Walk the Blue Fields

by Claire Keegan

  Waking, he finds he’s clothed from the waist down: black jeans and his working boots. He gropes for the clock, holds the glass close, reads the hands. It isn’t late. Overhead, the light is still burning. He gets to his feet and finds the rest of his clothes. Outside, the October rain goes shuddering through the bamboo. That was planted years ago to stake her shrubs and beans but when she left he took no mind, and the garden turned wild. On McQuaid’s hill, through cloud, he makes out the figure of a man walking through fields greener than his own. McQuaid himself, herding, counting all the bullocks once again.

  In the kitchen he boils the kettle, scalds the pot. The tea makes him feel human again. He stands over the toaster and warms his hands. His aunt brought up marmalade last week but there’s hardly a lick in the jar. With a knife he scrapes what’s left off the glass and goes out, in his jacket, to the fields. The two heifers need to be brought in and dosed. He must clear the drains, fell the ash in the lower field – and there’s a good day’s welding in the sheds before winter comes on strong. He throws what’s left of the sliced pan on the street and starts the van. One part of him is glad the day is wet.

  In Belturbet, he buys drenching fluid, welding rods, oil for the saw. There’s hardly any money left. He hesitates before he rings Leyden from the phone box, knowing he’ll be home.

  ‘Come up to the house,’ Leyden says. ‘I’m in need of a hand.’

  It is a fine house on a hill, which his wife, a school teacher, keeps immaculate. Two storeys painted white look out over the river. In the yard a pair of chestnut trees, the horse lorry, heads over every stable door. When Brady lands, Leyden waves from the hayshed. He’s a tight man, bony, with great big hands.

  ‘Ah, Brady! The man himself!’

  ‘There’s a bad day.’

  ‘’Tis raw,’ Leyden agrees. ‘Throw the halter on the mare there, would you? I’ve a feeling she’ll give trouble.’

  Brady stands at the mare’s head while Leyden shoes. The big hands are skilled: the hoof is measured, pared, the toe culled for the clip. On the anvil the shoe is held, hammered to size. Steel nails are driven home, and clenched. Then the rasp comes round, the shavings falling like sawdust at their feet. All the while it’s coming down, gasps of sudden rain whipping the galvanised roof. Brady feels strange pleasure standing there, sheltered, with the mare.

  When Leyden rasps the last hoof, he throws the tools down and looks out at the rain.

  ‘It’s a day for the high stool.’

  ‘It’s early,’ Brady says uneasily.

  ‘If we don’t soon go, it’s late it will be.’ Leyden laughs, his eyes searching the ground for nails.

  ‘I’ve to get me finger out; there’s jobs at home,’ says Brady. He puts the mare back in the stable, bolts the door.

  ‘You’ll come, any road,’ Leyden says. ‘I’ll get Sean to change a cheque and we’ll settle up.’

  ‘It’ll do another day.’

  ‘Not a hate about it. I might not have it another day.’

  As Brady follows Leyden back to town, a burning in his stomach surges. Leyden turns down the slip road past the chemist and parks behind The Arms. It looks closed but Leyden pushes the back door open. The bulb is dark over the pool table. On Northern Sound, a woman is reading out the news. Long Kearns is there with his Powers, staring into the ornamental fishing net behind the bar. Norris and McPhillips are picking horses for the next race. Big Sean stands behind the counter, buttering bread.

  ‘Is that bread fresh or is it yesterday’s?’ Leyden asks.

  ‘Mother’s Pride,’ Sean smiles, looking up. ‘Today’s bread today.’

  ‘But if we ate it tomorrow wouldn’t it still be today’s?’ says Norris, who has drunk two farms. Except for the slight shake in his hand, no one would ever know.

  ‘Put up two of your finest there, Sean,’ says Leyden, ‘and pay no mind to that blackguard.’

  ‘He’s been minding me for years,’ says Norris. ‘He’ll hardly stop now.’

  Sean puts the lip of a pint glass to the tap. Leyden hands him the cheque and tells him to give Brady the change. The stout is left to settle, the dark falling slowly away from the cream.

  ‘We got the mare shod, any road.’

