The Callaghans Part Four. The Maiden's Prayer. Chapter 1.

 

The Callaghans

Part Four.

The Maiden's Prayer.

Chapter 1.

Joe was well known in Dublin, but not necessarily by name. One time on his walks he got as far as The Gut, in Ballsbridge where his lovely Mary Fay lived in one of Turner's Cottages before he married her. Even though he had never been inside it, he knew the house and when he found it he took a long look.

Was that really the house? There were a few cars parked outside, when there might have been a horse and cart before and one of the cottages had a cat sitting on the step. He loved cats and went over to it. It was just like Graymalkin, black with a tuft of white under its chin. He bent down and put his hand out and the cat sidled up to him and rubbed itself against Joe's leg. He scratched the top of the cats head with his nails as he knew Graymalking loved that.

The closer he looked at it he thought it must be Graymalkin, but no. that was years and years ago.

He looked forward to the postman every day in case there was word from Birmingham. He loved to see photos of his grandson Finbar, and knew that he hadn't been too well recently, and looked forward to him coming over. When Finbar was around five he came over that time, with Carmel for a while, as he had a really bad chest infection and he was as right as rain when he went back. A lot of what he was saying was in an English accent but by the time he went back he was a proper Dub; but for how long?

Joe knew that Finbar had an attack of consumption but the little angel fought it off for ever. Later on the hospital found a shadow on his lung which was proof of the attack.

Joe was in his early sixties but sometimes when he reached the end of his walk he felt in his eighties. That bloody war, that bloody feckin' war, the war didn't do much for him except ruin his lungs. Maybe he should have carried on smoking at least that might have finished him off - as opposed to spending his life with a pipe or two he didn't use, in either case, as nobody could ever replace his beloved Mary,

Mary and Joe's real happy home was in the tenement in Parnell Street, after they were married and before he volunteered for the army. The house in The Liberties was given to Mary by the Dublin corporation, when he was away and he presumed this was because he was a serving soldier. He never quite knew this or was it because he was injured at the Somme.

Up to the time of going he didn't know where the Somme was and still didn't as the whole experience was vague: he never knew what they were fighting for, nobody had invaded Ireland – or England for that matter – but he didn't have a job, had no money and a baby on the way; so what else could he do?

When he came back, he didn't get on well with his brothers who had fought on the other side in Dublin. He went to the pub with them and the three of them were from different organisations; one was in the IRA the other in the IRB and Joe was an ex (gassed) British soldier as far as they were concerned; it didn't stop them drinking with each other though.

And here he was now, or there he is then, walking around by himself with a life full of things he didn't understand. He never knew the reason Mary died, he was told, but he didn't understand: he didn't know what happened to Carmel when he saw that the cord was wrapped around the baby's neck and didn't understand why Nurse Theresa told him to get rid of it; 'it' she said.

'IT?'

HIM - his first grandchild? Or the first one he knew.

And why did it have to be a secret?

No baptism: in purgatory for ever. In the ground next to Graymalkin which gave him many sleepless nights.

She told him to burn something else she had wrapped in newspaper; she didn't say what it was, she said 'burn it don't open it.'

But he did open it.

He never forgot it. Never forgot what he saw.

The cat came into his life when Mary was given him by a friend when she was expecting Patrick; she knew that if the kitten had remained in that house it would have been put into a tied bag and dumped into the Royal Canal. Graymalkin's mother was a tortoiseshell cat, called Biddy, who lived across the street and once in a while would be in Joe's yard with her son, Graymalkin, when Joe got out of bed.

Maybe the cat was sent for a purpose, maybe he buried him for a purpose and maybe that purpose was to hide Joseph.

Everything was sent for a reason, as far as Joe was concerned. The Irish people had been attacked by famine, consumption and bigotry with only the fittest surviving. All the religious wars in Ireland, all the invasions by Cromwell and his armies, coming over here for target practice, being allowed to kill the Irish as long as they didn't do it in Dublin, but beyond something they called the Pale, which going beyond it was okay to do anything they wanted. The Irish got over everything which was thrown at them, the famine and the TB epidemic, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This made the Irish strong – that and the craic.

