Fourfront, page 7
The boy would often visit Uggool, crossing over the gardens. He’d give Peadar a hand. He’d help Bláthnaid as well. He’d bring the piglets their feed and the calves too, muzzling them or using cow-dung so they wouldn’t be sucking one another.
He’d look after the children, bringing them to the woods nearby to play, hunting or playing hide-and-seek. They’d be brought to the house and given bread and jam. One day the boy was given a present out of the blue – not a biscuit from a box or a sweet from a bag. A duck! A duck with the oddest colours. Black and white. The wings and the tail were black. But the red crest on the head, around the eyes, that was the most peculiar thing of all.
Bláthnaid tied the legs with strips of cloth and put it into a bag – the body – and secured the bag with string. The boy took off with his package over the gardens, the long neck of the duck outstretched; the beak and the eyes.
“Well, well, well!”
* * *
Bláthnaid Barrett is still alive. She still lives in her house in Uggool, one of her sons, his wife and their children under the same roof. The boy himself is married and lives in Kylebroughlaun. Bláthnaid is the oldest person in the region. She says she’s had a good, hard life.
translated by Gabriel Rosenstock
A Fateful Day
Seeing that I hadn’t done my lessons the evening before or in the morning either I hadn’t noticed that my school-bag was missing until I came in from setting snares, and by then it was past time for me to have left for school. Now, in a great hurry, and up in a heap, I frantically searched for it. The awful thing was that the inspector was to be in the school that day and, anyway, Mrs McSurly, the schoolmistress, was always very cross with anyone who was late.
I threatened to stay at home, all my brothers and sisters having gone for ages, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it.
“Off with you, now, bag or no bag!” she said, she in a fit that I went out into the gardens unbeknownst to her; she having given me new socks and new sandals for the big occasion.
I said that she was to blame for my bag because I had left it on the table, and that I wouldn’t go to school without it. But I did. I set off peevishly and I felt very odd: each hand as long as the other and nothing in them.
I walked slowly at first, pretending that I didn’t give a damn, but it wasn’t long before I began to run. There was a new surface on the boreen, it was rough and it was hard to run or walk on it with any comfort. As well as that I was complaining madly to myself at not having done my lessons, especially seeing that I had told myself firmly that I would do them in the morning.
I recalled times before when I was in a fix but this was the biggest fix yet. The phrase “no matter how long the fox escapes he is caught in the end” kept coming into my head and I felt that this was the time, surely, that I’d be caught.
I started to run again but suddenly I hit the top of my sandal against a stone on the road and a bit of the sole tore off. I also hurt my big toe.
“Blast it!” I said.
I considered hiding in the mountain.
Another thought struck me, however: I’d pick a bunch of flowers for the teacher and may be, then, she wouldn’t be too hard on me. Immediately, I was very taken by this idea and a great hope ran through me. On many mornings girls brought flowers – daffodils, crocuses and other types of flowers – and the teacher put them in jamjars on the window-sil.
I went into the mountain and I pulled some orchids and other flowers, blue ones and yellow ones, that I didn’t know their names; pulling them as deep down as I could so that the shanks would be as long as possible.
Coming near the school, however, my enthusiasm started to wane. Down on the plain I felt ridiculous. I was thinking that my flowers weren’t flowers at all, only weeds. I thought about throwing them away, but for some reason I held on to them. It was a great relief, at any rate, to see that there wasn’t any strange car outside the school.
The teacher took my present and immediately threw the flowers into the rubbish-bin. She grabbed me by the hair and shook my head backwards and forwards. From the drawer of her table she took out one of her sticks, the hazel-rod, and gave me two slaps.
“What’s the use talking to you?” she said.
But she didn’t notice that I hadn’t my school-bag and that was the main thing.
Down I went to my old place at the back of the class. I wasn’t much upset. The slaps didn’t bother me a bit, and as for her throwing the flowers in the bin it was more or less what I expected: that they weren’t flowers at all even if they looked nice. If flowers grew that easily who would be without them?
