He laid down the cans and wandered quietly in that direction.
Holies! He could hardly believe it. His sister, Mary, was sitting in the middle of the clump with the tall slick young fellow with the well-oiled hair that he had sometimes seen at the dance hall and disliked because he was such an expert dancer.
He could tell from the soles of her shoes that it was really his sister. He could not mistake that square patch on the middle of the sole which she had herself put on. He couldn’t see the girl’s face for he judged from a distance of some twenty yards that she had her face screwed behind the fellow’s neck. She was in a twist.
This fellow always did his courting in the middle of the day, which was normal enough as he was unemployed.
He watched for a few moments and returned to his cans to find that the foal had put its hoof through the bottom of one. This disturbed him but not as much as his sister’s being in the nettles with a scamp from the town. Tarry began to sing because he felt that his voice would awaken his sister to a consciousness of respectability. Noise and shouting show that everything is open and aboveboard.
The rough and tumble is very moral.
Peeping through the hedge at one point he could now see his sister sitting upright but showing no sign of having been seriously disturbed or awakened to a realization of her position.
He was about to put water in the kettle to make some tea for himself when Mary entered, carrying what she said was a dozen eggs which she found down in the nettles at the bottom of the back field. Tarry, who had an eye of embarrassing keenness for seeing what he ought not see, saw that these alleged eggs looked very like small field stones to him.
‘I’ll blow that wheel,’ said she. She was in the best of humour.
Tarry sat at the table and began to speak in a very sing-song preachy voice about civilization, particularly about ancient Celtic civilization and how it gave honour to women’s virtue. He was almost repeating one of Father Daly’s sermons, and in much the same manner too. He spoke as if he were addressing a congregation and not an individual. As he preached he felt that weariness which bears down on those who are trying to overtake their own arguments. He knew that he was making a cod of himself, but the force of the emotion carried him along.
‘All this foreign dancing and music is poison,’ he said. ‘It never belonged to this country.’
His sister for answer took a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it with a live coal. ‘What the bleddy hell are you trying to say?’ said she.
‘You know damn well what I mean.’
‘Ah, dry up and don’t be making a barney balls of yourself. A person would think you were a missioner.’
‘And smoking, too,’ Tarry growled.
‘Amn’t I as much entitled to smoke as you? Give us down that tay canister. I’m as well have a bit of gas while I can.’
‘You’re gone to hell all right,’ said Tarry.
The cup of tea softened his anger. ‘Supposing Petey saw you, wouldn’t that be a fine how-are-you?’
‘Do you know what,’ said the girl, taking her brother in hand, ‘fellas like you that never as much as had their arm round a woman always think that there’s nothing in a bit of a court only the one thing. That’s all’s in your heads.’
‘But what about Petey? Are you ever going to marry him?’
‘Do I look out of me mind?’
‘Ah, but you shouldn’t be making a fool of yourself, having the neighbours talking. What need I care?’
‘Codology. Are you looking for a fag? I have a couple here. I’ll give you one.’
‘I tell you I have one of my own somewhere,’ said Tarry, searching in the lining of his jacket. ‘I know I ought to have one. No, I don’t want your fag.’ But he had his hand out for the cigarette as he said these last few words, and taking it was thereafter bought over.
As they were finishing their cups of tea they saw Mary Reilly coming down the road on her bicycle.
‘Isn’t she very nice?’ said Tarry to his sister.
‘Isn’t she only a lump of dung like the rest of us? Go on out and stop her and hear what she has to say. Go on, I say or you’ll miss her. Is it her? It is. I thought it might be Eileen Cassidy that’s home from England. Make a rush at it the same as if you were taking a dose of salts. Sure she can’t take a bite out of you.’
Under the stimulus of his sister’s encouragement Tarry wandered towards the gate and went onto the road and looked sharply in the hedge as if he had lost something.
‘Hello!’ he shouted before his courage failed him.
‘Hello!’ she answered very sweetly and got off her bicycle.
