by Therese Down
Mick Spillane had been very willing to tell all and sundry in the Dunane bar how Caitlin was getting on as Jack Flynn’s wife. “Sure he’s letting her finish school,” he boasted, “and he takes her there every day, picks her up in the evening.”
“Boy, he have it bad!” smirked one of the men, and others shook their heads, laughed.
“And what’ll she do with all that learning, do you think Spillane?” asked another. “And she married to Jack Flynn.” Mick shrugged, staring contemplatively over the rim of his pint as he raised it to his lips and lowered it again.
“Search me.”
“But it’s a good way of placating her, all right,” added Malachai Brett. “She has little else now to look forward to, I’d say.”
And so the conversation had turned to education. Donal had listened attentively as Mick recounted Caitlin’s dreams of university and how ridiculous the very notion was. “Aren’t you a maths teacher, Donal?” Spillane had asked again, enjoying his position as storyteller and centre of attention – and glad to be able to turn the conversation from Caitlin if people were going to get maudlin.
“I was,” confirmed Donal.
“They need a maths teacher above at the school,” interjected Sean O’Riordan. “Sister Michael is retiring – dying more like, the age of her – and they have no one to teach maths to the small ones. The wife was telling me the other day, for our grandchildren are at the school.” All eyes rested on Donal. It was interesting news, he admitted. But he couldn’t go to work in Dunane each day in a donkey cart.
“Sure Fennessey lives out your way – Cappagreen. Couldn’t he give you a lift?” suggested Malachai Brett. “He have to drive right past your neck of the woods to get here.”
“God love you, Brett, but you’re still a great matchmaker, eh?” quipped Spillane. “Will we drink to him, boys, will we?” Jim Fogarty stood to attention at the pump, readying himself for the next round.
* * *
If Dan Kelly was less than happy that Donal had taken a part- time teaching job in Dunane he did not say so. Jacintha had left school and was biding her time till she could look for work in Cashmel or Limerick or Tipperary. She could not leave her father while he was so ill and Deirdre was still at school. The girls did not welcome the prospect of the extra work they would need to shoulder while Donal taught maths three days a week, but, like their father, they said nothing. Donal’s sacrifice of a university place was a burden they all lived with and none could reasonably resent his taking advantage of this opportunity. “I can still do the morning milking,” he had pronounced, “and I’ll be home in time to do it in the evening. And the money’s good. A pound a week for a few hours. Sure that’s the bills paid, lads, at least.”
When Caitlin had gone home to pick up her accordion, her mother came out of the house wiping her hands on her apron at the sound of the horse’s hooves in the yard. When she recognized her daughter, Mrs Spillane threw her hands in the air and cried out in joy. When Caitlin got down from the cart, Mrs Spillane pulled her to herself and squeezed her tightly. When at last she looked into Caitlin’s face, Mrs Spillane’s bright blue eyes were awash with tears. “You are so thin, alannah! And so pale! Caitlin, are you eating at all?” Moved beyond any expectation and unwilling to signal even a fraction of the tumult she felt, Caitlin stared dumbly at her mother and did not respond. “Come inside, Caitlin,” urged Mrs Spillane. “Come in and have a bite to eat, for the love of God.”
When she felt she could speak without dissolving in tears or screaming in fury, Caitlin said simply, “I am not hungry. I only came for my accordion.” Tears spilled down her mother’s face as she turned away and went back to her house.
It was harder for Caitlin to cross this threshold than it had been to step across Flynn’s on the wedding morning. The kitchen was just as she remembered it – and why wouldn’t it be? It was only three weeks or so since she had left it. But in that time, such changes had been wrought in Caitlin’s heart and so complete had been the severance from her former life and expectations, that she felt like a traveller who returns to her place of origin to discover that it had forgotten her the moment she left it. The passage of time was irrelevant. Caitlin had not been sent into the world with the blessings of her people but sold to it, all rights and fealties waived. There was now such a gulf between her and the woman she beheld that a lifetime of weeping could not breach it.
