In 1968 our house underwent a renaissance. An extension was added, giving us the luxury of another toilet, kitchen and bedroom. This last was an important development for me. At night-time I no longer was the filling in the sandwich; we had an extra bed.
My mother turned my old bedroom into what she termed ‘the parlour’. She even managed to prise a carpet (brown; it wouldn’t show the dirt) and a vinyl, three-piece suite out of my father. For him it was a bold extravagance; for her it was a victory.
The ‘good room’, as it was called, was only used on very special occasions, and one of those occasions was when the ‘Yankees’ came visiting.
Isa was the sister of a neighbour. She lived in Canada and, faithfully every summer, she and her daughter Regina travelled those thousands of miles to visit her brother Sam and his infirm wife in Draperstown. They were always referred to as the Yankees, my parents believing that Canada and the United States were one and the same.
The only time our house got a real seeing-to was several weeks before their arrival. Windows were painted and walls papered; my mother scrubbed, and shouted with more vigour than ever, bellowing out commands that nearly shook the house. In the interests of parsimony and peace, the job of painting fell to my sister Rosaleen and me. Mother knew from past experience not to ask Lipstick, Glamour and Death father, since anything he did inside the house was ‘dear bought’, as she put it. This meant that he complained so much before, during and after the execution of a given task that he nearly drove her ‘mental’.
So we girls would go into action with the white gloss, tackling it with all the precision of a drunk in a lavatory. We strayed madly onto windowpanes, dribbled onto skirtings and floors, even coating the odd cockroach or insect that had the misfortune to blunder into the path of our reckless brushes. Mother seemed not to notice these mishaps; in fact she was so proud of our efforts that she’d send us to a straitened neighbour or myopic uncle to wreak the same havoc there.
We sang and slobbered away with our brushes in those other houses, knowing that no matter how careless our application was it probably wouldn’t be noticed. We also reasoned that our results would definitely be an improvement on what was there before. But perhaps the greatest incentive for our insouciance was that the stingy relative never paid us in coin; the paltry reward was often a mug of tepid tea and a stale bun.
There was exuberance in the air at the thought of the Yankees’ arrival, not least because the humble fare in the cupboard would be replaced with an assortment of cakes and buns which our impoverished palates knew were bound to come our way at some stage.
At the sound of their car there was a flurry of anxiety and excitement that no other visitors to our house could invoke. They caused us to perform to a higher standard, and even our established routines were tossed overboard. One of these involved the non-use of the front door; it would be stiff and unyielding because Rosaleen and I had invariably painted it shut.
‘Christ, there’s the Yankees!’ mother would yell to father. ‘Get off your arse and get that front door open.’
As the car approached, my father would use all his might to try to prise the door open, putting his foot up on the jamb in desperation while mother stood berating him for not having performed this very necessary task sooner.
‘It’s always the same,’ she’d continue, panicking now. ‘Declerta God, leave everything to the last minute. You hadn’t a damn thing to do except that, and you couldn’t even manage that. My heart’s a breakin’. I may give this place up!’
When the front door was finally freed, the back one, which was always open, would bang shut in revolt, making everything in the house tremble and flap. It seemed as though the arrival of the Yankees had the power to unsettle even the contents of the house.
Then came the moment we’d all been waiting for. There was a crunch on gravel and a flutter of chiffon and suddenly there they were in the parlour, my mother ushering them in in her slippery viscose frock and plastic sling-backs, my father in his Sunday suit. My parents looked shabby by comparison with Isa and Regina, unwittingly lending these dames a radiance they did not fully deserve.
The visitors were all elegance and grace: lean ladies with delicate wrists, who moved cautiously on precarious heels, and cared greatly about appearances. They carried powerful handbags and wore a great deal of asphyxiating scent. We had never seen such shoes before: glancing patent leather which barely covered their dainty feet, with buckles on the toes that glittered. The hair was blonde and wavy, their smooth untroubled faces painted and powdered and perfect. Regina was a younger reflection of her mother, and Isa held the elegant promise of what the daughter could become.
They would arrange themselves on chairs either side of the fireplace, like two exotic birds flanking the listless space. I’d hang shyly in the doorway, awed by the glinting jewellery that moved and winked as they talked. And boy could they talk! Streams of languorous syllables would issue from them all afternoon, the fine hands fluttering and straying in the air for added emphasis.
They inspired mother to gaiety and father to alien acts of chivalry: I’d see him getting up to replenish the flutes of sweet sherry and light the proffered cigarettes, which were as long as their stilettos. We children milled around, sneaking looks at the unfolding spectacle – a Hollywood drama right there in our living-room with the Yankees centre stage.
Tea was the high point of this production and mother would reluctantly leave the guests, to direct operations in the kitchen. She didn’t trust us, you see, and with good cause: she was aware that, left in charge of all the fancy food, we were liable to lose control and wolf down the lot.
She needn’t have worried, however; the ladies barely touched a thing. The symmetry of those figures had to be maintained; cheekbones and hand-span waists were forever their priorities.
Mother would wheel in the trolley to showers of obliging remonstration.
‘Oh Gawd, Mary,’ Regina would protest, ‘you shouldn’t have! How absolutely divine.’
‘You’ve gone to sooooo much trouble,’ Isa would say, ‘and we’re only slightly peckish. Well, just a morsel then; those teacakes look super.’
They’d linger over the morsels with absentminded ease, an art perfected through years of dizzy-making self-denial. And so the cake stand with its tier of buns and biscuits would remain like an offence between them, the sandwiches gradually curling up in defeat. And our eyes would widen at the prospect of all those yummy leftovers.
