The Music Makers

by E. V. Thompson

  ‘It’s time we moved on from Kilmar. You’re beginning to think more like a fisherman than a music maker.’

  Kathie slammed the door behind her and hurried down the pathway from the ramshackle hut, leaving her father sitting on the edge of the home-made mattress, head in hands, feeling sorry for himself. Kathie knew she had upset him but she did not turn back. She had done so on too many occasions and it invariably ended with her parting with some of her hard-earned money for Tommy Donaghue to spend on drink. His drinking was at the root of all their troubles and one day it would kill him for sure.

  But, with or without money, Tommy Donaghue would never go short of a drink of whiskey while he could play the fiddle – the drinking and making music were his whole life.

  When Tommy Donaghue tucked a fiddle beneath his chin and drew a bow across the strings, he entered a new and glorious world of his own making. He was no longer a pathetic failure, an itinerant musician earning a precarious living for himself and his motherless daughter. Lost in his music, Tommy Donaghue became a man among men. When he played men sang and women danced. When he stopped they slapped him on the back and begged for more, thrusting drinks into his ready hands. The fact that many of his evenings ended in unconsciousness these days mattered little to him. Drunk or sober, Tommy Donaghue was a fine fiddle-player.

  True, it was a precarious way of earning a living, especially since Kathie’s mother died. Kathie had been thirteen then, and Tommy Donaghue took to the road soon afterwards. It had not been so bad while they remained in the north of the country – there was some industry – but Tommy Donaghue was restless. There was always another town, another village, another hill.

  Somehow they had made their way here to County Wexford, where money was scarce. A fiddler could rely on being given as much ale or whiskey as he could drink, together with a dish of potatoes and salt fish, but he received few coins. Little of the fish from this small and isolated fishing community found its way to a market. It was bartered on the quayside for whatever was needed. Exchanged with the cottier for potatoes and with the farmer for corn and butter. A new pair of trousers or a coarse linen shirt would ensure a whole season’s supply of fish for the tailor. The barter system had worked well for centuries, and most fishermen resisted the call for change.

  Only the Feehans and the McCabes had made any attempt to advance with the changing world about them, but even they made little effort to widen the market for their catches.

  By the time Kathie arrived at the stone jetty the cobblestone quayside was crowded with people and raucous gulls. The curraghs had landed their catches, and the fishermen’s wives were noisily but efficiently gutting the harvest of the sea. About them swarmed dozens of hungry cottiers, the poor peasants from the inland potato holdings. It was late summer, the worst part of the year for them. The potato was their staple diet. It was boiled, baked, mashed and made into soup. In good years the men made a rough but potent alcoholic brew from the potato and traded off any surplus, but in every year there came a time when the previous year’s crop was gone and the new season’s potatoes were not yet ready. During these in-between weeks the poor cottiers roved the countryside and haunted the fishing villages, begging, stealing, and pleading to be fed.

  Pushing her way through a crowd of children who were squabbling over a discarded dogfish, Kathie reached the top of a flight of stone steps leading down to the water of the harbour. Below her Liam and Dermot had just secured their boat and were preparing to stack their full fish-baskets on the lower steps, away from the quick hands of the cottier youngsters.

  ‘Will you be needing someone to do the gutting for you when you’ve finished unloading?’

  Her words were directed at Liam, who was scooping fish from the bottom of the boat into a basket. Without looking up, the perspiring fisherman replied, ‘We do our own gutting and salting. We need no help.’

  When the basket was full, Liam swung it on to the steps with the others and, looking up, saw Kathie for the first time.

  She was a tall dark-haired girl who held herself very erect, and from her thin face a pair of very green eyes returned his stare and made him feel obliged to explain his refusal.

  ‘Our mother helps with our gutting. She’ll be here any minute now – but if you’re hungry you’re welcome to a couple of fish.’

  At any other time Kathie might have accepted the offer gratefully, but there was something in the frank appraisal of this fisherman that stopped her. Her chin went up and she said, ‘The Donaghues are not yet reduced to begging. I have money to buy food but I prefer to work for it.’

