THE HANDSTAND

september 2004

Miscellany of paragraph and other short stories


Pierce Francis Garvey assumed Privilege!
By Eddy Cody©
Tom White and my father were the best of friends. Tom was a historian of note in our eyes and his wonderful paper on the Priory in Inistiog is proof of that!

My father was one day organising a work force from the Tighe Estate to clean the Tighe burial places and they were cleaning out a part pf the old Priory we call the Ladies Chapel, the interior of which had become completely overgrown with bushes. In the far corner they discovered a crack or gap where the surface met the wall of the roofless chapel. My father felt there might be something down there and on another day he got a crowbar which he drove down into the ground with a sledgehammer. When he had driven it down a couple of feet it suddenly near disappeared on him. Grabbing it and moving the bar around a piece of the ground, 2ft or 3ft in dimension, collapsed and revealed a hidden cavern below. My father immediately sent for Tom.

Tom arrived without delay. I followed them both to the chapel and I remember well the excitement as we stood at the mouth of the hole. It could hardly have been much more intense with Howard Carter and Lord Canarvon as they prepared to enter the tomb of Tutenkamun. Both men were impatient to enter the mysterious place - but for different reasons I might add. My father because he always found the lure of treasure irresistable....Tom, the historian, because of the likelihood of the find of his life!

Tom was the first to descend, then he crouched down and shone his flashlight into the darkness. He was stunned by what he saw and answered my father's question as to what he could see - "Yes, yesI can see wonderful things!", came his reply. My father then descended and I waited outside while they both disappeared into the darkness.

I waited and waited - now and then I could here their muffled voices coming up out of the darkness. It seemed an hour to wait before they eventually appeared and they both looked rather stunned as they emerged into the daylight - Tom with his little notebook and pencil. As they talked Tom referred to all they had seen as "a perfect window on the past." What they had seen were three perfect skeletons lying side by side, their wooden coffins and shrouds having long rotted away. On the ribcage of one of them rested a breastplate and Tom had written down the inscription in his little book. It read: Pierce Francis Garvey of Brownsford Castle.

Tom went on to tell us that one of the skeletons was of the Head Prior for whom this tomb was originally built and that Garvey of Brownsford Castle who eventually owned the Priory lands, so many many years later, had demanded the right to be buried down along with the Head Prior at the end of his life. They also spoke about a ring on the finger bone of one of the skeletons and Tom referred to it as "..the Bishop's ring." I thought that maybe they were having me on and thought no more about it. However not long ago while looking through things belonging to my father after he died I found a reference to this ring, a big gold ring with a large blue stone.

Tom said that he knew the tomb existed having read about it somewhere, but none knew of its location until this moment. He spoke of the Prior and said that one of the other two skeletons was a Bishop. The third ofcourse interred so many centuries after was Pierce Garvey, whom you will remember turned out all his employees in the 1850s after the famine, because they could not pay the rent rises he demanded of the survivors. He, at the end of his life assumed the right and privilege as owner of Priory lands to demand a burial in this ancient tomb.

The following day, with my adventurous school pal, Eddie Keher, we agreed to descend into the tomb. Armed with two flashlights we mitched off to the Ladies Chapel and descended into the dark tomb. There before us under our dim lights, lying side by side, were three perfect skeletons. We shone the light beams around and saw that the tomb was constructed of close stonework bonded together with lime and sand. But the next thing I noticed was something I will never forget as long as I live.... From a hole you could see where the rats had burrowed in and you could see the paths they crossed back and forth through the tomb. To my horror I could see where a path crossed through the ribcage of a skeleton, that of Pierce Garvey, who had assumed the privilege of a burial beside the holy Prior of the ancient monastry and his Bishop.The horror of that sight!

A couple of days later the Tighe Estate asked my father to seal up the vault again.

