Tarry’s heart gasped. To think of his having to go in those patched trousers to help in the spraying of Reilly’s potatoes was the last irony. His mother could design the most degrading jobs for him. If it had been making hay atself, but spraying potatoes and going up and down the drills with clay on his boots and the old ragged trousers, worse even than the pair with the big button on the fork. The fork of this pair looked as if they had been torn by mad dogs and patched by mad women.
He took the trousers in his hand and went up to bed, and as he lay awake he tried to imagine himself as a great poet. He had written one poem for Mary which he liked and he said it over in his head, while in his imagination the girl was standing before him listening to poetry with all the innocent enthusiasm of the convent-bred girl who never fathomed the design behind it.
You do not come down the road any more
Past the ash trees where the gap in the hedge revealed
Your blue dress the trimming to the bottom of Callan’s field.
And the free-wheel of your bicycle like the whirr
Of the breeze in the black sallies. If you could see
The clay of time falling away from my feet
When you appeared this side of Callan’s gate,
You’d come.
He couldn’t get a good last line and he abandoned the day-dream altogether. He imagined the girl again and this time he recited another poem – as his own.
Oh I’d wed you without herds, without money or rich array
And I’d wed you on a dewy morning at day dawn grey.
She fell into his arms and he fell asleep.
‘Get up, you lazy loorpan, you.’
It was morning. After his day-dreams and night-dreams he awoke to the dreadful reality, the shame and degradation of the patchy trousers, and he himself no more than one of Reilly’s servant boys.
He got out of bed, stooped to look out the window through the trees and though the sky looked cloudy he knew it would stay fine: it always did when he was wishing it to rain.
The mother was up. She wanted him to hurry on that he’d get his breakfast in Reilly’s – ‘and what’s the use going to a man for a half-day? The gassan said that they’d send a man to you when you’d be drawing in the hay. And a day with the horse and cart is not to be sneezed at.’
Tarry delayed. He took his breakfast before going. At least he would be spared the ignominy of going in red-raw to Reilly’s at that hour of the morning. He would have to trust to luck at dinner time, and even if the girl were in then he might not care so much when he got into the hang of the place.
‘The book under the coat!’ exclaimed the mother as he went out the door.
He turned and said: ‘I have no book. What book do you mean?’
‘Ach, ach. – And if you happen to meet one of these Finnegans up the road don’t say one word. Last Saturday when I was at me confession I mentioned the trouble to Father Markey and he said them and Christians differ and that he was going to talk to them one of these days. There’s not one of the priests that wouldn’t put their hands under me feet. But you haven’t the wit of a two-year-old child, always trying to belittle the people that ’id do you a good turn. You’re on the right side of Father Markey’s book now and keep so.’
This kind of talk was better than anything to drive Tarry towards the day’s disagreeable work, and he hurried out of his mother’s range as quickly as he could. Nature must be like men in their loves – She likes to be resisted, not loved too easily.
Because Tarry was not interested in the beauty that was fluttering around him the more did the leaves dance and take on the simpleness that is so weird, and the more were the little hills queer with an ancient roguery. He did not love nature’s works, but he was in love with them – and he wished he wasn’t, for these things always made him sad, reminding of something far and forgotten in the land of Childhood before the Fall of Man.
He was impatient with the flirtatious gambolling of birds and trees, thinking as he was on the day ahead. But if he did not look at the hedges or the dust of the road these things looked at him.
Now he was caught in the stare of a huge boulder of whinstone that stood half way up the pass to Callan’s house. The old people used to say that there were fairies under that stone which was one of the shoulder-stones hurled by Finn McCoole, and Tarry knew that there were fairies under it – real fairies, fairies of the imagination, bitter and ironic fairies too.
There had been several heaps of similar boulders in Eusebius’ fields which were even more fairy-invested but Eusebius had cleared them all away. Tarry agreed with him in one way, for he too was ruthless, but at the same time he was beginning to think that Paddy Callan was a wiser man in the long run, though Paddy himself denied that he believed in the fairies and said that the only reason he didn’t shift the boulder was its usefulness as a scratching post for the cattle.
The green bushes at the bend beyond Callan’s gate overhung the road and the place in the dewy morning was a strange land in which a man could adventure. Going round this bend he always expected to meet someone or something strange. He let down his braces so as to give a devil-may-care appearance to the trousers. If a man could give the impression that he enjoyed wearing such patched things it would make them look funny. It was his experience that women liked a man who was queer and funny and didn’t care for anything. In this way the trousers were even worse looking. The fork hung down like the udder of a cow and the waist gave the impression that the wearer had a big belly. He tightened the braces again. He hurried past Cassidy’s house and cut across the bottom of Cassidy’s long meadow in case he might run into Joe Finnegan near the mouth of his lane. He looked across at Carlin’s and his new place and got a thrill out of the ownership. He was so glad to see that the four ash trees on the near fence were still standing. He stood on the edge of a ditch to see if he could see his cattle, though his mother had told him that in future one of the girls would keep an eye on them till the other trouble blew over.
