MEMOIR:EVERY CHRISTMAS SINCE Aunt Maggie died he'd been asked to our house and every time he'd some excuse; the dog, the budgie, the donkey. Who'd care them! And then come back to find his apples progged! And though he'd oblige any neighbour any time he was loath to ask for a return obligement. "Proud and private our Tom," my father said. So that year it was arranged we'd go to see him on St Stephen's Day, writes EUGENE MCCABE

In the car on the way over I heard again what I already knew. “Your uncle’s ailing . . . not well at all and this time try not to ask too many questions, son . . . I need to talk to him.”

Tom was the eldest. I was sorry he was sick but I was looking forward to the visit. My cousins, his children, had all emigrated to Glasgow, Liverpool or America. It was a concerned neighbour, aware of his weight loss, that contacted the district nurse. After one call from her, he declined further visits. He dismissed, we were told, all suggestions of doctors and hospitals.

I’d been to Corravilla three years before when I was six. The disused scutch mill had long since been converted into a forge. When we arrived at that time he had a helper, a big, bare-chested man with a leather apron. We watched them with long tongs lift a red hot iron from a circle of fire then ease it flaming on to a new cartwheel.The smell of burning wood, hissing when doused with buckets of water, combined with the astringency of anthracite and branded hooves is something you never forget. Also I had a clear image of the the slated, two-storey house adjoining the mill, the whitewashed walls, the window sills and a front door painted the purpley blue colour they used then on carts and wheelbarrows. Behind the house there was a sloping garden. That summer visit it was rank with giant rhubarb, egg bushes and fuchsia. Central in this garden there was one apple tree well cleared of brambles, nettles and ground ivy. It was protected from rooks and daws by chicken wire tacked to larch poles hooped at the top by an obsolete cog wheel. It looked like a see-through Indian tepee.

The branches that mid-summer day were bending with the weight of apples. Towards evening we had walked down to the millrace and along the stream. There was sunlight on the water flowing over brown stones. Beyond the millrace in swampy ground you could see an acre or more of yellow iris and drumsticks and there were, I was told, brown trout hiding under the banks.

“In a dry time,” Tom said, “you could catch them by ticklin’.”

I was curious and asked.

“Ticklin’ trout, son, is a tricky business. I’ll show you some day.” I knew that wouldn’t happen.

We then went up to walk the 20-acre farm as they talked about neighbours and land, marriages and deaths, the buying and selling of farms in nearby townlands, the poverty of growing up in Corravilla, the drowning of flax in bog holes, the awful smell of it, the cold monotony of scutching in the mill, the gathering of stones off poor fields without heart or nature. Mid-sentence my father stopped suddenly, looking about him: “Hardship surely but look Tom! . . . every ditch a glory . . . the foxgloves. I’d forgot them entirely.”

“There’s no big sale for foxgloves,” Tom said.

“That’s no money could buy a sight like that.”

We then climbed up to view Milltown lake. It was a long, magnificent glitter of rippling light.

“You tell me Killarney’s bests this?” Tom asked.

“It has the mountains . . . the lakes are equal. I’ll take you there some day.”

Like tickling trout I knew that wouldn’t happen. Tom had never been to Dublin, had no interest in anything outside a few mile radius of Shercock which they both pronounced Sharcock.

From the lake we walked down to their turbary stripe of bog to check how the the turf clamps were drying, the brothers, oldest and youngest now talking and chuckling as they re-lived growing up incidents, mostly about how very hard they’d had to work. They kept referring to Hup.When I asked who Hup was I was told it was their nickname for my grandfather.

There were nine of them. During school holidays the two girls were worked as hard in the house and yard as the boys were in the fields and scutch mill. Idle talk or an unauthorised break and the old man would suddenly shout “Hup there boy . . . Hup!” There was a clear understanding that the boys were to leave home at 14, the girls at 18 and they did, except for Tom . . . Glasgow first, then America or Australia. It was, they agreed, the same everywhere in Ireland at that time “and not much differ these days,” Tom said.

