An Irish Christmas Feast, page 14
Conscience Money
The twins Mickelow, Patcheen and Pius, were lookalikes, proportionately built, robust and round and standing at five feet two inches in their stockinged feet.
‘They don’t chase work,’ their parish priest Canon Mulgrave confided to a new curate, ‘but they won’t avoid it either so that you couldn’t very well call them ne’er do wells.’
‘Would you call them easy-going then?’ the curate had suggested respectfully.
‘Yes,’ the canon conceded after some consideration, ‘easy-going would be a fair characterisation.’
For the most part the twins worked for local farmers on a temporary basis. They were paid at the going rate at the end of each day. These modest but undisclosed earnings were supplemented by the weekly dole which the state provided all the year round.
By parochial standards the twins Mickelow would be classified as comfortable. They also had a cow. She provided milk and, as a consequence, sufficient butter for their needs.
The cow grazed throughout most of the spring, summer and autumn in the one-acre haggard at the rear of the house. In the winter she was transferred to the Long Acre except in the direst circumstances when the weather became unbearable, when she would be temporarily housed with a limited supply of fodder. On the Long Acre which in this instance extended to the nearest crossroads at either side of the house her search for grass would be supervised by one of the brothers. There was always the danger that in her eagerness to locate choice pickings she would over-reach herself and end up in one of the roadside dykes, very often filled with water during the months of January and February. Sometimes in areas of high risk she would be tethered as she sought sustenance beneath the bare hedgerows which sheltered the grassy margins of the narrow roadway.
In many ways the twins enjoyed an idyllic existence untroubled by strife or want. A small garden, sheltered from the prevailing wind by a narrow stand of Sitkas, provided potatoes and the more common vegetables such as turnip and cabbage. A latticed hen-coop overhung the wall above the front door in the kitchen and a sturdy hen-house of the lean-to variety rested against the rear of the house next to the back door. It had successfully resisted countless incursions from fox and otter since its erection. There were surplus eggs throughout most of the year and these could be exchanged for provisions when the itinerant egg buyer made his weekly call. Gentle and mild-mannered, the twins seldom or ever entertained conflicting opinions. Among strangers they were deferential and meek unless drawn into conversation. Even among those they knew they would be the last to initiate any form of communication.
Fuel for their fires was to be found in abundance in the adjacent bogland where they enjoyed turbary rights for generations. The quality was excellent and a small extra rick was held over until the week before Christmas when it would be disposed of to a local buyer who sold lorry loads to customers in the nearest town.
On Friday nights and Sunday nights they would unfailingly make their companionable way to the crossroads public house which was situated a little over a mile from their thatched abode. Arriving at nine they would depart at twelve. Four pints of stout was their nightly intake. Neither smoked or gambled. Neither paid court to females or fornicated in any way and neither visited the nearest town which nestled comfortably at the centre of a large fertile valley fifteen miles distant over dirt roads and tar roads. As a result they were never short of the wherewithal to indulge their crossroads excursions provided, they often reminded each other, that they stayed within the constraints agreed by themselves. These self-imposed limitations ordained that they attach themselves to no company other than their own. However if a drink chanced to come their way from some drunken or other well-meaning benefactor they allowed themselves the liberty to accept so long as it was clearly understood that nothing was to be expected in return.
There were always bountiful times in the height of summer when Yanks and English exiles came home on holiday. Then the drink would flow freely and there would be morning hangovers but nothing else and by this was meant, as far as the twins Mickelow were concerned, that there had been no extra financial outlay.
Those who came from England in particular spent heedlessly until all their hard-earned money was gone and they were obliged to return to the construction sites where abundant overtime had helped to finance the holiday in the first place. Full credit to them, they never mourned after their vanished earnings nor did they expect anything in return for their profligacy. They seem resigned, even content in themselves that their pockets were empty.
The twins had often been tempted to call a drink for their one-time benefactors, now possessed of nothing save a return ticket, but after weighing the merits and demerits thought better of it and resigned themselves to the prevailing attitude that such misplaced kindness might only result in a demeaning postponement of the exile’s departure.
There had, in fact, been at least one occasion when the exile had remained behind as a result of not one but several acts of misplaced charity. After a week he became a travesty of the carefree holidaymaker who had breezed in the door a few short weeks before. Eventually for his own good he was frozen out and, all too long after his allotted time, departed the scene an abject and pathetic reject, the victim of ill-considered philanthropy.
‘Never go against the tide boy,’ Pius Mickelow had warned his brother Patcheen at the time. From the opposite side of the hearth Patcheen had nodded emphatically in total agreement.
Then came a particularly bitter winter of ice and snow and great sweeping gales, a winter that imposed a heavier than usual levy on the vulnerable and the elderly. The twins would remind each other that such winters were to be expected from time to time, winters that gave no quarter and for some winters against which there was no defence.
