THE CITY AT CHRISTMAS A remembrance by Henry Hudson

THE CITY AT CHRISTMAS A remembrance by Henry Hudson

I am seven years old. It is Christmas Eve. The year is nineteen-sixty. I am living with my father and mother on the top floor of a tenement house opposite Dominick Street church. It is evening. Da sits by the fire studying the racing pages of the Evening Herald while Mam and I sit together and grate bread crumbs into an enamel basin. In the morning they’ll be mixed with herbs and sausagemeat to make stuffing for the turkey. Glowing coals in the fireplace bathe the room in a rich, warm light and the smell of spiced ham drifts from a pot that bubbles quietly on the gas stove in the corner of the room. Then from the hallway, three floors below, comes a wheezy, bellowing call. “Are ye up there, Har?”

Da goes out onto the landing and calls down into the darkness. “Good man, Flash! I’ll be down in a minute!”

Da takes a hand-torch and hurries down to where ‘Flash’ Cullen is waiting to make his annual delivery. ‘Flash’ is small, skinny and on the wrong side of sixty years of age. He is the cellar-man of the local pub. He cycles a messenger-bike that has a big, metal box set over its front wheel. He is delivering last-minute Christmas orders to customers of the aforementioned establishment. It was the same customers who gave him his nick-name because ‘Flash’ had only two speeds, dead slow and stopped.

I hold the door of our room open to let light spill down into the stairwell and I listen as the men lug two timber crates of stout up the twisting flights of stairs. The ragged music of twenty-four bottles tinkling together applauds their efforts. Mam wipes bread crumbs from her hands as they step into the room.

“There you are, Flash, and a happy Christmas to you!” Flash flashes a broad, gummy smile. “And to you, and all yours, Missus!” The crates of stout are safely stacked to one side of the fire. Then Da whips up two of the brown, corked bottles. “You’ll have a sample, Flash?”

“I shouldn’t really, Har… but then again, it’s Christmas!” Mam produces two half-pint glasses while Da skilfully de-corks the bottles. The stout is lovingly poured until a rich, creamy collar, exactly half an inch deep, stands on a steadily darkening base.

“Good luck!” the two men salute each other, sip their drinks, and begin to debate the merits of various runners and riders for the races on St. Stephen’s Day.

As they talk Mam quietly lifts the ham from the pot and cuts two thick

slices off the rump of the joint. Then she butters cuts of loaf bread and makes two huge, door-stopper sandwiches, one for each of the men. She puts them on plates and signals to me to carry them over. Flash’s eyes light up when he sees the steaming treat. “Good on ye, Missus, it’s so long since I ate, me belly thinks me throat’s cut!”

Da smiles appreciation in Mam’s direction and I sit there soaking in the warmth, the sounds and smells and wishing (as children often do) that life could stand still and never move on from that moment of sharing and companionship.

All too soon the stout and sandwiches are dispatched and it is time for Flash to make his annual presentation to Mam. As ever it is a gaudy calendar and a pink Christmas candle. These gifts are delivered on behalf of the publican. They are a peace offering for the nights during the year when his bar turned into a glue-pot and Da, arguing over football or politics, forgot both the time and his way home. Mam will use the calendar to mark off the repayments on Da’s new suit while the candle will later be lit and placed in our window to light the Holy Family’s way to the stable in Bethlehem.

As Flash is leaving he reminds Da to call to the pub on St. Stephen’s night to have a ‘Christmas drink’ with the rest of the regulars. Then the adults exchange good-humoured farewells and Christmas wishes while I go to the window and look down onto the street.

A few moments later Flash emerges from the hall door and creaks his leg over the cross-bar of his bike. Slowly, steadily, he cycles away into the cold, foggy mist that hangs like a curtain over the waiting city. When I turn around Mam is back doing the bread crumbs and Da is back reading his paper. The moment is over.

Sixty years on and the house, indeed the whole street where I lived, no longer exists. Mam, Da and Flash are all long gone to their eternal reward. Pubs don’t have cellar-men any more nor do they bribe wives with gaudy presents or reward ‘regular’ customers with free Christmas drinks. Dubliners no longer have bottles of stout delivered in wooden crates on Christmas Eve. Instead they buy their stout in cans from cold, soulless supermarkets. The cans are shrink-wrapped in plastic and jammed tightly together on cardboard trays so, unlike their glass-bottle ancestors, they are incapable of ever making the lovely, ragged music that once drifted up a darkened stairwell and filled a child’s heart with the joy and unforgettable magic of Christmas.

Henry Hudson was born in Dublin in 1953. A graduate of the Samuel Beckett Centre in TCD he is a former winner of the PJ O’Connor Radio Drama Award, The Heinrich Boll Award for Literature, Listowel Writers Week Playwrights Award and Best Play Award at the Cork Arts Festival. An E version of his unique Dublin novel Beyond Pulditch Gates (2001) is on Amazon Kindle under the title Pulditch. His second novel, Poor Lamb, Poor Lamb is also on Kindle. He is soon to publish an adventure novel for children based on ancient Irish legends. Along with numerous stage and radio plays he has written a collection of short stories including Playing for Time which appeared in The Evergreen Review in New York. His story Bloomsday and his poem To a Sitting Statue in Fluntern Cemetery were published in the Stinging Fly magazine. Website: henryhudsonwriting.ie