Life was too heavy on her feet in that place to leap dramatically when something apparently exciting happened.
The purchase of the new farm might seem to have given the Flynns a new outlet for their emotions, but the reality kept them sober. The only thing which might be said to give a kick of drama to the event was the fact that by all accounts their new next-door neighbour, Joe Finnegan, was lepping mad at the Flynns’ buying of the place over his head. Mrs Callan ‘who never brought a good story in her life’ informed Mrs Flynn that Joe Finnegan, drunk in the village the previous evening, had been threatening to make it hot for the Flynns.
‘The man is mad,’ said she to Mrs Flynn.
‘And who, musha, did he say all this to?’ asked Mrs Flynn.
‘It’s only what I heard,’ drawled the woman.
‘Bad luck to him, himself and his five pratie-washers,’ said Mrs Flynn. The ‘pratie-washers’ were the five daughters, Joe having been blessed with no son.
When she told Tarry about it he laughed and said he’d break Joe’s neck if he as much as opened his gob.
‘That’s the very thing you mustn’t do,’ advised the mother. ‘That’s what some of these cute customers like Eusebius would like. And the best thing would be not to go up at all the day afraid of the worst. Wait till the morrow, the fair of Shercock, for Joe is likely to be there. You can fence the gaps on the march between us and him when there’s no one about. The easy way is the best way.’ Tarry put the point of the bill hook on the bar of the gate and commenced filing the edge with great energy. ‘A man has to take the bull by the horns sometimes,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you I will.’
‘I don’t give a damn,’ said Tarry with petulant bravado.
The mother peeped over the wall and looked down the road.
‘These ones are worse since Lough Derg,’ she remarked. ‘And,’ added she as she wandered through the street, ‘I hope they get men out of it. Wouldn’t it be a good thing now that you have the hook sharp to go over to the Low Place and trim them briars that’s creeping through the new grass and not have the hands torn of ourselves when we’re pulling the hay for the cattle… Ah ha, good morning, Charlie, it’s early you’re on the go.’
‘Good morning, Mary. I was just going up as far as Cassidy’s; I hear they have a few stores for sale.’
‘You must expect a dear fair the morrow, Charlie?’
‘I have to take chance on that, Mary.’
‘Hurry over, Tarry, and get that job done and maybe you might go as far as the fair the morrow and see if you could get something. A man always learns in a fair’ – she was addressing Charlie now – ‘but this man of mine, there’s nothing for him when he goes there, only the face stuck in a book. Sure, that’s no way, Charlie, for a man that means to have a thing. No fear of you reading a book.’
‘Oh, your man is going for the big money.’
‘Bunk,’ gasped Tarry from the vicinity of the hen-house door. A fellow like Charlie could think of nothing only money.
‘Come home early for your dinner,’ the mother called as he went down by the meadow gate with the fork and billhook on his shoulder.
The conversation of his mother and Charlie at the gate pursued him as he went through the meadow where the clags and white butterflies were dancing in the sun. Did a man like Charlie ever notice the butterflies? That man was wise in the ways of the world. But wasn’t it easy being wise in that small way. The meanest minds became the great ones of the world’s wisdom because the really fine minds saw that such success wasn’t worth while. Politicians, businessmen and all that breed could be beaten blind at their own game if the good men tried. He was quite sure of that.
This field ran along Brady’s on the far side of their house and forming a right-angle to the main portion of Flynn’s estate. It was reached by a wooden bridge made of trunks of pine trees and covered over with stones and clay. In this field Tarry was cut off from the activities of Drumnay. He could daydream here without being disturbed. The sounds of the country people came through the blue haze of the air and the green leaves of the hedges sieved, fine.
There was a defect in him which these secluded fields developed: he was not in love with his neighbours; their lives meant little to him, and though off his own bat he was a very fine thinker and observer he had only one pair of eyes and ears and one mind. Had he loved his neighbours he would have the eyes, ears and minds of all these, for love takes possession.
Christ was the sum of the wisdom of all the men for whom He died, which was the race of Man.
He loved the fields and the birds and trees, stones and weeds and through these he could learn a great deal – but hardly enough. He saw the centre as a poet sees, but this introversion was leading to aridity. Men impacted themselves on him almost against his will. If he had been entirely passive he might have become wise. But he screamed hysterically when the lover wanted the beloved to sleep. He tore the emotion horribly.
The mother did not understand this queer kink in him which she felt would lead him to destruction. She would merely shrug her shoulders and say: ‘I might as well be talking to the wall.’
