Book Description
Judas in Kilkenny is the true story of one woman’s coming of age in the Marble City. A young Theresa Lennon must put aside her childhood dreams in order to strive for peace in her tumultuous home life, and fight for her own independence while trying to hide the secrets of a family headed for destruction. In the midst of chaos came solace, in the form of an old man who would help her find the truth.

About the Author

Theresa Lennon was born in Kilkenny, Ireland in 1931. At twenty-one she left for Brighton, England to work, where she met and married her husband, Keith Blunt.

In 1957, she emigrated to Canada, where she currently resides. Judas in Kilkenny is her first book.

Excerpt

Introduction

To begin at the beginning: Twenty years ago in Ottawa, a psychologist looked at me and said, "Write down every detail of your life in Ireland that you can think of, leave nothing out." His suggestion was prompted by a breakdown of my mental capability, the inability to express, without a flood of tears, what I wanted to convey. I wondered about the logic of his thinking as reluctantly I set about the task. But set about it I did, and as the weeks progressed the entries in my notebook grew considerably.

With time the therapy succeeded, my sanity returned, and the diary was no longer needed. Yet, somehow I couldn't bring myself to part with it, for somewhere in that compilation of memories and emotions I felt sure there was a story. I set my mind to finding it. Lacking the necessary qualifications, and never having written anything worthy of mention before, I naturally had some ambivalence about my ability to organise and complete the task. Nevertheless, I persevered.

Sadly, some months later, my sister Jane was diagnosed with terminal cancer, ironically providing me with a stronger incentive to continue with my quest. Two years later a manuscript was born. Unfortunately, Jane died before it reached completion, and with her death and the fact that I had given no thought to publication the manuscript lay dormant until 1999 when I myself was diagnosed with cancer. Though surviving radical surgery and removal of a breast, I was once again in need of mental counselling. Then, and only then, was the manuscript revived and with the encouragement of my therapist submitted for publication.

The story itself is set in a small town in the south of Ireland, Kilkenny (The Marble City), a pretentious though historically significant little town. It is a true account of "the best of times and the worst of times" as experienced by myself while growing up as a young girl there. The tale has many facets, sad in some respects, humorous in others and interspersed throughout with fragments of history and hearsay. It must be added here, in case of any doubt, that the people and events described are factual, but the names of certain individuals have been changed to protect them and their families from pain.

As for myself: I was born Theresa Agnes Lennon in August of 1931 into a large working-class family, most of whom had left home before my tale commences. Life was anything but easy, our childhood blighted by an alcoholic mother and a proud but stern father. Like many an Irish lass before me, I left school early, worked in Ireland until I was twenty-one, then crossed the Irish Channel into England, where I met and married my husband five years later. The year was 1956, and precisely one year after that we set sail for Canada. Our son, and only child, Allan was born in Montreal in October of 1961.

If the purpose of writing is to inform or entertain, then, I hope dear reader you will find my story worthy.

Prologue

Years and years ago when I was still a child in the marble city of my mind, I sailed the sky in a silver ship with an old man and his goat. He was a fool they said, a crazy intractable old fool filling our heads with silly notions and shouting his insanities to an indignant world. Well, maybe he was crazy. Crazy like an old fox at a farmyard feast. He had no home that I knew of when we first met, living out his days in some secret place and appearing at night like a phantom sheik to fill our world with his magic. Ah! but it was a long time ago, a time of innocence and trust when old men revelled in deeds long done and the days went on forever.

How well I remember it all the same. Sitting naked-like on an old log with only the sky for shelter, listening to a bedraggled old man telling tall tales and pouring his vinegary voice across the wind in an arrow of derision.

"Sure ye can knock forever on a dead man's door," he would say to us in exaggerated tones whenever Matty Cavanaugh the rent collector passed close enough to hear, or, "Tis huntin' with th' hounds an' runnin' with th' fox that a man meets his folly," to Barney Callaghan the chief constable.

Little we cared about the motives in his mind, the hidden meanings in his metaphors, as around him we would gather like moths around a flame, blinded by the grandeur of his rhetoric and driven by the lure of his legends.

All that has changed now. The Old Man is long dead, as are most of the others. Their voices stilled forever in the stony silence of their graves, their faces broken unclear images floating in and out of my consciousness like gnats on a summer breeze. Only the words remain constant, filling my mind with memories best forgotten.

1

I was twelve years old when I met the Old Man. It was Saturday, the day little Marty Connolly died, almost sixty years ago. My mother, gone as usual to do the weekend shopping, had left me to mind the house. Through the open window in the scullery I heard footsteps approaching the back door. I paid little heed, sure that it was only my sister Peg who had been playing in the garden a short while before, and whose passion for companionship sent her racing to the door on every conceivable pretext.

I stayed by the kitchen door, scraping the crusted wax from around the brass doorknob, and attempting to make some sense of my distorted image in the orb. The room, heavy with the scent of red Cardinal polish, was spotless and shining like a new pin. A light warm breeze rustled the clean crisp curtains, carrying with it the scent of lilac from the tree outside. The fire, though low, was bright in the grate. Beyond the rustling curtains the world had long been up and about its day, though you never would have known it from the deserted street. Except for the occasional clip-clop of horses' hooves on the road out front, everything was quiet.

