The last house in Drumavaddy
In his latest column, Let the Busy World Be Hushed, Fr Jason Murphy this time goes to Drumavaddy to remember the much-loved Nurse Nora.
The cat, rotund in size, sat outside the back door of the house nestled beneath the hill along the road to Ballyhaise, purring in the early morning sunshine after its nocturnal escapades around the hill of Drumavaddy. Meowing to be let enter to rest by the warmth of the range as had being its wont for years since it was rescued from the jaws of a terrier dog.
It was near mass time from Ardfinnan on RTE and time for his weekly devotions as he heard her turn the key to welcome in the rays of the morning sunshine. ‘Good morning Mr Pussy’ as he strolled nonchalantly by, wondering what had kept her, not stopping to greet her to let her know his displease, as he took up position by the foot of her chair for her to take her pew, his cue to jump up beside her as she always did as the two sat back and watched Fr Toomey say mass in the morning of the day.
As they sat still, deep in prayer, the cars passed by in their speed along the road bound for the town of Cavan, no time to stop, no time to stare as the familiar prayers of the mass were said, prayers that the woman had recited time and time again, prayers that brought comfort and healing, a constant through the ups and downs of her days and here, nestled into the hillside, they again brought comfort in the warmth of her home, their familiar and melodic rhythm like poetry to the ear.
They were abruptly brought back to their senses after the final blessing had been given in the summer of the year by the clatter of a bicycle thrown down at the gable of the house as the youngest of her grandsons, the Mooney boys, pushed down the handle of the back door, knowing well not to arrive until mass was over. He came through the door, somewhat red in the face, into the sun-lit living room to break the serenity of the morning much to the disdain of Mr Pussy who detested these school summer holidays when his peace was apt to be disturbed as she rose to put the kettle on the boil.
A pot of tea beneath a cosy and a slice of her brown bread with lashings of butter on a red willow-patterned plate followed by a slice of her crusty apple tart as the boy sat in his usual spot at the opposite end of the table, talking on the news of the day. Simple talk, childish talk - Thomas studying, Daniel cutting, Conor baling.
These were idyllic days, when life followed a slower pace and the simpler things took on a greater importance, each one was a blessing and this she knew all too well with her thrice weekday visits to the renal unit in Cavan General Hospital for dialysis, knowing days like these would not last forever.
The life lived in the midst of the ordinary where it seems to others that nothing really happens is the most precious life of all. She had come down this lane some 55 years ago as a bride of the huntsman, Seamus Mooney, and since that day she watched as each of the inhabitants of this townland in their turn were carried out the lane to the chapel at Killoughter and their houses - Fitzpatricks, Fays and Bradys - to stand thereafter in silence without smoke from the chimney to rise again. Hers was the last bastion of life in the townland of Drumavaddy where once hounds and huntsmen in their plenty roamed its fields but now were few in number.
But it was far from here she was born and oft times in the evening she would walk to the top of the hill and look westwards to gaze on the lights of Ballyconnell to the place where she was born. It was on a night out with some of her nursing colleagues from the old surgical hospital, all packed into her Fiat car, that the road of life brought her to a Carnival dance in the village of Stradone.
There at the other end of the tent stood a fine bachelor man from Redhills who had returned from London and worked with Joe McMahon, making coffins, as a joiner, lining the bottoms with tar and packing them full of hay before tacking on the white in-lay cloth.
As the band started up he crossed the floor to ask the brown eyed girl out to dance and, enchanted by his endearing smile, she took his hand and, in the year that followed, she became his wife on the outskirts of Redhills. It was an idyllic place to live twixt her neighbours and friends, where they came in the number with their cuts and grazes to be cleansed and sewn - old men with fingers half hanging off from tricking at a baler, who wouldn’t darken the door of the hospital came to Nurse Nora to have their minor injuries sorted.
She cherished her life among the hills, following the rhythm of the seasons as her husband Seamus followed the pheasants, ducks and foxes, calling him for his tea as he tinkered without in the shed beneath the naked light of a bulb, making gun stacks for fellow huntsmen.
But, as in all things, nothing remains the same as one year borrows another and Seamus too followed his neighbours down the lane to Killoughter chapel and there she was left in the quiet of the mornings with Mr Pussy at her side looking forward to the sound of a car engine or the clatter of a bicycle by the gable of the house. That was until that quiet Spring day as the wild garlic grew along the hedgerow to where the lane meets the road and the door was pulled behind them on the last house in Drumavaddy where smoke rose high from the chimney pot to tell of a life lived simply within its walls.
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