Through the thick hedge he could see into Brady’s street and when the door was open hear the talk within the house. It was surely fascinating talk for those who had the faith to see it as the expression of the divine gift of life. As it was, Tarry listened bored, his one and only thought being the seduction of the girl. This desire came between him and the romantic vision so that he only heard a confused murmur. Then he pricked his ears.
Mrs Brady came out to feed the hens and she interrupted her ‘chuck, chucks’ to remark to the daughter, ‘I hear the Flynns are after coming from Lough Derg.’
‘Aye, they’re home.’
‘Oul’ crooked Petey may come to scratch now,’ the woman said with a loud laugh. ‘Chuck, chuck. If I was a man I wouldn’t marry her if her backside was studded with diamonds. Peter and her is well met, Molly.’
‘They are,’ drawled Molly.
The mother stooped low and began to wave her head from side to side in Tarry’s direction. ‘Do you know what, I thought I saw young Flynn over in the hayfield. A terrible listener, that fella.’
The daughter came out and they both stared in his direction. Tarry stood perfectly still behind the thick hedge.
‘There’s nobody,’ said the daughter.
A little later Molly took a big delft jug and went in the direction of the well. Tarry took a notion that he was very thirsty and hurried down along the hedge where he got through a gap into Brady’s field.
‘Do you know what it is, I’m dead with the drouth,’ he cried ever so casually.
‘And a pain in your head for the want of a court,’ said Molly, adding the rhyme to a well-known local doggerel.
‘Give me the lend of the jug, Molly.’
Tarry sat among the tall rushes beside the well and drank. ‘God! I’m dead tired,’ he said and lay back. ‘Sit down here a while.’
He grunted and sighed for weariness, but still the girl showed no signs of being influenced by his hypnotic suggestions.
‘Ah, damn its sowl, sit down, Molly.’
‘Deed and I won’t. There’s nothing for you but the swanks.’
‘Ah, damn it sowl –’
‘– Father, Son and Holy Ghost –’
‘There’s your mother,’ said Molly.
There was no need to tell him. She was coming slowly along the headland of the potatoes on the other side of the stream walking with the long pot-stick. Tarry grabbed the jug and took a long drink of the cold spring water, saying: ‘God! I was very dry. I better be getting back,’ he said over his shoulder as he made off while his mother and Molly dropped into conversation.
‘Will you shout at that fella and tell him to come back,’ said the mother to Molly.
‘Your mother wants you,’ shouted Molly.
‘Did someone say something?’ said he turning round.
‘Have you them briars nearly trimmed?’ asked the mother. ‘If you have you’d better come home for an early dinner; there’s a job I want you to do.’
Tarry trimmed a few long briars here and there to satisfy his conscience and then went home to a dinner of new potatoes and butter.
Coming in from the road gate the mother said: ‘Three years ago I said that that man was near the pension age but nothing would do you only that he wasn’t passing fifty. And there it’s gone now, one of the best jobs in the parish.’
‘Who wants to be a postman?’ said the fox about the unattainable grapes.
The two girls had arrived home from their pilgrimage and were making up now for the loss of three days’ food.
‘Sour as a pair of buck weasels,’ said the mother.
‘All because we haven’t the gossip of the world home with us,’ pouted Aggie.
‘Hurry up with your dinner,’ said the mother to the son, ‘and fence the gaps between us and Finnegan’s so that we can put the cattle on it. Joe, the greedy dog, went and cut a darling ash tree that was growing on our side of the march and if we had the cattle up it would be an excuse to go up every day.’
‘Isn’t that what I said this morning?’ said Tarry.
And so on they talked and argued.
For the second time since the buying of the farm Tarry felt himself elevated by its adventure-possibilities. As he walked up the road he was a hero going forth to conquer. A new world was opening to him. New fields all his own. He would be next thing to being a Louthman, and that’s what would make the beggars jealous.
It began to rain. That was a good thing, for Joe Finnegan would be more likely to remain near his house. He hurried up the road past Cassidy’s house but as he expected he did not get past unknown to the mother, who stuck her head around the jamb of the hen-house door and measured him up and down.
Possession gives a new beauty to things and Tarry walking through the long grass and weeds of those fields was filled with a satisfaction that was different from the joy he got in gazing over the general landscape. These fields were his. As he strode through the field with the wet weeds lapping about the legs of his trousers up to his knees, a powerful selfishness filled his mind.
