Foggage

by Patrick McGinley

  Snoddy was an unprepossessing bugger. Small and thin with lank jaws that showed through his black stubble, he had the eyes and mouth of a frightened frog. The eyes stood out as if threatening to forsake their sockets, and the skin under his chin, which hung loosely like a gobbler’s wattles, inflated and deflated when he swallowed. As he always swallowed between sentences, the process of inflation and deflation and the corresponding up-and-down movement of his Adam’s apple were never ending. In addition, he was unclean in his habits. His fingernails were dirty, and his black hair, for lack of washing, lay flat and thick on his crown like lodged wheat after a rainstorm. His clothes shone with the glazed grime of a dozen seasons, and the holed sweater which he wore beneath his jacket looked the worse for having been used as a hand towel after meals. But what Kevin noticed most was none of those things but his small white teeth with gaping interstices between.

  His table manners were far from being his greatest social asset. He ate with lips apart so that you could see the unchewed food between his teeth, and in his haste to gorge himself he refused to acknowledge that his knife and fork had been manufactured for different functions. After the first day Kevin decided that Snoddy had more in common with certain four-footed animals than with himself. By careful, though not objective, observation, he discovered that if Snoddy swallowed a mouthful of food before starting a sentence, it would miraculously reappear in his mouth at the end of it. This could only be explained as a form of rumination, a chewing of the cud. He would then proceed to chew the bolus he had previously swallowed before embarking on another sentence, which showed at least an unerring appreciation of where one sentence ended and another began. However, what interested Kevin most, and might also interest a zoologist or a vet, was that he chewed quickly with the same sideways movement of the jaw as a wether, not with the slow deliberation of a bullock.

  The idea of Snoddy having several stomachs fascinated Kevin so much that he was soon led to wonder about his food conversion rate. Kevin once had a bullock that achieved a liveweight gain of 3.97 pounds a day over 400 days, but Snoddy was hardly in that league. He was clearly an inefficient feeder. For dinner he would demolish six thick slices of beef without mustard, a piled-up platter of parsnips and turnips and perhaps over six pounds of potatoes. Yet he was as thin as a rake. Though his conversion efficiency rate was low, it was possible that he would give a surprisingly good result in the abattoir. A high growth rate wasn’t everything. Lean meat and a high kill-out at slaughter were equally, perhaps more, desirable.

  Kevin observed him closely with Maureen, but in his conversation he could find no hint of nostalgia for the girl who had forsaken him because of the Lad in the Corner more than twenty years ago. He would look at her sadly with frog’s eyes, lick his lips like an anteater, and deliver himself of wise sayings with the detachment of a man who doesn’t believe in them. Maureen watched television in the evenings, but Snoddy scorned the little screen, which, he said, reduced everyone to the level of cattle ticks—all parasitic receptivity. When Kevin demanded to know if these ticks produce red-water fever in the television comedians on whom they feed, Snoddy buried himself in The Leinster Express and refused to be drawn. He was a tireless reader of newspapers, especially local newspapers, and it was one of his axioms that a newspaper, no matter how old, is new if you have not read it before. He was a good farmhand, though. And to some extent that made up for the sense of unease with which he filled Kevin in his own kitchen.

  After two weeks Maureen told Kevin that Snoddy had made a pass at her in the dairy.

  “What kind of pass?” he asked, aware of the morbidity of his interest.

  “He put his arm round me like that when I was mixing the hens’ feed, and then he kissed me on the back of the neck.”

  “What a strange place to kiss a woman. Do you think he’s all right?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “When I pretended not to notice, he put his hand up my skirt.”

  “And did you notice then?”

  “I told him to remove his hand or I’d give him a good goosing.”

  “I think it’s time I ’discovered’ you both in bed together. When you’re ready, let me know the day. I’ll say I’m going into Killage for something, but instead of going all the way to town, I’ll turn at Quane’s gate and drive back after fifteen minutes. By then you’ll both be in bed. I’ll tiptoe upstairs and solve our little problem.”

