Tarry Flynn

by Patrick Kavanagh

  As he feared, his mother wasn’t long hearing about the tiff. She heard it before the day was ended, though she did not accuse him of it till the day after. She talked as if she were terrified, but for all that there was humour in her terror which she couldn’t conceal.

  ‘What the devil’s father did you say to him?’ said she.

  ‘Not one thing.’

  ‘We’ll be the talk of the country – like the Carlins. Did you hear that one of the missioners was up with them this evening, trying to get them to come out to the Mission?’

  ‘They’re not going?’

  ‘Going, how are you… Give us up that long potstick from the door… O, going, aye! And you’re taking pattern by them.’

  Tarry was disgusted with the Carlins; they were liable to give the impression that having a respect for oneself was a sign of madness. If, in the cause of his self-esteem, he stayed at home from the chapel he’d be put down as a queer fellow. Not that he had any intention of missing the carnival spirit that was to be found around the church these days or of revolting against the Church – he had only intended staying away one evening. He would remain away that one evening – and he did. He ran over to the field to take a last look at a heifer that was due to calve and then went down the road as if he were going off to pray. Eusebius had to go off earlier, he being an official.

  He crossed the hills into Miskin, intending to come out on the railway line. Passing Petey Meegan’s house he saw the crooked old bachelor owner hurrying off up Kerley’s hill on his way to hear more about sex.

  The shadowy lane with the hedges that nearly met in the middle was filled with midges and flies buzzing over cow-dung. Here he was in another world. It was almost a year since he had gone up that lane and it evoked nostalgia. He remembered as a child coming home from second Mass on Sundays with Eusebius by this lane and how fairylike it seemed to him then. Old Petey’s old father used to come out hobbling on his two sticks and like the Ancient Mariner try to get them to listen to his stories of the Sleeping Horsemen who were enchanted under a hill near Ardee. One day they would awaken to fight against the enemies of the Church. It was to be a deadly fight and the time would be the End of the World. There was an apocalyptic flavour about all those stories and the memory of them influenced the heavy-smelling fungi and flowers that grew in the dark ditches.

  A great row was going on in McArdle’s kitchen.

  The four sons were arguing with their father and mother for money. These four sons were all over forty but they were treated as babies by their parents. That may have been why when they appeared at Drumnay cross-roads or in the discussions in Magan’s pub they were so aggressive and spoke with airs of such domineering authority.

  ‘I want a shilling for fags and I’ll have to get it,’ a powerful lamenting voice could be heard.

  A pup screamed and ran under the table.

  ‘Am I made of money? Am I made of money?’ the father cried.

  The mother was now crying quietly and Tarry hurried along, knowing that a family row is a most unhealthy affair for an outsider.

  He had been hoping to run into the youngest of the Dillons. If the truth must be told, he had had his eye on those two young girls for years and was only waiting for them to get big enough. He didn’t suspect that other men had had similar ambitions and even the affair of the earlier evening did not entirely disperse his hopes that they were still safe for him.

  Crossing on to the railway line he was treading down the sleepers when Josie Dillon, who had had three children, came down the slope towards a well. She was smoking a cigarette, which she put out on seeing him. Was the girl afraid of him as of a priest? It looked like it, and he did not want to give that impression of himself, which was, in his opinion, a false impression. Yet the girl might have been right, for on taking a second look at her he knew that he just didn’t associate with that class of person. She was the type of woman whom he often saw in the slums of the town of a fair day.

  To find out about the sisters he would have to speak to her, so he spoke, much to her surprise, for he had often passed her by before with his head in the air. He only said it was a nice evening, and the girl took it for granted that he meant something else.

  ‘Are you coming down the line?’ she inquired.

  ‘Good God! no,’ he said. ‘I’m late for the Mission as I am.’

  He raced up the slope and out of her range as quickly as he could, praying as he ran that nobody saw him. Bad as he was, if he got the name of being seen with one of the Dillons he’d be ruined. Some men could take life easily. Some could dabble in sin, but it didn’t fit into his life. He made a promise to the Sacred Heart that if he hadn’t been seen he would go to the Mission every single evening, and to Confession on the next Saturday.