He looked at the hedges and calculated the amount of timber on them. He was so pleased too that so many big ash trees had been allowed to remain even when the Carlins must have needed firewood.
The remains of an old dwelling house – relics of the old days when the land was more populated than now – was an added attraction. Before buying this place he would have described that ruin as an eyesore; now he counted the number of loads of good building stones that it contained. He thought of the wonderful job he could make of the yard at home, be able to put a good bottom to it with those stones. A soft peace had descended upon him. The clay, his clay, cooled the desire in his heart.
His thoughts turned to the practical girls he knew and whom he had up to this ignored. He would be happy in that country, happily married with children, and would go to the forge with the horses and converse with the blacksmith, and wander over to the cross-roads of a Sunday afternoon and discuss the football team and politics. He would be among the old men with his hands in his trousers pockets dreaming about the past. Then he would walk slowly home for his tea and the children and wife would be there waiting for him and everything would be as it was in his father’s life. How right his mother was! Why should a man seek crucifixion? And that, up to this, was exactly what he had been doing – seeking crucifixion.
Then he raised his eyes to the eastern horizon and he saw the queer light again. But this time he would not be deluded into being one of the Christs whom the world forever seeks.
O clay of life, so cool.
The division between this field and the portion of the farm which ran down the other side of the hill was a clay bank upon which yellow-blossomed whins grew. Flinging his jacket across the fence he walked back a few steps and took a race to the fence to see if he could leap it. His second love had always been athletics and on summer mornings he was usually to be seen running in his stockinged feet round the home farm, over hedges and drains and palings.
He leaped on to the fence among the whins and found himself standing above the world of Drumnay and Miskin and looking far into the east where the dark fields of Cavan fanned out through a gap in the hills into the green fertile plains of Louth.
The rain had stopped and the sun was coming out and the bees and stinging clags were coming alive again.
On the height beyond to the right stood Joe Finnegan’s long thatched house. He listened for sounds and his keen ear could recognize from footsteps in Finnegan’s street and from the heightened talk that some stranger was there. Like Eusebius. He walked along the march fence between himself and Finnegan’s potato field, to see how many trees and bushes had been cut. There was a lovely ash cut down and the fresh stump covered with mud and weeds. That showed that whoever cut it knew its ownership was doubtful. Greedy devils. In fencing the many gaps Tarry was going to make sure that he would cut only those bushes which grew more on Finnegan’s side than on his. He’d get what was doubtful first, the law would give him what really belonged to him.
In ordinary circumstances a terrible lethargy descended upon Tarry when starting a job like this. Now the energy of a man who was grabbing something that didn‘t belong to him urged him on, made him strong, decisive. He kept his eye on the laurels behind Finnegan’s house and once thought he had seen one of Finnegan’s five young daughters moving between the laurels and the back of the house. There was a lane at the back of the house, the lane which served this part of Carlin’s farm and Paddy McArdle’s bog field farther up. How glad Tarry was that he didn’t have to use that lane.
A few moments after the young girl had disappeared Tarry heard a wild commotion in Finnegan’s street and the violent rattle of buckets being flung down. He also heard the soft retreating footsteps of Eusebius going off by the front of the house. Then the ferocious voice of Joe:
‘Bleddy pack of foreigners, bleddy pack of foreigners. I’ll break his bleddy neck.’
‘Joe, Joe,’ his wife appealed, ‘be careful, for you know as well as bread that that man isn’t like another. If that man was to drive the fork in you there wouldn‘t be a thing done to him. Look out for yourself for he’s not square.’
‘I’ll make him square, Maggy,’ roared Joe. ‘Give me that graip, give me that graip. I’ll drive it to the handle in him.’
He was wrestling with his wife for possession of the graip.
‘The graip ’ill only give him the chance to let your guts out, Joe.’
‘By the sweet and living God he’s not going to cut my bushes, Maggie. By the living God I’ll…’
‘Joe –’
The wild man appeared at the top of the potato field in his shirt and trousers and clutching his cap in his hand. He raced diagonally down and across the potato drills stumbling among the stalks in the hollow and bawling ‘bleddy foreigners’ as he ran. He slowed down as he came along the level ground and stopped shouting, but now his face was fierce with a helpless hate. Tarry was afraid.
Joe walked along the hedge, panting, trying to swallow some of the hate that was choking his words. In the end he said in a low poisonous whisper: ‘Flynn, I’ll get you, I‘ll get you.’
