Tarry Flynn

by Patrick Kavanagh

  Tarry wished his mother would not be so mysterious about her plans. If she took him into her confidence she might find that he was as cute a businessman as anyone else. But she would tell him nothing. She was treating him as an irresponsible person and that wasn’t good for him.

  ‘You’re not going out at this hour of the evening, Tarry?’

  ‘I’ll not bother me head,’ said Tarry. He knew it was too late. He was easy. Mary Reilly would be home by now. He walked through the yard full of a great loneliness. Everybody was happier than he. The quiet night falling and the Evening Star and the young Moon and the sighing fields made him feel a queer sadness. There was something in him different from other men and women. He always did the peculiar thing, one peculiar thing which yet he could not define, which spoiled his chances of happiness.

  In his self-pity he said to himself: I have to carry a cross. He did not want to carry a cross. He wanted to be ordinary. But the more he tried to shake the burden free the more weighty did it become and the more it stuck to his shoulders. His mother came out to the corner of the yard, listened for a while at the horses’ stable door, then took the poe which had been an-airing in the fork of a bush beside the dung-hill and returned to the house. The bats flew over Tarry’s head. From the main road came the loud laughter of boys and girls.

  ‘Do you hear Bridie?’ said the mother from the doorway. ‘She’ll be heard where she won’t be seen.’

  While the mother was getting ready to say her prayers Tarry took a candle and went upstairs to a corner of his bedroom and sitting on the edge of the bed took a writing-pad and began to write verses. Yards and yards of despair he wrote about his love for Mary Reilly.

  O God above

  Must I forever live in dreams of love?

  Must I forever see as in a glass

  The loveliness of life before me pass?

  The table at which he sometimes wrote was the remains of an old sewing machine, covered with dust and grease and candle-grease. The room was a typical country bedroom, its walls covered with holy pictures. Reading about artistic things Tarry had once suggested to his mother that they should take down all those ugly pictures. She thought him the most atrocious black-guard: ‘Is it them splendid pictures? Why there’s three pictures there and the likes of them is not in the parish. I bought them second-hand and gave fifteen shillings apiece for them in Mick Duffy’s last Easter was eight years. Troth and sowl they’ll not be shifted while I’m here.’ She didn’t stop at that but drove the matter home: ‘The pictures you do be talking about are like the bottle of wine. Yes, talking about giving five pounds for a bottle of wine.’

  Tarry often regretted ever having mentioned the pictures or the bottle of wine. He had only read that there were rare wines which were sold at very high rates, and mentioned the matter to his mother. She threw it in his face at every opportunity.

  The ghosts of night came in the uncurtained windows, and Tarry grew a little afraid. Afraid of his father’s ghost. It was in this room his father died less than five years ago.

  While his father lived he often told him that he’d never be afraid, but his father said that we would be afraid to see our nearest and dearest. The flickering candle added to his nervousness. His mother starting her evening prayers might have added something more eerie still to the atmosphere – but it was a human voice near.

  He couldn’t think while she prayed:

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us… cat, down out of that and don’t be trying to lift the lid of that can… sinners now and at the hour of our… Tarry, come down out of that… death, Amen.’

  4

  For several days and even weeks the mother was able to see some good in books and dreaming. Wasn’t it Tarry’s romantic talk with Petey Meegan which had excited that man to want to make a liaison with the Flynns? For all that she was sometimes dim to the sense of it all and said so.

  ‘I can’t see anything in it at all. What does it mean?’

  ‘What does anything mean?’ was his answer. ‘What does Drumnay and Miskin and Dargan and the work day after day and year after year mean? Does that ever occur to you? Are any of these people going anywhere except to the grave?’ For a moment he laid bare the myth of living and was filled with remorse for his sin. That was a real sin – to tear up the faith and show nothing but futility.

  He did not need to have been so troubled, for life defending the wound of Reality flowed over it, and the warm blood was no longer exposed to the harsh light.

  The mother’s depression soon lifted and she was being swept along in the shouting, forgetful throng of people.

