Tarry Flynn

by Patrick Kavanagh

  Tarry continued explaining the state of the drainage in that area and Molly showed that she was capable of appreciating the fine points of the subject.

  ‘That’s the kind of people in this country, Tarry.’

  ‘Molly, did you fall in the well?’ called Molly’s mother.

  The woman needn’t have been worried about her daughter on this occasion and Tarry derived much pleasure and moral strength in the woman’s misjudgement.

  ‘Wonder, yous are not up at the new place, Tarry? Your mother got a good bargain in it.’

  ‘She gave the full value for it if I know anything, Molly. They can all go to hell.’

  ‘Me mother was delighted to give the drop to them smart Cassidys. Eusebius is raging.’

  ‘Molly, Molly, Molly, what are you doing down there?’

  ‘How are you, Missus Brady?’ Tarry called back, and his voice was full of the courage of the man whose dealing with anybody’s daughter has been aboveboard. The woman hidden behind the shoulder of the hill could not mistake it.

  ‘Little the better of you,’ she answered Tarry back, and he imagined that there was a disappointment in her voice.

  Molly was gone and he was alone again with the mud, the lovely oily mud, and stones of the drain. He cut the scraws in squares again. He spat into the water. An eel wriggled out of the side of the bank trying to get back and Tarry made several futile attempts to stop its course.

  The shirt climbed up his back and his braces slipped. The trousers were half off him.

  He cleaned his hands in a tuft of grass and sat down on the headland at the ends of the turnip drills to smoke and read the old torn book that he had begun some days before and which he since carried in the hip pocket of his trousers. He stretched his legs across the headland and with his head on a pillow of growing rushes held the book over his eyes and started to read. The poplars and a blackthorn bush kept the sun from him and he was comfortable except for his feet, for his boots were full of water, and some pebbles, too, had got in. So he pulled off his boots and kicked them across the headland into the turnip drills.

  The book, which had the first page torn out, was the best book he had read so far; there was something weird about the story although the book had all the appearances of the usual torn faded cheap novels with which he was acquainted. Madame Bovary was a wonderful character, he said to himself. Yet it wasn’t her character but the queer difference that was in the book. Good as the book was, he grew sleepy as he lay there and he cast the book aside in the clump of rushes and from a lying position began to think what a curious strange world were these common fields that he knew so well.

  The boortree at the other end of the field seemed to be hundreds of feet high. He stared straight up at the sky without a thought in his head. As he lay there, the pad, pad of soft slow footsteps coming along the headland roused him. It was his mother. She was saying:

  ‘Nothing kills me only these buck nuns that make out they wouldn’t look at a man, Tarry. Lord, God of Almighty! If you had to hear the giving out to me I got from that Aggie there now you’d think she was made in a foundry. I hope Lough Derg does them some good. You’re making a great job of the drain.’

  Tarry, vexed with himself to be caught idle after all his hard work, was on his feet now.

  ‘Take your rest, you needn’t mind me,’ said the mother. Then: ‘Is that a miss I saw up there, Tarry?’

  ‘No, that’s the little rock,’ said Tarry looking round.

  ‘I thought it was a miss. Were you talking to this slob on the hill? I wouldn’t tell much to that one, a real gabby guts… Them spuds will soon need to be sprayed… Musha, who’s is the big foot in the gutter there?’

  ‘Larry.’

  ‘And did he say anything, the dirty oul’ rogue?’

  ‘No, he said nothing.’

  A car purred slowly up the Drumnay road going very slowly past Flynn’s gate in case there might be chickens there and the mother was watching it with some anxiety until it had gone past. ‘Bedad,’ said she, ‘that young priest is nearly living in Reilly’s these days. Nothing for these priests but the rich.’

  ‘They say,’ said Tarry, ‘that he’s going to get Mary into some music school in Dublin. She’s a great player of the piano and Father Markey is very interested in music.’

  ‘The best thing for the likes of us to do is to keep away from parties like that, Tarry. Does she ever speak to you?’

  ‘Oh, an odd time.’

