by Maidhc Dain
‘Ah, my good woman,’ Sly placated her. ‘Like everyone else I like a good fire, but if you had your way you’d burn all the turf in Ireland.’
Lucinda got up without another word, got a plate from the dresser and put the hot shoulder of mutton that was in an oven at the side of the fire on his plate. There were half a dozen potatoes in the oven as well and she put them on his plate also.
Sly sat at the table and ate the food hungrily. He left the plate as clean as if it had been licked by the dog.
‘I suppose you had enough to drink at the weekend?’ Lucinda reproached him.
Sly looked at her, none too pleased at what she had said.
‘I hadn’t,’ he told her, ‘but since you mention whiskey I’m going to saddle the horse again and go to town for a few.’
Oh boy! When Lucinda heard this she jumped to her feet.
‘I have been here with three days and three nights,’ she turned on him, ‘milking, churning and baking while you have been roving all over the country drinking and throwing your arse about. You’re only a few minutes inside the door of the house when you’re thinking of getting on your horse to go drinking with your friends. Do you mind telling me where the money is coming from?’
Sly was not accustomed to having a woman barking questions at him.
‘There was plenty of money in this house before you set your foot on the kitchen floor and, before you go any farther with this cross questioning, it’s none of your business,’ Sly replied.
When she heard this, Lucinda exploded.
‘Upon my soul,’ she shouted, ‘if it’s the money you got from Langstrom for my house and farm that you’re throwing away, it is my business.’
That stopped Sly in his tracks. How did she find out when she was in the house for three days?
‘Tell me who told you I sold your holding?’ he demanded. ‘And, to put matters right, from the day you were willing to marry me it was mine from then on.’
‘But you promised to lease the house and the grazing of the land,’ Lucinda replied crossly.
‘I made every attempt to do that and I completely failed,’ Sly told her. ‘The holding was too small. I got a good price for the house and land together. Even Langstrom doesn’t know what he’ll do with it but I suppose he had too much dry cash in his house and it was safer to invest some of it in a patch of land.’
Lucinda shoved her face into Sly’s.
‘You stump of a fool,’ she began. ‘I’ll bet he didn’t tell you that he was willed the land next to mine by an uncle who died a month ago.’
‘What would that have to do with the price of land?’ Sly replied in a dour voice.
‘Because it would add to his farm and he has a house on his land now which he hadn’t until he bought my holding,’ Lucinda told him.
Sly realised, on hearing this, that he had made a big mistake but couldn’t find it in his heart to admit it. He took his cap that was hanging on the wall and hurried towards the door.
‘I won’t be long. As soon as I quench the thirst I got on the road I’ll come home,’ he promised her.
He opened the front door and Lucinda followed him.
‘Off you go,’ she said, ‘and stay out till morning if it suits you but sleep in the stable when you come home because both doors will be barred.’
‘Do that and you will find one of the bars in two halves in the middle of the kitchen and you will be on your way out to the stable,’ Sly replied scathingly.
Lucinda slammed the door after him. She stood in the middle of the kitchen and began to cry.
‘Oh, Lucinda Singleton,’ she wailed, ‘you didn’t make a good bed for yourself at the end of your life.’
She sat by the fire looking to see if she would get an answer to her troubles in the flames. Would she bar the doors or would she let it pass on this occasion and go to bed? She got up and made to bolt the doors twice but changed her mind. She thought that, maybe with the whiskey in him, he would go out of his mind and injure her. For some time now, Walter Sly had been changing in his demeanour. He wasn’t the same man that wooed her into marrying him. Maybe this was the real Walter Sly that was emerging. You have to live with someone to know them. He had sold her house without telling her. Where would she go if she had to escape from her husband? She was too old to begin afresh. ‘Yes,’ she conceded, ‘I made my bed and now I’ll have to lie in it and take the rough with the smooth.’
