Tarry Flynn (20 page)

Tarry showed blank innocence.

‘You attacked the priest,' she declared in an awful whisper.

‘What would take a priest up at the cross?'

‘Oh, this is more of it. Just when I was getting well in with the priests you had to attack the poor priest. And then ran.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Well, he's coming up again in the morning and I hope you'll have a good excuse for him. – That there's nobody like you. Aye, indeed,' she sighed. ‘Will you take a look at that letter we've got from Daly, the solicitor, this morning? It's there on the dresser.'

He looked at the letter and made slighting comments on its literary style.

‘Illiterate.'

‘I suppose,' said the mother, ‘you could write as good a letter as a solicitor – or a schoolmaster.'

‘That wouldn't be hard,' said Tarry with a sneer.

‘O, Lord, O Lord! If ever a man would make a person throw off their guts it's you. The Lord have mercy on your father but that
was
the man to state a letter. If he was alive I wouldn't have to be sending these ones to the town to see the attorney.'

‘To see the attorney. This letter only says that he'd like to see one of us whenever we happened to be in the town. There doesn't appear to be any hurry about us going, as far as I can see.'

‘And why is it that we haven't the deed complete by this? If I could depend on you I wouldn't care, but I can't trust you as far as I'd throw you. Mary should be back any time now.'

‘So she went to the town to see him. Didn't I tell you that I'd
go out on the bike and see him. When I went the first time I should go the second time. What will he think?'

‘And another thing,' said the mother now that she had her hand in, ‘keep away from that slob of a Brady one. I do be hearing things about her – God protect everyone's rearing – and last Sunday Bridgie McArdle was telling me that she's a peculiar class of a girl. Charlie Trainor does be coming about Brady's house and I'd keep away if I was you.'

‘And you always praising him.'

‘Never you mind. Now that you have your tay taken and the fresh clothes on, you might run and meet Bridie with the milk. Keep away from that party. Be dangerous to throw a pair of trousers at some women.'

Standing in the doorway Tarry saw the three calves which had been in Carlin's in the meadow. ‘Who took them calves down?' he asked.

‘I had them brought down till things are settled about the curse o'God deed.'

‘That's just giving in,' said he as he went to meet his sister.

When he returned, Mary had arrived from the town and was explaining to the mother what the solicitor had said. The mother bare-footed by the fire was sitting with her head on one side listening carefully.

‘And you told him what I told you to say?'

‘The whole bill of the races.'

Tarry wasn't being let into the secret at all. The mother was making a child of him, an irresponsible child – and all because he was able to see the wild and wonderful meaning in the commonest things of earth.

Could he not extract from this very trouble something wild and wonderful too? Was there not a second Tarry of whom nobody in Drumnay was aware, not even his mother, who looked on at the mortal Tarry, watching, laughing, criticizing and recording? He saw himself sitting there in the corner with his elbows on the table while his mother and sisters talked. Though he was silent his was the only opinion that would matter in the long run.

Out of this imagination of himself he suddenly emerged to declare:

‘In a hundred years from now the only thing that will ever be remembered about this savage area is that I lived here awhile among the pigs.'

To attempt to describe the look on Mrs Flynn's face at this surprising outburst would be impossible. She showed in her countenance a mixture of terror and laughter. She stood the pot-stick up against the hob and said: ‘Put out that dog till we say the Rosary. Give me over the wee stool till I kneel on it. With the help of God we'll both go out on the fair day and if yous can get that house well and good maybe it id be all for the best. A good eating-house is not to be laughed at. I suppose you mentioned the row this wonderful man here had with that savage, Joe.'

‘I did,' said Mary.

As they were beginning the evening prayer Tarry saw his mother looking at him and he believed that she was impressed by his boast and the thought depressed him. It was a responsibility being depended upon, being considered a wise man. Bad as he was now he didn't want
that.

Thou O Lord wilt open my lips.
And my tongue shall announce Thy praise.

