The House's Tale

 

The House’s Tale.

2020

You can see the house straight ahead as you walk up the road from the lough.  But the house can’t see you.  Milky cataracts have sealed its eyes- the blinds are drawn.  It is solid rectangle with two doors at the front and five more rectangles for windows. It marks the edge of the village to the west. If you leave by the front door, you can choose four routes. The house is at the centre point and roads radiate in every direction, drawing you away. Or bringing you home.

The house is asleep.  It dreams.  Children’s voices rise and fade; faint piano scales, the echo of the bell announcing a customer; the hum of the Hoover; the singing of the kettle on the stove. It is cold now - the stove is out.  A rectangular imprinted on the wall shows where the television used to be. On the walls girls in graduation gowns stare blankly at each other wondering where they have gone.

 The china cabinet holds treasures of the past.   Mirrored panels reflect the silence in the room.  A gold embossed china tea set wedding present in 1958, never used.  A service medal for the B Specials disbanded in 1970, a child’s collection of porcelain animals, a present from Portrush -gold and lilac embossed cup and saucer holds pride of place.  A moustached Beefeater and a salt and pepper set in the shape of a penguin stand guard and two exotic looking dolls with stiff petticoats watch him with interest. 

All year the house has been empty.  The good china in the kitchen cupboard gathers dust. The battered toys wait patiently to be played with. The snowdrops in the triangular garden by the side of the house flowered thickly and faded. No one picked them.    Clouds of lough flies like smoke moved in the sky in May and died in a day, their fragile corpses gather thickly by the back door. No one swept them up. In the yard this summer, the swallows swooped and dived. The washing line, an inverted metal pyramid, spins in the wind, unused. The blackcurrants plump and sweet hung heavy in the overgrown garden and dropped to rot, uneaten. The swallows lined up on the wires and flew away.  It is winter in the house again.

18^th July 1899

John unlocked the door to the second-best house in the village.  His house now.  Three big rooms downstairs, a pantry and a scullery at the back.  He climbed the stairs to the wide landing and looked out of the front bedroom window. He could see right to the Quay.  Men were unloading the supplies for the distillery.  His men, for now that Gaussen had gone away, he was in charge.  He could see the Gaussen’s home, Ballyronan House, thickly covered with ivy.  He’d envied his employer, coveted the spacious house he’d built looking out on Lough Neagh and the Quay his father had built. Now after 24 years of hard, unrelenting work John too got what he wanted, a house and a farm of his own. 

Outside in the yard he raised the bucket from the well, cupped his hand and tasted the cool water.  He’d put a pump in the yard - there were new ones now like the one the Gaussen’s had.  He walked up the lane by the side of his house surveying his land on both sides – there was a damp reedy field by the house but then it sloped gently upwards past the stack yard with its sheaves of flax drying?? (right time of year check) and a wide flat meadow. Good land, fertile land. Fields bordered by hedges. Hedges which needed cutting now it was high summer.  He’d grow wheat and flax here. Maybe a field or two of barley. And potatoes. He walked on – a sloping field on the left.  He’d call this the Wee Hill.  He turned and looked down at the house. His house. And beyond it the Quay and the Lough.  On the right a small stone cottage (who lives here????) at the top of a steeper slope -the Big Hill.  John walked on.  The land flattened out now and he’d reached the edge of his farm.  There were more houses here and another farm; he’d have to share the lane. But not the house or the farm – they were all his own.

2. Moving Day

‘Are you near done, yet Johnny? He’ll be back in a minute.’  She hoisted his baby brother Jim on one hip and hung the kettle in her other hand on the hook at the front of the cart. ‘Tie that on will ye.  That’s it all.’  He watched his mother look back at the low stone three-roomed cottage in Ballyneil where they’d lived all his life and sighed. Would she miss it? He wouldn’t.  Seven children in two rooms; one for his sisters and the tiny cold one at the back that was his until the new wean came and he had to share with Sandy, his cheeky ginger wee brother.  

Johnny finished tying down the rest of their possessions on the cart. He looked along the road for signs of his father’s return, his eyes dark and wary. What might he have forgotten? There was bound to be something. He checked the harness and the horses. The load was heavy, heavier than these old shires were used to, but it wasn’t far and mostly downhill to Ballyronan. They’d make it.  He stroked Prince’s soft mane and whispered softly in his ear. ‘Steady boy, it won’t be long now.

Two hours later with John at the reins, they turned into the main street of the village. The load shifted sideways as they rounded the corner on the Ballyneil Road that led to The Loup and the kettle clattered to the ground, startling the horses. Johnny’s heart was in his mouth and he looked at his mother clutching the baby beside him -the whole load was going over.  And it would be all his fault. But John steadied the beasts with a deft touch on the reins.  A lead coachman for many years, he was master of his craft.

‘Didn’t I tell ye to make sure ye tied things on tight?’  his father said.  ‘Go on and pick it up, will ye!’  

