He did not wait for a reply to this but hurried on to talk about the crops and more weather lore.
‘Aren’t them nettles very vicious looking?’ she said.
He delivered a short lecture on the various kinds of nettles. The sun slanted low and the song of the blackbird thrilled the evening. To the left of them below they could see Petey Meegan come from behind a hay-stack buttoning his trousers. A moment later he was seen putting the lock on his door and dragging himself over the fence as he went on his way to Flynn’s. At the same moment they could hear the voice of Tarry’s sister, Mary, whispering to her town lover among the briars below them.
A corncrake screeched in Kerley’s hay field. In the distance could be heard the rattle of tin cans being left down on stones outside some door. Some woman’s voice came across the valleys: ‘Drive them calves to the field, Joe.’
‘That’s a clouting evening for the spuds,’ said Tarry.
‘Do you think so, Tarry?’ the girl said. ‘Sit down here.’
He found himself sitting beside her. But he was ill at ease. One part of his mind told him to run, that to be great he must run away from things like this. He knew it was fear, a deep instinct that he could never hope to hold this girl.
Through the bushes he could see the corner of one of his new fields and the sight shamed him when he compared it with the broad tree-lined fields of Reilly’s which spread out in the distance.
‘I think your new farm is wonderful,’ she said as if knowing his mind. ‘Here, sit on the tail of this coat.’ She spread her coat on the dewy grass and now he was sitting closer than ever he had sat to a girl before. And it was the girl he had dreamt of. He was terribly unhappy, thinking of an hour ahead when it would all be over. Now he was in the company of one who belonged to the highest society of the parish. What would Eusebius say? He would try to make a jeer of it, for that was the kind of Eusebius.
Mary Reilly was so different from Molly who had twisted his thumb and left him more exhausted after his struggle with her than he would be after a day’s mowing with a scythe or a day carrying a knapsack sprayer.
She twisted a briar that hung over his head and wound it round a whin root.
‘It’s a powerful evening,’ said he.
He had his hand on the bank behind her within one inch of her back. He would give a good deal to have the courage to move his hand one inch. Eventually he took his hand away altogether.
‘You must come up to our house some evening,’ she suggested.
‘Oh, God! no,’ he cried, the offer being too good to be true. ‘Sure Father Markey and everybody does be up there.’
‘What harm?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said petulantly.
‘You must make a poem for me some day, Tarry.’
He shook his head from side to side. ‘Sure I do only be at that for a cod.’
‘My! Father Markey thinks you great.’
Tarry was afraid to hear more on that subject though at the time he did not know the reason.
‘Were you never talking to him?’ she asked.
‘I never was talking to a priest in me life,’ he said truthfully.
‘He has a brother who writes plays,’ said she.
‘Holies!’
The girl had shut her eyes softly and was leaning her head towards Tarry. Tarry instead of yielding stiffened himself and she straightened up. ‘We’d better be getting back,’ she said.
They passed Mary Flynn and her lover in the briars as they came down the hill. The girl went round by the main road on her way home. Tarry, talking to himself, walked home alone.
5
Life was too heavy on her feet in that place to leap dramatically when something apparently exciting happened.
The purchase of the new farm might seem to have given the Flynns a new outlet for their emotions, but the reality kept them sober. The only thing which might be said to give a kick of drama to the event was the fact that by all accounts their new next-door neighbour, Joe Finnegan, was lepping mad at the Flynns’ buying of the place over his head. Mrs Callan ‘who never brought a good story in her life’ informed Mrs Flynn that Joe Finnegan, drunk in the village the previous evening, had been threatening to make it hot for the Flynns.
‘The man is mad,’ said she to Mrs Flynn.
‘And who, musha, did he say all this to?’ asked Mrs Flynn.
‘It’s only what I heard,’ drawled the woman.
‘Bad luck to him, himself and his five pratie-washers,’ said Mrs Flynn. The ‘pratie-washers’ were the five daughters, Joe having been blessed with no son.
