Hugo Hamilton - The Speckled People - A Memoir of a Half-Irish Childhood

‘What money?’ they said.

They looked at each other and said there was some kind of mistake. Money in an envelope didn’t automatically mean it came from the Miss Ryans. They don’t go around dropping money into people’s letter boxes before they go upstairs and lie down softly in their beds. My mother asked if it wasn’t the Miss Ryans who dropped the money into her door, then who was it? So the Miss Ryans scratched their heads and thought about it for a moment and said the money probably came from God.

There was no way out but to bring the money back home again and there was nothing my father could do about it. My mother told him the money came from God and you couldn’t give it back, unless he wanted her to put it into the poor box in the church, but he didn’t want that either. There was no slamming doors this time, but he said she was still not allowed to go back home to Germany on her own. He said he had lots of cousins in America and South Africa who couldn’t come home to Ireland any time they liked. So she put the money away and said she would wait until there was enough for all of us to go to Germany together. Then everything was all right again and everybody in our house was dreaming and saving up money in jars.

My mother helped us to get everything ready for the puppet show. My father said we could use his desk-lamp as a spotlight. Onkel Ted came and Tante Roseleen and Tante Lilly, as well as Eileen Crowley and Kitty from Cork. Tante Eileen came up from Skibbereen with Onkel John this time, because he was attending the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis and he knew all about politics. Anne was there and so was her brother Harry, and everybody was afraid of him going to the Congo, because the only thing the Irish army was good at was keeping the peace. Lots of the neighbours came, too, like the Miss Ryans and the Miss Doyles. There was a whole table full of sandwiches and cakes. People brought lemonade and there was even wine and whiskey and bottles of black beer.

All the chairs and seats in the house were brought into the Kinderzimmer and lined up in rows. My mother helped Maria to tie a box of sweets around her tummy as a belly tray, so she could go around offering them to the audience. Ita was sitting on Harry’s knee trying to comb all his hair forward, and Tante Eileen from Skibbereen was showing everybody how to light a new cigarette from the old one. And when they were all sitting down, my mother closed the big wooden shutters on the window and switched on the spotlight. It was like a real theatre with people coughing in the audience and trying to stop making noise. My mother got in behind the puppet theatre with us and when everybody stopped talking and coughing, Franz pulled the string to open the curtains.

‘Have you seen the dog?’ Kasper said.

Then Ita suddenly started talking back to the puppets, because she believed everything they said and my mother had to put her head out and tell her to be quiet and not give away the ending. We continued and it was all in German, so nobody could understand what was going on except Onkel Ted and my father. Everybody else was in the wrong country and couldn’t rescue us.

There was a man called Arnulf, like the story my mother heard about in Germany, and he would not let any of the other puppets speak. All the time, Kasper was walking along and meeting other puppets like Hansel and Gretel and the grandmother and the queen and the king and other puppets that we made up ourselves with papier mâché. But none of them could say a word to Kasper, because Arnulf said they were not allowed to speak to him. Kasper asked them where the dog was, but they were all afraid to say anything in case Arnulf would come and punish them. So then Kasper had to find a way of killing Arnulf so that all the other puppets could speak again. And when Arnulf was dead with his head over the side of the theatre, my mother switched on the hairdryer and the blue scarf started blowing across the stage. Then Kasper came to the seafront and found the dog barking at the waves. That was the end and when Franz pulled the curtain closed, the audience clapped for a long time.

It’s a long way to go to Germany. You have to go on two different ships and five different trains. My father shows us the tickets and my mother counts the luggage lined up in the hallway, six suitcases and four children. She laughs and claps her hands because we’re going home and everybody is so excited that you feel nearly sick in your stomach. First you go on the ship to Holyhead. You go across the gangplank and my father laughs at the sign over the door that says ‘Mind your Head’ because it’s like a warning to anyone who leaves Ireland to be careful, not to forget where you come from or do anything stupid. Outside on deck you can see the lighthouse going by and the land moving further and further away until it’s out of sight. Maria wants to know if we’re going to get seasick, because the ship is moving from side to side and you can’t walk straight. The seagulls keep following us even though it’s dark now and there’s nothing more to see except some yellow light from the ship on the water. At night you take the train to London to see the black taxis. And the next morning you take another train and another ship to Holland and three more trains after that until you’re in Kempen and we’re back in my mother’s film.

They were waiting for us at the window. Ta Maria came out and threw her arms around my mother for a long time without a word. Then it was Tante Lisalotte’s turn and she wouldn’t let go. They stood outside on the street, hugging and looking at each other up and down, again and again, and they just kept saying ‘ ja, ja, ja ’ and ‘ nein, nein, nein ’ as if they didn’t believe their own eyes. The suitcases were forgotten on the ground. They shook hands with my father and called him Hans, as if he was going to be German, too, from now on. They knew all our names, but they kept saying ‘ Ach, Du lieber Himmel ’, as if they thought my mother had only gone away to Ireland for a few days and come back with four children.

Then it was time for coffee and we were sent over to the Kranz Café to get cakes. The smell of baking was like a warm pillow in your face when you walked in the door. All the women in the Kranz Café asked us questions and said we had soft voices, like German children long ago before the war. They said we were the long ago children with good manners and straight backs and no chewing gum. The cake was wrapped in the shape of a church so that the paper didn’t touch the icing on the top. They told us to hold the parcel flat so that it would arrive on the table the way it left the café, and Ta Maria even had the same silver trowel that my mother has, so you could lift a slice on to the plate and make sure it had never been touched by human fingers.

My mother walked around the town with us to look for all the things that had not changed. The church with the red steeple was there, just like it was in the photographs, as well as the cinema with the name Kempener Lichtspiele and the windmill on the Burgring. The shops had everything laid out in the windows just like the day that she left. The only thing that was missing was the house on the Buttermarkt square where she lived when she was small. The fountain was still there outside, but the house was gone. There were new doors on the houses and new windows. My mother said everyone had new kitchens and new cookers, and that’s what happens when you lose the war and you never want to look back at old things. Everything has to be new. The streets and the people still had the same names in German, but she was sometimes lost and couldn’t find things she remembered.

It was like being six years of age again and maybe she was homesick in her own home town. Or maybe we had been away too long, she said, and we were getting used to living by the sea, because she was expecting to see a bright blue glass of water at the end of every street. And late in the afternoon when we walked so far that we were nearly in the country, there was a high breeze in the trees that sounded like water. At the edge of the town we stood looking at the flat land going out for ever and watched a car travelling all the way across the horizon behind a line of tall trees.