These words were ordinary enough but they carried a heavy load of danger. Tarry trimmed away at weeds and briars as quietly as he could to keep the continuity of his legality.
The man on the other side of the hedge came up from the depths of his silent fury:
‘What the hell do you mane, Flynn?’
Tarry did not reply.
Joe walked a short distance away and examined a bush which Tarry had cut. ‘Oh, you hure you, you hure, you, Flynn, and that’s what every one belonging to you were. The good big bush!’
Now the man was shouting at the top of his voice. He pranced on the headland and made a dash as if to jump through the hedge, but fell back nursing his skin where it had been scratched.
‘If you come out here,’ said Tarry softly, ‘I may as well tell you, Finnegan, that I’ll cut the head off you. Do you hear that?’
Immediately the man had rushed through a gap and went for Tarry. As he rushed at him Tarry, who had studied a book on boxing, dropped the bill-hook and rammed out his left arm in Joe’s general direction, half hoping that it would miss him, for he would give a good deal to be able to avoid a fight.
To Tarry’s surprise the punch connected with the man’s right eyebrow, cutting it right open. The blood streamed down Joe’s face. To avoid further fighting Tarry tried to grapple with his opponent and when he did so he was surprised to find that this man who had such a reputation as a filler of dung and a carrier of thirty-stone sacks of wheat, was as weak as a cat.
Joe tried to scratch Tarry’s face and what was worse than all he tried to give him the boot in the belly. To lift the boot to an opponent was considered the meanest of all, and any man who did so in a public squabble would be set upon by the rest of the crowd. Next he tried to pick a large stone off the ground but Tarry shoved him away.
Tarry knew now that he could easily beat Joe, but his faith in physical force was weakening and he wished he could scrape out of the argument in some easy way. In fact, although he was winning, he had a strong inclination to run. The blood on the man’s face was now running down his shirt front, frightening him more than it did Joe.
Joe looked like a man who was refusing to believe that he, a man who had played football for the parish team and who had the reputation of being the toughest man in the team, could be bested by this – nobody of a Flynn. He fell to the ground but struggled to his feet quickly. He was surviving by the memory of his greatness. With victory so easily won Tarry’s fear of the talk that would be about the fight among the neighbours, as well as of the chance it would give people to draw attention to a land dispute that was going on over the farm, produced in him again the desire to run.
He did run right to the end of the field where the old ruins were and expected Joe to follow. But Joe did not follow. Tarry laid the tools across his knees as he sat down on a mossy boulder in the middle of what had once been the kitchen of a cabin and watched Joe in the hollow rubbing with the lining of his cap the blood away.
During this period the wife appeared on the scene coming in a state of terror across the potato drills.
‘Joe, what happened to you?’
Joe was now rubbing the back of his head. Would it be possible that the man got injured when he fell? Tarry tried to daydream that the row had never taken place. He tried to place himself back in the past and then forward in the future when there would be no more about the whole business. He was nervous. He wondered what he would say to his mother. He also knew that the unreason of the Finnegans would not let the matter drop; from now on his life would be in danger wherever he went – in pub or fair or at the cross-roads. The Finnegans were like wild animals. If Tarry had only one first cousin atself, he thought, he would be safe enough; but he had not a single relation to back him up.
Oh, as sure as his name was Tarry Flynn a week would not pass before he had heard more about this fight.
Maggy Finnegan led her husband away round the headland, for it seemed that he was too weak to walk through the potatoes.
From the legal point of view Tarry felt that he was safe enough. After all the man had no business coming on to his side of the hedge. And there was blood on the stones to prove it.
‘The hard man, the hard man.’
Tarry shifted round on the stone and was face to face with Eusebius who had a spade on his shoulder. ‘I’m just going to put in a lock of cabbage where the turnips missed, ‘he explained,’ and I thought I saw you down here. You‘re fencing?’
‘Sticking a few bushes in gaps, Eusebius.’
‘A good bleddy idea.’ Eusebius looked in the direction of the battle scene. ‘A lot of gaps in that hedge all right – but as the fella said, you have plenty of good strong bushes to do the job. See any women lately?’
Tarry, glad of the chance to keep the subject away from his nerves, entered into the spirit of the sentimental lead, but his enthusiasm was very forced.
‘I was talking to May Callan last night.’
‘I see,’ said Eusebius as if he had heard something very special. ‘Had she any stir?’
‘If you knew but all!’ said Tarry, making mystery.
‘Jabus.’
‘Charlie followed her from the cross the other evening when she was coming home and tried his best to get her to come out to Kerley’s hayfield with him. What do you think of that?’