It wasn’t even, she thought to herself, a question of forgiveness; the notion was abstract to Caitlin, for the weight of the sorrow she carried was numbing of finer thought and feeling. She was vaguely aware that a very small cloud, no bigger than a hand, was somewhere behind her, white in a black sky. She supposed it was hope – something vestigial in any case. But she dared not look for it in case she was wrong and the sky was all lowering, rolling storm.
No, it was not that Caitlin could never imagine forgiving her family for their betrayal; more that she could never imagine feeling anything for any of them again. The amorphous sorrow at their loss, however, was as much beyond her control to avoid as the small white cloud was hers to determine. Caitlin inhabited a land of shadows – not dead but not quite alive either. She was someone else’s dream, an idea someone had had to enhance his own life, but the price he was willing to pay for her shadow had cost the world her heart and soul. Somewhere, she slept like a princess in a fairy tale, pale and pure, awaiting a life-giving kiss. But unless the ogre himself became a handsome prince, what chance was there of rescue now?
“Will you fetch my accordion, please?” Caitlin had asked of her mother.
“I will, of course. Wait there a minute, now, Caitlin.” And Mrs Spillane left the kettle warming on the hob and went upstairs. Caitlin envisaged the hallway, the bedroom door as her mother approached it; she followed her in imagination to the room Caitlin had shared with Maureen and, ten years ago, with two other sisters besides. Maureen. Caitlin imagined her sister must by now have entered the convent. She felt nothing at the thought. It couldn’t be worse than her own life. In many ways, she reflected with an ironic smirk, their lives were similar: chaste, confined, austere, pointless.
Some minutes later Mrs Spillane reappeared with the accordion and a few cardigans and pairs of socks which Maureen had left behind. “Take these with you, alannah,” said Mrs Spillane brightly. “Sure, Maureen have no use of them now she’s in the convent above in Tipperary.” Caitlin said nothing as she watched her mother fold the clothes on top of the musical instrument. “We took her up there the other day,” went on Mrs Spillane, apparently undaunted by Caitlin’s silence, “in your father’s new truck.”
Caitlin frowned. “What?”
“Yes,” confirmed her mother, beaming with excitement at the revelation and Caitlin’s interest. “He bought himself a second- hand truck – a red one…” And she stopped; her face fell. Caitlin got up, pushed the clothes off her accordion, and picked it up. She needed to leave before the hot tears started flowing.
“Sit up straight, Kenny.” Donal took to teaching again far more naturally and willingly than he had resumed farm work. Farming to Donal was being yoked to the earth and, very specifically, a small patch of Tipperary. He wanted to travel and experience all life had to offer in light, clean shoes. Increasingly, all things Irish were weighing him down, including his covenant with the IRA. It was clear to him – as he knew it was clear to Joe Morgan – that a few hundred men were never going to bring down de Valera’s government or drive Churchill’s England from the North, before or after the war. Donal was formulating a plan. After the next campaign – Operation Holiday – he would find a way to abscond. Ireland was neutral, so in theory his passport could take him anywhere. He longed to go to America but would start by travelling to another neutral country – Switzerland or Sweden, perhaps.
He would find a job teaching English or even mathematics to English-speaking Swiss students whose parents had plenty of money. And when the time was right, he would pursue his studies. He knew that if he dese
rted the IRA it was not likely it would ever be safe to return to Ireland. At least, he could not envisage a time when the likes of Joe Morgan and the men he worked for would turn a blind eye to betrayal. But that was all right with Donal. He would earn enough money to send some home and never tell his family where he was. He would convince his father to sell the farm and so set his sisters free. Donal knew that neither Deirdre nor Jacintha wanted to endure farming life a moment longer than they needed to. Perhaps he would send for them all when he was settled. Perhaps Jacintha would marry soon and look after his father. If the farm was sold and she had a dowry, that was possible.
