Tales From Portlaw Volume Thirteen: 'The Postman Always Knocks Twice'

By William Forde

This is a love story is about a travelling Romany who visits the home of Lizzy Lanigan in Portlaw during the year of 1955. Lizzy is a newly-wed, who was married a mere three months earlier. The peg-selling gypsy persuades Lizzy to have her palm read for the cost of two shillings.

The Romany fortune teller then informs Lizzy that she will give birth to a girl child within the year who will be named ‘Mary’. Lizzy is informed that she will give birth to a total of seven children during her life, but that her firstborn will be a ‘special’ child, who, when her time comes, will also give birth to seven children, of whom the firstborn will be a ‘special’ girl, also named ‘Mary’.

The Romany also reveals that the Lanigan legacy of ‘specialness’ will be passed down for generations, providing that mother and firstborn maintain its secret. If the secret is kept as instructed, the Lanigan family will be blessed, but if the secret is told to another; the Lanigan descendants will be cursed!

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Forde
• Release date: Jul 19, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463323045

William Forde

William Forde was born in Ireland and currently lives in Haworth, West Yorkshire with his wife Sheila. He is the father of five children and the author of over 60 published books and two musical plays. Approximately 20 of his books are suitable for the 7-11 year old readers while the remainder are suitable for young persons and adults. Since 2010, all of his new stories have been written for adults under his 'Tales from Portlaw' series of short stories. His website is www.fordefables.co.uk on which all his miscellaneous writings may be freely read. There are also a number of children's audio stories which can be freely heard.He is unique in the field of contemporary children's authors through the challenging emotional issues and story themes he addresses, preferring to focus upon those emotions that children and adults find most difficult to appropriately express.One of West Yorkshire's most popular children's authors, Between 1990 and 2002 his books were publicly read in over 2,000 Yorkshire school assemblies by over 800 famous names and celebrities from the realms of Royalty, Film, Stage, Screen, Politics, Church, Sport, etc. The late Princess Diana used to read his earlier books to her then young children, William and Harry and Nelson Mandela once telephoned him to praise an African story book he had written. Others who have supported his works have included three Princesses, three Prime Ministers, two Presidents and numerous Bishops of the realm. A former Chief Inspector of Schools for OFSTED described his writing to the press as 'High quality literature.' He has also written books which are suitable for adults along with a number of crossover books that are suitable for teenagers and adults.Forever at the forefront of change, at the age of 18 years, William became the youngest Youth Leader and Trade Union Shop Steward in Great Britain. In 1971, He founded Anger Management in Great Britain and freely gave his courses to the world. Within the next two years, Anger Management courses had mushroomed across the English-speaking world. During the mid-70's, he introduced Relaxation Training into H.M. Prisons and between 1970 and 1995, he worked in West Yorkshire as a Probation Officer specialising in Relaxation Training, Anger Management, Stress Management and Assertive Training Group Work.He retired early on the grounds of ill health in 1995 to further his writing career, which witnessed him working with the Minister of Youth and Culture in Jamaica to establish a trans-Atlantic pen-pal project between 32 primary schools in Falmouth, Jamaica and 32 primary schools in Yorkshire.William was awarded the MBE in the New Year's Honours List of 1995 for his services to West Yorkshire. He has never sought to materially profit from the publication of his books and writings and has allowed all profit from their sales (approx £200,000) to be given to charity. Since 2013, he was diagnosed with CLL; a terminal condition for which he is currently receiving treatment.In 2014, William had his very first 'strictly for adult' reader's novel puiblished called‘Rebecca’s Revenge'. This book was first written over twenty years ago and spans the period between the 1950s and the New Millennium. He initially refrained from having it published because of his ‘children’s author credentials and charity work’. He felt that it would have conflicted too adversely with the image which had taken a decade or more to establish with his audience and young person readership. Now, however as he approaches the final years of his life and cares less about his public image, besides no longer writing for children (only short stories for adults since 2010), he feels the time to be appropriate to publish this ‘strictly for adults only’ novel alongside the remainder of his work.In December 2016 he was diagnosed with skin cancer on his face and two weeks later he was diagnosed with High-grade Lymphoma (Richter’s Transformation from CLL). He was successfully treated during the first half of 2017 and is presently enjoying good health albeit with no effective immune system.

Book preview

‘Tales from Portlaw’

Volume Thirteen

‘The Postman Always Knocks Twice’

By William Forde

Copyright © 2018 William Forde

Published by William Forde

July 2018

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Dedication

To my late mother, Maureen Forde

Born 24th January 1922

Died 26th April 1986

Author’s Foreword

I was born in Portlaw, County Waterford and came to West Yorkshire, England at the age of four years, where I have lived ever since. As I grew up, my mother used to tell me tales of Portlaw. Being a natural-born Irish person with a healthy imagination, she was also a natural-born storyteller. Consequently, I have no way of knowing how truthful her recall and re-telling of these stories were and was pulled in opposing directions in how best to write them. I eventually decided to use the medium of fiction.