  ‘Did she stand?’

  ‘It was terror,’ Leyden says. ‘I’d still be at it only for this man here.’

  ‘It’s a job for a younger man,’ McPhillips says. ‘I did it myself when I was a garsún.’

  ‘After three pints there’s nothing you’ve not done,’ says Norris.

  ‘And after two there’s nothing you won’t do!’ says Leyden, raising the bar. ‘Isn’t that right, Sean?’

  ‘Leave Sean out of it,’ the barman says affectionately.

  Norris looks at Brady. ‘Is it my imagination or have you lost weight?’

  Brady shakes his head but his hand reaches for his belt.

  ‘It’s put it on I have.’

  Big Sean wraps the sandwiches in clear plastic and puts them in the fridge. Brady reaches out and his hand closes on the glass. The glass feels cold in his hand. It isn’t right to be drinking at this hour, and the stout is bitter.

  ‘Have you a drop of blackcurrant there, Sean?’

  ‘What are you doing with that poison?’ Leyden asks. ‘Destroying a good pint.’

  Brady swallows a long draught. ‘At least I didn’t destroy four good hoofs,’ he says, finding his voice at last.

  Everybody laughs.

  ‘Is that so?’ says Leyden, smiling. ‘And what would you know? There’s nothing but cart horses in Monaghan.’

  ‘Every good cart horse needs shoes,’ says Brady.

  ‘They wear around the Cavan potholes,’ says McPhillips, a Newbliss man.

  ‘Now we have it!’ Norris cries.

  When the banter subsides, McPhillips goes out to place the bets. Sean turns off the radio now that the news is over. The silence is like every silence; each man is glad of it and glad, too, that it won’t last.

  As they sit there, Leyden’s nostril flares.

  ‘Which one of ye dug up Elvis?’

  ‘Lord God!’ Long Kearns cries, coming suddenly to life. ‘That would knock a blackbird off its pad.’

  Leyden swallows half his pint. The shoeing has put a thirst on him so Brady, not liking to leave with the money, orders another round.

  *

  Out in the street, schoolchildren are eating chips from brown paper bags. There’s the smell of fried onions, hot oil and vinegar. It is darker now and the rain is still falling. When Brady walks into the diner, the girl at the counter looks up: ‘Fresh cod and chips?’

  ‘Ay.’ Brady nods. ‘And tay.’

  He sits at the window and looks out at the day. Black clouds are sliding over the bungalows. He thinks again of that night in Cootehill. There was a Northern band in The White Horse. They sat at a distance from the stage and talked. She had a thoroughbred yearling and a three-year-old she thought would make an honest hunter. As she talked, a green spotlight shone through her hair. They danced a little and she drank a glass of wine. Afterwards, she asked him back to the house. If you bring the chips, I’ll light the fire and put the kettle on. They ate supper in the firelight. A yellow cloth was spread over the table. She put down wicker placemats, pepper and salt, warm plates. The cutlery flashed silver. Smell of deodorant lingered in her bedroom, a wee candle burning, and headlights were passing through the curtains. When he woke, at dawn, she was asleep, her hand on his chest. He was working then, full time, for Leyden. That morning, walking down the main street, buying milk and rashers, he felt like a man.

  The girl comes with his order. Brady eats what’s placed before him, pays up, and faces down the street. He has to think for a moment before he can remember where he parked the van. He passes a stand of fruit and vegetables, a bucket of tired flowers, boxes of Christmas cards, ropes of trembling red and yellow tinsel. When he is walking past the hotel, he recognises a tune he cannot name. He stops to listen, then finds himself
at the counter ordering a pint. The day is no longer his own. Afew more tunes are played. At some point he looks up and realises McQuaid is there, in a dark suit of clothes, with his wife. Sensing him, McQuaid looks over, nods. Soon after, a pint’s sent down. On Brady’s lips the stout tastes colder than the last.

  ‘The bowld man himself! Have you no home to go to?’ It’s Leyden. He takes one look at Brady, and changes. ‘What’s ailing you at all, man?’

  Brady shakes his head.

  Leyden looks over at McQuaid. The waitress is bringing serviettes, knives for the steak.