“I said, Kenny, sit up straight!” Donal’s class of nine- and ten- year-olds was restless and bored. He had them working through a section of algebraic equations in a maths textbook. Seamus Kenny was a chubby, freckly boy who had not inherited the genes which made his sister, Nuala, so intelligent. He was more interested by far in fishing and catching insects and chasing bainbhs to make them squeal. His father was one of the few farmers in Tipperary to rear sheep instead of cattle – a shrewd move in many ways, for the labour was far less intensive and there was more call for wool now the war was on and clothing was at such a premium. Seamus loved his father’s sheep dogs, Tess and Jack, and was often in trouble for rambling away with them on long walks, usually to rivers and ponds and fast-running streams where he could swim and fish and throw stones into the water.
“Sorry, sir,” said Kenny on his second rebuke. “I was thinking of something interesting.”
The class giggled nervously, but instead of getting angry, Donal said only, “I know what you mean, Seamus; I know what you mean.” The last thought Donal had had before admonishing Kenny for his slumped posture and sleepy face was that it might be a very fine adventure indeed to whisk Caitlin Spillane away from the drudge and servitude of her existence, to a place of blue sky and bright sunshine; a place where the cows wore bells around their necks and the only evidence they were milked was the bars of creamy Swiss chocolate he would buy for Caitlin.
Donal had seen Caitlin a few times now, around the school. She was very pale and thin but there was no mistaking her beauty. She wore her thick, black hair tied back, and she always looked preoccupied and serious. She seemed to shun the society of other students and a couple of times he had seen her at lunchtime in the Leaving Cert classroom, perched a distance from the other students, absently eating a piece of bread. She didn’t even look up when he had asked the students if they had seen Mr Fennessey – his ruse for putting his head around the door. Nuala Kenny’s beaming face and slow blush he had noted and raised an eyebrow in amusement. He had to find a way of making meaningful contact with Caitlin Flynn.
“That, Spillane, is a very fine truck,” affirmed Padraic O’Riordan. Jim Flaherty the landlord, Malachai Brett, and all the usual patrons of the Dunane bar agreed. It was a Saturday evening in the second week of February. Donal Kelly had persuaded Jim Fennessey to give him a lift into Dunane “for a pint”, promising his colleague that if the bar was too rough for him or he got too uncomfortable, they would leave.
“Come on, Jim,” Donal had urged the reluctant science teacher, “live a little, would ya? Come and have a pint with the men – you might enjoy it.” Jim was very unsure about that. Happy in his mother’s company and firmly attached to a spinster called Bridie, whom he had met through his mother, Mr Fennessey was not a drinking man. He liked to read books about scientific discoveries and planets and, though he would never have admitted it to Donal, shared a love of cooking with Bridie which often meant he spent the weekend in her kitchen, baking bread and rolling pastry to make jam or treacle tarts. They joined together their sugar and butter rations for the purpose and then brought their confections to Jim’s mother, covered with freshly laundered cloths and revealed with a magician’s panache. The old lady would always exclaim and clap her hands and there would be smiles all around. Jim’s idea of living a little was a nice bit of stew with fresh bread, tart and cream for pudding, and gentle conversation with his mother and Bridie about life in Cappagreen and the perennial subject of the priest’s vestments. They always looked so snowy white, because Bridie and Mrs Murphy down the road took turns to bleach, starch, and iron them.
And didn’t Bridie always used to make a lovely job of the flower arranging in the church at Cappagreen, before the war? When there was free trade across the Northern border and by sea from England, it was possible to find a range of fresh flowers out of season in a few Tipperary shops. Occasionally, if there was a wedding or a funeral, Bridie would go up on the train from Limerick Junction to Cashmel and bring back irises or roses, lilies and gypsophila, and spend hours tying them with ribbon in small bunches to pews, arranging them in vases before the altar. Father O’Neill was always happy to pay, for the chapel at Cappagreen was as fresh as a bride for days after the ceremony. But there was no money for that now and no flowers to be had either. Such memories were sources of light and fragrance in February blacked-out evenings and kindled hope for the future. Bridie Farrell was forty and thin with crooked teeth and dark- rimmed glasses but in her Jim had found a caring and attentive companion. And importantly, his mother already loved her like a daughter. It was likely he would marry Bridie in Cappagreen chapel and, one day after the war, perhaps when his mother passed away, he would take her back to Surrey suburbia from whence he returned in 1939.
