Treasa's Story

By Noelle Ryan

The quiet little village of Glenbeg in North West Donegal, Ireland is thrown into turmoil by the most unlikely of its inhabitants. The story follows Treasa Gallagher, an unassuming, introspective and romantic young woman whose road to self-discovery in the face of life's challenges, affect the lives of all those living in the village and beyond. In the face of loneliness and isolation, Treasa turns to writing as an outlet for her emotions and the result is a play that divides the village along gender lines, in an age old battle of the sexes!
Treasa's story is one of warmth, human frailty, resolve and courage told with the humor so common among the people of Ireland and particularly this corner of Ireland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Noelle Ryan
• Release date: Jan 12, 2015

Book preview

Treasa’s Story

By

Noelle Ryan

*****

Published by

Noelle Ryan at Smashwords

Copyright 2015 Noelle Ryan

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1-The Early Days

Chapter 2-On the Shelf

Chapter 3-This is it!

Chapter 4-The Storm

Chapter 5-Life goes on

Chapter 6-The Ceili

Chapter 7-Girls night out

Chapter 8-Seasons of Change

Chapter 9-A New Love

Chapter 10-Time for Friends

Chapter 11-The Crack!

Chapter 12-The Reading

Chapter 13-The Casting

Chapter 14-Opening Night

Chapter 15-Hot Water

Chapter 16-New Venue

Chapter 17-Tribulations

Chapter 18-New Beginnings

Epilogue

Author’s Note

As this story is set in North West Donegal the English used is European. This means the spelling is different for many words when compared to American English. For example, labor/labour.

The way people are named is also quite unique to this part of Ireland. As many families have similar last names a method is employed to help distinguish one from another. Instead of using a last name, the first names of their father and paternal grandfather are used instead. For example, Hughie Tom Ned.

The text is sprinkled with greetings and phrases in Gaelic that realistically depicts how the people of this region converse with one another.

Treasa’s Story

Prologue

The curtain went down in the theatre and for a moment there was a complete suspension of time, for me. In that brief moment I was struck with both awe and fear. There I was in the renowned Abbey theatre in Dublin, having just viewed my own play brought to life by some of the best talent in Ireland. But, did the audience like it? The suspense ended when the theatre erupted in thunderous applause and I felt both relieved and elated! They liked it!

Hi, it's me! I have so much to tell you! It was great! I just got back yesterday. The play was a huge hit! Well a minor hit for Dublin maybe, but a huge hit for me! They were all there, the family, Sarah, Maeve, Deirdre and of course Aisling. Afterwards, they all wanted me to go out celebrating, but I knew I would be celebrating for the rest of my life, so I chose to be alone that night. This had been a very profound journey for me culminating with that first opening night. I wanted, needed, time to reflect in private, to assimilate the flotsam of emotions that vied with each other for recognition. Once done, the time for celebration could begin in earnest!

I went back to my hotel room. It was all so exhilarating! I felt so content! For the first time in my life, I felt I was not being torn in all different directions. For the first time in my life, I felt I was being true to myself and it felt good. No more pretending.

Aisling knowing in advance that I wanted the night to myself had booked me in for one night in the exclusive Brian Boru Inn. The décor was lavish, displaying Irish Art in all its forms, from Carrickmacross lace, to Beleek china, and Irish wool carpets in stunning royal blue and gold intertwined in an intricate Celtic design. There was a wide open hearth, burning turf, the smell of which had the immediate though contradictory effect of making me feel at home and yet homesick! By the large window was a harp, played beautifully by a lady in a long dark green velvet gown. The music was haunting and evocative. There were of course paintings of Brian Boru himself including the famous depiction of the eighty year old warrior on his knees praying while the battle of Clontarf is waged outside his tent. His assassin is shown moving stealthily into the kill position. Inviting as the lobby was, it was not the place for private ruminations so I went upstairs to my room.

