Tarry’s mind was paralysed by the sight of her. He tried hurriedly to think of something appropriate to say, but decided in the end that the best thing to do would be completely to ignore her until such time as he had some sort of plan. So when they met and she moved up on the bank to let the heifer pass, he gave all his attention to the heifer to avoid having to make a decision, and so he only guessed that she smiled and said, ‘Hello, Tarry.’
She was only about nineteen, nearly ten years younger than he was, but she carried within her what Tarry knew was a terrible power of which she was as yet unconscious.
He didn’t recover himself till he was passing Toole’s house, and then he had begun to daydream all the fine things he had said to her and she to him. So excited was he that he was now thinking his thoughts aloud. Being accosted by Jenny Toole, who came to the entrance to her street and was leaning on a graip watching him approach, he quietly changed his talk into a song.
‘You were at Reilly’s bull,’ she said. ‘Ah, indeed, nothing for some people only the rich.’
Jemmy Kerley was her first cousin.
‘That’s right,’ said Tarry with the suggestion of a sneer. He did not like Jenny Toole, a bitter old maid, and she was one of the few people of whose evil power he was afraid.
Although he was fairly scientific-minded he harboured old superstitions that a bad wish from someone like that could do him – or the heifer – no good. He knew that was all nonsense, but just to be on the safe side – the answer if it did no good could do no harm – he said quietly to himself, directing the remark back at the woman – ‘God bless your eyes and your heart’, which was the traditional remark in cases of this kind.
The summer sun was going down in a most wonderful yellow ball behind the hills of Drumnay. It turned the dirty upstairs windows of Cassidy’s house into stained glass.
O the rich beauty of the weeds in the ditches, Tarry’s heart cried. The lush nettles and docks and the tufts of grass. Life pouring out in uncritical abundance.
Tarry was lifted above himself now in a purer kind of dream. He concentrated on observing, on contemplating, to clean his soul. He enumerated the different things he saw: Kerley’s four cows looking over a hedge near a distant house waiting to be milked. A flock of white geese in the meadow beside Cassidy’s bog. He heard the rattle of tin cans being picked up from the stones outside a door – somebody going to the well for water. But what bird was making that noise like the ratchet of a new free-wheel? He stared through the bushes where the blue forget-me-nots and violets were creeping. No bird was there.
He hurried after the heifer. Passing Cassidy’s house Tarry was suddenly proud of the heifer, and it occurred to him now as it often occurred before how nice and idealistic looking, how gentle-eyed and good-natured were the cattle he reared compared to the wicked-looking ugly beasts Eusebius reared. There was something in it, he imagined.
Mrs Flynn was leaning over the low wall by the gate enjoying the peace of a lovely summer evening when Tarry appeared in sight. She was waiting to have conversations with passers-by.
She rushed to open the gate, saying as they drove the heifer in: ‘Had you much trouble with her?’
‘Plenty,’ said Tarry, to gain sympathy.
‘We’d better put her in for the night and not have the other cows lepping on her. Mary, give us a hand.’
Mary, who was shutting in the sow, grabbed a yard brush and turned the heifer towards the stable door.
‘Well, that’s that,’ said the mother. ‘I hope she keeps.’
Aggie and Bridie were dressed for the road, waiting in the kitchen for May to give them the call.
Tarry tested the tyres of his bicycle which stood outside the cart-house door. His mother followed him and began to speak very confidentially: ‘Petey Meegan sent word the day.’
‘About what?’ said Tarry.
‘He has a notion of Mary. But don’t breathe this to the face of clay. The Missioners must have shook him up.’
Tarry was a little astonished. ‘He’s a bit past himself,’ he said.
‘Arra, nonsense. He’s a good, sober, industrious boy with a damn good farm of land in Miskin. And an empty house. Oh, girls can’t be too stiff these days. they’re all hard pleased and easy fitted.’
‘But he must be well over the fifty mark,’ whispered Tarry devoutly.