  ‘That’s a very wide headland, Tarry. Do you know she’s not nearly as fine a girl as she was a couple of years ago. I told Aggie to bring you over a sup of tay as soon as the big pot comes off the fire. Aye, too,’ she said to herself about nothing.

  She turned round and began to walk slowly back, and as she came along Tarry could see that she had some important advice to give him. ‘Whatever you do don’t go up there for the present. You’d get a false kick or a prod of a graip, and that’s what ‘id please Eusebius. They’d all love to see a good row now. Big Lip Larry over there is making out to be a friend of theirs; he’s not a full fourth cousin. I’m nearly as close meself. And damn them anyway but sure they’re no good to the country. The best of a farm if it was minded. In three or four years you wouldn’t know that place if you keep your eye on it… There’s Molly coming to the well again. And that’s a warm little piece of land too. And this Molly is no fallen goods either. One of these days you ought to take the cart up there and draw down them two nice ash trees that’s on the march with Eusebius – or if you don’t, he’ll claim them, because they’re growing more or less on the middle of the ditch.’ The woman moved off slowly and sideways as she looked up the drills.

  Tarry’s sense of progression in the clear air did not last long. Again the Earth tempted him and for no ordinary reason he found himself walking across the drain over the floor of flagger roots. He stood among the yellow-blossomed flaggers that nodded about his shoulders filling his mind with the emotion of green leaves. Then he moved deeper into the mystery and walked through the swamp to the well.

  For no ordinary reason he walked across the drain over the floor of flagger roots and stood among the tall green blades that were up to his shoulders. He liked standing there with the yellow blossoms of the flaggers nodding about him.

  He stood for a few moments filling himself with a soft emotion in the mystery of green leaves and then decided to explore further the swamp around the well. It was a long, long time since he had been on this side of the drain. He looked into the well and then lay down on his belly and took a drink of the cool water. A frog leaped in right before him and, poised under the water, looked up straight at him as if making a face at him. He was almost too lazy to get on his feet. The heat of the day had blotted out his mind. Here was a bees’ nest. It would be a good idea to get the honey. This ought to be a good year for honey.

  He sat by the edge of the drain some distance from where the tools were, idly staring across the boggy hollow which was all a-bloom with flowers the names of which – being a country-man – Tarry did not know. He didn’t need to know their names unless he wanted to tell somebody who didn’t know about them. But it could be said that he ‘knew them by eyesight’, and was intimately acquainted with these blue fluffy blossoms whose stems were so juicy, and the hard pink-petalled flowers too. He knew the names of the bogbane and water-violet and the marsh-marigolds, but these names meant little to the man who had the reality. And as he sat there the scents of a thousand flowers and the still stronger scents of the clay at the roots of turnips buried him in a fog of enchantment. Only one part of his being was alive on the common earth. The more he was involved in the earth’s enchanting mist the more did his imagination wander among the lusts of the flesh. He wondered would Mary Reilly come down on Thursday evening, which was the next evening. With her he felt so good too. He dragged himself out of the fog and stood on the bank trying to shake himself fully conscious.

  Molly was coming to the well for more water. It amaz
ed Tarry the amount of water the Bradys used. Now, said he to himself, just because I don’t care one way or the other, we’ll see what she’ll say.

  ‘Are you mad?’ she bawled when he made a grab at her. ‘Let me go.’ She caught his thumb and nearly broke it in two. That convinced him that he had made a mistake. Dirty ragged women can be quite moral. But was Molly moral? He would like to find out. He was sure that when she came to the well again she would ignore him but he was wrong in this. She was more friendly than ever.

  Another day came hot and close, and after breakfast he cut a sheaf of fresh hay for the mare which, with her foal, was being kept in a field that was bare enough of grass, because this field was the safest for the foal, with no wire palings in which he could get entangled. He hung the scythe in the hedge at the gate of the hay field as it was an old scythe that could safely be left out. People weren’t in the habit of stealing farm tools, though one never knew.