Before departure there was a photo opportunity on the front step. We stood in an awkward group, bashful in the scrutiny of the camera. And there they are: Isa and Regina forever conquering the lens, with their brilliant hold-it smiles and the confidence they knew was rightly theirs. When they left, their subtle energies went with them and the house returned to its drab old self. We could still, however, imagine those lilting voices and still smell the soft exudation of that scent.
As the car bore them away we’d dive onto the cake stand, and mother would unwrap the gifts the ladies had brought. There’d be a plate or ornament with the predictable maple leaf or Mountie. Over the years we accumulated a great deal of Canadian tat; it jostled for prominence on walls and shelves, growing with each successive visit.
Being an awkward teenager, I wanted to grow up very fast and be just like the Yankees. I imagined having a white mansion on a sun-drenched hill. Every year I would take off from it like an effortless swan and land in dear old Ireland to pay a visit to the humble folk. I wanted to feel those flimsy fabrics next to my skin and the danger of those stilettos on my feet; I wanted to lay claim to all that urgent beauty that had the power to fell envious women and halt men in their tracks, to have the ability to electrify atmospheres with my wit and charm, and manifest every kind of goodwill in everyone I met. I longed for that sculpted elegance, the diamonds and the scent, the glamour and polish that belonged to another world entirely.
There was no compromise with the Yankees. They caused such beautiful riots in my head and left lasting impressions. I felt no quandaries of faith where they were concerned. They were so unlike my mother and the other women I knew, those who slaved and gave to others because that was their function. These ladies relaxed and gave to themselves, and that was their triumph.
Isa’s brother Sam was a Seventh-day Adventist. In Ulster back then it was important to know a person’s religion – more important, in fact, than knowing their name. People were either ‘our sort’, meaning Catholic, or the ‘other sort’, meaning Protestant. Sadly little has changed in this regard.
Master Robert claimed that he could guess a person’s persuasion just by looking at them. It was a bizarre idea, coming as it did from an adult who appeared to be in possession of a fully functioning cerebral cortex. He’d say: ‘I saw an odd-lookin’ individual in the town today. He had the look of a Protestant about him.’ And nobody thought to question the veracity of such a wild assertion. Such innocuous comments, foolish as they might have seemed at the time, all served to harden the cement that built the walls of division in Ulster.
Our neighbour Sam, with his Seventh-day Adventism and not belonging to a mainstream Protestant denomination, bucked the trend slightly; nobody quite knew where to place him. So he was put in a ‘harmless cretur’ box, along with the Quakers, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
The main tenet of Adventism is the belief that the second coming of Jesus Christ is imminent. Sam believed it, and his goodness was a reflection of that readying conviction. He worked the land, treated others well and cared for his sick wife, all without complaint.
He was a tall, rangy man with a shiny bald head and a wart between his eyebrows which moved up and down as he talked. Often, when his chores were done, he’d drop in for the obligatory tea and talk. When Sam sat down on our couch he resembled a collapsed deckchair, reclining on his backbone, knees scissored wide in front, arms strung across his chest, with only the head in motion, roving around for that essential eye contact as he chatted.
Not surprisingly, he shared his sister Isa’s enthusiasm for the prattle. He’d speed in and out of subjects, giving loud opinions on everything. He’d brake briefly for my mother’s feeble additions of ‘You don’t say, Sam’, ‘Away a that’ or ‘Are you sure now?’ And then he’d be off again, gritting his lines with his own brand of swear-words – ‘heck’ and ‘dang’ and ‘gee’ – each calculated not to offend the Lord. Being neither Prod nor Taig he wisely steered clear of politics at all costs, seeing only shattered friendships and the dangerous glint of wreckage up ahead if that road were taken. And all the while he talked, mother’s offerings would lie ignored, the tea going cold, the scone untouched.
His days began and ended with his two loves: his land and his wife. The land was his livelihood: the farm. His wife, disabled, unable to get about, meant that Sam had as much work inside the house as out.
I never met Anna but imagined a restive soul trapped in a wheelchair, compensating for the scourge of useless legs by reading, knitting, and creating. Every Christmas we received a card which she had lovingly made with tissue and lace; inside, the greetings of the season were rendered in a shaky hand. Sam would bring us the customary cake and a pot of his home-made jam. These gifts were so caringly created and all had an air of thoughtfulness and sincerity about them; they came from naturally benevolent people.
Then, without warning, the unthinkable happened. Sam – loving husband, loyal neighbour and endless talker – vanished, and there was consternation in the locality.
Farmers of that era – and indeed the same holds true today – were forced to live according to the limits of their routines, in synergy with their land, their livestock and fellow farmers. When someone stepped outside the paradigm it created a warp, a stasis. Sam’s untimely disappearance caused just this: a temporary faltering of hearts and minds.
His brother flew in from Toronto, leaving Isa to grieve, and the hunt got under way. For days the neighbours searched the surrounding countryside. They looked in sheds and trawled the rivers, but their efforts went unrewarded and everyone was left further perplexed. In our rambling rosaries we asked for Sam’s safe return and – as the days collapsed into weeks and then months and the mystery deepened – we prayed for his heartbroken sister Isa so far, far away, enduring all that bafflement and despair.
Nine months later the agony of our not knowing was over. Sam’s body, weighted with concrete, was recovered from a lake outside Draperstown. He’d been murdered by bank robbers whom he’d happened across in one of his barns. His threat to inform the authorities had betrayed him, and precipitated the end of the principled, decent man that he was.
With his passing, the Yankees withdrew. They could never ‘come home’ again. And their absence left a dull and empty present. I was so sad. All that former glamour and elegance had died along with Isa’s brother.
When I think of Sam now I see him relaxing on that couch, the engine of his discourse forever running. I see my mother hovering in attendance with the tea. And I muse at the irony of how his speech could have betrayed him, and how his honesty could hasten such a brutal exit from all of our lives.