Easter Sunday – Back In The Day
My sister asked me,” What are you doing on Easter Sunday?” It got me thinking about Easter ‘back in the day” when Fran and I were first married and lived with his mother Rosanne, his Aunt Mary and Noreen and Gerard in Fountain Part, in Strabane Co Tyrone.
After the six weeks of Lent and going without the sweets or whatever we agreed to go off FOR Lent from when the blessed ashes were put on our forehead on Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday, when all the services of Holy Week were over , we looked forward to the treats that were to come on Easter Sunday..
Cassie Giving Birth
“You’re nearly there,” Sarah Jane, Cassie’s neighbour and the women who help deliver all the babies and (on occasion washed the dead) lied pushing the damp hair back from her face. She stopped to draw breath and listened to the rain drumming against the ill-fitting sash window. It had been a long day and a long night’s labour, for her and even longer for poor Cassie, she thought.
She left the bedroom, just of the kitchen, and going over to the range, shook the heavy black kettle to check if there was any hot water left in it. Cassie would need a good strong mug of tea when this was all over.
Part 2 Cassie’s Married Life
They went over the bridge and through the village, past Russell’s general shop that sold everything from fancy tea sets to farm implements and past Mulrine’s bottling store. Now, they were nearly at the railway station. The weak sun had retreated behind the darkening clouds and light spits of rain were beginning to dot the hood of the pram. It was further than Cassie had intended to push the children in the pram and they still hadn’t met Tom.
Breathing heavily now, Cassie passed the pink and white wild roses trying to outrun the banks of spiky nettles on the overgrown hedges
Cassie’s married life
Cassie reached up to the shelf in the kitchen and twiddled the knob on the wireless. She leaned closer to catch the news announcer voice crackling faintly over the wires. He was saying something about talks between Dublin and London. She turned the knob to ‘off’. She’d save the battery. If Tom didn’t carry the news back with him he’d be wantin’to hear it on the radio at bedtime. On a dull overcast day in February, the fighting and the on-going unrest seemed unreal and far away from her family and her life in Donegal
She looked around the small labourer’s cottage of two small bedrooms, a ‘big’ bedroom and kitchen and put her hand over her stomach. The labour pains had started. She hoped they wouldn’t get bad until night time when her children were in bed. She sighed deeply. It would be her fifth – four living and one buried along the hedgerow that bordered Clonleigh graveyard
The mixed up gender changing rooms
I tweaked the curtain of the cubicle. “How does it look? Does it fit?” There was a muttered response followed by a series of grunts and gasps. I rolled my eyes. My mother was trying to fit into a size ten… again.
I turned sensing someone was watching. I’d heard about hidden cameras in changing room…”.Holy shit. I don’t believe it,” I gasped out loud before I could stop myself.
A man was changing in the cubicle next to my mother. The curtain didn’t quite fit and I got an eyeful of hairy legs. My heart thudded in my chest and my skin tingles all at the same time.
Emily’s Dream Part 2
That night standing in the pub nursing a pint homeless and unemployed Jim desperately tried to decide what to do. Jim, a mate from work offered him a spare bed in his parent’s house, “We’ll get work at the factories.” he said. Jim remembered thinking he wasn’t so sure. Maybe, he should just go home and face Emily’s wrath about the delay there would have to be on the building of the house. Work was scarce. Minors were out on strike; many living off the soup kitchens.
Read More
Emily’s Dream
The sound of the news presenter’s voice stirred Andy out of his doze on the chair in front of the telly. He focused his eyes on the image on the screen as a smiling politician and his wife presented their new baby son to the waiting media. “What a lovely surprise – baby was born during the election campaign,” the newsreader enthused. Stretching over Andy watched with satisfaction as the smarmy face of the politician was swallowed up by the black dot
He wished he could fade out of his memories so easily. Election spiels and empty promises always brought him back to the 1980s because he always associated it with the beginning of his own troubles. “I was twenty-five, living at home and newly married to Emily,” he mused.
Ginger all the way
The dance floor was crowded. Girls still stood to one side of the hall pretending not to notice the men who were trying to pluck up the courage to walk across the floor and ask them to dance. Isobel looked around for Harry and spotted a soldier in uniform
Home At long Last
Hughie trudged onto the only bus of the day on the final leg of his homeward journey.
