The Parish (6 page)

T
he backbone of any church fundraising has to be the parish collection. Each parish does it differently but we did ours by townlands. It would be collected in envelopes distributed by the collectors and could be contributed to weekly, monthly or yearly. While guidelines were given regarding the amount, it was totally at the discretion of the contributor. The collectors who lived in each townland would distribute the special envelopes to their neighbours and then collect them about a week later. Some people could choose a direct debit system. Each year there would be a collectors’ meeting to bring people together for discussion, to iron out any problems and hand out the collectors’ envelopes already sorted into the different townlands. These envelopes could have been delivered by post but this would have taken away the connectedness that is an essential part of a living parish. In today’s rural Ireland neighbours can live in total isolation from each other and any exercise that keeps us in touch with each other helps to ease that sense of loneliness that is now part of the rural landscape.

The finance committee felt that special fundraising events
could spread the financial burden more evenly across the parish, as well as bringing people together and also enticing in outside support. It would also give people something in return for their money. At the first collectors’ meeting it was decided to have a Festival of Flowers. We sent out letters to local flower shops, flower clubs and flower enthusiasts, inviting them to be part of the festival. The response was immediate and generous. Everyone interested in gardening and flowers came together in a common bond. A flower festival is celebratory and uplifting and brings out the best in a parish.

The venue was to be the lovely little chapel of St Patrick’s Upton, which lies in the centre of the parish. St Patrick’s was the monastery of the Rosminian order which had originally been an orphanage and is now a home for mentally handicapped adults. The chapel here had escaped the rigours of post-Vatican II enthusiasm and had retained its original features so was the ideal place for a flower festival, the theme of which was to be the Joy of Creation, and what better month in which to celebrate this than the month of May.

At the first of many meetings, two groups were formed: the catering group and the flower-arranging group. As with any such undertaking, much discussion, difference of opinion and decision-making followed but one piece of advice carried the day. Kay, who owns a flower shop and had been part of many such fundraising events, sat quietly and listened to the discussions but when we appeared to be going around in all directions and getting nowhere she said quietly: “There are only two things we need to remember: people cannot come if they do not know about it, and when they do come we must make sure that it is worth their while.” She put it in a nutshell.

So the wheels began to turn and Margaret took on the
organisation of the catering, and Hazel and John the flower show. There was a lot of work in the preparation of the church but a small crew of men brought in sheets of timber and placed them across the seats to provide bases for the floral displays, and they were also at the beck and call of the flower arrangers to haul in large pieces of driftwood and lift sizeable statues. Preparing for a flower festival, we soon learned, is not for the faint-hearted or the argumentative!

The evening before the opening, it was difficult to imagine that out of the surrounding chaos would emerge a flower festival ready to be opened the following night. Mountains of greenery blocked the aisle, ivy was draped over seats, water nymphs that were supposed to peer into water fountains fell headlong into them, and irate ladies searched under seats for pruners intent on getting lost. The birthing of a flower festival is a site strewn with unexploded missiles. But on the Friday it all gradually came together and, ten minutes before the official opening, order was restored. Flower-arrangers are a great crew. While their creative juices are flowing, they can work in total disorder, and then slowly out of the chaos comes a beautiful creation and within a short time the surrounding debris disappears. But while the creative juices are coming to the surface, it is best not to intervene.

The staircase up to the choir gallery at the back of the church was intertwined with floral garlands and the gallery itself was transformed into a woodland of streams, trees, wild flowers and little animals. It was a scene from
The Wind in the Willows
. Up along the church each stand had a different theme and its story was told in flowers with all kinds of imaginative interpretations. The journey around the church needed to be made slowly to absorb the depth and subtle undertones of each
display: a scented voyage of delightful discovery. The sanctuary area, being the focal point at the top of the church, brought the voyage to a brilliant finale of intermingling tones waltzing in harmony with the wonderful colour of the overhead
stained-glass
window. In contrast to the richly colourful story told around the church, the little prayer room off the sanctuary was a tranquil pool of white flowers and lighted candles. People, on entering, immediately fell silent and smiled in appreciation as they were embraced by candlelight, scent and peace. When one woman who could talk for the parish came in and fell silent, I knew that a miracle had happened.