‘Aw, you’re a liar?’
Tarry could not fail to observe that Eusebius’ attention was not all on the conversation; it was only an excuse to hear all about the row. But Tarry would tell him nothing.
‘Begod, Charlie’s a quare hawk,’ he said without interest, for he was then staring analytically in the direction of Finnegan’s house.
‘I’d say he was a bad egg,’ Tarry offered.
‘Oh, the worst –’
‘What are you watching, Eusebius?’
‘There’s a few gaps down there you’d need to stick bushes in, Tarry. If your cattle broke into the spuds after they‘re sprayed it wouldn’t do them any good. Right pack of savages, them Finnegans, aren’t they?’
‘They’re as good as anybody else, Eusebius, if I know anything. Do you ever be up there at all, Eusebius?’
‘Do you know, Tarry, I was up with them this morning,’ said Eusebius as if admitting something awful. ‘Joe borrowed me rope-twister last year and it was as much as he’d give it back when I went for it. That Joe hates me, hates the ground I walk on. There’s the oul’ one now coming along the lane. Must be going somewhere. She’s dressed.’
‘God knows where she’s going,’ said Tarry with great indifference in a tone of deep weariness.
‘She has her hat on,’ remarked Eusebius.
Tarry was worried. Had he injured Joe seriously? The wife was either going for the police or the doctor or both, he feared, but he did not let Eusebius see his mind. It would be best now for him to leave the fence as it was, in case the police might be coming. So he didn’t return to the hedge.
They saw Mrs Finnegan go towards the village by way of the Mass path across the hills. Eusebius took a sudden notion to go back home for something he forgot. Tarry guessed that he was in a hurry home to tell his mother the good news that there had been a terrific row between Tarry Flynn and Joe Finnegan. It was plain to Tarry now that Eusebius had heard and maybe seen the row from beginning to end. He left Finnegan‘s, Tarry remembered, by the front way and had come around by the front of Carlin’s and then appeared on the scene as if by accident.
Tarry stood in the ruins for a few minutes, walking through the nettles and docks and picking at the old mortar near the chimney – in the hope that there might be a secret hoard left there by long-dead misers. Of course he knew that such a hoard was most unlikely, but the idea fed his day-dream of getting very rich. If he could suddenly get rich all his troubles would be solved.
The thought that he had a sack of oats hidden in the old hay in the open shed in the haggard began to get on his conscience. He had been looking forward to selling that sack and having a roughness of money to spend but now such double-dealing seemed unfair to his mother in the battle which she was putting up against the world of Drumnay.
As soon as he went home he promised himself that he’d leave that sack of oats back on the loft.
He put the fork and bill-hook on his shoulder and made for home by the back of Callan’s hills where they ran down to the bottom of Petey Meegan’s garden where the flax-pit separated Drumnay from Miskin. He needed some moral support and even though Petey was a poor sort of man to have as support, the fact that he had had – and probably still had – a notion of Tarry’s sister brought him closer to him than a complete stranger.
The padlock and chain which secured the door of Petey’s dwelling were lying on the window-sill, but Petey was out. Tarry was surprised that the careful and suspicious old bachelor who had reached that particular stage of bachelor queerness that he thought everyone was trying to steal from him should have gone off without locking the door. He was probably not far away, possibly in the field. He looked in the window at the kitchen. A pair of yellow boots hung by their laces on the far wall; a rake stood against the dresser, but for all that Petey’s kitchen was in comparatively good order. Tarry noted that it had a good concrete floor and that there was an excellent clock on the mantle-board. He wouldn‘t be the worst take for a girl, and he would be a useful man to have as a relation, so near at hand if a cow was stuck in a bog hole or anything like that. He whistled to announce his presence, and he was gone off and across the drain and was making up the hill towards the top of the green road when he heard Petey’s short cough at the door of his house. So he returned to get some consolation and advice.
Petey wasn’t too pleased when he heard the story. Joe was his third cousin.
‘He’s a very thick man,’ said Tarry.
‘He’s a hasty man,’ said Petey, ‘but I wouldn’t say he’s a thick man.’
‘I didn’t hurt him very badly anyway. Are you coming over this evening, Petey?’
It seemed that Petey had changed his mind. ‘I might and I mightn’t,’ said he.
‘Well, you’ll be welcome, Petey.’
‘Indeed, I know that,’ he said as if he thought himself the most eligible bachelor in the country.
