HOUSE OF MEMORY, CISSY
SPEAKS:
—With
thanks to Sebastian Barry’s Steward of Christendom.
Sure, the old man, he was
out walking the lunatic meadow again
after telling me you mustn’t
be talking to shadows.
Conversing with himself, the
trees, and God Almighty.
And the ginger cat followed
him like a dog,
her tail in a question mark,
listenin’ to every word he said,
stopping to sniff the
flowers like a large hairy bee. Silly creature!
She must’ve said something
because soon enough he quieted down like a lamb.
And all the birds were madly
singing by the hunter’s moon.
Him out there walking like
mad Sweeney himself,
morning, noon and night,
talking to the birds and the trees.
I couldn’t bear it, seeing
his arms raised up to the night sky,
the watery stars weeping.
And him keening like Absolom.
It went all wrong when the
birds flew into the house.
Or maybe it was the Kiltegan
curse taking root after all.
The field belonged to that
witch was next door to theirs, you know,
and her washing the milk
buckets in the well made us all queasy.
Uisht! Who is it busy
walking on my grave, now?
Him and the cat paraded
around that meadow until I was dizzy with grief.
Even the small fingers of
sunlight couldn’t banish all that fear
rising up from the dark eye
of the well.
Funny how the mind plays
tricks. Even now.
I kept thinking of Hamlet
chatting up his dead father.
No, I said, Thomas, you
come in from the cold.
Willie, he’s not coming
back. The Great War is over. Sleep.
Sure, it’s your
nightshirt all covered with dew, I
said.
Sleep, that’s the ticket.
But the grief came anew each time
as if it was the first time
he’d heard of it.
He just turned his face to
the wall. Then, the awful silence.
Talking to shadows he was. I
don’t blame him. Willie’s gone.
But I do blame the hawthorn
he slept under all the day,
the bees breaking their
hearts over closed flowers in late afternoon.
I was so afraid, I wanted to
bring him some tea, but it was no use.
I said to myself, if only we
could catch the honeyed words.
Put them in a jar for some
creature comfort later.
Ach, I could kill for a good
cup of tea, Annie.
Make it strong enough for
the mice to skitter across.
Give the cat a fightin’
chance to earn her keep.
Scald the pot! Oh for
godsakes, child, that’s a poor way to be making tea!
You’d think you were brought
up wrong, but then you had no mother—
or father, for that matter,
after he went off in the head.
Do you remember what they
say about sleeping under the hawthorn?
I’m sure that’s how it all
began. His mind wandered to all sorts of strange places.
Once he said he was with
Hannibal crossing the Alps. Imagine that!
Poor lummoxing beasts
climbing mountain passes
with no more understanding
of snow than the man in the moon.
And him worried about
elephants trembling at the sight of snow.
Wanting me to knit elephant
sweaters! Imagine that!
I thought to humor him but
then I’d never hear the end of it in the Hereafter.
Should I use the popcorn
stitch or a cable stitch like the Aran sweaters?
They were dogtags, you know,
for the lost fishermen,
in case the sea returned our
treasures.
Sure, I didn’t know what to
make of it.
There he was, ranting
through the ages,
a fine white snow covering
him.
Petals drifting down on him
from the hawthorn
until he was blanketed white
as snow.
I blamed the hawthorn, I
did.
We were told never to pick
it or invite trouble into the house.
Thorns into the bed. Or a
changeling.
And that he was. A
changeling, after they let him go.
Annie, your father was like
Hannibal all alone in Abyssinia.
He was leaderless after he
turned over Dublin Castle to them.
A loyal servant of Ireland
and to the Crown, he was.
The Crown was good to us.
The King, when he came to visit,
it was after Queen Victoria
died....
your father called her the
Flower of Christendom, he did....
the King, he praised my
hair.
Blue-black as the barrel of
a rifle it was.
I was wearing a new
polka-dotted dress.
And all the little tea cakes
staring up at us like Christmas presents.
I wanted to dance. But your
father, he stood
like a great tree in the
middle of the dance floor.
I was afraid he’s take root
right there.
They began to whisper and
laugh.
Shame upon us bright as
Brigit’s cloak over the land.
I had to coax him off the
floor with tea cakes.
And them all laughing at us.
Annie, don’t be so hard on
your father.
Was a time he was a
different man, he wore invincibility like a cloak,
but after he turned Dublin
Castle over to Collins and the like,
he was a changed man. After
that, he was dreaming candlelight into song.