The official opening on the Friday night was performed by Charlie Wilkins, the gardening correspondent of the
Irish Examiner
. Charlie was the ideal choice because tempered with his love of gardening is an irreverent sense of fun, so the opening was both enlightening and entertaining. He was probably the reason why many present were gardeners because his weekly column is addictive and brainwashes you into thinking that time spent other than in the garden is wasted. He is encouraging and dispenses no-nonsense information that turns gardening into a delightful pastime. After the opening, people wandered around the church, viewing and discussing the arrangements. Later, they filed out the back door and drifted across the yard to where the catering team served teas and home-made eats.

Saturday was bright and sunny and all day a steady stream of people walked around the church and afterwards went for tea in a sunlit conservatory where they basked in sunshine. Some people moved at a very slow pace from arrangement to arrangement and studied every last detail with great concentration, and for them a festival of flowers was an occasion to be savoured. For
others, however, it was all about the chat, the tea and
home-made
goodies. But for all it was a leisurely day out, a time to celebrate doing nothing and to meet the neighbours.

During Saturday there was the space and time to enjoy the entire experience but on Sunday crowds poured in and we had to appoint marshals to direct people in an ongoing flow up the church, along a side corridor, out the back door and across the yard for teas. I happened to be at the foot of the altar directing people into the prayer room when I noticed a man coming up the aisle. I have no idea why he stood out but probably it was the intensity of his expression. When he reached me, he said, “This is a strange day for me because my father was reared in the orphanage here and we grew up hearing about Upton, but I have never been here until today.” Because I was surrounded by milling people and my job was to prevent a bottleneck, not create one, there was no chance to talk with him. He hurriedly wrote his telephone number on the only thing that I had in my pocket, which was a matchbox. Later that day, somebody came along in a panic looking for matches to light candles, and I parted with my box. Despite trying to trace it later, I never again saw the box of matches. It was something that I deeply regretted because I felt that that man had a story that needed to be told. I wished that I could have gone into the prayer room and, sitting in that quiet place, listened to his story. It is probably one of the greatest problems of today’s Ireland that we have no time to listen to each other, and as a result counselling services have had to replace supportive neighbours all around the country.

The flower festival was a great financial success and set the fundraising off to a good start. There is nothing more uplifting than flowers, and a festival of flowers imbues a whole parish
with a sense of well-being. As I wrote in a poem called “Fresh Flowers”:

After celebrating the Joys of Creation in the flower festival we decided to celebrate the past by taking the village back in time. We had a Folk Day in the Bleach and brought the whole village on a walk into the past. Our GAA pitch is known as the Bleach because in 1760 the then landlord, Adderley, brought in a colony of French Huguenots to start a linen and silk industry and the riverside field was used to bleach the linen.

In the windows along the village, householders put out old photographs, oil lamps, butter spades and wash boards. Items on display ranged from decorative chamber pots to ancient hat-pins and studs; studs, in the 1930s, were used to keep your shirt on. Viewers walked along, looking at the old photographs, and had great fun remembering the uses for all the old tools. As they came up the village towards the Bleach, they heard the nostalgic hum of the threshing machine, and when they arrived at the Bleach gate, they were met by ladies in Victorian dress.

Inside the gate, the thresher pumped out golden straw while men in studded shirts, caps and braces fed it with corn. Along the field, women in gingham dresses made brown bread and baked it in the old-style bastable, while others made butter. The children were delighted with the animal corner of hens, chickens and donkeys. On the back of a lorry, a group of traditional musicians played Irish sets and old time waltzes
for people who danced on a wooden platform which was the dance floor of an earlier time. Along by the river, rows of vintage cars and tractors brought great enjoyment to the farmers who remembered the way it used to be. A large army tent was the shop counter for the entire Folk Day and from it cakes, jams and all kinds of home produce were dished out by ladies in floppy hats and starched white aprons.

Across the road from the Bleach is the Church of Ireland church, and on the front lawn ladies dressed in elegant finery served tea to the reverend ministers of both churches. The table was draped with a lace cloth, and tea was poured from a silver teapot into fine bone china and served with cucumber sandwiches and iced sponge cakes. It was a little cameo from an earlier time when gracious living was the order of the day. All these leisurely scenes were acted out as fast-moving traffic thundered relentlessly through our small village, but for just one day the whole parish enjoyed a leisurely trip down memory lane.

