of the picturesque gatelodge which stood to the entrance of the Big House occupied by two sisters, the Misses White Veneables, hung an asphyxiated fat turkey, freshly plucked, its skin still warm to the touch, tied upside down by its feet with blue baling twine, the blood percolating from out its nostril onto the red tiled floor, drip by rhythmic drip, and there would hang until its blood had coagulated and its head had turned blue.
The kitchen table was covered in flour, raisins, and crab apple peels as the last of the mince pies and apple tarts were made ready as she rolled out the ball of dough into a thin layer to cover the chopped apples with an eiderdown of pastry, pale in colour to bake slowly in the sweltering heat of the well used Stanley oven. The kettle whistled on the red hot plate as socks hung from one end of the mantlepiece to the other on a wire line airing above, the sleeves of her mauve jumper rolled to the elbows as she plunged her fists into the cream mixing bowl to kneed yet another elastic ball of dough again and again.
The wireless crackling on top of the pull-down dresser played Count John McCormack singing from days long past ….’sleep in heavenly peace, oh sleep in heavenly peace’, as she looked out the window into the long meadow beyond and watched as her children in their knitted jumpers rolled the snow into great balls to form the shape of what was to become a snowman.
Ms Gladys, one of the two sisters waving from the passenger seat of her Austin A40 rolled over the cattle grid as she returned from the town, Paddy Donohoe on his best behaviour at the wheel, nodded politely, it wouldn’t be long until he had parked the car in the garage and would be down for the tay to tell tales of traipsing behind Ms Gladys from Fagan’s shop to another up and down the Main Street of Cavan Town, indeed all much ado about nothing with only a wicker basket hung on her arm to show for her traipsing. She had Paddy for a céilí every day and indeed twice a day as he told the news from Laurel Hill to Wattle Bridge and up again as far as the county line.
Benny, her husband was above foddering hay to the cattle and breaking the ice that hadn’t thawed the whole of the day on the water troughs which lay hidden behind the bramble hedges to where the sun’s low rays couldn’t reach in these ebbing hours of the dying year. The shortest day was here again and it foretold that Christmas was but a few nights away and she knew that she would want to be on standby for Eileen Murphy the telephonist might walk across the green from the Post Office beyond to break the news that her sister Sheila, the husband and her six children were at Holyhead awaiting the boat for home. That meant having to listen to the Queen’s speech after the Christmas dinner, Sheila thought as much of that as if she were the Pope giving out the Urbi et Orbi only that the Queen had to be turned down low in case any of the boyos going the road might hear the anthem being played from within.
As she worked away in the kitchen of the gatehouse her mind wandered back to Christmases of her childhood in Drumacleeskin up beyond Treehoo Cross and a family of eight children and the candle lit in the window of a Christmas Eve to banish the darkness and welcome the light. The boys would bring in the holly and the ivy and place them across the freshly scrubbed table before the open fire where the pot that hung from the crane roasted a good fat chicken and she could see in her mind’s eye, her own mother doing then as she did now, readying the house for the Christmas for her own siblings. John, Maggie & Kevin, poor Kevin who drowned on the River Finn of a Good Friday with young McEntee and broke the heart of his mother, then there was Sheila, Mary, Hugh, herself Ethel and Lizzie. She, the second youngest born of a September day in 1926.
She was awoken from her thoughts as she heard the sound of a scream, that brought her back to the mixing bowl on the table as the children ran in through the back door and met face to face with the turkey who hung upside - down slapping against the back of the door as they had slammed it closed behind them. Poor wee Josephine with her long plaited hair getting the full whack of its blue head in the face. Their hands red raw and their noses bright from the cold without, they announced the imminent arrival of Paddy. She looked upon them with joy, the whole of her life’s work, the purpose of her every waking moment as she looked into their little faces as they all sat around for lashings of tea and currany bread and listened, their eyes agog, to tales from the Manor Born as Paddy mimicked the bauld Ms Gladys on her tour around the shops of Cavan Town. How they laughed as they ate near the whole of a cake as in her heart she was as proud of her little brood gathered around. As Paddy returned to his toil in the yard, so too the children pulled on their boots, stealing a carrot and ran to put the final touches to their featureless snowman, the house recoiled into the quiet of a mid-winter’s day with only the sound of the clock ticking, the kettle whistling, the tap dripping, and Bing Crosby in distant dulcet tones singing White Christmas. The sun turned a reddish hue and began to wane, and she knew it would soon be time for Benny to return on his bicycle down the hills from his homeplace at Claragh. The very bike on whose bar he carried her home from a dance one night those ten years and more ago and after several spins on the bar of this bike and a few dances here and there, he married her in the days before Lent in February 1958. They breakfasted up in Drumacleeskin and danced with the aid of a half barrel of porter and a few bottles of local brew as the day turned to night and the light of day appeared again before they all headed the road for home. It was then they came to live in this house in whose kitchen she stood on this the shortest day of the year mixing the filling for dozens of mince pies for fear the ones would land from England.
She stood in that kitchen for near on 60 years and followed the same routine that each day brought, watching as the trees in the wood turned with the seasons o’er yonder fields, so too beyond the walls of the Demense, as each Christmas passed, the village and its people changed around her. She watched as her children each in turn did grow as one winter followed each the other and discos, boyfriends and girlfriends brought them further and further away from snowmen in the field, watching as the last of them came in at night, their pyjamas wrapped in a hot water bottle. For no matter where they went, they always knew that she’d be standing there in that kitchen and every mid-winter day since first they could remember the smells were forever the same, that of bread baking, bacon frying, kindling drying on top of the range, the chickens standing on one leg to greet them on the front step, their eyes closed in the noon day sun awaiting the crumbs of the table to be cast abroad. She was content here in this corner of the world as each year passed and never wanted for anything else there in the midst of neighbours and friends.
And so as Count McCormack sang o’er the radio the song of Heavenly Peace on the shortest day those years ago, so this Christmas she will have heard the throng of angels when the sun was at its lowest in the sky, a song that will banish the darkness and herald the light for all who believe, a light that shines eternal in the hearts of God’s people that this child is the Christ, so sleep dear lady of the gatehouse, oh sleep in Heavenly peace.
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