(Another thing I say, if people start going on about depression and being hospitalized and trying to get their meds stabilized is, ‘If life throws you lemons, make lemonade.’ Although I’m not as keen on that saying because I don’t really understand it – why would I make lemonade when I can just buy it? Did you know that if you make your own lemonade, it’s not even fizzy?)
Then Helen – of all people – the most robust person on God’s good earth, gets diagnosed as having depression. Now, all credit to her, even though she was seeing giant bats when they were only seagulls and she wanted to be killed in a car crash, she was insistent that she had a brain tumour. Adamant, she was. She went down and saw Dr Waterbury and told him she was ready to start the chemo any time he liked. But he asked her questions and she gave all the wrong answers – she didn’t have headaches and she wasn’t seeing flashing lights and she wasn’t having dizzy spells and she was having a lot of the symptoms of depression.
I’m going to whisper a little something in your ear: I was … well … I was disappointed in Helen. I’d expected better than that from her. She says I’m afraid, that if the likes of her can get depression then anyone can. But she can hump off – I’m not afraid! I’m afraid of nothing. Except of my good name being sullied. And I have to admit I’m not gone on snakes. And I wouldn’t like to be given sea urchin to eat at a dinner party with everyone looking at me. And I don’t like the thought of being accidentally buried alive – when I’m dead I want them to make sure good and proper; you hear these awful stories of people in China coming back to life six days later … And I never want to sit another exam again. Sometimes I dream I’m about to do my Leaving Cert. physics paper, even though I never studied physics because girls weren’t allowed to study those kinds of things – you know, maths, chemistry – in case we took a notion that we might get a good job, thereby stealing one from a more deserving man.
E is for Elephantitis. I live in mortal dread of getting it. I believe your feet swell up and you can’t get your shoes on. You might have to buy bigger shoes and, between yourself and myself and the gatepost, I already wear a fairly large size. If I got Elephantitis I might have to get shoes specially made for me and I believe that costs a small fortune. Large feet are unladylike.
E is also for Employment. I used to have a job, you know. Not a lot of people know that.
It was before I married, back when I was Mary Maguire and not Mammy Walsh.
Of course running a home and looking after a husband and five children is job enough for any woman, but I used to have a job job. One that I got paid for.
I’m not saying I was CEO of the interweb or anything! Don’t get excited! I was just a lowly clerk in the civil service and I had to hand up my wages every Friday to Mammy Maguire and she’d give me back enough for my bus fares. There was no going off living in a ‘flat’ with two other girls and getting scuttered every night of the week and buying shoes and whatnot. Nothing like that.
Of the six of us Maguire sisters, Imelda had the best good job. She was the ‘brainy’ one, so the money was found to send her on a shorthand and typing course, after which she got a post at Shannon Airport. That was ‘akin’ to getting a job in Heaven – everyone in Limerick wanted to work in Shannon, what with the planes and the glamour and the chance of meeting a pilot.
After a while of working there Imelda started talking with an American accent. That was perfectly normal, everyone who worked in Shannon did. We were very proud of her.
So I was working away in my little job and I must say I enjoyed it – even though it wasn’t too taxing on the intellect. I enjoyed the camaraderie and ‘banter’ amongst my co-workers and the way we did skits on Miss McGreevy (our supervisor).
Then I got married and I stopped working. Not because I wanted to – although it wouldn’t have looked right – but the law in Ireland at the time was, if you worked in the civil service, as I did, you gave up your job once you got married. The thinking being, I suppose, that now you had a man to take care of you, why would you need to be out earning your own money and at the same time taking away a job from a man who really did need it.
Things changed a lot for me. Mr Walsh and I moved onto a ‘starter’ estate and suddenly I had my own house and I was away from Mammy – I was mistress of my own domain – but I was staring at the inside of four walls, all day every day, while Mr Walsh went off to work.
In those days there were no ‘yoga’ classes or ‘boozy’ lunches with the girls. There wasn’t even daytime telly. And the women who lived around me weren’t exactly a laugh a minute. Then I got pregnant with Claire and I was too busy puking day and night to be lonely.
