Tarry Flynn (24 page)

‘Isn't there the postman going back the road?'

‘Must be in Cassidy's he was.'

‘I thought it might be this rodney of an uncle of yours who was threatening to come back to lie up on us – we're not bad enough.'

Tarry was too deeply shocked over the news contained in the letter to be able to conceal his distress from his mother. She, however, thought that his nervousness was due to the scandal about Molly, which was only what she would expect.

‘Hang on that six-gallon pot till I make a drop of gruel for the calves and bring up a couple of goes of water from the bog-hole to wash the praties for the dinner. Oh, never during soot was there such a family as mine, one worse, than the other… The dirty pot-walloper,' she was referring to Molly now, ‘sure it's not that I'd care a hair if you had to keep away from her. And you needn't try to tell me that you did, for I saw you with me own two eyes no later than a month ago when you were running the turnips. How many a night last winter when she used to call here on her ceilidhe did you not sneak out and it used to make me
laugh the way you thought we didn't know. Yes, standing down there at the corner of the back garden with the rain pouring down, I could hear you sighing. Sure, you needn't think we're all blind. Yes, waiting for her to lave till you'd waylay her.'

Tarry could not deny this allegation, which was quite true.

If his mother only knew he was now rather pleased that she had this lesser of the two evils to engage her attention until such time as things straightened out. He was wondering if Eusebius wasn't behind this business of the land. He must have known something or he'd have been more jealous at the time of purchase. Tarry would inform his mother right away if he thought that she could find a way out of the dilemma.

He poured a bucket of water into the pot and the mother twisted the bellows' wheel. ‘If you'd tell me,' said she, ‘you might find that I'd be a better advice than some of these cute customers up the road with their ballads and the devil knows what. How well Eusebius never gets his name up with anything. He's in with everybody. Don't slash the water all over the floor. Oh, Eusebius knows how to mind number one.

‘And another thing,' said the mother while poking the fire under the pot, ‘it's about time we heard from that solicitor about the farm. One of these days I must go out meself and see him and find what's keeping him with that deed. I never liked the look of that man even if he is Father Daly's cousin. I hope you put the haggard in order for the hay atself.'

‘I did, I did.'

Bridie arrived at this point. She came in through the dairy and as she was closing the door behind her the mother called to her to bring up a plateful of barley meal to put on the pot. But Bridie had something on her mind and first rushed to the kitchen saying: ‘Did you hear about pet Tarry?'

‘What talk with you?' said the mother.

‘His name all over the country with Molly,' said Bridie.

‘He never had a haporth to do with the targer, Bridie, you whipster, you, and how dar' you say he had?'

Bridie shook her shoulders with a jeer and went for the meal. Her mother's voice pursued her: ‘Choke you and double choke
you, he never left a hand on the trollop. Have we not enough trouble without you putting in your cutty?'

Tarry went outside to think. He deceived himself into believing that he could think himself out of his various problems. He walked to the road gate consciously thinking – but nothing was happening in his mind. The threatened lawcase by the Finnegans had petered out, but no thanks to his thinking. There was a worldly wisdom which looked so much like stupidity that he could not tolerate it. He had seen and observed the worldly-wise men of the place with their platitudes and their unoriginality, and he knew that he could never bring himself to act as they acted. Eusebius was coming down the road whistling ‘Does Your Mother Come from Ireland'. Eusebius was a man who combined the stupidity of the world with a veneer of the other-world gaiety, and as Tarry waited for him to come up he was wondering how it was that a man could see all this worldliness and observe its workings, and yet be quite incapable of using it himself.

It was the same in matters concerning women. Nobody knew more than Tarry about the theories of love, and nobody was more foolish when it came to practising them.

‘Sound man, Eusebius,' said Tarry leaning over the gate.

Eusebius took the hay fork off his shoulder and used it to lean on. He glanced at the sky: ‘Do you think will it howl out?'

‘I think so,' said Tarry.