But Donal had needed a lift into Dunane. He could not again make the fourteen-mile round trip on a donkey cart. It wasn’t fair on the beast and it was uncomfortable and tedious beyond belief. Not only that, but picking your way along pitch-black roads and stony boreens late at night in a donkey cart, after a skinful of ale, was perilous. A fella could fall asleep in the hours it took the donkey to cover seven miles and end up only God – and the donkey – knew where.
Without effective transport, a village seven miles away was practically out of bounds, another life. If Donal was going to effect his scheme to spirit away Caitlin Flynn and escape, he needed a plan. And increasingly, it seemed to Donal, Mick Spillane was central to any that might just work. Any man who would sell his daughter would be easily manipulated and it wasn’t hard to work out what was important to him.
“It is indeed a very fine truck,” gloated Spillane, toasting his own good fortune and slurping his pint. Well worth a daughter, thought Donal cynically as he smiled and raised his own pint in salute.
“Drink up there, Jim,” urged Donal quietly, for Jim was sweaty and uncomfortable in his white shirt and ironed trousers. The farmers eyed him wryly and exchanged glances. Fennessey was not of their ilk. He had clean, manicured fingernails, and the gut which hung over his leather belt as heavily as his lower lip dropped told of indolence and self-indulgence. He was as out of place in their world as they would have been in his classroom or at one of the London scientific conventions he used to attend.
“I’d quite like to go home soon, Donal,” said Jim quietly, making an effort to get close enough to Donal’s ear so that his words wouldn’t be heard and perceived as rude. The men shook their heads and smirked at the sought intimacy and Jim’s exclusion of them and Donal was embarrassed.
“Just a little while longer, Jim, OK?” he reassured his colleague. “I just need a little more time here.” The older man frowned.
Then Donal had an idea. “Jim has to get off home, lads. So, as he’s my only way home, I’ll have to go with him, unfortunately.” And Donal downed his pint and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Jim reddened, his lip hanging lower than ever.
“But ye’ve just got here!” Spillane was genuinely disappointed. He liked the cut of Donal Kelly; he was like the son he had never had, looking after his poor ill father that way. And it had occurred to Spillane that there might be mileage in getting acquainted with a young fella in line to inherit a farm from an ailing man, especially when that young fella didn’t seem all that interested in the farm.
As Donal shrugged and assumed a sad but philosophical expression,
picked up his jacket from a stool and started to put it on, Mick put a restraining hand on the young man’s shoulder.
“I’ll take you home in my truck,” he announced. There were cheers of approval and jeers of mock derision at Spillane’s great pride in his vehicle.
“Will you, Mick?” Donal looked surprised and delighted. “Well, I’ll get the next round in, so!” He slipped off his jacket sleeve. The jacket crumpled on the bar stool as Jim nodded awkwardly to Donal and hastily took his leave.
“Daddy, we have been invited to lunch next Sunday, with the Spillanes over at Dunane,” announced Donal to his father the next morning during milking. Dan Kelly stopped milking, sat up straight on his stool, and frowned as he searched his memory.
“Mick Spillane, is it?” he asked. “Wiry fella with mad hair he can hardly get his cap over?” Donal laughed a little at the description, confirmed it was correct. There was a brief moment during which all that could be heard were jets of milk hitting the pails. The warm smell of milk mingled with the aroma of manure and the straw which littered the milking parlour floor. “Be careful of that fella, Donal,” said Dan at last. “He’s a sly one, I’d say. Always trying to knock down the price of anything at market or sell you something for more than it’s worth. I won’t come, son. You go, if you want.”
Donal nodded at the expected response. “Right so, Daddy, but I said I’d ask, like.” There was another pause.
“How did you come across Spillane, Donal?”
“In the bar at Dunane.”
“And do you like him?”
“Not really. But sure, it’s only polite to accept an invitation. He’s picking me up in time for mass.”
Dan pushed his head away from his cow’s flank in order to look at his son. “Mass? You’re going to mass?”
Donal did not look up from his milking. “Well, it was all part of the invitation. As I said, I’m being polite.”