Only with Blood

by Therese Down

  He was waiting for a glimpse of Caitlin Spillane and her new husband. Why, exactly, he was not sure. He was not the only one who wanted to see Caitlin Flynn. The whole village, the Spillanes included, were curious to see Caitlin enter the church as Jack’s wife. They imagined what must surely have transpired on the wedding night and could only think that, somehow, the trauma of it would show in Caitlin’s face and demeanour. Mrs Brett was ready with her most vicious and disapproving sneer, which she planned to deliver to Jack Flynn’s back as he passed her by. She might even risk an audible “disgraceful” if there was no chance he would look back and catch her.

  Mrs Spillane’s heart fluttered quickly at the thought of seeing her daughter. She had lain awake most of the night with the sheets over her head, crying at the thoughts of what Caitlin must be going through. Still, she had consoled herself, it was always worse to start with; you got used to anything after a while. Mick Spillane was very hung-over and had barely managed to milk his cows that morning. He could think of little else but going back to bed for an hour or so when he got home. Maureen and herself could feed the pigs. He did want confirmation that Caitlin had survived her ordeal, but his continuing inebriation was just the distraction he needed from images of Jack Flynn with his daughter. He might go drinking again that night. All were disappointed, however, for when Jack Flynn came into the church, coughing his way up the aisle and assuming his usual pew at the front, he was alone.

  “Geeney-mack,” whispered one young girl to her friend, “he’s kilt her!” And they both blessed themselves, exchanging wide- eyed looks.

  Jack looked neither right nor left, and Donal knew exactly who he was from the sudden eruptions of mutterings and nudges and looks towards the tall, greying man who arrived last to mass. Throughout the service, Donal stared at Jack’s back and hated him. He made up his mind that, married or not, Caitlin Spillane was to be rescued. Indeed, reasoned Donal, the act would be all the more heroic, for the victim would have lost all hope of deliverance.

  When Jack eventually emerged from the church, he nodded cursorily to the Spillanes, who had huddled together to wait for him on the top step. Then he walked on as though they were nothing to him. The young man who suddenly pushed himself away from the railing at the bottom of the steps and stared at him was less easy to ignore. Flynn met the stranger’s flashing brown eyes and frowned at him, enquiring who he was and what he wanted with a quizzical knitting of his brows and narrowing of eyes. No words were spoken, and after a moment Donal let his eyes slide from Jack’s and turned slowly away. He would remember that face.

  “Who do you suppose that is, now?” Spillane’s voice was startlingly close. At Mrs Spillane’s insistence, he had followed Jack to enquire of Caitlin and had watched with great interest the encounter between Jack and Donal. Jack ignored him and strode off quickly in the direction of his horse. As far as he was concerned, any necessity to communicate with Spillane had terminated the moment he had handed him that envelope.

  When Caitlin Flynn assumed her usual classroom desk after the Christmas break, there was a stir throughout the school. No one had expected her to return. The nun calling the register missed her off, paused, and looked at Caitlin when the register was concluded. Caitlin met her gaze, waited, and the nun said eventually, “Caitlin.”

  “Present, Sister.”

  Never before had a girl returned to school after marriage. In fact, it had been some years since a school-aged girl had married in Dunane. Times were very hard and the war made them harder. Those who could afford to marry at all were few and far between and the men who could afford it, middle aged. And, though matchmaking was familiar still, like many traditions, it was slowly being replaced by more civilized ways of getting things done. Halfway through the day, the head teacher, Sister Mary Francis, asked to speak with Caitlin in her office.

  “Sure it’s even in the Constitution, Caitlin, that a woman’s place is in the home,” she said, thrusting her hands into opposite sleeves of her habit and resting her elbows on her desk as she leaned forward. Caitlin stood before the nun and considered her words.

  “But you work, Sister,” she said sweetly.

  “I am not married, child,” retorted the nun, sitting back stiffly and frowning.

  “And if my… husband,” Caitlin reddened at the word, “wishes me to continue at school, then what does the Constitution say?”

