by John A. Ryan
They were working now in a vague way towards a book of songs in Irish with their music. Both loved the great slow airs and argued about which was the greatest. Paddy Joe said Cailín na Gruaige Doinne ‘for its perfection of words as well as music’, Davy suggested The Coolun, or Carrickfergus, or maybe Tiarna Mhuigheo – but how could anyone decide?
Their different acquaintance with machinery made for arguments, too. Davy owned a watch and a bicycle, and could, but seldom did, use a telephone. Paddy Joe had lived all his adult life in the city where he had lectured in the University, and was accepted therefore as the expert on all mechanical things, from the wheelbarrow to the internet. His contribution to their tour included his car, a recording machine and a marvellous device called a volcano kettle – basically two metal cylinders one inside the other, which, when the space between the cylinders was filled with water, and a bundled-up copy of the Examiner was ignited in the inner cylinder, would provide boiling water in five minutes.
On through Kerry, west and west again, siar amach, Anascaul, Dingle, Coumenole, Brandon. They sat on the Atlantic’s rim where the waves broke in thunder on the stacks and in the sea-caves. Oonagloor came to mind, The Cave of the Pigeons, which Paddy Joe claimed for Cork, but Davy said no, it was on the Waterford coast. They watched the gannets, their power and grace, and the red-beaked aerobats of the sea-margins, motionless a while as they leaned on the updrafts, then letting go, turning away to sweep downwind, and with a chuckle to slide smoothly over the cliff-edge. Sitting on a breezy headland the two old voyagers brewed their tea and ate their sandwiches, looked out through the blue air to the Blaskets, Isles of the Blest, Scarriff, the Skelligs, dark shapes on the horizon where the sun went down.
The companions were alike in their invincible optimism, their refusal of defeat, yet differed on many subjects and argued amicably about most. Did Glenanaar exist in fact or only in fiction? What place came oftenest to mind? Adrigole, Tooraneena, Corcomroe, Garryowen, Lyreanearla, Glenasmole? Did some vowel-sounds stick in the memory more than others?
Every day brought new delights to these old hearts. They drank old whiskey, they sang old songs, their thoughts dwelt on the magic places, they spoke of yesterdays, and they felt sorry for the young who had no such happiness. But they were not old. Many who didn’t know Davy but who had seen him sitting quietly by the lake, probably thought of him as a man whose time was over, maybe just waiting for the Man Above to call him. But Davy had never grown old and he was far more likely to have been waiting for a call from the man below in Cork.
Reluctantly they turned east. Instinct, or luck, brought them to where there was good music; they were known and welcomed. Sliabh Luachra was an essential stop, and on this occasion it once again provided a night of music and song, exhilaration, joy, comradeship, laughter, exaltation, satisfied longing, mórtas cine.
And as is the way of things, after that triumphant night, the very next day disaster struck, in the person of an officious water-bailiff. A grassy boreen had lured them to where a mountain stream came tumbling down, with scattered boulders, sudden pools, ledges and gravel bars. They gazed in admiration and Davy quoted, ‘Where stone is dark under froth.’ It was a challenge, an invitation, a trap. They were summoned to court. But if the owner of the fishing-rights thought that these old fellows were an easy mark he had made a serious error of judgement. No doubt deep in some musty vault a crumbling parchment with a broken seal states that 10,000 plantation acres are thereby legally transferred to Hollow Blades of the City of London, in recognition of financial aid for the Army of the Commonwealth in the prosecution of its war against the Irish enemy; by the time Paddy Joe and Davy fell foul of this bit of legal larceny, the land had been grudgingly returned to the Irish enemy, but all the rivers had flowed into the pocket of one Timothy Shepton. All this was smoothly explained by complainant’s legal team. Defendants, however, demanded to see documentary proof that the rights were as stated, and, without benefit of legal representation, argued that they had not broken the law because no document could be produced which forbade fishing but only ‘the taking of fish’, and they had taken no fish. That this had been a huge disappointment to them at the time was not mentioned in court.