  His boots, which he had left outside the door during the night on account of all the mud which was on them and in them, were still nimble with damp when he put them on. Once again he thrust his trousers over his knees and headed for the drain. With his feet in the wet boots, the dry clay and stones under them produced in him the sensation of being naked. He felt like a man in football togs. There was something illogical in the dry clay, so dry and yet his feet slipping inside his boots. When he got to the drain, and water and mud met water and mud, he felt more at home.

  On this day his work took him to a part of the drain where shovelling was more necessary than the drag. He had a plank across the drain which he stood on as far as possible, but in general he had to go down into the muddy drain and work with a short grip on his shovel.

  In spite of everything, the close heat of the weather and the blood-sucking clags, those days in the drain were some of the happiest days of his life.

  ‘As I crossed McArdle’s field I wondered

  As I looked down into the drain

  If ever a summer day should find me

  Shovelling up eels again.’

  There were scores of eels in this section. Tarry skinned one but found its snaky, slimy body so disgusting that he did not bring it home to put on the pan. He kept the skin, as the skin of an eel was supposed to make a good strap for the wrist and prevent a man getting a cramp in it. He had some difficulty getting all the mud shovelled on to his side for there was a thick hedge on his own side, but he cut holes at intervals of a few yards through which he was able to pitch the mud. The land on the other side was the remains of a cut-away bog which had belonged to different people when the bog was a bog. Who owned the part of the bog at this point would only be discovered in cases of a bitter argument among the neighbours.

  Tarry cut the scraws wide here so as to have plenty of mud. The sides of the high bank were held together by the roots of the bushes and there were wasps’ nests and rat holes, and there were also violets growing in the moss as high up as if on the side of a mountain, it seemed to Tarry, sunk in the drain. He threw up a round stone and a dead cat, and an old enamel teapot, and dreaming into these finds he was an explorer.

  ‘There’s another egg here, will you eat it, Tarry?’

  ‘Sure, two’s any god’s amount.’

  ‘Devil the damn harm it ’ill do you. Go on and throw it into you, you’re working hard.’

  ‘And I only ate the bare one egg that was only like a cock’s egg,’ said Aggie, from the corner.

  ‘And it’s plenty for you,’ replied the mother quickly. ‘Keep you from going madder for the men.’

  ‘Men, men, men,’ sighed Aggie, ‘there’s nothing in your grey oul’ head but the men. You’d nearly take a man yourself.’

  ‘And in troth,’ said the mother rather pleased, ‘I’d get a man quicker than any of yous – as ould as I am. Aye, would I. Devil a good Lough Derg did you.’

  ‘Oh, look at her now with the claub of laughing on her face,’ Aggie said referring to her mother, who had taken a fit of laughing as she picked at a rind of bacon in the doorway.

  She threw it to the hens, which made a great helter-skelter in pursuit, and said: ‘Three lovely daughters and if the Lord hasn’t said it they’ll be stuck like a blind to me window all the days of me life. Tarry, there’s a two-shilling bit there on the dresser you might want for fags.’

  ‘He stole my one and six that I had hid in the flower-pot,’ said Bridie. ‘If you hid money in the river that fella ’id find it.’

  ‘Grin away, grin away,’ jawed Bridie. ‘Trying to make out you’re the good boy, trying to look holy when the Reilly one does be about, one that would water on him. Oul’ cod!’

  ‘Go lang, you slut, you,’ said the mother with effect. ‘If he took it atself, who had a better right to take it? Sure it’s not yous with your painting and powdering and God-knows-what.’

  ‘But the point is I didn’t take it,’ said Tarry.

  ‘Oh, no, wouldn’t know how.’

  ‘Pass no remarks of her like a good fella,’ said the mother. ‘I suppose,’ said she changing the subject, ‘you’ll be cutting that piece of hay above the rock in the Low Place tomorrow or the next day. You’d smash a mill there on the stones.’

  ‘I suppose I’d be better get it out of the way before the spraying of the potatoes.’

