Laethanta Saoire: Paisley, Scotland, 1983 - by Carmel McMahon
Carmel McMahon, centre, on holidays with her family in Loch Lomond, Scotland.
Most summers, we took the ferry across to Scotland to visit my father’s childhood home. Paisley, in my ten-year-old opinion, was so much better than Ashbourne, Co Meath. In Ashbourne, it rained every single day, and there was nothing to do and nothing ever happened on our estate. I was an organized girl and happily helped Mam pack the suitcases. We coordinated clothing for eight children for two weeks. With strict efficiency, I further whittled down the pile to essentials: swimming togs, pajamas, shorts, tee-shirts, underwear and Sunday clothes.
In 1983, Ireland was in the throes of a heavy economic recession, but Dad had gotten a great job as a salesman at Lyons Equipment, a Dutch garage equipment company based in Dublin. The lines of worry melded and softened and wore away from my parent’s faces. Dad drove a company car, a rich, blue Ford Grenada. There were no child seats or even seatbelts to take up any room, so the eight kids could be mashed in the back for the two hour drive north to the ferry port of Larne. My folks knew the chain-smoking was bad for them, but not for us. While the cloud made us gag, we made no complaint, as we could sense that the fragile ecosystem enabling the peace was just a hairs-breath from disintegrating. We did our best, but it was just not possible for the ten of us to travel together without incident.
I always tried to “bags” a window seat, but inevitably I’d be made to move to separate whoever was killing each other. An argument would start small, usually by Clare accusing Martin “touching off” her arm. Martin, wedged between her and Billy would ask where she wanted him to put his arm? They would bicker back and forth, tensions rising, until she drew an imaginary line, a boundary between them, which everyone knew was just moments from being breached. When it was, she would scream, “Maaaaam!” Dad would erupt in response roaring threats about turning the car around and canceling the holiday. There would be silence for a while, but then someone would fart, and we’d all snicker, and Dad would open the window and say we were disgusting. I’d climb between Martin and Clare, close my eyes and dream of being an only child.
Dad’s family descended from Irish Famine refugees. He was born, the youngest of five children, in a Paisley tenement. After the war, through a Labor government scheme, his family moved into a three-bed semi-detached council house on Muir Terrace. My grandfather had been taken out of school at age fifteen to help support his family. His teachers begged his parents to reconsider sending such a bright and sensitive child to the mines. He went on to become an engineer at the Paisley Mill. At Muir Terrace, he channeled all his creative energy into his garden. The front was filled with prize-winning roses, and the back was landscaped with winding pebble pathways through various flowering beds. My grandfather died before I was born, but the basic shape of his magical garden was maintained.
My grandmother, a formidable woman, still lived on Muir Terrace. She sat in a sturdy wooden chair in the living room and sucked Polo Mints. Rolls of which she stashed in the cushions, and we found and ate. There were lots of special spaces in the house, each with its own specific atmosphere and smell: the cubby under the stairs, the bay window, the pantry between the kitchen and the garden, the green garden shed. My grandmother didn’t seem to mind that we disrupted her peaceful and orderly house with our clamor of buckets and spades and nappies and tantrums and toys.
Our visits attracted a procession of aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors and friends who dropped in to see us and say hello. There were endless pots of tea and plates of biscuits to be served. They pinched our cheeks and patted our heads and said things like “Aye” and “Wheest!” and “Weans.” We made day trips to Loch Lomond or Largs, or we ran around Barshaw Park, or we were split up and farmed out to whatever family offered to take us for the day.
One day, my sister Clare and I were sent to the home of family friends in another part of Paisley. They had a daughter close in age. She was an only child and had all the latest toys. In her bedroom, we marveled at her Barbies and Kens. She had the house, the car, and countless outfits and shoes. We began to play, but discovered, very quickly, that the rules of engagement were different in Scotland.
I do not recall the exact nature of the transgression, but there remains the perception of an injustice. My budding self-righteousness enflamed, an argument broke out. As far as I could see, my sister and I had a choice: either to remain and suffer the whims of this nine-year-old tyrant, or to find our way back to home base.
There were no cell phones. We we did not know the strange streets, or the telephone number of my grandmother’s house. If we didn’t get killed on the way back, my parents would finish us off when we got there. We were trapped. When I saw the self-satisfied smirk on the girl’s face, I decided we’d take our chances. I grabbed Clare’s hand, and we marched out. Carefully following the land-marks I had registered on the way over. Everything was so different and memorable: the Indian Restaurant with the gold tree design, the bus stop with the word, Gallowhill, the big Spar. After what felt like hours, we finally rounded the bend of Muir Terrace.
The girl’s mother had phoned the house in a panic, so our greeting, when my parents opened the door, was a mix of relief and anger and a hint of something else, a glimmer, a very slight whiff, but a whiff nonetheless, of admiration.
When we returned to Ashbourne, Dad parked the Ford Grenada in the driveway. He opened the front door of the house as we were unsticking ourselves from each other. A pile of post had gathered inside. He picked out one letter, opened it and the color drained from his face. He said, over and over, “I’ve lost my job. I’ve lost my job.” Lyons Equipment had closed for the two-week holiday in August and while the employees were away, they upped and moved, lock, stock and barrel, back to Holland, without a word to anyone.
The car was returned and Dad looked for a new job. There were no jobs. The only solution left he said, was to move to Scotland. We could stay with my grandmother until we found a home of our own. My heart sank. I looked down our wet street and realized I couldn’t bear to live anywhere else. Paisley was grand for holidays, but upon consideration, I found Ashbourne to be home. My friends were here, my school, my Dublin Nanny and Grandad close by. While he was making plans for the move, Dad found a job. Our Paisley grandmother died shortly thereafter, and the house on Muir Terrace was sold on.
The summer of I983 was the last time the entire family traveled to Paisley together. Since then, the memories of those trips have melded and softened. Forty years later, my sister’s family visit us from Ashbourne. The children charge through our peaceful and semi-orderly home in Co. Mayo igniting it with joy. The surprise of what interests them most, little animals whittled by my Scottish grandfather. What memories, I wonder, are forming inside them. What might arise, unbidden, forty years hence, from an unfixed past that is already wearing away.
- Carmel McMahon is from Ashbourne Co Meath, and was the second-eldest in a family of nine. She emigrated to New York for many years, and now lives in Co Mayo. Her widely-praised memoir, In Ordinary Time, was published earlier this year
