Tarry Flynn (16 page)

Petey wasn't too pleased when he heard the story. Joe was his third cousin.

‘He's a very thick man,' said Tarry.

‘He's a hasty man,' said Petey, ‘but I wouldn't say he's a thick man.'

‘I didn't hurt him very badly anyway. Are you coming over this evening, Petey?'

It seemed that Petey had changed his mind. ‘I might and I mightn't,' said he.

‘Well, you'll be welcome, Petey.'

‘Indeed, I know that,' he said as if he thought himself the most eligible bachelor in the country.

Tarry left him feeling small enough. As he went up the rushy hill he turned east and could see someone walking about the spot where the row had taken place. It was Joe.

Did he leave something behind him when he fell? Tarry
watched and saw the man go backwards and forwards through the gap. He had a mind to sneak back to see what the man was doing, but he had other things on his mind.

Smoke was rising from Carlin's house; they were getting up. One way of saving a meal.

Tarry gave a last glance towards the place of the battle and there was Joe Finnegan still mooching around like a man who had lost a shilling in the grass. It could be that he was trying to destroy the evidence but if he were he would only make the real truth more obvious. Tarry walked down the hill to his home partly satisfied that he had done his best.

‘What in the Name of God way did you come home?' cried his mother who was spreading shirts on the line in the front garden. ‘I sent Aggie up to see how you were getting on and she came back to tell me that hilt or hair of you wasn't to be seen, and that the devil the damn the fence you did.' She was disappointed and disgusted with her son.

‘But wait till you hear,' he appealed.

‘Sure, God and His Blessed Mother knows that I'm waiting and I‘m waiting and you're the same as ever you were. No care about anything only the curse-o‘-God books.'

‘I suppose she didn't tell you that I was attacked by Joe Finnegan and very nearly killed. She didn‘t tell you that, but she could tell you that I didn't bush the gaps.'

‘Arra, what?'

He left the tools against the wall of the cart-house with an air of self-pitying pleasure. ‘Only the way I took him it might be a different story,' he said, looking for sympathy.

‘The Lord look down on us anyway. And may the devil thrapple that big-mouthed Joe that – that it's no wonder he hasn‘t a man child about his place. Could he have better luck with his five pratie-washers? And the devil a son ever he'll have. What did he say?'

‘It's not what he said, it's what he did or tried to do. Came down rushing at me like a mad bull with the graip in his hand –'

‘Lord bless us, the graip. Bad luck to him. And –'

‘He came through the hedge and made at me. I had to hit him.
I hit him the smallest little tip you ever saw and he fell. And that's all.'

Mrs Flynn rubbed her marriage ring as if looking for inspiration in it. ‘I hope you're telling me the story right,' she said, ‘for that man would swear a hole through a ten-gallon pot. If I had me way I'd have sent Aggie up with you and then you'd have a witness, but no – you wouldn‘t let her go with you; you were too much the big fella. That's the kind of you. And sure, Lord God! what other man but yourself would try to steal the little grain of oats that I was keeping for the hens in the hungry summer. To think that…'

Tarry ran away towards the haggard and his mother's words followed him: ‘Oh, that's you all over. You don't want to hear the truth.'

She followed him and found him wrestling with the sack of oats. ‘Is it trying to rupture yourself you are?' she said. ‘Can't you leave it there till we empty a wee lock out of it with a bucket. Lord God! to think of a man trying to leave the hens without a bit to eat in the red raw summer.'

‘Will you give us a breeze?' Tarry screeched.

But the mother was relentless: ‘And the book in the pocket! Couldn't go up as far as Carlin's to put a few bushes in gaps without the book.'

‘I tell you I had no book. I had no book. Do you hear that?'

‘There's no use in talking to you, Tarry. You're your uncle all over that the whole parish wouldn't be able to keep in drink and squandering. Just like you he had nothing big about him but the talk. Did Maggy come out?'

‘No, she didn't, she didn‘t, she didn't,' cried the exasperated Tarry.

