An Irish Country Girl

by Patrick Taylor

  Paudeen drank and she could feel his eyes on her. Somehow the handle seemed to be turning more easily.

  “I really did come to see Tiernan as well. I do want to practice with him,” he said.

  “He’ll love that,” she said, and she thought, if you keep coming back to see my brother it’ll give me a chance to see more of you. “Could you come over tomorrow? I know he’ll be here all day.”

  “I could. The exercise would be good for me, for it is a power of a hill, so.”

  Her heart sang. “And maybe you’d stay for your lunch today, to give you the strength for the ride home?”

  “With pleasure. And I’ll be content to sit here and chat with you while you work.”

  She smiled broadly. “Chat away,” she said. “I’ll listen.”

  Paudeen sat on the bale of hay close to Maureen. “Do you know?” he said, “I went off and I thought about what you said about the teaching.”

  “And do you still think if I did, it would be a ‘thing’? It was your word, so.” She swung the crank that bit harder.

  “Lord Jasus, Maureen O’Hanlon, but you’ve more spines than a gráinneog, a hedgehog. I do not think that. I was just surprised, that’s all. And before you’d let me explain, you’d snapped at me like a monkfish and run off like a liltie.”

  “Well, then,” she said, churning more gently, “I’ve said I’m sorry, so explain away now and I’ll listen.”

  “I will.” He held out the ladle. “If there’s a drop more of that . . .”

  “Help yourself.”

  He did. “Now I confess you flummoxed me, for I hadn’t heard of a girl going on after school, and add to that I’d been disappointed myself. I told you I fancied the architecture. I never even got my Leaver’s.”

  She found she was less interested in his explanation for why he’d seemed to mock her aspirations and more interested in his story. “Because you went fishing instead?”

  “I did.”

  “I don’t understand. You wanted to be an architect, but you gave up that dream. Is fishing so exciting?”

  He sighed and said softly, “Sure I’d been helping my Da at weekends and in the summer holidays since I wasn’t more than a chiseller. I’ve grown to love the sea. It can get a hold over a man like nothing else I know.” His eyes had a faraway look.

  “Maybe you’d take me in your boat one day?” Maybe I can change your views about what can get a hold over a man, she thought.

  “I will, bye. I will, so.”

  “I’d like that. A lot.” So without anything definite having been said about the future, she could feel the rift between them healing over. She decided not to plough the same furrow twice by asking him his opinion on her plans to teach—not today anyway. Better to ask him about himself. “You still haven’t told me why you went to the fishing in the first place.”

  “I told you I’d a big brother and a wheen of sisters?”

  “Five, I think.”

  “Five sisters, it is, and back then all with mouths to be fed. My Da and Casey, my brother, ran the boat until the year I turned fifteen—”

  “And you changed your mind about the architecture?”

  He shrugged. His voice was flat. “I’d it changed for me. Casey hated the sea. He had a powerful donnybrook with Da one day. It nearly came to blows. I didn’t know then how that would affect my plans, but it did. Casey stormed off . . . and the last we heard he was in Sacramento in California.” He looked at her.

  Maureen wondered if he was thinking about her rushing away into the Lughnasa night. “I’m sorry, Paudeen. Family rows are awful,” she said and briefly touched his arm.

  “They are.” His gaze held hers.

  Maureen swallowed. “And did you have to leave school to help your Da? I thought you said you went fishing when you were sixteen.”

  Paudeen shook his head. “You’re right, I was. With Casey gone, Da took on a young lad as a deckhand, and lucky enough, Dympna and Myrna got married that year. Da was tickled because with them gone, the money stretched, even if he had to pay a crew.”

  Did neither of those girls have any hopes of doing more than marrying? Maureen wondered. Probably not, and she had no doubt that Paudeen would have got his ideas about girls and marriage from his Da—and his Da from his Da. Ireland, she thought, where things never change, the Land of Saints and Scholars—and minds as closed as steel traps. She frowned. “But if your family didn’t need the money, why did you go?”

  “Da, God rest him, was washed over in a gale. We didn’t find him . . .” Paudeen’s voice broke. He took a deep breath. “Until a week later.”