Sometime in the seventies – whenever it was, it was a bit later than in the rest of the world – Women’s Lib showed up, with the news that I didn’t have to be a domestic slave. But – and for the life of me I can’t really explain why – women of my ilk looked down on the Women’s Libbers. We mocked them for being shrill and wearing Dr Scholl’s sandals and drawing attention to themselves (the worst possible of all the offences; modesty was our byword). ‘Notice boxes’ – that was our damning assessment of them, as we discussed them over our back walls. Obviously, this is what the men were saying about them, but surely we had opinions of our own …?
All the same, some sort of seed must have been planted in me, because I started to yearn for … something. Something a bit more than cooking meals that were scorned and kicked around the kitchen by my five daughters. Maybe I could have gone back and ‘retrained’, whatever that is, but it wasn’t the done thing. Respectable women didn’t. It was like saying your husband couldn’t provide for you.
In a problem page in a magazine I read a letter from a woman who expressed similar urges to my own, and the ‘Agony Aunt’ told the woman to speak to her ‘spiritual advisor’ about it. I didn’t have a ‘spiritual advisor’ – until suddenly it dawned on me that the ‘Agony Aunt’ had meant a priest. Why she couldn’t have just said the word …
Anyway, one Saturday evening, I waited to be the very last person at confession, and in the dark dusty box I whispered my dirty little secret to Father Anthony – that I’d like a job. ‘But,’ says he, ‘you’re doing the most important job any woman can do, you’re being a mother.’ And suddenly I had such an urge on me to say, ‘Well, fuck you! It’s all very well for you. You’re a man!’ But I said nothing and he gave me fifteen decades of the rosary as penance for my audacity, and the moment passed.
It’s too late for me now, of course, but thinking back on my life, I would have loved a ‘career’. Doing what, I don’t know. I’d have been game for anything really. Although maybe not being a teacher, now that I think of it. I don’t know why. It’s because of the children I’d have to teach … being in close proximity to them. No, I’m quite certain I wouldn’t like that at all. Or animals. I wouldn’t like to work with them either.
But I like the idea of getting up really early and putting on a black suit and driving my red sports car out from my underground garage and going to meet my personal trainer before I go to the office. I like the idea of giving orders on my car phone while I’m driving to work – ‘Fax me the figures on Finland.’ ‘Find me the Fenugreek file.’
I really like the idea of firing people.
These days, from time to time, if Helen is stuck, she lets me help her out on a job and, all credit to me, I roll up my sleeves and get ‘stuck in’ with gusto. You can’t fault my work ethic, although Helen says it’s not work ethic, it’s just nosiness.
E is also for ‘Eejit Stick’. I’m laughing here to myself but at the same time I’m a bit ashamed, because I don’t know if I should tell you about this – I’m afraid it might show me in a bad ‘light’, but at the same time we have to have a laugh now and again.
Right, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to tell you what an Eejit Stick is. You see, myself and my sister Bernadette were going to Lourdes and we were at Dublin Airport and the carry-on of people! They were all walking at
the wrong speed. Much too slow, like.
Bernadette muttered, ‘God forgive me, but I’m itching to kill the lot of them. I wish I had my axe.’ (Bernadette married a farmer. Sometimes she has to chop wood. She’s very attached to her axe, the way other people are attached to their ‘mobile’ phones.)
And there and then the idea of the Eejit Stick was born!
We decided it would be like a walking stick except it would have a small ‘doobry’ on the end that would deliver a mild electric shock to a person – only a mild one, now, we’re not trying to hurt people. Not really. Just to give them a bit of a start. And a small sting, maybe. We’re not trying to get revenge on people, exactly. It’s more like we want things to be efficient.
So, say you’re at the airport trying to get to your ‘gate’ and a crowd of people are walking ahead of you and they’re going too slow, but there’re too many of them for you to get past and you’re getting ‘irritated’ and thinking, ‘Would you speed it up there, for the love of God!’ And it’s not like you’re worried about missing your plane, it’s just because it’s vexing.
Under normal circumstances you’d have to shuffle along behind them, going at their speed, letting them ‘set the pace’, as it were. But if you had your Eejit Stick, it’d all be different. You’d simply give one of the slow-coaches a touch of it to the back of their leg and they’d get a small electric shock and they’d realize they were being an eejit and they’d thank you for drawing their attention to it and they’d start walking faster. And once they were walking at the speed that suited you, you could stop giving them the shocks.
