summon him to the church and take him out the back and make him put on a pair of twelve-ounce boxing gloves, whereupon the Irish priest, the ex-cruiserweight champion of County Cork, would give him a damn good thrashing and then haul him into the confessional. With a bloodied nose and a fistful of âHail Marysâ as penance he was forgiven, and life on the island returned to normal. One way or another most things got sorted out. Looking back, this rough justice may seem little better than a kangaroo court, but I tell you what, it worked a treat.
Like all his mates off the trawlers and cray boats, Alf would get thoroughly pissed of a Saturday night. But to be fair to the fishermen, most of the other blokes on the island, with far less cause to drink the miserable week right out of their heads, were also down at the pub nudging elbows and getting equally legless.
Like many a small man before him, and a redhead to boot, Alf McKenzie was of a fiery temperament and quick to take offence; moreover, he couldnât hold his booze. It was a deadly combination and he was apt to get into regular blues, usually over some imagined insult and, with disquieting regularity, heâd pick on someone way above his own fighting weight, a fox terrier taking on a rottweiler.
Although, in his defence, unlike a lot of other men on the island, when pissed he didnât become a wife-beater â one of two crimes, the other being incest, that seemed to go unpunished in the community. This was probably because the former was too common to be remarked upon except as womenâs gossip, and the latter too shameful to be admitted under any circumstances by anyone. Itâs only now, decades later, that I realise that incest was not uncommon in many an island family.
Alf would occasionally take a half-hearted smack at us kids, though more out of a sense of duty than from real malice. For a bloke who could pick a fight at the drop of a hat I canât remember him ever seriously beating any of us boys, and he never laid a hand on my sister, Sue, either in anger or the other hidden and secret thing.
I recall how at Monday-morning roll call at school thereâd be dozens of kids with black eyes, thick ears, split lips and multiple bruises whoâd supposedly run into the doorknob or fallen off the chook-house roof or some other such euphemism for getting the tripe knocked out of them by a drunken father. By the time they were teenagers most of the boys had flattened noses that hadnât come about as a result of fights behind the school dunny.
As for the other, I dare say the female children and some of the males will carry the scars, secret guilt and shame for the remainder of their lives. In recent years the priesthood, Anglican and Catholic, has come in for a hammering for child abuse and with just reason, but, at least on our island, their parishioners were often just as guilty. Not that I think Father Crosby was up to no good. Certainly nobody has come forward and nothing untoward has surfaced over the ensuing years. As for Reverend John Stephen Daintree, our Anglican rector, he was nearly eighty when he came to the island and could barely raise an arm above his head to invoke a blessing, much less anything else. But then again, when you scratch the surface of any society, island paradises included, youâre certain to find a darker side.
Of course, there was no such thing as child welfare at the time. Island folk, as theyâd done since settlement, kept to themselves and resented any sort of bureaucratic interference, even if it proved to be in their own best interest. My mum would say we were a three-monkey society: see, hear and speak no evil, even if, plainly, there was a fair bit of it going on around us.
Alf McKenzie, a small man on an island of predominantly big ones, was considered a part of the Saturday-night entertainment where half-a-dozen serious fights usually took place at the back of the pub. Pound for
Like all his mates off the trawlers and cray boats, Alf would get thoroughly pissed of a Saturday night. But to be fair to the fishermen, most of the other blokes on the island, with far less cause to drink the miserable week right out of their heads, were also down at the pub nudging elbows and getting equally legless.
Like many a small man before him, and a redhead to boot, Alf McKenzie was of a fiery temperament and quick to take offence; moreover, he couldnât hold his booze. It was a deadly combination and he was apt to get into regular blues, usually over some imagined insult and, with disquieting regularity, heâd pick on someone way above his own fighting weight, a fox terrier taking on a rottweiler.
Although, in his defence, unlike a lot of other men on the island, when pissed he didnât become a wife-beater â one of two crimes, the other being incest, that seemed to go unpunished in the community. This was probably because the former was too common to be remarked upon except as womenâs gossip, and the latter too shameful to be admitted under any circumstances by anyone. Itâs only now, decades later, that I realise that incest was not uncommon in many an island family.
Alf would occasionally take a half-hearted smack at us kids, though more out of a sense of duty than from real malice. For a bloke who could pick a fight at the drop of a hat I canât remember him ever seriously beating any of us boys, and he never laid a hand on my sister, Sue, either in anger or the other hidden and secret thing.
I recall how at Monday-morning roll call at school thereâd be dozens of kids with black eyes, thick ears, split lips and multiple bruises whoâd supposedly run into the doorknob or fallen off the chook-house roof or some other such euphemism for getting the tripe knocked out of them by a drunken father. By the time they were teenagers most of the boys had flattened noses that hadnât come about as a result of fights behind the school dunny.
As for the other, I dare say the female children and some of the males will carry the scars, secret guilt and shame for the remainder of their lives. In recent years the priesthood, Anglican and Catholic, has come in for a hammering for child abuse and with just reason, but, at least on our island, their parishioners were often just as guilty. Not that I think Father Crosby was up to no good. Certainly nobody has come forward and nothing untoward has surfaced over the ensuing years. As for Reverend John Stephen Daintree, our Anglican rector, he was nearly eighty when he came to the island and could barely raise an arm above his head to invoke a blessing, much less anything else. But then again, when you scratch the surface of any society, island paradises included, youâre certain to find a darker side.
Of course, there was no such thing as child welfare at the time. Island folk, as theyâd done since settlement, kept to themselves and resented any sort of bureaucratic interference, even if it proved to be in their own best interest. My mum would say we were a three-monkey society: see, hear and speak no evil, even if, plainly, there was a fair bit of it going on around us.
Alf McKenzie, a small man on an island of predominantly big ones, was considered a part of the Saturday-night entertainment where half-a-dozen serious fights usually took place at the back of the pub. Pound for
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