Maggie's Breakfast (2 page)

When finished with her diatribe Molly would watch and wait for Paddy to defend himself. Silence and stillness would follow and as such it encouraged my mother to feel she had succeeded in her
assault on my father. Molly would wait like a satisfied cat with a mouse in its paws for Paddy to break into a rage.

As he’d pull the bed-sheet over his head he’d give out one blast, in a voice both aggressive and pained: “Ditch-livin’ MacDonalds! They couldn’t afford a roof over
their heads and didn’t have a penny to buy a potato!”

The Walshes and the MacDonalds not only hailed from the same county in Ireland but from the same village as well, but the way my parents behaved towards each other, the families might easily
have come from different planets.

For generations the Walshes of the small town of Athy made saddles, harnesses, reins and straps and anything leather for things equestrian. Rumour also had it that the Walsh reputation as
saddlers, in the distant past, had extended to England where at one time members of the royal family, including the king and queen, squatted their fat arses on a Walsh saddle. For some unknown
reason, the aptitude and occupation of saddle-making vanished from the Walshes’ way of life. It might have been that more than one character of royal blood fell out of a Walsh saddle. Or
maybe because of political changes things Irish weren’t embraced or accepted in England as they were in the past.

More than a few people bragged that Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, had in another century lived in the area and was once a neighbour. Sadly, this rumour often encouraged young men to
follow in the Duke’s footsteps and travel to England in search of fame and fortune. Several families in the locale even boasted of being related to the duke. There might also have been a
grain of truth in the gossip that some of my ancestors had a relationship with his horse. Whether any of this motivated my father to enlist and leave home, he never disclosed.

Molly had something of a spiritual impatience and appeared to be consistently regretful for having to dwell on earth too long when she believed that there was a better life to be lived in the
next world. Her path to paradise had to be paved with suffering and, whether by design or coincidence, she was living in a place where suffering was not only in abundance but honoured as though it
was the key that opened the door to salvation. Molly’s involvement with living in the present was so minimal that she often appeared to be a ghost that had lost its way on the road to
redemption. My mother lived as if she was in competition to win an award for suffering more than anyone else. Neighbours who came in contact with her considered her saintly and definitely
heaven-bound. Night-time seemed to be her enemy because it reminded her that she hadn’t died during the day and gone to heaven.

The ritual of Paddy and Molly getting into bed at night was not unlike that of two strangers finding themselves next to each other on a crowded bus. Indifference, separateness and isolation were
practised. Yet no matter how determined they were to avoid touching, the sagging hollow in the centre of the bed obliged them to slide towards each other anyway. When Paddy and Molly did make
contact they didn’t complain. Perhaps because there was still a morsel of power left in the sacrament of marriage and back-to-back touching was a secret wish both shared but neither would
ever admit to. The pleasure of sleeping with her back to my father was not something my mother would ever talk about. For my father Paddy, lying next to my mother might well have been his
definition of Limbo. For Molly, pleasure, affection and optimism seemed to be three of the Seven Deadly Sins. Friendship, encouragement, inspiration and support were the other four. The bed Paddy
and Molly slept in was held together by strings of rusty coiled wire, though the size and weight of the thing, with its strong firm legs and shiny rail-knobs, gave the impression that it had been
made to last. Parts of the bed’s railings still had bits and layers of brass that told of another era. When the bed was new it might have belonged to a prosperous family and might even have
been the nest where somebody rich and famous was conceived. It probably saw its share of departing souls as well. Still, even a bed of such pedigree was vulnerable to the wounds of use and abuse.
During daylight hours, when it was not being utilised, it looked like an abandoned boat floating on a calm sea, indifferent to dreams, snores and nightmares. In some respects it was now more of a
memorial to what it promised when my parents first got married. The iron ribs on each side of it resembled two black horses standing side by side waiting for a funeral to commence. Yet something
about the contraption still gave it an air of pride and importance. Like everything else in our home the bed was a second-hand purchase. My father bought it in a pawnshop shortly after he and Molly
arrived in Dublin in the 1920’s. Indeed, by the time the bed came into my family’s possession it might well have been tenth or twelfth hand. Often the centre had to be repaired and
replaced with strands of wire that held the thing together. When the wire holding the spring up gave way, it was neither unusual nor infrequent for my parents to end up on the floor next to the
communal portable urinal that in itself was second-hand.

