The Witches of Slievenamon

"Mmm, I do like a little honey wine to pick me up in the wet and cold and I have a little pot still back ... where I used to live, for the distillation of aromatic spirits for making lotions and medicines."

I was surprised that such a young girl would know such things but this is Ireland and if there was anywhere in the world with an affinity for home distilling close to the reputations of Tennessee, it was Ireland. And I can testify that Percy's Potch really does make a mean Martini.

Dunnes Stores is a big store that stocks a fantastic food hall, but also household goods, lighting, linens and towels and an extensive range of reasonably priced casual clothing, when you consider everything in Ireland is expensive, but prices are relative and Dunnes is a popular shopping destination and not just for, as Caoimhe put it, 'messages', the groceries.

I hate shopping, while Caoimhe loves to shop, like she was born to it. She never knew her Mom, of course, but this love of shopping must be in her genes because Ella simply loved shopping. She was a delightful girl, Ella, an irreplaceable wife, who lived an existence of continual delight in everything she did; if there was one thing she admitted to hating was shopping with me. Don't get me wrong, she delighted in shopping for me and most of my favourite clothes that I've since worn almost to rags were bought by Ella for me, but if she could, she'd leave me at home for shopping trips. Recently Caoimhe has been putting Ts and sweats in my size in the trolly for me and I've had to draw the line at shorts and socks.

So at Dunnes I watch Caoimhe and Etain interact.

My daughter knows where everything is in Dunnes, even when the staff move stuff, she has an instinct where the store puts stuff. If the pickles aren't in what I've called 'the pickle aisle' for years, I have to ask the staff; Caoimhe just says, 'I bet there over there' ... and they are, every time. It's a good job I'm not a gambler or Etain would have had new neighbors by now, why I'd be in debtor's prison and Caoimhe in an orphanage.

The girls have their heads together in the food hall, whispering and laughing as they examine loose veggies and fruit, or sniff at 'erbs. Etain asks for an ingredient and Caoimhe's off, Etain follows and I try and manoeuvre the increasingly heavier cart around the store.

It seems like Etain can't read very well, because some things she picks up, to check out, she holds the wrong way up. I wonder if she's dyslexic or is partially sighted, but her eyes seem extraordinarily exquisite, a pale blue like the sky.

At the checkout it all adds up and some of the shopping I see is for us, for me particularly even. I keep the receipts in case anything clothing-wise for Etain could be taken back if she's unhappy with them. I am conscious that Etain is student-age and may not have much in the way of financial resilience.

We open the door of our cottage first, to get the frozen stuff stored away, then we visit next door using my back door key into Katie's kitchen.

I try to hand the key over to Etain, but she points out a bunch of spares hanging from a cup hook on the kitchen dresser.

It is dark, the switch ineffective, the power has obviously been cut off, but I use the torch facility on my cell to check the fuse box out in the hallway under the stairs, but it is clear that the power needs turning on by the power supplier.

"That decides it, Etain," I say, as soon as I get back to the kitchen, but Caoimhe holds her hand up.

"I've already told her, Dad, while you were checking the fuse box, she's staying with us tonight in the spare bedroom."

They have already lit candles in the kitchen but it is dusty and cold in there. No, she can't possibly stay here overnight.

"And you can call round the suppliers in the morning,' Caoimhe continues, "and get the power on because you're good at that, Dad."

Praise indeed.

"Sure," I say, "we'll take these bags of messages back and I'll order in a set meal of Chinese for four, that should fill us up."

"Yeah, like for an hour," Caoimhe says.

Yup, she's a modern girl my Caoimhe the Diva, aged well beyond her 10 years, she's a modern girl in a modern world. I'm just not sure that our new neighbor is, as they say here all the time, 'not the full shilling'.

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Chapter Three THE TEASPOONS

Almost as soon as I offer to put my new neighbour Etain up for the night or until the electric power to her cottage is restored and the place aired and cleaned up, I realise that the spare room I have offered for her use is filled with what Caoimhe would consider 'junk'. But to me all that stuff is my stock in trade, made up of broken servers which I could strip for spares, Ethernet leads, connectors, screens, printers, manuals and files. We did have some limited storage in the house but mostly that store is a tiny room upstairs next to my daughter's bedroom, and only accessed through her room, next to her own little bathroom in the sloping eaves of the cottage.

