Tarry Flynn

by Patrick Kavanagh

  Could it be that girls knew that beneath his poetic appearance was primitive savagery and lust? In his innocence that was his surmise then. So he put on yet a further coat of apparent virtue. This made the situation worse, but he did not notice the worsening.

  His own sisters, too, treated him with little respect. One day he struck Aggie with his open palm and knocked her across the kitchen floor – and curiously enough, from that day forward she was the only one who deferred to his masculinity.

  With women in general he was truthful and sincere and would talk philosophy or Canon Law (Canon Law fascinated him, though what he knew of the subject was utter nonsense) to them on the slightest provocation. Women cannot understand honesty in a man.

  He carefully replaced the saddle-harrow and walked to the gate and glanced down the lane.

  ‘… so he said “me hand on yer drawers” says he, and says she… What the bleddy hell are ye listening to women’s talk for?’ It was Bridie who was speaking. May was looking at Tarry with cold indifference, as he thought.

  ‘The birds of Angus,’ he said in a dramatically silly tone.

  Tarry had a number of meaningless phrases which he used to astonish girls with. This particular phrase he had read somewhere. By saying something queer like this he expected to get the attention of the mystery-loving heart of woman. Women thought him a little touched when he made such remarks. This was not the arcanum to which they, were accustomed. He knew it was not the usual aphrodisiacal double-meaning, illiterate joking which a man such as Charlie Trainor was an adept at, but he felt that it ought to be much more effective. It wasn’t.

  And so the girls at the gate separated and Tarry was left – with his dreams.

  He couldn’t go to the town that day, because his two sisters, Aggie and Bridie, were going in the hope of getting a man, and he had to keep an eye on things. It was dangerous to leave a small farm without a steward for a day. Something was liable to go wrong, and then there would be a row with his mother. So all day he had plenty of time to read and smoke. Getting enough money to buy cigarettes was a problem; if it wasn’t for all the eggs he stole and which Aggie sold for him he’d be without a cigarette many a time.

  The day passed.

  Cyclists passed down the lane on their way to the town. The bawl of unsold cattle could be heard as they were being driven home. Tarry was not unhappy.

  Tarry was running a centre in the potato drills. As he was using only one horse to pull the old plough the work was rather bumpy–and in the local phrase ‘in and out like a dog pissing on snow’.

  Was he interested very deeply in his work? In some ways, yes. Although he was trying to compose a verse as he worked he was also thinking with much comfort of the excellent progress his potatoes were making. They were three inches over the tops of the drills, the best spuds in the country. Growing potatoes was a thing he took a great pride in. By merely admiring the buds as they grew he felt that they responded and progressed. Indeed he was sure they responded. Clay climbed in the back of his boots. The plough struck a rock and the handles flew high over his shoulders. Up and down the alleys he went for about an hour in a great hurry. Then he sat on the beam of the plough to dream.

  As he dreamt Molly Brady came down the path on the far side of the dividing stream, towards the well. In one hand she carried a tin can and in the other a long pot-stick. She left the can beside the well and began to search with the pot-stick in the rushes that grew in the swamp; she was looking for hens’ nests.

  Molly was about twenty years old, a soft, fat slob of a girl who appealed to Tarry in a sensual way.

  And for weeks in his daydreams he had been planning an approach to her. He knew the times she’d be coming to the well. Accidental-like he had a large plank lying across the stream for a week or more now – he had it there for the purpose of making a platform when he would be removing the big boulder that had rolled into the stream, blocking the flow of water. Molly’s mother did not get up out of bed these mornings until near eleven. That would be a good time. Among his other arrangements he had two large corn sacks which presumably were for covering the horse when he would be cooling down after a sweat. And now the time had arrived.

  Molly was obviously waiting for Tarry to open the conversation. It was plain that her interest in the hens’ secret nests was merely collateral.

  ‘Hello,’ he called.

  This ‘hello’ conveyed a different meaning from other hellos. In country places a single word is inflected to mean a hundred things, so that only a recording of the sounds gives an idea of the speech of these people.

