by Maidhc Dain
They began milking. When a cow was milked, the pail of milk was strained into a big wooden tub. Little by little Lucinda would glance at the fine man the morning had brought her. A talkative man, a pleasant man, she reasoned, and a man who could get milk from the toughest cow.
They were stripping the last two cows when Walter Sly stuck his head in the door of the shed. He got a start when he saw Dempsey.
‘My soul to the devil,’ he blurted, ‘you are here already.’
‘He is here,’ Lucinda answered, ‘and he has milked the cows with me. Oh, boy! A noted milker. Will you go in, Walter, and hang the skillet of porridge over the fire?’
‘God be with you, woman,’ Dempsey spoke. ‘My belly is tied to my backbone with the hunger.’
Sly went towards the house without saying a word.
‘Look at that for blackguarding,’ Lucinda said to Dempsey. ‘If you weren’t here I would have got a belt of the cows’ spancel across the side of the head.’
‘Why would he do such a thing?’ Dempsey was surprised.
‘Because I told him to hang the skillet over the fire,’ Lucinda said.
When he heard this, Dempsey didn’t say a word but strained the pail of milk into the tub.
‘Have you any special place where you wash the pails?’ Dempsey asked her.
‘Turn yours upside down outside the door,’ she told him. ‘I’ll wash it myself when I have seen to the calves.’
Sly spent a week showing Dempsey what was to be done on the farm. Dempsey found out that he wouldn’t be idle while he was in service with Walter Sly. But, that said, Sly was married to a friendly woman who was an excellent cook. When it was drawing near suppertime, he would get the fine smell of baking coming through the kitchen door. Oh, it would give an appetite to one who had none.
As soon as Sly considered that his hired hand was familiar with the farm work, he let him know that he wouldn’t be around the farm as often during the day in the coming months as he would be buying and selling horses. He had shown him how to run the farm and Dempsey would have to do the work. If there was ploughing or digging to be done, he would have to do it. If Lucinda needed a hand around the sheds or with the churning, he would have to help her, not to mention doing the spring sowing and the autumn harvesting as well. Dempsey’s heart lifted on hearing this as Sly was an awkward man at the best of times, and when he had a few drinks in him, he was worse. There was no need for Sly to show Dempsey how to run the farm because as soon as Sly had left him, Dempsey did the work his own way.
John Dempsey’s bed was in the back kitchen, which had a door leading out to the back haggard and the sheds. He could go out if he needed to make his water in the middle of the night and there was plenty of room beside the ditch for that. If a pin dropped in any room by day or by night, Dempsey could hear it as there was no door between the kitchen and Lucinda and Walter’s room, only a curtain so that they would have privacy. Dempsey would cover his ears when Sly came home having been gone, very often, from early morning until dawn the following day. No need to mention that his belly would be full of drink. It was Lucinda, the poor creature, who got the short end of the stick. Many times Dempsey had to restrain himself from going into their room and giving Sly a drubbing.
A season went by and Dempsey saw little of Sly by day. He had sown two acres of potatoes along with a couple of acres of oats, not to mention a half acre of turnips and the same of mangolds. Ben Stacey, Sly’s nearest neighbour, spent a week ploughing with Dempsey and Dempsey returned the favour when Stacey was doing the spring sowing. Neither of them wanted Sly with them as he wasn’t the neatest of workers when it came to sowing, but give him a colt to break and he would be in his element.
When he wasn’t at a fair, Sly spent most of his days drinking in Langstrom’s and fighting with the buyers he used to deal with.
One day he was fighting with the Brennans, who used to live close by his own farm but who he had evicted a year earlier. One of the Brennans threatened to kill him. There were three of them and they were strong men.
When he got home, Lucinda put his supper before him. He was in a foul humour and had a couple of deep cuts on his cheek and on his eyebrow. He got up out of his chair by the fire and he almost stumbled as he was pulling it towards the table.
‘Where was the fair today?’ Lucinda asked sarcastically. ‘In Langstrom’s tavern I suppose.’
