by Maidhc Dain
Because this Sunday was a fine day, the road he was travelling was fairly busy; coaches were coming against him not to mention horses with riders on their backs, with more coming behind him and hurrying past.
When Sly suspected that he was getting close to the place where Lucinda lived, he stopped in front of a thatched house on the side of the road. The woman of the house was standing at her ease at the threshold watching the coaches and the pedestrians hurrying over and back.
‘God bless you, my good woman,’ he began, ‘would you know where Lucinda Singleton lives?’
When she heard this, the woman looked at him shrewdly. It was a few seconds before she replied.
‘A little way down the road in the direction you are travelling. There is a boreen on your right. It is the first house down that road,’ she replied, still looking at him inquisitively.
Sly guided the horse down the boreen just as he had been instructed. He saw the house a few hundred yards from him with farm buildings at the back. He pulled on the reins and stopped the horse in the middle of the road. He looked carefully at the fields behind the house. ‘I suppose,’ he reflected, ‘they would be sufficient for a dowry. At my age I have no choice. This is my last chance.’ He guided the horse and trap up near the gable of the house. He jumped to the ground from the trap. He was about to unyoke the horse when the thought struck him that Lucinda might like to go for a ride out in the air. In any case, he was not a man who would be at his ease sitting in a stranger’s kitchen.
Sly knocked on the frame of the door even though it was open. Lucinda was bent over the pot of potatoes testing them to see if they were boiled.
‘Come in! Come in!’ she invited him. Sly walked slowly into the kitchen.
‘Oh, Lucinda,’ he began, ‘the water came to my teeth when I got the fine smell of food as I was walking towards the door. Pork and green cabbage I would say.’
Lucinda put the cover on the pot and took a step backwards, her face covered with sweat from being bent over the fire. She turned towards Sly, a glow on her face like that of a young girl meeting the love of her heart for the first time. She stretched out her hand towards him and shook it heartily.
‘I hope you are hungry,’ she said. ‘It will be ten minutes before the potatoes are boiled. Sit down on the settle.’
Sly sat on the settle watching her every move. He was thinking that, even though neither of them was in the bloom of youth, it was good that they wouldn’t spend the rest of their lives alone. But, that said, their friendship hadn’t grown to that as yet. That was obvious from the signs that were there the last time they met.
Sly observed the woman preparing the meal. He was thinking what a fine life he would have if he managed to sweep her off her feet. If he were married to this woman, with all her talents, his farm would be one of the finest in County Carlow.
‘Sit down to the table, Walter,’ she invited him.
Sly couldn’t take his eyes off the table as he approached it. One wouldn’t see the like of the meal that was on it even in the landlord’s house on Sunday. ‘This woman has to be on the lookout for a partner just like I am. God in heaven, wouldn’t a glass of whiskey go down well now,’ he thought, his body trembling all over.
‘Here we are now. I hope you like pork and the cabbage is very good at this time of year,’ Lucinda said in order to put him at his ease.
They both sat down and began to eat. They made light conversation while they were eating and it was during the meal that Walter mentioned Thomas Singleton. When she heard her son’s name, silence fell for a few seconds. Then Lucinda spoke in a firm voice:
‘Are you very friendly with my son, Thomas?’ she asked of him.
‘Upon my soul, I am,’ Sly informed her. ‘He has done me a couple of favours over the past few years. A gentleman.’
Lucinda shook her head.
‘I’m afraid, Walter, that unless a miracle happened since he left the shelter of this house you don’t know him rightly,’ Lucinda lamented.
Sly washed down a chunk of pork with a mouthful of milk and moved back a half foot from the table.
‘Oh, Lucinda,’ he looked at her, ‘he told me about the bad feeling that grew up between you. He told me that he was young when it happened and that he had no sense. He often intended to seek you out and ask your forgiveness, but, every time he came within a mile of your house, the shame wouldn’t let him stand before you and say that he was sorry for the hardship he caused you.’
