Tarry Flynn (19 page)

‘This man here says that there's no seed on it,' said the mother.

‘Anayther there is,' said Tarry.

Mary returned. Petey glanced maukishly at her as if trying to make up his mind. Perhaps he sensed that in the long run the whole thing was a joke, that when it would come to the test the girl would reject him. Perhaps he didn't want to be hurt and that was the cause of his hesitation.

‘We're as well be mooching off,' said Paddy rising.

‘Musha what's your hurry?' said the mother looking at the clock. ‘It's only half eleven; that clock's fast.'

‘Time for any dacent man to be shunting, Mary.'

The men rose. The mother went to the dresser and took two half crowns out of an egg cup. Going out the door she slipped them into Paddy's hand. Tarry thought her very generous, more generous than she ever was with him, and he grumbled when the men were gone.

‘It pays to be dacent,' said the mother. ‘A shut fist never caught a bird. If you had your way we wouldn't have a neighbour to bid us the time of day. You'd smoke the tail of an ass and not a word about it. Aggie, go out and bring in the vessel.'

They sat up by the fire holding an inquest on the late discussion. ‘That man's no good,' said the mother referring to Petey.
‘He'll
never take a wife, never, never, never.'

‘And who the hell said I'd take him?' snapped Mary. ‘I wouldn't take him if his bottom was paved with diamonds.'

‘And what do you mane to do? Yous all can't hang around this place. You might be glad of him yet.'

‘Cod,' said Mary.

‘Oh, yous are all like this man here, no sense or reason with any of yous.'

Tarry, sick of the whole thing, got up to go to bed. The mother said: ‘Take up them pair of trousers that's hanging behind the door that I patched for you.'

Looking at the pair of old trousers with patches like deal planks all over them Tarry burst out: ‘What in the Name of God do you want me to wear them oul' trousers for? To hell with them.'

The mother was ready to overflow in a rage. Tarry took the trousers. The mother said: ‘Young Paddy Reilly was here this evening after you were gone and he wants to know if you'd go up the morrow and give them a hand with the spraying of the praties on the high hill where they can't work the horse sprayer. I said you'd go. And don't be making a fool of yourself up there the morrow.'

Tarry's heart gasped. To think of his having to go in those patched trousers to help in the spraying of Reilly's potatoes was the last irony. His mother could design the most degrading jobs for him. If it had been making hay atself, but spraying potatoes and going up and down the drills with clay on his boots and the old ragged trousers, worse even than the pair with the big button on the fork. The fork of this pair looked as if they had been torn by mad dogs and patched by mad women.

He took the trousers in his hand and went up to bed, and as he lay awake he tried to imagine himself as a great poet. He had written one poem for Mary which he liked and he said it over in his head, while in his imagination the girl was standing before him listening to poetry with all the innocent enthusiasm of the convent-bred girl who never fathomed the design behind it.

You do not come down the road any more

Past the ash trees where the gap in the hedge revealed

Your blue dress the trimming to the bottom of Callan's field.

And the free-wheel of your bicycle like the whirr

Of the breeze in the black sallies. If you could see

The clay of time falling away from my feet

When you appeared this side of Callan's gate,

You'd come.

He couldn't get a good last line and he abandoned the day-dream altogether. He imagined the girl again and this time he recited another poem – as his own.

Oh I'd wed you without herds, without money or rich array

And I'd wed you on a dewy morning at day dawn grey.

She fell into his arms and he fell asleep.

‘Get up, you lazy loorpan, you.'

It was morning. After his day-dreams and night-dreams he awoke to the dreadful reality, the shame and degradation of the patchy trousers, and he himself no more than one of Reilly's servant boys.

He got out of bed, stooped to look out the window through the trees and though the sky looked cloudy he knew it would stay fine: it always did when he was wishing it to rain.