In ‘Tales from Portlaw’, I recount the stories that my mother told me during the years I was growing up in West Yorkshire about ‘the old country’ across the Irish Sea, and the village where I was born and lived before emigrating to England.

I have taken the ‘germ of truth’ in her tales and have made those details the central thread of my story, adding to her truth, my fiction embellished by a writer’s imagination. Any resemblance to anyone who ever lived or came from Portlaw in either name, likeness or character description is purely co-incidental; and to the best of my knowledge, this story is purely fictional.

~~~~~

This is a love story is about a travelling Romany who visits the home of Lizzy Lanigan in Portlaw during the year of 1955. Lizzy is a newly-wed, who was married a mere three months earlier. The peg-selling gypsy persuades Lizzy to have her palm read for the cost of two shillings.

The Romany fortune teller then informs Lizzy that she will give birth to a girl child within the year who will be named ‘Mary’. Lizzy is informed that she will give birth to a total of seven children during her life, but that her firstborn will be a ‘special’ child, who, when her time comes, will also give birth to seven children, of whom the firstborn will be a ‘special’ girl, also named ‘Mary’.

The Romany also reveals that the Lanigan legacy of ‘specialness’ will be passed down for generations, providing that mother and firstborn maintain its secret. If the secret is kept as instructed, the Lanigan family will be blessed, but if the secret is told to another; the Lanigan descendants will be cursed!

William Forde, July 2018

Contents

Dedication

Author’s Foreword

Contents

Chapter One: ‘The Gypsy’s Prophecy: 1955’

Chapter Two - ‘The birth of Lizzy’s firstborn, Mary Lanigan’

Chapter Three - ‘Growing up within the Lanigan household’

Chapter Four - ‘From Learning to Laundry to Love’

Chapter Five - ‘Courtship to Marriage: Lanigan to Fanning’

Chapter Six - ‘Mary Lanigan marries John Fanning: 1977’

Chapter Seven - ‘The early marriage years of Mr. and Mrs Fanning’

Chapter Eight - ‘The early school years of Mary Fanning: 1983-93’

Chapter Nine - ‘The Philosophy and Beliefs of the Fanning Family’

Chapter Ten - ‘Mary Fanning: Waiting: January 2008’

Chapter Eleven - ‘The Crash’

Chapter Twelve - ‘The Morgue-The Coroner’s Inquest-The Burial’

Chapter Thirteen - ‘Alcoholism and Depressive Descent’

Chapter Fourteen - ‘Childbirth Agony’

Chapter Fifteen - ‘Mary and Rory Separate’

Chapter Sixteen - ‘Mary and her daughter, little Mary’

Chapter Seventeen - ‘Mary Fanning Visits Grandma Lizzy’

Chapter Eighteen - ‘The letter’

Chapter Nineteen - ‘Mary and Brandon meet up again’

Chapter Twenty - ‘Brandon Murphy-Northrop 1987-2015’

Chapter Twenty-One - ‘The George Residence for Children and Young Persons’

Chapter Twenty-Two - ‘The Romany Visit’

Author's Background

Other Books by this Author

For the General Audience:

Romantic Drama Strictly for Adults

Connect with William Forde

Chapter One - ‘The Gypsy’s Prophecy: 1955’

Our story of the Lanigan legacy began many years ago in the village of Portlaw, County Waterford.

It is a hot, Wednesday afternoon around 3.00 pm, during the first week of July 1955. The heat of the sun is beating down with a fierceness that a hundred angry nuns could never show; obliging the young men to walk around without a shirt on their back, and the young women to wear loose covering garments, far less modest than is customarily worn with innocent intention.

Married housewives and mothers are stood outside their doors talking to their neighbours and watching the two quiet streets that run through the village centre and meets up with the Square.

While ordinarily their wifely and motherly appearances are governed by a more usual element of marital respectability, the heat of the afternoon sun has encouraged them to hoist up their hemlines as far as modesty will allow. Their dresses have been bunched up above their knees, tied in a knot; allowing the breeze to get to their legs and creep up through the pockets of the dress folds to cool their female undercarriage.

Portlaw is its usual quiet self and will remain so until the factory hooter breaks the silence at 5.30 pm, when one hundred and sixty workers end their day’s labour and march back home through the factory gates.

The hooter is heard twice daily; at both start and end of the working shift. It has kept its accuracy to the second since the Tannery was opened in September 1935 and most village clocks and watches are set by it.

Conditions for the tannery workers leave much to be desired. Except for grave accident, acute illness, or family death, no worker can leave the factory once they have clocked in, until the end-of-shift hooter sounds at 5.30 pm. Mid-day sandwiches are eaten by the side of one’s machine between noon and 12.20 pm.

There are only two toilets for over 160 workers to use and being absent from one’s machine for over five minutes at any time of the day results in fifteen minute’s losses of earnings.

A new worker soon learns that while he can usually piss for free at work, it costs too much not to shit at home!

The strictly imposed rules that all workers must observe, reflect the stinginess of the Tannery bosses, and reveals their primary aim of placing the profit of its shareholders over and above the wages and conditions of its workforce.

Even the end-of-day hooter has been timed to ensure that the worker’s five-minute minimum walk from their machines to the factory gates occurs in their own time.

Except for a few dozen workers who are occupied elsewhere in Portlaw, the Tannery has a monopoly over the local workforce; being the only major employer. If a villager doesn’t work in Portlaw, they have an 8-mile journey into the town of Carrick-on-Suir or a 12-mile journey into Waterford City daily to do alternative work.