Lucinda laid her knife and fork on the table and looked straight at Sly.
‘Did he say that?’ she asked him softly.
Sly looked at her earnestly.
‘As sure as my parents are buried in the graveyard outside Carlow town, he said that to me,’ he promised her. ‘Do you know that I would like to bring the two of you together and make friends of you again?’
‘Do you think if I invited him and his family to come to my house that he would come?’ she asked with a glimmer of hope in her voice.
‘I am certain that he would,’ he told her.
During the meal, they got to know each other much better. Walter let Lucinda know the important work her son was doing for the locality and for the Crown. He let her know that he would personally see to it that Thomas would come to her house without delay.
Even though their conversation was sensible and personal, neither Lucinda nor Walter went overboard. Sly told her how lonely his life was, particularly during the long winter nights when he would be sitting alone in the kitchen, the north or east wind whistling angrily around the chimney outside.
Without a doubt, Lucinda had a couple of questions about what she had heard from people she knew on the streets of Carlow. She felt it was right to question him about his carousing in the taverns. It was best to question him now before things went too far and she was tied to a drunkard.
‘Walter,’ she said, ‘it has come to my attention that you spend a lot of time drinking and carousing in the taverns.’
The mouthful of milk Sly was drinking almost choked him with the start he got at Lucinda’s question.
‘Who told you that?’ he stuttered. ‘I’m not denying that I take a couple of drinks but I wouldn’t call it carousing. Some of my work involves buying and selling horses along with my work on the farm. It is the custom when an animal is bought or sold to have a few drinks to seal the bargain. Maybe, now and then, I would have a drink or two over and above but I promise you if I had a good wife at home that I wouldn’t be drinking in the taverns all night. I’d have a drink or two when the bargain was made and head straight for home to my darling wife.’
Sly spoke so earnestly that Lucinda believed every word.
That Sunday evening Walter Sly swept Lucinda off her feet. They left her house together and went for a drive in Sly’s trap. He guided the horse in the direction of Kilkenny. Lucinda hadn’t felt so alive since she was a young girl travelling the same road with her husband, Thomas Singleton.
Sly described the advantages she would have living on a big farm and the comforts she would have there. He let her know that he would be willing to put her name on his farm if they were married.
They decided that Sunday that they would meet at least once a week to get to know each other better. It wouldn’t always be in Lucinda’s house that they would meet because Sly knew that Lucinda wanted to cast her eye on the house and the holding she might marry into. She herself had a small house and holding from which she eked a living and kept the landlord from her door when times were tough. After all that, she didn’t want to buy a pig in a poke.
Chapter Five
Having taken Lucinda home, Walter Sly guided his horse in the direction of Carlow town. It was almost a week since he had had a drink and his desire for it was pricking him constantly but he considered it worth the trouble if he managed to entice Lucinda to marry him even though it bothered him that she was getting long in the tooth and there was no chance that they would have a family. But yes! She would be a
good workhorse. It wasn’t for racing he wanted her.
He tied the horse’s reins to the ring on the side of the pavement directly outside Langstrom’s tavern and looked at the door with a light heart. It wasn’t open yet. ‘It has got to be close to seven o’clock,’ Sly thought to himself. He looked around in case there was a policeman strolling around the street. He knocked on the door of the shop next to the tavern. He knew John Cooney, the shopkeeper, very well. Wasn’t it in his shop he sold his butter and eggs and wasn’t it there he bought flour and any other food he needed?
‘Is it yourself, Walter?’ Cooney greeted him on opening the door. ‘I haven’t seen you any night for a week. I heard that you have given up the drink and that you are looking for a wife. Is there any truth in the rumour?’
‘Stop your mocking and take the lock from the gate into your yard until I unyoke my horse and put him out of the people’s sight in your stable,’ was Sly’s reply.
