Tarry Flynn (21 page)

‘We're only in the ha'penny place with
him,
Mary.'

There was a hardness about Eusebius' speech and behaviour this evening. He gave the idea of power and seemed to be losing his soft feminine way of going on.

‘I'll see you later,' said he to Tarry who, when he got the opportunity, had a word in private with his neighbour. ‘I'll be down the road in about an hour.'

‘I wouldn't let them about me place,' said the mother later to her son, referring to Eusebius' cattle. She murmured to herself:
‘Five of as hungry a cattle as ever I saw. Must have bought them from some of the long-nosed scutch-grass farmers of Monaghan. Give us a hand off with this pot.' They shifted the pot. ‘Why don't you take pattern by Eusebius?' said the mother. ‘The song the blackbird sang to Paddy MacNamee is the truest song ever sung – “have it or do without it”. These pair will be going to Shercock one of these days to start an eating-house and in no time you'd have a free house here. I think you'll have rain, for I have this corn on me wee toe and it's at me again. I wonder would you get the razor blade and pare it for me…

‘Oh, that's the boy that'ill have a thing when we're all going hungry behind the hay. Mind now, don't draw the blood. I think, now, I put a sprag in the Finnegans' wheel over that law case. Between ourselves you could have worse neighbours. I'd rather them a damn sight than this sneaky Eusebius that you'd think butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Oh, it's you that could have the good time here. You know I'm not too contented about that solicitor, though Father Daly said he'd see about it. O, please God it will come all right. You that could be the independent man…'

The mother brought the crocks up from the dairy and cleaned them in the kitchen so that she could enjoy the gossip with her son who was now, in her own words, ‘coming to his milk'.

In a sing-song dreamy voice she began to build up a picture of his future for him.

‘I wouldn't prevent you bringing in a woman here and I wouldn't be too stiff about money either. Sure there's not one in the parish cares less for money than I do or would more like to see you with your pockets full when you went out – so long as you wouldn't spend it.

‘If the Lord spared us all you could have your nice pony and trap to bring us to Mass of a Sunday and devil than the beggars. I wouldn't have to be looking at them galloping past me the way they do. Mind you I wouldn't say a ha'porth to an odd little read of the books so long as you didn't make a male of them. This house will be empty shortly, these pair are going to Shercock next Wednesday – and in here again they'll never show their noses if
I can help it. Could keep a pair of horses and a pony all the year round… I wonder what the devil's father them people wanted to know about the hen. The same inspectors have us polluted, if it's not the washing of the eggs, it's the bulls. There's a wee grain of rice there in the pot if you'd like it. Oh, it's you that could tell them all to kiss your arse.'

She carried the two crocks to the dairy with an air of deepest contentment, her talk wandering on towards the fulfilment of her dream as she groped about in the dairy.

Outside it was raining on the leaves of the lilac and the stones in the street glistened. The world that stretched east was so sorrowful this evening; and yet so beautiful.

If a man could only get his desire he could enjoy life and all the magic that was in common earth. But Tarry was a sensitive man, not a countryman, but merely a man living. And life was the same everywhere. He walked in a maze through the street, leaned over the bars of the road gate. He was always expecting something. Down that silent road something or someone different, not of this world, seemed to be about to come. That bend hid – what did it hide? His destiny, perhaps.

On the Thursday following he drove into Shercock with a load of new potatoes and other things for his sisters. The sisters left home the day before. The evening before they were due to leave Petey Meegan called and did his best to persuade them to stay. There was no future in an eating-house in a small town like Shercock that hadn't even a railway running to it.

Mary pointed out that there were the buses now. And anyhow she wouldn't stay if he was thirty years younger ‘and that wouldn't be so very young.'

‘Go home and buy yourself a blessed candle,' said she to him.

‘I don't mind what you were up to this… ' he started to say but she cut him off.

‘You poor fool, it's the Last Sacraments you ought to be thinking of. You and your fifty! You're not trusting to sixty.'

‘It's a long road there's not a turn on,' said Petey going out the door with his tail between his legs.