I looked around the room with girlish pride, trying to imagine my mother's face. I hoped she'd be pleased with everything I had done, though one could never be sure with Mother. For one thing, no matter how well you managed to get a thing done, Mother could always have done it better. For another, anything done without her prior consent was usually subject to discredit. Of course there were times when she didn't even notice, or at least showed no sign of having noticed. But when she did, and bestowed her praise, it was worth all the times that she had not.

Picking up my duster and my polish, I started away from the kitchen door when I heard a small voice calling. I listened, but everything had gone quiet. Then I heard it again, this time with a light tapping sound against the back door. I walked into the scullery and pushed open the door. A small timid boy was standing in the yard, looking up at me with eyes as large and green as pools of emerald. I was struck by the delicate beauty of his face, and though I could not put a name to him, I knew that I had seen him someplace before. How he had managed to get into our yard I had no idea until he told me he had climbed over the garden wall and showed me the scrapes and scratches he had gotten while doing it. I guessed his age to be about four, and learned that he was looking for my brother Jimmy, who was nearing six, the youngest member of our family.

Our house was situated on Stephen Street, and behind it was a wide, enclosed space where children of the neighbourhood came to play. We knew it as the Fair Green because once a month all the farmers in the county used to gather there with their livestock and wares, to trade with other farmers. Like other houses in the street, our back garden, surrounded by a high wall, overlooked the Green. The ground on the inside of our garden had been raised so that we could look out over, but access from the Green was possible only by scaling the wall. Somehow this little boy had managed to climb over.

"Is Jimmy not here then?" he asked again, with obvious pleasure at being out alone, and stretched his neck to see past me into the scullery.

Again I told him that Jimmy wasn't home. "If he isn't in the Green, I don't know where he is," was all I could think to say, for I recalled Peg telling me earlier that Jimmy had gone to the Cloch with his older brother Jack.

But what would be the sense in telling him that? The Cloch, a more primitive green next to the ancient burial ground of St. Rioc's, was a favourite gathering place for boys, but it was one street over and too far for him to go alone.

I was about to suggest that he go back home and get permission from his mother, when he voiced a sudden thought. "I know! He's gone to the Cloch, I'll betcha," and away he darted before I had time to stop him.

"Wait, wait," I called after him. "You haven't told me your name." He looked around excitedly but didn't stop.

"Connolly," he shouted across his shoulder.

I watched him race along the garden path, his tiny feet beating their freedom on the trodden earth, and as I stepped back into the house I heard his small voice calling, "Willie! Willie!"

Looking through the scullery window, I saw him sitting upright on the garden wall, his pale face staring out across the Green, one leg dangling inside the wall, his golden curls blowing in the breeze. Then, swinging his leg upward with a sudden jerk, he heaved his tiny body and disappeared behind the wall. I stayed by the window for a moment looking out, not happy that I had let him go.

I turned and walked back to the kitchen, resuming my work on the brasses and soon forgetting about the little boy. When I had finished polishing, I mopped up the spills from around the floor and put the dirty flannels to soak. I returned the Brasso to its place behind the door and checked that the pots were simmering by the hobs, adding more turf and coal to the fire for good measure. There was only the small front room that I had not touched.

I crossed into the hall and stood hesitant outside the door. Nobody was allowed in there without express permission from my mother, for behind the confines of the locked door lay not only the family's one claim to fame, but all that was left of my father's link with his more privileged past. For a moment I stood looking at the long-stemmed key lying in the lock. All it would take was one quick turn. There might never be a better opportunity, for usually the key was never in the lock.

I went to the front door and looked up and down. The street was empty. No sign of Mother. I checked the clock. There was still plenty of time, so I reached out and touched the key. The metal felt cold and stubborn, but when I closed my fingers more firmly around the end it yielded. There was a click and the door swung slowly inward. The room was in semi-darkness, the curtains half-drawn. I looked around quickly. Everything seemed perfectly normal, yet there were changes. Changes so minor they were barely perceptible until you looked harder. Here and there was an empty space, or an outline on the surface of the wood that told of something removed. I tried to remember what the object might have been, but could not. For several minutes I went over everything.

Above the mantelpiece were the two crossed swords that Uncle Jack had brought back from the war, and directly below was his medal. The Flying Duck, they used to call him, though I never knew why. A dead duck now he was at any rate, the result of shrapnel in his head; and the sum total of his life, sacrificed to an English king, displayed here upon an Irish wall. The medal, I suppose, was something for the family to be proud of, presented, as they said, by King George himself. Underneath on the mantel stood a little silver blacksmith, his powerful arms raised above his head ready to strike the waiting anvil.

There, near the china vase, was the papier mâché elephant. Long floppy ears it had, and a trunk that swayed from side to side, a gift to my mother from my older brother Joe. Poor lost Joe. Where was he now? Forever play-acting and getting into trouble, what harm had he done to anyone? God only knew what had become of him. The secret of his hasty departure in the middle of the night was still secure in a web of family secrets.

