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Standing at an Angle to My Age
For as long as I could remember, Mr. Pound had lived in the back bedroom. He wasn't family, as my dad was quick to point out to anyone who came by. "He wasn't family until we made him family," my mother would always add. Mr. Pound was already eighty when he'd first come to live with us in Portaferry. It was 1952, the year I was born and the year he'd left the kettle on the gas ring, sending his own house up in a fiery blaze while he dozed, oblivious, in a shady spot in his back garden. Even the pumper trucks didn't wake him-an old bachelor, his mind going queer, without a living soul to care or look after him.
"Some'd be content to take in a stray cat, but not your mother," my dad would say, within her earshot.
"Catch yourself on, Lorcán," she'd say back to him, gently. "Is that the example you want to be setting?" These were good-natured exchanges. Sometimes there were harsher words; low, muffled voices on the other side of a door.
Mr. Pound spent all of his time either in bed or in the pushchair my dad built for him with little cast-off wheels he'd brought home from work at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast. In his more lucid moments Mr. Pound would ask me to manoeuvre him to the window so he could watch the birds. He would sometimes have me sit up on his lap and then point to them and tell me their names. He would also sing little snatches of old songs, bits of his own childhood dislodged by some stimulus not apparent to anyone around him.
"Clitherty,
Clatherty,
Out upon a Saturday,
In upon a Sunday morning."
This particular fragment brought my mother running into the lounge from the kitchen, her hands red and dripping from the washing up, her face alight with excitement. "My father sang that to me, Ben! He was a weaver. They would sing that song at the beginning of each week when they changed the webs on the looms." I could see that there was magic and mystery locked up inside Mr. Pound.
By 1958, when Seán was born, Mr. Pound's lucid moments came less and less frequently. My mother had to feed the two of them, side-by-side, and my dad sometimes couldn't bear to eat with us. The well of his considerable good nature did not run as deep as hers. He would turn away in exasperation as mashed peas and plaice collected on Mr. Pound's stubbly chin. "Take your leave, Lorcán. Better that than say something unkind," my mother would declare as my dad pulled on his boots to leave for Dumigan's Bar over the road.
Sadly, as Seán grew older and began talking, Mr. Pound had still fewer songs or snatches of intelligible verse to share with him or with us. These and such other scraps of formed thought as still milled about within his nodding head were, by then, almost irretrievably locked away. Age, in its indiscriminate cruelty, had robbed him of the ability to call them forth. He chattered away, to be sure. But it was mostly gibberish, seasoned with gusts of Gaeilge and the odd swatch of breathtaking profanity.
"Mind your foot, Mr. Pound," my mother would say as she did the hoovering. His reply: "Liverpool Street. Bank. St. Paul's. Chancery Lane. Holborn. Tottenham Court Road. Oxford Circus. Bond Street. Marble Arch. Lancaster Gate. Queensway. Notting Hill Gate. Holland Park. Shepherd's Bush. East Acton. North Acton. Ealing Broadway. Fuck King Billy. Amhrán Hiúdaí Phádaí Éamoinn. Máire an Chúil Óir Bhuí.
Mr. Pound would still sometimes reach out with his spindly arms and try to pull us up onto his lap. But my brother would have nothing of it. "He smells of pee!" Seán would howl, squirming free, and he was right.
"Some'd be content to take in a stray cat, but not your mother," my dad would say, within her earshot.
"Catch yourself on, Lorcán," she'd say back to him, gently. "Is that the example you want to be setting?" These were good-natured exchanges. Sometimes there were harsher words; low, muffled voices on the other side of a door.
Mr. Pound spent all of his time either in bed or in the pushchair my dad built for him with little cast-off wheels he'd brought home from work at the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast. In his more lucid moments Mr. Pound would ask me to manoeuvre him to the window so he could watch the birds. He would sometimes have me sit up on his lap and then point to them and tell me their names. He would also sing little snatches of old songs, bits of his own childhood dislodged by some stimulus not apparent to anyone around him.
"Clitherty,
Clatherty,
Out upon a Saturday,
In upon a Sunday morning."
This particular fragment brought my mother running into the lounge from the kitchen, her hands red and dripping from the washing up, her face alight with excitement. "My father sang that to me, Ben! He was a weaver. They would sing that song at the beginning of each week when they changed the webs on the looms." I could see that there was magic and mystery locked up inside Mr. Pound.
By 1958, when Seán was born, Mr. Pound's lucid moments came less and less frequently. My mother had to feed the two of them, side-by-side, and my dad sometimes couldn't bear to eat with us. The well of his considerable good nature did not run as deep as hers. He would turn away in exasperation as mashed peas and plaice collected on Mr. Pound's stubbly chin. "Take your leave, Lorcán. Better that than say something unkind," my mother would declare as my dad pulled on his boots to leave for Dumigan's Bar over the road.
Sadly, as Seán grew older and began talking, Mr. Pound had still fewer songs or snatches of intelligible verse to share with him or with us. These and such other scraps of formed thought as still milled about within his nodding head were, by then, almost irretrievably locked away. Age, in its indiscriminate cruelty, had robbed him of the ability to call them forth. He chattered away, to be sure. But it was mostly gibberish, seasoned with gusts of Gaeilge and the odd swatch of breathtaking profanity.
"Mind your foot, Mr. Pound," my mother would say as she did the hoovering. His reply: "Liverpool Street. Bank. St. Paul's. Chancery Lane. Holborn. Tottenham Court Road. Oxford Circus. Bond Street. Marble Arch. Lancaster Gate. Queensway. Notting Hill Gate. Holland Park. Shepherd's Bush. East Acton. North Acton. Ealing Broadway. Fuck King Billy. Amhrán Hiúdaí Phádaí Éamoinn. Máire an Chúil Óir Bhuí.
Mr. Pound would still sometimes reach out with his spindly arms and try to pull us up onto his lap. But my brother would have nothing of it. "He smells of pee!" Seán would howl, squirming free, and he was right.
Submitted on January 2, 2013 in By David.
