The Washer Woman

When I was about five, possibly six, I was staying with Granny Begley for a while. I'm not sure why, I've a feeling my parents had to go somewhere. None of that mattered. As far as I was concerned, I was off on my holidays, even though it was the middle of winter.

One day, Granny Begley had to go into the village and pick up something at the post office. She dressed me in my little wellington boots, my stiff brown duffel coat, and woolly hat. It was very cold so she put a pair of socks on my hands. I thought this was very funny, Granny Begley didn't know that socks go on your toes, not your fingers. I was glad of them later because it was freezing.

We walked for hours and hours and hours before we got to there. I was sure we must have walked all the way across the county. Granny said I was a silly-billy. I didn't like the post office, there was nothing to see in there. I wanted to walk around the corner and look at the ducks in the river. Being a different time, when everything was safe and kids had the run of the world, Granny Begley said that I could, as long as I promised to stay on the little stone bridge. That was just fine by me.

When I rounded the corner, I saw a group of boys playing a game on the bridge. It looked like great fun so I ran over to see what was going on. The boys had fistfuls of pebbles and they were throwing them in the river, and shouting. I was worried they were scaring away the ducks so I peeked through a hole, but there were no ducks, only an old woman stooped in the middle of the river. She must have been a hundred years old; her hair was dirty grey and very long, it looked like barbed wire. Her back was crooked and she was beating a cloth off the rocks, sending water flying everywhere. She stood knee deep in the freezing river, the hem of her skirt dipped into the water, steadfastly ignoring the caterwauling boys on the bridge. Her skin was riddled with crevices and nearly brown from life outside. She had so many liver spots it was hard to see where one stopped and the next started. In all my young life, I’d never seen a person with such terrible skin.

Just then, one of the boys landed a pebble bang on target. The woman looked up angrily and I’m not ashamed to say, her face frightened the britches off of me. One eye was as white as milk, while the other was blood red. She hadn't a tooth left in her head, and if I thought her hands were wrinkly, they didn't hold a candle to her face. I changed my mind; she must have been a million years old.

To my undying shame, I got caught up in the mob mentality and started throwing pebbles along with the other others. That was until I was lifted clean off the ground by the back of my coat. Two quick slaps from an experienced hand and my arse was glowing as hot as the embers of hell. I’d never seen Granny Begley so angry in all my life, short as it was. She scattered the boys in seconds, not missing one of them with a thump to the ear or a boot to the rump. I just stood in the middle of the bridge, bawling for all I was worth. Granny was furious and dragged me all the way back home by the arm, not saying a word the whole long way.

When we got to the house, I was sent straight to bed. I stayed there for weeks and weeks, realistically about twenty minutes, before I sniffled my way out into the kitchen where Granny was sitting beside the open fire. She didn't look mad any more, or even sad. She just looked far away, if you know what I mean.

"Sor-r-r-ry Granny," I snuffled in my sorriest voice, trying to dig my chin all the way into my chest.

"Oh, come here," she said, in that lovely Granny way and lifted me into her lap. I snuggled into her and sucked my thumb, feeling very hard done by. She smelled of tea and roses, oh, and peppermint. She rocked over and back, rubbing my head, as the logs crackled in the grate. 

"You should never throw stones at anyone, especially an old lady."

"I won’t, Granny. Cross my heart," I said, knowing that ment I was forgiven.

"Good boy," she said, and gave me a kiss on the head.

***

I never spoke about that to my Mom, and it turned out, Granny Begley never did either. She took that particular little incident to the grave with her. In the weeks after her passing, our family told many stories about our times with Granny. One evening, I was sitting beside the open fire with my Mom and it crackled in the grate, just like it had that day when she forgave me. Such a simple thing, yet it brought that day flooding back. The memory was too vivid to keep bottled up so I told my Mom about it.

"I can’t believe she never told me," said Mom. Even then, telling her as a grown man, I felt the sting of shame.

"I know, I still feel terrible, throwing stones at such an old woman."

"She wasn't that old. The Washer Woman is just about the same age as Granny Begley. I think she’s still alive actually."

"You must be joking? She looked ancient, and that was years ago."

"She was cursed," Mom said, and she looked like she was being serous.

"Cursed? Come on Mom." This is the age of mobile phones and the internet. Nobody believed in cursed, did they?

