BY THE NECK

    The rectory was in the village. It was in grounds of over an acre, with a stable yard with coach house and a haggard, used in the days when the rector farmed the glebe land himself as part of his stipend. Up to ten or fifteen years previously the then rector still kept a cow for the house.    There was a large orchard now neglected and overgrown, but most of the trees still bore good fruit.    Some of the best fruit was virtually inaccessible because of mountains of briars growing around them.    This however was not a deterrent to the boys who lived in the Council houses up the avenue.    The orchard was not visible from the house but we could hear when the boys were in to help themselves.    We only disturbed them, but with no intention of catching them, if they came when the apples were not yet ripe.

     How could one small family be entitled to all those apples when so many families up the road had none?    So when the apples were at their height we used to give bags of apples to the women glad that they would be used and not wasted, but this was no use to the boys.    They still came in over the fence at the lower end. Twenty years later I met a man who had been a boy in Stradbally when I was there. I remembered him well.

     ‘ I suppose you were one of the ones that used to come in to rob the orchard,’ He grinned sheepishly.

     ‘I was’ he said. I told him we used to know when the boys were in the orchard. He laughed but he was surprised and probably disappointed to hear that his childhood escapades were less daring than he thought.

     In earlier times there was a full-time man to keep the grounds. Those days were gone and the best we could do was to keep the area around the house.    On my day off there was nothing I liked better than to don old clothes and hack back the wilderness.    

     One day I was up on the high perimeter wall cutting back ivy when I heard a voice below me on the footpath.    

     ‘Howa’ya?’ I looked down to see a small boy of about six looking up.

     ‘I’m fine how are you?’

     ‘What are you doing?’

     ‘I’m cutting ivy.’

     ‘Why are you doing that?’

     ‘Because if I don’t it’ll damage the wall.’ There was a long silence. Then the voice said:

     ‘I drink stout you know.’

     ‘You don’t.’ I said ‘You’re too young to drink stout.’ All the time I was working away, being careful not to fall off the wall. I looked down and the boy was gone. Five minutes later I heard the little voice again.

     ‘I’m back.’ I looked down and there he was, an open bottle of stout in his hand putting it to his mouth.’

     ‘Where did you get that?’ I asked.

     ‘Me Da keeps them under the sink.’ I thought for a while and for something to say I said:

     ‘Who is your teacher in school?’.

     ‘Sister Michael.’

     ‘Does she know you drink stout’?

     ‘She don’t, and if you tell her I’ll give you a kick up the arse.’