Our pair of cottages was originally one single storey cottage built, as far as our former neighbour Katie knew, about 200 years ago as a single room 20 foot square, with walls made of mud, cow dung and straw topped by a straw roof, sitting in arable land of about four acres. By 1870, which was how far back the local history society had transcribed old rent books donated to the library, it was then stated the pair of cottages was now 80 feet wide, 20 foot deep and equally split into two dwellings down the middle, although the land had been split with three acres on Etain's side and one acre on ours. The actual deeds of the property dated only from 1922, the originals presumably lost and needed to be submitted for registration to the new Irish Free State.

According to the deeds, by the 1920s the original walls had been lined with concrete render and the straw roof replaced by concrete tiles. Each cottage had incorporated a shared porch in the front and a butted up kitchen scullery and bathroom/privy across half the width of the back.

As newly-weds my wife and I wanted to move out of Cork to somewhere within an hour of Cork and Ella fell in love with this cottage even though it was an hour and twenty minutes away from my work by train. It was very reasonably priced so we mortgaged ourselves up to the hilt and were able to finance sufficient funds to built into the loft space. This extra room upstairs becomes our master bedroom with en-suite bath and second bedroom with en-suite power shower and storage space in the eaves at the end. Downstairs we knocked down the scullery and across the 40-foot width built in a new kitchen, a garden room and downstairs bathroom. The original sitting room had doors leading to the front door and porch, the kitchen and the original bedroom, which was turned into a spare room with a double bed and fitted wardrobes, plus my 'junk'.

Etain's cottage next door had replaced their scullery with a new 20 foot square kitchen but is still a single storey one-bedroom bungalow.

Our spare room is regularly used by my parents, every summer they would come over for two weeks from Florida, booking outside the normal school holidays to catch cheaper fares. My eldest sister Monica and her two children came every other year, all she could afford since her divorce in 2015. My brother Don, his wife Lou and two young boys come here for between 5 and 10 days every summer.

But these visits were planned in advance and I was always able to clear out the accumulation into the storage behind Caoimhe's room in plenty of time for those visits. I had blow-up mattresses for the children but quite often, if the weather was good, they were happy to camp out in a tent on the lawn in the back yard.

"Right," I say, as we enter our part of the building, "Caoimhe, if you order the Chinese food for us first, then show Etain around the place and put the kettle on for tea, while I clear out my rubbish from the spare room and put fresh linens on the bed."

There, I've admitted that most of the stuff I keep in there is rubbish. The truth will seek us out, they do say.

I run up the stairs to fetch the folded cartons I keep for the purpose of storage, a roll of tape and a Sharpie, actually a locally-made magic marker. When I get downstairs, while I was looking out the packaging and Caoimhe ordered the take-out and made the tea, Etain had already tidied up the room on her own.

I am speechless, the bed itself, usually the first drop-off point for additions to the room, is clear and looks freshly made. Along the wall furthest away from the front window, the servers are stacked together, as are the half-dozen flat screens, the manuals and files together, discs in two stacks, and the leads neatly rolled and on the floor at the end of the stacks.

I manage a stuttered, "How...?"

To which Etain replies with a smirk, "A woman's work is never done ... and I mean by that never done by halves, Richard. I've been doing housework all my life. Leave the boxes there, I'll pack them up in the boxes for you after tea."

"No," I insist, "you're a guest here. So, Caoimhe and I will pack them up and take them upstairs."

She smiles, "Why don't we all help clear that stuff away? We'll get it finished quicker and I won't feel uncomfortable being waited on when you are already being kind enough to allow me to stay."

"Excellent idea, Etain," chips in Caoimhe, "Food's ordered and on its way, Dad."

"Great," I say, "I'm starving and, as we look out crockery and cutlery in the kitchen, you can tell me why there are only four teaspoons in Katie's kitchen when the rest of the silverware is in sets of six?"

Etain laughs, "Ha! You looked!"

"Of course I did, that's why I'm asking for the reason. You do realise that those spoons are Georgian Sterling silver?"

"Aye, I do. Samuel Neville of Dublin made them in 1813 for a wedding present for er, one of Kaetlynn's ancestors."

