MAY THE RAINS FALL SOFT UPON YOUR FIELDS - OFFALY - 1953

I walked into the kitchen. “She’s in the back,” said the daughter, struggling to balance a turf-blackened pot against the clumsy sink edge. Billowing steam, potatoes, slick and gleaming tumbling and netted like thrashing salmon in a battered colander. I followed her nod, loose wisps of dull hair escaping her headscarf casually brushed away with the back of her hand. The hair, almost under control as her whole body tilted, coaxing the last of the steaming catch, “She won’t mind; be glad to see you.”

It was an old door; years of paint and potato steam had taken their toll, an eternity of decay enduring lifetimes of use. I fumbled the thumb-latch, eased, and pardoned my way into the secret, sacred room of the almost dead. There was Mrs. McCabe, kneeling, head bowed to floor level, pulling taught the linen of the old woman’s shroud, her bespoke plenary indulgence. Retrieving a mouth-held pin, she deftly tacked it into the hem, into the seam.

“Thomas!” exclaimed the old woman, her loose silver hair fragile against the weak morning light of the unwashed winter window. Her decline catching me, shocking me for a moment. “Oh! Thomas,” then in the same weak breath she added, “How long have you got? When do you have to go back?” I mumbled something about a couple of weeks, although in reality I had no idea; time was her domain.

Next morning, the daughter greeted me with a slight nod as I rounded the corner of the cottage. Low grey clouds troubling a weekly ritual, a turf-flecked sheet retrieved from the knotted clothesline. “How is she today?” I asked, following her indication, to hold two corners of the sheet, pacing backward I took up the slack. “Not so good,” her reply as she advanced, taking the sheet from me.

She had bad hands, eczema, rough red skin, caught me looking, a holding of eyes, a deep, unspoken truth, an overwhelming sadness, a long-dead love forever buried in a lifetime of regrets and excuses. She turned, coldly leading the way into the cottage, into the kitchen, her mother’s old linen basket cradled on one hip. That’s how women carry babies, I found myself thinking, on one hip. Knowing the cradled basket was the only child she was ever likely to carry.

I never did return, not even to pay my respects at the grave. I kept meaning to write to the daughter. I received a card a couple of Christmases back. Picture of the holy infant swaddled in a white sheet. Strangely, I still see the rough, dry skin as she took the sheet from me and those dark, trapped eyes, longing deep down for her own release, her own personal plenary indulgence.

T.S.Ollerhead: Having left school and home at 15 years of age, I travelled the world working in the oil and gas industry, eventually settling in Australia. Now almost eighty years of age I enjoy writing short stories and poetry and have over a dozen poems accepted in one of Australia’s best-selling school magazines which publishes over 1.5 million copies per year and has a long history of innovative, contemporary literature that appeals to students, both young and old.