Collected Stories (16 page)

He was leaning well over the bows, watching the rocks that fled beneath them, a dark purple. He rested his elbow on his raised knee and looked back at them, his brown face sprinkled with spray and lit from below by the accumulated flickerings of the water. His flesh seemed to dissolve, to become transparent, while his blue eyes shone with extraordinary brilliance. Ned half-closed his eyes and watched sea and sky slowly mount and sink behind the red-brown, sun-filled sail and the poised and eager figure.

“Tom!” shouted his father, and the battered old face peered at them from under the arch of the sail, with which it was almost one in tone, the silvery light filling it with warmth.

“Well?” Tom's voice was an inexpressive boom.

“You were right last night, Tom, my boy. My treasure, my son, you were right. 'Twas for the drink I came.”

“Ah, do you tell me so?” Tom asked ironically.

“'Twas, 'twas, 'twas,” the old man said regretfully. “'Twas for the drink. 'Twas so, my darling. They were always decent people, your mother's people, and 'tis her knowing how decent they are makes her so suspicious. She's a good woman, a fine woman, your poor mother, may the Almighty God bless her and keep her and watch over her.”

“Aaa-men,” Tom chanted irreverently as his father shook his old cap piously towards the sky.

“But Tom! Are you listening, Tom?”

“Well, what is it now?”

“I had another reason.”

“Had you indeed?” Tom's tone was not encouraging.

“I had, I had, God's truth, I had. God blast the lie I'm telling you, Tom, I had.”

“'Twas boasting out of the pair of ye,” shrieked Dempsey from the stern, the wind whipping the shrill notes from his lips and scattering them wildly like scraps of paper.

“'Twas so, Dempsey, 'twas so. You're right, Dempsey. You're always right. The blessing of God on you, Dempsey, for you always had the true word.” Tomas's laughing leprechaun countenance gleamed under the bellying, tilting, chocolate-colored sail and his powerful voice beat Dempsey's down. “And would you blame me?”

“The O'Donnells hadn't the beating of them in their own hand,” screamed Dempsey.

“Thanks be to God for all His goodness and mercy,” shouted Tomas, again waving his cap in a gesture of recognition towards the spot where he felt the Almighty might be listening, “they have not. They have not so, Dempsey. And they have a good hand. The O'Donnells are a good family and an old family and a kind family, but they never had the like of my two sons.”

“And they were stiff enough with you when you came for the daughter,” shrieked Dempsey.

“They were, Dempsey, they were. They were stiff. They were so. You wouldn't blame them, Dempsey. They were an old family and I was nothing only a landless man.” With a fierce gesture the old man pulled his cap still further over his ear, spat, gave his mustache a tug and leaned at a still more precarious angle over the bow, his blue eyes dancing with triumph. “But I had the gumption, Dempsey. I had the gumption, my love.”

The islands slipped past; the gulf of water narrowed and grew calmer, and white cottages could be seen scattered under the tall ungainly church. It was a wild and rugged coast, the tide was full, and they had to pull in as best they could among the rocks. Red Patrick leaped lightly ashore to draw in the boat. The others stepped after him into several inches of water and Red Patrick, himself precariously poised, held them from slipping. Rather shamefastly, Ned and Tom took off their shoes.

“Don't do that!” shrieked their father. “We'll carry ye up. Mother of God, yeer poor feet!”

“Will you shut your old gob?” Tom said angrily.

They halted for a moment at the stile outside Caheragh's. Old Caheragh had a red beard and a broad, smiling face. Then they went on to O'Donnell's who had two houses, modern and old, separated by a yard. In one lived Uncle Maurice and his family and in the other Maurice's married son, Sean. Ned and Tom remained with Sean and his wife. Tom and he were old friends. When he spoke he rarely looked at Tom, merely giving him a sidelong glance that just reached to his chin and then dropped his eyes with a peculiar timid smile. “'Twas,” Ned heard him say, and then: “He did,” and after that: “Hardly.” Shuvaun was tall, nervous, and matronly. She clung to their hands with an excess of eagerness as though she couldn't bear to let them go, uttering ejaculations of tenderness, delight, astonishment, pity, and admiration. Her speech was full of diminutives: “childeen,” “handeen,” “boateen.” Three young children scrambled about the floor with a preoccupation scarcely broken by the strangers. Shuvaun picked her way through them, filling the kettle and cutting the bread, and then, as though afraid of neglecting Tom, she clutched his hand again. Her feverish concentration gave an impression that its very intensity bewildered her and made it impossible for her to understand one word they said. In three days' time it would all begin to drop into place in her mind and then she would begin quoting them.