"So why are there two missing spoons?" I ask.

"When Kaetlynn's ancestor was married and lived in Clonmel two hundred years ago, it was a lively market town where she was friendly with a group of other housewives in the town and they used to have afternoon tea and a wee bit of gossip every day during the week on a round robin basis. They visited each house in turn as they all had nannies to look after and occupy their young children. Then our ancestor's sister came to stay with her for a few weeks before departing back to where she used to live. The tea-imbibers happily welcomed the young spinster woman temporarily into their midst. Unfortunately the poor girl suffered from an affliction that caused her to collect small mementoes of her stay in the manifestation of stealing teaspoons, which were obviously handed out with each cup and saucer of tea. After a week or so of this, the servants in each household noticed they were missing silver teaspoons and the culprit was soon deduced but not accused directly. These were genteel women after all. Kaetlynn's ancestor confirmed to her friends that her kitchen cutlery drawer had a number of extra spoons which tallied with those missing. As the sister's stay was of short duration, the kind ladies decided not to accuse her of anything but to keep her engaged in conversation on her last day during afternoon tea, while the ladies sneaked off one by one to the kitchen to pick out their own spoons and take them back. It worked well, but when our ancestor checked her drawer, she found only four teaspoons."

"It sounds like your ancestor's sister was a kleptomaniac." Caoimhe suggests.

"Yes, I assume she was. And there was, of course, the silver spoon that the sister kept on the last day," Etain smiled, "but one of the other wives must've taken the other missing spoon. So, for about 200 years that set of cutlery has only had four teaspoons."

"What a fascinating story!" I say.

"There's more," Etain grins, "even more unbelievable."

"Go on," Caoimhe urges.

"My aunt Bebhinn inherited the condition of stealing spoons and she had also inherited one of the two missing spoons from the spinster ancestor and, when she moved into this cottage next to aunt Kaetlynn, my aunt found that her teaspoons kept disappearing. Bebhinn used the spoons to stir the honey from her many hives into her tea. Nobody locked their doors in those days, so when Bebhinn tended her bees, Kaetlynn would sneak in and steal her spoons back from her sister but always leaving one for Bebhinn to use when she drank tea on her own at home."

"That is so sweet," Caoimhe coos, "the love of sisters."

"It is," agrees Etain with a sweet smile playing on her lips. "Then, when Bebhinn decided to move out and leaving everything behind for Kaetlynn to deal with, rather than return the spoon to her own set, Kaetlynn left the fifth spoon in your drawer for you and your wife."

"Oh my god!" I exclaim.

I get up and rush into the kitchen.

There in the kitchen cutlery drawer was the silver spoon in a spare compartment where we keep odds like spare batteries, the silver spoon that Ella found and treasured as serendipity.

She used that teaspoon all the time but I never have. It is tarnished now, not used since the day Ella died in the maternity ward, but I had never thrown it away because it was something I treasured as belonging to her. I return to the sitting room bearing the spoon.

"Do you want it back?" I ask Etain.

"No, you keep it," Etain smiles sweetly, "Kaetlynn had second sight, it sort of runs in the family, and she must've seen the tragedy in your young lives. I think that's why she wanted you to have this property and she cut the price so that you could afford it. The spoon was left to give your wife some comfort. She used it all the time, didn't she?"

"Yeah," I croak, "she did."

We are quiet for what seems like hours but is maybe 30 seconds before a tiny, soft voice asks, "Daddy, can I have the spoon to use for my tea?"

"Of course, sweetheart, it is something of your mother's to treasure. I should have thought of that myself."

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Chapter Four THE BUZZING SKEPS

Our ordered take-out arrives before we clear any of my garbage from the spare bedroom downstairs. As a break from my cooking, a regular couple of Friday treats a month for Caoimhe is to dine on a take-out ordered in.

It arrives hot and ready to serve and means that there's only a couple of plates and sets of cutlery to load into the washer, no pots or pans to bother with and no missing ingredients that I didn't know were missing until well into the food prep. Yeah, it happens a lot, we have had some odd dinner combos over my daughter's short life. So I guess take-out every other Friday is a real treat for us both.

Today it is Chinese food from Qian Kee, always generous portions and this evening it seems that Caoimhe has cell-ordered enough for three that is actually double our normal order, including a couple of dishes we'd never included before.