He could hardly believe it. The girl he had dreamed of was standing beside him and apparently delighted with his company. There was a humming in his ears and he could hardly hear what she was saying. She said that she saw the poem he wrote in the local paper and that it was ‘simply wonderful’. Before she had time to say more he had started off on a tour of English literature, as much as he knew of it, from Chaucer to Yeats. Once more he was delivering a fantastic lecture to a girl. She listened in astonishment. He tried to convince himself that he was doing well, that he was making a deep impression, but something else told him that he was talking too much. He could remember that he had run on like this before when trying to impress girls and while it was immediately successful, none of the girls took him seriously afterwards. He wished he could stop and be at ease. To add to his nervousness he knew that his sister was listening in the doorway picking up the makings of a laugh at him. In the end he did manage to stop lecturing and drifted a few yards away from the gate down the road, with the girl wheeling her bicycle beside him.
‘You can play the piano,’ he said.
‘I’m no good at it,’ she said.
‘Would you ever come down this way some evening till we have a talk?’ Afraid that he had been too bold he hurriedly said: ‘I was only joking.’
She gave him a glance that nearly made him faint into the ditch. No girl had ever looked at him like that before.
‘What about Thursday evening?’ she called back when she had gone some distance on her bicycle.
‘Oh, not at all,’ he said, without meaning anything of the sort.
He was talking to himself in the deepest distress as he returned to the house. ‘You didn’t say “not at all”,’ he groaned. He whispered in his most lyrical manner, ‘Yes, dear, Thursday evening at eight.’
‘Now,’ his sister cried in triumph, ‘what did I tell you? She’s mad for you. Didn’t I hear her?’
‘Ah, don’t bother me, don’t bother me, don’t bother me,’ Tarry cried. ‘I never want to hear another word about it.’
Tarry took the shovel and went off to clean the drinking place for the cattle.
‘Well?’
‘Well?’
Brother and sister spoke as one as soon as the mother arrived.
The woman plopped to a seat by the window and said: ‘Mary, will you throw a shovelful of oats to them hens and not have them picking at the window the same as if they never got a bite. I’m not able to give me sowl to God or man with the heat of that day. Tarry, did you see about the cattle?’
‘I did. How did you do?’
The mother ignored the question and said: ‘From now on you’ll have to change your gait of going.’ The woman scrutinized her son’s face. ‘Is that a scratch on the side of your jaw? Lord! but I can’t let you out of me sight but you’re liable to do yourself harm, break your neck or something. Mary, pull over that kettle and don’t wet the tay till I get me breath.’
‘But how did you do?’ asked the impatient Tarry.
‘I’m making you independent of the beggars, Tarry,’ said the mother.
‘You got it then. How much?’
‘How much do you think now?’
‘How would I know?’
‘Well, make a guess.’
Tarry guessed what he thought was a wild and high guess to please his mother.
‘A hundred and twenty.’
‘Ah, you’re the man that should be sent to buy a thing,’ the woman said shaking her head. ‘Give me over me handbag from the table. Yes, you’re the man that ought to be sent out. Mary, how many eggs did you get the day?’
‘Four dozen and two.’
‘She found a nest,’ said the impulsive Tarry before he had time to think.
‘A nest?’ said the mother.
‘I was thinking of the one she got yesterday,’ Tarry explained.
‘Have a look at that, you that’s the scholar,’ the mother said pushing a document in front of her son. ‘You may make the tay,’ she said to the daughter.
‘Two hundred and fifty,’ Tarry said amazed. ‘Of course it’s worth twice that. I only mentioned the hundred and twenty because I thought maybe you got it cheap.’
‘Do you know what the place is worth?’ the woman said, with her half-shut fist stuck in her jaw. ‘Do you know how much the solicitor said he could get for it if the Carlins were out? Hut! man!… I believe that this Cassidy one is home, Mary. Were you talking to her?’
‘No, I wasn’t,’ snapped Mary.
