Wild Decembers

by Edna O'Brien

  May it be a flame to bring warmth into my heart towards my family, my neighbours, and all those in need.

  I cannot stay for long, but I wish to give you something of myself.

  Help me to continue my prayer.

  They walked through side streets, then a tiny alley that led them down to the river. On the solid stone bridge there were hanging baskets with moss and flowers, their metal braziers thudding back and forth. The water was a dark brown, and just beneath it, lifelike torsos of seaweed that moved and slithered like belly dancers. A woman with two small children was also studying the water, telling her children how it was full of bugs and worms for the fish to feed on.

  “We better not be late,” Breege says.

  “If I go to gaol, who’ll mind you?”

  “We better not be late,” she says again.

  He looks at her, his face chastened, his blue eyes watery behind his fogged lenses, and she realises that he has been crying.

  O’Dea was waiting for them on the steps. By the way he waved and his satisfied smile they knew something had changed.

  “You’re a lucky man … Bugler has decided to drop the case.”

  “Now why would he do a thing like that?”

  “Jesus wept … You should be down on your knees,” O’Dea said; then, taking Breege’s arm, linked her jauntily down the steep, imposing flight of steps.

  THROUGH THE LONG drizzling afternoon and evening they sat, light rain on the courtyard outside dropping onto the tubs of ivy with floodlights stuck in among them, and as it grew darker neon strips came on in the office windows across the way. Joseph and O’Dea drinking quietly, happily. O’Dea teasing his client now, saying how he nearly hung himself, getting the judge’s gander up like that.

  “I wouldn’t have minded going to gaol.”

  “In with city gurriers … you wouldn’t have stuck it,” O’Dea said, and laughed, urging Breege to have a little drop of port wine and to take her coat off or she’d bake in the heat of the fire.

  Bugler is a few tables away with two strangers, but she has not looked in his direction, she is too ashamed to.

  “Faith, you were maladroit in the box,” O’Dea said, still laughing. He is in his element, what with the warmth of the room, the drawn velvet curtains, a red plush like theatre curtains, the smell of turf smoke, and the faint sound of sods shifting themselves in the heat. He has launched into the stories that he tells so often, relaying them now again for Breege and Joseph because he can see how nervous, how strangled they look in that grand room and the antagonist only a few feet away. The drink makes him expansive, reminiscences flowing from him as, turning from time to time to compliment Breege, he says, “You are excessively sensitive and excessively petite.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of life, a lot of human nature,” Joseph says sagely.

  “I’ve seen a lot of folly,” O’Dea says, sits back in the chair, stares into the fire, and then it is the parable of Brady versus Bonner, two unhappy families on either side of the stream.

  “It was thus,” he said, his voice pitched higher for others to hear. “There was the Bradys and the Bonners with a river between them but no bridge, Brady having to carry his women and his children when the floods came. So it was a question of trying to get Bonner to agree to a bridge, but he wouldn’t budge. The case going to a first court, a second court, a third court, an all-day sitting ending in the upstairs room of the local hotel; teams of solicitors, teams of barristers, warring engineers, and in the middle of the sitting the high court judge having to be wined and dined because of his status. Messages going to and fro, agreement almost, maps, opes, red lines, blue lines, the seal about to be stamped on it when old Mrs. Bonner stands up and says they are being rooked, ground is being taken from them on their side of the river. She storms out, the Bradys follow, cars tearing up a country road, and at midnight a settlement reached under the stars. Handshakes all around, until the next day or the next week when neither party would pay costs, each considering themselves to be the winner and not the loser. Litigation starting up all over again.”

  He ceased and laughed, bemused, into his tumbler of whiskey, declared there was a mischief in it from day one; that they were never meant to be friends.

  “That could be us,” Breege said nervously.

  “You are excessively sensitive and excessively petite,” he said for the second time.

  Looking at Breege then, he helped her out of her coat and warned her, “My good girl, never marry … Whatever you do, don’t, don’t marry.”

  “You married young,” Joseph says.

  “Too young … met her on a balcony.”