  ‘Pay no mind,’ he says. ‘Not a hate about it. The land’ll be here long after we’re dead and gone. Haven’t we only the lend of it?’

  Brady nods and orders the drink. Leyden pulls his stool up close and waits for the pint to settle. Brady is almost sorry he came in. When the pint is ready, Leyden puts it on the beer mat, turns it round.

  ‘Never mind the land. It’s the woman that’s your loss,’ he says unhelpfully. ‘That was the finest woman ever came around these parts.’

  ‘Ay,’ Brady says.

  ‘There’s men’d give their right arms to have a woman like that.’ Leyden says, coming in tight and taking hold of his arm.

  ‘They would, surely.’

  The waitress passes with two sizzling plates.

  ‘What happened at all?’ asks Leyden.

  Brady feels rooted to the stool. Back then some days were hard but not one of them was wasted. He looks away. The silence rises. He lifts his glass but he cannot swallow.

  ‘It was over the horse,’ he says finally.

  ‘The horse?’

  Leyden looks at him but Brady does not want to go on. Even the mention of the horse is too much.

  ‘What about the horse?’ Leyden persists but then he looks away to leave Brady some room.

  ‘I came home one night and she told me I’d have to buy food, pay bills. She told me I’d have to take her out for dinner.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘I told her to go fuck herself!’ Brady says. ‘I told her I’d put her horses out on the road.’

  ‘That’s terror,’ Leyden says. ‘Did you have drink on you?’

  Brady hesitates. ‘A wee drop.’

  ‘Sure we all say things –’

  ‘I went out and opened the gate and put her horses out on the road,’ Brady says. ‘She gave me a second chance but it was never the same. Nothing was ever the same.’

  ‘Christ,’ says Leyden, pulling away. ‘I didn’t think you had it in you.’

  *

  It is well past closing time when Brady finds the van. He gets behind the wheel and takes the back roads home. It will be all right; the sergeant knows him, he knows the sergeant. He will not be stopped. There are big, wet trees at either side of these roads, telephone poles, wires dangling. He drives on through falling leaves, keeping to his own side. When he reaches the front door, the bread is still on the step. The dog hasn’t come home but he knows the birds will have it gone by morning. He looks at the kitchen table, the knife in the empty jar, and climbs the stairs.

  He gets into the wisp and takes his jumper off. He wants to take his boots off but he is afraid. If he takes his boots off he knows he will never get them back on in the morning. He crouches under the bedclothes and looks at the bare window. It is winter now. What is it doing out there? The wind is piping terrible notes in the garden and, somewhere, a beast is roaring. He hopes it is McQuaid’s. He lies in his bed and closes his eyes, thinking only of her. He can feel his own heart, beating. Soon, she will come back and forgive him. The bridle will be back on the coat stand, the cloth on the table. In his mind there is the flash of silver. As sleep is claiming him, she is already there, her pale hand on his chest and her dark horse is back grazing his fields.

  The Forester’s Daughter

  Deegan, the forester, is not the type of man to remember his children’s birthdays, least likely that of his youngest, who bears a strong, witch-like resemblance to her mother. If occasional doubts about his daughter cross his mind he does not dwell on them for, in fairness, Deegan has little time to dwell on things. In Aghowle there are three teenagers, the milking and the mortgage.

  Some of Deegan’s hardship he brought upon himself. When his father passed away and left the place to his sons, Deegan, who was not yet thirty at the time, borrowed money against the place and bought them out. His brothers, who had other ambitions, were glad of the money and went off to make lives for themselves in Dublin. The night before the bank took over the deed, Deegan walked the fine, south-facing meadows. It broke his heart to mortgage the place but he could see no other way. He bought a herd of Friesians, put electric fences round the land and installed the milking parlour. Shortly afterwards, he drove to Courtown Harbour to find a wife.

  He found Martha Dunne on a Sunday afternoon in the Tara Ballroom. Deegan, sitting there in a blue pinstriped suit with his beard trimmed, watched this broad-hipped woman making bold figures of eight within a stranger’s arms. Her skin was smooth as a plate and her scent, when they waltzed, reminded him of the gorse when it is on fire.