The mother was up. She wanted him to hurry on that he'd get his breakfast in Reilly's – ‘and what's the use going to a man for a half-day? The gassan said that they'd send a man to you when you'd be drawing in the hay. And a day with the horse and cart is not to be sneezed at.'

Tarry delayed. He took his breakfast before going. At least he would be spared the ignominy of going in red-raw to Reilly's at that hour of the morning. He would have to trust to luck at dinner time, and even if the girl were in then he might not care so much when he got into the hang of the place.

‘The book under the coat!' exclaimed the mother as he went out the door.

He turned and said: ‘I have no book. What book do you mean?'

‘Ach, ach. – And if you happen to meet one of these Finnegans up the road don't say one word. Last Saturday when I was at me confession I mentioned the trouble to Father Markey and he said them and Christians differ and that he was going to talk to them one of these days. There's not one of the priests that wouldn't put their hands under me feet. But you haven't the wit of a two-year-old child, always trying to belittle the people that 'id do you
a good turn. You're on the right side of Father Markey's book now and keep so.'

This kind of talk was better than anything to drive Tarry towards the day's disagreeable work, and he hurried out of his mother's range as quickly as he could. Nature must be like men in their loves – She likes to be resisted, not loved too easily.

Because Tarry was not interested in the beauty that was fluttering around him the more did the leaves dance and take on the simpleness that is so weird, and the more were the little hills queer with an ancient roguery. He did not love nature's works, but he was
in love
with them – and he wished he wasn't, for these things always made him sad, reminding of something far and forgotten in the land of Childhood before the Fall of Man.

He was impatient with the flirtatious gambolling of birds and trees, thinking as he was on the day ahead. But if he did not look at the hedges or the dust of the road these things looked at him.

Now he was caught in the stare of a huge boulder of whinstone that stood half way up the pass to Callan's house. The old people used to say that there were fairies under that stone which was one of the shoulder-stones hurled by Finn McCoole, and Tarry knew that there were fairies under it – real fairies, fairies of the imagination, bitter and ironic fairies too.

There had been several heaps of similar boulders in Eusebius' fields which were even more fairy-invested but Eusebius had cleared them all away. Tarry agreed with him in one way, for he too was ruthless, but at the same time he was beginning to think that Paddy Callan was a wiser man in the long run, though Paddy himself denied that he believed in the fairies and said that the only reason he didn't shift the boulder was its usefulness as a scratching post for the cattle.

The green bushes at the bend beyond Callan's gate overhung the road and the place in the dewy morning was a strange land in which a man could adventure. Going round this bend he always expected to meet someone or something strange. He let down his braces so as to give a devil-may-care appearance to the trousers. If a man could give the impression that he enjoyed wearing such patched things it would make them look funny.
It was his experience that women liked a man who was queer and funny and didn't care for anything. In this way the trousers were even worse looking. The fork hung down like the udder of a cow and the waist gave the impression that the wearer had a big belly. He tightened the braces again. He hurried past Cassidy's house and cut across the bottom of Cassidy's long meadow in case he might run into Joe Finnegan near the mouth of his lane. He looked across at Carlin's and his new place and got a thrill out of the ownership. He was so glad to see that the four ash trees on the near fence were still standing. He stood on the edge of a ditch to see if he could see his cattle, though his mother had told him that in future one of the girls would keep an eye on them till the other trouble blew over.

Nobody was up in Carlin's. He could hear the crow of the old cock in the stable and his knowledgeable mind reflected on the foolishness of the Carlins in keeping an old cock. Nothing but in-bred fowl about that place.

The memory of the night before flashed through his mind and he did not think it funny. He was disgusted with the attitude of his mother to an old man like Petey, and at her suggestion that she'd be prepared to give money with Mary if the marriage took place.

What was that? He listened and was almost certain that the cries came from Finnegan's; the man was beating his wife.

When he arrived at Reilly's potato field it looked as if the men had been at work for a long time. Three men with knapsack sprayers on their backs were climbing the steep hill before the house. The head of the household, a small wizened fellow, was rushing about the headland wearing a peculiar grin of authority, the joking face of a slave-driver.

