How ashamed of his mother Tarry was! She was making no attempt to be polite. On the contrary she was being worse than usual. O my God! he gasped to himself when his mother ostentatiously blew her nose with her fingers. How could he raise himself in the girl’s eyes after she had seen the kind of his mother?
‘Is your bike flat?’ she asked the girl.
The girl said it was, and then the woman shouted: ‘Come out, Tarry, and pump the dacent girl’s bicycle.’
He was in a swether whether or not he should wait to put on his good trousers when the mother called again: ‘What the devil’s father’s keeping you?’
He went out as he was, walking with a sideways movement to conceal the big overcoat button that his inconsiderate mother had sewed on the fork of his trousers. He had never met this girl when he was at his best; there was always something to humble him – cow, coming from the bull, unshaven, or this big button.
She held the bicycle while he did the pumping and as he was stooped his head was against her beautiful bare legs. She spoke to him and this gave him a chance to upturn his eyes, but as an act of self-denial, a form of inverted bravado, he kept his eyes on the road. He felt that wearing those trousers any advance would be a waste of time and would maybe spoil a better future chance. He was fond of saving up for a grand passion.
Returning to the house he changed his trousers in the hope of meeting the girl on her way back. It happened that while waiting in the bushes near the mouth of the road, Molly came up.
His problem now was whether to enjoy – as far as he would be allowed – the pleasures afforded by this slut or wait on for Mary. He decided that he might easily kill two birds with one stone. If Molly turned out a failure or even if she proved a success, he would still be able to meet the other girl.
He walked with her to the green road and chanced his arm with a few lewd double-meaning remarks as he had heard Charlie doing, never imagining that, as he so indifferently said them, they would have any effect.
They were beginning to work. Instead of being insulted, she laughed, and pretending that she had not caught one phrase – the hottest one – said: ‘What was that you said?’
With lewd delight he repeated the phrase.
She kept silent waiting to hear more. He tried something the worst he could think of and again she took it in with a sigh. He found himself saying the most abominable things with a cold detachment; it was all in the cause of truth.
‘Some of the blacks have ones a foot and a half.’
She sighed deeply again. They were treading their way through the nettles and stunted blackthorns.
Why hadn’t he tried this method before?
They fell on a bank among the thistles and briars and all of a sudden his conscience returned. He was ashamed of himself and ashamed of being seen in Molly’s company. She had large buck teeth and her eye teeth, unable to find space, were turned in like the teeth of a pike. The grass around was withered and nearby somebody had used the spot as a lavatory. In disgust he got to his feet.
‘You wait a second here,’ he said. He crossed the bank into Kerley’s field, looked furtively round to make sure no one was watching or the girl following, and then he ran full speed through the field, indifferent to the bull sniffing in a corner, and was out on the main road in half a minute.
He hoped that no one had seen him – no one that mattered – but he was finding it hard to convince himself, for nothing could get it out of his head that as he was racing down the field Mary had been passing home on her bicycle. It would be just his luck if she saw him. The hedge was thick along the road at this point and it was doubtful if one passing on a bicycle could see him, but women, he always heard, had very sharp sight when it came to seeing things like that. Good God! wasn’t he the fool to risk everything for – nothing.
Some time later when he had quietened his thoughts he decided to take a stroll towards the cross-roads – just to see.
Before he had come within speaking distance of the crossroads he could see – or he thought he could see – jeering grins on several faces. He tried to hide his self-consciousness as he approached. He felt that every eye was on him. He put on a sour face and concentrated on high philosophical thoughts. He began to count the stones in the wall as an exercise in self-control.
There were, he observed, the usual two groups at the crossroads – a main party discussing football, politics and the crops, and a fringe party of whom Charlie was the leader carrying on low lewd conversation or making insulting comments on the passers-by. This fringe had been having a competition as to which of them could shout the loudest and their bawling could be heard echoing in the valleys beyond the Parochial House and the river.
