We fight the rats and we fight the stink from that lavatory. We'd like to keep our door open in the warm weather but you can't when people are trotting down the lane to empty their brimming buckets. Some families are worse than others and Dad hates all of them even though Mam tells him it's not their fault if the builders a hundred years ago put up houses with no lavatories but this one outside our door. Dad says the people should empty their buckets in the middle of the night when we are asleep so that we won't be disturbed by the stink.
The flies are nearly as bad as the rats. On warm days they swarm to the stable and when a bucket is emptied they swarm to the lavatory. If Mam cooks anything they swarm into the kitchen and Dad says it's disgusting to think the fly sitting there on the sugar bowl was on the toilet bowl, or what's left of it, a minute ago. If you have an open sore they find it and torment you. By day you have the flies, by night you have the fleas. Mam says there's one good thing about fleas, they're clean, but flies are filthy, you never know where they came from and they carry diseases galore.
We can chase the rats and kill them. We can slap at the flies and the fleas and kill them but there's nothing we can do about the neighbors and their buckets. If we're out in the lane playing and we see someone with a bucket we call to our own house, Bucket coming, close the door, close the door, and whoever is inside runs to the door. In warm weather we run to close the door all day because we know which families have the worst buckets. There are families whose fathers have jobs and if they get into the habit of cooking with curry we know their buckets will stink to the heavens and make us sick. Now with the war on and men sending money from England more and more families are cooking with curry and our house is filled with the stink day and night. We know the families with the curry, we know the ones with the cabbage. Mam is sick all the time, Dad takes longer and longer walks into the country, and we play outside as much as we can and far from the lavatory. Dad doesn't complain about the River Shannon anymore. He knows now the lavatory is worse and he takes me with him to the Town Hall to complain. The man there says, Mister, all I can tell you is you can move. Dad says we can't afford to move and the man says there's nothing he can do. Dad says, This is not India. This is a Christian country. The lane needs more lavatories. The man says, Do you expect Limerick to start building lavatories in houses that are falling down anyway, that will be demolished after the war? Dad says that lavatory could kill us all. The man says we live in dangerous times.
Mam says it's hard enough keeping a fire going to cook the Christmas dinner but if I'm going to Christmas dinner at the hospital I'll have to wash myself from top to bottom. She wouldn't give it to Sister Rita to say I was neglected or ripe for another disease. She boils a pot of water early in the morning before Mass and nearly scalds the scalp off me. She scours my ears and scrubs my skin so hard it tingles. She can afford tuppence for the bus out to the hospital but I'll have to walk back and that will be good for me because I'll be stuffed with food and now she has to get the fire going again for the pig's head and cabbage and floury white potatoes which she got once again through the kindness of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and she's determined this will be the last time we celebrate the birth of Our Lord with pig's head. Next year we'll have a goose or a nice ham and why wouldn't we, isn't Limerick famous the world over for the ham?
Sister Rita says, Now would you look at this, our little soldier looking so healthy. No meat on the bones but still. Now tell me, did you go to Mass this morning?
I did, Sister.
And did you receive?
I did, Sister.
She takes me into an empty ward and tells me sit there on that chair it won't be long now till I get my dinner. She leaves and I wonder if I'll be eating with nuns and nurses or will I be in a ward with children having their Christmas dinner. In awhile my dinner is brought in by the girl in the blue dress who brought me the books. She places the tray on the side of a bed and I pull up a chair. She frowns at me and screws up her face. You, she says, that's your dinner an' I'm not bringin' you any books.
The dinner is delicious, turkey, mashed potatoes, peas, jelly and custard, and a pot of tea. The jelly and custard dish looks delicious and I can't resist it so I'll have it first there's no one there to notice but when I'm eating it the girl in the blue dress comes in with bread and says, What are you doin'?
Nothing.
Yes, you are. You're atin' the sweet before the dinner, and she runs out calling, Sister Rita, Sister Rita, come in quick, and the nun rushes in, Francis, are you all right?