Well, the laugh Bernadette and I had about our ‘invention’! We decided we were going to go on Dragon’s Den with it and do a ‘pitch’. ‘We’re here to ask for four euro seventy,’ says she. And I said, ‘For a ninety per cent stake in our company.’ Because we weren’t being serious, like. Then we were thinking of how people go on Dragon’s Den to get investment in their chocolate company and they bring round a little plate for all the ‘dragons’ to sample. And we decided we’d ‘demonstrate’ our Eejit Stick by giving each of the ‘dragons’ an electric shock with it. Well, ROAR, as Helen says on the Twitters. Myself and Bernadette were laughing so much, tears were coming down our faces and we came to a standstill and a young woman with a pink wheelie bag bumped into the back of us and said, ‘For fuck’s sake. Why don’t you try walking, you pair of old boots?’
F is for Foundling. Oftentimes, when I was a girl growing up, I used to have this feeling, like, that I didn’t belong in my family and I used to ‘daydream’ that I was a foundling – you know, that I’d been found, as a newborn baby swaddled in a blanket, on the Maguires’ doorstep and they’d taken me in and were minding me as best they could, but they weren’t my real family. They knew it and I knew it. For a long time I was convinced that some day my proper mother and father would come for me and it would turn out that I was actually a princess.
But shur, doesn’t everyone feel like that!
F is also for ‘Feck’. It is fine to say ‘feck’. Feck is a very different word to the other ‘F’ word, which it is not fine to say. Those misfortunate souls who are not Irish often think ‘feck’ and the other ‘F’ word (the bad one) are the same thing and are shocked to hear a respectable woman like me say it. But they have it entirely wrong. It is a ‘cultural’ misunderstanding. I say ‘feck’ all the time – playing bridge, in Mass, whenever the situation ‘demands’ it – and I am not ‘swearing’.
F is also for Feathery Stroker. From what I can gather – although it’s not a question I’ve ever been able to ask outright – I’m the only woman of my age and station who knows about this sort of thing. No other woman of my vintage and decorum has to sit in a room with their daughters and their daughters’ friends and listen to them freely discussing sexual intercourse like I’m not even there. But my lot start up regardless of my presence, and, apparently, the very worst thing a man can be is a Feathery Stroker.
It was Anna’s friend Jacqui who started it. She’d met some fella and they’d ‘gone to bed’ and instead of ‘getting down to business’, doesn’t he spend hours and hours trailing his hands up and down her body in a light feathery way. He was at this stroking business for the Lord only knows how long and admiring her and telling her she was beautiful, and when he finally got to the ‘main event’ he stops, looks her in the eye and asks her if she’s sure she wants to go ahead.
Decent enough behaviour I would have thought. (Especially because another one of Jacqui’s boyfriends, some chap called Buzz, had tried to make her have a threesome with a prostitute.) But oh no. All the girls started screeching ‘Ewwww’ and ‘Creepy’ and I was surprised because normally they complain about men who don’t do any of this ‘foreplay’ (‘Two seconds of twiddling my nipples like he was tuning a radio and then we were up and running’).
Suddenly Feathery Strokers were Public Enemy Number One. Of course we’d all like to be flung across a bed and have the clothes torn off us, and be ravished to kingdom come and back again, but that’s just not real life, is it? You have to put up with what you’re given, don’t you? Nothing is perfect, am I not right?