Young Niall O'Donnell came in with his girl; one of the Deignans from up the hill. She was plump and pert; she had been in service in town. Niall was a well-built boy with a soft, wild-eyed, sensuous face and a deep mellow voice of great power. While they were having a cup of tea in the parlor where the three or four family photos were skyed, Ned saw the two of them again through the back window. They were standing on the high ground behind the house with the spring sky behind them and the light in their faces. Niall was asking her something but she, more interested in the sitting-room window, only shook her head.

“Ye only just missed yeer father,” said their Uncle Maurice when they went across to the other house for dinner. Maurice was a tight-lipped little man with a high bald forehead and a snappy voice. “He went off to Owney Pat's only this minute.”

“The devil!” said Tom. “I knew he was out to dodge me. Did you give him whiskey?”

“What the hell else could I give him?” snapped Maurice. “Do you think 'twas tea the old coot was looking for?”

Tom took the place of honor at the table. He was the favorite. Through the doorway into the bedroom could be seen a big canopy bed and on the whiteness of a raised pillow a skeleton face in a halo of smoke-blue hair surmounted with what looked suspiciously like a mauve tea-cosy. Sometimes the white head would begin to stir and everyone fell silent while Niall, the old man's pet, translated the scarcely audible whisper. Sometimes Niall would go in with his stiff ungainly swagger and repeat one of Tom's jokes in his drawling, powerful bass. The hens stepped daintily about their feet, poking officious heads between them, and rushing out the door with a wild flutter and shriek when one of the girls hooshed them. Something timeless, patriarchal, and restful about it made Ned notice everything. It was as though he had never seen his mother's house before.

“Tell me,” Tom boomed with mock concern, leaning over confidentially to his uncle and looking under his brows at young Niall, “speaking as a clergyman and for the good of the family and so on, is that son of yours coorting Delia Deignan?”

“Why? Was the young blackguard along with her again?” snapped Maurice in amusement.

“Of course I might be mistaken,” Tom said doubtfully.

“You wouldn't know a Deignan, to be sure,” Sean said dryly.

“Isn't any of them married yet?” asked Tom.

“No, by damn, no,” said Maurice. “Isn't it a wonder?”

“Because,” Tom went on in the same solemn voice, “I want someone to look after this young brother of mine. Dublin is a wild sort of place and full of temptations. Ye wouldn't know a decent little girl I could ask?”

“Cait! Cait!” they all shouted, Niall's deep voice loudest of all.

“Now all the same, Delia looks a smart little piece,” said Tom.

“No, Cait! Cait! Delia isn't the same since she went to town. She has notions of herself. Leave him marry Cait!”

Niall rose gleefully and shambled in to the old man. With a gamesome eye on the company Tom whispered:

“Is she a quiet sort of girl? I wouldn't like Ned to get anyone rough.”

“She is, she is,” they said, “a grand girl!”

Sean rose quietly and went to the door with his head bowed.

“God knows, if anyone knows he should know and all the times he manhandled her.”

Tom sat bolt upright with mock indignation while the table rocked. Niall shouted the joke into his grandfather's ear. The mauve tea-cosy shook; it was the only indication of the old man's amusement.

T
HE
D
EIGNANS'
house was on top of a hill high over the road and commanded a view of the countryside for miles. The two brothers with Sean and the O'Donnell girls reached it by a long winding boreen that threaded its way uncertainly through little gray rocky fields and walls of unmortared stone which rose against the sky along the edges of the hill like lacework. On their way they met another procession coming down the hill. It was headed by their father and the island woman, arm in arm, and behind came two locals with Dempsey and Red Patrick. All the party except the island woman were well advanced in liquor. That was plain when their father rushed forward to shake them all by the hand and ask them how they were. He said that divil such honorable and kindly people as the people of Carriganassa were to be found in the whole world, and of these there was no one a patch on the O'Donnells; kings and sons of kings as you could see from one look at them. He had only one more call to pay and promised to be at Caheragh's within a quarter of an hour.