Joe knew this and he knew the part of the bible which warned; There will be terrible earthquakes and seismic events of epic proportion that result in famines in one place after another. There will be horrible plagues and epidemics, cataclysmic storms on the earth, and astonishing signs and cosmic disturbances in the heavens” - he loved those words and loved them in that order and he looked around as he walked and said them out loud.

Oh!!!! How great that made him feel.

He half expected to be locked up every time the mood took him to speak out loud when there was nobody with him. He did that at home, as he spent most of the time by himself and when Finbar arrived with the quare one from Limerick he didn't soliloquise so much.

The harmonica was put on the top of the piano so that Finbar could see it any time. He still carried the woodman's whistle in his pocket and soon after he arrived Joe saw him sitting in a corner in the yard looking as if he had the whole world's troubles on his shoulders.

'What's that?' he said, pointing at the mound of Graymalkin.

'That's the mound of Graymalkin' he said 'and that's the Nancy Hutch' pointing at the place which used to house Nancy the ass and Patrick's horse, Finn MacCool.

When that first happened Joe said 'come on my little fella; let's go to the park.' and a big smile would interrupt Finbar's disposition and he'd run in and get the coats. Joe wrapped himself up warm with a big scarf over his chest and covered the whole of his head with a thick beret. He looked the proper French poet as they strolled out to Fairview Park before returning to a big fire of turf out of the cold dark December of Dublin.

When walking in Fairview Park that first time, the two of them were frozen and Joe said 'Let's go home and burn some turf.'

Finbar said 'they told us at school that it was called peat.'

'Poor old Pete' said Joe and each time they went there, Finbar said 'what about Pete?'

And Joe answered 'Poor old Pete.'

This was a little game they played.

The sheet music, for The Maiden's Prayer, was in the music rack of the piano and it had been there since Mary died. It was only disturbed slightly when Joe tried to play it and the time Carmel played it; playing it beautifully,

Finbar could read music but when he tried to play a few notes he found the piano way out of tune, so his hand automatically reached up and found the tune on the harmonica.

'What's that, Granda?' he said.

'That was your granny's favourite piece.' said Joe.

'I like it' said Finbar and he played the tune all the way through. When he finished he played it again with more confidence and Joe took his tin whistle out and the sounds of the harmonica and whistle seemed to know each other straight away; for there was harmony.

'Can I have a go?' he said as he picked up Joe's tin whistle.

'Sure.' said Joe.

Finbar sat down on the piano stool with the whistle and played, Deedle ap a doodle de doodle ap a doodee. Deedle ap a doodle de doodle ap a dum.

The little tune Joseph played.

'Did you see that?' said Finbar.

'I heard it.' said Joe.

Joe was hoping that Finbar might pick up the harmonica again but he didn't; he put it back in the same spot. There was something about Finbar that Joe didn't quite understand. He had been a very happy little fella, maybe stuck in his ways, but always smiling and good natured. He never lost his smile but Joe sensed a deepness. Finbar himself, was concerned about his granda's breathing difficulties and wondered what had actually happened at The Somme; but Joe was quiet about it. He told Finbar about his reaction to the Easter Insurrection of 1916, and said he had to see an officer who told him that there had been a bit of trouble in Dublin 'your country' was the way he put it. Joe told Finbar more about Dublin itself in the days before the war and when they were walking by The Quays, one day, he pointed to a drain, 'do you see that; I was standing here one day, when I was your age, and an owl-one was standing over it and I could see she was pissing.'

Of course this conjured up an image in Finbar's mind of an old woman crouching down, urinating into the drain.

'Standing there, bold as brass she was, with her long skirt just letting it go. An' you know what?'

'What?'

'She asked me if I would kindly, she said, very kindly, she put it, would I tie up her shoe.'