‘A short one there's not a cow-dung on,' retorted Mary.
‘Thanks be to God,' she sighed when he had gone. ‘I never felt in such good form.'

‘I don't know so much about that,' said the mother.

‘You know well,' said the girl, ‘and it's not his age either, old as he is. There's something unnatural about that man. I heard Eusebius talking about his carry-on. I wouldn't like to eat the eggs his hens lay.'

Tarry, sitting on the load of meal, vegetables and new potatoes remembered that hint of Eusebius' and wondered what he meant.

Then he forgot as he turned at Drumnay cross-roads and the song of the axle changed to a low solemn hum on the dusty silent road.

It was the day after the market and the town was deserted. He delivered his load, bought the paper, a packet of cigarettes and three sweet buns. The sisters gave him tea.

He was bringing home two bags of cement and a couple of boards for the repair of the stables. In the hardware shop he met a man who said to him: ‘I saw a friend of yours in Longford a week ago, an uncle of yours, I think.'

That uncle was coming nearer to his native place. Mrs Flynn would not be pleased.

Father Markey's car was standing outside the post office. The priest himself came out as Tarry was passing on his way home and Tarry tried to look as
decent
as possible. The priest was making preparations for the big concert and dance that was to be held in the hall the following Sunday night and in the quietness of his proud heart Tarry had dreams of being invited by Father Markey to take part. He felt that he would be able to rehabilitate himself with Mary Reilly if he once got the chance to flower forth in his real colours of genius. In spite of what he might pretend the priest was hardly blind to the fact that Tarry was well above the average man in ability. He could scarcely pass him over. The thing would be too obvious.

The priest gave him a quick glance as he entered his car and he did not seem too unfriendly.

In his conversations with Eusebius and his own mother he
passed the coming event over as a thing unworthy of his consideration. ‘Just a bunch of poor ignorant people trying to amuse themselves,' was how he described it.

Privately he was dreaming, dreaming. This was a great cultural event and right into his barrow.

Sometimes he took an unholy pleasure in imagining that he had been passed over for one of the leading parts on the stage – it showed them all up as a crowd of ignoramuses. This self-pitying torture was too great to endure for long and he returned to his dreams. That had been going on for the previous two weeks since the news of the event had become warm. Day after day he had been expecting the curate's car to come up the road and the curate to ask him to get ready for the big role.

On the day that Father Daly had called he did himself fair justice, he thought. He had put himself well forward in the priest's good books. But as the big event approached and he was neither asked to take part nor was in possession of any inside information as to what was being planned, he had that awkward, embarrassing feeling that comes over a man when he finds that his talents are not indispensable to mankind. It seemed that the utterly ridiculous was about to happen – he not to be asked.

Saturday evening came. Meeting Eusebius – who, as far as he knew was in the same boat – he threw out a few hints about the concert in the hope that Eusebius would talk without realizing that Tarry was in the dark.

‘I hear all the tickets are gone,' said Eusebius.

‘What!' said Tarry.

‘Did you not get one?'

‘I wouldn't be seen dead at an affair of that kind. You didn't chance to hear who's going to be performing, Eusebius?'

‘Don't you know, the usual – all the educated people, the three schoolmasters, the stationmaster and the postman that's what-you-might-call the right singer. You know you want a bit of education to go up on a stage,' Eusebius said without irony. He was quite sincere.

He said he heard that notable artistes had been booked from places as far distant as Castleblaney and Dundalk – and the band
was coming all the way from Clones. Tarry was choked with grief and humiliation.

‘Wouldn't you be as good on the stage as any of them?' he managed to say.

‘Jabus now, sure wouldn't you be as good as me?'

Wasn't Eusebius the pitiful fellow, lacking any self-respect or regard for the inner qualities of a man. Tarry never breathed a word about his own ambitions, and all he could do as he went about his work that evening was to carry on the favourite and futile tradition of the Gaelic race – cursing the concert and the promoters of it. He wished that it might rain bucketfuls on the Sunday evening, and in his spiteful day-dream and ill-wish he saw two car-loads of the principal artistes in a fatal accident just outside the village. The accident would have to happen before the event so that they wouldn't have the pleasure of collecting the money. He hated Father Markey and he was determined to let the cat out of the bag as to his knowledge of the Church, and how It was not sound. He could ruin the Faith in that parish.