  Sister Francis looked perplexed. Her mouth pursed and her eyebrows seemed to dive behind her spectacle rims as she bowed her head to consult her thoughts.

  “This is most irregular, child,” she said at last. “I shall have to speak to Father Kinnealy.” And the nun picked up a pen and wrote something on a piece of paper. Caitlin waited uncertainly. “Off you go,” said Sister Francis at last, eyeing Caitlin from the depths of her spectacles.

  “Ah, let her alone, Sister,” said Father Kinnealy. “Sure if Jack Flynn doesn’t mind his wife going to school, what harm?” The priest was sitting behind his desk. In order to see Sister Francis clearly he pushed his reading glasses up his face till they clung to his forehead. “The Constitution only says married women should not be obliged to work, Sister. It doesn’t say they can’t. And Caitlin Spillane has lost enough already, God knows. It’s very good of Jack, so it is, to let her go to school. Good man, himself.” Sister Mary Francis looked unconvinced but said nothing. The priest’s authority was above question. Father Kinnealy made to get up to show the nun out of his office. He had a sermon to prepare and it would be lunchtime in about forty minutes. His housekeeper, Mrs Finnegan, had promised him a nice beef pie. As he rose from his chair, he winced, his hand flying to the base of his spine.

  “Do you ever get a bad back, Sister?” Father Kinnealy squinted at her from a face contorted with pain. She shook her head.

  “No, Father, I can’t say I do – praise God.”

  “Aren’t you fortunate?” he rejoined. “I think the divil himself rides around on mine.” Sister Francis blessed herself, muttered her thanks, and took her leave as Father Kinnealy pulled his glasses down to the bridge of his nose, sighed, and went back to his sermon.

  “I have good news for you, Mr Flynn.” Mr Ryan, the official from Bord na Bainne, smiled widely as he stood before Jack on the threshold of his house. “Rather surprisingly, if I’m honest, your remaining cows are all tuberculosis free, and within a week or so, you will get official notification of the reinstatement of your farm’s tubercular free status.” Jack closed his eyes and visibly relaxed in relief. “Always a pleasure to bring good news to hard- working men like yourself, Mr Flynn,” added Mr Ryan graciously. “Get them out of their usual field, though. It is imperative you graze them on new pasture – to be certain the bacterium has died away on the old. Can you do that?” Jack assured the official that compliance was no problem; he had several fields. “Good luck, now,” Mr Ryan said, as he tipped the rim of his trilby hat with a gloved hand and turned to retrace his steps to his motorcar. As he did so, Caitlin came into the yard. She had been feeding the horse where he was tethered in the barn, for he had become a little lame lately. Jack was treating a swollen fetlock with hot poultices as a prelude to calling the vet.

  “Who was that?” asked Caitlin and Flynn told her, explaining how for weeks he had been tipping away his milk, waiting for the all clear. Showing little interest, she went past him into the kitchen.

  It was more than a fortnight after the wedding. Relieved of her greatest fear, Caitlin applied herself to her studies as never before. She had no idea where they might lead her but they had never been so important. One day, she thought, one day, she would make her bid for freedom. For now, she just had to keep her head down and stay out of trouble. Slowly, seeds of her dreams began to germinate again. If she could just get good results in her Leaving Certificate, then…

  She had started well enough in the keeping of her promise to clean the house and take care of Flynn. In the first wave of gratitude that he would not touch her, she chipped away for hours at the ba
ked-on grime of the range, scrubbed and scoured till it was almost clean, then coated its surface with waxy blacking to stop it rusting beneath the endless spillages of water from pots and kettles. She washed the floor until the stone flags were discernible beneath the dirt and she kept the range going all day, emptying the ash can, stoking it, fuelling it, adjusting the flue to maintain an even temperature and fuel consumption. She cooked and shopped.

