Ballinn, County Kerry
September 2019
A hush embraced the room and Ellie turned towards the stage, where a tiny figure with a shock of white hair climbed the stairs with slow, careful steps. The hands that reached out to assist were batted away impatiently.
Bernie leaned over. ‘Here she comes. The birthday girl.’
When she reached the top, Tabby turned to shine a cheeky grin upon the crowd, revealing perfect pearly teeth that Ellie was certain weren’t her own.
The crowd sent up a cheer and the crow’s feet at the corners of her green eyes deepened. Her skin was crinkled, like once-scrunched paper, and the tip of a birthmark crept from the collar of her crimson blouse.
‘Céad míle fáilte. Welcome.’ Even without a microphone, her voice carried, and Ellie remembered that, along with Bernie, the pharmacist and the farmers, Tabby Ryan had been a permanent fixture of the Ballinn Dramatics Secret Society. She probably still was.
‘I expect you’ll be wanting some advice. That’s what you’re all here for, aren’t you?’ She spread her hands in question and the crowd laughed. ‘And we’ll be getting to that, but first – apparently – I’m supposed to tell you a little of my life. They say’ – she indicated a group, family members, at the base of the stage – ‘that a party for a century is the time to write my own eulogy.’ Another laugh. ‘But I’ll do that for my one hundred and tenth.’ A whoop from the back. Tabby waved it away.
‘In case you’re no good at mathematics, I was born in 1919, into an Ireland that longed for freedom, and just like almost everyone around, our family – seven kids and all – were poor. I went to Ballinn National School before Ma sent me to work at Blackwater Hall, over there towards Kenmare.’ She spoke without bitterness, although the implication was heavy. ‘Da was the gardener, and I was a maid of sorts. Can’t say as I was very good at it. But working there did teach me a great lesson: money might be grand, but it can’t buy happiness.’ She paused, grappled for words.
The crowd held a collective breath.
‘Give us a proverb,’ came a heckle from the back.
Tabby’s face cleared. ‘The impatience of youth,’ she quipped. She put her hands in the pockets of her slacks, the lines down the front of her legs crisp and fresh.
‘I was given a helping hand, by the lady of the house, no less, to follow my passion for teaching. I must’ve been the only Kerry girl in history who never wanted to emigrate, and God help me I’ve been happy for it. From the beginning of my training in the autumn of 1940’ – here Bernie nodded to herself – ‘to my last class in 1980, ’twas my life.’ She stopped, looked heavenward. ‘That and, of course, my fifty-three years of marriage.
‘During that time, our home became the rambling house, like O’Brien’s cottage was before it fell to fire. Those were the happiest days of my life.’ Ellie remembered that a footprint of the latter still existed, just a tumbled section of wall tucked behind the shop. ‘When the day’s work was done, men and women used to crowd into our kitchen and there was talk and entertainment. Politics too. It was a cross between the Abbey Theatre and Dáil Éireann, the heart and pulse of the village.
‘But times changed and so did we. People no longer cared for the rambling house. They were busy. And now every day is filled to the brim with things. But I’ll tell you something for nothing: the secret to a good life is to learn what matters and what doesn’t. And that,’ Tabby said, ‘is harder than it sounds.’
A shaft of sunlight peered through the high windows and cut across the hall. For just a moment, a flicker of youth rippled over the old woman, and Ellie imagined her on that stage, years before: smooth skin, a tall frame and a light and nimble stride.
‘I lost my beloved Noel twenty years ago. He was my rock, my best friend. The twinkle in my eye. My parents left this world more than four decades past, God rest them. And it’s been an age since my brother . . .’ Tabby faltered, a tiny chink appearing in her strong and confident facade. ‘Tomas, he . . . we . . .’ There was a weight in the room; the crowd’s silence, its bated breath. Tabby’s eyes became rheumy with some long-cherished or long-forgotten memory.
Then a disturbance – a child’s cry, followed by a soothing sound, quick steps and the slam of the Lobby door – brought her back from wherever she had gone.
‘So . . .’ she assessed the crowd again, ‘some eighty years ago, I made a promise, that on my one hundredth birthday, I’d write some of our seanfhocal, our proverbs, in rhyme.’ She looked heavenward with a roll of her eyes, as though communicating with someone above.
Moira gasped with delight, and Ellie smiled. Someone stepped onto the stage with a cup of tea. Tabby took a sip. From her pocket she drew a piece of paper. She unfolded it theatrically and waggled those wisps of eyebrows. Then, in a lilting voice overflowing with rhythm and Kerry’s long-stretched vowels, she began to read.
‘If you haven’t any shoes,
Pull yourself up from the blues,
Because you’re bound to meet a man who hasn’t feet.
And no matter who your da,
You must find out who you are;
And his mistakes you’ll never to repeat.
Find the path of least resistance,
Make the most of your persistence,
So the breeze may always be there at your back.
Windy days are not for thatching,
And a cold ye’ll be a-catching,
If you go out when the weather’s rotten craic.
Be at heaven’s gates ahead,
Before the devil knows you’re dead,
Because no one ever lived without a wrong.
And life is just like tea,
And I know that ye’ll agree,
’Tis bitter when we make it far too strong.
For sure, the world is mighty,
From Boston through to Blighty,
But the road is always longer walked alone.
Those who travel have a story,
And tales too of glory,
But there’s never been a fire like your own.’
She folded the paper away, the final sing-song of her poem coming from memory as the stanzas shortened and her voice rose:
‘A hundred years
I’ve walked this earth
And if you cannot see:
The seanfhocal have led my life
And I give them now to ye.
It sends to bed
A promise made
In another time:
“If I should reach a grand old age,
I’ll put my speech in rhyme.”’