Eusebius hadn't told his companion everything, for the next evening when Tarry went down to the village, in the last forlorn hope that before it was too late the curate, the police, the schoolmasters and the stationmaster might see the light and realize the laughing-stock they were making of themselves, he found that Eusebius had been offered a job at the concert – carrying water from the pump to make tea for the visitors, and making himself generally useful. Eusebius had scarcely an eye for Tarry as he hurried to the pump beside the graveyard for ‘water for the tay for the swanks'.

‘And why the hell didn't you tell a fella? you're too bleddy mean.'

Eusebius laid down his two cans of water with the consciousness of the honour which had been conferred upon him and slowly lit a cigarette.

‘Didn't I tell you that Father Markey asked me three weeks ago, the day I was coming from the mill? You could be on this job if you had to mention it to me at the time.'

‘Who the hell said I wanted the job?'

‘There you are now,' said Eusebius very independently and picked up his cans.

Eusebius so proud pushed his way through the crowd that was rushing to and fro around the door trying to get in. The hall was packed. John Magan with his palms upraised came to the door and appealed to the crowd to go home ‘like good Catholics and go to bed'.

Tarry stood on the edge of the crowd and was pushed about more than most because he had his eyes on the vision of himself as he ought to have been – up on the stage reciting
The Outlaw of Loch Leine
.

Cars pulled up and men and women tremendous with airs of self-confidence. Car doors were banged, women were escorted by their men companions and they swept through the crowd around the door with a dominating flourish.

Through the open windows of the concrete hall the blare of the latest dance tunes came and the crooked little men, small farmers, standing in knots on the roadway chewing tobacco declared that the music was ‘damn good'.

‘And why wouldn't it and it after coming from Clones? Every man jack of that band gets a pound and a kick for his night.'

‘A week's wages,' said someone else. ‘Easy earned money.'

Tarry wanted much to go home but the old weakness which held him to the place of the insult kept him there waiting for kicks. He was hoping to be able to see Eusebius who might be able to get him a free pass in or even a ticket for money; so desperate was he at this moment that he would only be too glad to pay the half crown entrance.

Everybody that was anybody appeared to be coming that evening. The publican's wife, splay-footed, made her way through the throng at the door, the stationmaster and all his family came, there was a member of the County Council and others of fame. Tarry's ego receded till he could scarcely feel it at all.

A group of the village boys were groping along the hall trying to get a look in the windows and Tarry was tempted to join them. If he could get one look in he would be satisfied.

A sudden silence fell upon the rowdy crowd and Tarry, looking
round, found Father Markey pushing his way towards the door, carrying in his hand a valise. With him was the village schoolmaster's son and – Mary Reilly.

Tarry stood in to avoid being seen.

Now, thought he, I must get in at all costs. What was keeping that Eusebius? He couldn't but know the predicament Tarry was in. Tarry walked along the sidewall of the hall in utterest misery. He was uneasy too at the presence in the tobacco-chewing crowd of Larry Finnegan. Larry had been standing at the back of the crowd against the wall as still as a post but taking everything in. Tarry sensed danger. In the porch the priest and some other men were counting the money taken at the door.

‘Be a great stunt to rob him,' someone remarked.

‘Must have made thirty-five quid.'

Another car-load pulled up and emptied itself out. It appeared that some member of this car-load made a complaint when he got into the hall, for the curate came out and ordered the crowd to disperse at once. The crowd shivered a little and retreated a few yards but when the priest went back to count the rest of the money everyone had moved forward again. Next thing was someone at the back flung Tarry's cap into the porch. Tarry had a notion that it was Larry Finnegan but he pretended not to know, not wanting to raise a row. He went after his cap and as he did so the crowd surged forward and he was driven into the porch right into the small of Father Markey's back. The priest jumped up and Tarry tried to escape, but was jammed in a corner.