‘Hah,' he squealed, ‘where were you before dinner?'

One would think he was paying me, thought Tarry as he tried to joke back. Another sprayer, which happened to be a leaky one, was put on Tarry's back. The old man stood at the barrel and filled it quickly with a small tin can. ‘Off you go now, don't say it was here you were kept,' said he.

Bored and miserable he climbed the hill, doing his best to
dream himself far away, famous, and all this world in its proper place.

At dinner as he sat at the long deal table among six men who ate with their knives and belched and smacked, he kept his eyes on the plate self-consciously and sipped from the mug of butter-milk without tilting his lips.

The girl, helped by her mother and a servant girl, served the food. She shoved the dishes of potatoes on to the table between himself and her brother and as she did so she rubbed against his shoulder.

He would never be able to recover from this day's shame.

Going home that evening with his heart in the gutter he met the girl and from her attitude he believed that she did not mind his ragged clothes or the fact that he was one of the working men. She could see through the appearances to the reality.

He was tempted.

He knew that ladies had often fallen in love with their work-men. He could well have a happy time with the girl if he could bring himself to accept that point of view. But it was impossible.

A man who has conquered can dictate his own terms, but this would be slavery.

What the girl said to him he hardly knew. He was listening to his own divided self raising a bedlam in his imagination.

He knew that he had insulted her.

‘Will you be at the dance on Sunday night?' she asked.

‘Dancing is an eejut's game,' he said. And he went on to expatiate on the folly of dancing. ‘What would you say to a bunch of horses that after a hard day's work spent the night galloping and careering round the field? I wouldn't
dream
of wasting me time at a dance.'

‘I'd love you to come,' she said sweetly.

‘I wouldn't bother me bleddy head,' he said with a loud laugh.

‘Still –' She gave him a gentle smile but he was determined.

‘It's only an eejut's game.'

‘Sunday night will be a big event, Tarry. I could see you there.'

‘Indeed you couldn't and don't be pretending you could,' he shouted. He kept in a twist to conceal as much of his patched clothes as possible.

‘You'll probably be there all the same,' she said.

‘I wouldn't be seen dead at that hall.'

… My God! my God! my God! he cried in his heart when they had parted. He knew that he had meant nothing of what he had said. It was all the bravado of a man in ragged clothes.

He wanted to fling himself prostrate on the ground and ask the earth's forgiveness for his stupidity. He talked to himself. He rehearsed the encounter in his mind and said the right things. He was soft. He let the girl mould him. And then the raw reality appeared through the day-dream and he cried again.

What is the matter with me? Why couldn't I say the right things?

He glanced back and the setting sun was shining on the back windows of the house. Silly sun to think that I could be comforted by your illusory gold.

‘– hell light down on you and that's my prayer.'

‘And me dead tired!'

The mother had been waiting at the gate.

‘Oh, it's you that's the darling boy,' she cried.

‘What's wrong now?'

‘What's wrong! Oh, I don't know what class of a man you are.'

‘Can't you tell me what's wrong and not be making a mystery of it?'

‘Go on in there and put on a dry pair of trousers and a clean shirt and I'll tell you.'

‘Tell me first.'

‘Go in and change your wet dirty clothes or will you drive me clane and dacent out of me mind… Ah ha, good evening, Paddy… '

Tarry went in to change his clothes. Shortly afterwards the mother came in.

‘Had you a hard day?'

‘I put on four barrels with a leaky sprayer and that was no joke climbing one of them hills,' he said appealing for pity. ‘What were you talking about outside?'

‘Aggie, put on the kettle and make tay for this man.'

The mother kept him in suspense. She discussed practically everything about the place in spite of all his attempts to get her to unfold the mystery. When he had his tea taken and everything had been discussed she said in a low voice: ‘What carry-on had yous at the cross the other evening?'