About five years ago I was standing in this Ladies Chapel with a great friend of my father's and myself - the late Ambassador Tadgh O'Sullivan. He, a great writer and historian, was listening to me recounting this story. Tadgh stood back and thought for a few minutes in silence - "O yes," he then said, "This is what Garvey got for his claim of such a privilege, he went down, taking in the rats!"



spat on sand
By Jerry Vilhotti


    When Johnny came into the family as an old born baby, he felt coldness as his mother always wore a sweater to ward off the chills.  In a large way she resented his surviving her thirty-nine year old body; coming along after she had begun to control a smile that had run all over her face with uncertainty; wondering if Johnny were naked and freezing, if she could have thrown him a piece of dry wood to warm his bones while his four siblings were, at the same time. heaving chunks of spat-on wood to the direction of frostbite as they wished the little intruder had been still-born - believing in their hearts there would never be enough food for all of them - even more concerned that the little crumbs of love they were given from a mother who had not been given any by her mother would be eaten all up by a Johnny with the blond curly hair and be strong enough he was created by old parents so being as strong as iron able  to steal their father's love from all of them and the three of them the eldest daughter Tina, Leny One N who lost the one n from his name when he took off the wings of baby birds lost on the sands of Orchard Beach because he thought his eleven month younger brother Tom was getting all the attention from his parents due to his being fortunate to have been afflicted with Polio when six months old. Tom with a brace on his leg would participate in the killing of the shell that Johnny found on the sands of Orchard Beach carrying the ocean with him for days; throwing it off their roof to dash to a thousand grains of sand in the courtyard five flights below; wishing it had been the intruder Johnny who came among them in a late December Day to be their only gift that year of dying of hunger upon whom they would try to do Saphardy experiments to see if he would go away: Tina calling him "big ears", Leny teaching him to fight and pitting him against older boys so getting bigger odds only to have the little "southpaw" win all his fights and never get punched drunk to a catatonic state and Tom humming "Ciribiribin" before he would launch his frightening Lon Chaney faces on the little boy while pinching his skin to big red blotches; thinking Johnny would become one whole scab to be thrown away into the nearly empty garbage can.  A father who loved every woman, that had a smile wrapped up inside her eyes, in his uncontrolled way and indeed resembled the great Sheik of Araby who according to him had been killed on the operating table by jealous doctors who resented all their women swooning over the actor's affectations on the screen and was away more than he was with them; falling into all the many smiles of women who enticed him to be with them but after Johnny was born, the day before Christ was born, laughter erupted where there had been few before and they sort of became a family with their father coming home every night after working construction on a bridge that would span the Hudson River; to hold Johnny as he fed him. This baby who was never supposed to have been according to a doctor who said it would be impossible for such a thing to happen after the mother's miscarriage of five years before and he pronounced with all the authority he could muster that she would have no more babies.  Johnny's presence made the muddy sand fall off him that had almost suffocated the father who had all but lost his manhood - eaten away by the dying of the six month old fetus - that the doctor had told him to flush away which he did always dreaming of the fully formed male-child until Johnny came among them but he knew he could not always protect "the last born" from his daughter and two sons who from deep inside their hearts and minds - heaped the poison of their jealousy onto the little thing they would forever call: "Pal Stain":  a person they believed would be stripped of all dignity.    END   8-31-04








MY DIARY
By Roisin Braddell©

March 2nd. She came over again today. I tried to put the faulty chair where she usually sat but Dad kicked all the chairs and found me out. She sat down with all the best china before her, the finest quality tea poured from an exclusive tea-pot when horror crossed her face and she emitted a highpitched yelp. Fresh tea she said shaking her head should NEVER be poured straight out - seeing confusion on our faces she explained, apparently, the most obvious thing in the world :"You pour the milk in first!". That afternoon she taught me to pronounce her name "correctly" - probably to cover up the fact that it is a traditional Gaelic name for an Irish farm girl since the 1800's, though she prides herself as an Englishwoman.

March 4th.Today filled with the normal thrills. The regular jibes. A giant 'rudolph' spot on the end of my nose. and "I love you" notes passed around but not for me. But finally my lasting Minute of Fame....I tripped up and fell face down on the floor in a corridor full of people. It took everyone a few sweet seconds to realise what had happened before I was engulfed in a huge roar of laughter. I stood up as gracefully as the circumstances allowed and took my bow.

March5th. Sniggers today were not as bad as expected - but the glassy fish-eyed "it's gone so far now I actually feel sorry for you" stares were worse. Even the geekest of geeks pretended to vaguely know my name.

March6th. My parents were not very impressed with my ideas for plastic surgery. even though I had info. on good quality budget surgeons. I told them 'if we just down-grade the car a bit and move to a cosier home it would be better for everyone' - meaning me.

March7th.Something wonderful has happened - a magnificently clumsy girl spilt her lunch all down her uniform. How great it felt to be at the other end of the telescope. God I love the fickleness of teenagers. She even had to explain herself to the teacher that she had been sacrificing her place at the table for me.... Aah! the highlights of life as a teenager.