My parents’ bedroom was like a museum for religious statues. Statues and portraits of saints of every size and colour littered the place. A small statue of the Infant of Prague on the
small table next to my parents’ bed was a favourite of Molly’s. What it had to do with Prague I never knew. The statue had a gold crown on its head and was wearing a red cloak. It also
held a gold stick in its hand. Several holy pictures in the bedroom were of the suffering Spanish or French saints that Molly often prayed to. Facing the wall were two other very small statues that
my mother had won in a church raffle. They were from Romania but she didn’t pay much attention to them. I think it was because they were not the same kind of Catholic saints she had been
brought up praying to. In my mother’s eyes saints were judged by their suffering. Molly often said that Spanish saints were more like Irish ones. Mrs. Whelan, a neighbour from across the
street who went around the church at Mass with a straw basket collecting money for the church, had a different opinion. She said the saints who suffered the most were French and that the French
changed their religion many times and were tortured twice as much as any in Ireland or Spain – or Italy for that matter. But for some reason or other my mother had a reverence for martyrs
from Spain.

* * *

Saint Stephen’s Green in the centre of Dublin and the surrounding area is a combination of Ireland’s past, present and future rolled into one. Lord Iveagh, the man
who had a hand in inventing the pint of Guinness, named after his family, founded the little green oasis. It’s also been said he insisted that the park be closed two hours before the pubs
stopped serving the last mug of Guinness. His foresight in this instance may be the reason that the park is in such pristine condition and a jewel in Dublin’s tilted crown.

At least twice a week my father would walk to Stephen’s Green and sit on a bench near the Eblana monument and retreat into his reminiscences of his time as a soldier in the British Army.
Sitting there, he would mumble out loud: “I didn’t give a shite what was said about me when I came back in the English army uniform. Who raised the British flag in every piss-hole place
on the globe? Who? Me! Paddy Walsh and a lot of fellas like me! Wasn’t we the men who conquered the plains of India for England?”

The Royal Dublin Fusiliers’ arch at the entrance to Stephen’s Green was erected in 1907, a time when England and Ireland were less foreign to each other. The memorial was named
‘Eblana’ because some ancient scholar said it was Dublin’s first name before it was named Dublin. Many of the Anglo-Irish accepted the arch as an edifice of affection that
reflected the historical bond between the two countries at an earlier time. Irishmen who had served in the British army held the arch in high esteem. As a tribute it memorialises those of the
Dublin Fusiliers who fell in the Boer War. For the most part, few in Dublin stopped to read the inscriptions on the arch because the names of the dead were inscribed on the inside of the arch and
you had to contort your head backward to read the dedications. More than a few Dubliners chose to walk around it rather than under it and there were many voices that called for its destruction and
referred to it as the “Traitors’ Gate”.

If anyone in Stephen’s Green slowed down to listen to Paddy Walsh, he or she was likely to hear him continue with: “Did you know I was guarding the Jews in Palestine and
nothin’ to drink but camel piss? A double-breasted brass-button glory I was! What did ya want of me? What did ya want me ta do? Wasn’t half of Ireland in the British army? Isn’t
that what made the British army? Irishmen fighting for a shilling a day! Didn’t we beat Napoleon in the Peninsula and didn’t we beat him at Waterloo?” Depending on how many pints
of Guinness he had consumed on the day of his dole payment, Paddy would also be inclined to break into song.

“
Oh, when the war was on we had rashers in the pan!

Now that it’s all over, we’ve only bread and jam!

Oh right you are, right you are!

Right you are, me jolly good soldier, right you are!”

When pedestrians walked by Paddy he was unlikely to see or hear anyone. The world of his country, his city and his family were more like orbiting moons spinning about in the distant sky above
and they were as detached from him as he was from them – except when he chose to look up which was rare indeed.

