Walk the Blue Fields

by Claire Keegan

  ‘We can look at the paper. There’s a litter for sale outside Shillelagh. Jim Mullins has them. You’d love a –’

  ‘What would you know about love?’

  This strikes her sore. ‘I do know about love,’ Martha insists.

  ‘You don’t even love Daddy. All ye care about is money.’

  *

  One evening when Deegan is crossing the hill, more smoke than usual is rising. Deegan sees it. Somehow he had almost suspected it. In the yard, eleven cars are parked. He recognises every one. He has never known so many neighbours to come in the one evening, nor any to come so early. Davis is here, and Redmond. And Mrs Duffy, the ‘Evening Herald’. The maroon hatchback belongs to the priest.

  When Deegan steps over the threshold, a massive fire is throwing waves of heat across the kitchen floor. Deegan, feeling fragile in his old clothes, bids them all good evening and takes his hat off.

  ‘Ah, there’s the man himself!’

  ‘No man like the working man!’

  ‘Have you enough space to get in there for your bit of dinner, Victor?’

  ‘We’re intruding on ya.’

  ‘Not at all, sure weren’t ye asked?’ says Martha.

  She puts a warm plate down in front of him. There’s a well-done sirloin, roast potatoes, onions, mushrooms. A bowl of stewed apples is brimming with custard. Deegan sits in to his dinner, blesses himself, picks up the knife and fork. He doesn’t know how to eat and be hospitable at the same time. There is no sign of the children. His wife is handing round the stout, the Powers, smiling for the neighbours.

  ‘Drink up!’ she says. ‘There’s plenty. Wasn’t it awful about that young Morrissey chap?’ Her voice is strange. Her voice is not the one she uses.

  The neighbours sit there chatting, talking about the budget, the swallows and the petrol strike. They are warming up, ripe for an evening’s entertainment. A little gossip begins to leak into the conversation. Redmond starts it, says he went up to the Whelan sisters for the lend of a billhook after he broke the handle on his own and caught them eating off the one plate. ‘Dip to your own side, Betty!’ he mimics. There is a little laughter and, in the laughter, a little menace.

  The shopkeeper tells them how Dan Farrell came down and ate five choc ices, standing up. ‘Five choc ices! Wouldn’t he have a nice stool? And then, when he’d slathered the last, he tells me to put them on the slate!’

  Martha smiles. She seems genuinely amused. She reaches for a cloth, takes tarts and queen cakes out of the oven. The pastry is golden, the buns have risen.

  ‘Would ya look at this?’ Mrs Duffy says. ‘They’d win prizes at the show. And there was me thinking you didn’t bake.’

  Martha stacks them high on Deegan’s best serving plates and hands them round. She’s acting, Deegan realises. She’s acting well. Nobody couldn’t believe this didn’t happen every day. The cows stand bawling at the gate to be let in but Deegan cannot move. Everything in his body tells him to get up but his curiosity is stronger than his common sense. He crosses his legs and accidentally kicks the boy who is sitting, attentive, in Judge’s old bed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  At the sound of his voice the neighbours turn, remembering he is there.

  Davis says he walked all the way to Shillelagh but by the time he got there one of his feet got terrible sore. He took his boot off and there, inside, was a big spoon.

  ‘Not a small spoon but a big spoon!’

  ‘You’re joking!’ Sheila Roche says. It’s what she always says after hearing something she doesn’t believe.

  Tom Kelly says he’s going to do away with the milking parlour, that there is no money in milking any more. ‘The farmer’s days are numbered,’ he says, and shakes his head. ‘Sure isn’t milk the same price now as it was ten year ago?’

  That subject keeps them going for a while but some time later the subject of farming dwindles and comes to a halt. A few balls of speech are kicked out into the dwindling conversation but nothing catches; they roll off into silence. The neighbours get more drink and begin to look at Martha. They turn quiet. Someone coughs. Davis crosses his legs. Because the priest is there, the request is left to him:

  ‘I’ve heard you’re a great woman for a story, Mrs Deegan,’ he says. ‘I’ve never had the pleasure.’

