When Dotie Tupper retired from the fowl business at the age of eighty-four she decided to take a holiday. The first thing she did when she arrived at her home on the very day she gave up work was to immerse herself in a bath of warm water and remain there for the best part of an hour. In so doing she was merely following the habit of a life-time. There were no toilet facilities at her place of work save an antiquated WC frequented solely by Sam Toper. She avoided it as if it was an execution chamber. Whenever she felt overpowered by the offensive stenches in her work-place or felt in need of a wash she made the short trip to her modest home a few doors down the lane-way. Her boss Bustler Hearne never objected. He knew that Dotie would more than make up for any time she was likely to spend off the premises.
Bustler was a bully, a rude, crude and highly aggressive employer who made life hell for two of the three members of his staff, Sam Toper, fowl executioner, plucker-in-chief and trusser extraordinaire, and Mannie Kent, dispatcher and part-time cleaner. Dotie Tupper was in charge of sales, wages and supervising. She also helped out when her staff found themselves unable to cope with the pressures of work or illness.
Her boss, Bustler, spent of most of his time in the countryside within a radius of ten miles of his business location. Before he left in the mornings in his horse-drawn crate-clamped dray and after he returned in the evening with crates of assorted fowl he made his presence felt by verbally and physically abusing his plucker-in-chief and by roundly cursing his cleaner. Never once during the long years that Dotie spent in his employ had he been known to direct a single harsh word at her. He also paid her a decent wage and why wouldn’t he, his detractors would say, and she coining money for him on all fronts. Certainly it would be true to say that she had made him a wealthy man. She also made a name for him as a supplier of high-quality produce. She was courteous to customers and when part-time staff were taken on at Christmas she taught them how to truss and pluck. In an emergency Dotie could wring a chicken’s neck in a flash and on occasion in a matter of minutes had been known to dispatch an entire crateful to their eternal rewards if such other-wordly consolation is granted to the souls of departed fowl.
Dotie was a deeply religious person and with the canon’s housekeeper, the redoubtable Mrs Hannie Hanlon, was in charge of the floral arrangements behind the church altar, was a chorister in the parish choir and an esteemed member of the Trallock Parish Amateur Drama Group sometimes known as the Trallock Players. It could be said that Dotie was a participant in the game of life and not a mere looker-on. She gave herself unstintingly to all worthwhile causes and when she gave Bustler a month’s notice on the first of May he went on his knees before her and begged her to remain. She shook her head firmly even when he offered her a substantial raise, shorter hours and longer holidays as well as bonuses, bribes and assorted perks.
‘I am eighty-four,’ she announced firmly, ‘and I am no longer able for the work.’
Fortunately for Dotie, Bustler had contributed to a personal pension scheme on behalf of himself and his prize employee of over sixty-eight years. She had started off her poultry career with Bustler’s father Toby, brought him from the verge of bankruptcy and set his son firmly on the road to prosperity.
Bustler was a hot-tempered, intemperate thug or so it was claimed by those who maintained they knew him. He was possessed, however, of one virtue. He was a generous man and when Dotie departed she did not go empty-handed. During the years as an employee she managed to present a spotlessly clean appearance to the world. Not so her fellow-employees, Mannie Kent and Sam Toper. Sam’s Sunday suit was mottled with the stains of partly erased fowl droppings and tiny traces of down and feathers while his workaday overalls had changed from light blue to off-white over the years.
Mannie also carried traces of down and other fowl specks from her place of employment on her everyday clothes. On the other hand Dotie, even while at work, presented a shining image to the public. Small and spare, she had a capacity for endless work. Without fail, no matter her disposition at the time, she always had a bath after work. When showers became the mode she showered on Saturdays and Sundays. She spent her summer holidays in the nearby seaside resort of Ballybunion. She always stayed at Collins’ guesthouse and went for a hot seaweed bath every day of her richly deserved fortnight.
‘Regular bathing,’ she once told her life-long friend Mickey Mokely, ‘is the only antidote for the job I’m in.’
For years before she retired she was invited by her dear friend Hannie Hanlon, Canon Coodle’s housekeeper, to spend the Christmas holiday at the presbytery. Hannie had free rein at the parochial house but nevertheless thought it prudent to consult with the canon beforehand.
‘She’s as near to an angel,’ the canon had noted at the time, ‘as anyone we’re likely to encounter in this world.’
So it was that in her eighty-fourth year she was still a welcome guest at the presbytery for the Christmas period except that this time she would stay for the extended sojourn of the Twelve Days. In the town she was a popular figure. Young and old called her by her first name, Dotie. ‘Ah she’s a dotie girl to be sure,’ Fr Sinnott the senior curate announced when he frequently picked her up, placed her under his arm and laid her on the bottom step of the stairs after doing the rounds of the presbytery with her. Her bright presence brought joy and goodness wherever she went and yet deep down she carried a great hurt. Hannie knew about the hurt and the absent-minded canon had his suspicions. Absent-minded the canon might be about inanimate things but when he cared for people he was ever ready to listen to their woes and extend the hand of compassion where it was needed.