  While the band was playing the last tune, Deegan asked if she would meet him again.

  ‘Ah, no,’ she said.

  ‘No?’ Deegan said. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘I see,’ Deegan said.

  But Deegan didn’t see and for this simple reason, he persisted. The following Sunday he went back to Courtown and found Martha in the hotel, eating alone. Without asking, he sat down and kept her company. While she ate, he steered the conversation from the fine weather through the headlines and wound up talking about Aghowle. As he described his home he began to imagine her there buttering swede, patching his trousers, hanging his shirts to dry out on a line.

  Months passed and through nothing stronger than habit, they kept meeting. Deegan always took her out to supper and to dances, making sure to pay for anything that passed her lips. Sometimes, they walked down to the sea. On the strand, gulls’ footprints went on for a while then disappeared. Deegan hated the feel of sand under his feet but Martha’s stride was loose, her brown gaze even. She strolled along, stooping every now and then to pick up shells. Martha was the type of woman who is content in her body but slow to speak. Deegan mistook her silence for modesty and, before a year of courtship ended, he proposed.

  ‘Would you think of marrying me?’

  While the question was in mid-air, Martha hesitated. Deegan was standing with his back to the amusement arcade. With all the lights behind him she could hardly make him out; all she could see were slot machines and shelves of coppers that every now and then pushed a little excess into a shoot to let somebody win. At a van a child was reaching up for candy floss. The crowd was getting smaller; summer was coming to an end.

  Martha’s instinct told her to refuse but she was thirty years of age and if she said no this question might never be asked of her again. She wasn’t sure of Deegan but none of the others had ever mentioned marriage, so Martha, with her own logic, concluded that Victor Deegan must love her, and accepted. In all the years that followed, Deegan never thought but he did love her, never thought but he showed his love.

  The following spring, while birds searched for the perfect bough and the crocus laboured through the grass, they married. Martha moved into the house Deegan had described at length but found Aghowle to be a warren of dim, unlived-in rooms and unsteady furniture. Dirty nylon curtains clung to the panes. The wooden floors were bare of rugs, the ceilings full of woodworm but Martha, being no housekeeper, didn’t really care. She rose late, drank her tea on the doorstep and threw meals together same as she was packing a suitcase. Often Deegan came home from work expecting her to be there with a hot dinner but more often than not his house was empty. He’d stoop and find the big enamel plate with fried potatoes and a pair of eggs dried out in the oven.

  Martha preferred to be out in wellingtons lifting a drill for oni
ons or slashing the nettles along the lane. The forester brought her seedlings he’d found in the wood, sycamores and horse chestnuts which she staked about the land in places where the hedges had been broken. For company she bought two dozen Rhode Island Red pullets and a cock. She sometimes found herself standing in the barn watching her fowl pecking the seed, feeling happy until she realised she wasn’t.

  Before a year had passed the futility of married life struck her sore: the futility of making a bed, of drawing and pulling curtains. She felt lonelier now than she’d ever felt when she was single. And little or nothing was there around Aghowle to amuse her. Every week she cycled to the village but Parkbridge was just a post office and a public house cum shop whose keeper was inquisitive.

  ‘Is Victor well? There’s a great man, a great worker. You’ll not find the grass growing under his feet.’

  ‘You must like living up there now, do you? Afine house it is.’

  ‘Where did he find you anyhow? Courtown? Didn’t he go far enough for you?’

  One Thursday, as she was about to cycle out for groceries, a stranger appeared with a trailer. A big blade of a man with a thick moustache, he parked in the centre of her yard and strode up to the door.

  ‘Have you any interest in roses?’

  There, in the trailer, the stranger had all types of plants: rosebushes, budding maples, Victoria plum trees, raspberry canes. It was the end of April. She said it was getting late for planting but the salesman said he knew that, and would not go hard on her. She asked how much he wanted for the roses, and his price seemed fair. Over tea, they talked of vegetables, how lifting the potato stalk was magic for you never really knew what it would yield. When he left, she collected hen dung with the shovel and planted the rosebushes deep in rows at either side of the hall door where she could train them to climb up around the windows.