  ‘Ah now, Father, I’m not at all,’ says Martha.

  ‘Aye. Spin us a yarn there, Martha!’

  ‘God be good, nobody can tell them like her.’

  ‘All she needs is a bit of coaxing.’

  ‘Ah, I’ll not.’ Martha swallows what’s left in her glass. Tonight, she needs a drink. Her mother always said that her father’s people had tinker’s blood and that this tinker’s blood would take them to the road. More than once she has been mistaken for a tinker. She settles down, knowing the story she’ll tell. It is only a matter of deciding where, exactly, she should start.

  ‘Ah, you’ve heard them all before.’

  ‘If you don’t tell us a yarn, we’ll all go home!’ Breslin shouts.

  ‘That’s no way to persuade the woman,’ says the priest.

  Martha concentrates on the room. She has a way about her that is sometimes frightening. She looks at her feet and concentrates. Before she can begin she must find the scent; every story has its own, particular scent. She settles on the roses.

  ‘Well, maybe I could tell ye this one.’

  Deegan’s wife pushes her hair back and wets her lips.

  ‘Now we’re in for it!’ Davis rubs his hands.

  She waits again until the room turns quiet. She has no idea what she will say but the story is there; all she has to do is rake it up and find the words.

  ‘There was this woman one time who got a live-in job in a guest house by the sea,’ Martha says. ‘She wasn’t from there. She was a Bray woman who had gone down south to look for work. The house she worked in was a bright, new bungalow – much like the ones you see down in Courtown. Nothing fancy but a clean and tidy place. Mona was a big, fair-skinned woman. She was tall and pale, freckled. People sometimes mistook her for a tinker but, despite what people thought, she hadn’t a drop of tinker’s blood. She was a postman’s only daughter and one of the things she could do well was dance. That woman could swing on a thrupenny bit and not step on the hare’s ear.’

  ‘That’s a lovely type of woman,’ Breslin says quietly, remembering something of his own.

  ‘In any case, she went off this one night to a dance. It being the summertime, there was a great big crowd in the ballroom. She wasn’t really looking for a man but this night the same farmer kept asking her out to dance. He was a wiry fellow with a big red beard but he was light on his feet. He led her across the floorboards same as a cat’s tongue moves along a saucer of cream. They talked but the farmer could talk about nothing only the place he owned. All the acres, the trees along the lane, how fine the house was. He talked about the new milking parlour and the orchard and the big high ceilings. For the want of a better name, I’ll call him Nowlan.

  ‘Now Nowlan asked the woman if she’d meet him again and she said no but Nowlan wasn’t the type of man to take no for an answer. Being the eldest boy, he was used to getting his own way. He followed the woman here, there and yon. One time she looked up from eating her bit of dinner and there he was, looking in at her through the window. He hounded the woman and the woman gave in. In the end it was easier to court him than to not court him, if you know what I mean. But he was good in his own way, would buy her cups of tea and scones, would never let her put her own hand in her pocket. And, always, they danced.

  ‘They danced the foxtrots and the half sets and the waltzes same as they were reared on the same floor but in her heart Mona didn’t really take to him. He smelled strange, like pears that are near rotten. His sweat was heavy and sweet. Really, he was past his prime. Everything was all right when they were dancing but as soon as the band stopped and he went to put his lips on hers, the woman knew the match wasn’t right. But like
every woman, she wanted something of her own. She thought about living in the place Nowlan had described. She could see herself out under the trees sitting on a bench in the shade, reading the newspaper of a Sunday after Mass. She could see a child there too, playing in the background, banging two lids the way children do.

  ‘One night Nowlan asked her if she’d marry him. “Would you think of marrying me?” He said it with his back to the light so she couldn’t see him properly. They were close to the sea. Mona could hear the waves hitting the strand and the children screaming. It was the end of summer. The woman didn’t really want to marry him but she wasn’t getting any younger and knew, if she refused, that his offer might be the last.’

  ‘Now we’re getting down to it,’ says Redmond.