Tarry had tried to join the group under cover of this shouting but Charlie, in Tarry’s egotistical view, seemed to have but one interest in life, and that was concentrating his nasty mind on Tarry. Charlie was quite decent when there was no third party present, but in a crowd he showed very nasty traits.
All Tarry wanted now was to join the crowd quietly, anonymously.
Among those present were the brothers Finnegan, Larry and Joe, sitting together on the edge of the bank.
‘Did you get it?’ said Charlie with a laugh, as Tarry came to a stop in the middle of the group of crooked old men who were debating the mighty feats of strength of their immediate forbears and in particular of a noted strong man known as Paddy Hughie Tom who had hurled the sixteen pound shot ‘from here to below the turn at McKenna’s gate’.
Tarry ignored Charlie’s remark and tried to merge himself in the debating group by expressing a scientific view of Paddy Hughie Tom’s throw.
‘The world’s record’s well over fifty feet, but that would be well over the record. Was it the right weight or did he throw it right?’
A fellow with a long upper lip and bandy legs who was a relation of the strong man, spat out viciously and said: ‘Throw it right! what the hell are you trying to come at?’
Tarry regretted having made the observation. Attention was being focused on him, the very thing he didn’t want. The Finnegans were only waiting for the chance to pick a row.
‘I’m sure he threw it that far,’ he said, glancing down the bill towards McKenna’s gate. ‘He must have been a damn good man.’
‘He was six feet four and built according,’ remarked another.
‘Don’t be making a child of yourself, Tom,’ said someone else. ‘Did you ever see that man stripped? Chest on him, be the holies, like a barrel. Flynn,’ the man turned to Tarry, ‘did you say that the weight wasn’t the right weight? Do you know what, he’d throw the breed of you over that bleddy ditch before his breakfast.’
Tarry tried to sidle away, to make himself invisible, but the argument was beginning to surge around him.
‘He never tried to grab anyone’s piece of land,’ one of the Finnegans said from his sitting position.
‘Huh,’ sniffed Tarry with contempt. ‘Grabbing land! That’s a thing of the past.’
‘Here’s where Paddy Hughie Tom stood,’ one of the crooked little hero-worshippers was saying. ‘I was here the evening he did it.’
Two girls passed on bicycles.
‘Me hand on your drawers,’ shouted Charlie. ‘Come back outa that, Flynn,’ he said in a camouflaged voice, like the voice of a stunted mongrel bull.
‘That’s bleddy mean,’ said Tarry weakly.
‘He never grabbed what never belonged to him anyway,’ jawed Larry Finnegan, who had got to his feet.
A man passed on a bicycle and someone called after him: ‘You’re going the wrong way.’
Immediately the man dismounted, and there was consternation when it was discovered that he was Father Markey. He stood at a distance of about thirty yards from the crowd listening to the breathing of the men, for the crowd was hushed as soon as his identity became known. After a minute or so he got on his bicycle again. If he had said something they would not have been half so disturbed. There would be more trouble o
ver this, and nothing was more certain than that Tarry would be blamed more than anyone else.
Below them in the hollow the river gurgled by on the shiny stones. The mackerel sky was darkening.
‘Are you sure it was him?’ a man asked another.
‘Absolutely.’
Eusebius arrived at this point and stood in the middle of the road leaning contentedly over the handle-bars of his bicycle. How easily he blended with this crowd, thought Tarry. He was one of them, not a disturbing influence as Tarry was.
‘I’ll make some of them hop,’ growled Joe Finnegan. ‘I’ll bring some of them to their milk before I’m finished.’
Tarry, knowing that these remarks were directed towards him, and realizing that the night was coming on, thought it best to move off. As he was about to go he turned to Eusebius and asked him if he were coming.
‘What the hell hurry’s on you?’ said Eusebius.
‘I’m expecting a cow to calve.’
‘She’ll take no hurt.’
‘Better be sure than sorry, Eusebius.’
‘Any cow will calve on her own.’
From the mouth of the Drumnay road was heard the wild passionate neighing of a mare, and Eusebius jumped on his bicycle. It was a mare being brought to his stallion.
