Guards & January

For Catriona

For a woman full of anxieties and fear so bad she often cried out When? When will it end? Mammy had a funny attitude to the Garda Síochána.

It was men who failed to teach her, their patience failed them and the same kind of policers she evaded when she sped through the main roads and back roads

of Cork, Kerry and Limerick with a provisional licence. Laughing at our fears, laughing at the men, teasing Daddy with the accelerator although she was not shy

to look for help from any knight of the road, asking him to park the Mini when she was too nervous or to reverse her out of a tight spot, his corrugated brow concentrating

as she talked non-stop. I’m back in the dark of January, she’s driving me back to boarding school. Longsuffering May is riding shotgun as I hang over Mammy

from the back seat, my arms around her, trying to clasp the seat belt round her waist. Mammy, laughing with fear and excitement, even as the guards are flagging us down.

The Gardaí were dreadful fairies always appearing to ask the awkward question –out of nowhere sometimes like that day on the Conor Pass when she was the heroine

outwitting the foxy fellow on foot in a mountain fog.

Did she give Mary’s name, the sister in New York who got the licence when they were given out without the test?

Or was it Tricia who was pressed into the impersonation of Nuala, another red-haired sister, handing in the licence as promised to Mallow Garda Station?

I can’t be sure. I only know she got away with it, her heart still going, she says, as she unclips the suffocating seatbelt and releases the brakes to motor on for the Convent of Mercy,

never at rest for the whole of my life.