My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress by Christina McKenna Page B

sleet and bitter gusts, our shoulders hunched against the onslaughts, eyes and noses weeping. On rare occasions, prodded into action by my mother, father would come to collect us in the wobbling Ford Popular. He wouldn’t drive all the way to the school gate, however, but stop a good mile down the road, making us stumble in sodden file the rest of the way. We were ‘bother’ to him and this was his way of letting us know it.
    Once in the car, we’d rattle home in silence. There were no enquiries from him as to how school had been or what we’d learned, just a morose and bad-tempered muteness that hung in the air like a poised axe. I’d sit in the back seat between my two brothers with the rising smell of damp wool and the sting of his cigarette smoke in my eyes. I wanted to talk but knew I dare not. As a rule you did not speak unless you were spoken to and father never initiated friendly conversation with us, only accusation and rebuke. So we’d listen to the drubbing of the rain on the car roof and the lazy swish of the wipers, gaze through the runnels of water and stippled panes that made a Seurat canvas of fields and trees, as the car shuddered its way home.
    On our arrival mother would divest us of the soaking overcoats, arranging them on a clothes-horse by the range, where they steamed themselves dry.
    Oh, how I hated those short, damp days of winter! In the evenings our kitchen took on a look of sublime squalor, like some Turkish den in the peasant quarter of Istanbul.
    We all congregated there in the cloying warmth, the air heavy with the smell of boiling potatoes and stewed tea. Frequently the cramped space was encroached upon by lines of washing. Four drying rails suspended above the range would be draped with everything from bloomers to towels. These stalactites of fabric hung dangerously close to the range and trembled in clouds of water vapour from the bubbling pot. All this moisture made the polished floor a hazard to walk on and the windowpanes clammy. When supper was ended and homework done, boredom would drive me to those panes and I’d finger-paint graffiti into the condensation. I hungered for something nameless – peace, probably, or freedom – and in my frustration would turn away from the noise of the family huddle, press my face against the glass, look out into the darkness, and listen to the wind singing round the corners of the house.
    I don’t know which was worse: being forced out of bed in the early morning, to trek though the elements to journey’s end where you knew the Master waited, flexing his cane – or coming home to the wordless father and fretting mother in the gathering darkness of that house.
    The ritual of those evenings was supper, homework, rosary and bed. We did our homework by the faint glow of a 40-watt bulb high up in the ceiling, young eyes squinting in the gloom. Homework not completed at the table was finished under the bedclothes by the light of a torch.
    Schoolwork was a real burden to me, especially sums. I worried about not being able to do them and, if I managed to complete them, worried whether I’d got them right. All night long they roamed in my head, robbing me of the peace a child’s mind deserves. The spectre of the tyrant Master would rear up in my dreams.
    The rosary followed homework as surely as night follows day: all knees down on the cold, tiled floor, with sets of beads fumbled out of pockets and purses. My mother was the initiator. She took an aggressive interest in our religious affairs and felt it was her bounden duty to keep us all out of hell.
    She’d commence by asking which mystery matched the day in question. We never knew, and would turn our mute faces towards her like a row of innocent pansies. Then she’d be off on a good five-minute’s rant concerning our lack of religious knowledge.
    Father would have taken up a comfortable kneeling position: arse in the air, elbows bogged in