As luck happened, the case was heard before Justice Tackaberry, a noted fisherman. Now it would be astonishing if Tom Tackaberry had never in a long lifetime dropped a Greenwell’s Glory on a forbidden pool, but whatever about that, he looked down thoughtfully over his glasses at the two miscreants and no one knows what memories disturbed the cool logic of his mind. Did a line of Yeats occur to him, ‘Bald heads forgetful of their sins’? He spoke with his usual clarity and decisiveness, ‘Probation act!’ or some such legal phrase, and to the Clerk, ‘These gentlemen will put £5 in the Court Box as they go out,’ and they thanked the Court and left, and went on a week’s batter. The local Garda Sergeant, Jarlath Coen, kept an eye on them, made sure they got into no mischief, and towards the end of the week suggested that they might like to consider taking the pledge, or perhaps head for home, avoiding licensed premises if at all possible.
So it was a big bunch of flowers and a box of chocs for Tilly, the sergeant’s wife, but serious thought had to be given to a suitable gift for the sergeant; they consulted their friend Markey Kerr, who by devious ways procured a bottle of liquor, made by a small private distiller in an abandoned turf-cutting out beyond Purth. The bottle being unlabelled, Paddy Joe manufactured a very nice label with curlicues around the edge, on which they wrote ‘For internal use only’, then wrapped the bottle and delivered it with the flowers and sweets to Coen’s. Mrs Coen wanted them right or wrong to come in for a cup of tea, but they explained (the shameless liars), that they always had to be home before dark, and so they couldn’t delay. They said their goodbyes and were well away from the sergeant’s jurisdiction before he came off duty.
Their journey home from Kenmare after their day in court and their week in the jigs took in Sherkin and Cape Clear, more names to be added to their mental store of fabulous places. Trebizond and Samarkand meant less to them than Aghadoe and Glenflesk, Tomies and Purple Mountain. They sang of those magic places as though they were drunk on the names and the music of the names and on nothing more. For ten days after his return from the far west, Davy moved in a dream. Of Glandore and Rosscarbery. Of Mount Gabriel, with its suggestion of angels hovering over Goleen. And he loved Crookhaven. But he loved Eadarlocha too, and when he had settled down again he was perfectly content, happy in his round of self-imposed duties until the west beckoned again.
He spent a morning tying in his raspberry canes. Then Moll called him, and they ate their midday meal together. Moll went back to her bread, it was her day for baking, and he finished in the garden. Tired then, he carried his glass of whiskey down to the seat by the lake. He was glad to sit in the pleasant shade of the willow; it had been a long morning’s work and his back ached, though he felt a quiet sense of achievement, too. He looked across the lake towards the hill, where there were sixteen lambs, big and sturdy enough now to be safe from predators. Later in the day, he would help the two grandchildren with their homework, though he struggled with changed ideas about maths, and they laughed and tried to explain to him. He always enjoyed that. He must not, however, let them see how proud he was of them. All his family were well. He had no news of Tom, but surely there would be a letter soon.
Eighty-seven years, a long road with many turns, that had always led him back to Eadarlocha, where it began. And Marge – how many years now? Tomorrow he must bring her some flowers. A big armful of lilac. She loved lilac; it was she who had planted it. How strange that the green bough should still live and thrive. Tomorrow then. The sunlight across the lake was reflected from the ripples so that light and shade danced all around him. The heron, their grey guardian, patrolled the lake-shore. All was well. He leaned back against the fissured bole and drifted into sleep.
Growing Up
He drifted into the yard, where Mam wa
s feeding the hens, and asked for a bit of bread, ‘a stale bit will do, ma’am, and maybe a small drop of milk, and God bless you.’ Mam sized him up with one shrewd glance and said, ‘Go up there and sit on the chair by the kitchen door. I’ll talk to you in a minute.’ Then she looked around for me. I had slipped into the stable to avoid being given a job to do, even though I was curious about the stranger and wanted to know what was going to happen. But of course Mam knew where I was, Mam knew everything. ‘Tom, come out here and look after the hens,’ and then headed for the kitchen. The teapot sizzled as usual at the edge of the fire, so our travelling man got a mug of scalding hot tea with plenty of sugar and milk, and both brown bread and white soda with currants in it, and plenty of butter. ‘He looks hungry,’ Mam said to Aunt Kate and it was Aunt Kate who did the catering while Mam went to talk to him. I heard her asking about his family but he didn’t make her any the wiser.
