Love blossoms even in Winter years
Cassie Murphy lived in the townland of Mullinavarogue not far from the Mill Dam outside the village of Redhills. She was like a lot of Border women of her generation, born just before the foundation of State, strong and independent, never holding back in letting it be known exactly what she thought of you. In the early years of the 1970s, now in her early fifties, the thought of marrying had long taken leave of her mind and it seemed that it was her lot to live in the home of her parents with her two bachelor brothers for what remained of her years.
There was never any talk of her having done a line with a man, even in her earlier years, for she wasn’t just that type and it didn’t seem to bother her, not having married, for she had men enough to contend with in her two brothers, Andy and Johnny. She followed the same routine each and every day, walking the two miles or so in the early morn in through Veneable’s Estate and exiting on the Scotshouse Road that led her down beneath the overhanging sycamores to the crossing in the road below at Agnew’s Mill and returning home by the same way in the evening.
She had walked this road in hail, rain and snow, accustomed to taking the odd lift from a passing car until one evening a northern registered vehicle pulled up alongside her and a man, a little older than her, leaned over and wound down the passenger window, offering her a lift, a journey that unbeknownst to her was to change the course of her life to come.
The driver of the car was a man by the name of David Matthews who hailed from Comber in Co Down, a widower, whose wife, now deceased, was related to two old bachelors, James and Eddie Phair, who lived in the townland of Kivvy, in the road by Drumeena Church. The Phairs had left the place to David’s wife and, after she had died, David used to come and stay from time to time. It was on one such visit while out driving, he happened on the diminutive grey haired woman out walking in the duskish of the evening, stopping to offer her a lift, being the gentleman that he was, emulating the good Samaritan of high renown.
He spoke with the woman as they travelled along, he in his soft spoken tones and she in her matter of fact border accent. He told her of how he too loved to go for a stroll to take in the beauty of his surroundings to which she quickly replied, in her no nonsense way, that she wasn’t out walking for the good of her health but was returning home after collecting thousands of eggs, a far cry from the life of ease he seemed to be accustomed to, driving at his leisure along country roads.
Indeed she had heard Mrs McGarvey talk of this man, after Sunday mass, but had never laid eyes on him as he worshipped instead in the Church of Ireland at Drumeena. Their small talk continued, as they travelled along, though Cassie was a little wary at his questions, one after the other, which continued until she alighted the car at the gate of her house at Mullinavarogue. The talk that evening around the table fornent the window was about this man, going over who he was and where he was from and how it happened he was staying in Phairs.
It seemed too that a spark must have ignited in the heart of Mr Matthews as they journeyed along for, despite the blunt way in which she answered, the thought of Cassie didn’t leave his mind for all the long evening he spent on his own and he decided on making it a habit in the days that followed of driving along when it so happened that Cassie was finishing up and leaving Agnew’s.
As the days passed, Cassie’s brother Johnny, the giver out of the rosary after mass, was highly suspicious of the intentions of this man from Co Down, for it seemed that only a week had passed until the hoot of the horn could be heard without on the street as Johnny lifted his head from raking the ashes to see his sister skipping out the door like a young wan in the springtime of her youth without ever giving a thought to dipping her finger in the font of holy water, to bless herself, as left for her day of work in Laurel Hill.
Indeed he might have had cause to worry for, as another week passed, he found her washing her face with carbolic soap in a basin of warm water without in the back kitchen instead of clearing the tea dishes into the sink, putting rouge on her cheeks fornent the hall mirror before the car would again pull up outside to bring her off to the Magnet cinema in Cavan. It was then that he decided it would soon be time to seek advice from the local Parish Priest.
Well if Johnny didn’t know what to make of the whole thing, Cassie didn’t either, as her life changed inexorably in just a matter of weeks. Before long, Scud Rudden was telling it below in McMahon’s shop that Cassie Murphy had lost the run of herself and your man beyond in Phair’s was carting her to and from Agnew’s each and every day and that they were seen pulled up outside North’s forge of an April evening beneath the overhead light of the car and yer man with his arm round her.
Well before Fr Mc Govern had time to go down as far as Cassie to see had she completely lost the run of herself, both David and her was above at the door of the curate’s house sorting out a dispensation from the Bishop to allow them to get married in the chapel there. And marry they did of a May day in 1973, just months after they had first met along the road, as Johnny rang the church bell to welcome the bride, her young neighbour Mary Murphy, walked in front of her as bridesmaid and Andy, Cassie’s brother, being David’s best man.
The whole of the parish was invited to the reception in the White Horse Hotel in Cootehill and everyone said it was the best wedding they were ever at. Though chalk and cheese, Cassie being somewhat rough and ready and David being quite genteel, they lived 23 years of the most happily married life together. Cassie seen parts of Ireland she could have only ever dreamt of in her life before, staying in hotels and guesthouses the length and breadth of the country, never having to walk the road to collect eggs again. Each week David would go to Sunday service in Drumeena and thereafter leave Cassie off to late mass in Killoughter, waiting in his Fiat 127, until she had finished talking with the women at the gate to head off to the Creighton in Clones for their Sunday lunch.
It might have been by happenstance that they met or indeed of the doing of God but their coming together in what seemed a chance encounter along the road gave hope that friendship can happen when we least expect.
David died in 1996 and was buried in the church yard at Drumeena with his first wife’s people as Cassie remained a widow until she succumbed to old age, some 15 years later in April 2011 when she was buried, with her two brothers in the family plot as, each year, an anniversary mass is said for the most unexpected of sweethearts, brought together in the evening of their years, Cassie and David Matthews.
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