‘She’ll get a man this time or lose a fall,’ said the mother. ‘And for all that she’s not a bad girl. Back to England she wouldn’t go if she got the chance of a man.’
‘She came to the right place,’ said Mary, ironically.
‘Eusebius offered a hundred,’ said the mother. ‘That’s about all the money they have in spite of the stallion. From now on you’ll have to put an inch to your step and quit the curse o’God dreaming.’ She was silent a while as she filled her mouth, for the next remark.
Tarry was at first tremendously excited over the purchase, but as his mother spoke and he thought the matter over he began to pity himself. Even with the eleven or twelve acres added to their present farm what would they still be but poor? What chance would he have of marrying a girl like Mary Reilly? The new acquisition only set him up firmly among the small farmers – fixed him forever at the level of the postman and the railway porter. The new farm only drew attention to their real state. A tramp poet would be above him.
‘Lord! these shoes had the feet burned off me,’ Mrs Flynn said. She had removed her shoes and was walking through the house in her stockinged feet.
‘ – Not a bad girl at all,’ she mused aloud, ‘far from it, and I’m sure they’d give her all they have if she got a good take. And mind you, Molly Brady is a good healthy girl that ’id do a bad turn to no man.’
When the daughter was absent the mother turned to her son and said: ‘In two or three years it’s you that could be the independent man. These ones will be going sooner or later. Whether they get men or not out they’ll go at any rate. Let them start an eating house in Shercock or something. And remember, Tarry, it’s not of meself I’m thinking. That little place of Brady’s would put a real bone in yours – and what’s better, would give you another outlet to the big road. If you’d take a fool’s advice what you never took instead of the oul’ books and the writing you could be richer than the Reillys. Look at Eusebius cutting calves and pigs and every damn thing to make a penny; and Charlie Trainor that ’id lift a ha’penny out of a cow-dung with his teeth. Oh, it’s well I know these parties and that’s why I’d like you to be independent of the whole rick-ma-tick of them. In troth, you would. Give me over them oul’ boots of mine from in under the table. Troth, you could. Hut, man, I wouldn’t be bothered with these ones that you do be talking about – May up here and this Reilly one. Sure that poor girl, everyone belonging to her died of consumption, God protect everyone’s rearing. There’s seven of as nice a fields up there as there is in the parish. If you give them any kind of minding it’s you that could take out the a crop. Do you know, now when you have the chance you might do a bit of scouring to that drain and not have us near up to our knees in water in the winter.’
‘I’ll start the morrow,’ said Tarry.
‘Lord! but doesn’t the years slip by in a hurry,’ mused the mother as she stood looking out the open door. ‘Lord O,’ she sighed, ‘it’s only this blessed day I was thinking that your father, the Lord have mercy on the whole lot of them, will be dead five years next week. Ah, the Lord may have mercy on them all.’ Tarry had slipped upstairs. ‘Tarry, where are you?’ called his mother. He sat very still, not wishing to annoy his mother, for he knew that she would be annoyed at his going upstairs to what she called ‘the curse-o’-God rhyming’. When she left the doorway and went outside somewhere he came down and walked about the street as if he had been outside all the time. He wished he could have been manly and stayed upstairs. This concealment made him unhappy. Later in the evening he climbed Callan’s hill and looked across at his new possessions and it looked so small and mean now as his mind considered the epic plains of Louth beyond. And Reilly’s big house and huge fields that he could see from here. He was still a beggar. His mood changed again as he came down the hill and he began to think that a man married to Molly could be very comfortable. It would be an easy way.
