Tarry Flynn (11 page)

Lough Derg pilgrimage was no longer a place where sinners went to do penance, but almost entirely made up of three classes of suppliants: First, girls with – as Tarry observed – long noses and flat chests went to pray for husbands; then shopkeepers who had sons and daughters at school and college went to pray that these would pass their examinations; the third class were those who went to pray for health, for themselves or their relatives.

Before going off the mother had asked them to pray for a ‘special intention' of hers.

The mother was out at the gate talking to Charlie and when she came in she was agitated. She poked with the pot-stick for her best shoes under the table and brought the polish down from the mantle-board.

‘Had a mind to go as far as the town the morrow,' she said in an urgent manner.

‘Good God!' said Tarry.

He was too busy at that moment watching the movements of Molly as she crossed the field beyond the meadow to gather the full meaning of his mother's anxiety. Another day dawned.

The mother was dressed for the town. She came out into the street walking with her umbrella and lingered thoughtfully a moment as if she had forgotten something.

Her son was greasing the cart outside the carthouse, dreaming over the fine job he was making of it.

‘Don't forget to clean that drink for the cattle in the Low Place,' she said, ‘there was a green scum on it that was a total dread the last time I saw it.'

Tarry leaned his chin on the top of the red dashboard and was looking into the body of the cart admiring the new sheeting. That cart was as good as the day it was made four years ago. It wasn't a small cart but it was as handy a cart as ever was made, the sort of cart that you could bring to the town and not be ashamed of. He had the seat-board under the heel at the back so that one of the wheels was off the ground.

He plastered on the black grease with a table knife and then dropping the knife on the ground shot the wheel in on the axle. The sun glanced over the top of the front-board.

‘Don't leave that knife there behind you,' said the mother.

‘Don't you know very well I won't?' he snapped.

‘And you might clean out them hen houses and whitewash the roosts; the roosts need to be whitewashed once a week in the summer. I better be going.'

She went out the gate. ‘You might wish me luck,' she said.

‘I did wish you luck,' he said, ‘but just to satisfy you, “Good morning and good luck”.'

‘Thank you, and mind yourself till I come back. And keep this gate shut, Tarry, I see that hungry sow of Callan's prowling down there at the turn.'

As she went down the road he could feel the power of her ruthless organizing mind trying to throw a flame over his life.

She couldn't see that apparent indifference and laziness was not laziness but the enchantment of the earth over him, and the wonder of a strange beauty revealed to him.

She only laughed and said he was talking like a ‘Presbyterian minister'. ‘Lazeness, that's all it is, lazeness, lazeness, lazeness.' That was what she said hundreds of times and he had no answer. She went round the turn and out the main road and watching her from the gate he knew that she was spreading her mind over the fields and the years.

She was going to the town this day to inquire about the sale of the major part of Carlin's farm, seven fields which were not part of the holding of two acres upon which the house stood. For many years this farm had been ‘up on the wall', but nobody was anxious to be the first to bid owing to the savage threats of two cousins, Tommy Finnegan, whose land bordered the Carlins', and his brother, Larry, who had once been a famous footballer and as a consequence had the reputation of being a ‘good' man – that is good in a drunken brawl.

But something had recently happened to lessen the moral force of these two men who claimed to be relations of the Carlins – Larry had been charged with stealing sleepers.

His sister, Mary, poured thick milk into a pan for the hens to drink.

‘These ones had a good dry night last night for the Lough Derg,' she said. ‘I wonder would you take them two cans, Tarry,' said Mary, ‘and go to the well for water.'

Mary had her face washed and was dressed as if she were going to the village. Tarry took the cans after a while, having as usual ‘taken the good out of it' by saying he would not.

He walked slowly, dreaming, along the narrow path that skirted a deep sunken stream on the steep sides of which grew primroses in wildest profusion. At the well he lingered, in the cool shadows where a big blue fly buzzed about.

He filled the cans full flowing, for he always took pride in bringing home all the water the cans could hold.

