THE MAKER’S NAME: Winner Literary Titan Gold Book Award by Seamus McKenna
Raymond Quinn did not hear it often, but when he did, the bock-bagawking of chickens, no matter where in the world he was, brought him back, as vividly as if he were physically transported there, to the yard outside his mother’s home place where he had spent two years until he was five. Then other memories would arrive; of walking through the garden of blackcurrant bushes at the side of the house which, relative to his childframe, he perceived to be of enormous size but, when visited in adult life, proved to have an unexceptional scale, and was even small; of being brought by his aunt Julia, by the hand, to pick nettles for nettle soup. He had memory neither of picking the nettles nor of eating the soup, only of being informed by that lady that it was to carry out that activity they were bound when they set off; of his grandfather and his uncle Jack cutting timber, later to be chopped up for firewood, on the other side of the lane, with a two-man cross-cut saw.
One or other of the adults would light the Tilley-lamps in the evening, and it was not until he moved to a modern house, in his sixth year of age, that he realised that switching on an electric light was not a facility they possessed. Aunt Julia baked both brown and white soda bread every day, in a big black pot that hung down from the chimney over a fire of turf and timber that never went out; it was allowed to go down to its lowest when everyone had gone to bed, and was revived the next morning by the simple expedient of adding more fuel. Later, he remembered his mother saying the thatched roof kept the house warm in winter, but yet cool in summer. They milked a single cow. Her milk was separated into cream, from which country butter was churned, and skimmed milk, with which her occasional calves had to be content. A bye-product, buttermilk, was used in the baking. Then one of the older girls, Maureen, married one Billy Barnes. He collected milk churns for the creamery. In Raymond’s time he used to stop at the end of the lane, climb on to the back of his lorry, and reach down into a churn with a ladle to let Julia have a jug of buttermilk for her loaves.
Raymond was surprised one day when he came home from school to find a package waiting for him. It was flat and hard but not too thick, and well wrapped. What could it be? He had celebrated his tenth birthday about five months ago, and it was not anywhere near Christmas. His mother, a slim woman with dark, wavy hair, was hovering when he started to open it.
“Oh I love to get surprise parcels,” she said. “I’m so happy for you. It’s from your uncle Mick.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s his handwriting.”
After unwrapping, the item was revealed.
“It’s a book. What’s its name?”
“Treasure Island,” he had said, pleased that he was able to read out the title.
There was a letter too. Uncle Mick, who was a teacher up the country, had decided on his last visit that his nephew was ready to start reading books.
“You’ll have to write to uncle Mick straight away to thank him,” said his mother.
Yeh, sure. Just after I feed Barney. And then I have to go to hurling training. What about the youth club meeting?
But he did want to please her. She made him feel good. Like the time a man had come to the door selling Hoovers. His father was in work and his mother had no one to discuss the matter with, so she had taken Raymond into her confidence.
“We need a hoover here,” she had said to him out of the hearing of the salesman. “I’m going to buy it.”
This made him feel big and of great value. One of the most important adults in his life was treating him like an equal.
Raymond started to read Treasure Island. He’d either skip over words he did not know, or look them up.
On his next visit uncle Mick said:
“How are you finding the book?”
“Really good,” said Raymond.
“How far are you into it now?”
“I’m at the part where Doctor Livesey told The Captain that, if he continued to carry on in the way he did on the day the doctor visited The Admirable Benbow, he’d wind up at the assizes, because the doctor was a magistrate too.”
“Do you know what assizes are?”
“Yes, I looked it up in the dictionary. It’s a kind of court in England. And a magistrate is a judge.”
“You’re a very smart young man altogether,” said uncle Mick. “When you’re nearly finished with Treasure Island I’ll send you another one.”
Raymond’s father had also read Treasure Island, but many years ago, when he was also young.
“I see you’re reading Treasure Island,” he said one day.
“Yes, uncle Mick sent it to me.”
“A great book,” said his father. He started singing:
“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest,
Yo ho ho, and a bottle of rum.”
Raymond knew the words, but he didn’t know the music for that song. He suspected his father didn’t know it either, but that didn’t stop him from letting on.
Uncle Mick sent Kidnapped, also by Robert Louis Stevenson, and again his father was able to discuss the swashbuckling protagonist of that book, Alan Breck Stewart. The Coral Island, by R. M. Ballantyne, arrived, but this he had to digest on his own. The last one was The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, and Raymond marvelled at the doings of Mr. Toad, who needed all the assistance his friends, Mole, Ratty and Badger, could provide to prevent him getting into serious trouble, especially with his new motor car.
Many years later, when Uncle Mick was dead and gone, and when Raymond had realised how wonderful the world of books was, he did experience real gratitude to his uncle, and regretted he did not make a greater effort at the time he received these presents. He even could have, and should have, gone out of his way to thank Uncle Mick in his later years, before he died.
Raymond Quinn’s best friend was Augustus Considine. They had much in common but the love of books was a particularly strong bond between them. Later, Raymond’s reading was enhanced by his own acquisitions, and by books he got from Gus. They cut their teeth on as many as they could get their hands on of the James Bond books, by Ian Fleming. Later he advanced to Graham Greene, John McGahern, Somerset Maugham, Muriel Spark, Neville Shute, Evelyn Waugh, and many others. As some of these were regarded at the time as rather advanced for his age, even a little risqué, he found it necessary to hide them in a hedge outside, in order not to offend his mother.
But he did find ways to cause her anguish, great and small. He had an inquisitive nature.