  Maureen’s hand flew to her mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Thank you, but I’m not looking for sympathy. Things like that do happen. Just . . . I still miss him, bye.” Paudeen managed a weak grin. “He taught me to bowl, to dance . . . and to fish.”

  Maureen held her peace.

  “Anyway,” Paudeen said, “Da’s passing made me head of the household with Casey gone, and a living had to be made.”

  “So you gave up school to take care of your Ma and your sisters?”

  He raised both hands, palms up.

  “I think you’re a good man, Paudeen Kincaid. A very good man.” And she meant every word, but still, she thought, maybe if your older sisters, who got wed, had had jobs with decent wages you could have stayed at school. Maureen felt a tightness in her throat. She opened the lid of the churn, spilled out more buttermilk, and poured in cold water. “I think the butter’s near done. And I think what you’ve just told me’s very sad.”

  “Divil the bit,” he said. “A fellah does what he has to, and . . .”—he bent closer and whispered—“I think I’ll have to see more of you, Maureen O’Hanlon.” He grinned from one ear to the other, and she could do little but lean across the churn, Ma be blowed, and kiss him.

  As she moved away Maureen knew she’d been right not to raise the subject of her career. There’d be time enough for that question when she had Paudeen Kincaid as firmly hooked—she glanced at the salmon—as firmly hooked as that fish had been. For hadn’t she fallen for him, hook, line, and sinker?

  Paudeen stood and smiled at her. “If I’m going to be seeing more of you, Miss O’Hanlon, I still want to have a few lofts of the bullet with that brother of yours too, b—.”

  “Bye,” they said in unison and laughed together in the morning sunlight.

  25

  Maureen did see more of Paudeen Kincaid. Much more. Unless he had a tide to catch or his gear to maintain, he’d cycle over any day he was able during the school holidays. Once term started, he’d come on Saturdays if he was free, because on Sundays Maureen played camogie for the local GAA team or as a member of the Cork Juniors.

  He’d often spend an hour or two practising with Tiernan. But she didn’t begrudge him that because when the boys finished, she and Paudeen would walk for miles. They went over the fields or along the roads toward Clonakilty or Ballinvoher or Newcestown.

  One late September Saturday when the last of the summer swallows had gone and a single sparrowhawk hovered overhead hunting mice in hedges made brilliant by the orange of the rowanberries, Maureen started looking down the lane for Paudeen’s bicycle long before he could possibly arrive, willing him to come sooner. The moment he crested the rise she ran to greet him. His kiss was no longer a butterfly brushing her lips. His arms around her were strong, and she scented the fresh sweat of him.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said.

  “And I brought you these.” He handed her a bunch of heavily scented wildflowers, creamy white honeysuckle, and red foxgloves.

  “Thank you. They’re lovely.” She kissed him again. “Tiernan’s helping out over at the MacVeighs today. There’s no need to go up to the house,” she said.

  “But the flowers’ll wilt away. Give them back and I’ll ride on up and get your Ma to put them in water. You stay here.” Paudeen took the bouquet, hopped on his bike, and pedaled furiously away
.

  She waited, loving him for caring about her flowers.

  He was back in next to no time and propped his Raleigh against the fence. “Come on,” he said and took her hand. As they strode along the farm lane, Paudeen remarked, “Beal na mBláth isn’t far, is it?”

  “It’s not. Maybe a couple of miles. Why? There’s nothing much there except a five-road-ends crossroads and Long’s pub.” And, she thought, I haven’t been up in that direction since the day I went with Fidelma and saw Connor.

  “I took a notion I’d like to visit the place. They make a big fuss in Clonakilty about their hometown boy, Michael Collins.”

  The Irish rebel leader who was shot near Beal na mBláth in 1922, she thought. Maureen frowned and looked at him. “Are you a republican, Paudeen? Paying homage to a dead hero? Is that it?”

  He laughed. “It is not, and I am not. Not at all,” he said. “I’m a fisherman. I’ve no time for politics of any stripe.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” she said. “There’s been too much grief in Ireland over politics. Da said the O’Hanlons should take no sides in the war with the English, the Black and Tan War, nor during the Irish Civil War, the one that’s only over for three years.”