Very occasionally they remembered Hup coming back from a fair with drink taken. He’d sit at the table mumbling, angry with himself and the world. No one dared imply the smallest reproof, least of all Imelda, my grandmother. Now and then to break the silence he’d say aloud “Hup”, and stare round the table defiantly.

“And we lads would nod or say ‘Aye Sorr,’ or ‘You’re right there Sorr’. Open your mouth to talk an you’d get a lash of his tongue for somethin’ you’d done yesterday or maybe years back. But he never hit . . . ever . . . just the tongue lash.” After a silence Tom added; “I think he was half cracked . . . our auld fella.”

“The famine and the way he was reared,” my father said, “only for that scutch mill we’d have all died out . . . or been long gone from here.”

WHEN WE ARRIVED that Stephen’s Day three years later the brothers seemed awkward and gruff with each other. “You look rightly Tom,” my father lied, to which Tom said “Aye” and put his hand on my head squeezing it gently. I knew that was a kindly greeting for both of us. He had a droopy moustache and brown eyes, his tall frame stooped from a lifetime of heavy lifting to shoe cart horses and long hours bent over the anvil. His clothes looked too big for him now and his face was waxen under a grey stubble compared to my father’s pink clean-shaven face. From the front street through the peepy window I could see a crock of russet and red-tinged apples on the kitchen table. Inside there was a warm turf smell, a kettle steaming on the hearth, farls of brown and soda bread on the dresser, a bowl of boiled eggs and a wedge of Christmas cake.

“Gifted by a good neighbour,” Tom said, nodding towards them. “They heerd you were comin’.”

Maybe it was the half light or the firelight but the the crock of apples on the table seemed to me more beautiful than any Christmas tree, fairy lights or coloured paper hangings.

I asked for details about the apples. Both answered, vying with each other, turnabout:

“An ancient breed.”

“Hup’s auld fella got it from a huckster in Mullagh.”

“Come out of Shackletons, he swore.”

“The explorer Shackelton!” I asked.

“You know about that fella son?”

“Everyone knows about Shackelton,” I said.

“It was an auld tree when we were caudies.”

“Christmas apples we called them . . . takes the frost to ripen them.”

“There’s not the likes of them hereabouts.”

“They don’t taste proper till Christmas time.”

We went out then to the garden to look at the tree in the half dark. It seemed like a kind of miracle . . . reddish apples like roses glowing high in the cold dark of winter. After that we drank tea with bread, eggs and Christmas cake then reached for an apple. Tom didn’t join us. He said he’d already eaten. My father took out his Swiss penknife and began to cut and eat slice after slice. I wanted a penknife but was shy about asking for one. Tom saw this and handed me his. The apples were as good as they looked; juicy and bitter sweet and when I’d finished there was a faint taste of pear in my mouth. I told them it was the nicest apple I’d ever eaten. Both commended my judgment and urged me to eat another.

“I’ve a box of them packed for you in wood shavin’s.” My father thanked him and refused a dram of whiskey. Tom poured himself a big tumbler full. He sipped at it very slowly. I could tell this had startled my father but he kept an impassive face as Tom asked about his business interests in Glasgow and how the other brothers and their families were faring over there.

“All but Andy. Every penny he earned went on books and drink.” Then after a silence, “He had high notions of himself that lad. Spends most of his days in a library or the pub.”

“He was the brainiest scholar ever studied under Macauly in Lex academy,” Tom said. “The auld master tauld that to the whole parish.”

“Maybe so, but when he quit the council work in Rutherglen he cadged money from the rest of us for drink and rent, then told us to our faces we were shapin’ up be a pack of gombeen men.”

“He said that to you . . . our Andrew ?!”

“Worse Tom . . . ignorant money grubbers, the lot of us,” he said. “He got Hup’s tongue,” my father added “with longer and sharper words.”

There was quite a silence before Tom said: “Only 29 . . . poor fella. I was horrid fond of him . . . You give him a proper funeral.”

“A brother on each rope . . . tears at the grave.”

