‘I was there last summer,’ said Tom.
‘Yes, but Ned wasn’t, and I wasn’t.’
‘’Tisn’t us you’re thinking of at all,’ said Tom. ‘Over for a good drinking bout you’re going.’
‘Oh – ’ Tomas fished for the peak of his cap once more, ‘that I might be struck dead – !’
‘Be quiet, you heathen!’ crowed Maura. ‘That’s the truth of it, Tom, my pulse. Plenty of poteen is what he wants, where he wouldn’t be under my eye. Leave ye stop at home.’
‘I can’t stop at home, woman,’ shouted Tomas. ‘Why do you be always picking at me? Don’t you know well I must go?’
‘Why must you?’
‘Because I warned Red Patrick and Dempsey. And the woman from the island is coming as well. And what’s more I borrowed Cassidy’s boat, and he lent it at great inconvenience to himself, and it would be very bad manners in me now to turn his kindness back on him.’
‘Oh, we’ll go, we’ll go,’ said Tom.
It blew hard all night, and Tomas was out at the break of day, all anxiety, watching the white tops on the water. While they were breakfasting he came in and, leaning upon the table, announced that it was a beautiful day, thank God, a perfect day with a moist gentle little bit of a breezheen blowing, but Maura nagged and scolded so much that he stamped out again in fury, and sat on the wall chewing his pipe. He had dressed in his best clothes, that is to say, he had turned his cap almost right way around so that the peak covered his right ear; he wore a respectable blue coat cut very long and with the suspicion of a tail and pale grey trousers with but one patch on it.
He was all over the boat like a boy. Dempsey took the helm, a haggard, melancholy man with a soprano voice of astounding penetration, and Red Patrick took charge of the sail. Then Tomas clambered into the bows and stood there, leaning forward with one foot raised. The island woman was perched upon the ballast with her Rosary in her hands and her shawl drawn over her eyes to avoid the sight of the waves.
The cumbrous old boat took the sail lightly enough.
‘She’s laughing,’ said their father delightedly when her bows ran white.
‘Whose boat is that, Dempsey?’ he asked as another brown sail tilted ahead of them.
‘’Tis the island boat,’ shrieked Dempsey.
‘’Tis not, Dempsey, ’tis not, my love. That’s not the island boat.’
‘Whose boat is it then?’
‘’Tis some boat from Carriganassa.’
‘’Tis the island boat I tell you.’
‘Ah, why will you be contradicting me, Dempsey, my treasure? It is not the island boat. The island boat has a dark brown sail; ’tis only a month or so since ’twas tarred, and that’s an old tarred sail, and what’s more, Dempsey, and what proves it out and out, the island boat sail has a patch in the corner.’
Tomas was leaning well out over the bow, elbow resting on his knee, looking back at them, his brown face lashed with the spray and shining with the accumulated flickerings of the water. Ned half closed his eyes and watched sky and sea mount and subside behind the red-brown sail and the poised and eager figure.
‘Tom!’ shouted the voice from the bow, and the battered old face peered at them from under the sail.
‘Well?’
‘You were right last night, Tom, my boy. My treasure, my son, you were right. ’Twas for the sake of the drink I came.’
‘I know damn well it was.’
‘’Twas for the sake of the drink. ’Twas so, my darling. They were always decent people, your mother’s people, and ’tis her knowing the decency of her own family that makes her so suspicious. She’s a good woman, a fine woman, your poor mother, may the Almighty God bless her and keep her and watch over her.’
‘Amen, O Lord!’ chorused Tom ironically as his father shook his headgear piously towards the spring sky.
‘But Tom! Are you listening to me, Tom?’
‘Well? What is it now?’
‘I had another reason too.’
‘Had you now?’
‘’Twas taking pride out of the pair of ye,’ shrieked Dempsey from the helm, the wind whipping the shrill notes from his lips and scattering them like scraps of paper.
‘’Twas so, Dempsey, ’twas so. You’re right, man. You’re always right. God’s blessing on you, Dempsey, for you always had the true word.’ Tomas’s leprechaun countenance gleamed under the bellying chocolate-coloured sail, fierce and wild and full of humour, and his powerful voice beat Dempsey’s down. ‘And would you blame me?’