Tarry could see that his neighbour was bursting with delight at his misfortune, but he needed someone in whom to confide, and Eusebius had that soft, easy, feminine way with him which was so deceptive, so dangerous, and which could suck information out of the least confiding of men. Considering the matter, Tarry realized that Eusebius knew more about him than any other man or woman alive. How much did he know of Eusebius' private life? Practically nothing. On the other hand was there such a lot to know? Tarry consoled himself with the thought that there was not. And the surprising thing, thought Tarry between the words they were speaking, was that Eusebius never came without
some sensational gossip. He was always confessing his sins, but the sum did not add up to anything a man could remember.

‘Anything strange on your travels, Eusebius?'

‘Curse o' God on the haporth, Tarry, if you haven't something yourself. Why, did you hear something?'

Tarry opened the gate and went to the middle of the road where he stood and stretched his arms and yawned as if filled with the greatest indifference to Drumnay and Dargan and life in general. ‘I had a mind to draw in the hay the morrow,' he yawned.

‘Nothing like it, Tarry. Begod,' said Eusebius looking narrowly at Tarry, ‘I have a kind of notion you heard something funny. Don't be so bleddy close. Go and tell a fella.' He prodded the gravel with the prongs of the fork. ‘You heard something?'

‘Don't you know very well I'd tell you if I heard anything, Eusebius, don't you know that?'

‘You might,' nodded Eusebius doubtfully, and started to make a pattern on the road with the fork prongs.

‘Well, and it's hardly worth me while telling you, I was only thinking you might have heard something about the Brady one. She wasn't seen at Mass this past month, and people are talking, do you see?'

‘I see,' said Eusebius as if he were hearing something very sensational.

Tarry gave a sickly laugh designed to throw cold water on the story as a story. ‘And the funny thing is,' said he with the same unhealthy laugh, ‘some people were trying to say that I was seen with her. Wouldn't that make you laugh, heh? Of course it's all Charlie's doing – wouldn't you say?'

‘Jabus, that's a dread,' said Eusebius, ‘that bates the little dish as the fellow said. And are you doing anything about it?'

‘Sure the thing isn't worth talking about,' said Tarry fluttering his hands to show the limit of carelessness. ‘Sure, Holy God… '

He stopped talking to let Paddy Callan who was mooching suspiciously on the other side of the hedge, pretending he was examining his oats, but trying to hear what was being said – a habit of his – pass.

‘It's coming in nicely,' sang out Eusebius with his affected gaiety to Paddy. ‘It should be in for the Fifteenth, Paddy?'

‘What's that you said, young fella?' inquired Paddy.

‘You have a good crop of oats, Paddy, except that wee spot on the scrugan that's a bit short of itself.'

‘It'll have to be doing,' said Paddy philosophically.

Tarry as usual was impatient to get rid of the intruder and showed it by signs that would be obvious to the blindest ass.

Paddy took the hint, but before going winked at Eusebius as much as to say – ‘who'd think he had it in him?'

‘Yes –?' said Eusebius to Tarry.

‘There's no doubt about it I can't help laughing when I think of it. Wouldn't it make you laugh, Eusebius? now wouldn't it?'

Eusebius was very doubtful and disinclined to comfort his neighbour. ‘They say the woman's word is law,' he said.

‘Not always, Eusebius. You remember the case that was reported in the
Anglo-Celt
, and it was the man's word that was taken. Come down the road a bit, I don't want that mother of mine to be coming out. I'll fight it to the last ditch. I'll fight it.'

‘What else would you do? You'd need to get a first-class man.'

‘Oh, I know some of the young fellas, Eusebius, they wouldn't be so dear.'

Eusebius was emphatic that an experienced counsel would be necessary. ‘I could tell you your best plan only I don't know enough about the case, Tarry. There's no use in making up lies, you know.'

‘She can go to hell backwards,' declared Tarry,‘ they can get nothing off me. You can't take feathers off a frog, heh?'

‘You have Carlin's.'

‘Maybe I have.'

Eusebius put the fork on his shoulder and hurried off. ‘I might see you coming back,' Tarry called after him.