  ‘Well, to make a long story short –’

  ‘Ah, what hurry is on us?’ says the priest. ‘If it’s long don’t make it short.’

  ‘Isn’t that the very opposite of what we say about your sermons?’ Davis is getting full. He has taken over the whiskey bottle, giving himself the best measures while it lasts.

  The priest lifts a shoulder, lets it fall.

  ‘My stories aren’t a patch on your sermons, Father,’ Martha says and looks across at Deegan. Her husband’s arms are frozen across his chest. She sees the boy under the table but it’s too late to back down now. She remembers the girl and the report she got from the school and carries on.

  ‘Well, this woman, Mona, accepted his proposal. She married this man and went off to live on the farm. She thought by all his talk that the place would be a mansion so she got a terrible shock when she walked in through the door. The only thing you could say about that auld house was it wasn’t damp. Nowlan had a herd of cows, all right, and a milking parlour but the furniture was riddled with woodworm and there was crows nesting in the chimneys. She made every attempt to clean the place but when she found two pairs of dentures in with the spoons, she gave up. On her wedding night she felt springs coming up like mortal sins through the mattress. And wasn’t it all she could do some days not to cry.

  ‘Nowlan spent every day and half the nights in the fields. You see, as soon as he’d won her, he paid her little or no attention. Most of the time he was gone. Where he went, Mona didn’t always know. It wasn’t that she thought he’d be off with other women. She’d seen him look at other women during Mass but she knew he’d never lay his hand on anyone, only herself. If he laid his hand on another woman, the neighbours would find out. It would be common knowledge and Nowlan, above all things, feared the neighbours.

  ‘Every evening he’d come in complaining of the hunger, looking for his dinner. Mona didn’t care much for food or the niceties of it but always she had a few spuds with a steak or a stew. A few years passed in that place and still there was no sign of a child. The neighbours began to wonder. They began to talk. A few comments were passed, a few dirty remarks. One man, a shopkeeper, asked her where they met and when she told him, he said, “Didn’t you go far enough for a rig?” Some began to feel sorry for Nowlan. And Nowlan, knowing what people were saying, began to feel sorry for himself because – saving your presence, Father – he thought, like many a man who hasn’t a babby, that his seed was falling on bad ground. Naturally, he blamed his wife for, no matter how many times they –’

  ‘I think there must be nothing worse then being married and not being able to have a child,’ says Mrs Duffy. ‘I’ve often thought, since I had me own, that I am blessed.’

  ‘And aren’t you?’ says Sheila. ‘Sure haven’t you the finest childer that ever walked through the chapel gates?’

  ‘Ah, now, I wasn’t saying that.’

  ‘’Tis the truth all the same.’

  ‘Shut up, will ye?’ says Davis. ‘Why won’t yez all shut up and let the woman tell it? I’ve been waiting for this one.’

  ‘Sure wasn’t I only chipping in?’ says Mrs Duffy.

  ‘Isn’t that what it’s all about?’ says Martha.

  Martha looks again at Deegan. His eyes are asking her to stop. She puts her head down and waits for the silence to rise again so she can go on. Now she is determined. She thought she’d tell it in disguise and make the disguise as thick as possible. Now she isn’t sure.

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing where you were,’ says the priest.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ says Martha, who knows exactly where she is. ‘They were married. They were married six years with no sign of a babby and then one day when Mona was on her own who comes up the front door with rosebushes only a stranger. Mona had never before laid eyes on him, didn’t think he looked like anybody in that parish. Nowlan was away that day buying seed in the co-op and whenever he went to the co-op he never came back in a hurry. Mona had grown a little thinner by now. There, at the front door, stood this salesman –’

  ‘Oh, what was he selling?’ Davis whispers.

  ‘Shut up, Davis, will ya?’

  Martha pauses and lets her anger rise. They all sense it. Mrs Duffy gives her a look of sympathy but Martha isn’t interested in sympathy any more.