‘That’s young enough for a healthy man. And mind you, Mary is no chicken. Only the day I was thinking that she’s within a kick of the arse of thirty. Troth if she gets him she’ll be lucky. The other two are often enough on the road, and the devil the big rush is on them. As Charlie Trainor says, they’re like horsedung, you never walk the road but you meet them. I always say to these here, marry the first man that asks you. There’s only three classes of men a woman should never marry – a delicate man, a drunken man, and a lazy man. I’m not so sure that the lazy man isn’t the worst. Are you goin’ away this evening, too?’
‘Had a mind to go down as far as the New Road.’
‘Surely to God you wouldn’t marry a thing like that,’ said May Callan to Mary Flynn as the two girls gossiped, with the hedge between them, at the bottom of Callan’s hill where May had come to milk the cows. ‘How could you bring yourself to go to bed with a hairy oul’ fellow like Petey?’
Tarry, who was scouring out a bog-hole at the bottom of the garden, from which water could be drawn during the drought, rested on the shaft of his shovel to listen in.
‘That could be got over,’ said Mary, a little pensively.
‘Well, my mother says you must be a shocking fool,’ said May. ‘After all, you’re not that hard up for a man.’
‘I don’t know,’ Mary sighed.
Tarry pulled a wisp of grass and ran it down the shovel shaft to wipe off the mud. This movement must have made the girls aware of his listening presence, for May hunkered by the side of a cow and the sing-sing-sing of milk going into an empty tin can echoed in the evening hollows like a new bird’s song.
‘Might see you later,’ said Mary, who was nibbling at the leaves of the bushes, very worried.
‘I’m not so sure, for my mother is going out,’ said May.
Mary Flynn wandered towards the house and presently was in conversation with Bridie who was cleaning the hen house.
‘You were talking to gabby-guts,’ said Bridie. ‘What had she to say?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
Tarry came up from the bog-hole and stood the shovel by the hen house in case Bridie should want it. ‘Who’s inside?’ he asked.
Tarry found himself staring half-vacantly at his sisters.
Between the three Flynn girls there was little to choose. They were all the same height, around five feet two – low-set, with dull clayey faces, each of them like a bag of chaff tied in the middle with a rope – breasts and buttocks that flapped in the wind. When they were unwashed and undressed in the morning a stranger passing seeing them would hardly be able to say who was who. They were all the daughters Mrs Flynn ever had. They had not advanced with the times sufficiently to change from the old notion of staying about the home until some man came looking for them. Most of the other neighbours’ daughters had gone off, lots of them to be nurses in England, or to become shop girls in local towns or factory workers in the newly established ropefactory in Shercock, but the Flynns had a great desire to be farmers’ wives.
Tarry saw them at the closest range, but he was too close to observe them as anything but sisters.
Mary, who was the eldest of the family, twenty-nine and a year and seven months older than her brother, was the most unattractive of the three. She seemed to be continuously wearing a pout like one with a grievance, yet for all that she was the one most likely to get a husband. Some women who are beautiful bring out a falseness in men, set up complexities which are unfavourable to marriage combines in the tillage country. A man meeting Mary Flynn would be his own natural self – except in the case of such a tragic person as Petey Meegan. And he had made
overtures to Mary which proved to Tarry what he had often considered, that the attraction of the possible is in the end more powerful than that of the unattainable.
It was within the bounds of possibility that all the sisters would eventually get husbands of some sort. In that lay another worry of Tarry’s – The crookedest, oldest, poorest small farmer would be looking for money with a wife; and where in the case of his sisters was even one hundred pounds a piece to come from? He had often mentioned these worries to his mother, and she had always replied: ‘Let them produce the man first and then it ’ill be time enough to talk about money.’
He knew that his mother had a few pounds in the bank all right, but as far as he could make out it couldn’t amount to more than a single hundred at the very outside. He would like to know how much money she really had in the bank. He did remember one day being in the bank with her when a man who had been paid by cheque for cattle wanted to cash it. The bank manager signified that Mrs Flynn’s name on the back of the cheque would do, but she pretended that she couldn’t write her name.