Curious faces lined the streets of the village and outside the bar men whispered, some laughing quietly as Johnny got down from the cart and retrieved the dented kettle.   They knew John Ferguson: most of them worked for Gaussen on and off and he was the land steward, in charge of the farming part of the business.  He worked them hard.  Soon it would be time to harvest the corn, so he’d be hiring again.  Some of nodded at Johnny as he walked the remaining distance up the main street to his new home (use census names 1901) but they didn’t say much.  John was a hard man to please and they were Roman Catholics, so it was best to hold their peace.

Outside the school, a hundred yards ahead, he saw his sister Sarah waiting for the wee ‘uns to come out. A pale girl with dark eyebrows framing deep set eyes, she looked worried as he approached with the dented kettle.

‘Is he cross? It’s not your fault. The cart was overloaded. I said that to Mammy, but she wouldn’t tell him.’  Johnny said nothing. He knew what was coming.

She ridden down ahead of them on his Mammy’s old black bike.  Now that Annie was away working in Hamilton’s dairy farm in Cookstown, Sarah was his closest sister.  And his best friend.  The school bell rang and soon they were surrounded by his younger sisters, excited at the prospect of walking to their new home.  Maggie, a solid, sensible girl, would be leaving school soon and would join Sarah at home helping his mother keep the house.  There’d be pigs and maybe even cattle to care for too on their new farm his father said, and Johnny couldn’t do it all. Minnie, his father’s favourite with her dimples and unruly curls, was the most excited.  She grabbed Sarah’s hand and tried to drag her up the street towards the new house.

‘Where’s Sandy?’

‘The master kept him back.  He was bold again. I’m going to tell Mammy on him.’

Ye’ll do no such thing.  There’s enough bother as it is’.

A boy of about seven with a shock of ginger hair emerged from the school gate rubbing his palms on his sleeves. His eyes glittered but there were no tears.

‘Did you get a slap? I’m going to tell Dada – he’ll give you another one.’

Sandy lunged at his sister, grabbing a handful of curls. She was always telling tales.

Sarah stood between then and took a hand on each side.

‘ Come on now. Do youse not want to see your new house?’ And the wee’uns skipped up the road to the big two storey thatched house at the end of the village, their quarrel forgotten.

‘Are you making the tay, Johnny?’  said Maggie, pointing at the dented kettle.  She was always making fun him, wouldn’t let him alone when he wanted to stay inside and help his mother make the butter or the soda bread.  That was woman’s work, she said.  He should be out in the fields or tending to the animals. Da was always saying she was more use than him.

Da was unharnessing the horses when they arrived in the back yard.  Not meeting his eye, Johnny made himself useful and led Prince to the stable at the top of the yard and then went to help his mother unload the things for the kitchen, well-worn pots and pans and the flat cast iron griddle she used for the soda bread he loved to eat.  He entered his new home for the first time. The scullery was cool and light. A single stone step lead to the left lead to main kitchen with a red tiled floor and a coal-fired stove.  They’d be warm next winter.  Thanks to his Da which he was always reminding them.

‘John – would you c’mre son?  The lassies can help yer Mammy with that. We’ve the beds to put up.  if y’d loaded the cart the way I tould ye we coulda got them off a lot easier.’  There it was again. He’d never be good enough.

‘Wouldn’t it have a fine sight for those boys outside Sisk’s* bar if the cart had couped.  Ye’ll need te pull your socks up now, boy, for we’ve 36 *acres to farm.’

Didn’t he know it? His Da was always saying that.  Reminding him that this farm he’d worked so hard for would be his one day as the eldest son. How he’d pulled himself up by his bootstraps, worked his fingers to the bone at Gaussen’s for 30 years, saved every penny he could so that one day he could hold his head high in Saltersland church as a landowner. People kept telling him how lucky he was, what a great man his father was.  He should be happy today.  And he was. If only his Da would leave him alone.

!901

 Voices in the house now.  A coal fired range cooker (?) keeps the kitchen warm; the dented kettle is boiling and huge pans of water are heating. Outside the backdoor Sarah, a pretty girl of 17 (is she still at school???), fills bucket after bucket of water from a brand new pump painted green to be heated on the range for the washing. Her sister is churning, making the shiny yellow butter they’ll sell to ????. There’ll be buttermilk to make the wheaten bread for the tea later. A wee boy of near three wobbles between his sisters, his nappy drooping.  He’s spoilt his mammy says for he should have been out of nappies long ago and hasn’t she enough to do without nappies to wash. In the scullery, she is feeding wet sheets made from old flour sacks through a mangle before she starts on the nappies. It wasn’t her that spoilt him either- his big sisters doted on him. The only fair- haired child in the family Jim was a sweet-natured boy, rarely cried as a baby and happy enough to amuse himself playing with a ball or following the older children around.  They’d be home soon from school for their dinner at half twelve. There’d be plenty of spuds boiled in their skins and cabbage a bit bacon for the men, for Johnny was a man too now working on the land that was their own. (idea Sandy and Jim playing with toy gun.  Minnie scene needed too)