Chapter Eight
'Wedding bells in Portlaw'
Our story ends where all good stories end; in the town of Portlaw, County Waterford. It is the first day of spring, March 21st, 2013 and the grass of Portlaw has never looked as green. The town is a hive of activity as there is a special wedding taking place at 'St. Michael's Catholic Church' on the brow of the hill.
The wedding is not of the usual order and the congregation is a mixture of Catholics, Protestants, hedonists, pagans and atheists. All have come out of respect for the happy bride and groom to be; Bess Beresford and Tom O'Conner.
The wedding is not of the usual order and the congregation is a mixture of Catholics, Protestants, hedonists, pagans and atheists. All have come out of respect for the happy bride and groom to be; Bess Beresford and Tom O'Conner.
Though both bride and groom are in their early seventies, Portlaw is determined to give them a grand send off. The ceremony was conducted by a proud Father Frank Rossy who declared that this was the very first occasion he had married a couple of pensioners. Bess declined to wear a special dress and said that if Tom really wanted her then he'd willingly take her as he found her and consider himself lucky into the bargain!
The day was proudly rounded off by a huge garden party for all that was held in the grounds of Waterford House and which had been paid for by the 8th Marquis of Waterford.
Immediately after the birth of their twin children, Magnus and Elizabeth Ferguson had been determined to end these feelings of enmity that Bess Beresford had held for the family of Lord Waterford for over fifty years so they both sought an audience with the Marquis of Waterford.
The day was proudly rounded off by a huge garden party for all that was held in the grounds of Waterford House and which had been paid for by the 8th Marquis of Waterford.
Immediately after the birth of their twin children, Magnus and Elizabeth Ferguson had been determined to end these feelings of enmity that Bess Beresford had held for the family of Lord Waterford for over fifty years so they both sought an audience with the Marquis of Waterford.
The irony was that during the whole of these fifty years, while the Marquis had heard that there was an old woman who squatted on a part of his estate near the river, he had never paid her any heed or even expressed the smallest amount of ill-will towards her. As far as her casting any curse upon his family and household, the Marquis had never heard any word of such.
The Marquis was now an elderly man approaching his seventy ninth year of life and indeed, he'd never known that the person who'd squatted harmlessly on his common for so many years had been reportedly born into the Beresford family and was a distant relative of his through some manner of past family association. Neither did he know that the bones of Bess' adopted father and mother had also been laid buried side-by-side in a secret grave on the Curraghmore Estate. Though they'd died at different times, Bess was determined that they would never be separated again and so she arranged for the couple's skeletons to lay forevermore face-to-face below ground.
The Marquis was now an elderly man approaching his seventy ninth year of life and indeed, he'd never known that the person who'd squatted harmlessly on his common for so many years had been reportedly born into the Beresford family and was a distant relative of his through some manner of past family association. Neither did he know that the bones of Bess' adopted father and mother had also been laid buried side-by-side in a secret grave on the Curraghmore Estate. Though they'd died at different times, Bess was determined that they would never be separated again and so she arranged for the couple's skeletons to lay forevermore face-to-face below ground.
Once the Marquis had learned of her identity however, he indicated to Magnus and his wife that he would like to meet Bess. A meeting was eventually arranged in February 2013 after Tom O'Conner had convinced Bess that Lord Waterford held her no ill-will towards her and her family and never had done. Strange though it may seem, one meeting between the widow and the Marquis was all that was required to enable Bess to 'let go' of this senseless anger she'd held on to for over fifty years now. All it took was the simple acknowledgement from the mouth of the Marquis himself that she was distant 'family.' She felt as happy as the young Princess Bess had been to find herself welcomed back into the Court of King Henry Eighth.
For one of his wedding presents, the Marquis gave the couple a metal crest of the Waterford coat of arms and told Tom and Bess to display the insignia above the home they eventually lived in with his blessing. This they later did, alongside a wrought iron plaque that simply said 'Portlaw' upon it, to remind them of a special place in their lives.