  He was combing his hair at the mirror. First he combed it straight back in the manner of those expert dancers from the slums of Dundalk and other distant towns who were to be seen at the hall every week. Then he changed his mind and his hair style and swept it to the side. He put a dreamy expression in his eyes. Was he good looking or does every man admire his own face? His mother and sisters were never done saying what an ‘ugly-looking animal’ he was, and he being highly sensitive this criticism weakened his self-confidence.

  This was Thursday evening. Would the girl come?

  Outside it was threatening rain. He half hoped it would rain and give him an excuse in case he happened to be disappointed.

  ‘Surely you’re not going away this evening?’ said the mother coming in from the gate, ‘and that heifer liable to calve any minute. And them three sheets to galvanize in the street, you should put them where the mare or foal would not be in danger of cutting themselves. And the good shoes on!’

  He was tired but it was a pleasant tiredness in the small of his back and in his arms. He went into the cart-house and put on a collar and tie as he did not want to attract too much attention. Bridie was coming through the meadow with the milk as he went out the gate and he hurried in case she might have news that the heifer was near calving time.

  He stood on the middle of the main road at the entrance to Drumnay. The only people on the mile of road from the crossroads on one side to McArdle’s gate on the other were three of the Dillon girls, with dozens of men waiting for them. Mother a Protestant, they were reared pagans. The two youngest were among them, but now dishevelled and dissolute. Changed since the time before the Mission, when Tarry had desired them. He wouldn’t like to be seen talking to them now and hoped they wouldn’t try to be familiar.

  Tarry walked slowly towards the old road that had once been a great highway between Dublin and Derry. It branched off the main road about a hundred and fifty yards from the mouth of the Drumnay road, and ran up a sharp hill all dressed in the greenest of grass. Briars shook hands across it, and in the middle were stunted blackthorns that goats had nibbled. Scraps of tin, the signs of a tinkers’ encampment, were strewed about the grass. The Dillons did not frequent this paradise of courting couples, but brought their men friends into their house and to the railway slopes.

  May Callan who was ‘doing a line’ with a young fellow from the town appeared on the old road with her boy friend, their heads bobbing among the whins and blackthorns, and then sank out of view. Tarry was not worried about May for he thought her the type who was well able to look after herself. In common with men of all simple communities Tarry sometimes took a violent interest in the moral welfare of the local women �
� and at one time it was about as much as a strange man’s life was worth to be caught speaking to one of the girls of Drumnay. In the next townland of Miskin which was more remote and traditional the order still prevailed, with the result that the natives of that district were crooked and inbred as the blackthorns that the goats had nibbled.

  ‘I’ll count a hundred,’ said Tarry to himself, ‘and by that time Mary will have arrived.’ So he counted a hundred. At ninety he slowed down his count and at ninety-nine he held the number in suspense for fully five minutes. Then she appeared on foot.

  The conversation opened in the normal way:

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, Tarry.’

  The way she used his Christian name fluttered Tarry’s heart to little blown bits like leaves in a wind. Her voice caressed him.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ he said.

  She just looked at him as she had looked once before, and he was quite helpless. But not completely. Automatically he said in a super-objective manner: ‘I was just thinking of going up this old road when you came – ’

  They walked, threading their way among the bushes and briars and over rabbit burrows and the greasy stumps of long-felled trees.

  ‘Marvellous weather,’ said he with all the passion of a lover.

  ‘Terrific,’ she said.

  ‘Look at the rabbit,’ he said, continuing his love talk. ‘Give me your hand and I’ll give you a pull over that gripe.’

  He pulled on her hand and having landed her over the soaking trench let go of her hand. He felt that it was up to him as an honourable man not to get a set-in in that way. Afterwards he was mad with himself. It would be much harder to make a second attempt.

  They climbed up the hill and through a narrow gap which looked north over Miskin and away down through the dark valleys of Lisdoonan. Almost below them in the hollow was the Parochial House. Father Daly was walking through the field beside the river carrying a golf club on his shoulder.

  ‘You were often in the Parochial House?’ he said. ‘I never was.’