  “Do I have to go to bed with him?”

  “Yes, but you don’t have to go the whole hog if you don’t want to.”

  “But if I don’t go the whole hog…”

  “Do what you think most enjoyable, because that is what will vex you least.”

  Two days later, after a wink from Maureen, he said that he was going into town for a new battery for the tractor. It was a bright, cold day at the beginning of February, and as he drove down the lane with mischievous joy in his heart, he felt the flutter of youthful excitement, as if life were well worth living, as if he had recovered the sense of immortality he used to feel in springtime at eighteen. The young buds were red and green on the hedges, and a watery sun struck through a cloud at the flat head of Slieve Bloom. He switched on the car radio and laughed as he heard his favourite ballad singer rendering:

  “O, I will and I must get married

  For the humour is on me now.”

  As he turned at Quane’s gate, Elizabeth came down the drive with her big black Labrador at heel. In sudden confusion, he raised his hand and she signalled to him to wait.

  “I was going into town for a new battery when I discovered that I’d forgotten my wallet,” he said, somehow constrained to explain his appearance at her gate.

  “So you’ve got to go home again?” She smiled. “If you like, you can borrow the money from me and pay me back next time you’re passing.”

  Her talk was so unlike Murt’s, so alien in its perfection, that he felt he must escape before he exposed the black core of his heart.

  “It’s all right. It will only take me five minutes to nip back home.”

  “I’m sorry about the way I behaved over Murt’s death. I wasn’t myself under the shock.”

  She was standing with her ringless hand on the door handle of his car. As he noted the big brown buttons of her herringbone overcoat and the sad face of her bitch Labrador, he wished that he had turned at Lalor’s.

  “Grief does strange things to us all,” he said.

  “Will you come up to the house for a minute? I’ve got something to show you.”

  He got out of the car and walked with her up the drive, aware of her strong, flat shoes—nurse’s shoes—and the upward tilt of her chin. Her features were clean-cut rather than softly pretty, and her straight back hinted at reserves of character and the lack of self-knowledge that often accompanies self-will. She took off her overcoat in the hallway to reveal a tight-fitting blue skirt and jacket with a frilly white blouse underneath. He sat at the kitchen table as he used to do when Murt was alive, and she came back from the parlour and laid an official-looking document on the table before him.

  “It’s Murt’s will,” she said. “He made it six months before he died, a strange thing for a young man to do. It was as if he had sensed that he wasn’t long for this world. He left the land and the house to me, and he left you the right to walk in the Grove whenever you take the vagary. There’s the clause. Read it yourself and see.”

  She went to the dresser and, without asking him, poured him a glass of ale and a schooner of dry sherry for herself.

  “He was a deep man,” she said, sitting down opposite him. “But you knew him well.”

  “We were friends.”

  “He was an intelligent man, but he never talked about anything except farming. That’s why I used to make fun of you both about early bite and back-end grazing.”

  “We realized that.”

  “What did you and he talk about when you were alone?”

  “Farming.”

  “Anything else?”


  “The weather—but only when it was bad.”

  “And you still were the best of friends. I remember how he once said that though you were a hard worker no one ever saw you in a hurry.”

  “He was a hard worker himself.”

  “When I was in Dublin, I used to send him books about farming. They’re still on a shelf in the parlour.”

  “He never told me that.”

  “You can borrow them if you like.”

  “I’m not much of a reader.”

  “Did he ever talk about his girl friend—what’s her name?”

  “Polly Nangle. Only once to say that she had told him about the pH of soil.”

  “Maybe he went out with her because of her knowledge.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  He felt as if he had fallen under a spell, as if he had some precious knowledge unbeknown to himself which only Elizabeth could bring to life in him. He took a long, slow sip from his glass, wondering what he or she would say next. The clock was ticking on the wall, the cat was asleep on the settee, Billy Snoddy was tumbling Maureen, and he felt stuck to his chair.

