Fiddling around in my family tree on an otherwise dull Friday
afternoon, I came upon a set of my great-great grandparents - Daniel and Mary Ann McLenahan. Something had brought them from their native
Ireland, either together or separately, to settle in Fleetwood, where I assume
they were married in 1860. This assumption
is based on the arrival of their first child in 1861. I’m also guessing they were Catholic. This less-of-a-guess is based on eleven more
bundles of joy bursting onto the scene every eighteen months or so for the next
twenty-one years!
12 kids!
I realise that oodles of kids in those days was not unusual,
but all other unions amongst my ancestors – even an Irish/Spanish pairing –
called it quits at eight.
So, can we place responsibility for this huge family at Catholicism’s
alter? I wonder?
Perhaps Daniel McLenahan was a pious, sensitive man? Perhaps he came home from work, gathered his
loving and ever-growing family around the table for some nourishing broth, shared
a few bible stories and indulged in a spot of hymn singing, while the beautiful
and blooming Mary Ann sat busily knitting bootees for gift from God number ten
… and eleven … and twelve? And when all
the little ones were tucked up – top and tail - four in a bed, Daniel would
reach beneath the sheets for Mary Ann and whisper … “It’s God’s will…”
Or … perhaps not.
As they say in all good detective stories – this doesn’t
quite fit the profile.
Daniel McLenahan was a pattern maker in a foundry – a
skilled craftsman, a grafter. Two of
his sons were iron moulders – most likely at the same foundry. He would probably leave for work at dawn, his
boots clattering over the cobbles of Fleetwood’s streets. He would most likely work a twelve-hour shift
and then, sweaty and knackered, head for …
… the pub!
“I’ll just give Mary Ann time to get the little ones to bed,”
he might have thought, as he downed his first pint. “Well,
the wailers at least. I mean, six kids
under twelve can try the patience of any man.”
Being the considerate type, he would doubtless stay in the pub long
enough for Mary Ann to shift the wall of steaming washing from around the fire
so he can warm his feet when he gets in, give her chance to rid the house of
the stink of mucky nappies. Get his tea
ready. Tidy up.
Considerate.
And then, more than a few pints later he’d get home, slap a
couple of kids round the back of the head, chuck his burnt broth at the wall,
and perform his nightly ritual with poor Mary Ann.
Or … perhaps not.
But there must have been a time when Mary Ann gave up on
mourning her lost waistline. Too tired
to care about what was left of her swollen body, scarred with livid, purple
stretch-marks, there would have been a point when she let it go straight to
hell. She might even have imagined that
if she didn’t bother with how she looked, Daniel might just leave her alone.
For years she might have been too damn tired to find joy in
any one of those twelve bundles and when her exhausted body finally gave in, at
the age of sixty-four, she might have thanked God, with her final breath, that
at last, it was all over.
Or…
They might have been two people doing the best they could. Just getting on with it, like people
did. They may very well have loved each
other completely, and every one of their twelve children may have brought them
bucket-loads of joy. The iron men and
women of the McLenahan clan might simply have been hard working, law-abiding, god-fearing,
ordinary folk.
Who knows?
But whatever the real story, the widowed Daniel moved in
with his other Mary Ann, one of his seven daughters. For the next fifteen years before his death,
at the age of eighty-eight, he just might have been nursing a broken heart.
Quite the man, Dan.
No comments:
Post a Comment