Lucinda Sly

by Maidhc Dain

  ‘Because it is so far from my own holding I’d sell it for a hundred and twenty pounds,’ Sly offered.

  When he heard that, Langstrom jumped from his stool.

  ‘I thought you were anxious to sell it,’ he thundered. ‘For the money you are asking, I could buy half the land around the town of Tullow.’

  Sly thought for a moment.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘you can have it for a hundred, but I will have to get the money into my hand. Christ, how could I face Lucinda and tell her that I didn’t get a decent price for the farm where she made her living for forty-odd years in bad times?’

  ‘All right,’ Langstrom agreed. ‘But you will have to give me five pounds luck.’

  ‘Three pounds,’ Sly offered.

  ‘It’s a bargain,’ Langstrom said.

  They agreed on the spot that they would go to the attorney to seal the bargain. They drank their whiskey and Langstrom stood another round before he shut the door behind them and both of them walked down the street to the attorney’s office. John Burke was seated in his chair, busily poring over documents when the two walked in. Within a minute he raised his eyes from the papers in front of him.

  ‘Ah, God be with you, men,’ he welcomed them. ‘And what brings you to an attorney’s office this cold winter’s day?’

  ‘Do you remember the holding my wife gave me as a dowry before we married?’ Sly began.

  ‘Oh yes,’ the lawyer replied, ‘have you found somebody to rent it from you?’

  ‘Well,’ Sly stuttered, ‘the place isn’t being let. I have sold house and land to Mister Langstrom.’

  ‘Oh,’ the lawyer continued, ‘has your wife changed her mind? I thought she wanted to lease it for grazing rather than sell it.’

  ‘I tried my best to lease it and honour my wife’s wishes but I failed,’ Sly informed him. ‘It isn’t every day a buyer comes along. Is it in the marriage agreement that I can’t sell it?’

  ‘There’s nothing legally binding written down but I thought that you both had agreed to hold on to the house and farm,’ the lawyer reminded him.

  ‘When we said that, neither of us knew how difficult it is to lease land,’ Sly insisted.

  ‘Look, Walter,’ the attorney looked him in the eye. ‘It’s none of my business. The land is legally in your name. Right so, gentlemen, we’ll get down to business because I have enough to do besides dawdling with two men who have time to waste.’

  No two in the town of Carlow were more satisfied in their minds than John Langstrom and Walter Sly that cold Thursday in winter: Langstrom had bought the land he wanted at a reasonable price and Sly had gotten rid of the millstone around his neck. Yes, and dry cash in his pocket for the horse fair in Ballinasloe. But how would he tell Lucinda? Well, he need not break the news until after the Ballinasloe fair. He could be complaining little by little to her how difficult it was to do any work on land so far from the main farm.

  Walter Sly was making his way to the tavern along with Langstrom in order to collect his money. Sly was goggle-eyed when he saw Langstrom counting from a wad of notes that he brought down from one of the upstairs rooms.

  ‘In the name of God, John, wouldn’t your money be safer in a bank than under your bed?’ Sly reproached him.

  Langstrom looked at Sly and the stamp of the rogue was on his forehead. ‘I like to lay it out on the table now and then,’ he said, ‘and, since you mentioned it, I don’t trust strangers.’

  Sly handed the three pounds luck money to Langstrom who threw a pound on the bar counter.

  ‘We’ll drink the pound to celebrate the bargain,’ he insisted.

  ‘I’ll have one more drink,’ Sly replied, ‘but I’ll have to go home with Lucinda.’

  ‘Yes!’ Langstrom smiled. ‘We know who wears the trousers in your house.’

  Sly wasn’t a man to let it be known that he would be led and said by a woman.

  ‘All right so,’ he retorted, ‘since you are buying, fill the glasses.’

  Lucinda finished her business at the market and harnessed the horse. She spent some time waiting for Walter and when he wasn’t coming to her she had a good idea where she would find him. She tied the horse to the ring and hurried towards the tavern. The two were still drinking Langstrom’s pound. Lucinda stood at the threshold.