“W
hat are you looking for?” the builder demanded.

“Two wise men,” I told him hesitantly.

“Hard job that now,” he informed me. “They could be scarce.”

“Well, they were here,” I said, stubbornly poking around in the rubble.

“When?” he demanded.

“About two years ago, I think, was the last time I saw them,” I told him vaguely. “They were part of the old crib.”

“Missus, what planet are you off?” he demanded in amazement, rolling his eyes to heaven. “Don’t you know that everything ‘walks’ nowadays?” Then he had second thoughts: “Although wise men could be left. There would be few people needing them. No place for wise men in today’s world.”

We were up in the gallery of St Mary’s, our church that was being restored. It had been vacated months previously when we moved down into Christ Church. Our Church of Ireland brethren had very generously offered us the use of their church, and St Mary’s was now a building site and anything
of value had been cleared off site—with the exception of the missing wise men; but apparently not everybody considered them very valuable.

When you came up the circular iron staircase that curved into the gallery, and stepped on to the wooden floor, the prevailing smell was of mould and rotting wood. Climbing up the tiered gallery it was necessary to watch your step as you edged around an accumulation of odds and ends that had been dumped there over the years. If we were encumbered down in the church with shaky seats, odd vases or any homeless article, they were carried up to the gallery, and it was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

In the early 1960s, the parish had invested in a new set of crib figures. Nurse Murphy, who had been district nurse here for years and had always looked after the crib, had decided we needed a new set of figures and had a quick whip-around to pay for them. The new figures were bright, light and very mobile, whereas the old plaster ones were solid and cumbersome. The old set was relegated to the gallery where, on a deep windowsill at the back, a year-round crib was created. Over the years I had sometimes seen them and had vaguely noted that they were decreasing in number, and in recent years all that remained were the two wise men

In some way, that crib had appealed to the long-lost child in me because it was a replica of the crib in the church in North Cork where I had dropped in my brown pennies on Christmas morning. I remembered hoping that Holy Mary would buy some warm clothes for the baby with my money.

Now I looked around the gallery that was strewn with planks and an assortment of miscellaneous rubbish. I struggled to the windowsill, carefully picking my steps in between old
heaters and dehumidifiers, but my journey was in vain, as the deep sill housed only torn hymn books and a broken kneeler. Now, where were my two wise men? Or had they walked? Maybe not, because on last sighting they were in a bad state. Very few would have wanted them in that condition. Maybe they were left there in the first place because they were not as appealing as the others. Everyone would have wanted Mary and even Joseph, and of course the Baby Jesus was probably first out the door, and there is something very nice about a spare donkey, not to mention an extra cow; the shepherds and sheep, too, would have added a yuletide atmosphere to any Christmas scene. But no one must have felt the need to take home a haughty king in a long dress, not to mention a black one with a gold ear-ring. So, perhaps they had just slowly crumbled in the damp.

“What’s going to happen to them if they are still here?” I asked.

“Skip,” he informed me.

“I’m taking them,” I told him.

“Well, I’m sure no one will outbid you,” he answered smartly.

“But first we must find them,” I told him.

“You mean,
you
must find them,” he pronounced as he clattered down the gallery stairs.

I pulled and dragged planks of timber and broken seats, disturbing long-legged black spiders who for years had had undisputed possession. An ancient organ would not be moved so I went down on my hands and knees to peer under it, but all that was to be seen was a mummified mouse. He had probably died of pneumonia or of hunger and he was not a very smart mouse to have been up here in the first place. Then
it dawned on me that if a mouse had found his way up here, so too could a rat, and a shudder ran down my spine. From then on, I moved things gingerly, in nervous anticipation, but when I peered between the organ and the wall and saw a gold ear-ring glint in the shadows, I had to take my courage in both hands and reach into the darkness and haul out a heavy black king by the scruff of the neck. He was minus one leg and had a gaping hole in his backbone. The back of his head had crumbled and he was minus all regal garb. But his remains were all mine, and the chances were that his travelling companion could be somewhere as well.

I found the second king in a far worse state than the first because he had no head at all. I searched around for his lost head but it was nowhere to be found. I felt that the head had to be around somewhere so I searched on doggedly and all fear of rats dead or alive evaporated in my determination to find the lost head. As the search continued, my builder friend clattered up the stairs.