It was late that night before Lucinda lay under the covers. Her husband hadn’t returned. She didn’t sleep but was listening carefully, expecting every minute to hear the sound of the horse’s hooves trotting down the boreen. She was tossing and turning for a long time with every sort of thought racing through her head. ‘If he is drunk,’ she thought, ‘he will be looking for his conjugal rights and he will have no pity for me lying under him. It took me a few days to walk properly after he was astride me the last time. Upon my soul, he’s only an animal.’
Despite her best efforts, she fell asleep. She woke with a fright with her husband pulling her from the bed on to the floor.
‘Are you the strap who was going to bar the doors of my house?’ he bellowed. He was blind drunk.
‘In God’s name, Walter,’ she pleaded, ‘have you lost your mind?’
He lifted her off the ground. She was screaming like a baby.
‘After I shared my house with you, you strap,’ he continued, ‘you should respect me under my own roof.’
Then he stripped the clothes from her back and kicked her in her belly so hard that she fell against the wall. He went into the kitchen, got the horse whip and beat her unmercifully, then took her clothes and threw them down on her.
‘Go out yourself and sleep in the loft of the stable,’ he roared. ‘Isn’t that the bed you were giving me when I came home this evening?’
Lucinda attempted to get to her feet while all the time Sly was whipping her. Then he caught her by the hair. He pulled her to the kitchen and then in the direction of the front door. He gave her three more lashes of the whip and threw her out the door. He slammed the door after her.
Lucinda heard him bar the door inside. She realised then that she would have to sleep in the loft of the stable. She ran across the haggard crying so loudly that she could be heard far from home.
‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘hadn’t I a fine life before I saw Oldleighlin. It would have been easy to see that if the old man I married was in any way eligible he’d have been picked up years ago, but that didn’t happen until Lucinda Singleton, the fool, came along. My God, it isn’t good to be too gullible in this life.’
She went in the stable door. It was pitch black. The three foals began to jump in the air when they heard the crying and talking near them. She stopped crying and shouting and began to feel her way in the dark.
After a while, she laid her hand on the ladder that led to the loft. As soon as she was safely up in the loft she put on the clothes Sly had stripped off her. She was glad she had her clothes as there was a chill in the air from the frost outside and the north wind was whistling through the stable’s old window. The loft was half full of hay which could easily be let down into the horses’ manger during the winter. When Lucinda had put on her clothes, she made a nest for herself in the hay and covered her body with it too. After a long time, during which she was considering her plight, she fell into a deep sleep and, unusually for her, she had a terrible nightmare.
In it, her husband, Walter Sly, was above her; she was tied to a tree; Sly had two hooves like a donkey’s and he had a four-pronged pike with which he was attempting to stab her. Beside the tree there was a big, deep hole and there was a blazing fire at the bottom. There were people in the middle of the fire pleading for mercy from anyone who would put out the fire …
Lucinda woke in a cold sweat. The second time she woke she couldn’t close her eyes again so afraid was she. No woman was ever as grateful as Lucinda when morning dawned. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to suffer many nights like the
one before she went out of her mind. But she didn’t know where to go or who to turn to. Her heart missed a beat when the stable door opened. Walter was at the door. He stood peering up at the loft.
‘Lucinda,’ he said, ‘come into the house and make breakfast for me and have a bite yourself. Then go about your jobs and we’ll forget about what happened last night.’
That took her by surprise. Yes, that would do until she thought of a better plan. At least she would have the comfort of the house. She had her own churn and could earn a few shillings herself. But surely there was something she could do with the animal she had married.
Lucinda stayed in the loft until Sly left the door. She climbed down with one eye on the door and the other on the rungs of the ladder. As she crossed the haggard she saw her husband going up through the field with some jute bags under his oxter. ‘Thanks be to God,’ she said to herself. Sly had put down the fire. What is seldom is wonderful. She took the skillet and hung it on the crook in order to boil the porridge. She put four eggs into the kettle that was singing on the side of the hearth. Breakfast was just ready when Sly came in the door.