  ‘Walter,’ she said firmly, ‘the horse is harnessed and it’s time to go home.’

  Sly almost choked on his whiskey he got such a fright.

  ‘I’ll be straight out to you. Release the reins,’ he said in order to calm the situation.

  He hurried out of the tavern and jumped into the front of the cart. Neither of them spoke on the long road home.

  Strange thoughts were running through Lucinda’s mind: that whatever affection was between herself and Walter at first was beginning to wane. He was becoming more abusive by the day and insulted her in every move she made. The day before the fair in Ballinasloe he told her for the first time that she was expecting too much from the marriage.

  After supper that evening he sat by the fire, took off his shoes and laid them at his feet. Lucinda was washing the ware in a dish at the bottom of the table.

  ‘You have been very quiet there for a while,’ Sly said to her. ‘Is there something bothering you?’

  ‘There is,’ she told him. ‘Your drinking has gone to the dogs; you come home unable to get off your horse or walk in the door without stumbling and then you snore, you give every hop in the bed not to mention farting until bright morning … You have no thought for the desires of your wife in bed beside you. I am a woman who has desires and all you do is satisfy your own. As well as that, you haven’t been doing your fair share of the farm work for a while. That is not the bargain we made before we married.’

  Sly straightened himself in the chair with a snarl.

  ‘Neither of us will be able to gain anything from the farm until next spring. As soon as the cows are calving, I’ll hire a servant boy or girl for you who will do the heavy work.’

  Lucinda put down the ware she was drying and looked at him with an odd stare.

  ‘You’ll get a servant girl or boy and what will you be doing?’ she demanded. ‘Scratching your backside in the taverns in Carlow town.’

  ‘My good woman,’ Sly informed her, ‘I will be doing what I should have been doing for the past year instead of attending to you and trying to satisfy you. I’ll be selling and buying horses and, to do that, I’ll be travelling far from home to the fairs.’

  ‘There are more than two hundred acres around the house that need to be improved,’ she reminded him. ‘There are boundary ditches to be repaired, potatoes still in the earth, winter is upon us and we’re in danger of frost that would spoil all the potatoes.’

  Yes! It took her almost a year to get that much off her chest. It had come to war between them.

  Walter Sly spent some time reflecting on what Lucinda had said and thinking to himself, was this the same small, mild-mannered woman he walked out with for half a year and then married.

  ‘Sooner or later I’ll have to show her where the woman’s place is in this house,’ he was thinking. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that it would be better for her to mind the house she was living in as she had no other from the time her own house and farm were sold and he had the money in his pocket intending to buy twenty horses on the strength of it. But he held his tongue on this occasion. He didn’t want to go to the fair with bad blood between them. He considered he had said enough for the time being. He had his whole life to control her when he was at home.

  After a while when their anger had subsided a little, and Lucinda was seated by the fire knitting, Sly broke the silence.

  ‘I’m going to the horse fair in Ballinasloe tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be gone for three or four days. Do you think you can do the farm work without me?’

  Lucinda raised her head and cast a lethal eye in his direction.

  ‘Off you go to the fair. There is nothing to b
e done only to dig the potatoes,’ she replied.

  ‘I hired our neighbour, Michael Connors, and he told me he will begin digging the potatoes next Monday,’ he said. ‘His two boys can pick them. I told him to put them in a pit in the field.’

  When Lucinda heard that, it eased her a little. ‘Go to the fair,’ she told him, ‘and buy your foals or horses but don’t come home blind drunk. I don’t mind a few drinks but if you are drunk stay outside in the stable until you come to your senses.’

  Walter didn’t reply but looked into the heart of the fire pretending that he didn’t hear a word.

  Sly had an early breakfast the following morning. After he had shaved himself, he dressed in his Sunday clothes and put on a tall black hat he got as a present from a buyer of horses a year previously. It was the same hat that sealed the deal when he was buying the black foal he still had and that he would ride to the fair. He thought that good luck would go hand-in-hand with the hat and the horse. Sly was full of superstition.