Several old folk would pass on before the snows melted on the more elevated hilltops. Among these was a neighbour of the Mickelows, an eighty-five-year-old cottier and widower, one Daniel Doody, who had been nursed throughout the final weeks of his illness by his forty-five-year-old daughter who had given up her position as a domestic in the distant city of Cork and come home to attend to her ailing parent.
He bore his suffering bravely and all were agreed that his only offspring Kitty was truly a ministering angel if ever there was one.
Night and day she cared for him, luring him to upright positions on what would eventually be his death-bed with tit-bits and delicacies which had been prepared with love and devotion.
When, eventually, he expired, holding her hand, the hearts of the entire countryside went out to her but none more so than those of the twins Mickelow who had kept themselves discreetly at hand at all times when the old man strove to hang on forever to that which had been no more than a brief loan in the first place.
Patcheen Mickelow, in particular, was frequently moved beyond words as Kitty Doody tiptoed quietly to and fro uncomplainingly. Never once did she make mention of her position in the city of Cork or of her lifestyle there. Rumour had it that she had once been friendly with a soldier but that he had left her for another after several fruitless years of courtship. Others had it that she had been a cook in a convent before leaving to take up a housekeeping post with an elderly schoolmaster. Still more maintained that she had worked as a drudge in an establishment of disrepute. There were other more fanciful tales but, as with all such idle speculation, another topic would displace it in no time at all.
Shortly after the moment of expiry on the fateful night Kitty Doody, her blue eyes filled with anguish, looked helplessly at the Mickelow twins who had been in close attendance all night. She had summoned them that evening in the realisation that the old man was nearing his end. He had been anointed the day before by Canon Mulgrave. The elderly cleric had advised Kitty that she should be prepared for the worst and in consolatory tones assured her that her father would surely see heaven. A last feeble cry followed by a low choking sound heralded his passing.
‘I’ll go for the priest,’ Patcheen Mickelow had announced with fitting solemnity.
‘And I’ll go for the neighbours,’ Pius had volunteered.
During the wake which followed, in the absence of relatives, the twins Mickelow acted as chief stewards and masters of ceremonies. It was they who distributed the wine, whiskey and stout and it was they who polished and shone the holders for the death candles. It was they who replenished the traditional saucers of snuff on mantelpiece, table and cranny all though the long night and morning.
During the wake Pius drank his fill but never allowed himself to cross the threshold of drunkenness. For his part Patcheen allowed not a tint of liquor to pass his lips.
Afterwards when the whole business was at an end Patcheen would partake of a drink or two but for the duration of the wake proper and while it was in progress he resolved that he would be the most responsible man at that wake. Of the twins he was by far the more resolute. It was he who decided that the town should be out of bounds after Pius was struck on the jaw one night many years before with a dustered fist for no reason whatsoever. The blackguards he encountered in the gents toilet had never seen him before nor had he seen them. Patcheen quite properly deduced that the only reasons why his twin was felled were his small stature and inoffensive manner. His pockets had not been rifled and he had not spoken a word.
‘He is the sort,’ Patcheen confided to the publican in whose premises the assault had taken place, ‘who draws trouble on himself because of the way God made him.’ He counted himself lucky to have escaped similar treatment himself at the hands of the many drunken blackguards who pack-hunted in large towns after dark.
Pius agreed instantly when Patcheen suggested that they stick thereafter to familiar haunts where they were known and respected.
After the burial of Daniel Doody the Mickelows decided that they would not present themselves at the Doody household until such time as they were invited. Fine, they felt, to have made themselves available during the latter stages of the old man’s illness but it would not be altogether appropriate to do so now without good reason.
Spring would be well advanced with the wild daffodils withdrawn and brown before such an invitation would be extended. In between they occasionally met Kitty on the roadway and they nodded respectfully towards each other after mass on Sundays. Sometimes there would be words but these, for the most part, would be confined to views about the weather although Patcheen suspected that a more protracted exchange might not be unwelcome as far as Kitty Doody was concerned. For all that he played his cards in the conventional way and felt himself well rewarded when the invitation came on the final day of April. Pius was mightily pleased in his own way although the twins knew full well that the reason behind the summons was most likely related to the cutting and harvesting of the turf supply for the winter ahead.
For some years before his death as infirmity rendered him less active they had been hired by the late Daniel Doody to cut, foot and draw home the dry crop in their ancient but still serviceable ass-rail.
The drawing home was usually accomplished in less than a week and at the end of that time Daniel Doody’s turf shed would be full to the rafters.
When they arrived at the Doody house they were made welcome at the doorway by the sole occupant, the beaming Kitty, who took note of their sheepishness by seating them near the hearth and handing each a freshly opened bottle of stout.
The Mickelows were pleased to learn that it was fresh and in prime condition. They would have been just as pleased to accept stout left over from the wake but this, they would be at pains to explain, was not Kitty’s way at all.