Tarry left him feeling small enough. As he went up the rushy hill he turned east and could see someone walking about the spot where the row had taken place. It was Joe.
Did he leave something behind him when he fell? Tarry watched and saw the man go backwards and forwards through the gap. He had a mind to sneak back to see what the man was doing, but he had other things on his mind.
Smoke was rising from Carlin’s house; they were getting up. One way of saving a meal.
Tarry gave a last glance towards the place of the battle and there was Joe Finnegan still mooching around like a man who had lost a shilling in the grass. It could be that he was trying to destroy the evidence but if he were he would only make the real truth more obvious. Tarry walked down the hill to his home partly satisfied that he had done his best.
‘What in the Name of God way did you come home?’ cried his mother who was spreading shirts on the line in the front garden. ‘I sent Aggie up to see how you were getting on and she came back to tell me that hilt or hair of you wasn’t to be seen, and that the devil the damn the fence you did.’ She was disappointed and disgusted with her son.
‘But wait till you hear,’ he appealed.
‘Sure, God and His Blessed Mother knows that I’m waiting and I‘m waiting and you’re the same as ever you were. No care about anything only the curse-o‘-God books.’
‘I suppose she didn’t tell you that I was attacked by Joe Finnegan and very nearly killed. She didn‘t tell you that, but she could tell you that I didn’t bush the gaps.’
‘Arra, what?’
He left the tools against the wall of the cart-house with an air of self-pitying pleasure. ‘Only the way I took him it might be a different story,’ he said, looking for sympathy.
‘The Lord look down on us anyway. And may the devil thrapple that big-mouthed Joe that – that it’s no wonder he hasn‘t a man child about his place. Could he have better luck with his five pratie-washers? And the devil a son ever he’ll have. What did he say?’
‘It’s not what he said, it’s what he did or tried to do. Came down rushing at me like a mad bull with the graip in his hand –’
‘Lord bless us, the graip. Bad luck to him. And –’
‘He came through the hedge and made at me. I had to hit him. I hit him the smallest little tip you ever saw and he fell. And that’s all.’
Mrs Flynn rubbed her marriage ring as if looking for inspiration in it. ‘I hope you’re telling me the story right,’ she said, ‘for that man would swear a hole through a ten-gallon pot. If I had me way I’d have sent Aggie up with you and then you’d have a witness, but no – you wouldn‘t let her go with you; you were too much the big fella. That’s the kind of you. And sure, Lord God! what other man but yourself would try to steal the little grain of oats that I was keeping for the hens in the hungry summer. To think that…’
Tarry ran away towards the haggard and his mother’s words followed him: ‘Oh, that’s you all over. You don’t want to hear the truth.’
She followed him and found him wrestling with the sack of oats. ‘Is it trying to rupture yourself you are?’ she said. ‘Can’t you leave it there till we empty a wee lock out of it with a bucket. Lord God! to think of a man trying to leave the hens without a bit to eat in the red raw summer.’
‘Will you give us a breeze?’ Tarry screeched.
But the mother was relentless: ‘And the book in the pocket! Couldn’t go up as far as Carlin’s to put a few bushes in gaps without the book.’
‘I tell you I had no book. I had no book. Do you hear that?’
‘There’s no use in talking to you, Tarry. You’re your uncle all over that the whole parish wouldn’t be able to keep in drink and squandering. Just like you he had nothing big about him but the talk. Did Maggy come out?’
‘No, she didn’t, she didn‘t, she didn’t,’ cried the exasperated Tarry.
When he told her how Petey had taken the news she was still more annoyed. The wireless could not have spread the news more rapidly than the gossipers of the place. It was something to keep boredom away. Tarry could not see the funny side of it at all. Some people said it was because he did not care for anyone but himself, and his own self-critic told him that this was the reason. It is easy to see the beauty and humour of life when one is detached.
Returning from the field where he had been filling spraying barrels with water he found his mother talking to Charlie at the gate. She had just bought two nine-months-old calves from the man and as usual asked her son how much he thought she had given for them. He, as usual, did his best to flatter the animals and his mother’s bargaining powers by putting a high value, as he imagined, on the calves. He thought she had given about eight pounds each, so he said nine.
‘They may let you out, Flynn,’ said Charlie.
‘Exactly,’ said the mother. ‘I often wonder, Charlie, that some people’s not millionaires, they‘re such wonderful people for getting things for half nothing. Change them wet trousers and give us a hand to drive them up to Carlin’s. I have a nicely patched pair of trousers on the crook beside the fire.’
