The widows of the deceased footballers blessed themselves and rose as one from the Marian shrine where they had offered an open-air Rosary for the success of the living footballers who would represent the townland of Ballybee on the following Sunday. On their coats, blouses and frocks they proudly wore the black and yellow colours of the Ballybee Gaelic football team. For the first time in twenty-four years Ballybee found themselves in the final of the junior championship.
None was more surprised than the players themselves. Rank outsiders at the beginning, they had played their hearts out in pulsating game after pulsating game until they reached the ultimate stage of the Canon Coodle Cup. Nonie Regan, mother of the team’s youthful captain Shamus, prophesied from the beginning that the cup would come back to Ballybee.
‘They have the youth,’ she pointed out solemnly, ‘and you won’t beat youth at the end of the day.’
Before the first round of the championship she found few to agree with her but how different it was now! The team had grown in wisdom and experience and her son Shamus was being mentioned for the county team. It was widely believed by experienced non-partisans that the up-and-coming midfielder had the beating of his opposite number on the Ballybo fifteen, the redoubtable Badger Loran, a veteran of seven finals, five of which had been annexed by Ballybo. Despite the rise and rise of the opposition they were still money-on favourites to hold on to the crown.
Canon Cornelius Coodle after whom the cup was named had been a formidable footballer in his day and although extremely cautious in his footballing prognostications was inclined to favour Ballybee, ‘but,’ he cautioned his two curates, one from Ballybee and the other from Ballybo, ‘there will be very little in it in the end and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned out to be a draw.’
On the morning of the game he gave one of his more memorable sermons, recalling his own footballing days and emphasising the need for sportsmanship when tempers flared and caution was likely to be thrown to the winds. He recalled sporting encounters from the past and congratulated the six other teams representing six townlands who failed to make it to the final.
‘In many ways,’ he explained, ‘you are just as important as the finalists and with luck there might have been a different outcome in many of the games. You played like men and you behaved like men when the final whistle was blown. You shook hands with the victors and you withdrew gracefully from the scene to ready yourselves for future encounters when the day may be yours.’
The canon then addressed himself to the finalists in particular, pointing out that the children of the parish would be watching on that very afternoon and it behoved the players from both sides to set an example of sportsmanship and discipline. ‘Moderate your language at all times,’ he urged, ‘and take into account the feelings of the referee when you feel like upbraiding him. He is only flesh and blood like all of us and he has a wife and children like many of you so be sure to take his delicate position into account before you threaten him with fist or boot. Remember that there will be songs about this great event, songs which will be sung rousingly in years to come when the combatants have passed on. What matters most is the game so see to it that you abide by the rules and in so doing you’ll bring glory to your townlands and to your parish. It is my duty also to warn blackguards and thugs that the football field is for football and I shall be keeping a close eye on the goings-on at all times.’
Canon Coodle went on about excessive drinking and displays of drunkenness on the streets which scandalised young folk in particular. ‘To me has fallen the honour of throwing in the ball and I hope the players from both sides will shake hands as gracefully at the close as they did at the beginning.’
Later in the day he would throw in the ball after the referee had called him on from the side-line and then he would withdraw to his cushioned chair where he would maintain a dutiful silence until the game ended.
Let us now look at the captains, firstly the Badger Loran, a forty-year-old midfielder, gnarled and bony and tough as wax, reputed to have broken more bones than a butcher and closed more eyes than any sleeping potion. A strong farmer unmarried and independent with a shock of grey hair which is why he was nicknamed the Badger in the first place. He entertained romantic feelings for the Widow Regan especially since her husband died but had never made his notions known for fear of rebuff. He played with distinction for the county team in his twenties but was still a force to be reckoned with at this level despite his age.
‘He’s no thoroughbred,’ his supporters would tell anyone who cared to listen, ‘but the Badger will still be in the running when the thoroughbreds are spent.’
Shamus Regan the Ballybee captain was of average height but physically he was gloriously realised and the fleetest of the thirty players who would contest the leather that day. He could go higher for the ball than any mortal in the eight townlands that made up the ancient parish. Barely gone eighteen he would need a little more weight and a little more muscle if he was to advance to county honours.
‘When he’s nineteen or twenty,’ Canon Coodle informed his curate, ‘he’ll be a far tougher proposition.’