After a long moment Tom said: “I couldn’t get away.”

“We knew that.”

There followed one of those tighter silences that are hard to loosen, both brothers in their own heads, Tom sipping from the tumbler, my father blinking anxiously at it. Finally Tom asked: “Does this caudie of yours know about Taramayaki and our Pete?”

My father shook his head disinterested.

“You were there . . . tell him . . . he should know about that fambley stuff.”

Almost unwillingly it seemed, to please Tom, I was told that my uncle Peter took a size 19 collar and weighed 20 stones. Every morning for an hour he practised lifting two 56 pound weights high over his head then skipping so the whole apartment in Monteith Row vibrated. He’d joined a wrestling club in Glasgow. No one in the club could match his weight and strength. They put him forward for an international wrestling contest on Glasgow Green. He and a Japanese wrestler called Taramayaki were one of three warm-ups for the main world wrestling event. “We four brothers were sitting in the front row. When Taramayaki climbed into the ring we could see he was well muscled but not much over five feet. We muttered amongst ourselves:

‘Our Pete’ll tie that wee Jap in knots and kick him into Argyll Street. It shouldn’t be allowed, a wee fella lek that up again a giant lek Pete.’ ”

“Andrew kept his counsel till asked. ‘He’s not afraid and looks professional. Pete’s an amateur . . . a big ignoramus,’ he said.

“We other brothers who’d paid for Andrew’s ticket turned on him angrily, told him to hold his tongue or get out. He pursed his mouth, shrugged and kept quiet. After the bell went the fight lasted about a minute or less. The wee Jap man had Pete on his back right off, caught him by the ankles and swung him around like a highland ball then bounced him hard off the canvas. He never stirred till they carried him off.”

“That’s the way of it,” Tom said. “I seen people watch me at work all my life and them thinkin’ to theirselves ‘That’s aisy done.’ No so. Takes years to make a master a trade . . . and there’s always somethin’ new comes along to test you.”

My father agreed and asked:

“What do you think of this man Hitler, Tom?”

“I heerd the howls and shrieks of him once on the wireless. Is he in his right mind?”

“He has his mind made up years back . . . could land here or across the water, take over, make our money useless.”

“You think?”

“No doubt and . . . there’s goin’ to be war.”

“You’ll escape this one,”

“I will.”

I was startled by the casualness of this reference and asked my father if he’d been in the great war. When he ignored me I knew he didn’t want to talk about that or anything else. I could see him watching Tom sip from the tumbler, could sense that what was about to be said now was what the visit was about. I felt suddenly embarrassed, didn’t want to be there.

“I talked with Bourke. He phoned me.”

“Why was that now?”

“The district nurse had a word.”

“Had she?”

“She had.”

“Bout me?”

“Yes.”

“So?”

“He’s a good man, Tom.”

“They’re all good men . . . doctors . . . not for me!”

There was a long silence. They were like two men playing chequers who’d forgotten who moved next. It was clear Tom was not going to be first. He kept looking steadily into the firelight till my father said:

“I thought you hardly drank at all, Tom?”

“True enough, in my workin’ days.”

“That’s a fair scoop you have there.”

“It helps.”

“Close on half a bottle.”

“Aye.”

“They tell me you don’t eat much.”

“No point . . . nothin stays down.”

“Nothin’?’’

“Nothin.”

“And how long are you like this?”

“A brave while.”

“And does it help . . . the whiskey?”

‘Warms the stomach . . . helps me sleep.”

“And when you waken?”

“Water. Porringers of it, a half a bucket from the best spring well in Ireland. That stays down.”

I knew the serious talk was over when Tom turned suddenly and asked if I liked being boarded out at school. I said yes it was alright. “Is he a good scholar?” he asked my father. “He is, he is but no great hand at the sums they tell me.” I felt Tom’s long, bony fingers and thumb turning my head clockwise, then anti-clockwise. “It’s a good enough head . . . one of us alright.”

“And stuffed with poetry,” my father said.

“Is he small for his age?”