He admired Michael Collins,
he did. But they called him a traitor.
Blamed him for Larkin’s
death. And the others.
He never even carried a gun.
Just the billy club was enough.
He kept Dublin orderly and
safe. It was his job. Annie, he did it well.
They gave him trouble with
his pension, the new government,
and him, Chief Constable
working for Ireland and the Crown 45 long years!
And they called him a
traitor. It broke his mind, it did.
There’s always betrayal at
the heart of it.
They should look to
themselves.
Who was it gave the order to
kill the Big Fella?
Themselves alone. How he
wept when Collins died.
There was real hope for the
Big Fella, you see.
Not for “King” de Valera,
him with the stone heart of
a mathematician
leading us back into slavery
with rings through our noses
like cattle to Rome.
Dev, the called him. More
like devolution.
Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil.
Soldiers of destiny they
called themselves.
All it brought was more
civil war.
As if there wasn’t enough
bloodshed already.
It all began with your
brother Willie’s death,
it unsettled your father
something terrible, it did.
You know, he was never quite
right in the head after that.
I remember when he saw God
in the face of his newborn son.
That settled him down right
enough.
But why is it fathers and
sons never see eye to eye until it’s too late?
Poor Willie! All he wanted
was a kind word.
And your father, like a big
lump of a stone.
Poor tyke. He was only six
when I was with Dolly in the
childbed,
my own blood racing to meet
Lough Derg.
Such a long night it was.
And I couldn’t stop it, for
the life of me.
To let the birds in was to
let death come into the house.
When the candle failed, the
birds began to sing,
it was my father came to me,
but it was so queer,
he was my husband wearin’ my
father’s face.
I didn’t know who I was
talking to.
He began to keen. Hush, I said.
But the candle guttered.
Him, crying like his heart
would break.
’Tis a pity I never got to
hold Dolly.
My arms and breasts still
ache to hold her.
Where is she now? America?
And your sister Maud?
She never comes home. Only
you.
Why do you keep returning to
this house, empty of memory
with no family of your own
to fill it? Poor Annie.
Your back curving like a
riverbend of hammered pewter at dusk
that no man would ever set
sail on.
Pour us another cup of tea
dear, you’ll feel right as rain.
Will this cursed rain never
stop? It’s driving me mad.
Poor Willie. In what foreign
field does he lie in?
He was so proud to be in the
Rifles, he was. Caught in the crossfire.
But you can’t lose a son
without blaming yourself, your
father said.
You can’t fight a battle
without spilling some blood, I said.
They said it was a whole
generation Irish blood—not English—
that fed the fallow fields of
the Somme. Fodder for the Crown.
That’s all we were good for.
Fodder, that’s what your father
said.
They say there’s guns and
war medals enough rusting on uniforms
in shadowed cupboards of
every country of the world.
Willie, he was our own Finn
MacCool.
We called him William after
your Gran’Da.
But the others, they thought
it was King Billy we were referring to.
And they shunned us at the
market. Painting the door orange.
Calling your Da a spy for
the Crown. We were good Catholics, we were.
Sure, it was the Crown who
put the food on our table during the Troubles
when there was little else
to be had. What else could we do?
They were jealously counting
all our Sunday roasts stacking up into eternity.
Accusing us of putting a
little something aside for purgatory.
But jealousy is ever the
traitor’s mistress.
The Have Nots hungering
after the hard-earned good fortune of others.
I told him it was enough to
make any man crazy serving two mistresses:
Catholic Ireland and
Anglican England.
But he couldn’t hear me.
Not a single thing I said.
’T’was a pity I was only
talking to the shadows.
’T’is such a pity the old
man went off his mind like that,
waving that sword and
babbling in the grasses
like a babby wanting his
mother.
Annie, I swear he wouldn’t
harm a hair on your head.
’T’was only his wounded
pride speaking in the graveyards of betrayal.
The sword was a symbol of
the power he’d lost.
And the crows diving at him
like banshees.
When the candlelight fails,
when they’ve killed the
heroes,
and the potential of the
father’s only son
lies buried in the cold
clay,
when that stony love slips
down their cheeks
into the glittering face of
the well,
what loyalty was left for
there to crown?
This coffinship of a house
is adrift in a sea of memory
and here I am, talking to
shadows.
Sure, it’s a false quiet
after a storm.
There’s a good girl now,
Annie.
Put the kettle on the hob
and we’ll all have tea.