~~~~~

Newly-wed Lizzy Lanigan (Nee Forde), hums a tune as she works inside her house, preparing the meal for her husband, Mick, when he comes home from the Tannery.

Lizzy and Mick Lanigan have only been married for three months and are still settling into their small terraced property in William Street.

The couple originally hailed from Kilkenny, but the house they had planned to rent to start off their married life in was taken off the rental market at the last-minute. The property was instead sold to an Irish man who’d spent twenty years working in the steel works of Pittsburgh. He had recently returned to his city of birth in Kilkenny with a wife and a pocketful of money to burn.

After a last-minute frantic search, Mick Lanigan and his intended bride secured rented property thirty-two miles away from Kilkenny in the village of Portlaw.

Mick Lanigan and Lizzy Forde married in St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Kilkenny, and after a two-day honeymoon break in Clonmel they moved into their Portlaw property. The couple started married life as most newly-weds do; with little money, a few sticks of furniture comprising of bed, table, and chairs, and hope for a happy marriage and a healthy family in the years ahead.

Mick had been lucky enough to secure work at the Portlaw Tannery, to start one week after arriving in Portlaw with his newly-wed bride. His weekly wage would start at £9-7-6d and rise to £10-2-6d after a probationary period of three months had been satisfactorily negotiated.

~~~~~

Lizzy was peeling tatties in the kitchen when she heard the gate to her back yard open and close. She looked out of her window and saw a gypsy walking towards the opened back door, carrying a basket of wooden pegs.

The gypsy was dressed in garments made from a rough-sacking material that had either been fashioned and designed for hard wearing whatever the weather or made to illicit sympathy from the householders she sold her wares to. Given her hard life travelling the road, it was difficult to know if she was in her forties or fifties. Her skin was the colour of Mediterranean brown and her black hair that reached down to waist level was the longest Lizzy had ever seen.

Hello, Missus, said the gypsy woman politely announcing herself. Will the pretty lady buy some pegs from a true Romany? she asked.

Lizzy was somewhat amused at the way the gypsy had phrased her question; ‘Will the pretty lady buy some pegs?’ as opposed to, ‘Does the pretty lady want to buy some pegs?’

There appeared to be an unspoken understanding that were any pegs bought that afternoon, they would be purchased because of ‘who’ was selling them, as opposed to whether they were needed or not!

Lizzy had been reared in a household seeped in superstition and Irish folklore. One thing her mother had always impressed upon her was never to turn away a true Romany empty-handed if you wanted to avoid bad luck for the next seven years. Lizzy had grown up being repeatedly told that to offend a true Romany was to invite a lifelong curse, whereas to offer kindness often resulted in a blessing and good fortune for the immediate year ahead.

Being unaware whether the woman was a true Romany or just a travelling tinker masquerading as the genuine article, Lizzy decided to play safe. She opened her purse and finding it two-thirds empty, she placed one shilling in the gypsy’s hand and bought six wooden clothes pegs.

You can have a reading for another two shillings, the traveller said, adding, Rosie’s readings have never been known to be wrong!

Lizzy looked inside her purse to check its contents once more. She still had another two days to get through on the little money she had left until Mick’s next wage was due. Her purse contained coins totalling five shillings and tuppence; every penny of which was needed for food, plus other essential items.

Just as Lizzy was about to decline the reading of her palm and the telling of her fortune; sensing that she was only going to get one shilling from this house, the gypsy said, Okay then, Lady. Today’s your lucky day. Cross my palm with one more shilling only and I’ll tell you about your firstborn.

The mention of her ‘firstborn’ was enough to sway Lizzy Lanigan’s judgement and she opened her purse again to retrieve one further shilling which she gave to the Romany.

After scanning her open palm for two minutes in silence, except for the occasional ‘um’ and ‘ah’, the gypsy eventually spoke.

There are many things these lines tell me, the traveller said in a mysterious voice as she ran her forefinger over Lizzy’s palm. "Too many interesting things; far more than I have seen before in one mere glance of a woman’s palm. They all concern your firstborn, and their firstborn. Your lines also reveal the number of children you will give birth to, and