Returning, thinking of the possibility of his coming into the possession of a new farm of land, he stopped for a moment to
let the greed of his mind enjoy the full pleasure of ownership. And his mother might get it for a small sum. He often heard it said that the Land Commission would let a man have a farm by merely paying the arrears of Annuities. Wouldn't it be marvellous if she got it for forty or fifty pounds? It was worth close on three or maybe four hundred. That's what would madden Eusebius and all the other greedy people.

He lowered his eyes from staring at nothing and happening to glance towards a clump of nettles, thistles and pigs' parsley that grew at the bottom of the field behind the house, he thought he saw something white moving there.

He laid down the cans and wandered quietly in that direction.

Holies! He could hardly believe it. His sister, Mary, was sitting in the middle of the clump with the tall slick young fellow with the well-oiled hair that he had sometimes seen at the dance hall and disliked because he was such an expert dancer.

He could tell from the soles of her shoes that it was really his sister. He could not mistake that square patch on the middle of the sole which she had herself put on. He couldn't see the girl's face for he judged from a distance of some twenty yards that she had her face screwed behind the fellow's neck. She was in a twist.

This fellow always did his courting in the middle of the day, which was normal enough as he was unemployed.

He watched for a few moments and returned to his cans to find that the foal had put its hoof through the bottom of one. This disturbed him but not as much as his sister's being in the nettles with a scamp from the town. Tarry began to sing because he felt that his voice would awaken his sister to a consciousness of respectability. Noise and shouting show that everything is open and aboveboard.

The rough and tumble is very moral.

Peeping through the hedge at one point he could now see his sister sitting upright but showing no sign of having been seriously disturbed or awakened to a realization of her position.

He was about to put water in the kettle to make some tea for himself when Mary entered, carrying what she said was a dozen eggs which she found down in the nettles at the bottom of the
back field. Tarry, who had an eye of embarrassing keenness for seeing what he ought not see, saw that these alleged eggs looked very like small field stones to him.

‘I'll blow that wheel,' said she. She was in the best of humour.

Tarry sat at the table and began to speak in a very sing-song preachy voice about civilization, particularly about ancient Celtic civilization and how it gave honour to women's virtue. He was almost repeating one of Father Daly's sermons, and in much the same manner too. He spoke as if he were addressing a congregation and not an individual. As he preached he felt that weariness which bears down on those who are trying to overtake their own arguments. He knew that he was making a cod of himself, but the force of the emotion carried him along.

‘All this foreign dancing and music is poison,' he said. ‘It never belonged to this country.'

His sister for answer took a cigarette out of her pocket and lit it with a live coal. ‘What the bleddy hell are you trying to say?' said she.

‘You know damn well what I mean.'

‘Ah, dry up and don't be making a barney balls of yourself. A person would think you were a missioner.'

‘And smoking, too,' Tarry growled.

‘Amn't I as much entitled to smoke as you? Give us down that tay canister. I'm as well have a bit of gas while I can.'

‘You're gone to hell all right,' said Tarry.

The cup of tea softened his anger. ‘Supposing Petey saw you, wouldn't that be a fine how-are-you?'

‘Do you know what,' said the girl, taking her brother in hand, ‘fellas like you that never as much as had their arm round a woman always think that there's nothing in a bit of a court only the one thing. That's all's in your heads.'

‘But what about Petey? Are you ever going to marry him?'

‘Do I look out of me mind?'

‘Ah, but you shouldn't be making a fool of yourself, having the neighbours talking. What need I care?'

‘Codology. Are you looking for a fag? I have a couple here. I'll give you one.'

‘I tell you I have one of my own somewhere,' said Tarry, searching in the lining of his jacket. ‘I know I ought to have one. No, I don't want your fag.' But he had his hand out for the cigarette as he said these last few words, and taking it was thereafter bought over.

As they were finishing their cups of tea they saw Mary Reilly coming down the road on her bicycle.