The room was the height of indulgence! Well I haven't been in that many hotel rooms that I can compare, but to me, it was fabulous! It had a huge four poster bed! It was the size of the proverbial football pitch! I blushed just looking at it! Imagine the time that could be had getting lost in its softness! And...found! The walls were mahogany panelled, and decorated with many old paintings, notably Jack Yeats among others. Mostly depicted, were pastoral scenes of famous places and castles in Ireland. I walked around the room, touching the warm wood with my fingers almost feeling the history of other days. Rumour has it, that King James found rest and sustenance here, when he came over to Ireland seeking help from the Irish in his attempt to regain his crown. It seems he needed the rest before crossing the Irish Sea back to England as he was given short shrift by the Irish who routed him! It had something to do with broken promises! A seemingly Royal British past-time!

The bed was covered in a beautiful rose chintz bedspread. No modern down comforters here! There was an antique armoire and an old-fashioned dresser with a blue china jug of water sitting in a bowl or basin, a nod to older traditions of hygiene. Fortunately there was also a modern bathroom attached! I blessed Aisling for choosing this place. A better place for such a night, I just can't imagine!

There was a glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the room. I got up on a stool to investigate, but I couldn't make out if it was Waterford or not. Never mind, I pretended it was, it suited my mood!

There was a beautiful antique chair upholstered in rich damask fabric. It had some soft cushions just inviting a body to sit and relax. Which is exactly what I did!

I sat down and let a roar out of me! Yahoo!!! I clamped my hand over my mouth in stunned shock at what it had just done without checking with me first!! I didn't know where that came from, it just burst out of me! I nearly died with fright thinking the manager and half the staff would be up to my room to boot me out, finding out what they probably suspected to begin with, that I was an imposter! But after half an hour went by and no-one showed up...I breathed again!

So there I was, in the lap of luxury and I said to myself, You know what you're going to do, Treasa Gallagher? You're going to have yourself a bottle of the finest French wine and do what you like to do best, think with a drink!

It's funny, some people spend a lifetime trying to escape it, thinking, I mean. Most people find it too unpleasant being confronted by their own thoughts, or feelings. I've found a pleasure in it now, though it took some cultivating. When you spend enough time on your own, what started as isolation for me, changed over time into self-awareness and eventually, self appreciation. I've gotten to the stage where I actually like myself. I can appreciate time alone now. It's a time to reflect. Sometimes I just play childhood tapes in my head and relive past joys. It’s a time to think about my life and the people I love. Sometimes I create imaginary dialogues between invented characters, for my own amusement. Often I use it to simply daydream. I am never bored.

I picked up the phone and asked for a bottle of wine and no, not a pack of cigarettes! I've come a long way baby, but not as those cigarette ads would have you believe! They use feminism as a freedom call to kill yourself. I've found my freedom! And so, I settled myself comfortably for the night ahead. I thought about the first time I started writing. It started as a way of letting my feelings out and it developed into a past-time. It was about this time last year. My goodness, how miserable I was then!

I had brought my old journal with me and I began to read.

Chapter 1 The Early Days

An introduction would probably be a good idea! My name is Treasa Gallagher. I'm twenty-eight years old and I'm dying. I have come to you as my last resort, and I feel the benefit already. No, I'm not really dying. Not physically anyway, but I'm miserable. Can you help me? I hope so.

I am a housewife. That is my identity. That doesn't exactly qualify me for the suicide squad I know, but here's my story. Forgive my interruptions, I frequently smoke under duress, but I know you won't hold it against me!

I'm in trouble. Not with the law, or with anyone, for that matter, only with myself and I desperately need help. Can I tell you how I feel? Oh, you have no idea how good it is to talk about it! I mean write about it! I feel I can't talk about it to anyone, not even those closest to me. I feel a hole inside me that no-one, or thing can fill. A deep loneliness that is so soulful it denies expression. But I must express it! And so I have come to you. I make no demands of you, only to listen to my story, to my heart, as I can't relate it to anyone else.

Let me start at the beginning. I live in the Northwest of County Donegal. It is the most beautiful place on the face of this earth! Its magical and primeval ruggedness have been and still are a great source of comfort and joy for me. I grew up in a wonderful, warm, loving family. Not exactly a backdrop for such a troubled spirit, I grant you. Much of the problem is internal, I think. That's why I'm writing this.