  It seemed there was little curtailment necessary in the quantities and extent of the groceries and cleaning products she was allowed to purchase. Flynn handed her ample amounts of money and she rarely brought him change. She bought new lamps and threw away the ancient, blackened ones which barely lit the kitchen or her bedroom. She even washed clothes and sheets, hauling bucket after bucket of water heated on the range and pouring it into a metal wash tub in the yard, soaking the garments and sheets in lye soap, pummelling them with a wash pole. She would not consider scrubbing Flynn’s clothes and sheets on a washboard. She found an old mangle in the barn and wrung the washing till it could be draped across chairs in the kitchen and a line which Flynn strung from hooks in the kitchen walls. Not since his mother had lived in the house had Jack seen a washing line in the kitchen.

  But the lye soap and the scrubbing of pans, the blacking of the range, and constant immersion of Caitlin’s hands in water made them sore and red. The housework was laborious and unending. No sooner it seemed had she cleaned the floor than Flynn, unused to taking off his boots before entering the house, trod mud and cow manure over it from door to sink. It irritated Caitlin beyond tolerance that he did not wash his hands before he sat down to eat and that he left his filthy cap on at the table. His coughing drove her to distraction. The handkerchief, stained with blood and dirt which he used to wipe his mouth, disgusted her utterly.

  For his part, though Jack was grateful for the cleanliness and warmth of his house, he was concerned at how profligate Caitlin was with his money. They did not need a tablecloth or new knives and plates. He could not chop wood fast enough or bring in enough turf from the barn to fuel the range. The extra work was arduous to him in his failing health. He could barely cope with the milking, and though she saw how he suffered, Caitlin did not offer to help him with that. In the evenings, she shunned his company and remained in her room. When he came in from milking in the morning, chest on fire with pain and hands locked agonizingly with rheumatism, she was waiting impatiently for him to take her to school, scrubbed clean, well rested and well fed. She seemed to tolerate his eating of breakfast, looking often at the wall clock as if to remind him that he needed to fetch the horse and hitch it to the cart. She never offered to hitch the horse herself. Neither spoke on the way to and from the school and Caitlin never thanked him for the trouble he took to make sure she did not have to walk in the rain or the snow or the mud – as he had always done when he was a boy.

  On the Saturday morning following Mr Ryan’s visit, Jack came in from milking the cows and there was no sign of Caitlin. The range had not been stoked since first light and there was no tea brewing, no bread on the table. He moved to the foot of the stairs and called, “Hey, Caitlin? Are you up there?” There was no answer.

  Panicking a little, he climbed the stairs and knocked on her bedroom door. No response. He turned the handle and pushed open the door. She was not in her room. His heart lurched and he was immediately bent double in a coughing fit. When he had recovered, he descended the stairs as quickly as he could. What to do? Had she run away again? In the moment he thought she might have deserted him, he realized how much he had come to need her, how grateful beyond his capacity to express he was that this lovely young girl dwelt in his house, how much just the look of her reminded him of his mother.

  “Caitlin?” he shouted, trying not to sound too gruff, for she might hear and be alarmed. “Caitlin?” It was certain she was not in the house.

  Almost crying, Jack went out again into the bitter day, looked around wildly. Where could she have gone? The horse! He moved, as quickly as the pain in his chest would allow, to the barn. There his heart almost stopped in his breast as his worst fears were confirmed. The horse was gone. Dear God, she had left him! Anger, humiliation that she had so fooled him, rushed through him like swirling waters. Grief rose like a sword from his heart’s depths and pierced it. “Caitlin!” he roared, but there was no answer and nothing to do but return to his cold and empty kitchen and wait.

  That she might have returned to her father caused Jack agonies of humiliation. He would be the laughing stock of Dunane in no time. And as he sat, rocking with anxiety, fear after agonizing fear rolled over him like waves and whipped his thoughts to a black storm. She would tell everyone that he hadn’t touched her. He would be ridiculed by the likes of Brett and the others who drank nightly in the bar. He could imagine only too well the relish with which Brett would relate again how Jack had come to him seeking a wife, and now he had a fine young wife, he had no clue what to do with her! Jack got to his feet and roared his anguish till it seemed the walls of his house must begin to crack. Even the pain in his chest and the blood which erupted as he fell, coughing, to his knees could not prevent the primal sound. It had a life of its own, seeming to derive its energy from decades of pain and the dredging up of grief which Caitlin’s abandonment of him had set in motion. And when he could roar no more, he slumped, head bowed and bloody lengths of drool trailing from the abject drop of his jaw. Even when he heard the sound of hooves and cart wheels and a girl’s voice urging a horse to “whoa there”, he did not think it could be Caitlin.