The shopkeeper opened the gate at the side of his house and beckoned to Sly to guide his horse and trap in. When he had put everything in order, Sly thanked the shopkeeper.
‘Lock the gate when you are leaving,’ Cooney ordered him. ‘I’m going to bed early tonight. Tomorrow is another working day.’
Sly headed for the Langstrom’s tavern. It was still locked. He knocked vigorously on the door a couple of times. After a short while, the tavern keeper spoke from inside.
‘Who’s out?’ he demanded.
‘Open the door, you stallion,’ Walter barked. ‘It’s Walter Sly.’
The owner opened the door with a smirk on his face.
‘There are the world of stories about Walter Sly going the streets these days,’ he began.
‘And what kind of story, or stories, about me are in the old hags’ mouths?’ Sly demanded sourly.
‘That you are spending your time with a great lady … a widow with land and wealth along with it; that you are finished with drinking and carousing. Look, Walter,’ he said, ‘come in, in the name of God, before the police see you.’
Sly strode in angrily. He was able to make fun of other people but couldn’t take it himself.
‘Into the back room,’ Langstrom steered him. ‘You know that seven o’clock is closing time.’
Even so, Sly stood stubbornly at the counter.
‘Is there anybody in the back room,’ he demanded.
‘Six,’ Langstrom informed him.
‘Now,’ Sly turned on him, ‘tell me where you are getting your information because, as far as I am concerned, it doesn’t concern you at all.’
Langstrom understood that Sly was angry as there was fire in every word that came from his mouth.
‘Ah! Take it easy, Walter,’ he placated him. ‘I was only rising you.’
‘You know that mocking is catching. Keep your rumours to yourself if you please and to show you that there’s no truth in them put a glass of whiskey in front of me,’ Sly demanded.
The owner didn’t say another word but hurried behind the counter and poured the drink.
Walter Sly walked into the back room when he had paid for hisdrink. There were five men before him, sitting, as was their custom, around a table playing cards and a middle-aged woman seated on a stool by the wall with a drink in her hand keeping an eye on every card that hit the table.
After Sly had greeted them, and they him, he sat beside the woman. They knew each other well. Frances Campbell was her name and she was married to a bigwig who owned land in three counties not to mention the fact that he was a member of the House of Lords in Westminster. From the first day they married, they never agreed. She married him so that she would have a fine, free life with money to spend as she pleased. She had a reputation for the men and, in those times, you would seldom see a woman in the back room or at the counter of a tavern. It wasn’t like that for Frances; she spent her time in the back rooms of taverns and hotels knocking back drink with the gentlemen, if that is the right word for them, and particularly in the company of her own kind who would need to have fat purses.
As soon as the five men had finished their game, they invited Walter and Frances to join them at the table but they declined. Sly said that he would be too busy quenching the week’s thirst to be watching five rogues reneging cards at every opportunity that came their way.
Like every woman in Carlow, Frances Campbell knew everybody’s business. Sly bought another drink for himself and one for her. Having discussed the state of the country and the way the poor were destroying the locality, Sly stood another drink. Frances didn’t refuse it.
After the two of them had downed four or five drinks, Frances moved closer to Sly and spoke softly to him:
‘Is it true what I hear, Walter?’ she began.
Sly knew what was bothering her but he had no intention of satisfying her curiosity.
‘Out with it, Frances, with whatever you want to know … that is if it is any of your business,’ Sly challenged her.
She stirred uneasily in her chair.
‘I always thought you were fond of me,’ she replied sadly.
‘I’d thank you to keep what happened between us under your hat,’ Sly retorted. ‘If your husband heard about it he would banish me to New South Wales with the criminals of Ireland.’
She elbowed him in his chest.
‘An old widow with a couple of acres of poor land who will turn her backside to you in bed as soon as she gets inside your front door,’ she taunted him. ‘I heard that she is almost sixty years old. I am not yet fifty. It is said that the well dries up in most women when they hit their mid fifties. Along with that you will have to be at home beside her every night for the rest of your life.’
