We lived in Morden, a grim suburb in south London, in a fake Tudor semi. Each summer we were sent to east Clare, my younger brother and I, to my mother's people, who lived in an art deco villa. Our London house smelt of anthracite dust and the sulphur we sprayed on the grapes that grew under the verandah. The Irish house smelt of Seville marmalade, bicarbonate of soda and grandfather's Gold Flake cigarettes. That summer, the magic summer, we were nine and seven.
In London, toy guns were forbidden. As were toy bazookas which fired ping-pong balls, Airfix models of the Bismarck and the H.M.S. Hood, Roman centurion sword, scabbard and shield outfits, and Colt .45 cap-guns. No commercially manufactured military toys of any sort were permitted. Even playing with a stick that happened, by chance, to have the handle/barrel configuration of a gun was forbidden.
The injunction against war toys came from my father. He didn't like them, he said, because they were shoddy and they encouraged youthful identification with the military machine. Now I am a father myself, I think he just hated the noise and high jinks that went with these toys. But back then, war toys were banned because of an analysis, inspired by Marx (which I only dimly grasped - this understanding really came later), that connected consumerism and imperialism. The child who played with war toys in Morden today, was happy to go to Aden and slaughter Arabs tomorrow. So, in London, we lived in a largely war toy free zone.
In Ireland, on the contrary, it was Liberty Hall. We were free. We made spears and swords out of ash sticks. We made Webley revolvers and Winchester repeating rifles out of broom handles. We made pea shooters from copper pipe. We made catapults with `Y's of beech and strips of inner tube. But no matter how hard we tried, no matter how inventive we were, everything we made looked handmade. Which it was. And nothing had the finish or the gloss of a proper war toy from a shop. It was a terrible predicament. We were free to play war but lacked that vital ingredient: the shop-bought war toy.
In the circumstances the only alternative was magic. There was a fairy ring behind the farm house but because of its proximity we felt its powers were compromised. Happily, there was a second ring at the bottom of the avenue. It was a perfect circle of beech and oak trees with wild irises growing between them. Furthermore, which had not escaped our attention, no matter how bad the storm, the cattle never went in here.
So, off we set. Tramping down the avenue, we were in the normal everyday world of grass, bird song and cattle dung. But once we slipped inside the ring we were in a different world. It was incredibly dark for a start; it took ages for our eyes to adjust to the sepulchral gloom. It was also very quiet, while at the same time familiar sounds like the rasping bray of our donkey appeared to be far further away than in fact we knew was the case. We had noticed the same effect in churches. The ring also had a unique smell. It was a chalky, musty odour, heady like the incense we sniffed at Sunday Mass.
But its most important feature, undoubtedly, was the lichen-covered stones in the middle. This was the altar. Had to be. Here we placed our offerings. These were a penny, a headless toy soldier, a broken set of Rosary beads, a Lady Finger biscuit and an old light bulb from the milking parlour. Then we knelt on the brown carpet of beech nuts and, until our bare knees could stand it no longer, we begged the powers to grant us one wish: a double-barrelled shot gun with a spring mechanism that fired cork plugs for each of us. (Presumably, inspired by the spirit of Ireland, we wanted to play at flying columns.)
That night, lying waiting for sleep in the bed I shared with my brother and staring up at the Crucifixion scene hanging overhead, I saw the blood of our Lord as blobs of sealing wax. This was no precocious painterly insight. It was simple. Parcels and sealing wax were on my mind. If our wish was granted, it would come in a parcel.
We went back to the ring the next day. Our offerings were gone. Miracle of miracles. We knelt and prayed. We went back again the day after. On the night following our third visit, my brother woke me in the middle of the night. He had something to show me. I stared out into the velvety darkness. I blinked in disbelief. It couldn't be. It was. Three gold figures hovered outside: a blind fox (quite how I knew it was blind eludes me now), a bat and a fairy in a pointed hat. It was a propitious sign. I knew at once we needn't go back to the ring.
Some days later the post van pulled up and the postman fetched two long parcels out of the back. There were sealing wax blobs along the brown paper seams. One was addressed to Master Carlo, the other to Master Sasha Gebler. We carried the parcels into the kitchen and opened them. Inside were the double-barrelled shotguns we coveted. There was also a note from my mother. My grandmother read it out.
My mother said she had bought the guns on impulse. She hoped we liked them. We were advised not to bring them home. Yes, I said and shrugged. I knew what this letter meant. Grandmother had written off to her. But the guns would have come even if she hadn't. The powers would have seen to it. I knew that.
I unpicked the string which attached the corks to the gun-barrel ends and hurried outside to shoot a few Tommies.
Carlo Gebler's latest novel is How To Murder a Man, published by Little-Brown, £16.99 in UK; his collection of short stories, W9 & Other Lives, is published by Marion Boyars, £15.95 in UK.
Thursday: Mary Morrissy remembers the last family holiday, in Waterville, Co Kerry, before her father died.