He could tell by the bones in the back of Eusebius' neck which moved like the hips of a gamy woman that his neighbour was a happy man – happy in a next-door neighbour's misfortune.
Eusebius danced along the road kicking the pebbles before him. Tarry had to admit to himself that had their positions been reversed he would have been happy too. Hating one's next-door neighbour was an essential part of a small farmer's religion. Hate and jealousy made love – even the love of land – an exciting adventure.

If any man of them in that country were to open his eyes, if the fog in which they lived lifted, they would be unable to endure the futility of it all. Their courage was the courage of the blind. But Tarry had seen beyond the fog the Eternal light shining on the stones.

As he was clearing away the stones and rubbish from the haggard he thought the scene so enchanting that he sometimes felt that there must be something the matter with him. The three big nettles that grew in the ring of boulders upon which last year's pikes of hay had stood were rich with the beauty of what is richly alive. The dust of last year's hay and straw was so lovely it could almost make him want to prostrate himself upon it. Stones, clay, grass, the sunlight coming through the privet hedge. Why did he love such common things? He was ashamed of mentioning his love; these things were not supposed to be beautiful.

He scraped the dusty straw with the shovel and looked with admiration at the clean brown floor of the haggard.

He left the shovel standing against the hedge and stared across the townland towards his own fields. He could see the blue glint of the spraying stuff on the leaves of the potatoes and far in the distance of his farm the movements of the mare and her foal on the far side of a thick hedge.

Old Molly Brady's shadow passed along the horizon at the back of her house; she looked contented enough. He turned his eyes to the hills on his left and saw with delight Callan's scabby field of turnips. He tried to find in the badness of this neighbour's crop a counter-irritant for his own troubles but it was no use.

He wandered into the cabbage garden to cool his mind in the ever-wet green cool leaves.

Under the broad leaves of cabbages how cool
Even in the middle of July the clay is –
Like ice-cream.

He nibbled at the caraway seeds that grew in the hedgerow running his mind back to the days of his peacefulness. It was like this that all terrible things happened to a man – casually. Thus a man might find himself with a broken neck or on trial for murder and he'd wonder how he arrived at such a place.

So far the affair with Molly was only a rumour. Tarry himself only knew about it from the gossip of the neighbours. He had seen the girl and her mother since the rumour had gone abroad, and on one occasion had nearly got up enough courage to put it to the test. But he was afraid of putting things to the test; it was better to live in doubt – which is the same as hope – than to have all one's doubts and fears proven well-founded.

The last time he had been speaking to the girl Molly was about three weeks before when she was in her usual good spirits, and her mother bantered him from the height behind the house as he spoke to Molly at the well.

It might be put down as a remarkable fact that during all this time it never occurred to Tarry, or his mother for that matter, that the Bradys might be expecting someone – even Tarry – to marry the girl; that is, if there was anything the matter with her at all. At this moment the thought that the girl did want to get married flashed through Tarry's thoughts, but his egotistical mind could no more entertain it seriously than it could anything in the shape of genuine sympathy for anyone but himself. He had moments in which he saw himself as he was, but he knew that he had his justification. There were some people who were fit for nothing else but to sympathize, but a man like himself had a dispensation from such side-tracking activities.

A man who had seen the ecstatic light of Life in stones, on the hills, in leaves of cabbages and weeds was not bound by the pity of Christ.

Or was he?

If he were, how much that was great in literature and art would be lost. He justified himself by the highest examples he knew of.

Is self-pity not pity for mankind as seen in one man? He had it all off. But, O God! if he could only transport himself down the years, three years into the future when all would be forgotten. The present tied him in its cruel knots and dragged him through bushes and briars, stones and weeds on his mouth and nose.

They got half the hay home the next day, and would have done better seeing that Paddy Reilly had sent a man with a hay slide, but the rain came on in the early evening when the pike was at its widest. Tarry, who had heard that the wireless had said the evening before that there would be no rain, was yet not caught entirely unprepared. He had three nice lumps of cocks of bottom hay in the meadow right beside the haggard, and with this bottom hay they were able to put a good heart in the pike. Over the mound they spread a winnowing sheet, and when they went in for their tea Tarry was trying to think of all the men whose hay pikes had been caught at their widest in the downpour and with no winnowing sheets or bottom hay near at hand.