“A bit but he’ll grow.”

“Nothin’ to us if he didn’t.”

That I knew was true. There was a photo in our house of all the brothers as young men at Corravilla – Tom, Pete, James, Pat, Andrew, Benny and Owen, all of them over six feet. I was proud to be kin to them if a little awed by their stature and the great boned, warrior faces.

“We’ll have to hear some of this poetry. Do you know The Deserted Village, son? We done that at school.”

“‘He has a mind to write a poem of his own called Milltown After the Famine.”

“That ’id be the quare stuff. Can you recite a verse or two for us . . . whatever you lek.”

I said I could, went to the centre of the kitchen, bowed and began The Brook by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

I come from haunts of coot and heron

I make a sudden sally

To sparkle out . . .

“Quit! Quit that!” Tom almost shouted. “That’s enough about coots, herons and sparkles . . . Them Tennysons are a breed of landlord hereabouts.”

“That’s a different family,” my father said. “Same name. I’ll hear somethin’ else.”

I ventured again:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun

Nor the furious winter’s rages

Thou thy worldly task hast done

Home art gone and ta’en thy wages

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney sweepers, come to dust

I could sense that both were very attentive till I reached the last two lines:

Quiet consummation have

And renowned be thy grave

Neither were smiling nor applauding. There was an odd silence. I had a sudden awareness that the poem was inadvertently appropriate and inappropriate. Tom asked: “Who wrote that?” “Shakespeare,” I said. “Aye, he was the boy . . . he knew the story.”

AFTER THAT it was clear the visit had come to an end. Tom stood and proffered a half crown. There was no refusing it. He shook hands with me and told me to put the box of apples in the car. I did as I was told and stood listening in the half dark to the voices from the kitchen. I knew my father was trying to persuade him. Then I heard Tom’s voice, slightly louder:

“You can talk till doomsday. I’ll stay here where I was born . . . go my own way . . . on my lone . . . the way we all go.”

When my father came out his face was a mix of angry and sad. Tom stood at the doorway, an arm raised in farewell. For a while there was no talk in the car. Now and then my father muttered to himself “Impossible bloody man . . . he can’t have long . . . terrible what he’s at, a terrible way to go.”

When he was silent a while I asked him was he a soldier in the Great War. I thought for a minute he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said: “A courier, on a motorbike behind the lines.”

“Was it dangerous?”

“A bit.”

“Did you have a gun?”

“A revolver.”

“And did you . . . ”

“No! I shot no one.”

“Did you see Germans?”

“Dead ones in no-man’s-land. Listen son, promise me you’ll not speak of this to anyone . . . ever. Are you listening to me now . . . never . . . ever!”

I promised. “You can talk about your uncle Benny all you like. He kept guns under the counter in Glasgow . . . spent three years in prison. He gets a pension from Dublin now.”

“Is that good . . . a pension?”

“According to Benny, ‘enough to feed a small cat’.” My father gave a chuckle. It was good to hear him chuckle after all the strangeness of the visit to Tom.

EARLY IN January my mother wrote details about how Tom had died. The postman had found him barely conscious in the turf shed. He refused to get into an ambulance and took a taxi to our house near Clones, where he was well tended. He died after five days.

“I have never seen your father so lonely. They must have been very close growing up.” I was told that when I got home at Easter there would be surprises. The first thing I saw was his donkey in a paddock beside the garden, his budgie singing in the kitchen window, his Scot’s collie looking mournful in a basket near the cooker. After I’d eaten, my father brought me out the back door. Tom’s anvil was battened to a heavy block of wood beside the boot scraper. I was then led to an area below the house planted with a mix of low fruits and high fruits and ornamentals. In a sheltered corner I saw the familiar apple tree secured by ropes and timber props. It had new larch poles hooped at the top with protective chicken wire tacked on. It had been dug deeply around and winched with its root ball on to a lorry and delivered from Corravilla near Shercock to be replanted in Clonkeencole near Clones.

It lived for years but never blossomed to bear fruit again.