Lord Waterford also insisted upon providing food and drink for the whole of Portlaw on his Estate as well as standing the full cost of the couple's wedding and their honeymoon passage across the Atlantic to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. USA, where they intended to live out the remainder of their days.
The wedding day of Bess and Tom went off as well as anyone could possibly have imagined or hoped for. The couple asked Magnus and Elizabeth to accompany them to Dublin to see them off. Magnus and Elizabeth were more than happy to do so. As the ship left harbour, Elizabeth looked warmly at her husband and simply smiled. Magnus looked at Elizabeth and the ship and tried to remember what he was doing there instead of being at home.
As Magnus and Elizabeth returned home to Portlaw, the couple stopped at a public house for a meal and a drink. Upon being served, Elizabeth, who always carried the money on her person for the couple's needs since she had learned of her husband's condition of Alzheimer's, went in her purse to pay the bill and saw a lottery ticket which she had got one her visiting children to buy for her on Christmas Day. After she'd presumed that her husband had obviously forgotten to get the lottery ticket, she'd asked one of her sons to buy one for her instead, in celebration of the twins' birth. She decided to check out the ticket at one of the stores on their way back home and was pleasantly surprised by what she discovered.
It is the first day of April 2014, and Magnus and Elizabeth are having a quiet evening at home with their twins. Since the twin's birth, everything has gone so smoothly and effortlessly for them with the exception of a gradual decline in the ability of Magnus to remember. Each day is different for the loving couple and brings forth new challenges. One day, it is as though Magnus never had Alzheimer's and can remember most things whilst on others, he cannot even recall the names of his beloved wife and children.
As a mental stimulant to fend off the worse ravages of Alzheimer's, Elizabeth covers the lounge in euro bills and persuades her forgetful husband to count some of the money that they won in the European Lottery and to tie it up into €5,000 bundles.
As a mental stimulant to fend off the worse ravages of Alzheimer's, Elizabeth covers the lounge in euro bills and persuades her forgetful husband to count some of the money that they won in the European Lottery and to tie it up into €5,000 bundles.
While the best Secretary Portlaw has ever known continued to lose his memory of all things past in his native town, the citizens of Portlaw never would forget the most unusual 'Alternative Christmas Party' of Boxing Day, 2012 that he'd been responsible for. That Christmas will be forever spoken of in public houses, across garden walls and on street corners whilever a Portlaw resident remains alive to draw breath.
There were so many secret happenings that took place that fateful night that never did become revealed, not even to Nancy Noolan. It was as though part of the condition of forgetfulness had spread from Magnus to person-to-person, nun-to-nun and priest-to-priest as so many sins of the flesh were conveniently overlooked.
Ever since that Christmas, every Catholic Portlaw man who stayed behind to see out the end of the Boxing Day Party of 2012 when their wives had taken the children home, stopped getting their confessions heard in the parish of Portlaw and instead would opt to cycle as far as Kilkenny to receive their absolution. Some even say that a number of the sisters from the Waterford Convent also choose to make this forty-mile bicycle ride to a Kilkenny confessor rather than face Father Frank Rossy and have to look him in the eye.
The end.
Text Copyright William Forde, August, 2013.
There were so many secret happenings that took place that fateful night that never did become revealed, not even to Nancy Noolan. It was as though part of the condition of forgetfulness had spread from Magnus to person-to-person, nun-to-nun and priest-to-priest as so many sins of the flesh were conveniently overlooked.
Ever since that Christmas, every Catholic Portlaw man who stayed behind to see out the end of the Boxing Day Party of 2012 when their wives had taken the children home, stopped getting their confessions heard in the parish of Portlaw and instead would opt to cycle as far as Kilkenny to receive their absolution. Some even say that a number of the sisters from the Waterford Convent also choose to make this forty-mile bicycle ride to a Kilkenny confessor rather than face Father Frank Rossy and have to look him in the eye.
The end.
Text Copyright William Forde, August, 2013.
|
Click here for the next page
|
Click here for the previous page
|