* * *

One day, after Paddy received his dole payment and while reminiscing in Stephen’s Green, he heard from a man sitting on a bench opposite him that there was a vacancy for a
porter’s job in a big house on Ely Place. The position also provided living quarters in the large attic on the top floor. Ely Place was only a stone’s throw from Saint Stephen’s
Green. With little hesitation Paddy Walsh went to the address and applied for the job. To his delight he became a house porter for the Knights of Columbanus.

The Knights of Columbanus, a conservative Catholic lay organisation founded in Belfast in 1915, advised and assisted Catholic institutions throughout the world. Their patron, Saint Columbanus,
was a sixth-century Irish monk who founded many monasteries in Europe in his time. It was said by some and refuted by others that Columbanus preferred Easter to Christmas, the Resurrection to the
Nativity, and besides that idiosyncrasy had trouble convincing the religious orders in France at the time that they had their calendars wrong. He was following the Celtic calendar which had a
different date for Easter. When Columbanus informed the higher-ups in France about this he was thrown out of the country so he went to Italy where he got on better with the natives.

Paddy’s first serious bit of employment since he left the British army and located to Dublin transformed him. He, my mother and a family of nine moved into the attic at Number 7, Ely
Place. By any standard it was a posh part of Dublin. Paddy’s job required him to polish doorknobs and keep the front steps of the club free and clear of debris. Inside he swept the carpets
and cleaned the windows. After a few months on the job he appeared to be the happiest man in the world. It was as if he had returned to his youth. He was so content with his work as a hall porter
he went out of his way to boastfully tell anyone who would listen about his time as a seventeen-year-old soldier in the British Army. Paddy Walsh was a bit of entertainment for the strictly
orthodox Knights of Columbanus. When he opened the door for the club members he was greeted with a smile and encouraged to talk about his past, which he did unhesitatingly.

The job afforded my father a comfort he’d probably never had. Comfort, on the other hand, seemed to frighten my mother Molly. She believed, with just about everyone else in Ireland at the
time, that pleasure and happiness didn’t get one into Heaven. And the more she witnessed Paddy basking in the joy of his employment the more she withdrew from him and the rest of the family.
Almost every day she’d call to my father and demand he do something about his children running wild about the place. At the time my two oldest sisters Mary and Rita were frequenting the local
dance halls and were being escorted home by young men they met during the course of the evening. Their loitering in the hallway late at night and making audible romantic sounds would send Molly
into a frenzy. What she was hearing might as well have been the Devil screaming. Such was the effect on her, she’d stop praying and run down the stairway and chase my sisters’ escorts
out into the street in dismay and shock. In an effort to avoid any future occurrences, Molly did her best to prevent my sisters from wearing lipstick or nylon stockings. To her, these accoutrements
were an invitation to commit sin. In order to avoid my mother’s wrath, my sisters hid their make-up and nylon stockings anywhere they could. Sometimes they were stashed away in cooking pots
and in the oven. On at least one occasion we had cooked nylon stocking and melted lipstick for dinner. Added to my mother’s crusade and woes was my oldest brother Nicholas. He was about
twelve at the time and was constantly stealing apples and pears from the orchard in the back of the large house. This didn’t go down well with the Knights when their cook wanted to make
stewed pear and apples for dessert.

When Paddy was outside the building polishing the brass doorknobs, Molly would approach him and complain that the family was out of control and he was too busy to do anything about it – or
worse, didn’t care what they did. When he did his best to ignore her or retreat into silence Molly would yell at him. She purposely did this, hoping to disturb the club members who were
conducting their religious rituals or playing cards in the main meeting room. Paddy didn’t like Molly yelling at him whether it was inside or outside the building and might have even wished
he hadn’t taken the job in the first place. When it was in the attic he’d lower his voice so as not to disturb the members of the club who were conducting their meetings downstairs in
the main hall. When Molly accosted him outside the premises he’d tell her to go upstairs and mind her own business.