LEAVING THE SUNLIGHT FOR THE GLOOM

Arthur, the oldest McKenna brother, I never got to know; he died before I was old enough to form an opinion of him, but my memory is of a remote figure, tall and stern, the nose a bumpy outcrop on a craggy face. He wore a felt hat like father’s and a long, belted gaberdine which made him look very sinister and unapproachable. I saw him once in a far field, shaking a stick and roaring at a cow, which didn’t augur well.

On Arthur’s demise James became the guardian of the family home: a brooding, two-storey dwelling about a mile from our house. This was where my father and his siblings had been born. It was a strange, silent place with a disquieting air about it as if some baleful event had caused everything to atrophy long, long ago.

The house never seemed occupied somehow. On approaching it you got the feeling that at some point in the dim past its dwellers, moved by some supernatural calling, had suddenly got up and wandered off into the fields, never to be seen again.

But as you drew nearer you found that someone, against his better judgement, had decided not to heed that call from the other world, and was therefore doomed to languish in the house, regretful of that decision. That person was Uncle James.

The back door was always agape yet the clucking hens in the yard were the only signs of life. Those sinister lines in Flannan Isle come to mind.

We stood a moment, still tongue-tied:

And each with black foreboding eyed

The door, ere we should fling it wide,

To leave the sunlight for the gloom.

His yard bore the unvarying features of all the homesteads I knew. The machinery of agribusiness stood about like pieces of sculpture in an outdoor museum. Here: a tractor with the unhitched vertical of a trailer at its rear. There: a defeated hayshaker, blistering and rusting under the hot sun; and a proud baler, forged and new, which obviously did not belong.

The yard was bounded by white-distempered barns, with doors of faded green opening into odd degrees of darkness. As a child I dared not venture beyond those openings for fear of a door slamming shut behind me and locking me in for ever.

Often when we went for a walk on Sunday evenings mother and I would make a social call, but James, forever the misanthrope, didn’t see it that way. On hearing our approach he’d appear on the stone step, filthy tea towel in hand, and enquire with a suspicious eye what it was we were ‘down about’. No ‘Hello, how are you?’ here. Friendliness would have meant he approved of us, and that would never do.

Like his brother Arthur, James was tall and grim, hair sticking out from under his cap like ticking from a burst sofa, left eye bigger than the right as if a phantom monocle was permanently wedged in the socket. He wore the regulation uniform of the farmer: laced up boots, plaid shirt, serge trousers with a pair of braces hoisting them high off ankles and paunch, the whole ensemble creased and defeated looking. Most of this apparel would have been bought from an army surplus stall, at a knockdown price, on a fair-day in nearby Maghera. Precious cash was never wasted on necessities like clothing.

Only when he’d assured himself that his money was safe and that we hadn’t come to borrow his precious Morris Minor would we be admitted inside James’s lonely homestead. He spent most of his time in the kitchen. I remember every detail of it; the features of that kitchen have stayed in my head like a lacklustre woodcut.

It appeared as though my uncle was more a caretaker than a dweller. No effort had been made to make the place homely. The atmosphere was stale, lacking warmth or welcome. In the kitchen a fire roared and a clock ticked. Even back then I could see the potential that would lie for ever unrealised. The flagged floor and blazing hearth had a brashness about them which didn’t quite belong – all that shameless shine and vigour which spoke of merriment and laughter and tankards raised in toast. The floor, polished with the feet of spiritless generations, wanted to be danced upon and explored in all its fullness. And the hearth wanted to warm a whole host of flickering otherness. I could see a Breughel gathering taking shape: wenches in straining bodices, cavorting with their skirts held high; thigh-slapping young bucks in velvet and brocade, making risqué gestures in the shadows. The air craved lively music to cut across the silence and the solitary lamp high up on the raftered ceiling begged for the chance to strike it all to life.

I fear that that kitchen never knew joy of any kind. The floor had to make do with nothing more lively than James’s weary tread.