I am, Sister.
He's not all right, Sister. He do be atin' his jelly an custard before his dinner. That's a sin, Sister.
Ah, now, dear, you run along and I'll talk to Francis about that.
Do, Sister, talk to him or all the childer in the hospital will be atin' their sweet before their dinner an' then where will we be?
Indeed, indeed, where will we be? Run along now.
The girl leaves and Sister Rita smiles at me. God love her, she doesn't miss a thing even in her confusion. We have to be patient with her, Francis, the way she's touched.
She leaves and it's quiet in that empty ward and when I'm finished I don't know what to do because you're not supposed to do anything till they tell you. Hospitals and schools always tell you what to do. I wait a long time till the girl in the blue dress comes in for the tray. Are you finished? she says.
I am.
Well, that's all you're gettin' an' now you can go home.
Surely girls who are not right in the head can't tell you go home and I wonder if I should wait for Sister Rita. A nurse in the hallway tells me Sister Rita is having her dinner and is not to be bothered.
It's a long walk from Union Cross to Barrack Hill and when I get home my family are up in Italy and well into their pig's head and cabbage and floury white potatoes. I tell them about my Christmas dinner. Mam wants to know if I had it with the nurses and nuns and she gets a bit angry when I tell her I ate alone in a ward and that's no way to treat a child. She tells me sit down and have some pig's head and I force it into my mouth and I'm so stuffed I have to lie on the bed with my belly sticking out a mile.
*
It's early in the morning and there's a motor car outside our door, the first one we've ever seen in the lane. There are men in suits looking in the door of the stable of Finn the Horse and there must be something wrong because you never see men with suits in the lane.
It's Finn the Horse. He's lying on the floor of the stable looking up the lane and there's white stuff like milk around his mouth. The stable man who takes care of Finn the Horse says he found him like that this morning and it's strange because he's always up and ready for his feed. The men are shaking their heads. My brother Michael says to one of the men, Mister, what's up with Finn?
Sick horse, son. Go home.
The stable man who takes care of Finn has the whiskey smell on him. He says to Michael, That horse is a goner. We have to shoot him.
Michael pulls at my hand. Frank, they're not to shoot him. Tell them. You're big.
The stable man says, Go home, boy. Go home.
Michael attacks him, kicks him, scrawbs the back of his hand, and the man sends Michael flying. Hould that brother of yours, he tells me, hould him.
One of the other men takes something yellow and brown from a bag, goes to Finn, puts it to his head and there's a sharp crack. Finn shivers. Michael screams at the man and attacks him too but the man says, The horse was sick, son. He's better off.
The men in suits drive away and the stable man says he has to wait for the lorry to take Finn away, he can't leave him alone or the rats will be at him. He wants to know if we'd keep an eye on the horse with our dog Lucky while he goes to the pub, he's blue mouldy for a pint.
No rat has a chance to get near Finn the Horse the way Michael is there with a stick small as he is. The man comes back smelling of porter and then there's the big lorry to take the horse away, a big lorry with three men and two
great planks that slope from the back of the lorry to Finn's head. The three men and the stable man tie ropes around Finn and pull him up the planks and the people in the lane yell at the men because of the nails and broken wood in the planks that catch at Finn and tear out bits of his hide and streak the planks with bright pink horse blood.
Ye are destroyin' that horse.
Can't ye have respect for the dead?
Go easy with that poor horse.
The stable man says, For the love o'Jaysus what are ye squawkin' about? 'Tis only a dead horse, and Michael runs at him again with his head down and his small fists flying till the stable man gives him a shove that sends him on his back and Mam goes at the stable man in such a rage he runs up the planks and over Finn's body to escape. He comes back drunk in the evening to sleep it off and after he leaves there's a smoldering in the hay and the stable burns down the rats running up the lane with every boy and dog chasing them till they escape into the streets of respectable people.
IX
Mam says, Alphie is enough. I'm worn out. That's the end of it. No more children.
