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There all the barrel-hoops are knit,
– W. B. Yeats, Supernatural Songs, IV ‘There’
There all the serpent-tails are bit,
There all the gyres converge in one,
There all the planets drop in the Sun.
The Brown Betty teapot’s older than the Hills Hoist and twice as stubborn. Five generations of paddy women, and decades of tea parties, afternoon pick-me-ups and lone contemplative imbibing have cultivated an ambrosial aroma that, as Great Granny Quinn would have it, rivals Byzantium. ‘See that?’ her gnarled old pointer jabbing at the shiny streaky black patina, ‘That’s not just tea stains, girls – that’s a whole empire boiled into her belly. Rings inside rings all coiled together as though they’ve nowhere else to be. Murphy gold girls, and if it’s not black it’s not proper tea.’
We’d brought her home in a wheelchair taxi, an afternoon’s respite from the insult of Twilight Gardens Nursing Home teabags, and were parked under the fig tree out back of number five, Mum and Gran leaning back into yellow striped banana lounges, me trotting about, ankle bells jangling our recent arrival from India, Brown Betty and Honey Buttered Toast (BB and HBT) laid out on some wonky old thing propped against the trunk.
I loved these sessions, these tea parties with four generations of Murphy Queens, and can’t recall a time when the BB wasn’t an integral part of life’s fabric, the palpable centripetal pull drawing all loose threads back to their gilded home at the centre. And in between brews and sips and sups the Murphy mythologising, the irreverent retellings of stories as old as the gyres, spun fresh each time depending on who’s got the floor and how much tea they’ve had. Most of all, I loved to hear about where our Brown Betty came from, about Great Granny Quinn’s childhood and One Duck Farm.
This time Granny Suzy held the floor, retelling how Great Granny Quinn’s mum, Gran Murphy, fell pregnant at sixteen and Old Man Healey, the rotten sod of a Dad, had nicked off back to Queensland, leaving her in the lurch. Gran Murphy was nothing if not resourceful, though, and determined to keep young Quinnie, left her home alone to work at the jam factory, ducking back each midday for lunch. Old Man Healey’s childless marriage in Queensland landed him back on Gran Murphy’s doorstep, trying on a grab for young Quinnie, alerting welfare about ‘unfit mothering’ and ‘neglectful conditions.’ Gran Murphy, by all accounts a raven Irish beauty with bouncing black curls, green eyes and winning ways, lassoed herself a husband and a house, keeping the welfare at bay and Quinnie by her side, and sent Old Man Healey packing back North. ‘But,’ said Quinnie, slurping her tea, ‘once Mum and Dad had divorced their respective spouses down the track, Old Man Healey arrived back on the scene, wanting to shack up again with Mum! I warned him against that idea, she was impossible to live with after all, but he was persistent and thereafter unfurled a lifetime of him chasing her round the country, desperately in love but destined to be utterly incapable of living under the same roof.’
Granny Suzy chimed in ‘yes! Gran Murphy was hilarious, she’d look at him, pull a face and shout GOOOOOOORK, you’re a GOOOOORK!! And turn back to enjoying her meatballs!!’ And so, it seems, Quinnie’s childhood was not the norm. Gran Murphy ran with the local racing crowd and, after supping through the days from a KB long-neck stashed in the kitchen cupboard, would often be performing handstands against the wall when Quinnie came home, her skirt draped round her ears. ‘Ugh! She was dreadful,’ Quinnie chimed in, laughing fondly at the memories that had so embarrassed her back then. ‘Diamond Lill I used to call her! She owned one pair of diamond earrings she was always pawning after losing on the races, betting with the SP bookies.’ Then Granny Suzy recalled the banter between Gran Murphy and her other sister, Aunty Moo, Moo being short for Muriel. Aunty Moo would taunt ‘Ha ha! I see you’re wearing your rabbit skin again!’ To which Gran Murphy would retort, running her fingers through the pelt, ‘oh no, darling, it’s Pershanique, you know!’ Back then, they were, according to Granny Suzy, ‘a family of bog trotting Irish Catholics, but aspiring gentiles and extremely proud, for example, of their Father the Meat Inspector.’ In any case, Quinnie’s teetotalling ways seemed to me readily traceable back to an early life of rough and tumble and the threat of things falling apart.
Great Granny Quinn’s the wisest woman I’ve ever known, even though she never went to school. Somehow, somewhere along the line, she collected quite a cache of quotes, great philosophers, literary giants, Shakespeare, Schopenhauer and Yeats, and I knew that somehow she grokked the deep down gist of things more wholly than any blear-eyed wisdom borne of midnight oil. She slurped another sup of BB tea and tossed one on the breeze – ‘Well might one wonder then, in all of this with Diamond Lill and Old Man Healey, that naturally “Things fall apart; The centre cannot hold”?’ Theatrical pause, theatrical slurp, then ‘The centre cannot hold? Pfft!! Not if you leave it to the men! That’s why we got the BB.’ She leaned back, arching one bushing black brow, and gave the pot a fond little pat.
We were coming to my favourite bit, about One Duck Farm, Quinnie’s home-away-from-home growing up, and site of some of her happiest days. Gran Murphy’s Mum, Old Lizzie, was something of a trailblazer too, having left her husband and moved to One Duck Farm in the country with her other daughter, Nell, just four years Quinnie’s senior. People in their Irish Catholic community were suitably horrified, of course, but for Quinnie it was the start of a lifelong bond with Auntie Nell as she escaped out there for some peace and quiet, respite from Gran Murphy and her racing cronies. ‘Well then’ said Great Granny Quin, ‘that’s how the pot was got! When Old Lizzie died, and One Duck Farm was all sold up, I was allowed to choose one thing, one knick-knack to keep, so I chose the BB, and the rest is history!’ And so, like the layers of tannin cultivated over thousands of brews, time, memory, meaning and the whole Murphy Queen inheritance spiral inward, all the gyres converging in Brown Betty’s rough brown belly. Quinnie winked at me, laughing, ‘and there Darl, “all the barrel hoops are knit,” and our BB, our centre that does hold indeed!’