“Any luck?” he inquired with a smirk on his face.

“I’m looking for a head,” I told him.

“Yerra, half the country is functioning without one of them,” he told me. “What would an ould king want one for?”

“Still, he’d look better with it,” I informed him.

“Maybe,” he agreed; “though I see some faces around here and people would be better off without them.”

I decided at this point that he was not very sympathetic to my situation, but I was too quick in my judgment because just then he shifted a kneeler and there was the head, or rather half a head, as all the poor king had was a face with nothing behind it. My friend was off again.

“Just the job,” he declared. “Most people are operating
with half a head anyway.”

“I’m going to restore him,” I informed him smugly.

“There’s one born every day,” he declared, shaking his head at the stupidity of his fellow humans.

“Will you help me carry them down the stairs?” I requested.

“Missus, you don’t need two wise men; you need two strong men.”

But despite his protestations he manoeuvred the two battered wise men down the winding narrow stairs.

They were heavy so I brought up the wheelbarrow to carry them and their spare parts down the hill to their new home. I steered the wheelbarrow in the back door, wrapped my arms around each king in turn and eased him on to the hall table. It was probably as near as I would ever come to hugging a royal. However, these were two weighty royals and each move tested the strength of my muscles.

When they were anchored on the table, I stood back and surveyed them. They were a sorry sight but one day they must have been quite beautiful. They had been forced to abdicate in the mid-1960s and had been in the crib for about forty years before that, so my two kings were almost one hundred years old. And they looked every year of it! I brought out the Hoover and sucked all the dust off their outsides and then went down the throat of the headless one and cleaned out his insides. Then I rang a local potter about the possibility of moulding a head for my wise man, but I knew after a short conversation that he did not consider it a viable project and wanted to get rid of me. It would have to be a “little red hen” job.

It was the week before Christmas and, as I drew in holly from the garden to decorate the house, the two wise men kept
an eye on my comings and goings, and as the days passed by, the memory of their counterparts in the church of my childhood began to come alive in my mind. Each caller to the house was taken to visit the two wise men. Their original roles were reversed and, instead of being the royal visitors to the crib, they were now the visited. On Christmas Eve, they guarded the stuffed turkey as she waited for her big day, and later when I lit the usual Christmas candle on the back window, they waited in the shadows. Their day was about to dawn.

After the Christmas dinner, I dragged my two wise men up to the attic where I while away many hours pretending that I am an artist. I had big plans for them but I was also open to inspiration from them. My sister Ellen, who also likes to paint, decided to adopt one of them. I parted with the small black fellow sporting the traces of a gold ear-ring. The evidence that he was originally black was pitted around his elbow and knee while the rest of him was a sludge grey.

Our first problem was to give my wise man a new head and a new foot, but the head was the big problem. Amazingly enough, with a wooden spoon down his neck and an Irish linen tea towel for a brain, he was moulded into shape with a wonderful gun-full of gooey clay. When the back of his head had been shaped and covered with long flowing hair his face was put into position. When the clay dried, his face was secure and he had a sound head on his shoulders. With similar methods we created a leg and he finished up with a well-turned ankle and five elegant toes. With all his body parts in position the next step was to drape him in royal finery.

Once we started mixing paints, memories of the wise men of my childhood crib began to awaken and I felt as I painted that the colour scheme was almost decided by memory, and
the royal man himself influenced my decision as well. When he was finally dressed, he was resplendent in a glowing robe and crimson cloak, with a golden crown on his black flowing tresses, and holding a jewelled casket of frankincense between his elegant royal fingers. His dark companion turned out as handsome but, while my royal was upright and bearing gifts, his friend was down on one knee and in obvious awe at some unseen wonder. He was dark and intriguing and full of eastern mystery, and his ear-ring glistened with newly polished gold. Their restoration had been a journey back to the old crib, a journey full of the challenge that had made Christmas easier. This was our first Christmas without Con and I was learning that creativity is part of the healing process.

Having restored the two wise men, I had to decide what to do with them. Nobody, it seemed, felt in need of two ancient kings. But our house is old and roomy and over the years an assortment of odds and ends has accumulated, so two wise men would not be out of place. At each side of our front door are two half pillars and these were the perfect perches for them. So now a pair of retired kings guards our front door.