There was a fireplace with a crane crook holding a kettle of water for the tea. At noon the kettle was substituted for a pot of potatoes for the midday meal.

The kitchen had the typical inventory of tired furniture: a brown studded couch, a scrubbed table by the Gloom the window, two plain wooden chairs dating from the previous century, one of them serving as a rail for a grubby handtowel. As a point of dismal interest there was a glass case, slobbered with innumerable layers of brown gloss paint, which held a display of jaded, willow-patterned Delftware.

On a shelf above the hearth, lined up in order of preference, sat a selection of foodstuffs, all within easy reach. There was a bag of Tate & Lyle sugar, its furled mouth attracting a host of greedy flies. Beside it, a black-and-maroon tea caddy, a pot of Robertson’s marmalade and there, towering above all, a drum of Saxa salt, its red-and-yellow label lending some colour to the drabness. From the ceiling hung a strip of yellow, plastic flypaper, the corpses of long-dead insects studding it like so many currants.

The farmhouse had undergone very little change since James’s birth. Every time mother and I visited we were met by the same scene, everything preserved and fixed in time, emblems of decades past. It seemed that he was destined to move among these mute observers for ever. Like the furniture, he never changed and was therefore doomed always to live his life in retrospect.

Frequently when we’d call it was to find him engaged in either making tea or cooking a meal, which could only mean one of two things: our timing was always poor or James filled his hours by filling himself. Greed for money usually betokens greed in other areas too. And my uncle was undoubtedly self-centred; no matter how many times we called we were never offered tea or even a chair.

Quite naturally he hated to be disturbed, particularly during the cooking process. On one particular evening we arrived at the ‘wrong’ time, and happened upon an unforgettable spectacle.

As I recall, the frying pan figured large in his farmhouse cuisine. We stood in the kitchen, inhaling the stench of last week’s lard being refried yet again, saw blue smoke surging madly out through the pantry door – as if from the site of a mining disaster. We heard the frantic spluttering of sausages, eggs, bacon and a wee soda farl or two. Then through the furious haze, summoned by mother’s call, James emerged, the face roasted off him, his big eye watering fiercely, brandishing the egg-turner like a samurai sword and looking for all the world like an extra from that magnificent 1953 sci-fi B-lister, It Came From Outer Space. I need hardly add that he was not especially pleased to see us.

His manner and talk were as cyclical as the seasons. Like his brothers, he lived by a set of obdurate rules, never daring to try anything new lest he discover something different about himself or the world.

He was uncomfortable around people, especially women and children. Our Sunday visits ruffled him slightly; we broke his routine and injected panic in him. He could not settle until the purpose of our call had been established; on learning that it was purely social he’d feel more reassured and begin to talk.

His speech was always hesitant. I never knew if this was a physical impediment or simply the result of indecisive thought. Having spent so long in the same environment he’d begun to resemble the machinery and the hens in the farmyard. His conversations were far from coherent and he had the habit of going off on a wild tangent without warning when he heard something he didn’t like.

‘That’s the weather now,’ was his usual conversation opener. ‘Maybe a man’ll get a bit of hay cut.’

‘Sure you could have had that hay cut last week,’ my mother would say; she never missed an opportunity to upbraid James for his laziness. ‘I don’t know what you and Edward are footering about. Before you know it the rain’ll be down and then where will ye be?’

James, not wanting to hear the truth about himself, would rummage frantically in his head for something of a less incendiary nature and swiftly change the subject.

‘Paddy the Slooter is out of the hospital, I see,’ he’d say. ‘Maybe there wasn’t a wile lot wrong wi’ him to start with. People that’s goin’ nowadays can’t thole a thing.’ And he’d slurp and snort from the mug of tea and await mother’s response.

‘What are you sayin’?’ She was off again. ‘Sure didn’t the man have a heart attack? Near died if it hadn’t been for wee Mary Lizzie Biddy being there at the time. Bee t’ be a wile shock for the wee cretur.’