Shamus because of his blonde, curling locks was instantly recognisable wherever he went and was often a target for the scoundrels mentioned in Canon Coodle’s sermon.
‘They’ll never nail him.’ The canon wagged a finger at his assistants. ‘He’s too elusive, too speedy and built to ride the hardest tackle.’
‘Wait till the Badger’s done with him,’ the curates cautioned humorously.
‘He’ll annihilate him,’ said one hoping to draw the canon’s fire.
‘He’ll pulverise him,’ said the second hoping to do the same.
‘And I’ll pulverise you two,’ the canon countered with a laugh, ‘if you don’t get out of here this very minute and start hearing confessions.’
In truth the widow’s blond-haired son could do with an extra year but he was well compensated with speed and skill.
From an early hour the supporters began to arrive in town. Most made straight for the pubs which had early openings and extended openings for the occasion. Restaurants and sweetshops did a roaring trade and the contrasting colours were quickly sold out, the black and yellow of Ballybee and the red and white of Ballybo.
Mental Nossery the poet had been in the throes of competition for several days. ‘Mental isn’t his right name at all’, the canon would explain to visitors but the locals like to nickname those they don’t fully understand. Mental, a still-gangly chap of middle age, stood on a barrel in Crutley’s pub and read an appropriate verse from the epic he had started as soon as the finalists were made known.
‘No talking now,’ Fred Crutley ordered as he smote upon the bar counter with a large wooden mallet. Mental Nossery might be mental and he might be an odd-ball but the part of him that was a poet was sacred and must therefore be respected.
‘Order now please,’ Blossom O’Moone, barmaid for the day, called. Slowly an uncertain silence began to make itself felt. It was neither the time nor the place for poetry but Blossom would agree that a poet was a poet and might not be available the day after or the day after that or for indeed many a day especially this poet for he had received the annual rent for his leased farm only the day before. That was part of the agreement which both parties had signed, payment on the day or the nearest working day prior to the final of the football championship.
Fortified with three freshly consumed whiskeys and one pint of stout the poet raised a hand and prepared himself to read from the leaflet which fluttered in his shaking hand. He first explained to the somewhat disinterested clientele that he would be omitting most of the verses from the fourth book of the epic on account of the introductory nature of the contents, ‘as for instance,’ he explained to his restless listeners, ‘the many verses necessary to depict the arrival of the aficionados and the names by which they are recognised locally.’
‘Get on with it,’ a loud voice called. It came from a whiskered elder who happened to be sporting the black and yellow colours of Ballybee. He was immediately shouted down by several raucous young gentleman who wore the red and white ribbons of Ballybo.
Without further preamble Mental Nossery started. Dramatically he extended a long lean hand to encompass his listeners as it were and with the other hand held the pages closer to his eyes: ‘They came in coracle, punt and raft,’ he intoned:
And every make of outrageous craft
The drunk, the doting, the damned, the daft
The lewd and the low and the lofty
On mule and jennet, on horse and ass
On pony and cob through ford and pass.
Pensioner, puler, laddie and lass
And the crass and crude and crafty.
Mental judged from the humour of the crowd that he might be best advised to move on to the names of those who would be present on the side-lines: ‘Mottled McMahons and fair McEntees,’ he raised his tone:
Black McAlackys and hairy McMees,
Bald-headed Bradys and brindled O’Deas
Committed to common obstruction
In bevvies and levies and staggering skeins
Black-toothed Bradys and buck-toothed Maines
Foxy-haired Finnertys, bow-legged Kanes
Fermenting to foster destruction.
‘And now the ladies’ – Mental Nossery was always mindful of the opposite sex. He often boasted that they would never be neglected while he drew breath.
‘What do you think of it?’ Blossom O’Moone asked of Toben the schoolmaster.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘considering that we’re landlocked here and only a small river for water, the punts and rafts and coracles show how mental the poet is.’
The clientele, those who could fully hear him, were impressed but they were not entertained. Nevertheless like any poet worthy of the name he referred to the female breeds likely to be in attendance. His rendering became pacier now as he reeled off:
Delia Dan Donies and Tessie Tom Ned’s
Minnie Matt Minnie’s and Freda Mick Fred’s
Delectable damsels for marital beds
But presently prey to confusion
Julie Jack Josie’s and Josie Jack Jim’s
Katie Tom Katie’s and Tessie Tom Tim’s
Malignantly whetted by virginal whims
And curdled for want of collusion.