As I sat there, looking sideways into my companion’s book, I didn’t feel bad at all. I felt safe. I was sweating but that was no bother. I felt great that so much of my worry was over.
I startled again, however, when Mionla McKinane was asked to teach the class. Mrs McSurly did this sometimes but it was an exercise that I didn’t like. Although Mionla was far easier than Mrs McSurly I resented her. She was only one of the class herself and I always felt humiliated when she acted as teacher.
She was an engineer’s daughter, new to the parish. They lived in a big house with lots of strange shrubbery around it, near enough to us, and they had a motor car.
My father liked them, he said that they were kind people and that there wasn’t a bad thing about them, that they were good neighbours and all. Sometimes he would send milk to their house for good turns they had done, like lifts to town in the car. But I couldn’t like them. I would never forget the time that Mr McKinane had said, in Mionla’s presence, that there were potato-skins in the milk; she picking out a little bit of boiled skin as proof.
I didn’t like their company at all, because they were much richer than we were and they were far better dressed. Mionla’s clothes were far prettier than the clothes worn by my sisters. And, at this time, they were negotiating with my father to buy our garden by the river. They were adamant about it and my father kept saying that he needed the money.
At the teacher’s advice Mionla put us doing dictation and this was the devil altogether. I hated dictation.
For me dictation equated with the teacher’s thorny blackthorn stick on the top of my head. I was that bad at spelling.
However, Mionla was scarcely in charge of us when Mrs McSurly stopped her again. She took charge of us herself. In no time at all a knock came on the door, a gentle knock, and the door opened wide. A big tall man walked in. He wore a fine suit and carried a big leather bag in his hand.
He spoke kindly to Mrs McSurly and he shook hands with her. We stood and then we sat. The word “inspector” was beating loudly, like a clock, in each of our hearts.
After a short conversation with the teacher the man sat down at the table and he started to write with a fountain-pen in his notebook.
Everyone was well-mannered. Mrs McSurly was never as nice but we could see a glint in her eye that told us that this was the big moment; that anyone who failed would be in trouble, that he would lose the grant and that, may be, he would be expelled from school for ever.
When the inspector rose from the table and when he came over to us all our hearts started to beat violently. We were full of nerves. None the less I couldn’t but notice his physique. He was a fine man. Standing there before us he even looked bigger than when he first came in. He had a grand head of hair and it was nicely combed. His shoes shone. His trousers were finely creased. It was the best-creased trousers that I had ever seen. The crease on each leg, front and back, as sharp as a knife.
He greeted us in a very kind way but, nevertheless, his strangeness frightened us. Only that I was preoccupied with the creases in his trousers I’d be shaking with fear. They were, surely, the most noticeable creases that I had ever laid eyes on.
Suddenly Tadhg was called up and he was quietly told to go to the shop for a sweet cake, and to fetch a can of water from the well on his way back.
For whatever reason Tadhg was the teacher’s pet. It was he who was asked to do every message. I resented this, because Tadhg was my younger brother; although, by this time, I was getting used to it. We were in the one class and the teacher used often annoy me by saying: “Why can’t you be a little more like your young brother?”
Today, at any rate, I regretted whatever misdemeanour she had seen in me because if I was Tadhg, maybe, then, it would be me who would be free at this time.
I heard the crows calling in the big trees in the Nursery at the side of the school as if scolding someone for having disturbed them. That was Tadhg. Wasn’t Tadhg the lucky fellow? It would be lovely to be free, standing at the bottom of the trees looking up at the crows. This was a pastime that I really liked. I would spend lots of time looking up at them, flying from tree to tree, from branch to branch, making their loud commotion.
I loved their raucous noise. I loved their clamour. Their noisy bedlam was most pleasant to my ear. “Caw! Caw! Caw!” It was one of the nicest bird-noises. Fresh! It seemed to gush forth. Vibrant! Dawn! Dew! Daybreak! It was the epitome of freedom.