We only have a small breakfast table in the kitchen, the house is still small even after extending it to more than double its original size, so the dining area is in a corner of the kitchen and what you would call cozy, especially with little table-top space left for plates amongst all these aluminum cartons. After I fill up three glasses of water from the kitchen tap for us, there was little space left for elbow room.

I always use chopsticks for Chinese food, I was brought up using them naturally back home. El used to eat Chinese from a blue porcelain bowl that sits in the dresser long unused, because I was brought up to use round dinner plates. They don't supply take out food in normal ready to eat from cartons, but aluminium serving trays. Caoimhe is strictly a right-handed fork user for everything except soup, a habit formed copying me at home before they unsuccessfully tried to reeducate her in Irish two-handed table manners at school dinners.

Yeah, school dinners not lunches, that gets me every time. Over here in Ireland 'lunch time' in the middle of the school day is always referred to as 'dinner time'; now that's Irish, who would've guessed?

So, Caoimhe sets the table with the plates and cutlery, I get my chopsticks and Etain is given a fork to use. Our guest watches me with interest as I overconfidently grapple with a sweet and sour pork ball completely dunked and redunked until completely smothered in sweet sticky sauce with my favourite chopsticks and promptly miss my mouth completely and drop it with a sloppy 'plop!' into my lap.

Smooth, Richard, really smooth. Show up the whole family to a stranger as damn slobs why don't you?

Of course my daughter thinks my clumsiness is a total hoot and makes no attempt at maintaining any decorum in front of a stranger.

Caoimhe almost spits out her mouthful of masticated egg noodles, swallows it quickly and laughs so loud and long that her puffed cheeks are tracked by runs of salty tears.

Then she laughs even more as I pick up the hot rogue pork ball with the fingers of my left hand and drop it onto my plate like a hot potato and immediately suck my sticky fingers, not so much for the taste but because the lava-hot sugary sauce has really burned my fingers after the pork ball had made its presence felt, and not residing too comfortably I might add, in my lap.

Etain regards me with an amused look on her face, then she looks at my helplessly amused daughter and she starts to laugh herself.

"I've an ointment in my bag for your burned fingers," she states helpfully between what I have to admit are delightfully childish giggles, "Do you want me to fetch it?"

"No, I'll be fine," I reply as I use a paper napkin, rather ineffectually, on spreading the sticky stain on the front of my pants but at least lifting the stained cloth with a pinch of my sore fingertips so the sauce's heat stops conducting to more delicate parts fleshwise. "I'll just go change my pants, won't be long."

I can hear the unchecked laughter as I ascend the stairs to my bedroom, Caoimhe's raucous high notes, Etain's deeper, softer giggles and, probably, punctuated by my daughter's rhythmic slapping of the table with the flat of her hand, the orchestration clearly a soundtrack to a father's total self-embarrassment.

But hey, aren't fathers put on this earth to amuse and entertain their munchkins and, by association, their sleepover guests?

I'm only gone for a minute or three. By the time I get back the conversation is more excited than amused between them as Caoimhe is showing Etain something interesting on the tablet that she normally uses for school. They both look up at my arrival and regard me with smiles, of amusement on one side and what seems more like pity on the other.

Ice cream for dessert or "afters" seems to be a new experience for our guest, she appears in raptures over every mouthful of Murphy's sea salt flavor, Caoimhe having consumed all the less-adult flavors in the chest freezer without telling me we'd run out.

After putting the Chinese leftovers away in the frig, for Saturday lunch, no waste in our house ever, and leaving the dishes in the washer for tomorrow, we sit and visit in the sitting room.

While I had dealt with the dishes, the girls had swiftly boxed up and stowed all my junk from Etain's room into the storeroom upstairs.

I watch the news on the gogglebox but the two girls are shoulder to shoulder on Caoimhe's tablet, talking in whispers, then Etain takes over control of it. Kids today just seem to take tech in their stride. They're probably playing an educational game.

It's a tablet she needs for school, it has teacher/parental controls so it cannot access sites designated for adults, or download commercial games, but some of the educational games for early years do have a certain charm and I was impressed when she first got it programmed at school two or three years ago. It came in real handy when school was in total Covid lockdown.