John Dempsey was just coming in the door. He saw the mood Sly was in and looked fearfully at Lucinda, who was taking a joint of mutton from a skillet that she had put on the side of the fire. Although Sly had had a lot to drink, he saw his opportunity for a treacherous attack on her. He got up drunkenly from his chair. Lucinda was bent over taking the mutton from the skillet when Sly drew a kick on her and she banged her head against the leg of the hob. When Dempsey saw that, he could turn a blind eye no longer. He punched Sly so hard in the face that he collapsed on the flat of his back in the middle of the kitchen.
‘Come on now, you bastard,’ he exploded. ‘What kind of a man would kick a woman?’
Lucinda got up gingerly, looked fondly at Dempsey and then turned to look at her husband stretched groaning on the kitchen floor.
‘I hope the bastard is dead,’ she spat.
She put her arms around Dempsey’s waist and kissed him.
‘How did a kind, pleasant woman like you marry that animal?’ he began. ‘Leave this house or you will go out the front door in a white deal box. You are married to a madman.’
Lucinda kissed Dempsey again. That put a different complexion on things but Dempsey put such thoughts out of his head. He picked Sly off the ground and tossed him into the chair.
Although he was only half Lucinda’s age, Dempsey had the same feelings for her that he would have had for a younger woman. Sly was still not stirring in the chair but soon they heard him snoring intermittently. They knew then that he was in a drunken sleep and he wouldn’t wake up even if the house fell on him. Lucinda caught Dempsey by the hand and guided him to the bedroom.
This didn’t surprise him as, from the way she looked at him this past while, he knew that she desired him and that Sly was giving her no satisfaction in bed. Dempsey was a confirmed bachelor and it had been a long time since he had lain with a woman. He knew that Lucinda was a good woman who wouldn’t betray a secret.
Sly didn’t wake up until dawn. He had no memory of the blow in the face he got from Dempsey, or, if he had, he didn’t pretend to, but that was the first night Lucinda and John Dempsey lay together and it was the beginning of their troubles.
Every day, as soon as Sly left home, Dempsey would hurry through the fields towards the house and it wasn’t always to have a bite to eat. He would help Lucinda with the churning and milking as well. But he wasn’t always able to save her from Sly’s fists. He advised Lucinda to go for advice to the minister of her church unknown to Sly for fear she would get a worse beating from him.
One day as she was returning home from the butter market in Carlow it happened that she was passing the minister’s house. She halted her horse and cart outside his gate. She tied the horse’s reins to the poll and faced the door. Her heart was throbbing. How could she tell a stranger that her husband was constantly abusing her? She knocked on the door. It opened suddenly. The minister, John Doyne, was at the door.
‘Oh Lucinda,’ he greeted her. ‘Come in, come in! What brings you here? Look, sit on the chair. The maid will bring you some food.’
‘There’s no need,’ Lucinda responded. ‘I’m on my way home from the market and I will have to milk the cows and do other jobs when I get there. I have come for your help and advice. My husband beats me unmercifully when he comes home from the tavern at night full of whiskey.’
The minister looked at her in surprise.
‘Are you telling me,’ he asked in disbelief, ‘that Walter Sly beats his wife? I have known that man for years and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘I’m telling you,’ she repeated, ‘that
if somebody doesn’t talk to him, my body will be buried in the cemetery before long.’
On hearing this, the minister jumped from his chair.
‘Go home, my good woman,’ he said, ‘and do your duty as a wife. Prepare his food, patch his clothes and do your duty in the marriage bed and don’t let me see you at my door with balls of lies coming out of your mouth. Off you go now. Soon women will be looking for the vote or a seat in parliament. The cheek of them.’
Poor Lucinda went out the door more confused than she was going in. When she reached home, Dempsey was driving in the cattle. She enquired had he seen any sight of her husband.
‘I don’t think he’ll be at home until late tonight,’ Dempsey replied. ‘He took the white colt. He said he had twenty miles of road before him.’
Lucinda’s heart lit up when she heard this. Dempsey unyoked the horse and led it into the field before helping Lucinda with the milking.