‘Like deal boards with patches,’ complained Tarry when he had put the trousers on.
‘They‘ll do a turn as Micky Grant said about the wife,’ said the mother.
As they were getting ready to drive the calves up to the farm a car appeared at the mouth of the road, and as it purred slowly between the poplars they all knew that it was either a doctor or a veterinary surgeon or someone with bad news. It was Doctor McCabe, a young medical man from the town. Charlie raised his hat.
The mother looked at her son disgusted with his manners. ‘No fear of you being like another and rising your cap to the doctor. Oh, you were too grand!’
Charlie hadn‘t heard of the dispute with Joe Finnegan and Tarry didn’t want to tell him, knowing that he would find out soon enough.
Passing Cassidy’s house they ran into Maggy Finnegan who was carrying a commode which she had just borrowed from Mrs Cassidy; it was an article of furniture which circulated from one sick bedroom to the other in the district.
‘Who the hell can be sick?’ said Charlie.
‘God only knows,’ sighed Tarry.
The doctor’s car was pulled into the grass field alongside the lane leading to Carlin’s and Finnegan’s. Driving the calves past the car they saw the woman rushing ahead of them with the commode under her arm. Jemmy Carlin was standing outside his front door craning his neck in the direction of Finnegan’s.
‘Must be one of the Finnegans,’ remarked Charlie.
When they came to the spot where the row had taken place all the signs of the row, blood and stones and torn clothes on the briars, were on Finnegan’s side of the gap. Charlie noticed it. ‘Must have been murder committed there,’ said he.
Tarry would not tell Charlie the facts because he could not trust the calf-dealer and he was still hoping that the whole thing would blow over.
In a short time they had the gaps all fenced and were contentedly walking away when they saw two well-dressed men coming down the potato field towards the hedge.
‘What the hell must be the matter?’ said Charlie. ‘There’s a lot of activity going on around here… You have two good fields, Flynn.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Tarry said awakening from his tragic reverie.
When they were starting up the van they sighted Larry Finnegan coming along the lane in the direction of his brother’s at a gasping trot.
Charlie tried to stop him: ‘What’s wrong, Larry?’
‘Bad news, bad news,’ he said in a pant without stopping. ‘The brother’s dying.’
‘That’s a terror,’ said Charlie.
Next, Mrs Cassidy appeared carrying a white quilt and a blessed candle.
‘Isn’t it terrible about poor Joe?’ she said.
‘What happened him?’ asked Charlie.
‘Oh the less said about it the better; he was hurt this morning and he’s very bad. The priest was sent for.’
‘Was it a kick from a horse or what?’
‘I don’t know till I go over,’ she said and hurried on, delighted to be in touch with bad news.
That it was nothing but a fake injury Tarry was certain. They wanted to cause trouble and they were succeeding. He had only given the man the slightest little punch and it couldn’t be the fall. No, the whole thing was a fake. The Finnegans like most of the poor people of that district were never ashamed to make a show of themselves. They revelled in a dramatic scene. That was the sort of thing that Tarry always wanted to avoid and which by trying to avoid he now ran into with a vengeance.
The news of Joe Finnegan’s dying condition was the talk of Drumnay, Miskin and the whole parish of Dargan that evening. Some people said that he had fracture of the skull and that a specialist had been sent for. The report that Tarry Flynn had been arrested was also widespread.
Mrs Flynn was in a terrible state as she paced over and back her kitchen floor, crying and beating her thighs and cursing her son. She cried and clapped her hands and broke into the middle of sentences: ‘that me heart’s broke, night, noon and morning with a man that’s always making little of the priests, won’t go to confession or a curse-o‘-God thing.’
The three daughters were trying to pacify her by making themselves very busy – attending to the pots, coming in and going out in a hurry, shutting in the hens, sweeping the floor, washing the vessels.
‘Everything ’ill be all right, mother, wait till you see.’
‘With the oul’ book in his pocket and the fag in the mouth and then to think of him taking the bag of oats. Oh, I wish and I more than wish that I had let him go to hell out of here when he wanted to go… that me heart is as black as your boot with him, the blackguard.’
‘Come on in outa that with you,’ said Aggie to her brother, who during the outburst sat on the shaft of the cart in the cart-house glancing idly through the pages of the Sunlight Almanac.
‘Leave me alone,’ he said.