He was vague about his name – as indeed about most things, especially anything to do with himself – and somehow he finally became known as Rich. It was a name, not a description. Where had he come from? Why? What had he worked at? Had he a wife, a family? We found few answers to these natural questions. The one thing that was not vague about him, as we soon learned, was his love and knowledge of horses, and so it seemed most appropriate that he eventually wound up sleeping in the loft above the stable, where a straw mattress and the proximity of the two big plough-horses helped to provide him with some small comfort.
Naturally, Daddy had to be consulted about this when he came back from the fields. What was to be done about the newcomer? I suppose I knew even then, the way children know such things without being told, that the matter had already been decided, but Daddy had to be asked for his opinion; the conventions had to be observed.
The wanderer showed no inclination to leave, but behaved, with a gentle insistence, as though he thought this was where he was destined to be. He admired the house, and the seat in the sun by the back door, and the cows, and he smiled at the members of the family as they passed into and out of the house. ‘Poor soul,’ said Mam, ‘he looks lost.’ Even Aunt Kate took to him and it was she who suggested the loft over the stable.
John and I became his special friends. Ned usually trailed along after us, but he was my younger brother, only five, and wasn’t important. John, who was four years older than me, wasn’t very strong but he was clever and had ideas and was good at finding and making things. ‘We’ll make a bed for Rich,’ he said. ‘But he has a bed.’ ‘Not a real bed.’ So we got some boards from the floor of the other loft, the far end that was never used and where some of the boards were loose, and we made a kind of big box that we filled with straw. We put it against the warm chimney of the boiler-house, well away from the little window in the gable. Later on we found an old sack to keep the east wind from blowing in that window at night. There was a ragged cobwebby coat hanging on a nail in the car-shed. ‘Nobody wants it. We’ll make a pillow with it.’ Next, the stairs, not much better than a ladder really, that led to Rich’s loft, because Rich was sometimes a bit unsteady. It was John who thought of using an old discarded harrow that he found half-buried in the corner of the haggard. We needed a good strong pole to support the stairs, so we set off down across the Big Field and across to the far side of the stream in Mullenreagh and after a bit of a search we found a young ash tree and cut it down. We used a bill-hook; we weren’t supposed to use it, maybe because it could be dangerous or because we might take the edge off, and we didn’t let Ned or Rich use it. With the pole and the harrow and some good bits of the ladder we made a staircase that we were very proud of.
Rich did his best to help around the place, cutting sticks for the fire, or bringing water from the well. He sometimes scuffled the gravel in Aunt Kate’s garden, but she couldn’t trust him to do any weeding. ‘He doesn’t know a flower from a weed,’ she would say indignantly. He was willing to do any errand, to go to the shop in the street where one of the three houses had a shop which sold a few basic things, matches, candles, sweets, tea and sugar, or to the post office. In our house, of course, there was no scarcity of messengers unless it was in school-time so it usually meant that Rich and one or two of us went, and on the way, or on the way back, there would be adventures – tadpoles, or chestnuts in the autumn, or hiding in the tree near the school and watching who went by, or being chased by Cullimore’s wicked dog, or building a dam on Whelan’s stream to make the water run across the field. He didn’t as a rule play a very active part, but took an interest and made suggestions, or acted as a look-out (he was a very good whistler) and he could be depended on completely if there were secrets to be kept. Although Mam always told us not to delay, we’d often stop a while at the cross. We’d sit on the three big flat stones at the corner and watch who went by, on foot or on carts; there would often be young fellows just hanging around, or maybe wrestling or arguing, boasting, playing marbles. I remember how smooth and shiny those three stones were and I realize now why they were like that: it was because they had been polished by the trouser-seats of the many spectators who had used them as grandstand during pitch-and-toss schools, or a bit of hurling or football, or in earlier times, dances. After Mass on fine Sundays, you could sit there to talk, or smoke your pipe – there would always be someone there. It was a meeting-place; Rich said it was the centre of the parish. I never saw dancing there; at the time I’m thinking of, dances were held in people’s houses or barns.
