Free My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress by Christina McKenna Page B

then; those teacakes look super.’
    They’d linger over the morsels with absentminded ease, an art perfected through years of dizzy-making self-denial. And so the cake stand with its tier of buns and biscuits would remain like an offence between them,the sandwiches gradually curling up in defeat. And our eyes would widen at the prospect of all those yummy leftovers.
    Before departure there was a photo opportunity on the front step. We stood in an awkward group, bashful in the scrutiny of the camera. And there they are: Isa and Regina forever conquering the lens, with their brilliant hold-it smiles and the confidence they knew was rightly theirs. When they left, their subtle energies went with them and the house returned to its drab old self. We could still, however, imagine those lilting voices and still smell the soft exudation of that scent.
    As the car bore them away we’d dive onto the cake stand, and mother would unwrap the gifts the ladies had brought. There’d be a plate or ornament with the predictable maple leaf or Mountie. Over the years we accumulated a great deal of Canadian tat; it jostled for prominence on walls and shelves, growing with each successive visit.
    Being an awkward teenager, I wanted to grow up very fast and be just like the Yankees. I imagined having a white mansion on a sun-drenched hill. Every year I would take off from it like an effortless swan and land in dear old Ireland to pay a visit to the humble folk. I wanted to feel those flimsy fabrics next to my skin and the danger of those stilettos on my feet; I wanted to lay claim to all that urgent beauty that had the power to fell envious women and halt men in their tracks, to have the ability to electrify atmospheres with my wit and charm, and manifest every kind of goodwill in everyone I met. I longed for that sculpted elegance, the diamonds and the scent, the glamour and polish that belonged to another world entirely.
    There was no compromise with the Yankees. They caused such beautiful riots in my head and left lastingimpressions. I felt no quandaries of faith where they were concerned. They were so unlike my mother and the other women I knew, those who slaved and gave to others because that was their function. These ladies relaxed and gave to themselves, and that was their triumph.
    Isa’s brother Sam was a Seventh-day Adventist. In Ulster back then it was important to know a person’s religion – more important, in fact, than knowing their name. People were either ‘our sort’, meaning Catholic, or the ‘other sort’, meaning Protestant. Sadly little has changed in this regard.
    Master Robert claimed that he could guess a person’s persuasion just by looking at them. It was a bizarre idea, coming as it did from an adult who appeared to be in possession of a fully functioning cerebral cortex. He’d say: ‘I saw an odd-lookin’ individual in the town today. He had the look of a Protestant about him.’ And nobody thought to question the veracity of such a wild assertion. Such innocuous comments, foolish as they might have seemed at the time, all served to harden the cement that built the walls of division in Ulster.
    Our neighbour Sam, with his Seventh-day Adventism and not belonging to a mainstream Protestant denomination, bucked the trend slightly; nobody quite knew where to place him. So he was put in a ‘harmless cretur’ box, along with the Quakers, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
    The main tenet of Adventism is the belief that the second coming of Jesus Christ is imminent. Sam believed it, and his goodness was a reflection of that readying conviction. He worked the land, treated others well and cared for his sick wife, all without complaint.
    He was a tall, rangy man with a shiny bald head and a wart between his eyebrows which moved up and down ashe talked. Often, when his chores were done, he’d drop in for the obligatory tea and talk. When Sam sat down on