‘Did you put in your bike, Mary?'

He was ‘hanging' a scythe in the kitchen the next morning to mow around the rocks and corners in the hay-field, when looking out the back window he saw the Parish Priest himself coming up the road. He was walking slowly and the hauteur of his sided head as he strode between the poplars took away some of the terror. He was making up his mind to have it out with Father Daly unknown to his mother, if he could keep her out of it. He felt that outside the destructive influence of his mother he could put himself over big with the priest. On an entirely new high level of literature and scholarship.

Whether his mother came on the scene or not that was the way he was going to talk. The more a man stuck to the gutter the more he was stuck in it and he was not going to be the wet gutter reflecting the sky of truth if he could help it. His mother was over in the potato field at the time and he had high hopes that she would not return till the priest had left. In this he was disappointed. Just then the dog – which was an irreligious beast – began to bark wildly from the haggard and in a moment he was galloping across the street in front of the door. The mother who was coming across the meadow on her way back from the field saw the dog and rushed ahead just in time to prevent the priest from being attacked by the mongrel.

Tarry was in the house screwing his courage to the sticking place and indifferent to the dog's behaviour.

‘You're welcome, father. Chu father – dog.'

Father Daly had his hand on the bar of the gate. The woman was in a terrible state, shaking like jelly. The presence of the avowed and sacred celibate is a terror to womankind. No chink in the heart.

‘Chu – father – dog – to hell – father.'

The priest kept his dignity and never relaxed the hauteur of his
sided head. He seemed to be staring at the chimney of the house.

The woman succeeded in getting a kick at the dog, and this and the sound of Eusebius' cart coming down the road drew the animal away, for the dog had a warm regard for Eusebius, preferring him to his own master.

Having bid the woman the time of day Father Daly said: ‘In the words of Shakespeare, Mrs Flynn:

A little learning is a dangerous thing,
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.'

‘Pope,' said Tarry under his breath, too low for the priest to hear, but loud enough to flatter his own ego.

‘Yes, father,' whimpered the woman.

The cart approaching had stopped among the bushes and its stopping drew attention to its presence.

‘Finnegan's cart,' remarked the priest.

‘Or Eusebius',' said the mother.

‘Finnegan's,' dogmatized the priest, who took a great delight in knowing ordinary things.

Neither mother nor son contradicted him. Tarry was pleased at the priest's attitude. He was going to argue on the higher plane and that suited Tarry perfectly. He was not so pleased when Father Daly said in a declamatory tone: ‘This son of yours is a perfect fool, Mrs Flynn. A perfect fool. Yes, he takes on to know things that men have spent years in colleges to learn. Why don't you get him a wife? The other night, I understand he was at this cross-roads of Drumnay sowing the seeds of doubt in the minds of decent men.'

‘But –' Tarry was about to defend himself, but his mother standing one side of the priest gave him a look of mingled hate and pity that killed the spirit in him.

‘Oh my God, father,' said the mother piteously.

‘Yes, Mrs Flynn, talking about religion to fools, that is what we spend years in colleges for.'

During a pause in the priest's remarks the woman was able to get in a bit of flattery. ‘I heard people to say, father, that out from the bishop you were the educatedest man in the diocese.'

Father Daly smiled. ‘The bishop is a very great scholar, Mrs Flynn, a very great scholar. You'll be doing a fine job for God and Ireland, Mrs Flynn, if you get this man married and settled down.'

‘Isn't that what I'd like, father,' said she. ‘But sure God help us I can't see much future for girls in this place at all. If the girls were married I'd be only too glad to see him bringing in a wife. None of the other marriageable men of this place believe in making a move at all. What do you make of them, father?'

Up against this problem of the decay of the will to continue the human species theology was helpless, and the priest changed the conversation sharply to the weather and the crops.

The woman was disappointed in the priest. She thought him as blind to the ways of the world as her son. She had wanted to raise the question of the Finnegans and the Carlins and other matters of political importance, but he was beyond such details.