A pang of sadness came over me. I wished I had my school-bag. I wished I had my own book in front of me. It would be ages before it was three o’clock. But we’d have a break for lunch.
That wasn’t much good. What was a break like that compared to Tadhg’s freedom? Lunch-break was an ordinary break, everyone was free, but the freedom given to Tadhg was special. It was like being lucky or wise. That freedom was much nicer.
The teacher started to prepare some tea for the inspector. She boiled the water in a kettle on the small stove and wet the tea, and she cut the sweet cake into slices.
I watched her cut the cake. I inspected the slices. She cut the slices into halves.
The cake was browner outside than inside. Outside it was the colour of honey. Delicious, I thought to myself. My mouth desired a bit. If only I could eat a half-slice!
An inspector’s cake, I said to myself. I thought that it must have been made especially for an inspector because I had never before seen a cake like it. What a beautiful cake!
If I was an inspector I’d be eating cakes like that. I’d be eating heaps of cakes. Cut nicely like this one.
I might be an inspector. Then, I’d be dressed like a gentleman. I’d have a leather bag in my hand and I’d have shiny creases in my trousers. And I’d be gorging sweet cake in every school.
A piece of paper was sent from person to person to me: telling me that I had caught a hare in a snare. Alive! Tadhg was told the news in the village. My father had taken him in and he was being kept tied in my bedroom until I came home.
The whole class was excited. Everyone was looking back at me. I was delighted. Absolutely thrilled. I found it hard to believe. Which ever snare it was? Hares rarely got caught in snares. It must be one of the three I had set in the mountain, I thought. Brilliant! A hare was much better than a rabbit.
I envisaged the hare in my mind: out in the mountain, long ears, listening attentively, looking about him. Running off a short distance, stopping and sitting back. Sitting back on his bottom. Stretching himself upwards, listening and looking. His short front paws as if ready to go boxing.
A red hare! Of good appearance! His fur showing the sign of full health and vigour. Because of his shorter front paws a hare could run faster up hill than down hill. Downhil he would topple over if going too fast.
I didn’t fear the inspector any more. Nor did I fear Mrs McSurly. The inspector could ask me any question he liked. She could beat me all she liked. Neither of them had a hare, and it was unlikely that they ever would have one. But I had. In my bedroom.
The way the inspector was going it was unlikely that he’d get as far as me before lunch-break. But, of course, there was always a fear that he would. Because he didn’t assiduously follow any order. That was the trouble.
Every time, however, that I felt in danger all I did was to remember my hare at home and I was immediately filled with renewed confidence. To such a degree that I could endure any pain, insult or slap.
By lunch-time I regretted that I hadn’t been examined. I’d be finished, then. But, anyway, my hare was at home waiting for me.
After lunch it appeared that the inspector was hurrying. He was rapidly closing in on me. I felt as if I was being trapped in an evershrinking patch of ground. I was calling on my hare but somehow his presence didn’t appear to possess the same magical power as before. He, too, was frightened. I felt like the hare myself. I kept my head down.
When the inspector came to my turn I was almost stuck to the seat; like an ostrich hoping against hope not to be seen. Even my eyelashes scarcely moved. Although my body stayed rigid my brain prayed. I prayed most fervently, requesting and beseeching, that in some strange way I might be missed.
I wasn’t. I was caught. I raised myself in a stooped position and I felt more exposed than I ever felt in my life. My shape was often silhouetted against the sky as I walked the windy mountain boreen but that was no exposure compared to this. Every eye staring at me. I madly desired to escape, to run away. To be again on that lonely windy boreen. What a freedom that would be compared to this hot humiliating prison.
Although I was considered a big strong lad, full of energy and strength if I was itself, my knees were knocking together. I was almost pissing in my pants with fright, seeing all those faces making fun of me.
