When Kathy Sheridan returns to Westmeath the silence of the big field brings a nostalgia for childhood lakeside Sundays and incessant GAA radio coverage
The squealing and wailing in the old Ford Consul fade out as we fork right off the Castletown-Geoghegan road, go under a long, dark canopy of trees and pull up on the slope overlooking The Lake. My father's teeth unclench one by one as we pile out and the boys hare off to torture other people's young ones. The women hitch their skirts around their knees and gravitate towards the old boat-house at the water's edge, alert for boldness. The men stay by the cars, hot and terse in their Sunday suits, as radio knobs are twiddled and bursts of static fill the silence.
Suddenly, a human yelp crashes across the air waves. Snitchy Ferguson and Mick O'Connell are on the 40! Yup, that's Micheál O'Hehir, his machine-gun screech shattering the sound barrier, triggering spontaneous combustion in swans and ear-bleeding in dogs.
You would never catch me weeping for the Children of Lir. I knew from personal experience that their benighted sojourns on Westmeath lakes only felt like 400 years. And they hadn't the irritant of Micheál O'Hehir, week after head-banging week.
Sometimes, there were diversions at The Lake. Lilliput Sports. Races involving sacks and three legs tied together. A specially-laid, wooden dance-floor, up on the slope. Our own Bogarts and Bacalls fox-trotting to a band belting out "Sugar in the morning/Sugar in the evening/Sugar at supper-time/You be my little sugar and love me all the while". We wanted to be them. But children didn't invade adult spaces in the 1950s, unless it was for a properly-executed, arms-rigid, jig or reel.
These we learned in Ballinagore national school, where Mrs Heduan also introduced us to such musical novelties as "Ceol, arsan t-asal, 'se istigh sa ngort" and Mr Looram told us the Cuban missile crisis would end in a fireball but we'd be okay because we'd be dead before we knew it. I well remember when Mrs Casey called me a "taffy" at sewing, which only proves that you can nurse a grievance all your life, however minor, and reminds me why the word "calico" renders me nauseous.
At some point during those years, our Dad became a Senator. This caused little stir, beyond the odd, embittered creature who, for no good reason, would suddenly hiss, "The SINator" in our direction.
The fact that all the boys fancied Kathleen Gardiner (who could draw tears from a stone singing "Nobody's child") was another monumental pain. I therefore resorted to an early form of comfort-eating by sending up to Fagan's (The Shop) every lunch-time, for an ice-pop, a pineapple toffee and a macaroon bar, airily instructing them to put it on the tab. That lasted for about three months until the terrible day (which vies with JFK's shooting in the annals of remembering exactly where you were when earth-shaking events occur), when I got home and they were waiting for me . . . Maureen Fagan - to my mind, the spit of Ava Gardner - who with her husband, Jimmy, owned The Shop, often gave us a lift the two miles from school to Cloonagh. We could also rely on the man in the "Tyresoles" van to pick us up on a Thursday. He wasn't from round these parts. We never knew his name or whence he came.
On summer days, we dawdled home, fascinated by the tar oozing between our toes in our Clark's sandals, catching a sheep-dipping session up near Jimmy Mulligan's if we were lucky, sucking on haws and bitter sloes, chewing on velvety primroses and cowslips, splatting watery, pearl-like berries between our fingers, while the bold ones skived off down the river for a Woodbine. Once home, the height of a treat was a wodge of ice cream floating in fizzy orange.
On "busy" traffic days like the Kilbeggan Races, if we weren't hitting the chairplanes or the three-card trick men ourselves, we might sit on the wall outside our house and count the passing cars, particularly excited by registrations that weren't LI (for Westmeath). We gave a special wave to an IR (for Offaly, mother's county) or an IX; that was Longford, the Sinator's old heartland.