When she told Tarry about it he laughed and said he’d break Joe’s neck if he as much as opened his gob.
‘That’s the very thing you mustn’t do,’ advised the mother. ‘That’s what some of these cute customers like Eusebius would like. And the best thing would be not to go up at all the day afraid of the worst. Wait till the morrow, the fair of Shercock, for Joe is likely to be there. You can fence the gaps on the march between us and him when there’s no one about. The easy way is the best way.’ Tarry put the point of the bill hook on the bar of the gate and commenced filing the edge with great energy. ‘A man has to take the bull by the horns sometimes,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you I will.’
‘I don’t give a damn,’ said Tarry with petulant bravado.
The mother peeped over the wall and looked down the road.
‘These ones are worse since Lough Derg,’ she remarked. ‘And,’ added she as she wandered through the street, ‘I hope they get men out of it. Wouldn’t it be a good thing now that you have the hook sharp to go over to the Low Place and trim them briars that’s creeping through the new grass and not have the hands torn of ourselves when we’re pulling the hay for the cattle… Ah ha, good morning, Charlie, it’s early you’re on the go.’
‘Good morning, Mary. I was just going up as far as Cassidy’s; I hear they have a few stores for sale.’
‘You must expect a dear fair the morrow, Charlie?’
‘I have to take chance on that, Mary.’
‘Hurry over, Tarry, and get that job done and maybe you might go as far as the fair the morrow and see if you could get something. A man always learns in a fair’ – she was addressing Charlie now – ‘but this man of mine, there’s nothing for him when he goes there, only the face stuck in a book. Sure, that’s no way, Charlie, for a man that means to have a thing. No fear of you reading a book.’
‘Oh, your man is going for the big money.’
‘Bunk,’ gasped Tarry from the vicinity of the hen-house door. A fellow like Charlie could think of nothing only money.
‘Come home early for your dinner,’ the mother called as he went down by the meadow gate with the fork and billhook on his shoulder.
The conversation of his mother and Charlie at the gate pursued him as he went through the meadow where the clags and white butterflies were dancing in the sun. Did a man like Charlie ever notice the butterflies? That man was wise in the ways of the world. But wasn’t it easy being wise in that small way. The meanest minds became the great ones of the world’s wisdom because the really fine minds saw that such success wasn’t worth while. Politicians, businessmen and all that breed could be beaten blind at their own game if the good men tried. He was quite sure of that.
This field ran along Brady’s on the far side of their house and forming a right-angle to the main portion of Flynn’s estate. It was reached by a wooden bridge made of trunks of pine trees and covered over with stones and clay. In this field Tarry was cut off from the activities of Drumnay. He could daydream here without being disturbed. The sounds of the country people came through the blue haze of the air and the green leaves of the hedges sieved, fine.
There was a defect in him which these secluded fields developed: he was not in love with his neighbours; their lives meant little to him, and though off his own bat he was a very fine thinker and observer he had only one pair of eyes and ears and one mind. Had he lov
ed his neighbours he would have the eyes, ears and minds of all these, for love takes possession.
Christ was the sum of the wisdom of all the men for whom He died, which was the race of Man.
He loved the fields and the birds and trees, stones and weeds and through these he could learn a great deal – but hardly enough. He saw the centre as a poet sees, but this introversion was leading to aridity. Men impacted themselves on him almost against his will. If he had been entirely passive he might have become wise. But he screamed hysterically when the lover wanted the beloved to sleep. He tore the emotion horribly.
The mother did not understand this queer kink in him which she felt would lead him to destruction. She would merely shrug her shoulders and say: ‘I might as well be talking to the wall.’
Through the thick hedge he could see into Brady’s street and when the door was open hear the talk within the house. It was surely fascinating talk for those who had the faith to see it as the expression of the divine gift of life. As it was, Tarry listened bored, his one and only thought being the seduction of the girl. This desire came between him and the romantic vision so that he only heard a confused murmur. Then he pricked his ears.
Mrs Brady came out to feed the hens and she interrupted her ‘chuck, chucks’ to remark to the daughter, ‘I hear the Flynns are after coming from Lough Derg.’
‘Aye, they’re home.’
‘Oul’ crooked Petey may come to scratch now,’ the woman said with a loud laugh. ‘Chuck, chuck. If I was a man I wouldn’t marry her if her backside was studded with diamonds. Peter and her is well met, Molly.’
‘They are,’ drawled Molly.
The mother stooped low and began to wave her head from side to side in Tarry’s direction. ‘Do you know what, I thought I saw young Flynn over in the hayfield. A terrible listener, that fella.’
The daughter came out and they both stared in his direction. Tarry stood perfectly still behind the thick hedge.
‘There’s nobody,’ said the daughter.
A little later Molly took a big delft jug and went in the direction of the well. Tarry took a notion that he was very thirsty and hurried down along the hedge where he got through a gap into Brady’s field.
‘Do you know what it is, I’m dead with the drouth,’ he cried ever so casually.
‘And a pain in your head for the want of a court,’ said Molly, adding the rhyme to a well-known local doggerel.
‘Give me the lend of the jug, Molly.’
Tarry sat among the tall rushes beside the well and drank. ‘God! I’m dead tired,’ he said and lay back. ‘Sit down here a while.’
He grunted and sighed for weariness, but still the girl showed no signs of being influenced by his hypnotic suggestions.
‘Ah, damn its sowl, sit down, Molly.’
‘Deed and I won’t. There’s nothing for you but the swanks.’
‘Ah, damn it sowl –’
‘– Father, Son and Holy Ghost –’
‘There’s your mother,’ said Molly.
There was no need to tell him. She was coming slowly along the headland of the potatoes on the other side of the stream walking with the long pot-stick. Tarry grabbed the jug and took a long drink of the cold spring water, saying: ‘God! I was very dry. I better be getting back,’ he said over his shoulder as he made off while his mother and Molly dropped into conversation.
‘Will you shout at that fella and tell him to come back,’ said the mother to Molly.
‘Your mother wants you,’ shouted Molly.
‘Did someone say something?’ said he turning round.
‘Have you them briars nearly trimmed?’ asked the mother. ‘If you have you’d better come home for an early dinner; there’s a job I want you to do.’
Tarry trimmed a few long briars here and there to satisfy his conscience and then went home to a dinner of new potatoes and butter.
Coming in from the road gate the mother said: ‘Three years ago I said that that man was near the pension age but nothing would do you only that he wasn’t passing fifty. And there it’s gone now, one of the best jobs in the parish.’
‘Who wants to be a postman?’ said the fox about the unattainable grapes.
The two girls had arrived home from their pilgrimage and were making up now for the loss of three days’ food.
‘Sour as a pair of buck weasels,’ said the mother.
‘All because we haven’t the gossip of the world home with us,’ pouted Aggie.
‘Hurry up with your dinner,’ said the mother to the son, ‘and fence the gaps between us and Finnegan’s so that we can put the cattle on it. Joe, the greedy dog, went and cut a darling ash tree that was growing on our side of the march and if we had the cattle up it would be an excuse to go up every day.’
‘Isn’t that what I said this morning?’ said Tarry.
And so on they talked and argued.
For the second time since the buying of the farm Tarry felt himself elevated by its adventure-possibilities. As he walked up the road he was a hero going forth to conquer. A new world was opening to him. New fields all his own. He would be next thing to being a Louthman, and that’s what would make the beggars jealous.
It began to rain. That was a good thing, for Joe Finnegan would be more likely to remain near his house. He hurried up the road past Cassidy’s house but as he expected he did not get past unknown to the mother, who stuck her head around the jamb of the hen-house door and measured him up and down.
Possession gives a new beauty to things and Tarry walking through the long grass and weeds of those fields was filled with a satisfaction that was different from the joy he got in gazing over the general landscape. These fields were his. As he strode through the field with the wet weeds lapping about the legs of his trousers up to his knees, a powerful selfishness filled his mind.
He looked at the hedges and calculated the amount of timber on them. He was so pleased too that so many big ash trees had been allowed to remain even when the Carlins must have needed firewood.
The remains of an old dwelling house – relics of the old days when the land was more populated than now – was an added attraction. Before buying this place he would have described that ruin as an eyesore; now he counted the number of loads of good building stones that it contained. He thought of the wonderful job he could make of the yard at home, be able to put a good bottom to it with those stones. A soft peace had descended upon him. The clay, his clay, cooled the desire in his heart.
His thoughts turned to the practical girls he knew and whom he had up to this ignored. He would be happy in that country, happily married with children, and would go to the forge with the horses and converse with the blacksmith, and wander over to the cross-roads of a Sunday afternoon and discuss the football team and politics. He would be among the old men with his hands in his trousers pockets dreaming about the past. Then he would walk slowly home for his tea and the children and wife would be there waiting for him and everything would be as it was in his father’s life. How right his mother was! Why should a man seek crucifixion? And that, up to this, was exactly what he had been doing – seeking crucifixion.
Then he raised his eyes to the eastern horizon and he saw the queer light again. But this time he would not be deluded into being one of the Christs whom the world forever seeks.
O clay of life, so cool.
The division between this field and the portion of the farm which ran down the other side of the hill was a clay bank upon which yellow-blossomed whins grew. Flinging his jacket across the fence he walked back a few steps and took a race to the fence to see if he could leap it. His second love had always been athletics and on summer mornings he was usually to be seen running in his stockinged feet round the home farm, over hedges and drains and palings.
He leaped on to the fence among the whins and found himself standing above the world of Drumnay and Miskin and looking far into the east where the dark fields of Cavan fanned out through a gap in the hills into the green fertil
e plains of Louth.
The rain had stopped and the sun was coming out and the bees and stinging clags were coming alive again.
On the height beyond to the right stood Joe Finnegan’s long thatched house. He listened for sounds and his keen ear could recognize from footsteps in Finnegan’s street and from the heightened talk that some stranger was there. Like Eusebius. He walked along the march fence between himself and Finnegan’s potato field, to see how many trees and bushes had been cut. There was a lovely ash cut down and the fresh stump covered with mud and weeds. That showed that whoever cut it knew its ownership was doubtful. Greedy devils. In fencing the many gaps Tarry was going to make sure that he would cut only those bushes which grew more on Finnegan’s side than on his. He’d get what was doubtful first, the law would give him what really belonged to him.
In ordinary circumstances a terrible lethargy descended upon Tarry when starting a job like this. Now the energy of a man who was grabbing something that didn‘t belong to him urged him on, made him strong, decisive. He kept his eye on the laurels behind Finnegan’s house and once thought he had seen one of Finnegan’s five young daughters moving between the laurels and the back of the house. There was a lane at the back of the house, the lane which served this part of Carlin’s farm and Paddy McArdle’s bog field farther up. How glad Tarry was that he didn’t have to use that lane.
A few moments after the young girl had disappeared Tarry heard a wild commotion in Finnegan’s street and the violent rattle of buckets being flung down. He also heard the soft retreating footsteps of Eusebius going off by the front of the house. Then the ferocious voice of Joe:
‘Bleddy pack of foreigners, bleddy pack of foreigners. I’ll break his bleddy neck.’
‘Joe, Joe,’ his wife appealed, ‘be careful, for you know as well as bread that that man isn’t like another. If that man was to drive the fork in you there wouldn‘t be a thing done to him. Look out for yourself for he’s not square.’
‘I’ll make him square, Maggy,’ roared Joe. ‘Give me that graip, give me that graip. I’ll drive it to the handle in him.’
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