At first when the inspector called my name I managed a kind of smile, a wry distorted smile, but in no time at all I was fecked; I couldn’t smile or answer, although he was nice and pleasant. All I wanted was to be quickly put out of my misery. That he would see at once that I wasn’t capable of answering any question that he might ask me.
Suddenly Mrs McSurly whispered something to him.
“He’s from Tawnaghalougha!” I heard her say.
For some reason or other the inspector thought that significant. He immediately took a new interestinme. He turned his book to meand he asked:
“What animal is that?”
“A hare!” I said.
“Say that in Irish!” he said.
“Giorria!” I said.
“‘Giorr-i-a!’” he repeated after me and he wrote it like that on the blackboard. Then he got the whole class to repeat it as I had said it.
“Where does a hare sleep?” he asked.
“In a red bed!” I answered.
“‘In a red bed!’” he repeated. “I leaba dhearg!”
We talked some more and I was dying to tell him about my hare at home, but I didn’t.
Then he changed the subject.
“Are there fish in that lake up there?” he asked.
“There are!” I answered.
“What type of fish?” he asked.
“Salmon and white trout!” I answered.
“What do you call ‘white trout’ in Irish?” he asked.
“Liatháin!” I answered.
“‘Liatháin!’” he said after me.
When he was finished he handed me sixpence and I was as happy as if I were in Heaven. I said to myself that I’d buy a yellow orange with the money and that I’d give it to the inspector. He’d give me another sixpence and I’d do likewise with it.
But that wasn’t what I did. Instead I bought myself a bag of sweets.
On my way home, east of the village, I went to take a drink of water from the tap and suddenly I spotted my black school-bag on the green grass beside the wall. Immediately I remembered having left it there the evening before.
translated by the author
Precious Moments
It was the morning of the day of the Twelfth-night.
In spite of the severe cold Mary Faherty rose early, as early as any other winter’s morning. She was expecting to witness a heavy coat of snow on the ground because of the grey appearance of the sky the evening before; the odd snowflake falling when she was going to bed.
Standing in her bare feet she viewed the wide expanse of countryside from the small window of her bedroom. The day was only dawning. There was, indeed, a fine coat of snow outside.
Everywhere and everything, with the exception of the lake, was shrouded white. The bogs, the fens, the marshes – right up to the banks of the lake – they were all white. Just two colours to be seen: the white of the land and the grey of the lake and the sky.
The grey water didn’t look healthy. It looked sick, like a huge trough of stagnant liquid. But that didn’t bother Mary. The water was calm. Not a ripple on it. Unlike most other winter mornings there wasn’t the slightest whisper of breeze, even from the west gable-end of the house.
The whiteness pleased her. Snow always pleased her. Ever since she was a child. Every winter she longed for snow. Not just a sprinkle of snow but a good, healthy, heavy, fall. Snow at Christmas-time, that was how God wanted it, she felt.
Snow transformed an area. Making it pure and beautiful. It brought a blessing with it, a joyful silence. Permitting one to talk at one’s comfort with the Creator.
“Blessed be God most high!”
She raked out the live embers of the old fire and lit a new fire of turf: putting two sods lying on top of each other at the back, the embers in the middle, and a semicircle of standing clods by the perimeter.
She hung the kettle of water over the fire, and then she went on her knees on the floor, her elbows resting on the seat of a chair, her back to the fire, saying her prayers.
When she had eaten a bite, and swallowed a drop of tea, she would go out, “this blessed morning”, and let out the dog and hens. There wouldn’t be much for the hens to pick but they could scratch the snow and, anyway, she’d enjoy the harsh healthy air on her face; inhaling a few hefty draughts of it into her lungs.
Some blobs of snow fell down on her the moment she opened the door. Some wrens were flying about. Such tiny birds! But lovely. They had come out of the eaves of the thatch. She regretted that St Stephen’s Day was over.