Dad says, The good Catholic woman must perform her wifely duties and submit to her husband or face eternal damnation.
Mam says, As long as there are no more children eternal damnation sounds attractive enough to me.
What is Dad to do? There's a war on. English agents are recruiting Irishmen to work in their munitions factories, the pay is good, there are no jobs in Ireland, and if the wife turns her back to you there's no shortage of women in England where the able men are off fighting Hitler and Mussolini and you can do anything you like as long as you remember you're Irish and lower class and don't try to rise above your station.
Families up and down the lane are getting telegram money orders from their fathers in England. They rush to the post office to cash the money orders so they can shop and show the world their good fortune on Saturday night and Sunday morning. The boys get their hair cut on Saturdays, the women curl their hair with iron tongs hot from the fire. They're very grand now the way they pay sixpence or even a shilling for seats at the Savoy Cinema where you'll meet a better class of people than the lower classes who fill the tuppenny seats in the gods at the Lyric Cinema and are never done shouting at the screen, the kind of people if you don't mind who are liable to cheer on the Africans when they throw spears at Tarzan or the Indians when they're scalping the United States Cavalry. The new rich people go home after Mass on Sundays all airs and stuff themselves with meat and potatoes, sweets and cakes galore, and they think nothing of drinking their tea from delicate little cups which stand in saucers to catch the tea that overflows and when they lift the cups they stick out their little fingers to show how refined they are. Some stop going to fish and chip shops altogether because you see nothing in those places but drunken soldiers and night girls and men that drank their dole and their wives screeching at them to come home. The brave new rich will be seen at the Savoy Restaurant or the Stella drinking tea, eating little buns, patting their lips with serviettes if you don't mind, coming home on the bus and complaining the service is not what it used to be. They have electricity now so they can see things they never saw before and when darkness falls they turn on the new wireless to hear how the war is going. They thank God for Hitler because if he hadn't marched all over Europe the men of Ireland would still be at home scratching their arses on the queue at the Labour Exchange.
Some families sing,
Yip aye aidy aye ay aye oh
Yip aye aidy aye ay,
We don't care, about England or France,
All we want is the German advance.
If there's a chill in the air they'll turn on the electric fire for the comfort that's in it and sit in their kitchens listening to the news declaring how sorry they are for the English women and children dying under the German bombs but look what England did to us for eight hundred years.
The families with fathers in England are able to lord it over the families that don't. At dinnertime and teatime the new rich mothers stand at their doors and call to their children, Mikey, Kathleen, Paddy, come in for yeer dinner. Come in for the lovely leg o'lamb and the gorgeous green peas and the floury white potatoes.
Sean, Josie, Peggy, come in for yeer tea, come in at wanst for the fresh bread and butter and the gorgeous blue duck egg what no one else in the lane have.
Brendan, Annie, Patsy, come in for the fried black puddin', the sizzlin' sausages and the lovely trifle soaked in the best of Spanish sherry.
At times like this Mam tells us to stay inside. We have nothing but bread and tea and she doesn't want the tormenting neighbors to see us with our tongues hanging out, suffering over the lovely smells floating up and down the lane. She says 'tis easy to see they're not used to having anything the way they brag about everything. 'Tis a real low-class mind that will call out the door and tell the world what they're having for the supper. She says 'tis their way of getting a rise out of us because Dad is a foreigner from the North and he won't have anything to do with any of them. Dad says all that food comes from English money and no luck will come to those who took it but what could you expect from Limerick anyway, people who profit from Hitler's war, people who will work and fight for the English. He says he'll never go over there and help England win a war. Mam says, No, you'll stay here where there's no work and hardly a lump of coal to boil water for the tea. No, you'll stay here and drink the dole when the humor is on you. You'll watch your sons going around with broken shoes and their arses hanging out of their trousers. Every house in the lane has electricity and we're lucky if we have a candle. God above, if I had the fare I'd be off to England myself for I'm sure they need women in the factories.