The conductor clicked his ticket and looked him over with a lazy interest. “You’ll have a fair stretch of the legs when you get off,” he said, guessing from the cut of him he was heading for the country.
Hugh nodded. Having lived in England for too many years he had though he’d have to walk the entire way from the town to his home place. He hadn’t realised there even was a bus service. “We’re glad we can take you part of the way,” the conductor continued, as if reading his mind.
Skinnin’ Yer Shins
It always happens to me – the shopping trolley with the wonky wheel.
There they stood in a long line piggy-backed on each other looking all docile and innocent. I dither beside them muttering” Will I chance this one or maybe this one?” I always end up with one that thinks its great craic to take the skin of as many shins as you can in the shortest time!
Out of School and Into the Factory
It was Friday. And I was starting in the factory on Monday. I couldn’t wait. No more school for me. I was a big grown up girl now. My mother was delighted. “No more pullin’ you out of that bed to get you to school before the bell rings. And no more teachers complainin’you spend more time copying other people work than doing’ your own work. You’ll soon learn what real work is now, girl, “she finished.
Behind the White Paneled Door
I stare at the door
With its panels painted pristine white
Where the handle will not feel the pressure of your fingers
Tell myself you will never open it wide
Walk out at a measured pace
Intend on your mind’s purposeful stride
Through the white panel door from inside
The silence
The Honeymoon Night
“No, Thomas, Uncle Ned can hear you,” Cassie said breathlessly, wriggling out from beneath her husband.
Frustrated and disappointment Thomas raised his voice in anger. “That’s what you said every time I came near you when we stayed with the Callachan’s. I thought things would be different here,” he said buttoning up his waistcoat and pulling on his coat.
Cassie’s pale skin grew pink with embarrassment. “Shush, keep your voice down he’ll hear you.”
Cassie leaves Thomas.
Willy knew from the way Katie was rattling the iron poker between the bars of the grate that something was very wrong. “What is it,” he said irritably.
It had been a long day since this morning when Cassie got married too early for the crows in the trees around the chapel to stir out of their nests
The Upstairs Room
Father O Neill raised his hat and climbed into his horse and trap rubbing him palms together in anticipation of Ellen’s scone bread and a warm mug of tea after the 10 o clock funeral.
As the clip clop sound of the priest’s pony faded silence fell over the breakfast table. “I’m away too,” Eliza said giving her sister a hug.”
Lifting the remainder of the fruit cake to return it to the pantry, the housekeeper glanced at Thomas. “You should get away into the far field.”
The Wedding Breakfast and the Priest
William stepped back in the pew as the bride and groom started down the three step that led from the altar into the main aisle of the chapel. As Thomas possessively took hold of Cassie’s arm William wanted to step forward and say “My Cassie is not that strong. Don’t expect too much of her…at least not in the beginning; she’s doesn’t know much about men…and that side of getting wed.” Instead he looked into her brown eyes so much like her mother’s that she reminded him of his own marriage in this very chapel thirty years before.
Una
The Marriage Ceremony
Willy, Cassie father’s face had a grey pallor to it as he braced the handlebars of the bike against the side of the Church careful not to mark the fresh white cement. He stopped outside the arched wooden chapel door to draw his breath.
The grass in the chapel grounds wore a light coat of April frost. Across the road a low hanging mist clung to St Patrick’s newly opened National School.
The Unwelcome Homecoming
Tom brooded for a while on old Ned’s words as he followed the road that took him through the village, over the River Deele with its humped backed bridge and the turnoff for home.
His thoughts turned to Catherine and their coming wedding. He remembered the first time he had seen her in the old one-roomed disused school used by the parish for parochial dances. She was with her sisters. They were flouncing about and flirting with the local boys but
Tom and Cassie Wedding (1911)
“The port of Derry, “Tom said with evident relief as the Scotsmans sailed up the Foyle. He leaned on the rail and breathed in the cool early morning air glad to be free of the underdeck fetid smell of cattle, vomit and diesel. It had been a long noisy 12 hours since he had boarded at Broonielaw Quay in Glasgow the night before. The revellers had drunk and sung Irish and Scottish songs for most of the night. As the dark sky was illuminated by a bright frosty moon the deepening cold night forced the drinkers and the singers to quietened down and find a space to get their heads down on the hard wooden benches or floor.
Gemma Hill Writeyou Writeme 