‘I could eat a horse,’ Sly began as if nothing had happened the previous night. But Lucinda had learned a hard lesson. From now on, she would be very careful with every word she spoke in front of her animal of a husband.
In the weeks and months after that night, Sly drank less. He concentrated on the work of the farm but, then, in the middle of February, the cows began to calve and, as soon as a calf was three weeks old, Sly would take it to the fair. He began drinking again and very often Lucinda wouldn’t see him until she had the cows milked in the morning.
One morning while they were eating breakfast, Lucinda felt that Sly was in good humour.
‘Walter,’ she began, ‘do you remember at the start of the winter we were saying that, maybe, when things got busy on the farm, you would hire a servant girl or boy? More than half the herd are milking and all the work is falling to me this past fortnight. Before long, I’ll be churning twice a week.’
Sly didn’t reply for a few seconds.
‘Look, Lucinda,’ he answered eventually, ‘leave it with me for a few days.’
Sly had to go to the fair a few days afterwards as he was selling three of his calves, from three weeks to a month old. It so happened that calves of that age were in great demand with cattle buyers from north Munster. Some of the big farmers did no churning. They concentrated on dry stock for the British market. They had large holdings with fertile land that could grow plenty of grass and wheat at little cost. Sly kept some of the heifer calves as his cows were getting old and he liked to keep his own breed of cattle. As well as that, he had more than enough milk left after churning with two-year-old cattle turning their noses up at it.
Tuesday was the day of the fair for young calves in Carlow. Sly got up early that morning, put the turf rail on the cart with a sop of straw in the bottom and harnessed the black horse to the cart. It was a hard, cold March morning with an icy edge to it. Farmers used to be afraid that the cold weather would give their calves the scour and the only remedy they had for it was to mix a fistful of flour in hot water containing four spoonfuls of glucose.
There were a few hundred calves for sale at the fair that day and it didn’t take Sly long to sell his three animals. That was no wonder as they were fed on new milk from the day they were born. Some farmers would take the cream from the top of the milk for churning and feed the buttermilk to their calves. There would be a gloss on the calves fed on new milk that the other calves wouldn’t have.
As soon as Sly had sold his calves and the money was in his pouch, he headed straight for Langstrom’s as he usually did. There were a dozen farmers there before him, all of whom had sold their calves.
When he had got a glass of whiskey from Langstrom and had saluted some of the farmers he knew, he found a seat near the bottom of the counter and sat down contentedly without talking to anybody. He was pondering how he could satisfy the strap of a woman he was married to.
‘She is a top-class worker,’ he conceded, ‘but when something gets into her head, I make out that the seventeen devils from hell get into her to put her astray.’
When every customer had a drink in his hand, Langstrom went over in Sly’s direction; he wanted to find out if he had cooled down since the time he bought his wife’s holding from him without telling him that it was beside the farm he had been willed by his uncle.
‘Has the last cow calved for you, Walter?’ he enquired delicately.
‘No,’ Sly replied, ‘not until the end of April. Christ, I’m crippled from work with a while. That strap I married has my heart broken. I had to let her know that I wear the trousers in my own house. But there were times when she was getting stubborn and trying to put the trousers on herself. That said, she is a great worker and, with the extra work I have to do with the cattle I have added to my herd, I can’t do all the farm work. When all the cows have calved, I’ll take someone in service. You don’t, by any chance, know any strong young girl who is scratching her backside for lack of work?’
Langstrom looked at him, surprised.
‘My good man,’ he smiled, ‘any young girl who has any appearance is in service in one of the big houses working in the kitchen by day and rattling the boards of the bed with the landlords by night. But, if it is a servant boy you want, there is a strapping young man at the top of the counter who is ready to go in service to any farmer who will hire him for a season.’
Sly looked at the young man and examined him from head to toe. He was strongly built and had a civil appearance.