Anyway, let me not digress. I am the second youngest in a sprawling family of nine. Not unusual for my generation, though becoming a rarity today, a mere double-decade later. I won't name all the members of my family, only those most involved with my dilemma. Many of my older brothers and sisters had left home by the time I was a teenager. There was my mother and father of course, and my older brother, Ciaran, who's a darling, and my sister, Aisling.

I had such a happy childhood! There was always a hubbub of activity in our house! It seemed like we were just getting over one holiday when another one was on the way! Dad was a whiz on the fiddle so there was never a dull moment! In the long winter months the kitchen was a centre for Irish music from evening to the wee hours of the morning! My mother loved the comings and goings as much as the rest of us. She is so proud of Dad.

My mother was and is a very special woman. A devout Catholic, she instilled in us the love of God, who was to become my rock, when I finally turned to Him. It is to my mother that I give credit to, for the inspiration that started me off, writing. She imparted her love of learning and reading, to us, that would fan the fires of my imagination and prompt me to express the words that burned within.

Mom had been to secondary school which was a privilege at that time as women of her generation did not need an education, in order to get married. She loves to read and somehow found time to read to us regularly amid her many chores that go with a large family. Perhaps we were lucky, Aisling and I, being the youngest, as Mom had more time to do things with us. At least that's what my older brothers and sisters tell me. Whatever the reason I thank God she did.

We grew up on stories from Irish mythology. We learned of the escapades of Cuchulann and the Red Branch Knights, the adventures of Fionn McCumhaill and the Fianna. We learned of the fortunes and misfortunes of St. Patrick and the Golden Age in Ireland. We learned of the reseeding of Christianity by the Irish Missionaries after the Dark Ages in Europe. We learned of the Brehon Law which served as the law of the land for almost two millennia. A complex law under which the peasant and the prince received equal treatment. This was replaced in the seventeenth century by British law. The British had one law for themselves and one for the Irish Catholic. The veritable double standard flourished under their rule!

Mom has a great love of Irish poetry and would pick out humorous and melodious poems for our pleasure. Among my favourites were the Triads of Ireland an ancient and irreverent poem, but very insightful! Then there was William Allinghams’ poems. My favorites being The Faeries and The Leprechaun, were not only rhythmical and comical but also evocative. I have no doubt that it was this fertile ground that nourished the seed of my imagination, and allowed it to take root and eventually give rise to my love of writing.

Dad was the quiet peacemaker in the house. Being a large family we were constantly at war over some perceived injustice or other. Dad was always there to calm the waters. He had a remedy for the noise makers. He would always find work to do for the aggressors, whether it was weeding the garden, cleaning out the garage or a mission over the rocks looking for carageen. People always commented on our beautiful garden, our neat garage and the wonderful milk puddings that were made from the carageen moss! Little did they know they were the fruits of penance!

Aisling and I were separated by only ten months. We were the proverbial Irish twins a euphemism coined that highlighted the rapidity with which Irish women got pregnant! Well I for one, am not complaining! We certainly were as close as two people in a family can be, growing up. It was great! We shared everything! We were so close that sometimes when I started a sentence Aisling would finish it!

Our village of Glenbeg is very small. It consists of one hotel, a chemist, a petrol pump station, a shop that sold everything and of course the local pub. There are of course, houses connecting all these businesses, on one street. The purple heather covered mountains rise up behind the town and the rugged coastline is in front. There are golden strands (beaches) around every bend of coast and emerald islands dotting the horizon. The islands had once been home to many clans but were now bereft of human habitation, leaving the sheep which still were raised there to enjoy the beauty of rolling green hills, steep cliffs, black caves with sea arches, and sea stacks breaking the foam of the wild and turbulent sea. On a clear day the beauty is breath-taking! On a wild and stormy day the beauty is terrifying.

The homes of the village are brightly painted in colours of yellow, peach, brown and beige to mention a few. Perhaps it was a subconscious action on the part of the dwellers to have bright cheerful colours in a land with almost artic-like dark winters, due to its northern latitude. Whatever the reason, the bright colours always make me smile. I love to turn the bend in the road and see the gaily coloured homes of my friends and neighbours and of course my family home, included.