  ‘Roses!’ she almost shouts it. ‘He was selling roses. “Would you be interested in roses?” he asked her. He was a good-looking fellow, tall and cleanshaven. He didn’t have that dirty beard Nowlan had and Mona was able to get a good look at his chin. She wanted to reach up and touch his chin but he was a good many years younger than herself.’

  ‘A mere child!’

  ‘She was robbing the cradle!’

  ‘In the back of his van this stranger had all kinds of rosebushes and fruit trees, everything under the sun. She bought every last one of his rosebushes and took him inside for the tea. As she was scalding the pot, he asked if she was married.

  “I am but my husband is gone off to get seed.”

  “Has he no seed of his own?” the salesman asked. He was talking about potatoes – but then the woman looked at him.

  “No,” she said honestly. “He has none of his own.”

  ‘The way she said it made the salesman nervous. He got up and went over to the window. He said her hydrangea was the bluest he had ever seen. He went out and touched the bloom. It was the sun, shining on the man touching the hydrangea that attracted the woman. When she went near him, her hand touched his throat and then his thumb came up and stroked her lips. His hands were soft compared to Nowlan’s.

  “Your eyes are the colour of wet sand,” he told her.’

  Under the table the boy is concentrating on his mother’s words. This is a different kind of story. This story is what really happened for he remembers the man, and the hydrangea. And then there are those things his sister taught him at Christmas, the things she read in the biology book. He wants his mother to go on, to finish it. He likes the people in the kitchen. He wishes they could be this happy all the time.

  ‘The woman planted the rosebushes outside the hall door,’ Martha continues. ‘Late that night when Nowlan came home he called her a fool for spending all his good money. “What kind of a woman spends all the money on flowers?” Not only that, but he accused her of never making him a decent bit of dinner. “Spuds and cabbage is no dinner for a working man.”’

  ‘It’s spoiled, he was!’

  Deegan cannot stand it any more. There are some things he doesn’t need to hear. She will bring in the dog, the girl. God only knows where she will stop. The neighbours are listening in a way they have never listened, as though it is the only story Martha has ever told. He stands up. As soon as he stands, the neighbours turn to look at him.

  ‘I can’t listen to them poor cows bawling any longer,’ he says. ‘You’ll have to excuse me.’

  The neighbours push their chairs out of his way. The wooden legs screech on the floor as they let him through. When he reaches the door he doesn’t know where he gets the strength to open the latch. Outside, he manages to close it behind him. He leans against the wall and does his best not to listen. In his heart he has always known the girl was no
t his own. She was too strange and lovely to be his.

  He listens for a while to Martha’s voice, trying not to hear the words. But he cannot help himself, he wants to hear the details. He strains to catch the words. Something about the way it’s told tells him Martha knows he’s listening. Finally, he hears his son, the simpleton, shout, ‘Mammy had a boyfriend!’

  Deegan’s feet carry him down the yard, his hand rises to switch on lights and somehow, one by one, he gets the cows into their stalls, finds the clusters, and milks them. He is not taking his time; neither does he hurry. He is thorough, that is all. As he is finishing his work, the neighbours come out. They are leaving, coming through his front door. He had other ambitions for his front door but they don’t seem to matter now. He waves to a few and they wave back but not one of them calls out.

  Deegan stays for a long time in the milking parlour. He scrubs the aisles with the yard brush, rinses dung off the stalls. He puts fresh hay into the troughs, replaces a loose link on a chain. For a long time he has been meaning to do this.

  Finally, he goes in. It is his house, after all. Martha hasn’t gone to bed. She is still there, sitting at the fire. All around her are the vacant chairs, the empty glasses. He looks under the table but the boy is no longer there.

  ‘Are you happy now?’ he says.

  ‘After twenty years of marriage, you’re finally asking.’

  ‘Was that all you wanted?’

  Martha raises a glass of whiskey and stares at her husband.

  ‘Happy birthday, Victor,’ she says. ‘Many happy returns.’

  *

  A lid of silence comes down on the Deegan household. Now that so much has been said there is nothing left to say. The neighbours stay away these times. Deegan gives up going to mass; he no longer sees the point in going. He works later, eats, milks the cows and throws money on the table every Thursday.