I could scarcely remember his departure: a moment of awareness in the dead of night, angry, muffled voices from some remote corner of the house, a door opening and closing, a voice calling in the dark. An extension of a waking dream, perhaps? I had no idea. But in the morning Joe had gone, and all my mother had left of him was the little elephant and his picture in the family album. On rare occasions that, too, was taken down from its shelf and we allowed to look at it. Women sitting stiff-backed on wooden chairs, their children mute against their sides, or squatting by their feet. Men standing rigid by a table or a chair, one arm lost behind their backs, or resting stiffly on a woman's shoulder.

"Well now, let me see," from Mother. "You wouldn't know him, or you wouldn't know her, but there's Uncle Willie with your father's sister Kate, the one that went to Canada, remember? Aye, and look now, there's Nelly Madigan, God rest her soul. She was before your time, but a great friend to the family."

And so it went, with Mother laughing or sighing as the case might be, but always snapping back the clasp with a sudden jerk and locking in the ghosts. Grandmother, they said, had had the greed of filthy lucre, and pinched and pared her pennies with the zest of a thrifty Scot, and though I suspect that criticism to be the hobgoblin of little minds, I remember well my mother's words, "as mean as ditch water, as soon part with a molar as with a penny." Whatever the truth of it, our family did well enough by her. Almost everything in the room had come to us from my grandmother's house, albeit through my father's brother Jim who lived with us--even the cabinet, with its sparkling glass and fine delicate china that never got used. There was something sacred about this little room with its clutter of ornaments, old furniture, and its haunting, mellow atmosphere. Nowhere else in the house was there such a feeling of stability. Yet even that feeling I knew now to be false, for I was learning to interpret the subtle influences at work in the destruction of our home.

My first real awareness that something was wrong had come about by accident. One day, suffering from an upset stomach, I had come home early from school. The front door was open, and there was a strange man standing in the hall. My mother, catching sight of me coming through the gate, had quickly shuffled me inside. Her obvious annoyance at my appearance and the man's immediate move to conceal the object in his hand made a strange impression on my mind. I had given little thought to it at the time, absorbed as I was with my own struggle for survival. Yet several days later, huddled in the corner by the backyard door, listening to the argument going on inside, I had reason to remember.

I heard my father, his voice raised in anger questioning my mother about some missing object, and my mother, her voice sharp and resentful, denying knowledge of it. Then somewhere through the mirrors of my mind came a reflection, and coupled with my father's words, the forgotten scene took on meaning: Mother's hands steering me through the kitchen door, the stranger waiting in the shadows, a sudden, silent movement and, there in the corner of my eye, a furtive hand--something concealed beneath the fingers. The shocking truth broke upon me then, though it was all I could do to accept it. Many times I had heard about the skeletons in other people's closets, but I had never suspected we had one in ours. Everyone but myself must have known of it. The picture was as clear as day, with all those innuendoes from various corners of the street, but I had turned a deaf ear to it.

Even that day in the gaolhouse yard, with Josie Brannigan saying what she had, the truth had not registered. Yet I had knocked her down on account of it. What else could I have done? Speaking that way about my mother! I hated the mean way she had said it, eyebrows raised, and speaking so loudly that everyone could hear.

"Your mother, I believe, is extremely fond of the bottle!"

So typical that was of Josie, who had run home crying to her mother. I knew that I would have to pay the penalty.

"I'll not have one of mine brawling on the street," Mother raged as soon as she laid eyes on me, her knuckles heavy on my ear.

So stung was I by the unfairness of her action that without really meaning to I blurted out the reason for the assault. Only a slight change of expression in Mother's eyes betrayed her alarm, but a few minutes later, when she put on her coat and hastily left the house, I knew she had gone to the Brannigans'. You'd think I would have realised then that there was something wrong, but I hadn't--not consciously at any rate. It was easier to believe that Josie had been lying.

The stranger in the hall turned out to be the rag-and-bone man from Parnell Street, who called to visit people too ashamed to visit him. I had not recognised him at the time, but I knew about his practise. Many times I had passed by his open gate and seen all the rags and feathers in squalid little heaps waiting to be weighed, and the solemn-faced women, the look of the Famine in their eyes, waiting mute beside the limestone wall hoping for a handful of pennies. That was how it was for many people then, but it had never been a part of our world, and I resented Mother forcing us into it. The implications of my father's questions had alerted me, and I remember well the feeling of despair that had come over me. My own mother, one who I had imagined to be above reproach--better than all the others--a common drunk, selling anything she could get her hands on to support her habit!

The following months found me a regular attendant at evening prayer, filling up the coffers of the church and depleting its seemingly endless supply of candles. Self-denial and prayer became my constant companions, for I had no doubt that I could save my mother. Yet here I was, one year and a million novenas later, finding out for myself the futility of my efforts. Not one of my prayers had been answered. My petitions? Who knew? Lost in a letterbox without a bottom.