Nothing vexed Tarry more than this. To see how interested Eusebius could be in his own affairs and at the same time trying to make Tarry indifferent to his. It was a mean sort of attitude.
Joe Finnegan, afraid that Tarry might escape before he engineered a row with him, staggered across the bank and stumbled over Tarry’s feet.
‘Did you try to work the boot on me, Flynn?’ he cried. ‘The bastard tried to work the boot on me.’
The men who had been discussing Paddy Hughie Tom immediately came to attention. The one form of fighting which was abhorred in this society was the use of the boot in a row. The knee in the belly was permitted, but never the boot.
‘I didn’t even see the man atself,’ pleaded Tarry.
‘You’re a liar,’ bawled Larry Finnegan, surging up towards him.
‘I’d bore rat-holes in you, and in the breed of you,’ declared Joe.
Tarry moved away pursued by the Finnegans.
He decided to run, and he ran followed by the two brothers. He outdistanced them easily, but in doing so he had lost caste, he knew. When he stopped to draw his breath he could hear Joe laughing: ‘He wouldn’t be able to pull the skin of boiled butter-milk.’
As he walked up the Drumnay road among the gossiping poplars he had a feeling that there was some tension in his home. There was a light in the dairy window and although there was often a light in the dairy he sensed something wrong. Was it his guilty conscience?
The cow must have calved. Nervous activity registered itself from the vicinity of the cow house. The front door of the dwelling-house was open and that was a sure sign. He ran in and found the kitchen empty. The kettle was on the crook. He called hello but no one answered. Then his mother’s footsteps crossed the street in front of the house and she saw him.
‘Oh,’ said she bitterly, ‘it’s you that’s the good son. That the cow had like to be lost in the calving with not a man about the place. Only for the good neighbours I don’t know what I’d do.’
He took his chastisement without a reply. He went to the door of the cow house and looked in with humble eyes. Paddy Callan and Petey Meegan were sitting together on the manger-stick smoking and talking and feeling that they were the two most important men in the parish. The cow lay contentedly beside them.
‘Where’s the calf?’ he asked.
‘He’s here,’ called Aggie from the horse stable, ‘and come in and give us a hand to dry him.’
‘A bull calf,’ he remarked when he saw the little animal.
‘That’s why she got it so hard to calve – big head,’ said Aggie complainingly.
‘Nonsense. That cow always calved on her own. Almost any cow will calve on her own,’ he added. ‘And there’s no need to be rubbing a calf in summer. And what half-chewed eejut brought the cow in from the field anyway in the middle of summer to the dirty stable?’
In the task of delivering a cow or any other farm animal the last men Tarry would have would be the pair of awkward fellows who were now sitting on the manger-stick. They took on to know a great deal and were fond of interfering with nature taking her course. Pawing the cow and rooting around her, there was a danger that she’d get blood poison from this handling.
‘Leave the calf alone and he’ll be on his feet in a minute,’ Tarry said. ‘That rubbing him with a wisp of grass is not needed.’
‘Give that man no heed,’ commanded the mother coming in.
‘I was only… ’ He cut himself off lest his mother should go into the tantrums, and went to the cow house to have another look at the cow.
The road gate rattled and the mother looked to see who it was. It was the two daughters. ‘Wet the tay,’ she called, ‘and fill up the tay-pot.’
The two old men were reminiscing about the past – Petey especially was – and Paddy as soon as he had an audience changed his attitude and began to take a hand at Petey – about his not having a wife – ‘and all to that.’
Remembering Petey’s attempted mimicry of him in Joe Finnegan’s, Tarry was not over sympathetic. If Petey got the chance he could take a hand at a bigger fool than himself.
‘There’s your woman there,’ laughed Paddy, putting his hand on Mary’s shoulder when she was pouring out the tea. He winked at the girl. ‘What do you say?’
Mary took it in good part and as for Petey he had the old bachelor’s enjoyment in being joked about women. Petey ate away, scooping his egg out of the shell with the wrong end of a table spoon.
The mother sat in her usual place on the low stool by the fire quietly directing the conversation, but for the moment letting it run on the marriage business, saying nothing.
