Lizzy

I grew up with my two siblings in a thatched farmhouse. Lizzy, an aging spinster, and our beloved babysitter lived in a house in the town. The night my parents went to the cinema she piled coal and turf into the Stanley range. We listened to songs on the wireless from RTE, BBC, Radio Caroline, and Radio Luxembourg. She loved French words and French songs. She brewed tea and fed us caraway seed cake smothered in damson jam, and we sang and danced around the flagstone kitchen with unsupervised abandon. We stayed up late, played cards—Old Maid and Twist—bounced on our beds, and oh, the wildness of Lizzy.

She entertained us with stories of her travels in the countryside with her friend Nonie, another old woman. They begged for food at farmhouses and collected kindling along the road. Lizzy crafted a bundle of twigs, which she strapped to her lower back.

“Hey, there’s a tree growing out your backside,” young ruffians shouted as she walked by.

 

She ignored them.

 

      They learned which farms to avoid, where suspicious country folk threatened them with savage-looking dogs.

 

“I’d never step foot in there again,” Lizzy said as she trotted out the farm gate.

 

“Never again,” Nonie agreed, catching her breath.

 

“Stingy auld bastards,” Lizzy said.

We repeated these words until tears ran down our faces.

Cycling home, my parents saw the chimney top licked red. Father raised the alarm. Mother sprinted to our bedrooms and woke us. We hurried back and forth with buckets of water from the yard pump to douse the fire.

“I'm so sorry,” Lizzy said throughout, wringing her hands.

We soon quenched the fire and saved the thatch.

All retired to bed, and Lizzy settled for the night in the press bed beside the cooling embers.