  When he found out that nobody had seen him – if they had there would be talk – he was somewhat annoyed with himself for making rash promises – but he would keep them.

  The little tillage fields and the struggle for existence broke every dramatic fall. A layer of sticky soil lay between the fires in the heart preventing a general conflagration. The Mission had lifted up the limp body of society in Dargan, but as soon as the pressure was relaxed it fell back again and the grass grew over the penitential sod.

  With Tarry it was different. He believed that of all the people in the parish he alone took religion seriously. Too seriously, for being too serious meant that it was not integrated in his ordinary life. When the ordinary man went to Confession he rambled on with a list of harmless sins, ignoring all the ones that would have filled Tarry with remorse. When Tarry went to Confession that Saturday night he had the misfortune, contrary to his own well-thought-out arrangements, to mention unusual sins.

  The Confessor was the monk he had met on the road.

  ‘What sins do you remember since your last Confession?’ the monk asked.

  ‘I read books, father,’ Tarry replied before he had time to think. He knew at once that he had made a mistake, for that started the monk off.

  ‘What sort of books?’

  Tarry did not want to admit that he only read school books and newspapers and it would appear that he was telling a lie if he didn’t try to mention some books. So he said: ‘Shaw, father.’

  He had read about Shaw in the newspapers, but had never read a line of Shaw’s.

  ‘Have you a Rosary?’ asked the Confessor.

  Tarry had not but he said: ‘Yes, father’ in the hope of getting out of the confessional as quickly as possible. He had made it awkward enough as it was.

  ‘You should read the Messenger of the Sacred Heart,’ said the Confessor. ‘Do you ever read the little Messenger?’

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘Continue to read it, my child; in that little book you will find all the finest literature written by the greatest writers. And give up this man, Shaw.’

  In all he could not have been less than twenty minutes in the confessional and considering that there was a long impatient queue on both sides of the confessional – among whom were Charlie and Eusebius – and that that confessor had the reputation of being very quick and easy – which was why he had such queues waiting to tell their sins to him, no wonder that Tarry’s lengthy period in the confession box caused such surprise.

  ‘Shaw’s a hard man,’ remarked Charlie later, when they were standing outside Magan’s shop. Charlie hadn’t the faintest idea who Shaw was but he thought that by mentioning the name someone might reveal the secret behind it. No one knew, and Charlie was disappointed.

  ‘You were a long time in the box with the priest, I hear,’ said the mother when he got home. ‘Did you kill a man or what?… You’ll have to cut them yellow weeds in the Low Place the morrow and not have the fields a show to the world. What did you say that made him keep you?’

  ‘It’s a sin to tell a thing like that.’

  ‘Whatever you do anyway, I wouldn’t like to think of you knocking around Dillon’s house, not that I’d ever believe you’d
do anything, but you know the big-mouths that’s about this place.’

  ‘You needn’t worry.’

  The Mission came to an end with a brilliant display of lighted candles and the massed congregation of old men and women straightening their bent backs and vowing to renounce the World, the Flesh and the Devil. They promised to control their passions, and Tarry, as he watched the scene of self-abnegation from the gallery, got a queer creepy feeling in the nerves of his face which something that was ludicrous and pathetic always made him feel. Petey Meegan was thumping his breast and looking up towards the coloured window with an ecstatic gaze.

  Old thin-faced, long-nosed Jenny Toole had a frightened look, thinking of the dangers she faced in a world of violent men.

  The crowds went home and once again the clay hand was clapped across the mouth of Prophecy.

  He cut the ragweeds and the thistles the following day. The yellow maggots wearing football jerseys which crept on the blossom fell to the ground. These maggots would become winged if they had lived long enough. Some day he, too, might grow wings and be able to fly away from this clay-stricken place. Ah, clay! It was out of clay that wings were made. He stared down at the dry little canyons in the parched earth and he loved that dry earth which could produce a miracle of wings.