‘There is a message clearly written on Canon Coodle’s face,’ Fr Sinnott once informed his bishop, ‘and what it says is this – “I am here for you my friend no matter how high up or low down you are. I don’t care what you have done. I am always here for you”.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ said the bishop, ‘and I thank God that it’s there for all of us.’
The pair were returning from the all-Ireland Gaelic Football Final in Dublin chauffeured by a junior curate who neither drank nor smoked. He had been specially chosen by his parish priest, an astute gentleman who had seen both the bishop and Fr Sinnott play football and remarked more than once that he was truly grateful to his maker that he had never crossed the path of either on the playing field.
Among his other virtues, the junior curate in question was also possessed of sealed lips and subscribed to the ancient Chinese adage that a shut mouth caught no flies. If his Lordship and Fr Sinnott had a failing it was merely a shared love of an occasional indulgence in a few pints of stout, well, a good few pints of stout but not on a regular basis. Hence the necessity for an abstemious and close-mouthed driver.
On the Christmas of her eighty-fourth year Dotie arrived at the presbytery as usual. She was glad to be leaving her home for a while although a bright and cosy home it was and a home which she hoped to share with her dear friend Hannie should Canon Coodle pass on as indeed he must some day but as Hannie would say, ‘let us pray that it’s a far-off day and that I will be there to look after him until such time as that day comes’. At the canon’s insistence Dotie always had her meals in the parochial dining-room.
On the Christmas Eve of that eighty-fourth Christmas Dotie was, according to Hannie, down in herself.
‘Well then,’ said Canon Coodle, ‘we must do all in our powers to cheer her up.’
The topic of conversation at the tea-time table had been the return of the presbytery cat, a battle-scarred chap who had, from the looks of him when he returned, surely forfeited his penultimate life of the nine lives granted to all cats. Fond of a scrap and fiercely possessive of his many female friends it was inevitable that he would meet physically more accomplished toms during his ramblings on moon-lit roof-tops under starry skies when only cats are abroad. He slunk into the dining-room and rubbed his racked body against the canon’s left shoe.
‘Ah my friend,’ said Canon Cornelius with a grim smile, ‘what a mighty confession you could make at this moment.’
It was the first genuine laugh that Dotie had enjoyed in several weeks. Her woes had really begun when it began to dawn on her that she would never see her father again, not in this world anyway. Always, up until her eighty-fourth birthday, she cherished the faint hope that he would one day return. She remembered him only vaguely. She had been six years of age when he disappeared a month after her mother’s death. There were ugly whispers abroad that while he was of unsound mind after his bereavement he might well have eased himself into the flooded river in the belief that he might be united with the woman who had been the love of his life. Then there were rumours that he had been seen in places as far apart as Glasgow and Chicago. Each night, from the age of six onwards, Dotie prayed for his safe return. At first she could not believe that he had walked out on her. She had missed her mother terribly at the time but with the passage of the years it was for her father she longed. She had seen other girls out walking with their fathers. She had bitten her lip in anguish when she saw small girls being lifted into the air by the one man they loved above all others in the world. She had cried herself to sleep on countless nights. Her aunt who had come to look after her and who slept in the adjoining room would silently slip into the bed beside her and do her best to console her. There were times when she thought she saw her father but it was always from a distance so she could not be certain.
‘I don’t have any doubt,’ the district inspector of the RIC had made clear at the time. ‘His behaviour was strange to say the least for days before his disappearance. He was seen by the river-side at a point where once in, it would be impossible to change one’s mind. He knew what he wanted to do and he did it. That is my conclusion and it is the conclusion of all the other investigators involved.’
Dotie steadfastly refused to believe that her father was not coming home and now at eighty-four she knew in her heart that she would not see him again.
‘One would imagine,’ she told herself, ‘that I would be over it by now but I will never be over it,’ she cried out in the confines of her kitchen. The worst was that she could not remember sitting on his lap while he sang.
‘I remember the pair of you well,’ her aunt recalled, not realising how deeply wounded Dotie became at mention of her father. ‘He used to sit on the old rocking chair on the porch and you would climb aboard his lap. He had a light tenor voice but he never sang after your mother died. He never meant to leave you. He wasn’t himself the Lord be good to him and how could he after his terrible loss? We must pray for him. We must always pray for him.’
All through the years from the age of six to eighty-four she simply could not reconcile herself with his disappearance. In the early years she convinced herself that he was a victim of amnesia. She invented other excuses when the long decades went by and he failed to show up. At length she resigned herself to the sad fact that he was gone forever.
‘He would be a hundred and twelve years of age next Saturday week.’ She forced a laugh as she disclosed the information to Hannie Hanlon. Hannie had remained silent not knowing what to say.