When he told her how Petey had taken the news she was still more annoyed. The wireless could not have spread the news more rapidly than the gossipers of the place. It was something to keep boredom away. Tarry could not see the funny side of it at all. Some people said it was because he did not care for anyone but himself, and his own self-critic told him that this was the reason.
It is easy to see the beauty and humour of life when one is detached.

Returning from the field where he had been filling spraying barrels with water he found his mother talking to Charlie at the gate. She had just bought two nine-months-old calves from the man and as usual asked her son how much he thought she had given for them. He, as usual, did his best to flatter the animals and his mother's bargaining powers by putting a high value, as he imagined, on the calves. He thought she had given about eight pounds each, so he said nine.

‘They may let you out, Flynn,' said Charlie.

‘Exactly,' said the mother. ‘I often wonder, Charlie, that some people's not millionaires, they‘re such wonderful people for getting things for half nothing. Change them wet trousers and give us a hand to drive them up to Carlin's. I have a nicely patched pair of trousers on the crook beside the fire.'

‘Like deal boards with patches,' complained Tarry when he had put the trousers on.

‘They‘ll do a turn as Micky Grant said about the wife,' said the mother.

As they were getting ready to drive the calves up to the farm a car appeared at the mouth of the road, and as it purred slowly between the poplars they all knew that it was either a doctor or a veterinary surgeon or someone with bad news. It was Doctor McCabe, a young medical man from the town. Charlie raised his hat.

The mother looked at her son disgusted with his manners. ‘No fear of you being like another and rising your cap to the doctor. Oh, you were too grand!'

Charlie hadn‘t heard of the dispute with Joe Finnegan and Tarry didn't want to tell him, knowing that he would find out soon enough.

Passing Cassidy's house they ran into Maggy Finnegan who was carrying a commode which she had just borrowed from Mrs Cassidy; it was an article of furniture which circulated from one sick bedroom to the other in the district.

‘Who the hell can be sick?' said Charlie.

‘God only knows,' sighed Tarry.

The doctor's car was pulled into the grass field alongside the lane leading to Carlin's and Finnegan's. Driving the calves past the car they saw the woman rushing ahead of them with the commode under her arm. Jemmy Carlin was standing outside his front door craning his neck in the direction of Finnegan's.

‘Must be one of the Finnegans,' remarked Charlie.

When they came to the spot where the row had taken place all the signs of the row, blood and stones and torn clothes on the briars, were on Finnegan's side of the gap. Charlie noticed it. ‘Must have been murder committed there,' said he.

Tarry would not tell Charlie the facts because he could not trust the calf-dealer and he was still hoping that the whole thing would blow over.

In a short time they had the gaps all fenced and were contentedly walking away when they saw two well-dressed men coming down the potato field towards the hedge.

‘What the hell must be the matter?' said Charlie. ‘There's a lot of activity going on around here… You have two good fields, Flynn.'

‘Oh, yes,' Tarry said awakening from his tragic reverie.

When they were starting up the van they sighted Larry Finnegan coming along the lane in the direction of his brother's at a gasping trot.

Charlie tried to stop him: ‘What's wrong, Larry?'

‘Bad news, bad news,' he said in a pant without stopping. ‘The brother's dying.'

‘That's a terror,' said Charlie.

Next, Mrs Cassidy appeared carrying a white quilt and a blessed candle.

‘Isn't it terrible about poor Joe?' she said.

‘What happened him?' asked Charlie.

‘Oh the less said about it the better; he was hurt this morning and he's very bad. The priest was sent for.'

‘Was it a kick from a horse or what?'

‘I don't know till I go over,' she said and hurried on, delighted to be in touch with bad news.

That it was nothing but a fake injury Tarry was certain. They wanted to cause trouble and they were succeeding. He had only given the man the slightest little punch and it couldn't be the fall. No, the whole thing was a fake. The Finnegans like most of the poor people of that district were never ashamed to make a show of themselves. They revelled in a dramatic scene. That was the sort of thing that Tarry always wanted to avoid and which by trying to avoid he now ran into with a vengeance.