  This hello had in it a touch of bravado, the speech of a wicked monster making a bid for a woman’s virtue, the consciousness of the wickedness producing a tremulous quality in the tones. Speaking, he felt that the whole countryside was listening to his vile suggestion.

  ‘Hello,’ answered Molly. Her hello was a wild animalistic cry.

  ‘Fierce great weather, Molly,’ said Tarry, going towards the edge of the stream.

  ‘I’m looking for a nest of oul’ eggs,’ said Molly with a pout of bitterness which was aimed at some hens unknown, ‘and bad luck from the same hens how well it’s here they have to come to lay. How’s your mother?’

  ‘Damn to the bother, Molly. They wouldn’t by any chance be laying on this side of the drain. Do you know what it is, Molly, I kind-a thought I saw one making a nest on this side.’

  Molly was standing in the rushes with her legs wide apart and the pot-stick stuck between them, like a witch ready to take off on her broom. Tarry in his mind was crouching nearer his prey. If he could get her out on this side of the stream he would have the battle three-quarters won. But first he had to make his escape sure. If she started to screech what excuse would he make? Would he be able to pass the thing over as a joke?

  Suddenly he realized that this game would take hours to develop. The game wasn’t worth the trouble. That was it; any man could have any woman provided he was willing to be patient. He decided to put the affair off until some other time. Molly would be liable to be visiting Flynn’s house one of these nights and he’d have a better chance if he waited and waylaid her as she went home alone through the meadows.

  As he reasoned to himself – sure, good God, a man would be mad to try a thing like that on in the middle of the day.

  When Molly went on her way and Tarry was halfway up the drill he remembered the technique which always worked in his daydreams. It would work in real life, too, if be had the gumption to put it to the test.

  ‘I’m the two ends of a gulpin,’ he said aloud to himself.

  And all through that day he kept cursing himself for his cowardice.

  At tea-time in Flynn’s the mother was chastising Bridie, and Bridie was not behind-hand in replying in similar coinage. The argument which was well under way when Tarry entered, had been started by Bridie, who accused her mother of going about with a face on her like the bottom of a pot.

  ‘Go lang, ye scut, ye,’ said the mother, ‘how dar ye say a thing like that to me.’

  ‘Oh nobody can talk to you,’ said Bridie with a pout, ‘if a person only opens their mouth ye ait the face off them.’

  ‘The divil thank ye and thump ye, Bridie, ye whipster, ye. Your face is scrubbed often enough and the damn to the much you’re making of it. I could be twice married when I was your age.’

  ‘A wonder ye didn’t make a better bargain.’

  ‘Arra what?’ the mother was rising in her anger, ‘arra what? Is it making little of your poor father – the Lord have mercy on him – ye are? May bad luck to ye into hell and out of it for a tinker that… Go out one of yez and bring in a lock of sticks for the fire… Oh a brazen tinker, if ever there was one. Oh a family of daughters is the last of the last. Half of the time painting and powdering and it would take a doctor’s shop to keep them in medicine.’

  ‘Will ye shut up.’

  ‘I will not shut up. There’s that poor fella there (Tarry) and he didn’t
get a drop of tay and him tired working in the field all day. Go now and put on the kettle, Bridie, and make him his tay.’

  ‘He’ll die, poor chap, if he doesn’t get his tay. Nothing for the mother here only the big fella. There’s no talk of making tay for us when we come in. And we’re doing more than him.’

  ‘What are yez doing? what are yez doing? I don’t see much of your work… How did ye get on the day, Tarry?’

  ‘Nearly finished.’

  ‘Ye shouldn’t try to do a bull-dragging day. Isn’t there more days than years. Listen, listen.’ They all listened to the rattle of the road gate. ‘I hope to the sweet and honourable father,’ gasped Mrs Flynn, ‘that it’s not someone coming in on top of us at this hour of the evening. Whip that kettle off the fire and not have us making tay for him.’

  Aggie took off the kettle, shoved it under the stairs and disarranged the clean tea-mugs on the table. The mother dashed to the door. It was Mrs Callan prowling for her ducks, which were laying out those nights.