  Liam was aware of Dermot grinning at him from the steps, but at that moment there was a bump against the side of the boat that knocked him off balance. It was the Feehans’ boat coming alongside, and Liam turned as Sean, the youngest of the two red-haired boys, scrambled across the McCabe boat, a mooring-rope in his hand.

  ‘You – girl. Are you looking for work, or making some private arrangement with Liam McCabe?’

  The brusque question came from Tomas Feehan, head of the Feehan family. A thick-set, coarse-featured man, he scowled up at Kathie, ignoring Liam McCabe.

  ‘I’m looking for work – gutting fish.’ Kathie qualified her reply for the benefit of Eoin, the remaining Feehan, who leered at her from the stern of the family boat.

  ‘Then help my boy to push the McCabe boat back out of the way. We’ve got a catch here that will busy you for a couple of hours and send you away with enough fish to keep a family for two days.’

  A gross bull of a man, Tomas Feehan had spent most of his fifty years proving he could outfish, outfight and outswear any man in this corner of County Wexford.

  ‘Eoin!’ Tomas called upon his eldest son. ‘Get up top and clear a space for us. Make sure it’s at the edge of the quay where we won’t need eyes all about us to see thieving hands.’

  Eoin Feehan, a good-looking, dark-eyed young man of Dermot McCabe’s age, had eyes only for Kathie Donaghue as he scrambled across the McCabe boat.

  ‘Watch your boots on that paintwork, Eoin. I haven’t spent hours painting my boat for some big-footed fisherman to scrape it all off again. If you’re in such a hurry you should have got into harbour earlier. Now you can wait for a few minutes until Dermot and I have finished unloading. When we’ve done that I’ll move my boat and allow you to come alongside.’

  Liam spoke to Eoin, but his glance took in the scowling Tomas and the young man at the top of the steps.

  As Tomas Feehan glared at Liam, Dermot tensed, wondering how this strange violent family would take his brother’s words.

  ‘It’s all right, Liam. We’re in no hurry. Here, I’ll give you a hand with those baskets.’

  It was seventeen-year-old Sean Feehan who broke the moment of tension. Stepping carefully into the McCabe boat, he took a newly filled basket from Liam and swung it ashore.

  Dermot breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Will you be at the meeting tonight, Eoin?’ he called.

  ‘We’ll all be there, the whole Feehan family.’ Tomas Feehan looked pointedly at Liam, who missed neither the glance nor the implication.

  ‘Then Ireland need not tremble,’ Liam said. ‘At least, not while there’s talking to be done in an ale-house.’

  Turning his back on the older man, he swung the last basket ashore and jumped out of the boat. Unfastening the mooring-rope from the steel ring on the jetty, he passed close to Kathie. She smelled and looked clean, unlike the majority of the cottiers who came to Kilmar. To Dermot he said, ‘Mother should be here to help you soon. She’ll have seen us coming in. I’ll take the boat to the beach and lay out the nets to dry; there’s no space to do it here.’

  As Liam rowed the heavy fishing boat away he looked back at the landing-steps he had just left. His mother had arrived and she waved a hand to him before she and Dermot began carrying their loaded baskets up the steps. Then Liam watched Kathie as she helped the Feehans. Her body strained against the patched dress as she swung the heavy baskets
up to Eoin. She was a shade too thin for good health, but she was a willing worker and doing more than her share of the work. Liam thought she was not like the usual cottier girls who came down to the fishing villages from the hills at this time of the year. He wondered who she was and why he had not seen her before.

  Liam’s interest was shared by Tomas Feehan’s elder son. Eoin Feehan considered himself to be something of an expert on the merits of the impoverished cottier girls. He was a good-looking young man and could claim a high degree of success in his brief encounters with them. It was nothing to his credit. The cottiers stayed on their tiny plots of land until their situation became truly desperate. By the time they reached Kilmar they were weak from starvation. When hunger and chastity came into direct conflict the needs of hunger invariably won the battle, but it seemed less degrading when a carnal arrangement was made with a good-looking young man.

  Eoin Feehan said nothing to Kathie until, with the gutting half-completed, Tomas Feehan followed Liam’s example and took his own boat to the beach.

  ‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ Eoin Feehan opened the conversation. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘You haven’t seen me here because I haven’t been in Kilmar long,’ said Kathie. ‘And my name doesn’t matter to you or anyone else just so long as I gut your fish for you.’

  Kathie’s reply was far blunter than Eoin had expected, but he did not allow it to deter him.

  ‘You’re a good worker. The gutting is coming along well.’

  ‘I’ve done it before.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you have. Times are hard between crops.’ Eoin still thought Kathie was a cottier girl, and she did not correct him.

  ‘I wouldn’t argue with that.’

  ‘You know, there’s an easier way for a pretty girl like you to earn a few coppers than gutting fish.’

  Kathie’s knife flashed faster, and the fish she was gutting lost its tail in a swift accident. She said nothing, but her silence encouraged Eoin to continue.

  ‘You meet me tonight behind the old salting-house and you won’t have to gut fish for a few days.’

  ‘Oh? Since when has fishing made a man so rich?’ Kathie stopped gutting and looked Eoin Feehan in the face for the first time. He saw fire and passion and a deep darkness in her eyes, and Eoin Feehan knew he wanted this girl as he had never wanted any girl before.

  ‘I may not be rich, but I’ll give you as much as a family man earns for a day’s work on a farm. I’ll give you ten pence.’

  Kathie’s eyes never left his face, and suddenly Eoin Feehan felt uncomfortable.

  ‘Well …? Do we have an arrangement?’

  Kathie spat in Eoin Feehan’s face. He was taken completely by surprise. Then his anger flared and he took a step toward her. He stopped just in time as a razor-sharp fish-knife slashed the air an inch from his nose.

  ‘You come one step closer and you’ll take no girl behind the old salting-house – or anywhere else. I’ve never lifted my skirt to any man for love and I’m damned if I’ll do it with you for money. Ten pence indeed!’

  Furiously Kathie shouted the words at him, and Eoin Feehan was aware that the Kilmar fishermen and their women had stopped work to enjoy the incident. He tried to calm the angry girl, but she addressed her next words to the watching and listening crowd.

  ‘Did you hear his offer to me? It’s a great opportunity for any girl amongst you who would like to earn herself ten pence. All you have to do is to meet him behind the old salting-house tonight.’

  She slashed the knife dangerously close to Eoin Feehan’s face, and he took an involuntary step backward, infuriated by the laughter that rose from the fishermen and their helpers.

  ‘You’ve done yourself no favour,’ he hissed at Kathie. ‘There will come a day when you’ll be down here begging for fish with the rest of the cottiers. I’ll see you starve before you get anything from a Feehan.’

  ‘I’d willingly starve before I took it,’ retorted Kathie. ‘And my father is a fiddler, not one of your bog-cottiers. You’ll never have the pleasure of seeing me beg for food – or for anything else. Now, I’ve gutted more than half of your fish, so half a basket is a fair payment. I’ll take it now and you can gut the rest of your fish yourself.’

  Helping herself to no more fish than she believed she had earned, Kathie Donaghue picked up the basket and made her way from the quay, the grinning fishermen moving back respectfully from her path.

  ‘I don’t know who she is,’ said Dermot McCabe to his mother as Kathie passed by without looking to left or right, ‘but she’s just saved Eoin Feehan the trouble of going to confession on Sunday. I wish Liam had been here to see what went on. He offered to give her some fish when we came in.’

  ‘Did he now?’

  Norah McCabe looked after Kathie with renewed interest, and frowned. Until now there had been little opportunity for Liam to take an interest in women, but this girl was both attractive and strong-willed. She would have little difficulty in getting any man in Kilmar. Norah McCabe felt an uneasy stirring within her. Her instinct told her that this unusual and high-spirited girl would bring trouble to the village.

  To Dermot she said, ‘Liam is lucky not to have felt her tongue. That girl carries a pride that doesn’t go well with an old patched dress.’

  Chapter Two

  The meeting of the All-Ireland Association had been in progress at the Kilmar ale-house for longer than an hour, but had not yet been called to order. Men stood around in noisy, sweating, drinking groups and tobacco smoke hung from the low-beamed ceiling thicker than a November fog. In a far corner Tommy Donaghue drew tune after tune from the strings of his fiddle as a wide variety of drinks came his way. Gin, ale and local whiskey followed each other down his throat in quick succession.

