An Irish Christmas Feast Read Online Free PDF Page B

some larger sods to the fire. Then from the recesses of the cupboard he withdrew a bottle of whiskey. He had purchased it in a nearby village after a football game to which he had cycled in late November with carrier bag attached for no other purpose. He shook the bottle thoroughly before uncorking. He stood it on the deal table for several minutes while he went in search of a glass. There was one somewhere, only one. He knew it wasn’t in the cupboard. The people of the street kept their glasses, few as they were, in sideboards. Those who were not possessed of sideboards wrapped them carefully in old newspapers and arranged them loosely in a cardboard box which was always kept for safety under the parental bed.
    He found himself searching the sideboard in the small sitting-room attached to the kitchen. Eventually he found the upturned glass under a tea cosy. He could not recall how it came to be there. He returned to the rocking-chair and stretched a hand as far as the whiskey bottle. He poured the contents into the four-ounce glass until it was brimful. He sipped, spluttered and coughed. It was always like that, he recalled, with the first drop unless one was partial to whiskey diluted by water. In the street the menfolk never mixed spirits and water. When the whiskey was swallowed it was all right to swallow a mouthful of water after a decent interval but to mix it in the glass was regarded as far less edifying than the pure drop.
    He placed the glass on the table next to the bottle and removed the mud-covered boots. He would clean them in the morning. Nobody could clean and polish boots like his late lamented mother. Nobody could untie lace knots like her. He used to call her his knot-ripper-in-chief. He recalled how his father had laughed loud and long when the title was first conferred. Ah those had been happy days!
    The tears flowed down Jacko Mulholland’s face, remembering his father and himself squatting on the workbench, his mother attentive and obedient to their wants. It was she who delivered the finished trousers when, for one reason or another, the customer failed to call. She never came back empty-handed. When she returned without the money she always brought the trousers home. She never extended credit. Sooner or later she would get her money. Alterations were child’s play to her.
    Jacko extended a hand for the bottle and refilled his glass. He could not bring himself to resurrect past Christmases. The memories were too painful. He found a block of cheddar in the cupboard and cut himself a slice. His thoughts turned to Mary Moles as they did at the same time every year. He wondered if he would be any happier if he had taken her for a wife. Too late now. He had seen the grey hairs on her head and the puckered face of her through his window as she passed up and down. Hers was a stately walk. She would have to be granted that. Never looking to left or right she moved with the grace of a swan. It was her natural gait. Everybody in the street would agree that she was one unflappable female, maybe a mite too steady and maybe a trifle too demure and maybe somewhat conservative but she was the kind of girl one could present anywhere. Certain people in other streets considered her dull but this assessment had to be based on ignorance. Her true worth was known only to her neighbours and they would swear in any court in the land that Mary Moles had a touch of class and they would also swear that class was what really mattered in the long run.
    She lived with her father, a cantankerous old man, a martyr to lumbago and catarrh, who chided his only child day in day out. His wife, or so the neighbours maintained, had simply given up the ghost having been subjected to twenty years of withering criticism, all undeserved. The only respite she enjoyed was when she visited the church. Who could blame her if she spent as much time as possible in its hallowed precincts, kneeling and praying and savouring the blessed