T is for also for Tree Over a Blessed Well. In a way, being like a tree over a blessed well is the opposite of taking agin something. A person who has had a bad blow and wants everyone to know about their misfortune by behaving sadly, mournfully and miserably could be said to be ‘like a tree over a blessed well’. Streeling around the house like a droopy drawers, if you get me. If someone’s husband has ‘done’ the ‘dirt’ on them, or if a person has lost their job or had their car stolen and their self-pity is starting to get on your nerves, simply say, with great jocularity, ‘Look at you, drooping away there, like a great big droopy drawers! You’re like a tree over a blessed well!’
You will be amazed at the effect it has on people. Usually it jizzes them up so much that they jump to their feet and run off, clearly to do something constructive. Sometimes they are so grateful that they punch you in the upper arm.
T is also for Television. The Walshes would not be the happy family that we are, if it wasn’t for the telly. It is a great way to ‘bond’.
U is for Useful. And that brings us to my husband, Jack Walsh. Unlike my daughters, I did not ‘play the field’ before I married. I was not a one for the boys. Of course, I’m sure I had many admirers, but they were so in awe of me, they kept their distance. It was my height, I think, that put them off. I’m not extremely tall. Only five foot ten or thereabouts. But people were generally smaller in those days and it takes a big man to be happy with a tall woman. (I’m saying ‘big’ metaphorically there, just for clarification.)
Mr Walsh and I met in circumstances that were mundane. He was originally from some rural hamlet in County Clare and he came to work in the ‘big smoke’ of Limerick, where I was reared. He was ‘in digs’ in a house across the road from my family, and myself and himself used to get the bus to work, around the same time every day.
Back then, people were friendlier. You just didn’t ‘ignore’ people at the bus stop and stick yokes in your ears and nod away to yourself. At the very least you’d say, ‘Fine day, thank God.’ And if the weather wasn’t fine, and it usually wasn’t, you’d say, ‘Mild day, thank God.’ Or, ‘At least it’s not raining.’ Or, if it was raining, and it usually was, you’d say, ‘Lovely growthy weather, good for the crops.’
Of a weekend, Mr Walsh used to go ‘home’ to his half-cracked mother and family of bogaloons and one Monday morning, at the bus stop, didn’t he give me a little parcel wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with string. ‘What’s this?’ says I. ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘nothing at all.’ But it was something! It was a little pullet hen, roasted all lovely and Mammy was delighted with me and said maybe I wasn’t the big long streel of uselessness she’d taken me for (she was a ticket, was Mammy).
Every weekend after that, he’d bring me something, maybe some eggs or a lump of ham, and, before I knew it, we had an ‘understanding’. Now, the funny thing about ‘understandings’ is that they’re unspoken. For a nation so chatty, we Irish can be quite ‘clammed up’ about important things. But without anything being formalized, Jack Walsh and I were ‘walking out together’ and ‘coooourting’, which eventually solidified into ‘doing a strong line’.
Every Wednesday night we’d go to the pictures, and in those days it didn’t matter what was on, you just went. There was none of this reading reviews or saying, ‘I can’t stick that Bette Davis. That last thing she was in was a load of sh*t.’ Horse opera, musical, romance – you got what you were given and you were glad of it. Mr Walsh used to buy me a box of Cleeves toffee and we’d eat them together.
Then there would be dances, but it wasn’t like these days, when you can go to ‘clubs’ any night of the week, and sometimes even two or three different clubs. I have a faint memory – now, don’t quote me on this, because I might be wrong – that dances couldn’t be held on a Saturday night because they might infringe Sunday ‘non-enjoyment’ laws. As far as I remember, dances were usually held on Friday nights and they’d be wonderful affairs. You’d have a live band playing their heart out and you’d dance the legs off of yourself and the national anthem would be played at the end. (Now that I think of it, it was played at the end of the pictures too. The lights would go up and everyone would clamber to their feet and if you’d been at any ‘dirty business’ during the picture, you’d have to tidy yourself up fairly lively if you didn’t want the whole cinema looking at you. Not that I ever did anything like that, of course.)
It was taken for granted that, when Jack had saved enough money for a down-payment on a house, he’d ask me to marry him. As Mammy said, ‘If he asks you, you make sure you say yes, my girl; he’s the best chance you’ll ever get. The only chance.’ But of course I was going to say yes. I was – and still am – very fond of Jack Walsh. He’s a quiet, easy-going man and that’s probably for the best. Especially because I sort of ‘blossomed’ after I moved away from living with Mammy. I like a good chat and I’m a great raconteur – you should have seen the reception I got out in ‘LA’! I was invited to the next-door-neighbour’s Fable Telling evening and, even if I am polishing my own medal here, I stole the show! They loved me and my story of Famous Seamus and How He Won the Love of the Doctor’s Daughter!
Mr Walsh and I have been married for forty-seven years and, do you know something, even though I am taller than him, we’ve been very happy together. Apart from the children, of course. They have made us very unhappy. Only from time to time, that is – when they were up to whatever feck-acting they were up to. But it was like a relay race! The minute one of them stopped her tomfoolery, another started up. There was very little respite, and being honest with you, if it wasn’t for Margaret being so well-behaved I would have surely ended up in the mental hospital.
I can see you trying to do the sums there, thinking, ‘If she’s married for forty-seven years and she must have been in her late twenties at least by the time she got the ring on her finger, what age does that make her now?’ Well, I’ll tell you something. A lady (and I am one) doesn’t disclose her age but I’ll whisper you a secret: I’ve aged well.