The Library

MY MOTHER had a passion for the written word. She brought it with her from her family in Croom in Co Limerick, at a time when reading was the prerogative of a small minority.

There were far more important issues in the Ireland of her father’s day who was a policeman before he settled down to farming. There was a small press in the kitchen which was intended to be the place where her reading material was stored.

That press was like a commentary on the way that life unfolded as it progressed.

The press was commandeered for other inhabitants: for Sunday shoes and Monday wellingtons, polish tins and brushes, old socks and mouse traps. And bit by bit, the place for her books became a small corner on the top most shelf. Until finally it held just a few books, but their presence there, still miraculously intact, was a statement of her dedication to reading.

She guarded the books with great care. If left unminded, the likelihood was that some vandal hand would draw a scribble across a spotless page. At evening time all except my father, who sat on his armchair beside the fire, was gathered round the kitchen table. My mother read and at the same time, which was a duality of major skills and ability, responded to the flow of questions from those who were doing homework.

Those who were too young to go to school were also stationed around the table, and, if an unguarded pencil, or a clean space in an open book, momentarily became available, a scribbler went into action. I still have some of my mother’s books and all of them carry the hand marks of a scribbler.

Every now and then a brother or a sister from her home place came to visit. Usually he, or she, mostly she, came bearing gifts: a shop sweet cake that was always judged inferior to my mother’s baking, perhaps an item of clothing that had fallen out of regard by an unmarried sister, but always and more welcome than gold, was a book.

Not just any old book that was picked up at random in O’Mahony’s of Limerick, usually by a brother, but one of her favourites, an Annie M P Smithson, an Agatha Christie, a Baroness Orczy. But there were long periods between visits and the top shelf of the would-be miniature library looked deserted and forlorn.

AND THEN suddenly a miracle happened. A brother acquired a box of books that had been thrown in with another item that he bought at an auction. He kept some for himself - he too was a reader - but had no regard for what he called

‘silly romantics’.

If we wanted them, he wrote, come and get them. And do so by a specific deadline, otherwise he would dispose of them.

My mother wrote back and suggested that we meet half way. No, it was out of the question, he wrote again, the proposition still stood, come and get them, otherwise the books would go up in a bonfire.

That last intention was sacrilegious to my mother, books were sacred things, even if they were written by what the brother called ‘women who had nothing better to do’.

So she went, in a trap cart, with me as a companion, gifted with a day home from school, but that was sorely limited with the prospect of meeting a cantankerous uncle.

BUT FORTUNE shone on us both. The cantankerous uncle was nowhere to be seen. In his place was a friendly generous man who plied us both with kindness. When we started for home he called me aside, told me to close my eyes, and open my fist, and close it again when he said so.

I was not to look until I got home and was not to tell anybody what it contained. But I sneaked a look and knew by the silver knurling that there was half a crown nestling in my fist.

And so the top shelf of the press was filled. Now and then I would take a book from the shelf and pretend to read as my mother did, moving my eyes over the cover, and pushing out my lower lip as she did too when something arrested her concentration.

IWONDERED what was happening between the pages, what it was that held her attention. Even when she responded to desperate pleas for homework help, her eyes never lifted from the page

And then there was Baroness Orczy. She grew up in Hungary, the daughter of aristocratic parents who were impecunious. Her writing output was enormous but none of it seemed to hit the high spots as did her creation of The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Pimpernel is a herb found widespread throughout Europe with purple-tinged flowers and leaves that are sometimes used for salads. In the time she wrote, not many people would know of that particular herb, and many less would have eaten it in a salad.

But the name sounded grand and mysterious and was a perfect non de plume for her main character, an English aristocrat called Sir

Percy Blakeney, who during the French Revolution, devoted his time saving French aristocrats from the guillotine.

NO MATTER how the simpleton French dullards tried to nab him he always daringly escaped.

There was a rhyme that edified Blakeney’s daring. They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven, or is he in hell. The dammed elusive Pimpernel.

On my first day in school, the teacher asked me if I could sing. I said no. It was a preposterous question. It was known far and wide that Nestors never sang.

When asked if there was anything else I could do, could I dance, play the mouth organ or the Jew’s harp, I shook my head and then almost unknowing to myself, I launched into the rhyme of the scarlet pimpernel. It ran from my lip like treacle.

They seek him here, they seek him there.

Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.

Is he in heaven, or is he in hell.

The dammed elusive Pimpernel. ■