Mr. Porter Says Hello

Mr. Porter’s ghost was as distinguished and as erect as Mr. Porter had been in life. A man of business and a gentleman all his life, he had been universally admired by his neighbours in Hamilton Park ever since he and his wife had first arrived there as a young married couple in 1922.

The Porter family were one of the original residents in the small scheme of houses built by the newly independent Irish state. Over a period of more than forty years Mr. and Mrs. Porter – for I never knew them by any other name – raised their family and built a successful furniture manufacturing business in town.

In the winter of 1964 Mr. Porter succumbed to pneumonia and was duly buried following a simple service in Mount Jerome Cemetery. Yet I had just seen him raise his hat and offer his best wishes to my mother.

It was the summer of 1965 and I was on holiday from school. School had only closed the previous Friday and the weather was unusually hot and sunny. Summer days and long summer nights called to us children then as there were games to be played and adventures to be had. However there were also jobs to be done both inside and outside of the house before we could enjoy what the summer might bring. My brothers Shay and Tom fell in for the outside work while my big sister Emily helped my mother clean the house from top to bottom.

Shay had spent two days painting the metal railings at the front of the house. On the day of Mr. Porter’s return to Hamilton Park he was painting the rickety fence in the back garden.

Tom had been given the job of cleaning out the ‘shed’ at the back of the house. This was in fact a one storey block built lean-to which was where coal, turf and paraffin oil were stored for winter. It housed the manually operated clothes wringer or mangle which my mother described as a ‘God-send’ when it first arrived. It was also in this part of the house that dogs slept, where clothes were hung in the worst of weathers and where the only sink in the house was to be found fed by a single cold water tap. This was where my mother hand washed clothes and peeled potatoes and my father shaved each morning before heading for work.

Tom spent the day in a cloud of coal dust and turf mould as he brushed and scrubbed both floor and walls, occasionally damping down the dust with buckets of water.

My job was to cut the grass in the garden to the front of the house. This garden was in two halves either side of a narrow cracked concrete path leading from the recently painted front gate. My tools for the job consisted of a push rotary mower of indeterminate age and an equally ancient large, wooden handled pair of garden shears. Neither was particularly sharp nor well oiled.

I laboured with one and then the other for over three hours until the grass was cut to within an inch of its life. The clippings and weeds I gathered into a rusty metal bin, carrying them through the house and dumping them in the furthest corner of the back garden. He they would rot down to be dug into the tiny vegetable plot early the following spring.

I finished the job stripped to the waist, dripping in sweat and glowing red at the shoulders. I put back on my striped blue and white T-shirt and fetching from the house an old sheet which my mother and Emily had both agreed was beyond rescue I spread it on the newly cut grass and lay on it.

At what moment I fell asleep or for how long I slept I have no idea, but I awoke with a start to a firm but gentle voice saying, “Good lad, you made a fine job of the garden and no doubt.”

I squinted upwards and back over my head, past the railings to where stood Mr. Porter. In spite of the heat of the day he wore his heaviest winter overcoat, leather gloves and his signature broad rimmed fedora.

“Oh, and tell your mother I was asking after her. Now don’t forget son,” he added raising his hat as if my mother was actually there and heading down the little cul-de-sac to his own house.

“No Mr. Porter...I mean yes Mr. Porter. I’ll tell her alright,” I answered, rising to my feet and turning to look after him. By the time I was on my feet and my eyes were fully adjusted to the brightness he had turned the key in the door of Number 5 and gone in.

What was I to tell my mother now?

On the Warpath

‘Grandpa’ Curran had lived in our little community for over ten years. The first time I encountered him was at the age of four and a half. I was playing a game of Cowboys and Indians and had taken up a good sniping position in his little front garden behind a sappy bright green leylandii shrub. Suddenly the rattle of a metal gate caused me to look up. There was ‘Grandpa’ Curran towering above me, eyes quizzically examining the earth smeared face of a boy no more than three feet tall.

I don’t know exactly what thoughts of panic went through my head at that moment but I am sure they ranged from fear of his great height - to his possible anger - right through to an overwhelming feeling that he would definitely give away my position to the Indians.

Much to my surprise however, he folded his long body in a manner which must have taken great gymnastic ability until he was looking me straight in the eye. Eyeing my roughly cut wooden rifle pointing through a gap in his shrubbery he summed up the situation instantly.

“Howdy partner,” he whispered just like in the films. “Injuns on the warpath again?”

Memories 2

One of my most precious memories is of a photograph. I was not present at the event it portrayed and it intrigued me greatly as a young child. It showed two young people,  a beautiful woman and a dashing young man dancing, holding each other close atop a small wooden table in a country setting.

When I was about ten years old the picture fell and the glass protecting it broke. A sudden gust of wind was to blame. I was sitting in the living room struggling with homework when the crashing and splintering of the glass made me start and rise to my feet. Turning to see what had happened I saw my mother on her feet too. Bending slowly, picking the photograph from among the shards of glass, holding it tenderly, Ma blew away the dust it had gathered from the linoleum floor. Moving towards her I saw her raise the photograph to her cheek, hold it there for a moment, then lower it smiling, nodding twice.

As I had never known the provenance of this photograph I decided now was the time to put the question which had often occurred to me as I realised there would never be a better time to ask.

“Who is that Ma,” I asked, “the beautiful woman in the photograph...and that man?”

“Why Martin, that’s me,” she said, and I could swear the colour in her cheeks was a rosier pink.

“And your father, Martin, that’s your Da.” Her tone suggested surprise that I needed to ask such a question.

“God, Ma. You were beautiful. And Da...he’s like an actor in the pictures,” I gushed.

“But why are you on a table Ma? You’re dancing on the table.”

Holding  the photograph to her with both hands my mother turned to me and smiling brightly explained that the photograph was taken in Carna, in Connemara. She and my father were on their honeymoon.

“It was the loveliest place, Martin” my mother assured me, “and the happiest week of my life.”

“There was an American man there and he had the latest camera. He took pictures of everything,” my mother went on.

The American man it seems, just like me, thought they were a stunning couple and cajoled them into posing for the photograph. The pose on the table he told them had featured in some Hollywood film or other. The photograph had duly arrived as promised by post about a month later. The postmark said Paterson, New Jersey.

The moment lost and the story finished my mother turned to me and said, “Martin. Get me the sweeping brush like good little man.”