Wearing boots, without socks, and with his trousers turned up above his knees, capless, and with the old torn shirt open wide at the neck, Tarry was striding through the thistles and rushes of the meadow on his way to clean the drain. The drain was the stream that separated his farm from those of the Bradys and Larry Finnegans In the summer the cress and sorrel spread over the surface of the stream and the roots of flaggers at one point made a floor across it upon which a man could cross without wetting his feet. If the drain were cleaned every summer it would benefit a dozen small farmers all the way towards its source in Miskin. This was one of the reasons why Tarry felt not perfectly satisfied when he attacked it with shovel and drag. Cleaning the drain was of much more benefit to the Flynns, no doubt, than to anybody else, for it meant that a three-acre meadow would be partly free from flooding in winter. But it did do good to others: that corner of Larry Finnegan’s where when the drain was choked a horse would be bogged in the middle of summer could nearly be ploughed when the drain was free. But would Larry give a hand? No fear. He might – and it was as much – come and look on at Tarry Flynn up to his knees in the mud and might even pass comments on the fact that Tarry was shovelling all the mud on to his own side.
Larry’s main interests looked out on the main road and he had as a result something of contempt for Drumnay and the methods of the natives in that townland. Tarry meant to spend a few bits of days at the drain before the cutting of the hay and the spraying of the potatoes, and here he was on the first days of July making a rush at the work.
The drag was a specially made instrument which had been bought in Shercock by his mother who had a penchant for old iron. He had an improvised knife for cutting the green scraws; it was made from the blade of an old scythe.
He started at the spot near Brady’s well which was the worst spot on the drain. He cut the roots of the flaggers in squares and then began to drag them on to his own bank. It was very heavy work, but he loved it. Indeed, dragging the drain was one of his favourite jobs, the job that most softened about his burning thoughts and desires.
The heavy squares of flagger roots yielded very slowly to his strain. They carried a huge backside of oily mud that was sometimes a hundred weight. Bit by bit he dragged it up the bank and as he eventually landed it safely he was filled with deep satisfaction. The pool left behind by these sods was like a clear well. It was in the long run easier to clean the drain where the flaggers were than at other places, for although the roots of the flaggers were hard to cut and had a high hydraulic soakage, once you had them out you had that part of the drain cleaned.
The purchase of the farm meant that none of his sisters would get a fortune. It would take some doing to get the two hundred and fifty, never mind fortune the girls.
He was leaning back on the handle of the drag, slowly sliding a mighty square of dripping roots and mud upwards and upwards. He slipped on his backside and wet the seat of his trousers.
He had to get a new grip of the sod so he stood up for a moment beside the poplar and took a breath.
Man alive, he was getting on gallant.
Molly stood on the height above him and stared through the sunlight at him but he wasn’t interested in her.
The wild bees which nested in the swamp on the other side of the drain filled the air with their hum. A couple of crows descended from theparched sky and landed in Tarry’s plot of turnips. He walked up the field from the drain and gave a look at his turnips. He was satisfied; no natural crow would be able to pull one of those turnips.
Tarry’s face was half covered with mud from wiping the sweat off with wet muddy hands. If Mary Reilly saw him now what would she say? Not that at that moment he’d care, for now he was hot with a profounder passion… Even all the work he had done in that bit of a morning would tell in the meadow in winter. A powerful job.
He stopped and pulled a small scraw up with his hands like a man rescuing a drowning person by the hair of the head. He clapped the sides of the dreeping bank with his palms and had a mind to set down and take a rest and a smoke. But not yet. He would do to beside the next poplar and then take a good long rest. A clag rested on the back of his hand and was sucking blood before he had time to kill it.
Molly came to the well for water and they had a few quiet words. The girl looked at the work he was doing and thought it a very good job.
She was dressed in her most seductive raggedness – big rent in her flimsy blouse, cotton skirt that clung to her fat thighs emphasizing contours of sluttish appeal – but he was not thinking about her. He had other things on his mind.
‘Man, that’s a dousing job,’ she said.
‘If I had time… ’ he said.
‘Do you know what it is,’ said he looking along the drain, ‘if about six inches was taken off the bottom there at the cutting it would lower the bog till you could nearly lough it. The only trouble is you’d get no one to help you, and when you’d do it they’d hardly give you credit for it. Sure, the McArdles object, saying that the drink for their cattle runs dry when the drain is cleaned.’
Tarry Flynn Page 9