While they were milking, Lucinda told him about her visit to the minister. She was so upset that she had to lay her head against the cow’s belly for a rest before she could continue milking.
‘Oh, John,’ she pleaded, ‘what am I to do now? I am denied by my own Church. “Go home”, the minister told me, “and do your duty as a good wife” and he mentioned the bed too … As if he could do anything in bed. He is too heavy with drink, it takes him ten minutes to locate it and when he does he has nothing but a bit of wrinkled skin. I can see that he is spreading rumours about me around the place. Hardly any of the women who sell butter on the side of the street salute me now. Yes, and those who do, call me “the hag of the butter”.’
‘Ah, my good woman,’ Dempsey soothed her, ‘they are jealous of you because of the quality of your butter.’
When the milk had been poured from the tub into the dishes in the dairy, they both washed the pails and headed for the house.
Dempsey had put down a big turf fire as he knew, with Sly gone and not due to return until late that night, they would have a fine cosy time by the fire. That was the night that Lucinda put the thought in Dempsey’s mind that there was room in her bed for only one man and that he, Dempsey, was her choice.
On hearing this, Dempsey grew afraid. He was happy enough with the way things were between Lucinda and himself. Never in his life had he got so much pleasure from a woman as he had from this gentle woman. But the battering she received from her husband when he, Dempsey, wasn’t around to protect her greatly disturbed him. ‘Right so,’ Dempsey thought to himself, ‘what is the solution to the problem? He is often enough seated on the chair where I am sitting.’
‘What can we do about Walter?’ he suddenly blurted out loud.
‘Look at the axe by the wall of the house,’ Lucinda pointed out. ‘One blow with the edge of that axe will split his head.’
Dempsey sat back on the chair with two wide eyes.
‘That’s murder,’ he protested. ‘Do you know what happens to murderers? They are hanged.’
‘You are right, John,’ she persisted. ‘If there is any proof against the one who did the deed. You could stay here as a farm hand and we could bar the two doors of the house every night and what do you think would happen?’
‘I know you are at the end of your tether with Walter,’ Dempsey continued, ‘but murder! In God’s name, gather your senses, Lucinda. I never heard of anybody who did such a deed escaping the gallows.’
‘What kind of man are you at all?’ Lucinda taunted him. ‘Or have you any feelings for me?’
This struck him like a blow to his face.
‘Look, Lucinda,’ he went on, ‘leave it to me. We’ll have to come up with a better plan than splitting his head with an axe. Think of all the blood that would be around the kitchen.’
Lucinda’s face lit up on hearing this as she felt that Dempsey was a clever man who would come up with a better way of getting rid of Sly. She got out of her chair and sat on his knee. They spent some time fondling each other.
‘We had better go to bed before Walter returns,’ Dempsey urged her.
Up they went to the bedroom and such was Dempsey’s desire for Lucinda that he was ripping the buttons of his flap on the way.
They were only a minute in the bed when they heard the latch of the door being lifted. They looked at each other.
‘Did you bar both doors?’ Lucinda asked him, afraid that her husband had returned.
They jumped out of the bed, both searching for their own clothes. Who was standing at the room door but Bridget Massey, a friend of the Slys. She stood there goggle-eyed looking at the two naked figures before her, Dempsey looking for his trousers and Lucinda trying to cover her body.
‘Oh God protect us,’ Bridget wailed, ‘but the Devil’s work is going on in this house of damnation this evening.’
‘I know what you think we are doing,’ Lucinda began, ‘but the opposite is the case. The bed is full of fleas. John was trying to get rid of them when they got into our clothes.’
Bridget turned and went straight for the door.
‘Upon my soul,’ she exclaimed, ‘I have seen people beating a blanket with a bat but I never saw two naked people killing fleas without one.’
She went out the door taking out her rosary beads for the house and its inhabitants … that God would be merciful and forgive their sins and that he would banish Lucifer to the hobs of hell.
‘What will we do now?’ Dempsey asked. ‘If she opens her mouth you will be as good as dead, Lucinda.’
Lucinda thought a moment.
‘Leave it to me,’ she reassured him. ‘I will visit her tomorrow and I will bring her a lump of butter and a dozen eggs. She knows well what kind of man Walter Sly is.’