  ‘If this Mary one goes they may all go,’ she said as she moved the curtain aside to look towards the main road.

  ‘It’s a fact,’ said Tarry contentedly. He was kneeling by the fire heating a piece of iron.

  ‘Bedad, there’s someone coming in from the Big Road,’ said the mother, ‘it’s… come here you that has the good eyesight. It’s the process-server going up to Carlin’s. Where’s me clean apron till I go out and talk to him.’

  It was the process-server all right.

  He was a very friendly fellow, on terms of good will with all the people in the districts through which he operated. He was never averse to letting anyone read through his bunch of civil bills and summonses. Now he was running his thumb through the pink documents like a bank man counting pound notes while Tarry and his mother listened with their mouths open.

  ‘There’s one for Joe Connolly of Lisdrum and here’s another for Jack Hamill, and…’

  ‘Musha, what’s the matter with Joe Connolly?’ asked the mother. ‘Sure, he’s one of the best-off men in the county. I saw him in the market last Wednesday week.’ The process-server was running through the documents for the most interesting ones… ‘I had one here somewhere… Joe is in trouble over a girl. The father is suing him for seduction.’

  ‘Ah, you’re a liar, Tommy! That man’s sixty if he’s a day, and he has a family of grown boys and girls of his own. I wouldn’t even it to him.’

  ‘There you are now, ma’am; it’s hard to be up to the men that’s going these days. I had one here and whatever the damn devil happened to it. Ah, here she is. Have a look at that one.’

  ‘For Father Daly!’ said the woman in amazement. ‘That bates the little dish. That’s a terror. Fifty pound in debt! The parish priest! Who’d think that?’

  ‘He’ll not let it go to Court… Good evening, Eusebius,’ said the process-server. While they were talking Eusebius dashed up the road on his bicycle without a word.

  ‘What hurry can be on him?’ said the mother.

  ‘I saw a mare going up to the stallion,’ explained Tarry.

  ‘It’s late in the season for a mare to be going up,’ said the mother.

  ‘I better hurry after him,’ said the process-server, throwing his leg over his bicycle.

  ‘To Carlin’s you’re going, I suppose?’ said the mother.

  ‘I have three bills for them the day – one for Tom and two for Jemmy – and sure, like that, I have orders to seize for the past five years. I don’t like to lift the cow. This Eusebius up here is grazing the ground but you’d never catch a beast of his on the ground, though I could have taken a pair of bullocks once. And would you believe me, Mrs Flynn, he never as much as said thank you. No, a mean man.’

  ‘Mean is no name for him, Tommy,’ said the mother. ‘Would you say would any greedy devil buy the place on the quiet, Tommy?’

  Tommy thought that it was quite possible. He heard that a couple of offers had been made for the farm, but he couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Wouldn’t they ait you for land round here?’ said the mother.

  ‘Ait is right,’ said the process-server.

  ‘What do you think of that?’ said she to her son, when the process-server was gone.

  ‘He lives high,’ said he, thinking she was referring to the parish priest.

  ‘Ah, you’re the slackest man I ever met. You coul
dn’t see that Eusebius was bursting himself to clear his cattle off Carlin’s when he heard the process-server was coming.’

  She walked through the street musing: ‘Some fine day some cute boyo will slip in and buy that place of Carlin’s over all our heads. Oh, as sure as sure can be. Take the cans and go to the well for water. Yes, as sure as sure as sure.’

  For a while that problem took a rest and the other one of Petey Meegan’s proposed alliance with the family cropped up. Petey came down later in the evening and left two baskets of dirty eggs to be collected at Flynn’s by the higgler whose van passed that way every Tuesday evening. It was a good excuse.

  Tarry was forced to stay in to keep the old fellow company and to drug his mind with learned talk. The daughters invariably disappeared on Petey’s arrival, which was rather unsatisfactory.