Not far from the town is a crossroads where Deirdre’s home sits. One of the roads is the coast road which goes over a pretty granite bridge. The Clogherlan River flows beneath. What a beautiful river! Boulder strewn, wide and turbulent in places, and elsewhere calm and deep. I love that river! It is one of the few rivers in Ireland where the fish stories are actually true! The salmon really ARE four feet long! Their numbers really ARE as thick as your fingers, when they migrate upstream for the great mating game. I remember Aisling and I would go down to the Clogherlan River and run with sheer pleasure along the rabbit trails! The thrill of youth bursting out of us! Other times we would sit quietly by the rivers’ edge watching the salmon run and I would spin yarns for Aisling about their watery world. We would pretend to be those salmon and imagine ourselves making the long gruelling trek home outwitting the fly-fishermen and the midnight poachers! Ours was a world of the senses and how we relished it! I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world! Then, the teenage years came around. That's when my troubles began.

I don't know when it was that I looked in the mirror and realised I had the wrong body. God must have made a mistake! I saw a big country girl with a ruddy complexion and thick limbs and worst of all, a bosom that never ended. I would say to myself, How can this be? I who hate undue attention! How can I be cursed with this grossness of fecundity that is supposed to represent the reflection of the inward me. Well no! What I actually thought to myself is, Look at you! You’re nothing but a big elephant! The Dolly Parton of Glenbeg! Even though I was not overweight, I gave the impression of being so. The bulk had a way of projecting my presence into a room at the very time in my development when I needed more privacy. It was such a perverse twist of Nature to have betrayed me like this.

I used to have a dream, still do sometimes. The dream was there long before my body began to betray me. In the dream I am standing on a small moonlit rocky ledge up on the mountain, with a gentle breeze wafting over me. As the way of dreams can be, I don't know if I am human or animal in form. I can't really say which, with any certainty, but there are definite elements I can distinguish. Every fibre of my being is quivering with delight from the almost overwhelming sensations pulsating around me. Everything is so alive! The plants, animals, even the rocks seem to have consciousness! But it is the wind that captures my attention! What a mundane word for something so vibrantly elusive and yet so all pervasive! It shows the narrow plane of sensory awareness that we humans live on.

The wind washes over me like a soft hand alternately caressing and cajoling me. It lifts my hair playfully and just as quickly releases it to gravity. It fills my lungs with the sweet smell of damp life. It carries night smells of exquisite beauty that many plants only yield in darkness. The thrill of life is carried on its breath!

In this dream I am all quaking, shivering energy. Like an arrow from a bow could I wing aloft in aerial flight! My body is not a sum of parts but a wonderful sensual, lithe autonomy. Alive and primed to respond to whatever stimulus is sent its way. I feel in communion with the earth, at one with Nature, even plant form. I can just as easily sense the life flowing through the vascular systems of the greenery around me as I can feel the wordless instincts of the animal life there present. The plants are every bit as much alive, interacting with the air around them and responding though more slowly, to the physical world. The affinity I feel in this wild state is stronger than anything I've ever felt in my real life. Sometimes when I'm alone with Nature I get a tantalising glimmer of it, like a window opening, letting a memory in, of life before the Fall, when all creation was in Divine Harmony. This is the first time I've ever written this down. It looks strange in print. And yet, it's real to me. Oh, I tried once, to tell Aisling, but she looked so puzzled that I gave it up. I don't know why I'm even writing it down now. I just feel it is so important to me, in order to understand myself. Maybe the dream personifies that oneness with Nature that I feel so deeply and maybe it’s why I loathe my body, because I see it as a barrier to that feeling of oneness, that. lightness of being that I yearn for, but will never have.

Perhaps it is because of this dream that I have such a love of horses! Was I a horse in the dream? If ever an animal symbolised the raw fire of life, it is the horse! Anyway, enough about my dream! The important thing is this, the way I feel about my body and how I wish it was. No!! I don't mean that I should look like a horse! But certainly something more motionally poetic than the reality it is. I’ve never had a desire for good looks or an attractive body. I only wanted a body that was lithe and light and could carry me far away when I need to run.