It was on the strength of these few pounds that his sisters were depending, and Tarry did not like it. They should go and try to make a living elsewhere, but when he thought of them sympathetically, where could they go unless to England to be nurses? They were too proud to do that. So there wasn’t much chance of Tarry having a clear house into which to bring a wife. Yet, except when he wanted to make excuses for himself, he admitted in his heart that even if the house were empty he would hardly marry any girl in that country who would be willing to endure the life he could give her.
The ugliness of his sisters was a puzzle to Tarry. How did they come to be so indifferent-looking while he was well above the average of men in the place? The mother said it was from a grandfather on the father’s side – ‘a man that you’d think was reared in a pot,’ she said.
For all their seeming likeness to each other in externals they were quite individual. When Tarry forgot himself sufficiently to let his natural sympathy flow, he saw them as three souls as new and wonderful as individual souls always are.
They surely had their dreams, too. Beneath the conventional cliché which they wore as a defence the bleeding reality of intense life poured its red-hot stream of feeling.
Aggie was the most religious-minded, but all of them had strong faith. In the struggle it was hard contemplating the luxurious ecstasy of God in the fields or on the Altar. Yet they did. Their real devoutness, though they did not know it, was in their faith in life.
Bridie, the youngest, was only twenty-one. She had a wild temper and a sharp tongue. She was mean to her brother on many occasions, and did not fail to make a show of him in front of a crowd on a couple of occasions by charging him with stealing her money which she had been hiding in a flower pot deep down in the clay.
Except on very rare occasions Tarry realized that he did not care for his sisters, and was not worried how they fared in life. His own problems were too pressing.
While the girls were talking and Tarry was thinking, the heavy footsteps, which there was no mistaking, of Petey Meegan could be heard approaching Flynn’s gate. He coughed his usual short cough to announce his approach.
Before he had arrived at the yard gate Mary was in the middle of a savagely belittling speech about him – ‘the dirty oul’, crooked oul’ eejut. It’s saying his prayers he ought to be.’
Tarry was depressed on hearing her opinion of a possible husband. If she didn’t accept him – and by all appearances she would not – there was very little chance of his ever having a free house to bring a woman into.
Not to make the poor old fellow’s welcome seem too freezing, Tarry went towards the gate to say a few words of comfort. As he went he could hear his sister’s repeated – ‘oul’ eejut, oul’ eejut, oul’ eejut’ from the door of the hen house. How pitiful it was to hear an oldish man trying to be young in his talk and actions.
Coming up to the gate he sprightlied up his plough-crookened step and tried to straighten his humped shoulders. He looked any age between fifty and the age of an old oak. He was wearing his Sunday trousers, and this made still more obvious the man’s ancient position.
When he opened up the discussion on a frivolous topic – the previous Sunday night’s dance – Tarry’s embarrassment turned to sorrow for the man. Tarry switched the conversation to what he believed were more appropriate subjects by asking him how his turnips were doing.
‘Who cares about turnips in weather like this?’ said he.
‘I gave a second moulding to my spuds, Petey,’ said Tarry, struggling to swing the discussion.
But nothing could stop Petey from wanting to discuss light romance. The sow trailed through the yard and Tarry pretended to be driving her somewhere, but the man never noticed the animal at all.
In the end there was nothing Tarry could do but invite the man into the house. They sat by the half-dead fire alone for half an hour. The two sisters had slipped in and up the stairs without coming into contact with Petey. The upstairs floor creaked and Petey listened uneasily.
This was one of the most awkward situations Tarry had ever to deal with, and he wished his mother would soon return.
In the end the talk lagged.
‘Well, that’s the way,’ said Petey, which was the phrase he used to smother a sigh.
And Tarry replied, ‘That’s the way.’
Petey took out a packet of cigarettes, though he was a pipe smoker, and a tobacco chewer.