Dad says a factory is no place for a woman.
Mam says, Sitting on your arse by the fire is no place for a man.
I say to him, Why can't you go to England, Dad, so we can have electricity and a wireless and Mam can stand at the door and tell the world what we're having at dinnertime?
He says, Don't you want to have your father here at home with you?
I do but you can come back at the end of the war and we can all go to America.
He sighs, Och, aye, och, aye. All right he'll go to England after Christmas because America is in the war now and the cause must be just. He'd never go if the Americans hadn't gone in. He tells me I'll have to be the man of the house, and he signs up with an agent to work in a factory in Coventry which, everyone says, is the most bombed city in England. The agent says, There's plenty of work for willing men. You can work overtime till you drop and if you save it up, mate, you'll be Rockefeller at the end of the war.
We're up early to see Dad off at the railway station. Kathleen O'Connell at the shop knows Dad is off to England and money will be flowing back so she's happy to let Mam have credit for tea, milk, sugar, bread, butter and an egg.
An egg.
Mam says, This egg is for your father. He needs the nourishment for the long journey before him.
It's a hard-boiled egg and Dad peels off the shell. He slices the egg five ways and gives each of us a bit to put on our bread. Mam says, Don't be such a fool. Dad says, What would a man be doing with a whole egg to himself? Mam has tears on her eyelashes. She pulls her chair over to the fireplace. We all eat our bread and egg and watch her cry till she says, What are ye gawkin' at? and turns away to look into the ashes. Her bread and egg are still on the table and I wonder if she has any plans for them. They look delicious and I'm still hungry but Dad gets up and brings them to her with the tea. She shakes her head but he presses them on her and she eats and drinks, snuffling and crying. He sits opposite her a while, silent, till she looks up at the clock and says, 'Tis time to go. He puts on his cap and picks up his bag. Mam wraps Alphie in an old blanket and we set off through the streets of Limerick.
There are other families in the streets. The going-away fathers walk ahead, the mothers carry babies or push prams. A mother with a pram will say to other mothers, Go
d above, missus, you must be fagged out carrying that child. Sure, why don't you stick him into the pram here and rest your poor arms.
Prams might be packed with four or five babies squalling away because the prams are old and the wheels bockety and the babies are rocked till they get sick and throw up their goody.
The men call to each other. Grand day, Mick. Lovely day for the journey, Joe. 'Tis, indeed, Mick. Arrah, we might as well have a pint before we go, Joe. We might as well, Mick. Might as well be drunk as the way we are, Joe.
They laugh and the women behind them are teary-eyed and red-nosed.
In the pubs around the railway station the men are packed in drinking the money the agents gave them for travel food. They're having the last pint, the last drop of whiskey on Irish soil, For God knows it might be the last we'll ever have, Mick, the way the Jerries are bombing the bejesus outa England and not a minute too soon after what they did to us and isn't it a tragic thing entirely the way we have to go over there and save the arse of the ancient foe.
The women stay outside the pubs talking. Mam tells Mrs. Meehan, The first telegram money order I get I'll be in the shop buying a big breakfast so that we can all have our own egg of a Sunday morning.
I look at my brother Malachy. Did you hear that? Our own egg of a Sunday morning. Oh, God, I already had plans for my egg. Tap it around the top, gently crack the shell, lift with a spoon, a dab of butter down into the yolk, salt, take my time, a dip of the spoon, scoop, more salt, more butter, into the mouth, oh, God above, if heaven has a taste it must be an egg with butter and salt, and after the egg is there anything in the world lovelier than fresh warm bread and a mug of sweet golden tea?
Some men are already too drunk to walk and the English agents are paying sober men to drag them out of the pubs and throw them on a great horse-drawn float to be hauled to the station and dumped into the train. The agents are desperate to get everyone out of the pubs. Come on, men. Miss this train and you'll miss a good job. Come on, men, we have the Guinness in England. We have the Jameson. Now, men, please, men. You're drinking your food money and you'll get no more.