This verse, alas, proved too much for a hot-headed male member of the Freda Mick Fred family who denied that his breed were ever prey to confusion. He retaliated by knocking Mental from his barrel and would have throttled him had not Blossom spirited him out of doors and sent him on his way to a safer hostelry.
As match time drew near the pubs began to disgorge their crowds and soon there was a steady stream heading towards the sports’ ground where the local brass band was playing. Then suddenly there was silence as the band struck up the national anthem. After the anthem a loudspeaker was placed in the now-steady hand of Mental whose true Christian name was Indigo.
‘Now, now now!’ the canon raised his hands aloft for silence, ‘our Laureate will regale us with a verse or two.’
The canon withdrew a step leaving the stage to the poet. For his part Mental Nossery held forth with what he believed was the kernel of the poem.
‘I see Mars in the sky or to be more exact in those black clouds that have gathered to the west of us. I now formally invoke the aid of the Holy Spirit and call for ten seconds’ silence after which, by the grace of God, I will commence to versify:
Up above Mars waits for the bloody fare
The lightning brightening his burnished hair
As he madly treads on the trembling air
And prises the heavens asunder.
Now he raises his hands than the welkin higher
His nostrils belching and billowing fire
As his voice rolls over the land entire
With its terrible tones of thunder.
Harken now to the words I say
Let the lines be drawn for the coming fray
Let there be no quarter this glorious day
Let each wound another nourish.
Let the game flow fast, let the blood flow free
Let the ball know elbow, boot and knee
Let knuckles white set the molars free
Let the warrior spirit flourish.’
The canon applauded loudly but there was to be no more, for the referee’s whistle had sounded and the game was on. The play flowed freely, then savagely, then wickedly, then beautifully and gracefully as Shamus Regan sent over the opening point for Ballybee. Ballybo responded quickly when the Badger fielded high and sent a long pass to his forward-in-chief who split the posts for the equalising point. There followed for the hour similar exchanges while the crowd roared their approval. Never had they seen such a final. Never had so many passionate tempers flared and died and flared again. Never were there so many accurate points and never before in the history of the competition were dynamic goals scored, one for either side by the captains of either team. The Badger lost his head and flayed his opponents but Shamus kept his and won a free kick which was to be the final one of the game the referee warned.
The sides were level as the Ballybee captain placed the ball, sixty full yards from the Ballybo goal. A tricky wind had crept into the proceedings towards the end of the game which made free-taking extremely difficult. Add to this the acute angle of the space between ball and posts. A mortifying silence descended. The day would belong to Ballybee should the ball go over the bar. Shamus bent his head and looked not at the far-off posts. He would estimate with closed eyes before he opened them to kick the ball. Over it went and the crowd went wild. Then a scuffle broke out and when Shamus tried to intervene he was felled and kicked in the head. The Badger threw his great body across the youth to save him from further kicks.
Later in the hospital the doctors concluded that Shamus was in a coma and might well remain in that suspended state for a month or a year or forever.
***
Blossom O’Moone lived on the side of the street in a small house which fronted seven acres of arable land. The cows which grazed her pastures were never hungry nor were they ever smitten by disease. Blossom’s maxim was that cleanliness was the answer to all ills. The milch cows, five in number, provided half of her meagre income. Odd jobs such as white-washing, scrubbing and part-time barmaid-cum-cleaner at Crutley’s public house provided the other half. If she was liberal with her favours, as they said, she was also choosy. Her liaisons were short-lived and those who boasted loudest about ravishing her had never even spoken to her. Those who did not boast at all and those who kept their minds to themselves would be more likely to have received her favours or so the wise men of the locality were fond of saying.
‘Not so at all,’ Mrs Crutley held opposing views, ‘Blossom is just a hot court. If she was anything else she would not be working under this roof.’
The house and land had been willed to her by her grandfather. Blossom’s mother had succumbed to the ravages of tuberculosis in an era when there was no redress for victims of the disease. Her father’s identity was a mystery.