  He thought of Mary Reilly. By a miracle the day might come when he’d have no trouble in getting her – or one even more beautiful. Greater miracles had happened. He hoped that she did not think that he was really responsible for the mauling she got at Drumnay cross-roads, for he wasn’t. Indeed, that was the last thing he would think of doing. It wouldn’t be past Eusebius, for all his talk.

  He would like to be able to warn the girl of the dangers she was going through, warn her of men like Charlie and some of those other slick blackguards who frequented the dance hall and who were such close friends of Father Markey. Ah, please God she would mind herself. He convinced himself that the curate’s brother who sometimes visited Reilly’s with the curate was a decent fellow. A rabbit darted from a clump of bushes and he flung a stone at it, forgetting for the moment his pensive thoughts. Looking through the hedge he saw his field of potatoes and turnips and the sight of them doing so well put every other problem out of his mind.

  3

  Tarry went to the horses’ stable for the winkers. Happening to look into the manger he found a fresh-laid egg. He picked up the egg, cracked it on the edge of the old pot in which the mare got her oats and drank it. It was not that he liked raw eggs but he believed that raw eggs produced great virility. Stallions got a dozen raw eggs in a bucket of new milk every day during the season.

  Standing in the doorway of the stable he felt good and terribly strong. A man is happy and poetic in health and strength. The stable in summer with the dust of last year’s straw on the floor was to Tarry the most romantic place he knew. Sitting in the manger smoking and reading was paradise. But he had work to do now.

  Walking through the meadow in summer was a great excitement. The simple, fantastic beauty of ordinary things growing – marsh-marigolds, dandelions, thistles and grass. He did not ask things to have a meaning or to tell a story. To be was the only story.

  The sun had come out through the haze and the morning was very warm. The cackle of morning had ceased. The songs of the birds were blotted out by the sun.

  Paddy Callan, May’s father, was walking diagonally across the hill beside their house looking a little sadly at his rood of turnips which had failed badly. This gave Tarry much satisfaction. His pleasure did not live long for just then he heard the wild neigh of a mare coming down the lane at Cassidy’s gate and presently sighted the animal. Eusebius was getting some trade for that stallion of his, though Tarry, wishfully thinking, thought that no sane man would bring a mare to such a miserable beast that wasn’t sixteen hands high. Considering that Reilly had a prize stallion, seventeen three in height, at stud less than a mile away this was surprising. Tarry satisfied himself that only bad pays, men with ponies and old mares, would come to Eusebius’ stallion. Flynn’s mare was in foal by Reilly’s sire, although Eusebius had been letting his beast to mares the previous year.

  He caught the mare easily enough, for she was lazy at this time, and led her after him to the stable.

  The harness wasn’t in the best condition. The collar needed lining and the traces were tied with bits of wire in two places. He couldn’t find the hames-strap. Searching for it between a rough wooden ceiling and the galvanized roof he found a torn school reader which he usually enjoyed reading while evacuating his bowels in the stable. He put it in his pocket in case he’d take a notion to read in the field.

  ‘Come home for your dinner about half-twelve,’ said his mother.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And don’t come till we call you.’

  ‘I’ll not come at all if that ‘ill satisfy you,’ said Tarry peevishly.

  ‘Begod there’s a powerful piece of turnips,’ Eusebius was saying as he leaned over a low stone fence upon which moss and briars were growing, and which was the march-fence dividing a field of Cassidy’s from Flynn’s.

  ‘Not so bleddy bad, as the fella said,’ Tarry agreed. The field of two and a half acres was one-third taken up with turnips and the rest, with the exception of three drills of cabbages, with potatoes. Tarry looked across at the drills and the goodness of the crop flowed through the heat of his passionate desiring mind like a cool river. He remembered the damp evening on which he sowed them with love. The dry clay too was so beautiful. As they talked, Tarry’s mind adventured over and back that rutted headland with its variety of wonders. From where he stood to the cross hedge bordering the grazing field. Every weed and stone and pebble and briar all along that ordinary headland evoked for him the only real world – the world of the imagination. And the rank smell of the weeds!

