At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill [133]
Next day the news came that the British had evacuated from Gallipoli. “Without Single Loss of Life,” the papers trumpeted. But Gordie they had left behind. Still Aunt Sawney would not hear of a card in the window. The black bordered the house instead.
It was Christmas week and they took down the mother hen from the kitchen shelf and smashed it on the yard flag. Jim watched his father search through the smithereens. His round face sagged, as it always did on these occasions, on account the cost of the hen and the scant coppers that chinkled out. But as he said, they would need less decorations this year. The usual festoons in the shop—there’d be mutterings from the customers else—but the kitchen would go bare, and only a candle in the parlor window to light the way.
They fetched down the box of Christmassings from the attic and replenished its unaccountable shrinkage, same every year, from the mother hen’s savings. They got in the usual supply of tall red candles to give out among the customers on Christmas Eve. After many hours of fabulous sums on the kitchen table, Jim’s father paid out the Christmas club savings, correct to the last farthing. They had puddings on the shelf in festive tins, which as usual no one would afford and Aunt Sawney would be serving them up at unlikely seasons in the coming year. Carollers sang in the street and pantomimes advertised on garish hoardings. And when a tiny snow fell, his father said to Jim, “The old woman’s picking her geese and selling the feathers penny apiece.” Then she hung them stiff from the poulterers’ shutters.
“The army now was the place for Christmas,” he said while they were decorating the shop. He spoke more and more of his army days, the way remembering them would bring him closer to Gordie. “Little balls of fluff that we’d tie with a thread and hang them from the ceiling. You’d come into the barrack and think the roof was after lifting off and there you was in the midst of a snowstorm. Great tuck-in you’d have on Christmas Day. Some regiments would have the officers to serve the men. The Dubs didn’t go for any of that malarky. Behavior unconductive. I regret to say there was considerable drink partook. Sergeants made themself scarce for the duration. Then when the festivities was over we’d take the men on a good twenty-mile march. Sweat old Christmas out of them.”
“What was Christmas like before the army?”
His father stroked his mustache. “To tell the God’s honest, I misbelieve I had any Christmas before I found the Dubs. If and I did, I don’t recall it. Templemore was my first with the regiment. Mullingar, then Fermoy. It was England after that.”
Nothing was ever told of his father before the army. It was like he was born to the regiment. “Did you mind leaving Ireland?”
“Sure I was only a nipper. Set sail for Southampton, not a cloud in the sky. What had I to mind anyway? The trouble of it was, I wasn’t yet on the strength, not official-like. Had to beg them to take me. On me marrowbones I begged. Meself and young Mick, this was. Fearful fuss we must’ve put up for in the end the Adjutant took pity. Wasn’t ulagoning from the stern I was, but gazing into the blue beyond.”
Jim pictured his father with his hands on the rail and the sun setting behind. His father without boots on, jags in his breeches, the orphan boy. “How old would a nipper be?”
“Sure nobody took much note of your age in them days. If I was ten, I wasn’t a day more. Four years out then, and ’twasn’t the barrack rat but Bugler Mack what sailed with his regiment for the Rock. Proud as a peacock with my fusilier hackles. Blue facings that told the world the Dubs was a royal regiment.” The smile wavered on his face and he said, “Though they wasn’t the Dubs then. Was still the old 103rd. And I never did get the hang of