  ‘Won’t ye come in and rest your stockings, Mrs Callan?’ Mrs Flynn said, with enthusiastic hospitality.

  ‘I can’t till I get me ducks,’ she said in her sneaky crying voice.

  ‘Would ye let me look into your stable to see if they might be there? I thought I saw them coming this way.’

  Mrs Flynn did not like the suggestion that she was exploiting Callan’s ducks. Indeed this was not the first time that Mrs Callan had come round on a similar errand.

  ‘Troth, the only time, Mrs Callan,’ said Mrs Flynn, ‘that you’d be sure of finding your ducks about our street is when we’re feeding the hens. They are the boys for aiting me hens’ feeding, Mrs Callan, but as for dropping an egg here that’s the last thing they’d think of. Oh, catch them to lay about a stranger’s place.’

  ‘It’s a wonder they’d be coming, then, to ait your hens’ feeding seeing that they have the run of the fields and the bog – the two bogs at that.’

  ‘Troth, there’s damn all nourishment in the fields or in the bogs, Mrs Callan. If that’s all ducks get the devil the many eggs they’ll lay.’ Tarry went to the road gate to see if his neighbour Eusebius was coming.

  The mother called him: ‘Tarry, did ye chance to see Mrs Callan’s ducks knocking about this evening?’

  ‘They were over in our field trying to look for worms in the drills after me about three hours ago. After that I saw them making for Cassidy’s field of oats.’

  ‘Aren’t they the terrible travellers,’ Mrs Callan drawled innocently. ‘It must be the breed.’

  ‘Troth,’ said Mrs Flynn, ‘it’s the breed of everything to look for the full of their bellies, Mrs Callan. The ducks will always come home if they’re sure of getting a feed when they come.’

  When Mrs Callan was gone Mrs Flynn turned to her son: ‘That party never fed man or baste in their life. Even the cats come here and I often take pity on them mewing for a sup of milk. Mane lot of beggars and the consait of them. Why, that young whipster of theirs, May, you’d think she was the lady of the land. With her little black head and her sparrow-legs, ach, she’s not a girl nor a patch on a girl’s backside… Gwan, now, hen, into the house with ye.’ The woman shooed the wandering hen in the direction of the hen-house door. ‘I don’t like a hen that doesn’t go to roost early in the evening; she won’t lay the next day. My, isn’t it a lovely warm evening.’ She gazed up the valley.

  ‘Is that Petey Meegan I see? Another slack gelding. The devil the woman he’ll ever take now.’

  2

  The silly attack on the girl at the cross-roads, though it was a fairly ordinary occurrence, appeared to have set Father Daly thinking – thinking that life in Dargan was in danger of boiling over in wild orgies of lust. And what did he decide to do but make arrangements for a big Mission to the parishioners by the Order of Redemptorists who were such specialists in sex sins.

  Nothing could have appeared more pathetic to Tarry or Eusebius when the news got around. The parish was comprised of old unmarried men and women. For a mile radius from where Flynn’s lived Tarry could only count four houses in which there were married couples with children.

  From a devotion known as the Nine Fridays, Tarry was able to assess the number of old maids in the parish, for this devotion – which he had in his childhood practised – was the old unmarried girl’s escape from the fruitless flower of virginity. On the first Friday of every month these old girls could be seen strolling home from the village church, their sharp tongues in keeping with their sharp noses. Tarry, when he reflected on this devotion, was glad that he had gone through it, for there was a story that anyone who had done so would never die unrepentant. That gave a man a great chance to have a good time.

  The crooked old men sat up and took notice when they heard of the Mission; they began to dream themselves violent young stallions who needed prayer and fasting to keep them on the narrow path.

  Mrs Flynn was glad to hear of the Mission too.

  ‘I hope this’ll stir up the pack of good-for-nothing geldings that’s on the go in Dargan. And you’ll have to go too,’ she said to her son.

  Petey Meegan from Miskin, across the hills, passing Flynn’s house was in wonderful humour.