  “How are you coping with the farm?” he asked.

  “I have a good foreman, John Noonan, but I keep an eye on him. I feel I shouldn’t leave anything to chance.”

  “I’d be only too pleased to help if I could.”

  “If I’m ever in doubt about anything, I’ll know where to go.”

  She got up and placed her empty glass on the drainer by the sink, breaking the spell that bound him. He hurried to the car and drove back furiously to Clonglass. As he came through the second gate, he saw Snoddy leave the house with the peak of his cap turned backwards.

  “You eejit,” yelled Maureen when he entered the kitchen.

  “I went down to Quane’s to turn, and I had to change a wheel at Sheridan’s on the way back.”

  “You’re steeped in luck, aren’t you?”

  “You lay with him, then?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you do the bold thing?”

  “I’m not tellin’. I don’t think it’s good for you to know.”

  “I must know. Are you in the clear or not?”

  “I’m in the clear.”

  “I could catch you both tomorrow if you like.”

  “Once is enough.”

  “You don’t sound like a satisfied customer.”

  “He was out of practice. He came too soon.”

  He strode out of the kitchen with a sense of outrage. Hearing that they had done the bold thing washed over him like gentle river water, but the knowledge that he’d come too quickly pummelled and winded him like an Atlantic roller off the coast of Clare. He avoided Snoddy all afternoon and had his tea in silence while Maureen reminisced and Snoddy indulged his taste for antiphonal conundrums.

  “I think the young people of today miss all the fun of growing up because they can do anything that comes into their heads,” said Maureen.

  “But they soon find out that anything is nothing,” said Snoddy.

  “When we were growing up,” said Maureen, “it took a week of cajolin’ and slootherin’ to get permission out of Mammy to go to a dance. But if it weren’t for her, God rest her soul, neither Concepta nor myself would ever have had a date, because His Dotage upstairs couldn’t bear the thought of a man putting his hand up his daughter’s skirt.”

  “It’s a wise man who knows the contents of his daughter’s drawers,” said Snoddy.

  “I was lucky in a way,” Maureen continued. “Concepta was younger than me, but Mammy trusted her because she wouldn’t be seen dead with a farmer. And since the only men around were farmers, Mammy knew that as long as I stayed with Concepta I’d be safe. She let us go to one dance a week provided we went to confession on Saturdays, but a week is a long time if you’re fifteen and dying for a squeeze. That’s why I’d use the cows as an excuse to get out of the house. In summer I used to drive them from the moor every evening at six for milking, and then I used to drive them back at eight. That was my opportunity of the day. I used to nip down the road to Dooley’s Cross to see if Robert Kirwan was waiting, but I could only stay twenty minutes in case His Dotage discovered I was missing. On Sunday nights Mammy would let us go to the dance unbeknown to him. We would pretend to go to bed, and then we would throw our good clothes out the bedroom window, climb down the drainpipe, and change in the turf shed behind the house. When we came back after midnight, we had to make sure that Daddy didn’t see us. Mammy would leave the parlour window open for us, and if Daddy was still up she would ask him to go out for a skib of turf so that we could sneak upstairs while his back was turned. Concepta never did any business at dances, but I always made hay while the moon shone, and Concepta would stand like a policeman ten yards away saying every five minutes, ’Whatever are you doing now, Maureen?’”

  “It was a life of innocence,” said Snoddy. “A squeeze was worth a herd of cattle, but now the whole hog isn’t worth a fart. We’re all victims of sexual inflation, and the worst hit are those on fixed incomes.”

  Kevin covered his beef with mustard and said nothing. He had told himself that he did not give a damn about Maureen and Snoddy, but he was hurt by the discovery that he knew so little about himself.

  After dinner the following day, he went upstairs to turn his father in the bed.

  “Have you ever heard the saying ’three acres and a pig’?” the old bugger grunted.

  “I’ve heard of ‘three acres and a cow,’” said Kevin.