‘You’re getting swanky,’ remarked Tarry, in an attempt to break the deadness.
‘Yes, that’s the way,’ sighed Petey on a different note.
‘That’s the way,’ sighed Tarry back. He got up and put water in the kettle.
‘Where the devil’s these women of ours?’ he said, partly to himself. Petey did not answer. He was sitting with his head between his legs smoking the cigarette in amateurish fashion, one half of it wet in his mouth, while he stared at the tongs.
He rubbed his fingers along the bricks of the arch, and eventually forced himself to gulp: ‘The man that built that arch knew his job.’
‘The Ring Finnegan,’ said Tarry.
‘He was the right smoke doctor,’ said Petey, but without much enthusiasm.
Tarry hung on the kettle and blew up the fire. Then he went to the door to listen for his mother’s homecoming. Not a sign of her. If Aggie was here atself. The only sound he could hear was the soft laughter of his two sisters and May as they went giggling down towards the main road. He was properly in the lurch now.
God, how he wished his mother would come home and take a great burden off his hands. It wasn’t merely the boredom of having to keep a depressed man company, but he wanted to take a quick walk round by Drumnay cross-roads on the off chance of catching a sight of Mary Reilly.
He was worried about that girl as he never had been worried about any of the other neighbours’ girls. His mind overflowed her like a warm tide. He became jittery. He knew from experience that when he wanted anything, like this wanting to wander round by the cross-roads, he would have to wear out his patience. He knew that a man never got anything – while he desperately wanted it. To himself he said a quiet prayer: ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, keep Mary Reilly for me.’
‘I suppose I’m as well be on the move,’ said Petey, rising and stretching himself as if he were bored with it all. ‘As the man said, I have a few things to do, and, like that, I better go before night falls.’
‘Aw, take your time: I have the kettle near boiling.’
‘No, I’m better be going.’
At the doorway he turned: ‘I suppose,’ he said very casually, ‘these women of yours won’t be home for a while?’
‘My mother ought to be home anyway, Petey, and you’re as well wait.’
‘No, sure I can come some other evening.’
And he went.
No sooner had he departed than Mrs Flynn arrived. ‘What have you the kettle on for?’ she asked.
‘The devil thrapple her anyway,’ she said. She hung the umbrella, which she had used as a walking stick, on the side of the wall and hurried about the house. ‘You may as well make a sup now when you have the kettle boiled… Oh, no, I wouldn’t much mind Mary saying things like that. That doesn’t count. If I had to be here I’d tell her something. Yes, hard pleased and easy fitted, that’s what she is. Oh, I saw ones like her before and they’d want a man made for them. Ah-ha, I saw them after and they weren’t so stiff. Oh, wait till she comes home.’
‘All the same she’ll hardly take him,’ said Tarry, resignedly.
‘Be my safe sowl she will,’ said the mother with determination. ‘She’s not going to lie up on me here and a man coming looking for her… The tay is in the wee canister beside the soda… Be me safe sowl she’ll marry him or take the broad road and her health. Wouldn’t go to be a nurse in England like the Cassidy girls. If she couldn’t be trained in Vincent’s in Dublin she wouldn’t be a nurse at all. Wanted me to plank down a darling seventy pounds to get her trained in Dublin – the tinker! Where would I get seventy pounds?… You made this tay too strong. We won’t be able to sleep after this.
‘Do you know what, I’m just after coming down from Carlins and there’s not a blessed thing about the place that Eusebius hasn’t whipped over to his place – the roller that you were always saying you could get and the good reaping mill. Still, if you’d be said by, I have a little plan of me own and if all goes well we might do better than so.’
‘Will they be able to pay the debts?’ Tarry asked.
‘Oh, never, never, never. Sure they’re there and not the slightest bit of worry on them no more than if they were as rich as John Magan. I was putting it on to her about selling the cow – she’s as good a cow on her third calf as there is in the country – and I might as well be talking to the wall. They laughed at me.’
Tarry Flynn Page 7