‘She’s another one.’ James would be getting into his stride now. As with his brothers, women and children did not count for much. ‘Has the man broke. A different rig-out on her every Sunday. The man couldn’t keep fut till all that and wh … wa … wh … at … what a … does she need all them pallions on her for?’

‘What are you talkin’ about pallions for? What have pallions to do with Paddy’s heart?’ Mother knew that sympathy was not James’s strong suit.

James, seeing he couldn’t win, would change the subject yet again, the words queuing up in him to stumble out in a panic. He’d consider the fire in the hearth.

‘See-the-price-of-coal-goin’-up-again. Soon be a man’ll not be able to live atall, atall. And the butter too wh … a … wh … who’s at the back a that a wondir?’

‘Sure what are ye buyin’ butter for when you could make your own? Have ye no sense? A good churn sittin’ out there in the scullery belongin’ to your auntie Martha Mary Micky, niver used. God, James, you’re a quare one.’

James, sensing defeat, would struggle frantically for a defence.

‘Sure isn’t the h … ha … ha … han … hannel on it broke and wh … a … wh … who’s gonna fix it anyway, anyway, anyway?’

He clucked and stammered over those challenging ‘wh’ sounds, and rocked on the chair and flapped his elbows like wings as he spoke. Sometimes, in order to control all his inner commotion, he’d grasp his elbows resolutely in cupped hands, folded forearms now a shield worn high across his chest. But still the machinery of him shook and he’d shift uncomfortably as mother kept the accusations coming.

‘Aye, handle broke, me arse! Couldn’t ye fix it yourself? Any gulpen with half a brain could fix a bit of a churn. I’m tellin’ ye, James, if you had a houseful of wains to feed ye wouldn’t be buyin’ butter.’

‘Aye and what would I be doin’ with a clatter of youngsters round me? …’ And he’d fix me with his large eye, a laser beam of indictment.

‘Christ, what sort of craic’s that? S’pose ye think ye came into the world with that cap and braces and all on ye.’ And so it would go.

James hated to see my mother in his yard. She flung rebuke before him like handfuls of chicken-feed. He was slow. He was lazy. He was everything she was not. No, time never rushed for Uncle James; it sauntered up to him, sidled about a bit and then stood still. He never put off until tomorrow what he could do in six months’ time, or better still forget about completely. In short he was procrastination in all its genuflecting glory made flesh.

He was like an old tractor, endlessly stopping and starting up again, with all that moving and jigging about, just itching to roar away. But unlike a tractor James did not have the fuel or power to get himself going. He was destined to stay stuck, spluttering and stalling on the one spot all his life.

Sometimes, as mother and I endured James’s disjointed dialogue, a daring hen would wander in and halt in the middle of the floor. It would fix us with an astonished eye, one tentative foot raised high. Such an intrusion wasn’t surprising since the door between yard and kitchen stood open for most of the day, and a confused hen would take the stone floor to be the natural extension of its territory.

James would rouse himself from the creaking chair and send the creature flying with a surging of plumage and the skittering skid of talons on stone.

‘Get out arrgh that!’ he’d bellow. ‘Don’t know what’s to be done with them hens, anyway, anyway, anyway.’ It did not seem to occur to him to keep the door shut.

Often in summer the front door was left open too. While he and mother fenced with words, I sometimes wandered down there out of curiosity and boredom. Here the flagged floor gathered itself and made a spotless run down the dim hallway. One thing that can be said in James’s defence is that he kept his house relatively clean and tidy.

This corridor was featureless, no pictures or shelves of bric-à-brac to divert me, just a menacing flight of stairs painted in the ugly brown of the glass case. And, snaking up the middle of them, a balding strip of carpet in the colours of dead leaves.