  “No, that’s an English phrase, but ’three acres and a pig’ is Spanish. It was invented by no less a Spaniard than De Valera. You see, he was going to divide all Ireland into two provinces. In one of them he was going to put all the Catholics with three acres and a pig apiece, and in the other he was going to put all the Protestants with three acres and a horse.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” said Kevin.

  “To give him his due, it was good politics. Pigs, you see, breed more quickly and grow faster than horses, and his intention was that the Catholics would get richer and richer and the Protestants poorer and poorer, because a sow will drop a litter of twelve or more twice a year whereas a mare will take eleven months over one foal. Do you see the low Mediterranean cunning of the bastard? Oh, it was not by accident that Michael Collins got shot in the back at Beal na Blath.”

  “I’ve never heard of that either.”

  “What did they teach you in school? You see, De Valera had pigs on the brain. It was pigs, not the treaty, that was behind the Civil War. De Valera believed in dry feeding, but Griffith, Collins, Duggan, Barton, and Duffy were all skim-milk men. The unanswerable question is whether the five of them were plenipotentiaries or just delegates, but if you want to know the answer I’ll tell you.”

  “I left the kettle on the hotplate. I must take it off before it boils dry.”

  He went to the door, but his father’s phlegm-muffled voice still held him. “When are you going to take a woman to yourself?” he demanded.

  “Any day now, Daddy. I’m only waiting for Miss Riche-ffrench O’Carroll.”

  “It’s not natural for a man to live alone. Even Dev took a woman to himself, and he was the most unnatural man that ever batted an eyelid. Though he looked like the devil himself in a black overcoat—Devilera was no nickname—he managed to lure a woman to his bed, a wee fairy of a thing with a scared look, but a woman with a woman’s accoutrements for all that. Now, that’s more than you’ve done. All you’ve ever ridden is the bloody mare, and I’ll bet you never rode her bareback—”

  “I can hear the kettle boiling over.”

  He hurried out of the room and bumped against Maureen, who looked as if she had been eavesdropping.

  “He’s gone soft in the head, the oul’ divil. He’s now saying that Dev murdered Michael Collins.”

  “You know what the doctor said. We mustn’t contradict him.”

  “I didn’t contradict him. I just bit on the bulle
t.”

  “Never mind him Kevin. With any luck he’ll be joining Dev and Collins very soon.”

  She put an arm round his waist and led him into her bedroom. “I’m in a bad way, Kevin.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure to catch you at it next time.”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I’m dying for a rub of the relic. I’m so far gone that even a rub would do.”

  To unzip his reliquary was the last thing he wished for, so he sat on the edge of the bed, seized by physical and mental exhaustion. He wanted to walk out of the house and forget about his reprobate of a father, his whore of a sister, and the evil-smelling Snoddy. He wanted to walk down the lane and into the Grove, sit in silence under a tree, and look at a blue sky through black branches. Playfully, she pushed him back on the bed and began to undo his shoelaces.

  “What about Snoddy?” he asked in sudden inspiration.

  “He went down the lane whistling ten minutes ago.”

  “And what was he whistling?”

  “I meet a maid in the greenwood shade at the dawning of the day.”

  “You’ve made him a very happy man,” he said as she pulled off his trousers.

  They lay in each other’s arms for ten minutes while the cold bed thawed.

  “Where is it?” she asked as she rummaged in his underpants.

  “Don’t rush me. I’m always slow to start in cold weather.”

  She kissed him with the inside of her lips, drawing his tongue into her mouth, where it was immediately set upon by her own. Their tongues were like gamecocks, darting and retreating and rising again to the attack, but still he could not take his mind off the maid in the greenwood shade and the whistling of Billy Snoddy.

  “He doesn’t have to dance a jig,” she said. “She’s so far gone that if you lay him against her it will be enough.”

  The bedroom door creaked, and the lean face of Billy Snoddy seemed transfixed for a moment on the jamb.

  “I’m afraid I’m late,” he said and closed the door, his high-pitched voice rising in song: