Tarry Flynn

by Patrick Kavanagh

  ‘What the hell must be the matter?’ said Charlie. ‘There’s a lot of activity going on around here… You have two good fields, Flynn.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Tarry said awakening from his tragic reverie.

  When they were starting up the van they sighted Larry Finnegan coming along the lane in the direction of his brother’s at a gasping trot.

  Charlie tried to stop him: ‘What’s wrong, Larry?’

  ‘Bad news, bad news,’ he said in a pant without stopping. ‘The brother’s dying.’

  ‘That’s a terror,’ said Charlie.

  Next, Mrs Cassidy appeared carrying a white quilt and a blessed candle.

  ‘Isn’t it terrible about poor Joe?’ she said.

  ‘What happened him?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘Oh the less said about it the better; he was hurt this morning and he’s very bad. The priest was sent for.’

  ‘Was it a kick from a horse or what?’

  ‘I don’t know till I go over,’ she said and hurried on, delighted to be in touch with bad news.

  That it was nothing but a fake injury Tarry was certain. They wanted to cause trouble and they were succeeding. He had only given the man the slightest little punch and it couldn’t be the fall. No, the whole thing was a fake. The Finnegans like most of the poor people of that district were never ashamed to make a show of themselves. They revelled in a dramatic scene. That was the sort of thing that Tarry always wanted to avoid and which by trying to avoid he now ran into with a vengeance.

  The news of Joe Finnegan’s dying condition was the talk of Drumnay, Miskin and the whole parish of Dargan that evening. Some people said that he had fracture of the skull and that a specialist had been sent for. The report that Tarry Flynn had been arrested was also widespread.

  Mrs Flynn was in a terrible state as she paced over and back her kitchen floor, crying and beating her thighs and cursing her son. She cried and clapped her hands and broke into the middle of sentences: ‘that me heart’s broke, night, noon and morning with a man that’s always making little of the priests, won’t go to confession or a curse-o‘-God thing.’

  The three daughters were trying to pacify her by making themselves very busy – attending to the pots, coming in and going out in a hurry, shutting in the hens, sweeping the floor, washing the vessels.

  ‘Everything ’ill be all right, mother, wait till you see.’

  ‘With the oul’ book in his pocket and the fag in the mouth and then to think of him taking the bag of oats. Oh, I wish and I more than wish that I had let him go to hell out of here when he wanted to go… that me heart is as black as your boot with him, the blackguard.’

  ‘Come on in outa that with you,’ said Aggie to her brother, who during the outburst sat on the shaft of the cart in the cart-house glancing idly through the pages of the Sunlight Almanac.

  ‘Leave me alone,’ he said.

  The dog came in and sat at his feet. The dog was the only animal with Christian feelings in that area. He patted the dog and stretched its ears and as he did he forgot the torture that was ripping up his soul and for one moment looking through the half-open door saw the Evening Star over Jenny Toole’s and he knew – This worry would pass. The grass would reflect the sun tomorrow and the wings of crows would be shadows upon it.

  The blackbird began to sing in the bushes behind the shed. His mother’s whine had ceased. Bridie had gone to milk the cows. Tarry lit a cigarette.

  Tarry sat by the window sipping his tea without saying a word lest he should start his mother off again. She was leaning over the table at the back window with her rosary beads in her fingers.

  Every time footsteps sounded on the road outside Tarry jumped, thinking it might be the police. The police were certain to come it not this evening in the morning. The mother left her place by the back window and went to the parlour where Tarry heard her opening the money box. Shortly afterwards she came up with a ten shilling note which she put in an envelope and said: ‘I’m sending that ten shilling note to the Redemptrists the morrow morning if the Lord spares me. And if this blows over you‘ll have to go to your confession to them.’

  Tarry growled but did in his own defeated heart promise to confess his sins and to pray as he never prayed before if he got out of this scrape.

  What he was trying to make out now was what he had often tried to make out before – and that was how the most innocent action by him always seemed to have in it the seeds of misfortune. How many times had Charlie Trainor been in rows, had beaten up men in pubs. And Eusebius too, he could get away with anything. Tarry remembered how when they were small boys himself and Eusebius were throwing stones idly at a bottle on a wall and as he flung a stone a cow of Callan’s put her head over the wall and got her eye knocked out.

  They had been waiting to hear the doctor’s car coming back, but at nine o’clock there was still no sign, so they came to the conclusion that he went out by the upper end of Drumnay.

  ‘And now in the Name of God,’ said the mother, ‘let us all kneel down and say the Rosary – for my special intention.’

  The mother had Tarry on the run. He knelt down like a child and answered out loudly and never dozed off at all during the prayers.

  ‘Name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.’ The mother made the Sign of the Cross with the Crucifix of her Rosary and straightened her back away from the low stool at which she knelt. Bridie was already going up the stairs to bed. ‘Take that vessel up with you,’ said the mother. ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost… Well, now you be to hurt the man somehow, and you didn’t tell me. He‘ll swear you hit him with the slashing-hook.’

  ‘He must have hurt himself when he fell on the stones; but he couldn’t be too bad for I‘m sure as sure that I saw him after clearing away the evidence when I left. There wasn’t a track anywhere on my side when we were up there this evening.’

  ‘And why the devil’s father didn‘t you tell me that? Oh, Lord God!’

  ‘I’m sure there’s damn all wrong with him, mother.’

  ‘Don’t I know only too damn well that it’s making out he is, but the making out is as bad as anything. He’d like to put us out on the door. I was talking to Molly there and she was telling me that Mrs Cassidy was telling her that there isn‘t a whit the matter with him. But what good is that to us?’

  ‘The doctor ought to know.’

  ‘The doctor can‘t tell everything.’

  It was morning, and as he walked through the cabbages in the garden while waiting for Bridie to bring home the milk for the breakfast he could not help feeling the gentle cool caress of the cabbage leaves and the dew-wet honeysuckle in the hedge cheering for the lovelier truth that fluttered wings above the mean days.

  Considering himself, he found that he had not been seriously hurt in spirit over the trouble with Finnegan, and today he was better prepared to meet whatever challenge came. The snails climbing up the stones of the fence and the rushes and thistles in the meadow beyond seemed to be putting a quilt of peace around his heart.

  He went to the village after breakfast to buy the spraying stuff and found the clerks in Magan’s were surprised at his being out of jail. The village blacksmith in for a ‘cure’ came up from the public house end of the shop and told Tarry that if he wanted a witness to stand for him he wouldn’t hesitate.

  ‘Only pretending to be hurted, that’s all,’ said the blacksmith. ‘You don‘t worry, sham-shiting behind the hedge he is.’

  ‘Are you sure of that, Tom?’

  ‘Positive, positive.’

  Tarry had gumption enough to remember to stand the blacksmith a drink.

  He learned in the village that Mrs Finnegan had been to the police but that they had advised her to prosecute; it wasn’t a case for the police.

  Cycling home with nearly a hundredweight of sulphate of copper and washing soda on his back he felt less burdened than if he had no load. His mother was pleased when he told her what he had heard and particularly proud of her son having had the sense to
stand the blacksmith the drink. ‘That’s why I like you to have money in your pocket,’ she said, ‘not to be smoking it and wasting it on oul’ books.’

  6

  Petey called to Flynn’s one evening again but he was plainly drifting, or sidling, out of the marriage notion. He was displeased over the beating his cousin Joe had received.

  ‘He’s a gelding,’ said Mrs Flynn, ‘they‘re all very thick with their relations.’

  The neighbourly dislike of the Finnegans for the Flynns had now warmed into vicious hatred. Tarry was not behindhand in his fury: he was continuously either day-dreaming or planning the destruction of Joe and his family. He put himself off to sleep every night for a fortnight on the day-dream that Joe had fallen on the blade of a scythe and severed part of his genital organs.

  Then one morning Eusebius brought him word that the Finnegans were rehearsing a court scene in which he (Tarry) was figuring as defendant.

  Tarry had often heard it said that all the branches of the Finnegan tribe had always rehearsed court cases in which they were interested in advance, but he accepted the story as a good story, no more. He was too vexed and hated too much now to see any humour in the thing. But one evening as they were coming from the village nothing would do Eusebius only that they should sneak over by Finnegan’s house till they’d see.

  It was a fine summer’s evening and the night air was scented most enchantingly, but so depressed with anger and hate was Tarry that he had no time for either the beautiful night or the enchanting scents. Neither did he observe anything in the vicinity of the house. Eventually they got to the back window and could see in.

  The scene going on was like a play. As he remembered the scene later when he was less angry it appeared thus:

  Characters:

  Mrs Maggy Finnegan . . . . . . . . A Judge

  Joe Finnegan . . . . . . . . . . . A Plaintiff

  Petey Meegan . . . . . . . . . . . As Tarry Flynn the defendant

  Larry Finnegan . . . . . . . . . Solicitor for the plaintiff

  Johnie McArdle . . . . . . . . . . Solicitor for the defendant

  (Plaintiff is giving evidence.)

  I was coming quietly down me drills of potatoes to see if they were blighted when I saw the defendant on my side of the hedge in a fighting attitude. He had a slashing-hook in his hand.

  Solicitor for Plaintiff: You were afraid of the defendant, no doubt?

  Plaintiff: I was terrified of him; he is a very peculiar class of a man.

  Solicitor: You thought he was about to attack you?

  Plaintiff: I was.

  Solicitor: You said nothing to anger him?

  Plaintiff: I never opened me mouth.

  Solicitor: He then attacked you and you tried to defend yourself?

  Plaintiff: I did the best I could.

  Solicitor: Flynn is a much bigger man than you?

  Plaintiff: He’s a big bad man; I’d bate the breed of him in any kind of a fair fight.

  At this point the court adjourned in some consternation and a general confab took place.

  ‘If you say a thing like that you’re bet before you begin,’ said one.

  ‘We’re better try Flynn in the box before we chuck it,’ said another.

  Eusebius giggled quietly but Tarry saw nothing funny in the affair.

  The wife, who was playing the judge, was now finishing the porridge in the tin porringer which she had on the table beside her.

  ‘Petey, get into the box.’

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Petey, without moving from his seat.

  The Solicitor for the Plaintiff goes at once into the attack without allowing the Defendant’s own lawyer to examine his client directly.

  Solicitor: You’re a bit of a poet, Flynn, I believe? (laughter).

  Petey (attempting to mimic Tarry): There’s a great beauty in stone and weeds (more laughter).

  Solicitor: Your mother bought a farm for you to keep you from the lunatic asylum, is that the case?

  Petey: I admit she bought a farm.

  Solicitor: What’s known as grabbing a farm, isn’t that so?

  Petey scratches his head in imitation of Tarry.

  ‘Isn’t he the lousy bastard?’ commented the real Tarry.

  ‘Howl on,’ said Eusebius.

  Petey: She gave full value for it, if I know anything.

  Solicitor: Would it be any harm to ask you where she got the money to pay for it? (Petey does not reply.)

  There was here a second private confab as to the method of attack on the defendant and his family. The judge got up and disappeared for a time.

  ‘Do you mane business at all, Joe?’ asked his brother.

  ‘I bleddy well do mane business.’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it to me.’

  ‘I have to go out to loose a button,’ said Joe.

  ‘Come on,’ said Tarry.

  ‘Howl your horses,’ said Eusebius.

  Tarry wasn’t risking being caught and he was already on his way through the dry dust of a dunghill and over the remains of a pit of mangolds.

  His mother was gone to bed when he arrived home. She called down: ‘Where were you?’

  As he heated milk for himself he told her what he had seen.

  ‘And Petey was there?’ cried the mother. ‘Lord, O Lord! it’s no wonder I do be telling you to mind your things with the class of people that’s on the go in this country.’

  In one way the mother was pleased by this burlesque development; if the Finnegans really meant business, if they really were in a state of blind anger and hate they would be unable to make a play of the theme.

  ‘Petey will hardly ever come back for Mary,’ said Tarry.

  ‘No loss,’ said the mother. ‘Aggie was telling one of the priests on Lough Derg about it and he said she‘d be mad to have anything to do with him. He said that it would be a sin for a young girl to marry the man. And do you know, I kind of think he’s right. They‘re thinking of starting an eating-house in the town. Have a better chance of getting a man that way. Since she went to the factory May up the road has scores of young fellas after her. And even if they are barefooted gassans at least they’re young hardy chaps… Drink your drink, sugsie.’ She was giving a drink to the calf out of a bucket. ‘Take this bucket and bring the calf to the meadow, he‘ll follow you,’ she said.

  ‘Terrible the changes that’s taking place, Tarry,’ she rambled along musingly.

  ‘Greedy pack. You’ll have to keep an eye on them trees or they’ll not leave you one to make a swing-tree.’

  He took the knapsack sprayer out of the dairy, put it on his back and was going off to finish the spraying of the potatoes when his mother called after him with a small can of milk in her hand. ‘I don’t want you to be stooping down to drink out of that well; I do be afraid you‘ll fall in one fine day.’

  ‘Aw, you’re… ’ He checked himself, for once not wanting to tear through his mother’s affection for him.

  Up and down the drills he went. As well as being his day’s work this was also an exercise of the will, the will to live and have faith, the faith of a flower or of the sun that rises every morning.

  The spray blew like a fine mist through the leaves of the potatoes. Half way up a drill the nozzles choked and he had to blow into them with his mouth. The taste of the copper mixture was in his mouth and his lips were blue. The narrow bottoms of the drills made his feet turn sideways so that he was walking on the edges of his soles.

  He had faith in the day and faith in his work. That was enough. Without ambition, without desire, the beauty of the world poured in through his unresisting mind. He backed into the side of the barrel on the headland and let the sprayer rest on the seat-board of the cart which lay across the top. He lit a cigarette but found that the taste of spraying stuff did not agree with nicotine and he had to throw the cigarette away.

  All day he sprayed the potatoes, and nothing was happening except his being. Being was enough, it was the worship of God.
/>   When he went home that evening his mother had a pair of dry trousers ready for him to put on. She was a terrible woman for keeping old trousers going. How could a man think of himself as being in love with a beautiful girl when wearing such rags? He had intended putting on his good trousers but he knew that if he mentioned doing so or made the slightest complaint about the raggedness of the other ones his mother would call him everything but a decent fellow. She would probably go into a fit of the tantrums. But the memory of the potatoes was in his mind and the imagination of the clay and weeds and into that picture any pair of trousers would fit him. He was a part of the ragged little fields.

  ‘I just sent Mary up to see about them cattle in Carlin’s,’ she said as he put on the trousers in the dairy. ‘If you didn‘t keep an eye on your things you wouldn’t have them. I don‘t know what’s keeping her. Yes, it pays to keep an eye on your little stuff.’

  He had a mind to go over to the cross-roads; it was the only place a man could go in the old trousers he had on – but he changed his mind and went upstairs to his room where he brought out the old American book on phrenology and began to look through the pictures.

  Eliza Cook: Poet. ‘Mental Temperament, Large.’

  Tarry rubbed his fingers round his head, feeling for the bumps of poetry. According to the book the most poetic head was that belonging to an American poet called Clark, of whose works Tarry had never heard. But the people who made the book seemed to think that on the shape of his skull alone he was entitled to be called a great poet – and Tarry was inclined to agree. This poet was ugly enough. The top of his head across the brow was very wide and his chin was very thin. The eyes were large and bulging and it was hard to say whether it was a man or a woman. But Tarry would have liked to have such a poetic-shaped head. If he had an extra half inch on each side of his temples he would be a great poet too. He got a comb and combed back the hair from his brows. He narrowed his mouth and chin and considering his appearance in the mirror adjudged himself nearly as great a poet as Clark.

  He was going through the book examining other mighty heads when he heard his mother’s voice at the gate in conversation with Mary Reilly. He put his head out the window where he could see without being seen and there was the girl standing beside her bicycle, dressed in a summery dress which revealed all the contours of her limpid body.