‘Tell me if you think she is loose with the tongue,’ Dempsey pleaded.
‘Look,’ Lucinda informed him, ‘even if she is, she is of the breed of the tinkers. Sure, nobody believes a word they say even if it was in the confession box.’
By the time Sly reached home that night, or the following morning I should say, it wasn’t far from cockcrow. Nearly the whole village heard him with his shouting and bawling like a madman. Dempsey was in his own bed in the back kitchen and Lucinda had one eye open in her own bed. She heard the front door opening and then the thud of Sly’s drunken body falling into the middle of the kitchen.
‘Lucinda,’ he demanded, ‘get up and get me some food.’
Lucinda pretended not to hear him. Sly went down to the bedroom, caught her by the hair of the head, pulled her out on to the floor and down to the kitchen. Then he began to kick her.
‘All right,’ she shouted in fear, ‘give me a chance to wake up.’
Just then Dempsey came into the room from the back kitchen in his drawers. When he saw the abuse Sly was meting out to his wife, he jumped in between them. He told Lucinda to sit down on the chair.
‘But I have to prepare food for Walter,’ she whimpered fearfully.
‘By the time I’m finished with him, he won’t have much mind for food,’ Dempsey promised her catching the collar of Sly’s coat and letting fly with his left fist to Sly’s jaw. He punched Sly with his right and left until he was on the flat of his back. He lifted him from the ground then and took him to the bed.
‘Now, my good woman,’ Dempsey addressed Lucinda, ‘he has no need for food or to put you to the trouble of preparing it.’
Lucinda burst out laughing.
‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you laughing in three months,’ Dempsey smiled. ‘You should laugh more often.’
‘Oh, John,’ Lucinda replied, ‘you should have stayed out of this mess. When he wakes up in the morning he’ll give you the road.’
‘Indeed he won’t,’ Dempsey assured her. ‘Don’t you remember the last time I gave him a couple of thumps; he blamed his neighbour, Michael Connors. Off to sleep with you now and don’t be in any way worried.’
Chapter Ten
Midsummer, 1834. Walter Sly had added extra cows to his herd. A person not in the kn
ow would say that he had added to his herd to improve his farm but that was not so; he did it to add to Lucinda’s and Dempsey’s workload so that they would be so exhausted in the evening that they would have no time for romance.
Michael Connors, Sly’s neighbour, had whispered in his ear that Lucinda and Dempsey were becoming very fond of each other … Yes, and that it was no wonder that he was getting pleasure where Sly once was. Rumours were going around that Lucinda was the worst kind of witch. Even the women who sold butter beside her on the street in Carlow had turned against her because at that time there was no worse sin than a woman having an affair with a man who was not her husband. Some of the bigwigs’ wives were engaged in such practices, it was said. Many of them were banished but it was seldom spoken about as they were sent on a long holiday never to return.
Lucinda spent a hard summer and autumn as more animals were out on pasture and extra fodder had to be provided for them for the winter. Walter Sly spent most of the summer going to fairs enjoying himself and drinking heavily. That was the summer that Lucinda was at her wits’ end, and, but for John Dempsey’s help and friendship, she would have been put into the lunatic asylum. Her bones were protruding through her skin, she had lost so much weight.
The November Fair was the one Walter Sly most looked forward to as it was held in Carlow town. He would always have two or three horses ready for it. It was a hard, dry Saturday morning with a frosty breeze that was blowing from the north as is usual in November. Lucinda and Dempsey milked the two cows that weren’t dry yet. As soon as the three of them had eaten breakfast, Sly ordered Dempsey to inspect the boundary ditches and to make any necessary repairs. Dempsey went out the front door and over the ditch into the field. Sly watched him until he disappeared from sight. Lucinda knew that something was irritating him and that he didn’t want Dempsey to be present.
No sooner was Dempsey out of sight than Sly turned on Lucinda and hit her across the face.
‘For the last couple of months,’ he snarled, ‘the butter money is short. Is this how you are paying your stallion for his services?’