Aisling on the other hand, is the opposite of me. She also is tall and dark. But there the similarity ends. She is slim and willowy and has beautiful long, shining raven-black curly hair. Her dimples smile effortlessly on the world and beguile it. Her skin is milky white and her dark eyebrows and eyelashes contrast strongly against such a pure background. She has big startlingly grey eyes that dance in her face when she talks. She is in fact a living metaphor of Irish Beauty. Her elegance emphasised my bulk. She understood that. And it was a cross for her just as much as it was for me. It is a testament to her largeness of heart that she felt my pain from being compared to her. While we are very close we are also very different. I could not tell her of my pain. How could I? It was her pain too and it lay like a silent wedge between us.

I remember the day I confronted my image in the mirror and said to myself, You are ugly. Just accept it. and I cried. I never told anyone. Who could I tell? Who could help me? Earlier in the day, we had been walking back from school, Aisling and I. It was a beautiful autumn day and we were collecting leaves. We were going to put them in a notebook and keep them. We used to love to do things like that. There aren't that many trees around the windswept hills of Donegal that can provide leaves for collecting. However, there was one exception. On the road home from school, just before our house is an old abandoned manor of the kind the English used to live in, back in the old days. It was a summer home for an English gentleman in the days of occupation. It was abandoned after 1922 and no-one has laid claim to it since. It has a grey concrete facade and eight large windows facing the only road that passes through Glenbeg. There are four windows on top and four on bottom. There are six chimneys though now in some disrepair as indeed the house itself is. It has a semi-circular driveway that enabled a horse and carriage to enter and leave easily and its driveway is lined with trees. It has the only decent mature trees in all of Glenbeg!

We were about fifteen at the time, we were standing under the old elms, sycamore, and oaks when Maurice Devlin went by. I had just spotted some lovely autumn coloured leaves and was bending down to pick them up. Maurice stopped and with a sleazy grin on his pimply face said,

Here let me get that for you, Treasa, you look like you might fall over! I mean you're carrying the milk for the neighbourhood there! I looked up at him in surprise confused by his comment though his leering look did not escape me. I didn't know what he meant straight away so I said,

What are you talking about? Aisling must have known, because she said,

Get out of here, Maurice Devlin! You’re nothing but a dirty vulgarian from start to finish and the whole neighbourhood knows it!

When I heard the tone of her voice it began to sink in what he meant. I was mortified! I didn't speak a word for the rest of the way home. Aisling made up for it by dismissing him as an Amadan and went on to make small talk to cover for my silence. It was my initiation for what was to come. That's when I built the barrier, so nobody would know how I hurt. I decided there was no-one I could talk to about it. The human psyche is resilient and I found a way to cope with it, enough to hide from others, how I truly felt.

It was fifth year in secondary school that I found my niche. I could not be the most athletic, the most academic, or the most attractive but I did earn a reputation for being funny. Not hilarious, but funny. I could do impersonations to a fair degree of accuracy and as long as the subjects were sufficiently unpopular (as some teachers were), my deficiencies were supplemented by willing imaginations! It's a fact in Irish society, all manner of vices are forgiven, if the owner of those vices can make you laugh! I've seen lots of questionable people accepted by their peers as long as they're a good laugh. Humour is the social currency in Ireland. In a climate like ours where one may not see the sun from one season to the next, anyone or anything that can cheer a drooping spirit may literally be a lifesaver in a country where suicide is a leading cause of death in healthy adults. And so, humour is the whitewash that covers a multitude of sins in our society. Could be worse I suppose.

Our group was made up of Deirdre, Sarah, Maeve, Aisling and myself. We did everything together. We used to have so much fun. One of our favourite places to go was a small bay off the main strand, and we'd stretch out on the cool yellow sand and spin faery tales of how our futures would be.

I remember one particular day. We had just finished our Leaving Certificate Exam and would be soon unleashed on the world. The relief to be done with school was physical. We had planned what we were going to do weeks in advance. If the day was good, we were going to go down to the strand, to our favourite spot and bring a picnic and we were going to talk about everything under the sun, except Exams!

The last exam was Biology that year. We finished at 12:30pm on Friday afternoon the 25th of June 1980. The weather was glorious! A heatwave had swept across the Island and was predicted to last three weeks! We were delirious from the sudden release of the intense pressure of the Exams. The plans were finalised the night before, so all we had to do was go home and change out of our uniforms and pick up our picnic bags.