  There seemed to Tarry to be something unhealthy in the visitor’s surrender to the drone of conversation. For all Petey’s crude appearance there was a feminine quality in him which in its yielding way was having a very deleterious effect on Tarry’s mind.

  He mentioned the matter to his mother and she laughed. ‘You want to get away, that’s all. What could be queer about him?’

  Tarry didn’t know. ‘But why doesn’t Mary stay in an odd time atself?’

  ‘Troth, she’ll have to in future,’ said the mother.

  The next evening Petey surprised Mary in the house and began to joke with her. She was cruel.

  ‘Ha,’ said he, ‘I hear you have a fella from the town these days.’

  ‘Shut up, you jack, you,’ said Mary.

  Petey smiled faintly and Tarry knew that he was adjudging that the girl’s abuse was a good sign.

  ‘Can’t you be dacent for once?’ said the mother. ‘And another thing, don’t be always going down the road or yous ’ill get a bad name. Petey, you mustn’t mind these young ones, they have no sense. How is your turnips doing?’

  Like this they talked. Mary left and Petey tried to accompany her to the gate, but she left him standing with his mouth half open, speechless.

  The mother made tea for the suitor which he drank with even a louder smack than was usual on the Drumnay side of the hills.

  That fared very well. No business was transacted that evening and it did not seem that any business would ever be transacted. But the next evening didn’t the brave Petey arrive, accompanied by one of the McArdles and with the old-fashioned bottle of whiskey in his pocket.

  On the first sight of them Mary whipped out the gate and away down the road. This didn’t deter the spokesman, who began to sing the praises of Petey. Tarry remembered with traces of laughter some of the speech:

  ‘Here is none of your fly-the-kites, Mrs Flynn. He could go where there’s more money but he’s not looking for money. Good men aren’t got on the tops of the bushes these days. He has fourteen acres of what-you-might-call good land – with a drink in every field. He doesn’t owe a penny piece to any man. He only lives across the hill and if ever you wanted a turn done you wouldn’t be stuck.’

  He said a lot more in a sing-song voice as though he had learned it off by heart. The mother agreed that he was as good a take as any girl could want ‘in these bad times’.

  ‘Or in any times,’ said the spokesman.

  ‘Whatever you say. But what’s the use of talking. Can I make her marry the man?’

  Next thing the spokesman delivered his piece belittling the girl, which was a traditional part of the argument. ‘It won’t stop her growing,’ said he. ‘Mind, I’m not saying she’s ould, but it’s time she was getting a man. I don’t want to make little of any woman’s daughter, but amn’t I saying what’s right? What are you going to do about it?’

  ‘What can I do about it?’

  ‘Surely you can drive in the heifer?’ said he.

  ‘Like oul’ hell I can drive her in,’ said the mother.

  Petey kept his mouth – in the words of the mother, ‘as tight shut as a crow’s arse,’ throughout this discussion. There he sat as pleased as could be, imagining that he was deeply involved in life. This would be something to talk about – the time he went looking for the wife in Flynn’s. The mother took a doubtful view of the man’s sincerity and agreed with Tarry that there was something unnatural about the man.

  Having extracted some food for his ego from the proposal Petey withdrew a distance from the scene for awhile.

  Bridie and Aggie went to Lough Derg on pilgrimage.

  ‘I hope they get something out of it,’ said the mother.

  Lough Derg pilgrimage was no longer a place where sinners went to do penance, but almost entirely made up of three classes of suppliants: First, girls with – as Tarry observed – long noses and flat chests went to pray for husbands; then shopkeepers who had sons and daughters at school and college went to pray that these would pass their examinations; the third class were those who went to pray for health, for themselves or their relatives.

  Before going off the mother had asked them to pray for a ‘special intention’ of hers.

  The mother was out at the gate talking to Charlie and when she came in she was agitated. She poked with the pot-stick for her best shoes under the table and brought the polish down from the mantle-board.

  ‘Had a mind to go as far as the town the morrow,’ she said in an urgent manner.

  ‘Good God!’ said Tarry.