She ordered a couple of drinks from the owner. That gave Walter time to consider what she had said.
‘Look Frances,’ Sly said, ‘this is my chance to get a cook for my kitchen, someone who will milk my cows for instance if I were at a horse fair in Galway … I’ll have to be beside her until she gets used to working on my farm. Don’t worry, Frances, I’ll be back to my old ways before I am six months married.’
Frances gave an ignorant grunt and slapped him on the back.
Then Sly began to list the widow’s virtues – that she did the finest churning in the district, that she could sew and knit and cook.
When Frances grew tired of listening to the praises of Lucinda Singleton, she turned on him sharply:
‘God Almighty!’ she exploded. ‘One would think you were buying a mare. And how is she under the bedcovers? Maybe she has gone past it. That happens to women don’t you know? You are rusty for lack of practice and she is worn out from the world and from the weather.’
‘Listen to me, my good woman,’ Sly turned on her, ‘don’t be discouraging me from what I have set before me. I have a plan in my head and, for the first time in my life, I’ll have a woman at home before me who will put food on the table for me after a hard day’s work.’
‘Or after a day and night carousing in Langstrom’s tavern,’ she replied sharply. ‘But then again, maybe it’s the back of the brush across your back you’ll get as soon as her feet get settled under your table.’
‘I don’t think that she is that kind of woman,’ Sly informed her, ‘and suppose she is, there is the width of the mountain to bring her to her senses. Now, if we have nothing further to discuss, I’ll be shortening the road home.’
In a fit of temper, Sly threw back the drink she had stood him, jumped out of his chair and told the owner of the tavern to have a look out at the street so that he could leave to go home. When he did, Frances stood up.
‘We’ll shorten the road home for each other,’ she said, standing drunkenly on her feet. ‘I heard that there are tinkers camped a mile outside the town.’
The card players looked at each other and then at the two who were walking towards the door.
While they were on the road home, Frances never stopped trying to seduce Sly to come to her house so that they might ‘stretch their t
highs together’ as she put it, but, although Sly had drink in him he put that kind of carousing on the long finger. Indeed, he wasn’t about to spoil things when he was so close to getting a wife.
During the weeks and months that followed, Sly and Lucinda became more intimate as their courtship blossomed. Along with that, Sly was able to re-establish contact between Lucinda and her son. This was the quality Lucinda had been looking for in Sly’s character that proved he would make a good husband.
When they had been courting regularly for six months, Sly felt the time had come to show her his house and farm of land.
On the first Sunday of August, 1828, Lucinda guided her horse and cart through Carlow town in the direction of Oldleighlin. The sky was clear and her journey was pleasant in the heat of the sun. She followed the directions Walter Sly had given her during the week. She saw the luscious green fields on both sides of the road. Sly owned the land on both sides from the King’s road to the house and acre upon acre of bogland behind it on the other side if he was to be believed.
‘The farm is three hundred acres between rough and good land. I will have the most butter to sell at Carlow fair,’ Lucinda was thinking.
Walter was standing at the door happily waiting for her. He walked towards the gate of the haggard, took the left ring of the horse’s headstall and guided him into the barn at the side of the house.
‘Welcome to Oldleighlin, Lucinda,’ he greeted her.
She jumped out of the cart as supple as a woman half her age. They both unyoked the horse and let him out to grass in the field behind the house. Sly walked in the door ahead of her and welcomed her warmly to ‘Sly’s Manor’ as he called it.
Lucinda was very impressed with the cleanliness of the kitchen. It was fortunate that she had not seen it a few days earlier but, for the first time in his life, for this special occasion Sly spent two days cleaning and scrubbing.
‘Sit down by the fire, my dear. Take off your shoes and warm your feet after your journey.’ Sly began pleasantly putting the best sugawn chair in the house under her.