‘The O’Donnells haven’t the beating of them in their own flock.’
‘Thanks be to the Almighty God for all his goodness and mercy,’ shouted the old man, raising his cap once more. ‘They have not. They have not so, Dempsey. The O’Donnells are a good family and an old family and a kind family, but they haven’t the like of my two clever sons.’
‘And they were stiff enough to you when you came for their daughter.’
‘They were. They were, Dempsey. They were stiff. They were so. You wouldn’t blame them, Dempsey. They were an old family. I was nothing but a landless man and like a landless man they treated me.’ The old man dragged his cap still farther over his ear, gave his moustache a tug and leaned at a still more precarious angle over the bows, his blue eyes dancing with triumph. ‘But I had the gumption, Dempsey. I had the gumption, my love.’
The bare mountainsides drew closer, the islands slipped past, the gulf of water narrowed and grew calmer, and white cottages could be seen scattered about under the tall ungainly church which seemed identical with what they had left behind. It was a wild and rugged coast; the tide was only just beginning to fall, and they had to pull in as best they could among the rocks. Red Patrick leaped lightly on shore and drew them in. The others stepped after him into five or six inches of water, and Red Patrick, himself precariously poised, held them from slipping. Rather shamefastly Tom and Ned began to unlace their shoes.
‘Don’t do that!’ shrieked their father. ‘We’ll carry you up! Ah, your poor feet! Your poor feet!’
‘Shut your clob!’ said Tom angrily, as he took Red Patrick’s hand, and clambered up the slimy rocks. Then the whole party set out across the fields. As they entered a little winding lane they were met by the Caheraghs, who insisted on their coming in for a few minutes. Old Caheragh had a red beard and a pleasant, smiling face. His daughter was tall and good-looking. After they had given their customary greetings and promises to return they resumed their way up the hill to the O’Donnells.
The O’Donnells had two houses, separated only by a yard. In one lived their Uncle Maurice and his family, in the other Maurice’s married son. While their father went across the way Ned and Tom stayed with Sean and his wife. Sean was a grim, silent fellow, but Tom and he were old friends. When he spoke he rarely looked at the priest, merely gave his a sidelong glance which barely reached to his chin, and then dropped his eyes with a peculiar, timid smile. His wife had once been a beauty. She was a tall, matronly, nervous woman who clung to her visitors’ hands with a feverish clutch as though she could not bear to let them go, at the same time uttering ejaculations of tenderness, delight, surprise, pity and admiration. Her speech was full of diminutives, ‘childeen’, ‘handeen’, ‘boateen’. Three young children scrambled and crawled and howled about the floor with a preoccupation scarcely once broken by the strangers, and she picked her way through them, hastening to fill the kettle, and then, as though fearing she was neglecting her guests, interrupting this to take up their hands again. When she spoke her whole body swayed towards them, and her feverish concentration gave the impression that by its very intensity it bewildered her and made it impossible for her to understand a word they said.
Tom and Sean went outside the door. They talked in low voices. Ned could not catch what they were saying. Then young Niall O’Donnell came in with his girl, one of the Deignans from up the hill. The Deignan girl was plump and pert; she had been in service in town. Niall was a well-bui
lt boy with a soft, wild-eyed, sensuous face, and a deep mellow voice of great power.
Barbara laid the meal for Ned and his brother in the sitting room. She was very proud of her parlour. It was a long, bare room with a table and three broken-backed, upholstered chairs. Two or three small family photographs had been placed at a height of eight feet so that the details of them were invisible.
‘Oh, my treasure, isn’t it the pity I didn’t know ye were coming and I’d have had something better than this for ye,’ Barbara complained. With joined hands she stood before Ned and surveyed him with adoring eyes.
‘It is so,’ said Tom with pretended indignation.
‘Ah, Father Tom, you were always a great joker.’
Sean leaned against the wall, cap over his eyes and hands behind his back, and whenever he looked at Ned he smiled the same mysterious smile and dropped his eyes. Through the back window they could see Niall and Delia Deignan standing on the high ground. He was asking her something but she, more interested in watching the sitting-room window, only shook her head.
After the two young men had had their meal all of them went across the yard to the other house.