  When he had washed and shaved, put on his shoes and leather gaiters up to his knees, he took his riding crop that was on top of the dresser and slapped his left gaiter with it. Lucinda, who was going through the door having given mess to the hens, got such a fright she almost dropped the empty dish.

  Sly raised his hat as he was going past her as a sign that he was leaving. Lucinda followed him as far as the door and watched him jumping on the horse’s back and after he had prodded the horse with his crop he went trotting down the boreen and out of sight.

  ‘The Devil go with you and your horse,’ Lucinda said beneath her breath. ‘Why did I marry that scamp and not stay in my own house? Yes, and if he continues drinking constantly, I won’t put up with it much longer.’

  Because it was the month of November, there were only two cows to be milked and they would have been dry as well only they had slung their calves and it was late in the autumn when they were bulled again.

  The thought struck her that she should travel to her old house and visit Mary Joy. If she left immediately, she would be back home before nightfall. Even though she was a fast walker it would take most of the morning and up to lunchtime before she reached Mary’s house a couple of miles from the town of Tullow.

  She put on her Sunday shoes she had bought for her wedding and a black shawl. Down the boreen she went, her heart as light as the thrush singing from the top of a furze bush. Since it was Friday, Carlow town was reasonably busy. Pig farmers sold their bonhams and fat pigs there every Friday. It was a long walk south-east to Tullow and Lucinda was regretting that she didn’t bring the horse.

  By the time she reached the top of the boreen that led to her own house she had to loosen the thongs of her shoes. She sat on the side of the boundary ditch between her farm and the Joys’. She drew a long breath of relief, her head raised in the direction of the sky so that she could fill her lungs with the fresh air of her home. Then she cast her eye over the ditch at her farm and, down in a corner of a field, her own felt-covered house.

  ‘How is it that there is smoke coming from the chimney?’ she wondered. She forgot the thongs of her shoes, jumped to her feet and hurried in the direction of her house.

  ‘Walter didn’t tell me that the house was let,’ she said as she hurried towards the door. She raised the latch and, without knocking, opened the door.

  Who should be sitting on a settle at the side of the kitchen in front of her? Langstrom, the tavern keeper from Carlow. He got such a fright when the door opened so suddenly that he nearly fell off the settle. Lucinda looked at him for a few seconds.

  ‘Do you mind telling me what you are doing in my house?’ she demanded. By this time she was frothing at the mouth with venom.

  Langstrom stood in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Didn’t Walter tell you that I bought the house and land from him?’ he answered.

  Lucinda walked in circles around the kitchen.

  ‘Are you sure that you haven’t just leased it?’ she demanded again.

  ‘Oh no!’ Langstrom retorted. ‘I had my eye on this place since my uncle left me the farm down the road in his will.’

  ‘Oh that bastard Sly,’ Lucinda swore. ‘I made a bad bargain. I told him to let the land and, if possible, to rent the house. The attorney was present when I put it to Walter. And wasn’t it he who promised me faithfully that that is how it would be.’

  Langstrom looked at her with a strange look.

  ‘The attorney has no such thing in writing,’ he informed her.

  ‘You are right about that,’ Lucinda agreed, ‘but I can tell you that my name is in the will he made before that same attorney. If that is the kind of man I married, well two can play at that game. To satisfy my curiosity, how much money did you give him for the farm and house together?’

  Langstrom looked at Lucinda, then down at the floor.

  ‘One hundred pounds outright and I got three pounds luck,’ he told her.

  ‘Wasn’t it nice of him?’ Lucinda said. ‘The house and land together are worth at least two hundred pounds particularly as the one who was buying it has a farm beside them.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t know that I had been willed a farm nearby,’ Langstrom countered.

  ‘The stump of a fool,’ Lucinda thundered. ‘What came over me to marry him?’

  Lucinda rushed out and slammed the door after her. She was talking to herself on the way to Mary Joy’s house. Never in her life had she been betrayed like this… But deceit catches up with the deceiver.

  Mary welcomed her friend heartily.