The news of Joe Finnegan's dying condition was the talk of Drumnay, Miskin and the whole parish of Dargan that evening. Some people said that he had fracture of the skull and that a specialist had been sent for. The report that Tarry Flynn had been arrested was also widespread.

Mrs Flynn was in a terrible state as she paced over and back her kitchen floor, crying and beating her thighs and cursing her son. She cried and clapped her hands and broke into the middle of sentences: ‘that me heart's broke, night, noon and morning with a man that's always making little of the priests, won't go to confession or a curse-o‘-God thing.'

The three daughters were trying to pacify her by making themselves very busy – attending to the pots, coming in and going out in a hurry, shutting in the hens, sweeping the floor, washing the vessels.

‘Everything 'ill be all right, mother, wait till you see.'

‘With the oul' book in his pocket and the fag in the mouth and then to think of him taking the bag of oats. Oh, I wish and I more than wish that I had let him go to hell out of here when he wanted to go… that me heart is as black as your boot with him, the blackguard.'

‘Come on in outa that with you,' said Aggie to her brother, who during the outburst sat on the shaft of the cart in the cart-house glancing idly through the pages of the Sunlight Almanac.

‘Leave me alone,' he said.

The dog came in and sat at his feet. The dog was the only animal with Christian feelings in that area. He patted the dog and stretched its ears and as he did he forgot the torture that was ripping up his soul and for one moment looking through the
half-open door saw the Evening Star over Jenny Toole's and he knew – This worry would pass. The grass would reflect the sun tomorrow and the wings of crows would be shadows upon it.

The blackbird began to sing in the bushes behind the shed. His mother's whine had ceased. Bridie had gone to milk the cows. Tarry lit a cigarette.

Tarry sat by the window sipping his tea without saying a word lest he should start his mother off again. She was leaning over the table at the back window with her rosary beads in her fingers.

Every time footsteps sounded on the road outside Tarry jumped, thinking it might be the police. The police were certain to come it not this evening in the morning. The mother left her place by the back window and went to the parlour where Tarry heard her opening the money box. Shortly afterwards she came up with a ten shilling note which she put in an envelope and said: ‘I'm sending that ten shilling note to the Redemptrists the morrow morning if the Lord spares me. And if this blows over you‘ll have to go to your confession to them.'

Tarry growled but did in his own defeated heart promise to confess his sins and to pray as he never prayed before if he got out of this scrape.

What he was trying to make out now was what he had often tried to make out before – and that was how the most innocent action by him always seemed to have in it the seeds of misfortune. How many times had Charlie Trainor been in rows, had beaten up men in pubs. And Eusebius too, he could get away with anything. Tarry remembered how when they were small boys himself and Eusebius were throwing stones idly at a bottle on a wall and as he flung a stone a cow of Callan's put her head over the wall and got her eye knocked out.

They had been waiting to hear the doctor's car coming back, but at nine o'clock there was still no sign, so they came to the conclusion that he went out by the upper end of Drumnay.

‘And now in the Name of God,' said the mother, ‘let us all kneel down and say the Rosary – for my special intention.'

The mother had Tarry on the run. He knelt down like a child
and answered out loudly and never dozed off at all during the prayers.

‘Name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.' The mother made the Sign of the Cross with the Crucifix of her Rosary and straightened her back away from the low stool at which she knelt. Bridie was already going up the stairs to bed. ‘Take that vessel up with you,' said the mother. ‘Father, Son and Holy Ghost… Well, now you be to hurt the man somehow, and you didn't tell me. He‘ll swear you hit him with the slashing-hook.'

‘He must have hurt himself when he fell on the stones; but he couldn't be too bad for I‘m sure as sure that I saw him after clearing away the evidence when I left. There wasn't a track anywhere on my side when we were up there this evening.'

‘And why the devil's father didn‘t you tell me that? Oh, Lord God!'

‘I'm sure there's damn all wrong with him, mother.'

‘Don't I know only too damn well that it's making out he is, but the making out is as bad as anything. He'd like to put us out on the door. I was talking to Molly there and she was telling me that Mrs Cassidy was telling her that there isn‘t a whit the matter with him. But what good is that to us?'