The dog came in and sat at his feet. The dog was the only animal with Christian feelings in that area. He patted the dog and stretched its ears and as he did he forgot the torture that was ripping up his soul and for one moment looking through the half-open door saw the Evening Star over Jenny Toole’s and he knew – This worry would pass. The grass would reflect the sun tomorrow and the wings of crows would be shadows upon it.
The blackbird began to sing in the bushes behind the shed. His mother’s whine had ceased. Bridie had gone to milk the cows. Tarry lit a cigarette.
Tarry sat by the window sipping his tea without saying a word lest he should start his mother off again. She was leaning over the table at the back window with her rosary beads in her fingers.
Every time footsteps sounded on the road outside Tarry jumped, thinking it might be the police. The police were certain to come it not this evening in the morning. The mother left her place by the back window and went to the parlour where Tarry heard her opening the money box. Shortly afterwards she came up with a ten shilling note which she put in an envelope and said: ‘I’m sending that ten shilling note to the Redemptrists the morrow morning if the Lord spares me. And if this blows over you‘ll have to go to your confession to them.’
Tarry growled but did in his own defeated heart promise to confess his sins and to pray as he never prayed before if he got out of this scrape.
What he was trying to make out now was what he had often tried to make out before – and that was how the most innocent action by him always seemed to have in it the seeds of misfortune. How many times had Charlie Trainor been in rows, had beaten up men in pubs. And Eusebius too, he could get away with anything. Tarry remembered how when they were small boys himself and Eusebius were throwing stones idly at a bottle on a wall and as he flung a stone a cow of Callan’s put her head over the wall and got her eye knocked out.
They had been waiting to hear the doctor’s car coming back, but at nine o’clock there was still no sign, so they came to the conclusion that he went out by the upper end of Drumnay.
‘And now in the Name of God,’ said the mother, ‘let us all kneel down and say the Rosary – for my special intention.’
The mother had Tarry on the run. He knelt down like a child and answered out loudly and never dozed off at all during the prayers.
‘Name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ The mother made the Sign of the Cross with the Crucifix of her Rosary and straightened her back away from the low stool at which she knelt. Bridie was already going up the stairs to bed. ‘Take that vessel up with you,’ said the mother. ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost… Well, now you be to hurt the man somehow, and you didn’t tell me. He‘ll swear you hit him with the slashing-hook.’
‘He must have hurt himself when he fell on the stones; but he couldn’t be too bad for I‘m sure as sure that I saw him after clearing away the evidence when I left. There wasn’t a track anywhere on my side when we were up there this evening.’
‘And why the devil’s father didn‘t you tell me that? Oh, Lord God!’
‘I’m sure there’s damn all wrong with him, mother.’
‘Don’t I know only too damn well that it’s making out he is, but the making out is as bad as anything. He’d like to put us out on the door. I was talking to Molly there and she was telling me that Mrs Cassidy was telling her that there isn‘t a whit the matter with him. But what good is that to us?’
‘The doctor ought to know.’
‘The doctor can‘t tell everything.’
It was morning, and as he walked through the cabbages in the garden while waiting for Bridie to bring home the milk for the breakfast he could not help feeling the gentle cool caress of the cabbage leaves and the dew-wet honeysuckle in the hedge cheering for the lovelier truth that fluttered wings above the mean days.
Considering himself, he found that he had not been seriously hurt in spirit over the trouble with Finnegan, and today he was better prepared to meet whatever challenge came. The snails climbing up the stones of the fence and the rushes and thistles in the meadow beyond seemed to be putting a quilt of peace around his heart.
He went to the village after breakfast to buy the spraying stuff and found the clerks in Magan’s were surprised at his being out of jail. The village blacksmith in for a ‘cure’ came up from the public house end of the shop and told Tarry that if he wanted a witness to stand for him he wouldn’t hesitate.
‘Only pretending to be hurted, that’s all,’ said the blacksmith. ‘You don‘t worry, sham-shiting behind the hedge he is.’
‘Are you sure of that, Tom?’
‘Positive, positive.’
Tarry had gumption enough to remember to stand the blacksmith a drink.
He learned in the village that Mrs Finnegan had been to the police but that they had advised her to prosecute; it wasn’t a case for the police.
Cycling home with nearly a hundredweight of sulphate of copper and washing soda on his back he felt less burdened than if he had no load. His mother was pleased when he told her what he had heard and particularly proud of her son having had the sense to stand the blacksmith the drink. ‘That’s why I like you to have money in your pocket,’ she said, ‘not to be smoking it and wasting it on oul’ books.’