She sat herself by the large, wooden table while the visitors drew on their bottles. They spoke about many matters. Every subject, in fact, was up for discussion save the one which brought them. That would be aired in its own time. It would have been a blatant breach of good manners to bring it up prematurely.
When a second bottle of stout and all the conventional topics had been exhausted Kitty Doody spoke for the first time about turf.
‘I was wondering,’ she said as her sad blue eyes swept the kitchen and finally the hearth-place where the twins were seated, ‘what I should do about the winter’s firing?’
‘Turf is it you’re worried about?’ It was Patcheen who spoke on behalf of the pair.
‘Turf it is,’ Kitty confirmed.
‘Let turf be the least of your worries,’ Patcheen assured her.
‘The very least of your worries,’ his brother Pius added lest there be the slightest doubt about it.
‘Her turf will be cut won’t it boy?’ Patcheen turned to Pius knowing full well what the answer would be. They had discussed the subject often enough across the winter nights.
‘Let someone else try to cut it,’ Pius had whispered to himself with uncharacteristic ferocity. Now the words gushed forth like a torrent as he pledged his commitment.
‘We will first clean the turf-bank of scraws,’ he said, ‘and then we will cut it and foot it and refoot it and then we will make it up into donkey stoolins and then come September when it will be well seasoned we will fill your shed to the rafters.’
‘That is exactly what we will do,’ Patcheen concurred proudly. He was about to add further reassurances of his own but Pius had not yet finished.
‘We will not be charging you a brown penny,’ he rushed out the words lest he suddenly dry up, ‘for we would be poor neighbours if we did not help a lady in a pucker.’
‘Oh we can’t have that,’ Kitty tried not to sound half-hearted, ‘we can’t have that at all. The labourer is worthy of his hire.’
‘Not these labourers!’ Patcheen cut across, ‘these labourers is doing it out of the goodness of their hearts so there will be no more talk about hire.’
Relieved that her predicament had been shouldered by such a doughty pair she rose from the table and wiped a tear from her eyes with a corner of her apron. Her visitors had the good grace to turn their heads and used the opportunity to carefully examine the glinting soot which adorned the back wall of the chimney.
‘If ye will come to the table now,’ Kitty suggested without the least sign of stress or worry in her voice, ‘I will grease the griddle and we’ll have fresh pancakes for supper.’
After that April visit the twins called regularly across the summer to render a progress report on their turf-cutting activities. Always there would be fresh pancakes and then one glorious day in the middle of June she made her way to the bog in order to see for herself the advances being made and to invite her champions home for supper.
The sun shone from a cloudless sky and from every quarter of the boglands the larks sang loudly especially when the sun departed the centre of the heavens and moved slowly down the sky.
‘On such a day as this,’ Patcheen Mickelow spoke with awe in his tone, ‘God do give his voice to the larks and then the larks do tell us about God.’
‘Oh well spoke brother, well spoke!’ Pius made the sign of the cross reverentially and turned to Kitty whose sparkling blue eyes radiated appreciation of the heavenly sentiments expressed by Patcheen.
‘Was it not well spoke Kitty?’ Pius asked and then he fell silent as he awaited Kitty’s reaction.
‘It was well spoke,’ Kitty agreed, ‘in fact it could not be better spoke if it was spoke about forever.’
Pius marvelled at the wisdom of her answer. For some time he had the feeling that the pair had a special relationship, nothing that he could put his finger on except that he knew it to be there.
‘It’s there,’ he said to himself, ‘as sure as there’s frogs in the bog-pools and hares in the heather.’
‘Oh you may say it was well spoke,’ Kitty turned the full force of her blue eyes on Patcheen but he could no more look directly into their depths than he could at the blazing sun which adorned the heavens. Modestly he bent his tousled grey head and sought refuge in the heather. Pius now knew for certain that there were exciting stirrings in the hearts that beat close by and that when the stirrings comingled there would be a rare song in the air.
‘Wouldn’t it be lovely,’ Kitty whispered the hope half to herself, half to the twins, ‘if this day could go on forever.’
The brothers were immediately arrested by the sentiment, impractical though it might sound.
‘Yes, yes,’ they whispered fervently, ‘it would be lovely.’
For the remainder of the day Kitty helped with the making and clamping of the donkey stoolins and it was not she who cried halt as the shadows lengthened.
‘If I don’t eat soon,’ Patcheen announced, ‘my belly will never again converse with my gob.’
Taking each by an arm Kitty led them to a spongy passageway and thence to the dirt road which would take then to her home.
The summer passed uneventfully thereafter and then came the time for the drawing home of the turf. They made light work of the task and by the end of the second week in September the Doody shed was filled to capacity as promised. The turf was of the highest quality and properly utilised would keep the winter cold firmly in its place.
As usual the twins paid their biweekly visit to the pub at the crossroads and it was here one night that they overheard strange tidings which alarmed them no end.