Blonde and wispily formed she was possessed of what locals were fond of calling a quaint face. Rather was it a quizzical face. She seemed to be forever in search of mystical fulfilment although precisely what kind of mystical fulfilment no one was prepared to say. If they had been more observant they would have noticed that the quizzical look was replaced with one of concern whenever she found herself looking into the bright, blue eyes of Shamus Regan, captain of the Ballybee football team. Although twelve years his senior she felt that there was more than a mild interest. The fact that he also blushed unreservedly confirmed her suspicions. She stored him in a certain secret place in her memory and vowed to resurrect him at the earliest opportunity and she knew, however far-fetched it might seem, that opportunities always presented themselves, even on the most unlikely occasions. Presently, however, it seemed highly unlikely that there would be a moonlight tryst between them.
A small but vibrant river ran by one of the tiny fields at the rear of her house. she had planned to lure him there, to a sheltered grove near a small pool and there to bathe with him and run through the moon-lit fields with him till they fell exhausted into each other’s arms but this would never happen now. It seemed certain that he would never waken from the coma in which he found himself.
The night frost had descended on the fields as she walked and whispered to herself: ‘This very river flows under his window in the hospital in the town and were I to strip now down to my pelt and wear just a garment like that old fur coat Mrs Crutley gave me twelve months ago this Christmas and were I to tuck it inside my corduroy trousers and were I to pull on my wellingtons what would stop me from straying along the river bank to the hospital and then to that small room at the back which overlooks the river. Without disturbing the drip which sustains him, slip out of my things and slip in beside him. He has no hope of coming out of the coma anyway and what harm would I be doing if I held him close and kissed his lips and stroked his curls till he stirred maybe and yielded to me? Why shouldn’t I do it when there’s no other hope for the poor boy? I know I have it in me to waken him. I feel a great force in me and it’s driving me towards him.’
Blossom was shocked by her resolve and her intensity. Later as she moved gracefully along the bank of the shining river she recalled the many times since the football final in the summer she had made the same journey but on those occasions it had been to worship from a distance and to pray for the still creature in the lone bed of the dimly-lit ward.
***
‘She mightn’t be the full shilling,’ Dr Matt Coumer told his wife as they sat drinking one night after-hours in Crutley’s, ‘but she has mystic qualities. In another age, in another place she might have been a priestess or a sorceress.’ Blossom had just served them with a drink and bestowed upon them a most mystical smile, the smile that others called quaint and quizzical. Matt shook his head after he had sipped from his glass. ‘There’s more to Blossom than flesh and bone,’ he concluded and then he dropped the subject as they were joined outside the counter by Fred Crutley and his wife.
Blossom had little difficulty negotiating the stone steps which carried her from the river-side to the window of the ward where lay her golden boy. From a safe distance she could see all that was happening in the ward. Shamus Regan’s mother sat at one side of the bed and, wonder of wonders, the Badger Loran sat at the other.
Blossom liked the Badger. He was tough, uncompromising and gnarled like an ancient thorn tree but he was respectful and in Blossom’s eyes that was what mattered in a man when all was said and done.
After a while Mrs O’Regan rose and withdrew a hair brush from her coat pocket. The Badger lifted the young man’s head and held it gently while Mrs Regan brushed the beautiful locks of her son’s damaged head.
Blossom bent her own head over her hands and pressed her cold fingers against her forehead. A feeling of unbearable sorrow seized her as her entire body began to tremble. Then came the tears and with them a series of gentle but profound lamentations that helped to ease the pain within her. She dried her eyes with her cold hands and, still trembling, drew the fur coat tightly round her bosom.
In the ward the Badger was weeping. She had often heard people say of him that he was incapable of tears, that he could not express himself when sorrow assailed him, that’s if it ever assailed him they said. If only they could see him now, Blossom thought. He sat on the side of the bed and shook his great shoulders helplessly when the widow placed tender hands thereon. She helped tease the anguish out of him. She had been taken by surprise, never having seen him shed a solitary tear until that very moment. ‘It’s good to cry,’ she whispered and allowed her hands to caress the sides of his craggy face.
As she watched, Blossom declared to herself that such a woman would bring great ease and solace to a man and to the Badger in particular for he had held on to his feelings for too long a time and they had become frosted and crusted but Blossom sensed that he would never surrender to despair again, not with Nonie Regan by his side to comfort him.
After a long, long spell she noticed how the Badger’s powerful body began to compose itself once more. Blossom knew that every person who walked the earth was possessed of a sorrow that wreaked havoc on the human heart. Age often alleviated it and so did companionship but love, mostly, was the antidote although traces of it would always remain and visit the spirit, reminding the victims of long-forgotten sorrows stored in the memory.
