It was her wordlessness smote him. An impulse to cry out touched his throat. Words came to her again. They came in a spurt, on their own, like he had once seen blood spurt. ‘God help me and every mother.’ And then a storm of sobs swept her and words came in a deluge. ‘Your nice wee place; your strong farm; your wee room for your writing, your room for your writing.’
‘How will she carry on,’ he kept mumbling. ‘How will she carry on.’
He was very sorry for his mother. He could see that she was in her way a wise mother. Yet, he had to go. Why? He didn’t want to go. If, on the other hand, he stayed, he would be up against the Finnegans and the Carlins and the Bradys and the Cassidys and the magic of the fields would be disturbed in his imagination.
She was a good mother and a wise one and she would surely realize that her son was doing the right thing.
‘Women,’ remarked the uncle sensing his companion’s thoughts, ‘never have got full credit for their bravery. They sacrifice everything to life.’
Tarry, hesitating like an unwilling schoolboy, turned at the mouth of the Drumnay lane and looked once more and once more again up the valley. The field of potatoes in blossom was the full of his mind.
‘Shut your eyes and you’ll see it better,’ said the uncle paradoxically.
Jemmy Kerley was leading the shorthorn bull to a corner of his field beside a gate where a cow was waiting and Tarry remembered all the times he had driven a cow to the bull – up lanes banked with primroses and violets, and meeting men and women who were always so interesting.
They met Father Daly coming from saying his morning Mass in Dargan church and Tarry was shocked that his uncle did not raise his hat to him. ‘Terrible pity of that poor man,’ said he, ‘living here at the back of God’s speed. I met the Pope once and if I had known about him I’d have put in a good word for him.’
‘And you met the Pope?’
‘Yes,’ the uncle went on, ‘the only thing a man could do in a place like this is drink himself to death. I could have fixed him up if I had only known.’
The uncle continued talking but Tarry was not listening. He was back in Drumnay looking for his cap on top of the dresser. He was walking along the dry brown headland of the potato field. He was coming home alone from the crossroads of a Sunday evening and when he got home nobody was in the house save his mother who was making pancakes for him. He was wearing a new suit and he had a new soul, brand new, wondering at the newly created world.
O the beauty of what we love! O the pain of roots dragging up! He was visualizing a scene that took shape as a song.
On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.
The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy’s haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight
To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.
As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.
And I thought of the wasps’ nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.
The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.
I’ll be carrying bags today, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill…
Maybe Mary might call round…
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.
Tarry Flynn Page 21