  Turning to Breege, he said he would make her laugh. He didn’t like to see such a melancholy expression, he would amuse her with the story of Flanagan, the horse who was able to pick locks with his pronged teeth.

  “A judge beyond in Tipperary got promoted to a court not far from here. In due course he sent for his favourite Flanagan so that he could ride him. Flanagan and a mare were put on a train, arrived at his gateway, and were put in a field next to the road. Well, Flanagan doesn’t care for the new surroundings, so he gets his teeth to work all night, and the following morning it’s down to the railway station whence he had come the night before; clogs into the ticket office, terrifies the stationmaster’s wife, who is putting in her teeth, takes a counter with him, floats over two filing cabinets to a back passage, and with the Flanagan nose for a level crossing leaps to the place where he had dismounted the previous evening. No oncoming train. So it’s over a half-door into a waiting room, chairs and benches keeled over, a glass window broken, Flanagan now going berserk on account of being trapped in an enclosed room, and men too frightened to go near him manage only to quell his assaults by feeding him and his missus buckets of oats. Next night same scenario. Flanagan and the mare are turned back and a rope put on the gate. Flanagan in the fullness of time masters how to undo knots. Nothing for it but a padlock. Well, the padlock is put on the gate and our judge sleeps sound until he is alerted to the fact that Flanagan and the mare are out on the main road again causing pandemonium. Down to the gate. He mooches around to find the lock and the key flung into the grass. He had the bad luck to share an avenue, a causeway, with a Mrs. Boyce, a returned Yank whose vernacular principally included the words ‘Oh gee’ or ‘I’m thinking of making a killing.’ Over he goes to her, but oh gee, the subject of the lock is not interesting to her, all she wishes to know is the price of steer so that she can make a killing. He asks how the lock got there. Oh gee, it’s a mystery. Moreover, he did not have the right to put a lock on the gate. It belongs to her. She had it made, she had the piers put down, and she has the receipts for same. He tries to reason with her, says if the Lord Himself built a gate, the purpose of it is to keep animals in check. Oh gee, she agrees, but a lock-eating horse belongs in a circus and not in a field. He says it was not Flanagan who threw the lock and key away, that much is certain. Oh gee, another thing is certain. She is not in favour of a lock. It will slow things up for Paud going in and out. Could Paud be persuaded to suffer the nuisance of opening a little lock? Oh gee, she doubted that. A lock was not going to bite him, and if an animal got out on the road and killed someone, it could be manslaughter, it could be trouble for everyone. She would think it over. Same scenario. A new lock thrown into the high grass. The judge decides on a fence to keep his Flanagan in. Oh gee, a fence is no good. A fence is cutting a slice out of their side of the avenue. Paud sits on the gate and stops the workmen coming in. More letters. An injunction. Circuit court, district court, high court, and Flanagan having to be sent away, and on her deathbed, Oh gee, Ma Boyce proud of one thing, that they beat the judge.”

  He mused for a moment and said admonishingly, “It’s in the genes … I have a lot of time for DNA, but the English fucked up our genes.”

  “That’s a great story,” Joseph said, relaxed now, the shame of the morning dissolving in a muddle of drink and warmth and laughter as O’Dea’s
story was applauded by several listeners.

  “I’ll tell you what we’ll do … we’ll send a drink over to your man,” O’Dea said, pointing in Bugler’s direction.

  “Oh God, no.”

  “Oh God, yes … we’re gallants.” He had only to look at Joseph to see by that abject and thawing expression in his eyes that he was glad of it, glad to make the peace. They watched the waitress go across, saw Bugler and the two men hesitate, then nod, and on her way back the waitress gave them a little wink because the outburst in the court had been relayed by one and all.

  “Yes … it’s in the genes,” O’Dea said solemnly, asking Breege if she knew her history.

  “Some,” she said clumsily.

  “Well, my dear girl, you should know it, because it all happened on account of a woman,” and deciding now that his listeners were as merry and as carefree as himself, he settled into his history lesson.