The Badger heaved a final sigh indicating that he had put his grief behind him. Then with a flourish he produced the most voluminous handkerchief Blossom had ever seen. He trumpeted several times into its deep folds and returned it to his pocket. Then he rose and steadied himself before taking the Widow Regan in his arms. As they clung tightly to each other Blossom felt the last of her sadness leave. Then the couple bent and kissed the lifeless form in the bed. The Badger would compensate in so many ways for the illness which had destroyed all forms of normal communication between mother and son.
After they left the ward Blossom stood stock-still for a while. She had learned enough about the dark to know that it could throw up anything when one least expected it. She might well be under secret surveillance from some unknown source, good or evil. Such was the way of darkness. From the distant streets of the town came the strains of Christmas carols, gentling and purifying her spirit.
I will go now to his bedside she told herself and if it is in the power of a human heart to raise the siege of silence and lifelessness that overwhelms him it shall be done and no one will ever know what befell.
In the ward he lay still, his blonde curls still shining after his mother’s ministrations. Making certain that the corridor was empty she readied herself for the loving task ahead of her. He lay still while she whispered words of endearment and womanly passion into his ear. She kissed him and caressed him and she called his name in rich whispers and then a secret smile appeared on her face. It was an expression of triumph, of surpassing achievement, a jubilant rejoicing for having attained the unattainable, for defying all the odds, for restoring life to where there had been no life and no hope of life. There should have been somebody in the wings, she felt, to emerge and ask her to take a bow. She had never in her life felt so elated. She had suddenly been transformed from a general factotum to a healer and if she never did anything else in her life this was sufficient in her eyes to justify her tenure in a world that sometimes just did not care but, mercy of mercies, sometimes did care.
As she drew her fur coat round her she heard voices in the corridor; one belonged to the matron and the other was the property of the poet Mental Nossery. Mental intoned in deep euphony the words of an ancient hymn. If the truth were known the composition wasn’t ancient at all. It was Mental’s latest. ‘It was composed,’ Mental Nossery informed the matron, ‘in the year eleven hundred and ninety by the court jester on the death of his sovereign, Frederick Barbarossa.’
Suitably impressed the matron led the way into the ward where her most prized patient was sitting up in bed. If the matron had entered a few seconds earlier she might have witnessed Blossom make good her escape through the ward window, a window which she closed discreetly behind her before embracing the soothing moonlight which awaited her without. She received it eagerly and watched as the matron and Mental Nossery recovered from their shock.
The resurrection of Shamus Regan was the talk of the parish for evermore. Only two people knew the truth, Blossom and Mental Nossery.
Mental had arrived at the hospital only moments after Blossom but whereas she had entered by the back entrance he had entered by the front. When he arrived at the door of the ward he heard strange sounds, sounds which he would normally associate with another place in other circumstances. In the half-light of the ward he deduced that there was an extra body in the bed, most certainly, judging from the sounds emerging from her lips, a female.
Later, as Mental Nossery left the hospital grounds he was waylaid by Blossom. He told her what had happened.
‘I was about to enter the ward,’ he explained, ‘when I heard the unmistakable sounds of wild oats being sown. There were two participants in this wonderful activity so I presumed that Shamus had awakened or been awakened from his long sleep. The great thing is that he’ll be all right from now on or so the matron and the two doctors who arrived hot-foot assured everybody.’
‘It’s a wonderful night entirely,’ Blossom exclaimed with delight. She took Mental by the hand and led him to the river-bank, by which secret route they journeyed hand in hand to the abode of Blossom. First they walked her small fields under the light of an indulgent moon and then they withdrew to her cosy kitchen.
They married the following autumn and Mental Nossery no longer rented his lands. His proud wife who was an accomplished farmer in her own right saw to his verdant acres as well as her own. After some time Blossom produced a young son and not long after that Mental Nossery finished his epic. Canon Cornelius Coodle wrote the ten-thousand-words introduction and the poem was hailed far and wide. In that same summer Shamus Regan received his call for the county team and just before the September equinox of the same year the Badger Loran and Nonie Regan walked up the aisle together. As they left the church after the ceremony they were greeted by a jerseyed guard of honour consisting of members from the football teams of Ballybee and Ballybo.