‘You only just missed your father,’ said their Uncle Maurice, shaking a hand of each.
‘How so?’ asked Tom.
‘He went off to Ownie Pat’s only a couple of minutes ago.’
‘The divil he did,’ said Tom. ‘I knew damn well he was out to dodge me.’
They had their dinner with Maurice and his family. Tom took the place of honour. He was clearly the favourite. He remembered everyone, and every detail of the days he had spent there in boyhood, fishing and shooting with Sean. Through the doorway into the bedroom could be seen a big, old-fashioned bed and on the whiteness of a raised pillow a white, skeleton face surrounded by a halo of smoke-blue hair and surmounted in a distinctly odd way by a mauve tea-cosy. Sometimes the white face would begin to stir and everyone fell silent while Niall translated the scarcely audible whisper for the priest. Sometimes Niall would go in and repeat one of Tom’s jokes for the old man in his drawling powerful bass. The hens stepped daintily about the feet of the diners, poking officious heads between them, and rushing out the door with a flutter and shriek whenever they were hooshed at.
‘Listen here to me,’ said Tom, with a look of mock concern at Niall. ‘Is that young fellow courting Delia Deignan?’
‘Was he with Delia again?’ asked Maurice.
‘He was. Is any of them married yet?’
‘The Deignans? No.’
‘Because I want to make a match for Ned with one of them. He’s not safe up there in Dublin by himself. Now, seriously, seriously, which of them will I make the match with?’
‘Cait! Cait! Cait!’ shouted half a dozen voices, the deep voice of young Niall loudest of all.
‘Well, now, Delia looks a smart little piece.’
‘No, Cait! Cait! Delia isn’t the same since she went to a situation. Let him marry Cait!’
‘Is she a quiet sort of girl?’
‘She is, she is, she’s a grand girl!’
Suddenly Sean rose and walked to the door with a grin.
‘Damn well he knows she’s a quiet girl. No one else would have put up with him, the way he used to maul her.’
Tom sat stiff with mock indignation while the whole gathering rocked. Niall rose and repeated the joke to the old man in the bed. The mauve tea-cosy shook; it was the only indication of the ancient’s amusement.
4
Before returning to the Caheraghs they decided to call at the Deignans ‘to choose a wife for Ned’, as Tom proclaimed. The purpose of the visit excited so much amusement and Tom was such a favourite that they had a following. Sean and two of the O’Donnell girls came as well. Niall preferred to remain at home.
The Deignans’ house was on top of a hill over the road and commanded a view of the countryside for more than a mile on every side. They went to it up a winding muddy boreen whose walls of unmortared stone rose here and there against the sky like lacework. On their way they met another procession coming from a house some distance from the Deignans’. It was headed by the father and the island woman, arm in arm, and it numbered two locals as well as Dempsey and Red Patrick. Their father was already drunk. That was plain when he rushed forward to shake them both by the hand and ask how they were. In answer to Tom’s good-humoured queries he said that devil such honourable and kindly people as the people of Carriganassa were to be found in the whole created world, and that the O’Donnells were kings and sons of kings and you could see that same at a glance. He promised to be at the boat within twenty minutes. He had only one more call to make.
They looked in over the Deignans’ half door. The kitchen was empty. It was a beautiful room, the woodwork and furniture painted a bright red-brown and the dresser shining with pretty ware. Over the fireplace was a row of caps and hats of different colours and sizes. They entered and began to look about them. Nothing was to be heard but the ticking of the cheap alarm clock over the fireplace. One of the O’Donnell girls began to giggle. Sean raised his voice.
‘Is there anyone in?’
There was silence for a moment. Then a quick step resounded upstairs and a girl descended at a run, drawing a knitted black shawl more tightly about her shoulders. She was perhaps twenty-eight or thirty with a narrow face and blue, nervous eyes. She stepped across the kitchen in an awkward manner, sideways, giving the customary greetings but without once raising her eyes.
‘A hundred welcomes before you!… How are you?… ’Tis a fine day.’
The same girl who had laughed first made herself objectionable again. Nora Deignan looked at her in surprise, nervously biting the tassel of her shawl.
‘What is it?’
‘Musha, stop your old antics and tell us where’s Cait from you,’ said Tom.