‘Isn't she very nice?' said Tarry to his sister.

‘Isn't she only a lump of dung like the rest of us? Go on out and stop her and hear what she has to say. Go on, I say or you'll miss her. Is it her? It is. I thought it might be Eileen Cassidy that's home from England. Make a rush at it the same as if you were taking a dose of salts. Sure she can't take a bite out of you.'

Under the stimulus of his sister's encouragement Tarry wandered towards the gate and went onto the road and looked sharply in the hedge as if he had lost something.

‘Hello!' he shouted before his courage failed him.

‘Hello!' she answered very sweetly and got off her bicycle.

He could hardly believe it. The girl he had dreamed of was standing beside him and apparently delighted with his company. There was a humming in his ears and he could hardly hear what she was saying. She said that she saw the poem he wrote in the local paper and that it was ‘simply wonderful'. Before she had time to say more he had started off on a tour of English literature, as much as he knew of it, from Chaucer to Yeats. Once more he was delivering a fantastic lecture to a girl. She listened in astonishment. He tried to convince himself that he was doing well, that he was making a deep impression, but something else told him that he was talking too much. He could remember that he had run on like this before when trying to impress girls and while it was immediately successful, none of the girls took him seriously afterwards. He wished he could stop and be at ease. To add to his nervousness he knew that his sister was listening in the doorway picking up the makings of a laugh at him. In the end he did manage to stop lecturing and drifted a few yards away from the gate down the road, with the girl wheeling her bicycle beside him.

‘You can play the piano,' he said.

‘I'm no good at it,' she said.

‘Would you ever come down this way some evening till we have a talk?' Afraid that he had been too bold he hurriedly said: ‘I was only joking.'

She gave him a glance that nearly made him faint into the ditch. No girl had ever looked at him like that before.

‘What about Thursday evening?' she called back when she had gone some distance on her bicycle.

‘Oh, not at all,' he said, without meaning anything of the sort.

He was talking to himself in the deepest distress as he returned to the house. ‘You didn't say “not at all”,' he groaned. He whispered in his most lyrical manner, ‘Yes, dear, Thursday evening at eight.'

‘Now,' his sister cried in triumph, ‘what did I tell you? She's mad for you. Didn't I hear her?'

‘Ah, don't bother me, don't bother me, don't bother me,' Tarry cried. ‘I never want to hear another word about it.'

Tarry took the shovel and went off to clean the drinking place for the cattle.

‘Well?'

‘Well?'

Brother and sister spoke as one as soon as the mother arrived.

The woman plopped to a seat by the window and said: ‘Mary, will you throw a shovelful of oats to them hens and not have them picking at the window the same as if they never got a bite. I'm not able to give me sowl to God or man with the heat of that day. Tarry, did you see about the cattle?'

‘I did. How did you do?'

The mother ignored the question and said: ‘From now on you'll have to change your gait of going.' The woman scrutinized her son's face. ‘Is that a scratch on the side of your jaw? Lord! but I can't let you out of me sight but you're liable to do yourself harm, break your neck or something. Mary, pull over that kettle and don't wet the tay till I get me breath.'

‘But how did you do?' asked the impatient Tarry.

‘I'm making you independent of the beggars, Tarry,' said the mother.

‘You got it then. How much?'

‘How much do you think now?'

‘How would I know?'

‘Well, make a guess.'

Tarry guessed what he thought was a wild and high guess to please his mother.

‘A hundred and twenty.'

‘Ah, you're the man that should be sent to buy a thing,' the woman said shaking her head. ‘Give me over me handbag from the table. Yes, you're the man that ought to be sent out. Mary, how many eggs did you get the day?'

‘Four dozen and two.'

‘She found a nest,' said the impulsive Tarry before he had time to think.

‘A nest?' said the mother.

‘I was thinking of the one she got yesterday,' Tarry explained.

‘Have a look at that, you that's the scholar,' the mother said pushing a document in front of her son. ‘You may make the tay,' she said to the daughter.