  He was too busy at that moment watching the movements of Molly as she crossed the field beyond the meadow to gather the full meaning of his mother’s anxiety. Another day dawned.

  The mother was dressed for the town. She came out into the street walking with her umbrella and lingered thoughtfully a moment as if she had forgotten something.

  Her son was greasing the cart outside the carthouse, dreaming over the fine job he was making of it.

  ‘Don’t forget to clean that drink for the cattle in the Low Place,’ she said, ‘there was a green scum on it that was a total dread the last time I saw it.’

  Tarry leaned his chin on the top of the red dashboard and was looking into the body of the cart admiring the new sheeting. That cart was as good as the day it was made four years ago. It wasn’t a small cart but it was as handy a cart as ever was made, the sort of cart that you could bring to the town and not be ashamed of. He had the seat-board under the heel at the back so that one of the wheels was off the ground.

  He plastered on the black grease with a table knife and then dropping the knife on the ground shot the wheel in on the axle. The sun glanced over the top of the front-board.

  ‘Don’t leave that knife there behind you,’ said the mother.

  ‘Don’t you know very well I won’t?’ he snapped.

  ‘And you might clean out them hen houses and whitewash the roosts; the roosts need to be whitewashed once a week in the summer. I better be going.’

  She went out the gate. ‘You might wish me luck,’ she said.

  ‘I did wish you luck,’ he said, ‘but just to satisfy you, “Good morning and good luck”.’

  ‘Thank you, and mind yourself till I come back. And keep this gate shut, Tarry, I see that hungry sow of Callan’s prowling down there at the turn.’

  As she went down the road he could feel the power of her ruthless organizing mind trying to throw a flame over his life.

  She couldn’t see that apparent indifference and laziness was not laziness but the enchantment of the earth over him, and the wonder of a strange beauty revealed to him.

  She only laughed and said he was talking like a ‘Presbyterian minister’. ‘Lazeness, that’s all it is, lazeness, lazeness, lazeness.’ That was what she said hundreds of times and he had no answer. She went round the turn and out the main road and watching her from the gate he knew that she was spreading her mind over the fields and the years.

  She was going to the town this day to inquire about the sale of the major part of Carlin’s farm, seven fields which were not part of the holding of two acres upon which the house stood. For many years th
is farm had been ‘up on the wall’, but nobody was anxious to be the first to bid owing to the savage threats of two cousins, Tommy Finnegan, whose land bordered the Carlins’, and his brother, Larry, who had once been a famous footballer and as a consequence had the reputation of being a ‘good’ man – that is good in a drunken brawl.

  But something had recently happened to lessen the moral force of these two men who claimed to be relations of the Carlins – Larry had been charged with stealing sleepers.

  His sister, Mary, poured thick milk into a pan for the hens to drink.

  ‘These ones had a good dry night last night for the Lough Derg,’ she said. ‘I wonder would you take them two cans, Tarry,’ said Mary, ‘and go to the well for water.’

  Mary had her face washed and was dressed as if she were going to the village. Tarry took the cans after a while, having as usual ‘taken the good out of it’ by saying he would not.

  He walked slowly, dreaming, along the narrow path that skirted a deep sunken stream on the steep sides of which grew primroses in wildest profusion. At the well he lingered, in the cool shadows where a big blue fly buzzed about.

  He filled the cans full flowing, for he always took pride in bringing home all the water the cans could hold.

  Returning, thinking of the possibility of his coming into the possession of a new farm of land, he stopped for a moment to let the greed of his mind enjoy the full pleasure of ownership. And his mother might get it for a small sum. He often heard it said that the Land Commission would let a man have a farm by merely paying the arrears of Annuities. Wouldn’t it be marvellous if she got it for forty or fifty pounds? It was worth close on three or maybe four hundred. That’s what would madden Eusebius and all the other greedy people.

  He lowered his eyes from staring at nothing and happening to glance towards a clump of nettles, thistles and pigs’ parsley that grew at the bottom of the field behind the house, he thought he saw something white moving there.