  “Your Da was right.”

  “Then why do you want to go to the crossroads?”

  Paudeen stopped walking, forcing her to halt. He let go of her hand. “I’ve been reading about those Troubles. Since you told me you’re interested in Irish history, I thought I’d better find out a bit about it myself, so I started with a local figure. Collins.”

  “Just because I’m interested in Irish history, Paudeen? That’s sweet.” She kissed him.

  “Do you know,” he said, “some of it’s as exciting as anything by R. M. Ballantyne or H. Rider Haggard?”

  “I do know.”

  “Anyway, the Big Fellah—that was Collins’s nickname—was born at Woodfield, four miles west of Clonakilty in 1890. He worked for the British post office.”

  “In London,” she said, “and he fought in the Dublin General Post Office along with Pádraig Pearse and James Connolly in April 1916 during the Easter Rising. I was eight then. I remember Da and Ma talking about it.”

  Paudeen laughed. “And I thought you weren’t interested in politics.”

  “I’m not, so, but history is very different from politics, and I’m very interested in history . . . everything to do with Ireland from just a while ago and your man Michael Collins, right back to the beginnings. The very start is written down in the Leabhar Gabhála Éireann—The Book of Invasions—and Da just about knows it by heart. Since I was wee, I’ve heard stories from him about all the races who ruled this country from the mists of time until today.”

  “My aunty Brid knew about The Book of Invasions too and tried to tell me, but I was too interested in the sports to pay much heed to her going on about the Milesians or the Fir Bolg.”

  She turned left when they reached the road. “This is the way to Beal na mBláth if you want to go there.”

  “I do.” He shortened his stride so she could easily keep pace. “And as we go, do you want me to tell you about the Feer Bollug?”

  “I do . . .” His eyes twinkled. “Bye.”

  They both laughed. She kissed him again, loving him for his teasing and his willingness to learn about something that interested her.

  They walked through the misty afternoon. The moisture made the air feel touchable and blurred the crests of the hills as if they had been sketched with charcoal, then smudged on a blue-grey paper sky. The road, the drystone walls, and the turning leaves shone damply.

  “. . . and the Feer Bollug were beaten by the Tuatha dé Danann,” she said.

  “And aunty told me the Milesians came from Spain, they were Celts, and they did beat the Tooatha, so. Us modern Irish are descended from the Milesians.” He chuckled. “Do you think that makes us Spanish?”

  “Eejit. It does not, at least not most of us. There’s a few folks out on the west coast descended from shipwrecked sailors off the Spanish armada.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is.” She stooped and plucked a piece of tufted vetch, studded with blue flowers, from a roadside bank. “But you’re right, it’s the Milesians we’re from.” Then she asked, “Do you know what happened to the Tuatha?”

  He shook his head.

  “They were driven to live underground into the sidthe and became the Shee, the people of the mounds.”

  He sounded serious when he asked, “Do you believe in the faeries, Maureen?”

  “I do.” And, she thought, it’s been a while since I’ve seen them or heard Connor.

  “Me too.” He smiled at her. “Honestly.”

  “Good for you.”

  They walked on in silence.

  She heard the plaintive cries of a flock of curlew overhead, the bleating of sheep, and smelled the harsh odours of flax being retted in a nearby flax dam. The water softened the plants’ stem fibres so they could be separated out and spun into Irish linen.

  “You don’t get a stink like that at sea,” Paudeen said, wrinkling his nose.

  “I hear rotting seaweed and dead fish don’t get much sales in perfume shops either.”

  They were chuckling as they turned a corner.

  Maureen hadn’t seen Connor’s cottage for years. She stopped in her tracks. There it was at the end of its short lane. Her laughter faded and she felt an ineffable sadness.

  “That’s a sad-sorry looking sort of a place,” Paudeen said.

  “It belonged to a friend,” she said softly.

  The thatch was dirty brown, mouldy, overgrown with moss and ferns, and half caved-in. Tufts of grass grew from the chimney pots. Brambles, benweeds, and convolvulus snarled in tangles round the windows. The red paint had peeled from the frames, and the panes were smashed, their jagged edges as vicious as razors.

