Terry Prone: When the sunny springtime arrives, everything feels possible — except for my cat chasing a mouse
'Sure, why would anybody go to the Canaries when Ireland gets weather like this?'
That straight shining double white line in an otherwise blue, blue sky lends such magic to a spring day.
You have to wonder if, on a perfect weekend like we’ve just had, pilots know the contrails they’re creating are so arresting, seen from below. Probably not. Pilots tend to be a bit busy after takeoff, which is when jet-trails seem to be most evident. It’s the people on the ground, sun on their backs, eyes shielded by a straight hand, who watch and wonder where they’re off to, those people in the tiny silver dot at the front of the clean line, as that vapour trail scarfs into something softer, less defined, more gossamer, floating in spring sunshine.
That sunshine has the most astonishing effect on humans, filling hearts with hope and possibility, causing even the most negative of folk to smile at total strangers and be tolerant of the weather/geography cliches. You know the ones that go: “Sure, why would anybody go to the Canaries when Ireland gets weather like this?”
The garden centres and DIY stores are as full as a tick with people kidding themselves that they are going to transform their surroundings for the better this very weekend. The city evenings see happy crowds — mostly of young workers — outside every pub, laughter in the air, music in the background.
Little begrudgery, either. Even the vigil-keepers, the loving carers who fan the sick, who moisten lips with an ice-pop and wait for worse, even they half-smile when they glance out the window at the bright wonder that is this time of the year. They are triggered to talk quietly to the focus of their love, reminiscing about the summer when he got his shoulders burned and she sprained her wrist showing off at tennis. They tell of relatives off to the west or going camping somewhere else and of young parents fierce in their determination to embed their youngsters in an armour of SPF 50 before allowing them into the open air.
As the sun flashes off car windows, homeowners look at the paint that needs refreshing, the surfaces that need sanding. Thoughts go to putting up temporary versions of the screens that fascinated them on their first trip to the USA, to keep the bugs out. “Spring cleaning” becomes an urgent positive imperative, rather than a vague possibility.
Some of us, of course, are pretty resistant to the spring-cleaning urge, which is why I was sitting in bed the other evening, reading a novel that includes, as a character, a pal of my late husband who was a nazi spy. To be honest with you, I had totally forgotten this until I was a third into Michael Russell’s wonderful
. A pal of mine donated the book, which I assumed was by an English writer about the Cold War, because it had the Brandenburg Gate on the cover and a man in silhouette, looking mysterious. In fact, Michael Russell lives in West Wicklow and, while his series of books about a 1940s Special Branch inspector do visit Berlin during the war years, they’re essentially rooted in Ireland.
He does this clever, difficult thing of threading real people and real mass murders into his fiction, and that’s where Helmut Clissmann popped up. My late husband, Tom Savage, was running a peace organisation when he found himself dealing with Amnesty International Ireland, and with one of its founders: Clissmann.
He happened to mention Clissmann’s age, which established that the man must have lived through the Second World War. I asked about that and was told he’d been in the military. "On what front?" I asked, being a card-carrying military history buff. Clissman hadn’t fought, I was told. What, now? What was he doing if he wasn’t fighting?
“Spying,” Tom said, tranquilly.
“Spying on who?”
“Us. Ireland.”
“Was he a member of the Nazi party?”
Tom nodded, adding that he wasn’t sure Clissmann would have had much of a choice in that regard. The notion of anybody in the 30s and 40s spying on Ireland seemed as ridiculous as the notion of a former nazi being instrumental in the setting up of an organisation devoted to the interests of peace. But Clissmann had done both, and Tom loved him.
Michael Russell’s book is fair to Clissmann in a way that has not typified Irish media portrayals in the past, and I was enjoying it when the corner of my eye registered something travelling along the skirting board. It was about the size of a fat bee. But silent. A bee, therefore, it wasn’t. To differentiate it further from bees, this had a tiny tail.
I was as mortified as if a jury of 12 good men and women were watching. It’s OK, when you live by the sea, to have a mouse invade your premises in the autumn, when the cold drives them indoors. That’s the self-exculpatory theory, anyway. But a mouse in springtime? Not acceptable. A definitely shaming experience, reflecting on your housekeeping standards and suggesting that spring cleaning is the very least you should be doing. Also, serves you right for eating in bed.
I gave Specs the cat a poke and pointed to the mouse, finding out, in the process, that cats do the reverse of humans when someone points to something. Humans look at the something being pointed at. A cat looks slowly up the pointing arm, its gaze settling impartially around about elbow level.
“Look, you gobshite,” I said with the polite elegance for which I am widely known. “A goddam . In . Do your bloody job, you’re a cat.”
I turned her head so she was looking straight at the bee-sized mouse. She managed to convey that she had retired from all that stressful hunting stuff. That’s the thing about cats. Their need for appreciation is small. Maybe even non-existent.
Which is why I visited Mr Price and bought three traps, on the basis that mice travel in families. Paying half nothing for them, I reflected on that old saw which holds that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door. I’m not sure the mousetrap has been radically improved since that was first said. Nor am I convinced that it needs to be.
When Bryan, my visiting handyman genius, arrived at the weekend, I presented him with my purchases and he announced that the best bait was chocolate, which was cool, since Easter leftovers were everywhere. The smallest of the mice, when found, dead, seemed to have annoyed the trap into knocking it unconscious without entrapment. The other two died the traditional way.
Bryan says you can’t be sure that three was the extent of the family. He is always right on such matters.
So now, I am spring cleaning with unusual delicacy. That’s for fear I get attacked by one of the re-baited traps. I need my fingers for typing.
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