  ‘Where has Eugene Brennan got to?’ asked Dermot for the sixth time. He ran a coloured handkerchief over his glowing face. ‘We’ve got men from all over Wexford in here to hear him speak. If he doesn’t arrive soon, we can forget the All-Ireland Association in this part of the county. No one will want to know us.’

  ‘Don’t you worry yourself. Eugene Brennan will be here. He’s said he’ll be coming, and Eugene Brennan is a man of his word.’

  The reassurance came from Patrick Meahey, the leather-aproned landlord of the ale-house. His shin was wet with perspiration, and beneath the bottom edge of the apron his trousers were soaked with spilled ale. He had never before been quite so busy and secretly hoped County Wexford’s Member of Parliament would be delayed for another hour. Impatient, waiting men drank more than men who were listening to a good speaker.

  ‘Father Clery went to meet Brennan,’ said Sean Feehan. ‘I saw him leaving the village before I came in here.’

  ‘Then they’ve more than likely gone to the big house at Inch.’ Tomas Feehan wiped froth from the tip of his nose with a large grubby hand. ‘Eugene Brennan will not be worried about keeping a few fishermen waiting while he’s looking at an earl over the top of a glass of good brandy.’

  ‘Brennan cares more for the likes of us than he does for the land-owners,’ said Sean Feehan hotly. ‘He could have had a good living as a lawyer if that was all he wanted. Instead, he’s spent a lifetime working for Ireland-and pauperised himself in the process.’

  ‘I don’t know why I let this young terrier have schooling,’ growled Tomas Feehan. He emptied his tankard and banged it down upon the rough wooden table. Glaring at his younger son, he said, ‘If you want to air your learning in grown-up company, then tell us something about the ninety-eight rising right here in County Wexford. It was the ordinary people who rose against the English then and it will be the same next time. You can forget all about your lawyers and good talkers. Not one of them will risk his neck if there’s the slightest possibility of it ending up in a noose.’

  ‘Pa’s right,’ agreed Eoin Feehan. ‘We should forget about Eugene Brennan. He’s an old man now. He’s spent fifty years talking about things and we’re more under the rule o
f the English now than we were when he started. We haven’t even got a parliament in Dublin. That’s what his talking has done for us.’

  ‘I’ll hear nothing against Brennan.’ Dermot’s face was flushed with the heat of the room and the amount he had drunk. ‘He’s a good man … a great man. But I agree that it’s time we showed the English that the All-Ireland Association means business. We should take over the land belonging to absentee English landlords and give it back to the Irish people, for a start.’

  ‘What for? So that the cottiers can grow more potatoes?’ Tomas Feehan took a stubby clay pipe from the corner of his mouth and spat on the sawdust-scuffed floor. ‘No, boy. That’s not a cause that will make me march on to an English bayonet.’

  He stabbed the end of his pipe toward Dermot.

  ‘I’m not saying anything against our Member of Parliament. He’s done his best. I’ll give him that. I’m just saying that he’d do as well to stay in London … talking. That’s what he’s best at doing. When it comes to fighting, then we’ve got to organise ourselves. We’ll get little help from outside when the time comes – and none from the likes of them at the big house where Eugene Brennan most likely is at this very moment.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the Earl of Inch.’ The landlord panted to a halt beside them. ‘He’s as Irish as the rest of us. If every land-owner looked after his people half as well as the Earl, there would be no hungry cottiers down on the quay – and no need for meetings like this.’

  ‘Then it’s as well for you that such a state of affairs will never come about or you’d lose all your business,’ retorted Tomas Feehan. Reaching out, he knocked his empty tankard over on the table before him. ‘Now you’ve given us the benefit of your opinion perhaps you’ll fill this and bring it back before I choke to death in this smoke.’

  From the far corner of the room there was a loud cheer as Tommy Donaghue climbed upon a chair and began scraping out the music of a well-known tune about Kelly the pirate and the pirate queen Grannaile.