‘I was reading lately in one of the Sunday papers,’ Dotie continued, ‘that the oldest man in the world was one hundred and eleven years of age. I was going to write to the editor and tell him that if my father was alive he would be the oldest man in the world and then I thought how foolish I would look if he decided to publish the letter.’
Still not knowing how to respond Hannie waited for her friend to continue. Dotie’s voice was no longer steady as she spoke. ‘Imagine it took me all those years before I finally realised he was well and truly dead and not coming home any more. I always cherished the hope that he might somehow make his way back to me but at a hundred and twelve it would be out of the question. I still have his photographs, one in particular, the one taken before he shaved off his moustache. My but he was handsome and so tall. I don’t know where they got me because my mother was a tall woman too. If I could be sure I would see him again, see the two of them again somewhere someplace, I would die happy.’
Hannie placed a hand around her friend’s shoulder but she could not find the proper words of consolation so she steered her out of the room and into the hall-way.
‘I don’t remember sitting on my father’s lap while he sang to me and that’s the hardest part.’ Dotie was weeping now. ‘I know for a fact that my aunt saw me sitting with him but I have no recollection of it.’
Dotie had just reached the age of sixteen when her aunt died, a victim of tuberculosis, the same disease that accounted for her mother. Relatives and friends decided that it would be best for Dotie if she emigrated to the United States where her only surviving aunt was settled but when Toby Hearne offered her a job Dotie had no hesitation in accepting. Neighbours and friends feared for her well-being at the hands of such a man but Dotie had no qualms. She was possessed of that rare quality which always brought out the best in people and like so many others Toby quickly fell under her spell. When he would rant and rave at others Dotie would look on in amusement knowing that his rage would expend itself in a few short minutes. Over the years she managed to temper his and Bustler’s outbursts and around the time she decided it was time to retire Bustler’s nature had assumed a mellow side which eventually won out over his dark side. She went so far as to suggest to him that he retire. The business was but a shadow of what it used to be but Bustler had made his money particularly during the period of the second world war and he had invested it wisely always acting on Dotie’s advice.
Rather than sell the business he closed it on his ninetieth birthday and retired to a local old-folks home where he spent the remainder of his days. He regularly visited the premises where he spent his entire life and when he died his last will and testament revealed that the sole beneficiary from his estate was none other than Dotie.
When Bustler withdrew from his business the same notion of retiring occurred to Canon Cornelius Coodle – but he quickly dismissed the thought when it dawned on him that he would be contributing to the unprecedented scarcity of priests in the diocese. He told himself that he would be the last man to leave down the side.
‘I’ll die in my harness,’ he told the wrinkled face which confronted him in the mirror of his bedroom.
After late mass that night he withdrew to the sitting-room with Fr Sinnott. The canon raised his brimming glass of port and wished his senior curate the compliments of the season. Fr Sinnott responded and sipped from his tumbler of Jameson.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed as Dotie and Hannie entered, ‘the ladies are with us.’
Both priests rose and toasted the fresh arrivals who returned the seasonal compliments by touching the extended glasses of the clergymen with the delicate sherry glasses shapely and brimming. As they settled into their chairs the canon began to reminisce about past events in his life as was his wont on Christmas Eve. He noted, for all his pre-occupation with other days, that all was not well with Dotie. It was Hannie who explained that Dotie was facing up to the fact that she would not see her father again and worse still that she could not remember sitting on his lap when she was a little girl.
‘What age would he be now if he was alive?’ Fr Sinnott asked with no little amazement.
‘One hundred and twelve,’ Dotie replied without a moment’s hesitation as the tears flowed down her face.
Fr Sinnott extended his hands in her direction after placing his glass on the floor beneath his chair. Dotie handed her glass to her friend Hannie and a new hope surged within her. The senior curate’s powerful hands were still extended towards her, the same hands that had subdued countless ambitious full forwards and the same hands that once held aloft the county championship Gaelic football trophy which was his inalienable right as captain. In his lap Dotie looked up into his face and in a little girl’s voice asked the question which had been troubling her so much in recent times.
‘Will I see my dad again?’ she asked.
‘Of course you will,’ Fr Sinnott assured her
‘But will he know me?’
‘Will he what!’ Fr Sinnott shouted, ‘you’ll be sore for six months woman for the squeezing he’ll give you.’
A radiant smile adorned the tear-stained face of Dotie.
‘And my mother!’ she directed the question at Canon Coodle.
‘Of course, of course,’ Canon Coodle assured her, ‘she’ll be there at the gates of heaven by your father’s side and the three of you will enter heaven together.’
Dotie’s eyes were closed in bliss. Fr Sinnott rose with his charge cradled in his arms. He walked round the room a few times humming softly and paused in front of his canon’s armchair. ‘You take her for a while,’ he said, ‘and I’ll fill another drink.’
Canon Coodle placed her carefully on his lap and gently kissed her on the forehead. A succession of reassuring and audible murmurs escaped him before he cleared his throat and crooned a lullaby from the Gaelic. It had been his grandmother’s song when he was a small boy.