Nobody was up in Carlin’s. He could hear the crow of the old cock in the stable and his knowledgeable mind reflected on the foolishness of the Carlins in keeping an old cock. Nothing but in-bred fowl about that place.
The memory of the night before flashed through his mind and he did not think it funny. He was disgusted with the attitude of his mother to an old man like Petey, and at her suggestion that she’d be prepared to give money with Mary if the marriage took place.
What was that? He listened and was almost certain that the cries came from Finnegan’s; the man was beating his wife.
When he arrived at Reilly’s potato field it looked as if the men had been at work for a long time. Three men with knapsack sprayers on their backs were climbing the steep hill before the house. The head of the household, a small wizened fellow, was rushing about the headland wearing a peculiar grin of authority, the joking face of a slave-driver.
‘Hah,’ he squealed, ‘where were you before dinner?’
One would think he was paying me, thought Tarry as he tried to joke back. Another sprayer, which happened to be a leaky one, was put on Tarry’s back. The old man stood at the barrel and filled it quickly with a small tin can. ‘Off you go now, don’t say it was here you were kept,’ said he.
Bored and miserable he climbed the hill, doing his best to dream himself far away, famous, and all this world in its proper place.
At dinner as he sat at the long deal table among six men who ate with their knives and belched and smacked, he kept his eyes on the plate self-consciously and sipped from the mug of butter-milk without tilting his lips.
The girl, helped by her mother and a servant girl, served the food. She shoved the dishes of potatoes on to the table between himself and her brother and as she did so she rubbed against his shoulder.
He would never be able to recover from this day’s shame.
Going home that evening with his heart in the gutter he met the girl and from her attitude he believed that she
did not mind his ragged clothes or the fact that he was one of the working men. She could see through the appearances to the reality.
He was tempted.
He knew that ladies had often fallen in love with their work-men. He could well have a happy time with the girl if he could bring himself to accept that point of view. But it was impossible.
A man who has conquered can dictate his own terms, but this would be slavery.
What the girl said to him he hardly knew. He was listening to his own divided self raising a bedlam in his imagination.
He knew that he had insulted her.
‘Will you be at the dance on Sunday night?’ she asked.
‘Dancing is an eejut’s game,’ he said. And he went on to expatiate on the folly of dancing. ‘What would you say to a bunch of horses that after a hard day’s work spent the night galloping and careering round the field? I wouldn’t dream of wasting me time at a dance.’
‘I’d love you to come,’ she said sweetly.
‘I wouldn’t bother me bleddy head,’ he said with a loud laugh.
‘Still –’ She gave him a gentle smile but he was determined.
‘It’s only an eejut’s game.’
‘Sunday night will be a big event, Tarry. I could see you there.’
‘Indeed you couldn’t and don’t be pretending you could,’ he shouted. He kept in a twist to conceal as much of his patched clothes as possible.
‘You’ll probably be there all the same,’ she said.
‘I wouldn’t be seen dead at that hall.’
… My God! my God! my God! he cried in his heart when they had parted. He knew that he had meant nothing of what he had said. It was all the bravado of a man in ragged clothes.
He wanted to fling himself prostrate on the ground and ask the earth’s forgiveness for his stupidity. He talked to himself. He rehearsed the encounter in his mind and said the right things. He was soft. He let the girl mould him. And then the raw reality appeared through the day-dream and he cried again.
What is the matter with me? Why couldn’t I say the right things?
He glanced back and the setting sun was shining on the back windows of the house. Silly sun to think that I could be comforted by your illusory gold.
‘– hell light down on you and that’s my prayer.’
‘And me dead tired!’
The mother had been waiting at the gate.
‘Oh, it’s you that’s the darling boy,’ she cried.
‘What’s wrong now?’
‘What’s wrong! Oh, I don’t know what class of a man you are.’
‘Can’t you tell me what’s wrong and not be making a mystery of it?’
‘Go on in there and put on a dry pair of trousers and a clean shirt and I’ll tell you.’
‘Tell me first.’
‘Go in and change your wet dirty clothes or will you drive me clane and dacent out of me mind… Ah ha, good evening, Paddy… ’
Tarry went in to change his clothes. Shortly afterwards the mother came in.
‘Had you a hard day?’
‘I put on four barrels with a leaky sprayer and that was no joke climbing one of them hills,’ he said appealing for pity. ‘What were you talking about outside?’
‘Aggie, put on the kettle and make tay for this man.’
The mother kept him in suspense. She discussed practically everything about the place in spite of all his attempts to get her to unfold the mystery. When he had his tea taken and everything had been discussed she said in a low voice: ‘What carry-on had yous at the cross the other evening?’
Tarry showed blank innocence.
‘You attacked the priest,’ she declared in an awful whisper.
‘What would take a priest up at the cross?’
‘Oh, this is more of it. Just when I was getting well in with the priests you had to attack the poor priest. And then ran.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Well, he’s coming up again in the morning and I hope you’ll have a good excuse for him. – That there’s nobody like you. Aye, indeed,’ she sighed. ‘Will you take a look at that letter we’ve got from Daly, the solicitor, this morning? It’s there on the dresser.’