Finbar laughed at this 'And did you?'

'Of course' said Joe 'I got down on one knee and did it.'

'What about the smell of wee?'

'I never noticed' said Joe 'Sure the whole place smelt of piss. There were loads of smells from the horses pissing as they would stand there, shite'n as they stood. Kids would run out and scrape up the shite. Do you know there's something about a horse's diet that makes it okay to handle their shite.'

'Handle it?'

'Well you know what I mean' then he'd break out laughing miss pronouncing it 'you know whad oy mane?'

They walked on. He loved Dublin, they both did. They walked to Moore Street Market, just off O'Connell Street, where everybody seemed to know Joe and got more used to his companion of late. They knew their names at the market and people were used to Finbar's name, as opposed to the queries he got in Birmingham with the people mispronouncing it as Funbar. Then he thought of the thing that Joseph said, Fin boy. Just who was Joseph? He wasn't sure, was he a figment of Finbar's imagination, was he a figment of Finbar himself. He never could explain it and he never told anybody. The hospital told him he had been poisoned but he didn't really eat the mushrooms he kind of almost did. He did something between smelling and eating them, kind of taking them in for comfort. What would that be called a smell-eat? A smeat – there we are, he thought I've made up a word. You didn't make that word up, said the teacher, a girl wrote it for you and it's been written sloping backwards like a girl. What a gobshite. He saw his granda talking to a couple of the market traders, making them laugh. He saw the vapour from his mouth floating across and away from him, it was quite cold as was standing there and he thought what the word would be if granda swallowed his breath and what would that word be, vape-eating?

He was drinking a cup of hot tea which added to the vape ness.

'Come on' said Joe 'let's be off, your mother and father will be here tomorrow. That fella I was talking to knows your father.'

'Doesn't everybody.' said Finbar, and as they walked away the fella who knew Patrick said 'have a good Christmas.'

Finbar had been staying with Joe for a month or two, and the first night Joe told him the best place for him would be in his father's old room. It wasn't a big room but a lot bigger than his box room in Birmingham. Joe tucked him in and as he closed the door, Finbar asked him to leave it open, and that's what he did. 'I'll leave mine open too' he said 'If you want anything, just come in.'

He could see the night through the window and the wind blowing outside. In the yard was an outside lavatory, even though there was one in the bathroom at the back of the house, which was all on ground level, and that lavatory door was making a metallic noise as he settled down to sleep. It was a bit like a moan, kind urghhhhhh!!! then Clink. urghhhhhh!!! then Clink, and suddenly a bang. And that was it, no more of a moan.

He'd been asleep for an hour or two, he didn't know as there was no clock in the room, when he was wakened with a shout:

NO NO. ARGHHHH! BEHIND, NO AT THE BACK – THE BACK RUN . . . . NO RUN! ARGHHHH!

Finbar got out of bed and heard the sound coming from Joe's room. He went to the open door and could see granda on his knees, on the floor, with his torso over the bed. His head buried in the eiderdown. Then he lifted his head again – ARGHHHH!

It was the only time he heard it as both bedroom doors were closed from then on.

The next morning when Finbar got up he saw that Joe was outside in the yard. He was sitting on his bench, which looked like a park bench.

'Is that a park bench?' he asked.

'They threw it out at Fairview Park – your father brought it home when we had the cart.'

'It's cold' said Finbar.

'Well get your coat.'

'It's okay.'

He sat down next to Joe 'Are you all right?' he said.

Joe patted Finbar on his knee 'Did you see me last night?' Joe said.

Finbar nodded his head.

'I get bad nights – nightmares, I suppose, but that's all. I won't come and get you.'

He was staring at Graymalkin's grave.

'What's that?'

Joe told him about Graymalkin. It fascinated Finbar. 'Did you call the cat after yourself?' he said.

'Graymalkin, his name was. I said.'

'I got the feeling it was Joseph, you said.'

'No.' said Joe.

©2025 Chris Sullivan