‘Mam,’ said Paddy turning half round, ‘this will be the dearest cow that ever calved about your place. You’ll lose one of your daughters over it. By the lord Harry there’s a man there and wouldn’t anyone know he has the heat of marriage in him.’
Observing Petey’s reactions, so contented having his back scratched, Tarry felt embarrassed, but he tried to hide his feelings. He wasn’t going to have his mother blaming him this time.
‘Mary, run out and see if that cow is all right. I don’t want her to eat her cleanings,’ said the mother. ‘Paddy, if she wants to get married the devil the bit of me will stop her.’
‘Now Petey, it’s up to you,’ said Paddy.
Petey, his ego being built up, was inclined to retreat, to make himself more valuable.
‘Before the girl comes in, what do you say, Petey?’ Paddy urged.
‘If I had me hay cut,’ said Petey with a hem and a haw, ‘and the house done up a bit, I don’t know a damn but I might take a notion.’
‘Ah now, none of this hunker-sliding, Petey,’ said Paddy half on the joke. ‘If you don’t do it now you’ll never do it. Damn it, after all it’s coming up to the time for you to be making a move. I’m not saying you’re past yourself yet, but at the same time it’s coming up to the time.’
Tarry dragged an old newspaper from the window stool and began to pore over the advertisements. He was finding it hard to endure this embarrassing conversation.
Paddy turned to the mother. ‘You wouldn’t send her out empty-handed, Mary?’
‘If she was getting a good man she’d be well treated,’ said the mother.
‘Now Petey,’ said smiling Paddy.
‘I wouldn’t – I wouldn’t think – much,’ said Petey hesitantly.
Paddy was disgusted. He switched the conversation sharply, much to Petey’s disappointment, and said: ‘Are yous taking seed of your hay, Mary?’
‘This man here says that there’s no seed on it,’ said the mother.
‘Anayther there is,’ said Tarry.
Mary returned. Petey glanced maukishly
at her as if trying to make up his mind. Perhaps he sensed that in the long run the whole thing was a joke, that when it would come to the test the girl would reject him. Perhaps he didn’t want to be hurt and that was the cause of his hesitation.
‘We’re as well be mooching off,’ said Paddy rising.
‘Musha what’s your hurry?’ said the mother looking at the clock. ‘It’s only half eleven; that clock’s fast.’
‘Time for any dacent man to be shunting, Mary.’
The men rose. The mother went to the dresser and took two half crowns out of an egg cup. Going out the door she slipped them into Paddy’s hand. Tarry thought her very generous, more generous than she ever was with him, and he grumbled when the men were gone.
‘It pays to be dacent,’ said the mother. ‘A shut fist never caught a bird. If you had your way we wouldn’t have a neighbour to bid us the time of day. You’d smoke the tail of an ass and not a word about it. Aggie, go out and bring in the vessel.’
They sat up by the fire holding an inquest on the late discussion. ‘That man’s no good,’ said the mother referring to Petey. ‘He’ll never take a wife, never, never, never.’
‘And who the hell said I’d take him?’ snapped Mary. ‘I wouldn’t take him if his bottom was paved with diamonds.’
‘And what do you mane to do? Yous all can’t hang around this place. You might be glad of him yet.’
‘Cod,’ said Mary.
‘Oh, yous are all like this man here, no sense or reason with any of yous.’
Tarry, sick of the whole thing, got up to go to bed. The mother said: ‘Take up them pair of trousers that’s hanging behind the door that I patched for you.’
Looking at the pair of old trousers with patches like deal planks all over them Tarry burst out: ‘What in the Name of God do you want me to wear them oul’ trousers for? To hell with them.’
The mother was ready to overflow in a rage. Tarry took the trousers. The mother said: ‘Young Paddy Reilly was here this evening after you were gone and he wants to know if you’d go up the morrow and give them a hand with the spraying of the praties on the high hill where they can’t work the horse sprayer. I said you’d go. And don’t be making a fool of yourself up there the morrow.’
Tarry Flynn Page 14