Aisling and I started on the strand road about 2pm. The road was empty except for a few stragglers like ourselves that were going down for a swim. There were no tourists out yet though. They usually didn't come until July. We climbed the top of the last dune and there lay the little inlet that we regarded as our own as it was never used even when the summer season was in full swing. Well, for a reason, it was a good ten minutes’ walk from the main stretch which was a mile long as it was!

Maeve and Deirdre were there already with the blanket laid out on the sand. Deirdre is almost like another sister to me. She is one of those rare people who are so empathetic that you feel that they experience your emotions exactly as you do yourself. She is a green eyed strawberry blonde. Something that we used to give her endless grief about either calling her a dumb blonde or a tinker that got her red highlights by a camp side fire! She shares with me a passion for horses and we usually spent our holidays working in the riding stables every summer. She is of medium height, a little shorter than me, slender, and full of bounce. She is the one that gets us to do things, otherwise I think we would never bother our heads. It was her idea to have the picnic. But as always we were only too happy to follow and secretly delighted that we had someone to deluge us with possibilities.

Maeve is the shortest of us all. She has light brown hair in a bob that frames her pretty even featured face. She is slim though I don’t know how since she’s always eating sweets! Maeve is quite unlike Deirdre. She is more relaxed, preferring to spend her evenings curled up reading a book or doing crosswords or playing chess. Her interests are definitely more stationary than Deirdre’s! However like Deirdre she tends to be very goal oriented. She had her life planned out in front of her with most of the fine details only needing minor refinements. She is the smartest of us all, academically and we all took it for granted she would succeed in whatever she set herself to do.

Deirdre waved to us and shouted,

Did you bring any lemonade? Aisling pulled out a big bottle from the bag in answer. We flopped down on the sand beside them and asked where Sarah was. Maeve said, "She had to run to the shop for her mother but she won't be long. But she warned me to tell you not to start without her!" Sarah was Deirdre's cousin. She was a big girl like myself but it didn't seem to bother her. Sarah was one of those people whose personalities are totally integrated with their bodies, a true autonomy. She revelled in her sexuality in a completely earthy way. But then she was so wonderfully unselfconscious about everything she did. Tact was not her strongest suit! I honestly believe she really didn't understand most of the nuances that she encountered in her life unless they came and slapped her in the face! She could never be accused of being duplicitous!

We were all disparate in temperament, sensitivity and interests, yet our differences complemented one another so well. It made for a truly interesting mix! Ours was indeed a special friendship, the kind not easily formed in later life. Perhaps when friendships are formed in youth, so much is revealed, it lays claim to a powerful loyalty.

Behind us Sarah came tramping through the sand.

For the love of Mike, why the hell do we have to pick a spot in outer Mongolia as our turf"? Wouldn't the top of the strand be good enough for ye?" she complained good naturedly. She was not keen on exercise, of any form!

I brought my camera girls, we have to make this a day to remember! she added good-naturedly. And the peculiar thing is, that day is framed in my mind as if my mind were the photographic print on which it was recorded on.

We all settled down and chatted excitedly about all the little ordinary things in our lives as we laid out the goodies in front of us. The sun felt wonderful on our parchment skin. The tide was on its way in, so we camped ourselves at a safe distance, for the three hours more, it would take for it to complete its journey, before retreating once more. The little islands off the coast glittered in a wealth of sun spun diamonds that twinkled merrily on the jade coloured water. Everything was perfect!

It was always our tradition to start on the food right away as it gave us a replete beginning to start on the main course of our conversation which gave us considerably more satisfaction.

The conversation invariably turned to boys. Sarah, Deirdre and Aisling were going out with fellas but myself and Maeve were free, or, on the loose as we used to say! Sarah, was always trying to set me up with some one. She felt nobody could be happy unless they had a fella of some description! Maeve had made it clear she wasn't interested in anyone locally.

Sure, between the three of you, you've wrapped up the only talent around here anyway. she said. Sarah poked me and said, "You're holding out on us, I just know