"It's true," she said. My Mom is nobody’s fool, but this was a little airy-fairy for me.

"Go on, tell me about this curse then."

This is the story my Mom told.

***

When Granny Begley was just a slip of a girl, Bess was a few years older and a stunning beauty. Granny didn't have much time for Bess, nor did any of the girls in the village. She wasn’t only beautiful; she was incredibly vain. One boy was never enough for her, she wanted them all. No woman's son, or husband for that matter, was off limits. She’d flirt with them, tease them, and then just when she knew she had them wrapped around her little finger, drop them like a hot potato.

That is exactly what she did to Matty McGrath. He was obsessed with Bess and couldn't stay away from her. She drove that boy mad, stringing him along only to turn her eye on another man at the last minute. One evening, Bess arranged to meet Matty on the village bridge. She was very late but he waited anyway. 

Low and behold, down the village she comes, arm and arm with some English soldier that had chatted her up outside the pub. She glided along, brazen as you like, swishing her new summer dress as she walked, dragging this fella along to the bridge. Matty snapped, he tore into the soldier. Matty was young and tough, but no match for fully grown man trained in fighting. Bess looked on proud…PROUD…that these men were fighting over her. Sadly, Matty pulled a penknife on the man, which was only boyish bravado, but the soldiers training kicked in.

The blade ended up buried in Matty's guts. Seeing the blood, the English man ran back to his mates and they hightailed it as fast as they could. Bess was horrified and tried to help Matty. She cried and held him, pressed her hand against the wound and cradled his head. News of the fight spread through the village like wild fire. The doctor was sent for, and if he’d been home that night, things might have turned out different. Tragically, he wasn't. Matty passed away right there on the bridge, Bess holding him and sobbing. With a final shuddering breath, Matty was gone and there was nothing more Bess could do.

She stood up and backed away from him. That was when she saw the blood. Her legs were covered in it, as well as her hands and her dress. Seeing herself drenched in Matty's blood must have been a terrible thing, even more so because she knew it was all her fault. Bess ran down to the river and tried to wash the blood off. As unkind circumstance would have it, that was when Matty's mother arrived. She’d never liked her son hanging around with the village trollop. What a terrible shock she got when she saw her darling, Matty, laid out in the middle of the road, Bess, down by the stream washing his blood off her hands. Mrs McGrath flew at the girl.

She grabbed Bess by the hair, dragging her into the middle of the stream where she half drowned the girl by dunking her under the water, again and again.

"Wash, you bitch, wash," she screamed. "You’ll never get my son's blood off your hands. You killed him, you murdered him! You did it with your pretty skin, and terrible beauty.  A curse on you, you little bitch! Every sin will stick to your skin, never to be washed away. Everyone will see you for what you are!" At this point Mr McGrath appeared. He waded into the river and dragged his deranged wife to the bank. She collapsed there, crying. "She took him from us, Tom. She took our lovely Matty."

Bess vanished into the night. It was months before she was seen again. Some argue it was the curse, others said it was madness that had changed her so much. She was no longer the beauty she had been. Patches had appeared on her hands and legs where they had been covered in Matty McGrath's blood. Her hair had silvered and grown brittle. Her once lustrous skin was now dry and cracked. She hid herself under thick shawls, never meeting anyone's eye. She was disowned by her family and shunned by the village. Bess eventually moved into a tiny hovel at the edge of the woods.

One day, Bess was seen standing in the middle of the river, washing a man's clothes. Rubbing them against the rocks and rinsing them again and again in the chilly mountain water. A week after that, she was spotted hobbling out of the church looking ten years older. The lines were beginning to show on her hands and her face. Legend has it that the clothes she washed belonged to Mr McGrath. He’d swindled a neighbour in a land deal and felt tainted by the sin. Bess had offered to help as she felt she owed the family. Her curse absorbed his sin and added it to her own.

From then on, bundles of clothes began appearing at Bess's doorstep with a shilling left on top. Down she would go to the river, summer or depth of winter, and wash the owner’s sins into her own skin. Granny Begley had gone into the river once and tried to get Bess to see sense. It was useless. 

Bess said, "It's my penance, the price of vanity." She kept pounding the clothes against the slimy rocks. Each wash adding another line to her face or hands.