  What is a flower?

  Only what it does to a man’s spirit is important.

  Something happened when Tarry looked at a flower or a stone in a ditch. Sometimes he went with visitors to what were called beauty spots and these fools would point and say: ‘Isn’t that a wonderful scene?’ But these scenes did nothing to him and were not wonderful.

  Eusebius had his elbows on a flat stone as he spoke. He had tackle – hobbles and ropes – on his shoulder as he was on his way to castrate young bulls for someone.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit late in the season for cutting calves?’ Tarry suggested.

  ‘Not at all, the flies didn’t start yet.’

  Eusebius was a marvellous man for trying to pick up loose money in this way. He was always on the look-out for any game that had ready money in it. He also went in for castrating young pigs but he had the name of not being very lucky so that his trade in this line was rather thin. At the time he was also dabbling in smuggling. Then there was the stallion.

  Tarry thought Eusebius a greedy man for the world, and a mean man too in spite of all his gaiety.

  ‘See any women lately?’ Eusebius asked.

  ‘None that counted, anyway.’

  ‘Any word about the Reilly one?’

  ‘I think that all blew over. The Mission killed it. All the same it was a damn mean thing of Charlie to give out my name that night. That was a dirty lousy thing to do. I’ll get that fella yet or I’ll call myself a damn poor class of a man.’ Tarry spoke petulantly, as a weak man. Eusebius crossed the fence and accompanied Tarry down the drill.

  ‘I say, there’s flaming great spuds. You must have shoved on the potash, no matter what you say.’

  ‘Only the hundred,’ said Tarry with an in-drawn breath of self-satisfaction.

  ‘Near closing the alleys. That’s fierce for this time of the year.’

  ‘Easy there, Polly. You’re not in earnest about that, are you?’

  ‘Only what I hear. All women’s as bad as the Dillons if they get the chance.’

  These remarks wounded Tarry very deeply. He wanted to sustain his illusions about human nature. He did not want to believe these
things – until, perhaps, he had had his fill of lust.

  ‘I believe that nearly every girl in this place is a virgin,’ said he, hopefully. Eusebius laughed loudly. ‘Huh, huh, huh. Jabus, you’re a very innocent fella. I’d say there wouldn’t be more than twenty per cent – if there is that.’

  The mare stopped on the side of the hill. Tarry stood with his back to the plough and standing between the handles settling his mind for a good long talk on his favourite theme.

  ‘You’re a desperate man, Eusebius,’ he opened. ‘To hear you talking a person would imagine all the women in your country was blackguards. That’s the kind of Charlie Trainor. Nobody’s out for anything else according to him. After all there’s more than that in it.’

  ‘You might be right, right enough.’

  ‘I’m sure I’m right. There’s very few women like that when it comes to the whipping of crutches. Remember the night we saw him with the Dillon one?’

  ‘Look!’

  ‘Wonder who the devil is it.’

  ‘Might be the bailiffs coming from Carlin’s. They have a betten pad up to them.’ The two boys stared across the fields watching the clear in the hedges at the turn of the Drumnay lane, two hundred yards distant.

  ‘They’ll be sold out before long,’ said Eusebius.

  ‘Indeed they will not, Eusebius; they’re not that far gone,’ said Tarry, who had a greedy notion in his head that they, the Flynns, might be able to slip in and get the Carlins’ place for half-nothing – maybe for fifty pounds. It did not occur to him that Eusebius might have eyesight just as good and maybe better, for seeing through deal boards. It is foolish not to recognize the other fellow as as far-seeing a rogue as yourself.

  In the middle of the conversation Eusebius suddenly remembered that he had business on hand; the chance of making a few shillings always crashed like a stone through the window of his romantic mind, and he was off. His father was just the same, all gaiety and jocosity till it came to business and then he changed his mood altogether.