‘We're having some trouble with the Finnegans,' said she.

‘Very hot tempered indeed,' said he casually.

Tarry sidled away and the woman and the priest began to discuss the fowl, a subject in which Father Daly took an interest.

Tarry listened from the doorway of the hen house, pretending to be examining the hinges of the door.

Eusebius was delaying up the road till the priest went away. Tarry took the scythe and went to the hay-field.

As he went off he could see the priest's face beam with pleasure. Father Daly liked to see a man going to do his day's work.

As far as he could now gather, his mother was trying to impress upon the priest the importance of getting the deed of the farm through as well as the lesser matters of keeping Joe Finnegan quiet and stirring the men to get married.

Death was in the atmosphere.

Only the yellow weeds in the meadow were excited by living.

That was May Callan now on her bicycle going off to work in the factory.

The next day Paddy Reilly sent a man with a pair of horses
and a mowing machine to cut Flynn's hay, that being the arrangement come to when Tarry helped at the spraying of Reilly's potatoes.

The day after that was the fair day and his mother and two sisters, Mary and Aggie, went to the town.

Bridie was in great humour at the idea of the other sisters leaving to start a restaurant in the town.

‘That'll be the cooking that slept without,' said she.

He went to the hay-field to make the hay, making it up in windrows, where it was light on the heights. Tomorrow he would have his sisters to help him. The dry earth under his feet was slippery, but the mown hay was filled with memories of life. The scent of the wild woodbine in the hedge bedrugged his mind until he felt no worry. He was a very tiny creature in the middle of a large field.

Beyond the hedge was Brady's, but today nobody was about the house. He concluded that they had gone to the fair. Even if they were at home he was determined to have no more to do with Molly.

He watched the bright yellow frogs leaping about on the dry earth, and the insects that crawled in the ruts. He got down on his knees and began to study a beetle that lay on its back. For no reason at all but only because it existed and he existed.

The hoarse caw of hungry crows sounded from the plantations in the Whitestone Park.

The whole world was gone to the fair and he had it all to himself.

That day when he went home for his dinner he found a letter awaiting him on the dresser. The letter was from his uncle Petey, who to Tarry's knowledge had only written about twice in twenty-five years. He was then, according to the letter, with a circus in Tullamore – Ringmaster.

What would Mrs Flynn say if she heard about that? The uncle hinted that he might call if in the vicinity.

The mother and two daughters came home filled with excitement. They had rented a shop in the main street and were planning to have a restaurant going for the next fair day.

‘Waiting for the bleddy geldings to make a move,' said the mother, ‘is nothing but foolishness. An odd bag of praties or a few heads of cabbage and little things like that will put a bone in your business,' she said, the feeling of prosperity in her expression. ‘No need for new-fangled cooking. Give the men then-fill and that's all they want. Lord O! Come here.'

She was looking out the back window. Tarry went to help her to look. Eusebius was coming up the road driving a number of bullocks before him. ‘One – two – three, four, five, six,' the mother counted. ‘That's the man will make a spoon or spoil a horn. I must go out and have a talk with him to see how much he gave for them.'

Tarry followed her out, for he wanted to have a word with Eusebius too.

‘Ah ha, it's you that's the right industrious boy that'll have a thing, not like this man of mine that I don't know what class of a sling-slang he is. You gave a brave penny for them, Eusebius.'

Eusebius let the cattle wander up the road and he continued talking with great enthusiasm when they broke into Callan's field of oats.

‘How much do you think, Mary?'

‘Did you give ten apiece, Eusebius?'

‘I did and the rest, Mary.'

‘And they're worth it. When they get a bit of grass they'll be wonderful animals, Eusebius. There's no doubt about it we're only in the ha'penny place with you, Eusebius. In the ha'penny place. You don't be at the curse-o'-God books, troth you do not – This man here –'