  “ ’Tis an unfortunate-looking spot,” Paudeen said. “I hate to see anything wrecked. A good boat up on the rocks with her ribs showing through like the skeleton of a drowned cow always does bring me very low.” He sighed and turned to her. “What happened here?”

  Maureen looked him in the eye. “Paudeen, you said you believe in the Shee?”

  “I do. I didn’t use to . . . but since I’ve taken to the fishing . . .” He stared into the distance.

  “Go on.”

  “You do see strange things in the ocean.”

  “What strange things?”

  “Do you know about the Selkie?”

  “The seal women? They’re women ashore, but when they put on their magic sealskin they become seals and live in the ocean? I’ve heard tell. And I’ve heard of the Dobharchú, the sea monster of the Rosses of Donegal.”

  “I never saw one of those beasts, thank the Lord, but I think a Selkie saved my life,” he said.

  She shuddered and her eyes widened. Paudeen’s outline was now blurred, his voice indistinct. The hill behind him had vanished, and instead there was a wall of white water, roaring, crashing, clawing at him, reaching for him, and then disappearing suddenly, leaving him there smiling, his eyes blue, the hillside behind him grass-green and bracken-brown, and the only water the misty dew on it.

  Maureen tried to hide her trembling. The Pavee woman had shown her a card called the Prince of Cups and said it could have something to do with the moods of the sea. Now she had seen a monstrous wave in an angry sea. She shook her head. What did it all mean?

  “Are you all right, Maureen?” She heard the concern in his voice.

  It took an effort, but she managed to say, “I’m grand, so. I just felt a bit dizzy.”

  “Come and sit down.”

  Together they sat on the one smooth rock on top of a crumbling stone wall.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Honestly. It’s passed.” She forced a smile. “Women do take the vapours once in a while, you know. Now go on, tell me about your Selkie.”

  She saw the concern in his eyes, how he waited for her to c
ollect herself. She was trying to, she really was, but she’d just watched a wave coming for Paudeen. He said a Selkie had saved him. Maureen connected the thoughts.

  For a second, she must’ve seen the sea that had almost taken him. Did that mean the sight and the tarot worked backward too? That they hadn’t been portents of the future, but rather had spoken to her about something from the past of the man she loved? She’d like to think so. She would believe it.

  Maureen stopped shaking. “Go on,” she said. “I’m fine now, honestly.”

  “You’re certain sure?”

  “I am, Paudeen. I’m grand, so. Tell me about the Selkie.”

  “This is how it was,” he said. “I’d gone out on the mudflats at low tide to dig lugworms for bait when from nowhere came this great comber and pulled me out, way out to sea. And I can’t swim.”

  “You what?” Maureen heard her voice rise. “You can’t swim? And you go fishing for a living? Are you mad, Paudeen Kincaid?” She almost said, “After what happened to your Da?” but held her tongue. She didn’t want to hurt him.

  “I am not,” he said calmly. “The waters here are so bitter they’ll kill you very quick if you go overboard. Being able to swim would only prolong the dying. All the fishermen believe that, so.”

  “You scare me, Paudeen.”

  “It was that great big wave that terrified me. There I was, thrashing and choking and drowning. There was nothing but water under my feet and over my head, and I couldn’t tell up from down, and my lungs bursting, and the world growing cold and dim, when what do I feel, bye? I feel something shoving me, hard, and I can’t see what it is. I put down my hand and there’s an animal beside me, silky to the touch. Warm to the touch. And the creature is pushing me. I don’t know what nature of beast it is, but I know I’m moving, and I know my feet have found solid land, and my head’s out in the air and I can fill my poor lungs. I know if I can struggle a few steps I’ll be safe on the strand.” He smiled. “And there I was, cold and soaked, but alive and safe. And I couldn’t tell if the water in my eyes was salt sea or salt tears.”

  “Thank God you were saved.” Maureen knew now, she just knew, she’d seen the wave that almost took Paudeen. It had been terrifyingly big. That was what she’d seen moments ago. Wasn’t it?