  It was at least ten minutes before she came into the kitchen, having unhitched the horse, fed, and watered him. The kitchen was dark and cold. As her eyes adjusted, Caitlin could make out Flynn standing by the range. There was something wrong, that much was evident.

  “It’s fierce cold in here.” There was accusation in her tone. Through the stupor in which his rage had left him, Flynn struggled to make sense of that. He searched the fog inside his head for a step to clarity, made unsteadily for it, felt for the next. Was she annoyed with him for letting the range go out? There was a long silence, during which Caitlin avoided the range in spite of her last observation, for Flynn had not moved away from it and did not seem concerned that it was all but dead. She busied herself with lighting lamps and then lifted a shopping bag, and something else of considerable weight, from the floor onto the kitchen table.

  “Where have you been?” Flynn’s voice was low and there was in its timbre a menace she had not hitherto experienced.

  “I went into Dunane,” she answered, defensiveness already colouring her tone, “and bought a few things – for dinner like, and some more soap. We needed soap.” There was no answer. “Can I not leave the house, is that it?”

  Flynn was unable to prevent the fury uncoiling again in his breast but now it was precise and venomous.

  “You will not take my horse and go careering off wherever the hell you please!” he roared. Caitlin was transfixed with fear. In the gathering lamplight, he walked slowly towards her. “And where the hell, may I ask, missie, did you get the money for… for shopping?” He sneered the last word, gesturing sharply at the bag on the table. “There’s enough stinking food in the place to feed an army! Do you think you can just spend my money as you damn well please, do you?” He was face to face with her and his eyes were terrifying. He was unshaven and gaunt and his breath stank. Blood had crusted around his mouth and soaked into his shirt. Caitlin could not prevent the grimace of disgust which crumpled her face, and she took a step back from him. His arms were stiff at his sides, his fists clenched. He breathed heavily through closed mouth as he shadowed her steps, trying to stop the coughing and aware his breath was foul. She turned her head to one side.

  “Well?” he roared.

  Suddenly, Caitlin turned to face him. Her eyes flashed back at his and her face contorted in anger. “Well what?” she shouted. “I had a few shillings left in my purse from the last shopping trip, if it’s th
e money you’re mad about! And if you must know, I wanted to pick up my accordion from home.”

  If he could have been placated by the defence of her shopping and her explanation for the money it necessitated, the last piece of information and her use of the word “home” could not have been calculated more precisely to undo the balm.

  “You what?” he erupted again. “You took my horse and cart to Spillane’s house? You scut! Did you buy him a bit of shopping too, eh? Is that the plan, is it? To feed the likes of Mick Spillane with my money – as if he hadn’t got enough out of me!”

  Caitlin could not think of how to respond to what seemed stark madness. Even in his worst temper, Spillane had never approached the unsluiced vitriol of this man’s wrath. She covered her face. The gesture checked Flynn for a moment; it seemed familiar. But the thumping of his heart and the rage unleashed in his head could not easily be appeased without a sacrifice. He turned away from her and strode to the table, then lifted the accordion roughly and it fanned in apparent alarm, discordant notes falling from it like confetti. Caitlin took away her hands and looked in horror as Flynn held aloft her instrument by one strap.

  “Ah, please don’t… please don’t damage the accordion,” she begged, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. “I just want to play it sometimes is all… I missed it.” She came towards him, one hand over her mouth, the other outstretched in a gesture of supplication and request. Flynn tightened his grip on the accordion and lifted it higher. His eyes widened and his teeth clenched in an expression which seemed the precursor to dashing the instrument to the floor. But Caitlin fell to her knees before him and joined her hands in something like prayer. “Please, please don’t,” she cried.