  ‘Sit down, Lucinda,’ she greeted her, ‘and tell me all about your life in Oldleighlin – your purse full and women attending to you every time you ring the bell.’

  Lucinda sat, tired and weary, on the settle.

  ‘Oh, Mary, my dear,’ she sighed, ‘the opposite is the case. I am married to an old codger who has no respect for women. Don’t be talking about him in bed – he’s useless. He thinks women were put into the world to be servants to men and to do the housework and farm work as well.’

  Mary stood in front of her staring at her in surprise.

  ‘Ah, tell the truth,’ she laughed. ‘He is noted for his deeds under the covers.’

  ‘God’s honest truth,’ Lucinda told her, ‘he throws his leg over me, in and out and plups! He stretches himself backwards and in a short time he is snoring.’

  ‘You don’t say it,’ Mary said in disbelief. ‘He had a reputation once for … oh, excuse me, you are married to him.’

  ‘Out with it, Mary, my dear,’ Lucinda insisted. ‘I was told after I married him that there wasn’t a tinker woman going the road that he hadn’t mounted. To give Mary Walsh her due, she gave me that information when she heard I was walking out with him but a few other women who were selling butter on the side of the street told me it wasn’t true. Now they are all saying it.’

  ‘Give him a chance,’ Mary advised her. ‘Maybe it is lack of practice. Listen! I was hanging out clothes on a bush a little while ago. I saw smoke coming from your chimney. I knew then that you had come to visit your old home.’

  There was silence for a few seconds. Then Lucinda cleared her throat.

  ‘It wasn’t I who put down that fire,’ she told her. ‘Walter sold my house and land without even telling me.’

  Lucinda burst out crying and the two women put their arms around one another.

  ‘God save us,’ Mary comforted her, ‘but how did he manage to sell the house and land? Didn’t he have to get your permission to do that?’

  ‘I had put the house and land in Walter’s name, you know, as a dowry for our wedding,’ Lucinda informed her.

  ‘Here,’ said Mary, ‘have a cup of milk.’

  The two women spent a couple of hours going over everything that happened to Lucinda since she left her home. They would not see each other again until the beginning of spring as Mary’s cows were dry for a month. Mary wouldn’t be at the fair again until the end of January. Their chat
brought some relief to Lucinda. Walter would be at the fair for three days and she would be alone with her thoughts and would have time to think deeply about her married life in the years that were before her. She would have to confront Walter as soon as he came home in order to clear the air. Would there be peace between them or would it be out and out war? But Lucinda wasn’t about to spend her remaining years as a slave to a blackguard, attending to him every time he whistled. ‘I won’t be any man’s servant,’ she vowed to herself.

  Chapter Eight

  Late in the evening of the following Tuesday, Lucinda was sitting beside a blazing turf fire she had lit. She was finishing the second of a pair of socks. Outside the darkness of night was creeping on the brightness of evening. Walter wasn’t home from the fair yet but she was expecting him. The fair finished on Sunday and if he had bought a couple of foals it would give him all he could do to reach the house before dark.

  She was just finishing the last few stitches on top of the sock when she heard the sound of horses’ hooves approaching the house. She jumped out of her chair and left the four knitting needles and the sock in the place where she was sitting. Out she went and opened the stable door so that her husband could guide the foals or horses he had bought into the stable without too much trouble. As soon as the three foals were tied up in the stable he took the saddle from the black horse and tied him in his own stall. After he had left a few sops of hay for the foals and put a handful of oats in a bowl under the horse’s head, he hung the s addle on the crook behind the horse. Lucinda went back into the house without so much as greeting him.

  She had caught hold of the sock and had her eyes fixed on her work by the time Sly came in the door. He looked in the direction of the fire beside which Lucinda was intent on her knitting.

  ‘Are you thinking of boiling a pot of potatoes on that bonfire you have there?’ he began. ‘Upon my soul but you have two bags of turf burning in the heart of that fire.’

  She looked hatefully in his direction.

  ‘I haven’t had a noggin of whiskey or a man to lie beside me for three nights,’ she fumed.