Parcels in the Post (eBook)

3

alking to school or to town takes us past the farmhouse. As I’m walking home from school Granny comes down to the gable. ‘Your mother’s here, with the baby. Isn’t he a lovely thingeen?’ Her massive hands open the low gate out, towards me. She has flour on her big wide apron. It’s only an odd dab, not half a bag like I would have all over me and everything around me if I was making bread.

‘Hi, Granny. Where’s Rex?’ I shrug my school bag off my shoulder. It’s so heavy. The large sheepdog bounds up. Every time they get a dog it’s called Rex. This one only arrived after we came to live here, so he will be the Rex for a long time, if he isn’t killed on ‘the road’.

‘The road’ always means the busy one, as the farmhouse is exactly where two roads meet. The quiet road goes up a steep hill, out to the bogs where we cut turf every summer, and is all farmers and tractors. The busy road is flat, goes to the next town, and is a mix of farmers and town houses. There are buses on this route, we use them to tell the time.

I follow Nan up by her garden at the front, blinking as we enter the kitchen and my eyes adjust. The windows are all tiny, set into thick stone, and even on a bright day it’s dark in here. Only the new back kitchen that Dad built last year has a big bright window, which looks directly onto the yard and sheds. Rex stops at the door, knowing the limits.

The air is fruity with smells of fresh cow’s milk, cats, rain, sun, hay, moistened calf feed and various kinds of animal shit – all jumbled into the pastry Nan has returned to rolling out. Mum is up at the range, showing Gerard to Granddad, who is in his tall chair, nodding as if he can hear everything. The kitchen table where Nan works is an enormous, worn, wooden beast, running down the full length of the room. I lean on it and stroke the softened wood while I get out of my coat and kick that bloody bag to one side, drawing a cautionary look from Granny and Mum, which I ignore. I have inked David Bowie all over every bit of the denim, including the straps, and Granny shakes her head every time it catches her eye. Like Mum she can easily do everything at once. She can make a tart, watch out for the 4:15 bus passing, give out about my school bag, mind whatever is cooking on the range, manage all her chickens, geese, turkeys and chooks, milk and muck out eight cattle twice a day, and still have time to go out to either gable end. She leans on a gate to gather the news from whoever is going into town or going home, buying a couple of fresh duck eggs off her en route, paying in updates on who has died, who hasn’t and who might.

Áine and Seán must be out hunting for hen’s eggs. It’s a full roll of Eclairs for anyone who finds a hidden nest. It’s the wrong time of year for blackberries, thank God. Every year Mum despairs at the potential waste of ‘all that lovely fruit’ and makes jam. And every year, for a couple of weeks, we play along.

‘It’s lovely, Mum, can I have more?’

Then it’s: ‘Ah, it’s really lovely, great. No. Don’t need any more, thanks.’

Until we can take no more.

‘It’s like soup, Mum. It goes everywhere.’ Or: ‘It won’t spread. It’s like tar with seeds in it.’ Or: ‘It sits in a big lump and tears up the bread if you try and spread it.’ And inevitably: ‘Mum, it’s sour. Please can I have the Dunnes jam?’

Every autumn we give it our best shot until we have to give up.

‘... and Father McCarthy says he can do him Sunday week, after twelve o’clock Mass,’ Mum is saying. Granny likes Father McCarthy and says he does a lovely Mass.

‘Not his family then?’ Granny asks. ‘None of them at all?’ She shakes her head slowly. ‘The Europe and the EEC will be the death of us,’ she declares, as she pops a finished tart into the oven. We’re doing the EEC in school now, in Geography. I wonder if Granny is even sure which way Europe is. ‘Giving them all that money for having babies, any which way at all.’ I look over at Mum with a ‘What?’ on my face. Mum gives a slight shake of her head for me to say nothing.

‘What money, Nan?’ I grin at Mum, who throws me a look.

‘Oh, it’s a fortune, a full fortune. And they likely all get one of them big new prams. Would you look at the size of it, and the wheels come off and everything.’ The very new pram is indeed parked at the dresser, where a cat is eyeing it up. That cat won’t be there long if Granny sees it.

‘It’s eight pounds.’ Mum’s voice is a bit stiff.

‘It’s not eight. What’s eight? It’s eleven,’ I say.

Granny’s hands stop. I quickly grab a big piece of apple she has peeled, mush it right into the sugar bowl so not one bit isn’t sugared, and pop it into my mouth. She is quick enough to slap the side of her knife off the back of my hand and we both laugh.