‘Cait!’ called Nora in a low voice, clearly glad to share such an embarrassing position. There was the same quick step upstairs and another girl came down. It was only afterwards that it struck Ned that he had never seen a more lovely creature. She had the same narrow face as her sister, the same slight features sharpened by an animal delicacy, the same blue eyes with the startled brightness, but her complexion was as fresh as morning and the blush that covered it made it seem fresher still. She entered the kitchen in the same embarrassed, hostile way.
‘Have you nothing to say to me, Cait?’ asked the priest with a grin.
‘Oh, a hundred welcomes before you.’ Her blue eyes rested on him for a moment with a fierce candour and penetration and then wandered past him to the open door. The rain was beginning to fall outside.
‘Is that all?’
‘How are you?’
‘The politeness is suffocating you. Where’s Delia?’
‘Here I am,’ said a low voice, and Delia was observed standing in the doorway, immediately behind him. It was so unexpected that everyone began to laugh. And then the silence fell again.
‘The reason we called,’ said Tom, clearing his throat, ‘was this young brother of mine looking for a wife, and I told him I’d show him the three prettiest girls in Carriganassa.’
‘Leave him take me,’ said Delia.
‘Why? Aren’t there your two sisters before you?’
‘Even so, I want to get up to Dublin … Would you treat me to lemonade, mister?’ she asked Ned. ‘This is a rotten hole. I’d go to America if I could.’
‘You don’t have to make up your mind, Ned,’ said the priest. ‘Write and tell them. I have to be rushing not to keep my father waiting.’
‘We’ll go with you,’ said Nora unexpectedly.
The three girls took down three black shawls from inside the door.
‘I’ll go under the shawl with you, Cait,’ said Tom.
‘You will not,’ she said, starting back.
‘She’d rather the young man,’ said Delia.
‘She had enough of the other,’ said Sean.
Cait looked at them both angrily a
nd then began to laugh. She stretched out her shawl for Ned. Outside it was raining, a mild, persistent drizzle, and a strong wind was blowing. Everything had darkened and grown lonely about them, and under the blinding shawl Ned felt he had dropped out of Time’s pocket.
They sat waiting in the Caheraghs’ kitchen. The old man sat in one chimney corner and the little boy in the other. The dim blue light poured down the chimney upon their heads with the delicacy of light on old china, and between them the fire burned a bright orange in the great white hearth and the rain fell softly, almost soundlessly outside the half door. The twenty minutes had already strung themselves out to an hour. Tom was again the life and soul of the company, but even he was clearly beginning to be anxious. Two of the little boys were sent off to search for Tomas. All the while Ned could scarcely take his eyes off Cait Deignan who with her elder sister occupied the form against the rere wall, the black shawl drawn across her chin, the white wall behind. Sometimes she caught his eye and laughed softly; then she sank back again into pensiveness. Pensiveness or utter vacancy? He found it hard to say, but while he looked at her narrow face with the animal instinctiveness of its over-delicate features he was seeing, as if painted, the half door, the rain falling, the rocks and hills and angry sea – all that had given it birth.
The first to arrive was Red Patrick. After him came the island woman. Each of these had apparently last seen Tomas in different places. Then came Dempsey. Dempsey was glad the rain was falling. It would quiet the bay. The only question was, would Tomas be in a state to take a boat anywhere? Opinions varied. The Deignans said it made no difference. They would make room for Ned. Cait laughed and looked away. Tom began to grow angry. And then Tomas appeared.
He entered like a seawind, scattering all before him. He rushed to Tom and shook him heartily by the hand, asking him passionately if he were well. He did the same by Ned who only laughed. ‘In God’s name,’ he shouted, waving his arms, ‘let us be going now before the night comes.’
The rain was still falling. The tide had dropped. Tomas grabbed an oar and pushed the boat on to a rock. Then he raised the sail, let it fall again and had to be extricated from its folds. They shouted their goodbyes to the little group of figures revealed upon the naked rock against a grey background of drifting rain. For a long time Ned continued to wave back at Cait Deignan. A strange feeling of exaltation and loss descended upon him. Huddled up in his overcoat he sat at the stern with Dempsey, not speaking.
The Collar Page 2