  “O’Rourke was King of Brefni and Dermot McMurrough was King of Leinster. O’Rourke ran off with McMurrough’s wife and brought her to his keep in Brefni. McMurrough charged after her with his private army, but he was beaten off, so he shot over to England to explain his case to Henry II, to ask for cavalry to get his wife back. Henry was reluctant until McMurrough persuaded him that the French or the Spanish could land in Ireland and get to England by the back door. Henry sent his Norman knight, Strongbow, and when the Red Coats in their chain-mail landed in Wexford and marched through Leinster they frightened the life out of our lads in their bearskins, hiding in the hills. Nine hundred years of turbulence to follow, and all because of a woman.”

  Turning to Breege he said that it was his bounden duty to qualify that — “I love women, don’t get me wrong, but whatever you do, don’t marry,” and determined now that everyone should hear, he recalls again the famous meeting — “I met her on a balcony … sixteen golden years back … that fucking balcony … the young Brunhilde … so vivacious … charming plaits … youth … the lot … a lifetime of salads and soya milk.” He was reflective then, musing, talking into his drink, the water of life, lucky to be away from his freezing office and Miss P. with her ejaculations, away from Brunhilde and the little Huns who were strangers to him. He paused, said he would like to ask a question of the distinguished company. “Where,” he asked, “where lieth the seat of the affections, in the body or in the soul?”

  They were silent, constrained, knowing that he had been overheard.

  On his way out Bugler stood by the table looking from one to the other.

  “Thanks for the drink,” he said.

  “I’m a bridge over troubled waters,” O’Dea said, and laughed. They each laughed, and then Bugler smiled at Breege; it was a shy smile, but it came from deep within and went beyond the confines of the place, back out to the far reaches of the mountain, the ballerina birch, and the fugitive amethyst river.

  “THEY’RE OFF … they’re off.” The words so heady and affirmative, carrying up the course, where the hare of the same dun green as the grass is running for its life, ears pointed, and packed into the little furry frenzied volume of flight is the knowledge that this might be its last one. The two hounds waiting down below to be let slip are sending out sounds both bloodthirsty and despairing.

  Joseph stood apart from the crowd, the better to be able to see the race, to live it, silently telling Violet Hill to remember everything he told her, instilled into her when he rubbed the liniment into her muscles, into her being.

  They are slipped — the Red and the White, etiolated creatures, faint as smoke, bodiless almost, charging forward as if their lungs were carrying them, so close at first they might be merged, then just barely separating, creatures unsubstanced, their bluish breaths preceding them through their plaited muzzles, the crowd cheering, impossible to tell who is leading, then the hare turning and Violet Hill turning with it, the hare scrambling to escape, both hounds circling it in a crazed whirligig as the crowd shout at the hare to “Get in … get in.”

  Joseph is halfway up the field towards the post, not knowing whether the red or white handkerchief will be raised, and all the while the crowd yelling, yelling, then the hare vanishing into its hole and an instant of unspeakable suspense as the white handkerchief, Violet Hill’s colour, is raised by a man on horseback. The cheer that burst from the crowd had in it that barbaric and resonating timbre which exults in victory.

  Afterwards when he held her she was like a nerve, the wet tongue thin as a willow leaf flapping from her lower jaw, her whey eyes drinking in the praise. Coquette-like she lifts one leg for it to be shaken, to be congratulated. He led her back then to prepare her for the next race, dipped each foot, each forelock, in the pot of lukewarm water and gave her the crust of honeyed bread which Breege had put in the basket. He rubbed her whole body once again so that the liniment soaked into every pore, then covered her in her tartan blanket and crept with her alone into the back of the van until it was her turn to run the next race, and the next, to run four races in all. He spoke to her in there in a quiet and matter-of-fact tone. Win these four and she would qualify for the feature stakes, and from that to the Oaks, and then the Derby itself, distances away, but distances that had to be run. She was his life now, and Breege’s too. Breege loved her, and though she never said so, she would have liked to have come to the courses, to be part of the fun, except that Daly forbade it. Daly trained her and was against women coming; women, he insisted, were a bloody nuisance and made the dogs skittish. Daly’s own wife, Eileen, his queen, was not allowed, so why any other woman?