‘Eleven pounds. Eleven. They get eleven pounds for having a baby?’ She is shocked. ‘You could buy a full heifer for that in jig time. Michael, did you hear this, eleven pounds?’ I don’t see what the big deal is. Mum has sat heavily into Granny’s chair by the range. There’s never any money in our house.

‘It’s eight for the unmarried mothers. We get eleven,’ Mum clarifies.

‘Why do we get more?’ I ask, eyeing up another piece of apple.

‘Eight pounds a week. Every week. When did I ever see eight pounds a week?’ Granny’s gone back to the sour cooking apples, her grey head still shaking.

‘For the things,’ is all Mum adds. I know she wants me to stop.

‘Well, Granny, she’s not getting any eight pounds now while we have the baby, is she? We’re getting it. Will she get it back if she takes the baby back, Mum?’ I’m all innocence as I size up how to get another piece of apple without landing a slap of the knife.

Granny is indignant. ‘Takes the baby back? What do you mean? You cannot be giving and taking a baby, who ever heard of it? It’s the Europe, the Italians.’ I knew it would put her out.

‘Give me a hand with him.’ Mum is having no more of it. I grab another piece of apple and start moving, grinning at her.

‘At least he will be baptised.’ This appeases Granny.

‘Who’ll stand?’ I ask.

‘We will,’ Mum replies, strapping him in.

‘You and Dad?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll come, and Eileen?’ Mum looks over to the table.

Aunt Eileen will be home soon, after the shop closes. Granny has to think about this. The baptism of a baby whose mother was likely not married. In the house of God, and her there too, in her very best clothes. She is Dad’s mum, and not as easy going as Mum’s mum.

‘Well …’ she buys some time, ‘it’s usually the early Mass for us, to be back for the milking.’

‘Granny, there will be ice cream after.’ I tease her. She has a fierce sweet tooth. ‘And, if you go twice on the one Sunday you will go straight to heaven entirely.’

‘Mmmh.’ She swings the oven door open and pops another tart in.

I go ahead of Mum, carrying the front of the pram down the old stone steps, as Mum guides the end. She’s facing forwards while I step backwards. The pram just about fits. It’s almost as wide as the cattle, who stain the whitewashed gate posts blacker every time they go through, before and after milking. Áine and Seán have gone ahead of us through the fields. We watch them running along the top of the hill as we cross the busy road and turn towards home.

‘You are a monkey,’ Mum tells me.

‘I know, I know.’ I’m giggling. ‘The Europe. It’s just a bloody baby, Mum, where’s the harm?’

‘Will you mind them shoes, so you’ll have them for the church.’

‘Do you think they’ll come?’

‘I don’t know.’ She sighs as we manoeuvre the pram around a large pothole. There’s no pavement running along the houses in this row that looks out onto the busy road and then across to my grandparents’ farmyard and fields. In some parts there are so many potholes that there isn’t enough room in between them for such a big pram. The town starts a bit further on, at the judge’s house, along with the streetlights and paving.

‘Those bloody dogs were up town, Mum. The whole gang, by the Dunnes lane, pure wild. That lead one is a big bastard. He’s more like a calf with savage teeth.’

She frowns. ‘I can’t believe they haven’t shot them yet.’

‘There will be murder if they don’t do it before the lambs. But that’s not for ages, Mum, and I think there’s more.’ Another series of potholes, and no space to go around them so we lift the pram together. I think it will be just us, Mum.’

‘Mmmhh.’ She’s giving nothing away.

‘Is there really no one? It’s awful sad.’ Gerard is watching the sky pass overhead, oblivious. ‘I can hold him in the back, though, so we all fit and no pram. And Dad’s new camera.’ Our latest banger of a car is bigger.

‘That’s if there’s any petrol.’

‘Oh yeah. We should get a big sled, and train them rotten bastard dogs.’

‘Stop that. And no photos,’ Mum says.

‘What? But we can get some film, from the eleven pounds?’

‘No, there’s to be no photos. The nurse says so.’

‘Is she mad? Has she never been to a christening?’

‘It’s the rules. It’s not allowed.’

‘But why? Who makes these bloody stupid rules?’

‘She doesn’t know why or who made the rule. It’s just the rule.’

‘Are you telling me that even with Dad’s new camera we cannot take a picture of a baby? They all look the same anyway, don’t they...