My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress Read Online Free PDF Page A

train our collie Carlo to jump through hoops just like Bunty’s dog could? The impossible radiance of that one day of the year cannot be dimmed no matter how many decades pass. Strangely enough, I realised even then that it was my mother who had made it all happen. By late morning I was so full of chocolate I could not face dinner, and instead sat at the table watching Aunt Margaret try to eat hers.
    Margaret was an attractive woman in her forties who stood in for the aunt we never had. She was a cousin of mother’s and an essential feminine presence to offset the drabness of our many uncles. She was a stiff woman with legs as thin as dowelling rods. Feet in flat, suede slip-ons, never high heels: ‘It’s me bunions, Mary’, wore dimpled gloves and a coat with a mandarin collar. Her hair was her best feature: thick and shiny, inexpertly tamed with castor oil and a brush. She had chosen not to marry, and this was looked upon as a character flaw rather than a conscious decision. My mother would say that Maggie ‘had missed her markets’ and vent a sigh of disapproval.
    On Christmas Day she’d arrive clutching gifts that never varied from one year to the next: a jam sponge in a cardboard box from Ditty’s Bakery in Maghera and a bottle of Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry. There was always a vague air of helplessness about her, as though she were forever searching for something she knew she’d neverfind. This persistent questing was also brought to the dinner table; she couldn’t sit on a hard chair, always needed a cushion: ‘It’s me piles, Mary.’ Every Christmas a different part of Margaret ached. We heard about bunions, corns, ulcers, wind and cramp. She ate very little, perhaps for all these reasons, and would poke and search among the contents of the plate to see if that elusive something might be trapped under a slice of turkey or among the vegetables.
    After dinner she and my parents chatted by the fire, becoming more animated with the sherry, while we played with our toys – breaking most of them. It was plain, even to us children, that Aunt Margaret had never perfected the art of conversation. My mother would make a simple enquiry and could have gone off and said a couple of rosaries before Margaret got round to answering. After what seemed like an interminable silence, she’d say something like ‘What was that, Mary?’ before reverting to her usual, detached self. Her solitary life had left her unable to communicate.
    Television changed all that, and Christmas afternoons became less of a trial for everyone concerned. Not that I had much say in my viewing matter; the adults would decide what was suitable entertainment. Five of us would squeeze onto the couch with Margaret teetering at one end, and watch the most mind-numbing selection of programmes imaginable: The Black and White Minstrel Show (our visitor’s favourite), Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (mother’s favourite) and They Flew to Bruges (father’s).
    After hours of tedious television, sweet cake, idle talk and syrupy sherry Margaret would have metamorphosed from timid and uneasy to red-cheeked and tipsy, and would be ‘helped’ out to the car to be driven back to her council semi in Maghera.
    However, no matter how boring the television became there was always the distraction of a jigsaw or the prospect of yet more sweets. Christmas Day never failed to make me happy. It was the one day that guaranteed complete and utter joy.
    The 25 December 1966 was no exception. It hardly prepared me for the year to follow, though. That September I was entrusted to the not-so-tender care of Master Bradley.

L ESSONS IN H ELL
    I f Miss was the rewarding angel then Master Bradley was surely the avenging one. No two personalities could have been more divergent. I was passed from the ease of the one into the fearful clutches of the other. This was when the unravelling of my innocence