If that ascent into the darkness seems familiar now it’s because of a famous movie scene: Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho climbed the same flight many times to converse with his spectral mother. That staircase was scary even before I’d seen the film. I would stand at the bottom wondering what was up there, and test my courage with a foot on the first tread and a clammy hand on the banister. But the challenge was too much for me; I’d simply retreat into the safety of the hall and view the first floor from afar. Those upper rooms were not for looking into; for me they were the places where the dead roamed; there was a clamour of ghosts up there, I was sure. I imagined the unmade beds and the airless whiff of stale linen; the furniture claw-footed and heavy, and curtains drawn resolutely against the light. There’d be no points of interest to detain the eye, except for one pockmarked mirror, high up on a dun wall, reflecting the listless whole.

The stagnant past of those ancestors came back to haunt me too. In my mind’s eye I saw a mother on the base bed in the final throes of giving birth; a raging father shaking an ashplant at the moon as the uncles and aunts, sullen and speechless, stood around among the mayhem.

The thought of old Rose made me back away. I wondered if she’d tried tapping out any messages to her nephews before visiting us. Perhaps she had, but had given up, on realising that nothing would be done for her. Yes, there were ghosts up there I was sure, still unaware that their calls would never be answered.

I suppose I naively thought that in every two-storey house, at the top of every flight of stairs, I’d find a bedroom as intriguing as Helen’s. I somehow knew even then that I wouldn’t find it here. There was no woman to cause scenes of glamorous tumult in that house: no trails of gaudy finery, no clouds of heady scent. Uncle James had neither the curiosity nor generosity to be a lover or husband, so there would never be stiletto heels on those stairs and no peals of breezy laughter to riffle the mildewed air. Festivities were always inappropriate and would never be countenanced; it was a place where the dead lived and the living had – without realising it – already died.

Like his brothers Robert and Edward, James was caged within the flat routines of the fearful and the aimless: those daily jaunts to the village to buy comestibles, the changeless appointment with the confessional of a Saturday evening, the Sunday mass – all duties carried out with the alertness of an automaton and the sincerity of a jester; all to keep the neighbours from talking and the probing clergy from his door.

He ate the same artery-clogging food every day, moved between house and yard, performing his mindless chores; tending to himself in the kitchen, tending to the animals in the yard.

He was prudent in his consumption of alcohol – for purely economic considerations, the cost of the vice being the sobering deterrent. On a Saturday evening, after the trials of the confessional, he’d down a couple of ‘half-uns’ and a pint of Guinness – no more, no less. This was the only gulp of joy in his grim week.

I ask myself if he ever had dreams to dream or passions to chase or a cause to fight for. Being human I suppose he must have had, perhaps as a young man, but what had happened to blunt the desire to pursue them? What awful hold-up did he perceive on the road out of childhood that made him baulk, and turn back towards the land and that awful house with the promise of hoarded cash in a far-distant future? What a mind-numbing choice to have made, to live in the hopeless past, running the same grainy footage in his head, with all ambitions of love and energy and joyfulness edited out.

My mother would say that ‘they didn’t take it off the water’, which I think implies that such lack of drive was in the genes. I tend to disagree; to me this amounts to a get-out clause for staying stuck in a rut. We all have it within our power to forge our own destinies, blaze our own trails, throw off the yoke of the inherited past and create ourselves anew.

James and his brothers blindly followed in the footsteps of their father who, from all accounts, was an awkward and inward-looking man. It never seemed to occur to the brothers that they had the power to change their destinies and live in a more life-enhancing and fulfilling way. They could have learned from the past rather than repeating the same, negative pattern.

I’m reminded of a true story I once heard concerning two brothers. Their father was everything a man should never be: a murderer, a rapist and a drunk. When growing up, the sons absorbed all this negativity, but eventually went their separate ways. In their mid-twenties they were found in different places doing very different things: one had become the CEO of a thriving company, the other a criminal, just like his father. Both were asked the same question: ‘How did you turn out to be this way?’ Both gave the same answer: ‘With a father like that what else could I do?’

Unhappy marriages produce unhappy children, but when we become adults we do have a choice. We can continue being miserable, for the rest of our lives, blaming our parents and believing we are powerless to change. Or we can look around for more affirmative ways to live – and decide to be happy.

This my uncles could so easily have done.