Then the girls started extending their definition of Feathery Strokery. Like I said, it started with the poor divil who stroked Jacqui in a feathery sort of a way and then spread outwards, gathering up all kinds of other men who might never have actually stroked someone in a feathery fashion. Suddenly a man was an FS for the slightest transgression. Men who don’t eat lamb – Feathery Strokers. Men who glance at buns in cake-shop windows – Feathery Strokers. Men who carry rucksacks on both shoulders instead of just the one – Feathery Strokers. Men who do Five Rhythms of Dance (whatever the hell that is) Extreme Feathery Strokers (I believe a special extra-bad category has been invented just for them). Men with cushions arranged neatly on their couch – Feathery Strokers. Men who say the word ‘groceries’, men who pronounce ‘croissant’ in a French accent, men who’ve met the Dalai Lama, men who eat ice-cream cones in the street, men who like Downton Abbey, men who bake bread, but also men who don’t eat bread, men who ring their mother every Sunday, men who grow basil in a pot on the windowsill, men who are on speaking terms with their ex-wives, men who approach you with a lump of cheese on the point of a knife and say, ‘Try it, it’s amazing’, men who say, ‘That’s really sad’ when there’s a thing on the news about a five-year-old dying in a house fire, men who can’t swim, men who pass their driving test first time round, men who don’t have jump-leads, men who’ve failed their driving test three or more times, men who have Holland & Barratt loyalty cards, men who say, ‘Rise and shine’ when the weather is sunny – every single wretched one of them is damned as a Feathery Stroker.
The list is getting longer all the time, and some of it seems downright unreasonable – for the life of me I cannot see what is feathery strokery about a man drinking a smoothie. Personally I don’t favour a man in a cardigan but that isn’t on their list, so I could ask them to include it, and they would with pleasure, but why ruin a man’s life? A whole category of lives, in fact?
F is also for Funeral. I am not one to ‘gloat’ but it’s nice to see who I’ve outlived. Also a funeral is a great day out: you meet everyone, you get a glass of wine and something to eat. Frequently you get a sit-down meal. I have already picked out the clothes I’m going to wear for my funeral. Although that won’t be for a very long time yet. Mr Walsh often says to me, ‘Mary, you’ll outlive them all.’ And he’s right (for once): I will.
F is also for ‘False Goodbyes’. This is a ‘thing’ that Anna alerted me to – she can be very intuitive betimes, can Anna, she can ‘put’ her finger right on something. Instead of trying to explain what a False Goodbye is, I’ll tell you a story about how it happened to me.
It started off when myself and Mr Walsh went to visit Carmel O’Mara – well, she’s Carmel Kibble now, she married a chap by the name of Kibble. Carmel and I worked together in Limerick all those years ago
, and after I moved to Dublin she stayed below in Limerick. She had three children and life seemed to have worked out well for her, even though, if you want the God’s honest, I always found her husband, Podge Kibble, to be a bit of a cold fish.
We’d ‘exchanged’ Christmas cards over the years and I always said, ‘This summer will be the one that we’ll get down to see you.’ But with one thing and another, it didn’t happen until the May just gone by.
Myself and Mr Walsh hit the road to Limerick and we found ‘Casa Kibble’ (that’s what they call it, for whatever unearthly reason) easy enough because Mr Walsh has a ‘talking map’ in his Mondeo.
Carmel and myself were only thrilled to meet up again. We did the sums and realized it was over thirty years since we’d clapped eyes on each other and she said I hadn’t changed a bit – ‘Still towering over everyone! Haha!’ And I said that she hadn’t changed a bit either, although that was a ‘white’ lie. To tell the truth, if she passed me in the street I wouldn’t have known her from a ‘bar of soap’ as Claire says. Carmel had got very tubby round the middle and her hair was short and curly and grey – why someone wouldn’t have directed her towards a ‘colourist’, I don’t know.
Well, we had a lovely visit. Especially when I took a good look round and saw that their house wasn’t any bigger than ours. We had tea and biscuits and a couple of the grandchildren were inveigled in by the biscuits to say hello to us – two teenage boys (surly little pups) – then they went back to their ‘gameboys’ and us adults were able to continue our chat.
We were there for a good couple of hours and I could feel Mr Walsh starting to get restless beside me and, to be honest, I felt we’d run out of chat at that stage – we’d established which of our ‘gang’ were dead, which was the thing I was most interested in – and I was wondering when we could go without seeming rude.
Eventually I stood up and everyone else stood up too, very, very quickly, and we began to say our goodbyes, which went on for nearly the same amount of time as the actual visit. The surly grandsons were forced to come and bid us farewell and Carmel was full of ‘You must come again soon.’ And, ‘Don’t leave it as long again the next time.’ And, ‘Don’t be a stranger’ (although I’ve never entirely understood that saying).