  ‘I believe that the two men that’s coming are the two toughest men in the Order,’ said he, and his eyes began to dance under his bleary eyelids.

  Old maids like Jennie Toole coming around were filled with the tales of awful things that young men had done to girls in that parish. ‘It takes out,’ she said to Mrs Flynn. She told how a certain girl was raped and another one half raped, while Mrs Flynn clicked her tongue, not looking at all displeased.

  It was a story of life in a townland of death.

  As far as Tarry could gather from his mother’s talk about the Mission, she had hopes that the Missioners’ condemnation of sex would have the effect of drawing attention to it.

  He was paring her corn this morning before going out to finish the moulding of the potatoes when she said: ‘It might stir them up… Easy now and don’t draw blood. You’d never know the good it might do. I was talking to one of the McArdles there and I was telling him that he ought to be getting a woman. “Huh,” says he, “what would I be doing with a woman? I have me pint and me fag,” says he, “and I’m not going to bring in a woman.” You ought to hurry with the praties before the ground gets too dry.’

  He moulded the potatoes that day, his mind lifted to a new excitement by the thought of all the strange girls that would be coming to the Mission. It often worried him that a lot of other men might be as hypocritical as himself. He, when he analysed himself, knew that he went to religious events of this kind mainly to see the girls.

  The clay was running through his mind.

  He gloated over his potatoes and the fine job he was making of the moulding, though he was only using one horse. The clay was staying up nicely.

  Molly came to the well several times that day but he was too engrossed in his work to take much notice of her.

  The Holy Ghost was taking the Bedlam of the little fields and making it into a song, a simple song which he could understand. And he saw the Holy Spirit on the hills.

  With the cynical side of himself, he realized that there was nothing unusual about the landscape. And yet what he imagined was hardly self-deception. The totality of the scene about him was a miracle. There might be something of self-deception in his imagination of the general landscape but there was none in his observation of the little flowers and weeds. These had God’s message in them.

  Filled with mystical thoughts he loosed out the horse that evening, threw the backrope and traces on the beam of the plough and let the mare out on the grass, and then went home to try out his ideas on his mother. In moments like these he was rapt to the silly heavens. Often, as now, he only said outlandish things to his mother to test them. Anything that stood up to her test would stand up to anything.

  ‘Did you get finished?’ said she.

  ‘I d
id,’ he said. He organized his will for a remarkable statement. ‘The Holy Spirit is in the fields,’ he said in even cold tones. He was unemotional, for these strange statements did not lend themselves to any human emotion.

  The mother who had one shoe off and her foot on a stool did not seem to have heard. ‘There’s a curse o’ God corn on that wee toe and it’s starting to bother me again. I think we’ll have a slash of rain. Get the razor blade and pare it for me.’ He held the foot between his legs like a blacksmith shoeing a horse. ‘Easy now,’ she cried, ‘and don’t draw blood. Easy now, easy now. The Mission’s opening next Sunday week, I hear. Aggie, run out and don’t leave any feeding on the hens’ dishes for Callan’s ducks. Have you the pea out?’

  ‘I have.’

  After a while she quietly asked:

  ‘What was that you said about the Holy something?’

  ‘I said the Holy Spirit was in the fields.’

  ‘Lord protect everyone’s rearing,’ she said with a twinkle that was half humorous and half terror in her eye. She knew that there was no madness on her side of the house – that was one sure five – but –

  ‘Is it something to do with the Catholic religion you mean?’

  ‘It has to do with every religion; it’s beauty in Nature,’ he said solemnly but also dispassionately.

  It was a mad remark but it was said by a very sane man.

  ‘You’ll have to go to this Mission every evening, Tarry. I don’t want to have the people talking, and it’s talking they’d be. The last time there was a Mission in this parish…’ She put her finger to her lip and began to consider… ‘How many years ago would that be? It’s either ten or eleven… the devil a go the Carlins ever went and their luck wasn’t much the better of it… Did you scrape the dishes clane, Aggie? Oh, they had the devil’s luck. You made a great job of that corn. I hadn’t a foot to put under me.’