An Irish Christmas Feast, page 19
Then there are certain young gentlemen who blow their noses when there is no need whatsoever to do so. They believe that it matures them. They remind me, in many respects, of those young men who sport moustaches and even beards which they hope will make them look older.
These undeveloped nose-blowings have a false ring to them. They are hollow-sounding. They are easily identified by the experienced ear or by anybody whose parents or grandparents were nose-blowers. I could always distinguish my father’s nose-blowing from other nose-blows and whenever I heard him in the distance I was instantly reassured that all was well with the world.
Then there are gents who blow their noses in order to make themselves look more manly but it never comes off. The sounds are like those made by baby elephants who have become separated from their mothers whereas the genuine article, the full male outpouring from the facial proboscis, has all the powerful vibrancy of a rogue elephant.
I recall too when I was a boy there were severe-faced old gents of irascible dispositions who would blow their noses at people to intimidate them. It worked in most cases but never when the nose was blown at another nose-blower.
A nose blown properly and from the correct angle often put a man on the right road just as surely as a kick on the posterior did. In order to realise maximum effect, however, the nose should be blown in quiet or hallowed places where silence dominates. A nose suddenly blown at full force in a silent room can send a surprised assailant scuttling for shelter.
There is only one occasion when I find nose-blowing to be extremely shattering and that is when I am the proprietor of a hangover. I always run for my life when I see a nose-blower approaching. Let him blow by all means as long as I am out of range.
On the credit side I heard of a nose-blower in a distant land who once blew a hole in his handkerchief when his prodigal son came home and another who blew off his own hat when he sneezed on Christmas Eve after his grand-daughter had told him she loved him.
I am of the belief that no house should be without a nose-blower. A good, snorting, rattling, bellicose nose-blow will frighten away intruders far better than a barking dog. The criminal will always know that a bark came from a dog but with a comprehensive nose-blow who is to say that the blower is not a polar bear or a tiger or even an elephant!
However, it must be finally said that a good nose-blow into a voluminous handkerchief is the last refuge of the inarticulate, especially those shy souls who long to tell of their love and concern during the glowing days of Christmas.
High Fielding
Jack Frost wasn’t as cold or as pinched as his name might suggest. No, he was bluff and hale and hearty, always ostentatiously and good-naturedly slapping down a large-denomination note on the collection tables which were strategically placed Sunday after Sunday around the entrance to the church on behalf of some charity or other. Yet Jack wasn’t popular. He wasn’t half as well-liked, for instance, as Dinny Doublesay who contributed very little to charities for the good reason that he didn’t have an awful lot to give. Of course, Dinny had played football with the local team when he was in his heyday and he had a way with the girls or so they said. Also he was trainer-in-chief of the highly successful under-14 team year in, year out, so that he was highly regarded by parents and youngsters alike. Jack Frost did not like Dinny Doublesay. He once confided to his wife that he hated the sight of him although when pressed for a reason he couldn’t say why.
‘Could it be,’ she asked, ‘because everybody else likes him?’
‘It could be,’ Jack replied peevishly, ‘and it could also be something else like he’s lousy and warty and picks his nose and he’s always chasing after women.’
‘But he’s a widower,’ his wife argued, ‘and there’s no restriction on widowers.’
‘Shut up,’ Jack Frost shouted at her and he drew the bedclothes over his head. Jack’s wife laughed herself gently to sleep wondering how it was that there had never been an open confrontation between her husband and the man he despised. Certainly the town was small enough and how often did they drink in Gilhaffy’s, the football pub where the game’s players and aficionados gathered after every championship encounter!
She knew that Jack often tended to bide his time, always on the lookout for an opportunity to get even with somebody who had taken him down or with somebody he didn’t like for reasons that he couldn’t altogether explain.
She knew Jack Frost. She had been married to him and to the business for thirty years. Jack was sly for all his apparent heartiness and in business there was nobody as devious. He overcharged whenever he thought he would get away with it and as for giving proper weight and measure, well! All Jack’s instincts would be opposed to such a dictum. Once when he had overcharged an elderly female for poor-quality sausages his wife had taken him aside and told him firmly that it was wrong.
‘Of course it is,’ Jack agreed, ‘but it’s also wrong for her to hide boxes of sardines in her cleavage every time she thinks nobody’s looking and it’s wrong for her to keep popping grapes into her mouth when she has no notion of buying any.’
The confrontation which Kate Frost had long anticipated and dreaded took place one late evening at the meat counter in the supermarket. Jack was, as usual, immaculately dressed in freshly laundered white coat and cap and greeted each and every customer as though they were long-lost relatives who had been sorely missed. His smile disappeared when he beheld Dinny Doublesay even though the latter had a twenty-pound note in his hand. Jack Frost accepted the note with a curt thank-you after he had wrapped and handed Dinny the four slices of lamb’s liver for which he had declared a preference over chops, steaks and kidneys.
Jack placed the note in the till and then sweetly, smilingly and mischievously handed his victim the change out of a ten-pound note.
‘I gave you twenty,’ Dinny spoke matter-of-factly, not wishing to draw attention to himself.
‘You’re sure it wasn’t a hundred you gave me!’ Jack Frost threw out the question for the benefit of everybody within ear-shot. Dinny pursed his lips and availed of the silence which had imposed itself with deadly impact all round.
‘I gave you twenty,’ he spoke evenly, ‘and you gave me the change out of ten which means you’ve taken me down for ten pounds.’
‘Why don’t you come in here and have a look at the contents of the till and then we’ll see who’s codding who?’
Jack Frost stood to one side in order to allow access to his accuser. A number of shoppers surged forward lest they miss the outcome. As the till drawers shot forward Dinny moved in to investigate but was forestalled by Jack.
‘Let’s have a pair of independent witnesses.’ The supermarket proprietor raised a hand and intimated to a pair of females that they should come forward and authenticate the outcome.
Dinny in their presence instituted a fruitless search which would be repeated over and over, at Jack’s urgings, by the pair of female witnesses who would declare that there was no twenty-pound note to be seen. There were numerous five- and ten-pound notes but not a solitary twenty.
‘Satisfied Mr Doublesay!’ Jack slammed the till shut and devoted his attention to the pair who had vindicated him. Dinny stood irresolutely to one side before shuffling his way towards the main exit. He was confused and embarrassed. He could have sworn that he had a twenty-pound note in his hand and that he handed it to Jack Frost. He decided to go home. His daughter would know for sure. Had she not handed him the money as he left the house!
In his wake Jack was escorting the two witnesses to the wine shelves where they would choose one of the more expensive vintages in return for their honesty and integrity.
‘Witnesses’ expenses!’ Jack had laughed aloud as he beamed on all and sundry. Word of the incident would later spread but nobody believed, the witnesses apart, that Jack Frost was innocent. There were many who would recall similar experiences. When he reached home Dinny sat on his favourite chair. His daughter, sensing that something was seriously amiss, sat on hers.
‘Did you or did you not give me a twenty-pound note when I left the house a while back?’ Dinny asked.
‘I gave you a twenty-pound note,’ his daughter informed him.
Later in the back room at Gilhaffy’s Dinny’s many friends in the footballing world commiserated with him, three of his closer cronies in particular. These would be the Maglane brothers Johnny, Jerry and Jimmy who once formed the nucleus of the local football team. They played at left half forward, centre forward and right half forward respectively and when they combined as a unit there was no holding them. They specialised particularly in long passes by hand or foot which often saw the ball travel over distances of forty yards where one of the trio would have surreptitiously removed himself so that he would be in a position to gather the pass and send it over or under the bar for a vital score.
They were, according to local newspaper reporters, imaginative, innovative, accurate and mercurial but it was their passing from improbable distances that set them apart.
Often in the back room at Gilhaffy’s followers of the code would ask each other to nominate the best player that ever togged out for the team and invariably the answer would come back – ‘I don’t know who the best player was but I know who the best three players were.’
The Maglanes were particularly close to Dinny Doublesay. Dinny was the team’s full forward when the Maglanes were in the ascendancy. They put many a score his way, unselfishly passing from less favourable distances to where Dinny was disposed near the edge of the square.
‘Combine!’ Johnny Maglane was fond of saying before championship finals. ‘Combine and nothing will beat us!’
‘Submerge yourselves!’ Jerry would counsel, ‘and rise as one so that we will form an unstoppable wave.’ Jerry was the poet of the Maglane family and in fact had composed several ballads about the exploits and triumphs of the team.
‘A team that doesn’t play together won’t stay together,’ Jimmy would say as the fifteen players primed each other before running on to the field fired with resolve and gleaming with embrocation.
Uppermost in the thoughts of all those congregated in the back room at Gilhaffy’s was how to get even with Jack Frost. Violence was outlawed since the team’s greatest successes were achieved in the face of violence by the expedient of not reacting and by playing the game according to the rules.
As well as being poetic Jerry Maglane was also the strategist of the team. It was he who laid out the plan of play and it was he who might suddenly order a change of tactics which often turned defeat into victory. There is no element of humanity as potent or as loyal or as dangerous or as compassionate towards each other as the survivors of a once-successful football team. There is that quiet confidence in themselves. There is the certain knowledge that when they present a united front they can achieve anything. That is why none interfered with Jerry as he figured out a way to get even with Jack Frost.
He sat, isolated, humming and hawing to himself, scratching his nose, his forehead and his jaw in turn. He pulled upon his ear lobes as though they were the handles of pumps which would send mighty ideas gushing to his brain. From time to time they surveyed him anxiously.
‘Ah yes!’ he announced triumphantly at the end of his deliberations, ‘I see it all now.’
Johnny Maglane placed a pint of stout in his brother’s hand. Nobody knew better than he of the strain to which Jerry had been subjected while he deliberated. None would ask him to reveal his plan. All would be known in due course and this made the prospect of restitution all the sweeter.
Later when the lights had been dimmed in the back room and only the nucleus of the town’s best-ever team remained, Jerry told of his requirements.
‘I will need,’ said he, ‘our two best fielders and our best long passer. No more will I say till the deed is done and our comrade’s honour is avenged.’
Here he laid a hand on the shoulder of Dinny as a tear moistened his eye and the lips that issued many a stern command on the playing field trembled with emotion.
‘All I will say to you,’ he addressed himself to the former full forward, ‘is that under no circumstances are you to buy a solitary item for Christmas nor are you to utter a solitary word to any man or woman until our business is done.’
The nights passed slowly thereafter and as they did the Christmas fever mounted until its spirit was everywhere abroad. Two nights before the blessed event there was an extension of shopping hours until nine o’clock.
Shortly before the extension ended Johnny Maglane and his wife Pidge arrived at Jack Frost’s supermarket ostensibly to purchase some groceries to tide them over the Christmas holiday.
‘I want you,’ Johnny informed Pidge, ‘to engage Jack Frost in conversation. Make sure that his back is turned to me at all times.’
Pidge nodded eagerly. She was well aware that there was something afoot and she was only too eager to be part of it. Dinny ranked high among her friends and she was as anxious as the other conspirators to see the score settled. Also she had no doubt about her ability to engage and absorb Jack Frost in a long and interesting conversation. Jack, for his part, had often cast a longing eye in the direction of the footballer’s wife.
‘Dang it!’ he often whispered to himself, ‘I will never understand how those danged footballers with nothing in their heads wind up with such good-looking women. I mean,’ he would continue to confide to himself, ‘what have they got that I haven’t got and yet the best of women fall for these so-called athletes who, more often than not, kick the danged ball wide.’
It was a question that he would never successfully answer. When Pidge approached him and suggested they remove themselves to a quiet area he jumped at the opportunity and when they arrived at a secluded spot behind the dog-and-cat food pyramids he waited eagerly for some heart-lifting revelation. For a while she did not speak, for the good reason that she could think of nothing to say.
‘Well!’ Jack Frost moved from one foot to the other.
‘Well!’ Pidge echoed the question as she racked her brains for something to say.
‘Oh yes,’ she said in a confidential tone as though what she was about to say had slipped her mind and had suddenly presented itself again.
‘I was wondering,’ Pidge opened, ‘if you would consider joining our drama society?’
Jack Frost was astonished.
‘Me!’ was all he could say.
‘I don’t see why not.’ Pidge was in full flight now. ‘I mean you have the appearance and you have the carriage. Carriage is ninety percent of acting. Then you’re sharp. I mean you wouldn’t have any trouble remembering lines. I’m sure you know the price of everything on those shelves and if you can memorise such prosaic things as prices you can memorise anything. Then there’s your voice. It’s so seductive and yet so resonant. Then there are your eyes, those come-to-bed eyes. Man dear you were born for the stage!’
It was at this stage of the conversation that the object whizzed by overhead.
‘What was that?’ Jack asked, looking up anxiously but seeing nothing.
‘What was what?’ Pidge asked although fully aware that something had passed by in the space above them.
‘Never mind, never mind!’ Jack dismissed the intrusion and wished only for his unexpected veneration to continue. It was, in fact, a ten-pound trussed turkey enshrouded in plastic wrapping which had passed. It had been thrown by Pidge’s husband Johnny who had lifted it from a display case and, when he was certain nobody was looking, flung it a full forty yards out through the main exit where it was beautifully fielded by his brother Jerry who passed it at least fifty more yards to the third Maglane brother Jimmy who fielded it with great skill before placing it in the open booth of his car. There followed a ham, cooked and wrapped, and if the Maglane brothers had fielded well in their respective heydays they fielded magnificently now but the skills of Jerry and Jimmy were shortly to be put to an unprecedented test by the oldest brother who, for good measure, had lifted a bottle of Cuvée Dom Perignon 1985 from the wine shelf, had lovingly handled it feeling its weight and balance and dispatched it faithfully and accurately into the waiting hands of the much-lauded fielder, his brother Jerry, who flung it in turn to the third brother Jimmy, who placed it beside the turkey and ham in the car booth.
After the champagne had been flung Johnny Maglane decided that enough was enough. The three items which had flown through the air with the greatest of ease would more than compensate Dinny and by the time the story leaked and reached the ears of Jack Frost, the ham and the turkey would have been devoured. Christmas would have been toasted and the champagne swallowed by Dinny Doublesay and his darling daughter.
A Christmas Diversion
At seventy-one the Badger MacMew retained most of the brown, grey-streaked hair which had earned him his sobriquet. Otherwise he didn’t look in the least like a badger. He was tall, slender, elegant and courteous which was more than could be said for some of the mischievous neighbours who privately compared him to the carnivorous mammal after which he was named.
‘It isn’t fair,’ Mary Agge Lehone was fond of telling the few elderly customers who still frequented her tiny green grocery near the end of the long street which had seen better days.
‘I mean,’ Mary Agge would go on, ‘he’s so refined and he never badgers anybody. He brings me bags of kindling all the time and he never charges anything. It’s all out of the goodness of his heart.’
Part of what Mary Agge said was true. The Badger MacMew, particularly during the long winters, would scour the nearby woodlands for the kindling with which the bright turf fires of the neighbourhood were started.
Though never full, the rickety turf shed at the rear of the Lehone premises was never without a horse-rail or two of turf, not top-quality black turf but sods of brown and grey which burned all too quickly. Black, bottom-sod turf, on the other hand, lasted from one end of the day to the other provided, of course, the fire was properly constructed in the first place.