Once in a while, a policeman would cycle out from town but he could be seen coming along the straight stretch of road, and there was plenty of time for the pitch-and-toss players to scatter, usually up through the graveyard, past the chapel and the school to the mountain road. On one occasion that was long remembered, he outflanked the gamblers by cycling up the mountain road and coming down on them aniar adtuaidh. Most of them escaped through Lizzie Kinsella’s garden, but he captured two, gave them a severe lecture, and worst of all confiscated a penny from each of them. As he was about to re-mount his bicycle, however, he stopped and called them back, handed back their money and said, ‘You’re to put those in the priest’s box on Sunday. Do you hear me now! Without fail! I’ll be talking to Fr Doyle about it.’
That had happened before Rich came into our lives, and when we told him about it, he surprised us when he said, ‘Served them right!’
‘Why, Rich? People always played pitch-and-toss there.’
‘Because it’s illegal.’
‘But why?’
‘It’s an insult to the queen’s image,’ and when he saw that we didn’t understand, he said, ‘Don’t you know the queen’s head is on every coin?’ I suppose maybe we did know that; anyway as none of us had a coin to demonstrate what Rich was telling us, he put two fingers into one of his waistcoat pockets, took out a small string-bag, opened it carefully and shook out into his palm some tiny silver coins. He wouldn’t let us handle them but let us look at them closely; we had seen threepenny bits before, of course, but there were also tiny silver pennies and two-penny pieces. ‘Look at the queen’s head,’ and then put them with great care back in the bag, tightened the cord and stowed it again in his pocket.
‘Why did you never spend them, Rich?’ He looked a bit shocked. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t spend those. They were a present from Mrs Bannerman. She was a lovely lady. She said they were a thank you for bringing the family to so many lovely places and bringing them safe home again. And that was only a year before she died. And she was young. Her husband went off to his house in England after that and never came back to Ireland. Her little baby died the same time and they were buried together in the one grave.’
I wanted to ask him if those were really silver buttons on his waistcoat, and were they a uniform, and if they were, was it because he was a coachman, but just then he stood up, and said something about seeing to the horses and walked away from us. This was more information than we’d ever got, up to then, about Rich’s former life. We surmis
ed that that might have been when Rich lost his job as coachman.
John said, ‘I think he’s sad talking about Mrs Bannerman and the baby.’
My only sister near my age was Kitty, who was only two years older than me. Sometimes we went for walks, maybe to paddle in the stream that came down from the mountain. It had places where the water was green and sliding, and little waterfalls with froth, and pebbly stretches, or dark pools under the hazel boughs where the river stopped to rest. We looked for fish and found none, and frogs, and floated stick-boats in the water, and she would bring home flowers that she put in a jam-jar but they were always drooping and wilted by the next morning. She was a quiet girl, with red hair, and she never fell out with me. She was my favourite sister. Those times when we went rambling were special, we didn’t want any of the others to know, although I think now that they probably did know; everyone knew that our two were special friends. Our favourite place was down through the Grove, and out the tall iron gate into the stony lane that joined our farm to the outlying land. We knew that it had once been the main road between Wexford and Ross, so it had been wide and well-paved, though now the sceachs and briars and blackthorns made it narrower. We loved especially to walk there in summer time, sheltered from every breeze in the deep lanes that were drowsy with bees and flowers. There was a wild plant that we picked because its spiky yellow flowers smelt of lemons. There were things to eat, sorrel, sloes, blackberries and hazelnuts, depending on the time of year. A quarter of a mile on, we took the right-hand branch into our fields; and always we went to the empty house where we knew Mam and Aunt Kate had been born and spent the first years of their lives until the family moved to our present house. Another family had taken their place; the last member of that family married, the wedding party went on for a week until every scrap of food and drink was gone, and every song had been sung, and then the dancing had to stop, they turned the key in the door and went to America, leaving the empty house to fall into ruin. We always went to the doorway and looked in, but we were a bit scared of it and of the jackdaws that flew up from the chimney and talked and squabbled. Fascinated, we had to go to see it, but frightened too, and usually very quiet as we went away.