‘Send him down to me in a while,’ Sly instructed Langstrom, ‘but don’t let on that we were talking about him. Upon my soul, but they are constantly looking for more and more money from season to season. I’ll pretend that I might be hiring a man, and then again, that I might not.’
Langstrom went about this business. While Sly was drinking another glass of whiskey, he noticed Langstrom’s head inclining in the direction of the young man. He took the drink that was in front of him and began walking towards Sly. He stopped at the empty space in the counter near Sly. He put his drink on the counter and looked cautiously over and back.
‘I’m told you’re looking to hire a farm worker,’ he said steadily.
‘Maybe I am and maybe I am not,’ Sly replied nonchalantly.
‘I won’t ask you again,’ the young man countered, ‘because I have almost made up my mind to go to the fertile plain of Munster. I have seen nothing since I came to this county but small farmers with petty, narrow minds and they are as miserly as Midas.’
That knocked a start out of Sly.
‘Take it nice and easy,’ he advised him. ‘Maybe you have met only the worst of us. And, yes, I am looking for a farm worker. Could you stay until the beginning of May?’
‘I wouldn’t,’ the young man told him. ‘Live horse and you’ll get grass is your plan, is it?’
‘Oh, not at all,’ Sly assured him. ‘What would you say to a year’s hire instead of a season’s hire, starting next Monday?’
The young man dropped his drink on the counter when he heard that.
‘That is, if your work is satisfactory,’ Sly added.
He wouldn’t throw his money away. He was too old for that.
‘I am a good milker, a good workman,’ the young man informed him. ‘I can plough a field with a team of horses with a light or heavy scribe, whichever suits the land. I am told that you buy and sell foals and horses. There is no man within fifty miles of here who can break a young colt as well as I can. I can churn as well as any woman and can bake bread as well. Have you any other questions?’
‘The Devil a one,’ Sly retorted, ‘but that it is a pity I didn’t meet you before I married my wife.’
They both laughed out loud.
‘I’ll pay you four pounds every three months and you will have a bed in the back kitchen and three meals a day beginning next Monday,’ S
ly informed him.
‘I am Walter Sly,’ he introduced himself, ‘and my farm is in Oldleighlin.’
‘People call me John Dempsey,’ was the reply.
They had a few drinks together in order to get to know each other before they went their separate ways.
Chapter Nine
Early the following Monday morning the sun was shining on the green fields of Bilboa and up as far as the town of Oldleighlin. Lucinda Sly was driving in the cows for milking. Walter Sly was still snoring, his head hanging out of the bed on account of his drinking the previous night. Lucinda had a habit of talking out loud to herself if anything was bothering her, which was often since she married Sly.
What she was saying to herself this morning was that her patience was exhausted with regard to Sly’s drinking, not to mention that every bone in her body was aching from the beating she got from Sly and all the work she had to do on the farm. The day would come when she would stab him in the belly with the four-pronged pike while he was sleeping in bed.
She didn’t see the man who was walking down the boreen behind her and could hear every word she said. He followed her to the cowshed without interrupting her. When she had guided the last cow into the shed she saw him and screamed loudly with the start she got.
‘Easy, woman,’ the man said. ‘I’m the farm worker your husband hired. Didn’t he tell you about me?’
She spent a while staring at him as if he had two heads.
‘A farm worker,’ she gasped. ‘He didn’t say a word to me about it. But, thanks be to God, it’s not before time. I’m Lucinda Sly. The Oldleighlin drunkard is still snoring. Listen, I have a habit of thinking out loud. Did you hear what I said?’
‘I didn’t catch a word you said,’ he lied. ‘I was too far away from you. By the way, I’m John Dempsey. If you like, I’ll milk the cows with you.’
Lucinda’s heart lifted when she heard this.
‘Oh, God be with you forever,’ she exclaimed. ‘It was He sent you to me. I am dying with pains in my bones since the start of last winter.’