He looked at the letter and made slighting comments on its literary style.
‘Illiterate.’
‘I suppose,’ said the mother, ‘you could write as good a letter as a solicitor – or a schoolmaster.’
‘That wouldn’t be hard,’ said Tarry with a sneer.
‘O, Lord, O Lord! If ever a man would make a person throw off their guts it’s you. The Lord have mercy on your father but that was the man to state a letter. If he was alive I wouldn’t have to be sending these ones to the town to see the attorney.’
‘To see the attorney. This letter only says that he’d like to see one of us whenever we happened to be in the town. There doesn’t appear to be any hurry about us going, as far as I can see.’
‘And why is it that we haven’t the deed complete by this? If I could depend on you I wouldn’t care, but I can’t trust you as far as I’d throw you. Mary should be back any time now.’
‘So she went to the town to see him. Didn’t I tell you that I’d go out on the bike and see him. When I went the first time I should go the second time. What will he think?’
‘And another thing,’ said the mother now that she had her hand in, ‘keep away from that slob of a Brady one. I do be hearing things about her – God protect everyone’s rearing – and last Sunday Bridgie McArdle was telling me that she’s a peculiar class of a girl. Charlie Trainor does be coming about Brady’s house and I’d keep away if I was you.’
‘And you always praising him.’
‘Never you mind. Now that you have your tay taken and the fresh clothes on, you might run and meet Bridie with the milk. Keep away from that party. Be dangerous to throw a pair of trousers at some women.’
Standing in the doorway Tarry saw the three calves which had been in Carlin’s in the meadow. ‘Who took them calves down?’ he asked.
‘I had them brought down till things are settled about the curse o’God deed.’
‘That’s just giving in,’ said he as he went to meet his sister.
When he returned, Mary had arrived from the town and was explaining to the mother what the solicitor had said. The mother bare-footed by the fire was sitting with her head on one side listening carefully.
‘And you told him what I told you to say?’
‘The whole bill of the races.’
Tarry wasn’t being let into the secret at all. The mother was making a child of him, an irresponsible child – and all because he was able to see the wild and wonderful meaning in the commonest things of earth.
Could he not extract from this very trouble something wild and wonderful too? Was there not a second Tarry of whom nobody in Drumnay was aware, not even his mother, who looked on at the mortal Tarry, watching, laughing, criticizing and recording? He saw himself sitting there in the corner with his elbows on the table while his mother and sisters talked. Though he was silent his was the only opinion that would matter in the long run.
Out of this imagination of himself he suddenly emerged to declare:
‘In a hundred years from now the only thing that will ever be remembered about this savage area is that I lived here awhile among the pigs.’
To attempt to describe the look on Mrs Flynn’s face at this surprising outburst would be impossible. She showed in her countenance a mixture of terror and laughter. She stood the pot-stick up against the hob and said: ‘Put out that dog till we say the Rosary. Give me over the wee stool till I kneel on it. With the help of God we’ll both go out on the fair day and if yous can get that house well and good maybe it id be all for the best. A good eating-house is not to be laughed at. I suppose you mentioned the row this wonderful man here had with that savage, Joe.’
‘I did,’ said Mary.
As they were beginning the evening prayer Tarry
saw his mother looking at him and he believed that she was impressed by his boast and the thought depressed him. It was a responsibility being depended upon, being considered a wise man. Bad as he was now he didn’t want that.
Thou O Lord wilt open my lips.
And my tongue shall announce Thy praise.
‘Did you put in your bike, Mary?’
7
He was ‘hanging’ a scythe in the kitchen the next morning to mow around the rocks and corners in the hay-field, when looking out the back window he saw the Parish Priest himself coming up the road. He was walking slowly and the hauteur of his sided head as he strode between the poplars took away some of the terror. He was making up his mind to have it out with Father Daly unknown to his mother, if he could keep her out of it. He felt that outside the destructive influence of his mother he could put himself over big with the priest. On an entirely new high level of literature and scholarship.
Whether his mother came on the scene or not that was the way he was going to talk. The more a man stuck to the gutter the more he was stuck in it and he was not going to be the wet gutter reflecting the sky of truth if he could help it. His mother was over in the potato field at the time and he had high hopes that she would not return till the priest had left. In this he was disappointed. Just then the dog – which was an irreligious beast – began to bark wildly from the haggard and in a moment he was galloping across the street in front of the door. The mother who was coming across the meadow on her way back from the field saw the dog and rushed ahead just in time to prevent the priest from being attacked by the mongrel.
Tarry was in the house screwing his courage to the sticking place and indifferent to the dog’s behaviour.
‘You’re welcome, father. Chu father – dog.’
Father Daly had his hand on the bar of the gate. The woman was in a terrible state, shaking like jelly. The presence of the avowed and sacred celibate is a terror to womankind. No chink in the heart.
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