  By twilight it was all over, rain coming on, a maze of swallows swirling and circling, dogs and their owners walking back to their cars, winners and losers, commands to meet down in the pub, vehicles lurching in the mucky field, and a pride for Joseph as passersby cross to admire her.

  “She’s more like a changeling than a dog.”

  “Spectacular.”

  “You hear that,” he said, and he held her, and they waited for the crowd to fall away.

  All of a sudden she started to yelp, and break loose of her leash. He saw what it was. On the far side of the track in the shrouding rain thirty or forty hares were being chased back towards a hut, and though not being able to see them she sensed them, the leaflike tongue moiling now, brain and muscles in an urgency to be let go, to be let free, to be let loose among them for slaughter.

  “You witch, you,” he said, clasping her tight, but she twisted and strove, no longer content with his touch, all nearness gone, all silkiness gone, far from him now, as rabid and estranged as a creature of the wild.

  Down in the pub the winner of the big race carries the cup around, proud, insistent that everyone, even children, drink from it. He stands before Joseph, bulky and with an angry look until he smiles, then commandingly raises an arm. “Bets on who will be taking home this cup, this time next year.”

  Suddenly Joseph is being lifted up, lifted high on the shoulders of strangers and being made to drink the dark brew, a blend of whiskey, brandies, and God knows what else, stronger than any drink he has ever tasted but yet one that cannot make him drunk. His is a different drunkenness, fired with thoughts of the future, the pre-dawns up on the mountain, the meets, Daly, himself, and the Crock in the front of the van, great stories of great dogs, legendary dogs, Violet Hill among them, her name enshrined in the annals.

  BUGLER WAS UNDER no illusion that the day he started to cut turf would lead to more strife and a last division. But he was callow then and certainly callow in that he did not know, did not want to know, the inward pernicious trickle of fear and ire that Joe Brennan was consumed with.

  It would take Breege to show him that, and he would not be so callow then, and many things would have unfolded.

  Moreover, he wanted to cut turf. It appealed to him, a new skill to be learned, to be mastered, a whole tract of it spread out to dry, then brought home and burned in his big new inglenook fireplace. He had only smelt turf once and that was in a big hotel where he had gone o
ne evening for his dinner out of an unwarranted loneliness.

  He had had to make searches to ensure his ownership, and in the various bits of correspondence he read the names of tenants, over fifty at one time, the acres and roods and perches that had been allotted to them, the rents they had paid, a place their sweat fell on, their hopes too, until eventually they had gone away from it. He hired an engineer to map out his own bit, and they marked it with blue twine which seemed gaudy in that universe of tawny grasses that reached up to their chests; pools of bogwater weirdly and pulsingly green, scummed with mosses, the occasional bird, the occasional aeroplane, a habitation gone back to nature, and the only remains of man was a rusted gas cooker and a pair of grey flannel trousers with holes in them.

  “You could murder someone here and get away with it,” the engineer said drolly.

  “So you could.”

  And they laughed over it.

  He had read the books on turf cutting and consulted Thady, an old man who had once been the fastest slanesman in the country. Earnestly he had listened, then watched as Thady brought in a rusted slane from an outhouse and, using the kitchen floor as a bog, enacted the stripping off of the top skin of grass, then marking out the bank, and with the slane having to dig and dig, doing it slantwise so as to cut the sods straight.

  In the kitchen it had been an amusement, but out there in the heat and the dryness, insects crawling over him, his back breaking from having to bend and push in an unaccustomed way, he realised that he had never worked so hard or so gruellingly and yet so satisfyingly. Between himself and those wet strips of loamy bank there was as much a relationship, a tussle, as with an animal or a person, that give and take, the strength of him versus the strength of it, the yield of the sod under the slane, and for some reason as he pulled it up his mother’s voice came from nowhere.

  He worked all day, and it did not worry him that someone had come up at the gap beyond, a youngster crouching in the high grass to snoop on him. It did not worry him in the least. The aloneness of the place, the queer solemnity of it and the spread-out, wet gallumpen sods, like the hewn pieces of a priceless carpet, made him feel monarch of it all.