Amid all this excitement, we found time to wander the countryside, hunting for hazel nuts and vast field mushrooms. Sometimes we waddled forth on a fat, old pony. The call of the corncrake was a commonplace. An early memory is of a sister and me trudging down McCormick's Boreen in our mucky, little sandals, big pink ribbons in our black hair, two warts on someone's finger. (I'm not allowed say whose . . .) The hedgerows are dark and heavy with lilac and the scent of summer, fat animals doze in the sun, and we're lugging baskets of sandwiches and hot, bottled tea (the stoppers fashioned from tightly packed newspaper) for the men pitching hay.
Food delivered, we continue down the mile-long boreen on another, furtive, far scarier, mission. Every step takes us further from human contact. At journey's end, to our left, is the big field we call Deireadh Bhíligh, where a solitary tree reigns in the centre, forever safe from the saw because it stands in a "fort", or fairy ring.
Shaking with fear, we come to Mickey McCormick's gate. We suspect Mickey to be some kind of giant, 200 year-old, blood-sucking ogre. But these are desperate times; Mickey has the "cure" for warts.
Suddenly he appears out of the dilapidated old stone house, a small, soft-eyed, old man with a woolly moustache. He nods benignly, disappears for a minute and returns with two short pieces of straw and some thread. Deftly, he threads the lengths of straw together in the shape of a perfect crucifix. With this, he weaves a slow, solemn sign of the cross over each wart, murmuring imprecations. We splutter thanks before heading smartly for the gate.
Forty years on, I'm sad to report, the jury remains out on whether the warts disappeared as a result of Mickey's ministrations or some quack potion from the chemist in Mullingar.
In the early days, we went to Sunday Mass in Raheenmore, a low-ceilinged, roughly plastered, little church at the back end of Ballinagore, where another sister occasionally hammered out the accompaniment to "Soul of our Saviour" on the old Wurlitzer organ. Then we transferred to the parish church in Castletown-Geoghegan, an actual village, where the Rev Fr McGahey, PP, bellowed out parishioners' "offerings" from the pulpit, complete with name and amount, for maximum humiliation.
Castletown might have been a step-up, but it could never be Mullingar. Mullingar, 10 miles from Cloonagh, was mecca. We got our shoes in Donoghue's, our medicines from Miss Farry's chemist, our teeth extracted by Mr Kelly, our piano lessons from Mrs Daly, and my copy of "Diana" (a younger sister of Bunty and Judy) from what became the Topic on Mount Street. Occasionally, we got to the cinema, for blockbusters like "The Nun's Story" and "The Song of Bernadette". Heaven.
At last, we moved house, within hitching distance of mecca. It was around then that I followed my sisters to a Co Wicklow boarding school, where a six-foot blonde, flower child from San Francisco called Mary Anne McGurn blew in the times that were a-changin', and General Franco's grand-daughter languished sulkily on the fire escape, tweezing individual hairs from her long, brown legs. It was a long, long way from Cloonagh, Ballinagore.
I went back last week . . .
The old house is gone, even its imprint, but the wall is there. I sat on it for old time's sake and waved at the massive lorries hurtling past.
McCormick's Boreen, no longer heavy with foliage and flowers, is shorn of its mystery. The few old stones that remain from Mickey's home have been put to use in a cattle crush. There's no sign of the fairy fort in Deireadh Bhíligh. But maybe I was looking in the wrong place.
As we stood in the unearthly silence, I could almost hear my mother calling to hurry on to the men, while the tea was hot. And imagined my father standing there, pointing a stick to where the fort had been, describing how poor Mickey met his end, and who's living in Jack Marshall's house now, and if anyone we know is left in pretty, little Ballinagore.
We'd reminisce about Jimmy Fagan and his lovely Maureen, and we might ramble on up to Raheenmore church - 1780, reads the date, no wonder the walls are so thick and, good God, the old Wurlitzer is still there - and later, if it was a good day, we'd have a right snort at the "Scoop the Poop" sign on the notice board at Lilliput - now called Jonathan Swift Park, if you don't mind - before adjourning to Wallace's in Dalystown for a half-one.
But all we're left with is the unyielding silence of Deireadh Bhílig, the gentle flitting of old ghosts, and a sudden, fierce nostalgia for Micheál O'Hehir.