They looked over the Deignans' half-door. The kitchen was empty. The girls began to titter. They knew the Deignans must have watched them coming from Maurice's door. The kitchen was a beautiful room; woodwork and furniture, homemade and shapely, were painted a bright red-brown and the painted dresser shone with pretty ware. They entered and looked about them. Nothing was to be heard but the tick of the cheap alarm clock on the dresser. One of the girls began to giggle hysterically. Sean raised his voice.

“Are ye in or are ye out, bad cess to ye!”

For a moment there was no reply. Then a quick step sounded in the attic and a girl descended the stairs at a run, drawing a black knitted shawl tighter about her shoulders. She was perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, with a narrow face, sharp like a ferret's, and blue nervous eyes. She entered the kitchen awkwardly sideways, giving the customary greetings but without looking at anyone.

“A hundred welcomes.… How are ye? … 'Tis a fine day.”

The O'Donnell girls giggled again. Nora Deignan looked at them in astonishment, biting nervously at the tassel of her shawl. She had tiny sharp white teeth.

“What is it, aru?” she asked.

“Musha, will you stop your old cimeens,” boomed Tom, “and tell us where's Cait from you? You don't think 'twas to see your ugly puss that we came up here?”

“Cait!” Nora called in a low voice.

“What is it?” another voice replied from upstairs.

“Damn well you know what it is,” bellowed Tom, “and you crosseyed expecting us since morning. Will you come down out of that or will I go up and fetch you?”

There was the same hasty step and a second girl descended the stairs. It was only later that Ned was able to realize how beautiful she was. She had the same narrow pointed face as her sister, the same slight features sharpened by a sort of animal instinct, the same blue eyes with their startled brightness; but all seemed to have been differently composed, and her complexion had a transparency as though her whole nature were shining through it. “Child of Light, thy limbs are burning through the veil which seems to hide them,” Ned found himself murmuring. She came on them in the same hostile way, blushing furiously. Tom's eyes rested on her; soft, bleary, emotional eyes incredibly unlike her own.

“Have you nothing to say to me, Cait?” he boomed, and Ned thought his very voice was soft and clouded.

“Oh, a hundred welcomes.” Her blue eyes rested for a moment on him with what seemed a fierce candor and penetration and went past him to the open door. Outside a soft rain was beginning to fall; heavy clouds crushed down the gray landscape, which grew clearer as it merged into one common plane; the little gray bumpy fields with the walls of gray unmortared stone that drifted hither and over across them like blown sand, the whitewashed farmhouses lost to the sun sinking back into the brown-gray hillsides.

“Nothing else, my child?” he growled, pursing his lips.

“How are you?”

“The politeness is suffocating you. Where's Delia?”

“Here I am,” said Delia from the doorway immediately behind him. In her furtive way she had slunk round the house. Her bland impertinence raised a laugh.

“The reason we called,” said Tom, clearing his throat, “is this young brother of mine that's looking for a wife.”

Everyone laughed again. Ned knew the oftener a joke was repeated the better they liked it, but for him this particular joke was beginning to wear thin.

“Leave him take me,” said Delia with an arch look at Ned who smiled and gazed at the floor.

“Be quiet, you slut!” said Tom. “There are your two sisters before you.”

“Even so, I want to go to Dublin.… Would you treat me to lemonade, mister?” she asked Ned with her impudent smile. “This is a rotten hole. I'd go to America if they left me.”

“America won't be complete without you,” said Tom. “Now, don't let me hurry ye, ladies, but my old fellow will be waiting for us in Johnny Kit's.”

“We'll go along with you,” said Nora, and the three girls took down three black shawls from inside the door. Some tension seemed to have gone out of the air. They laughed and joked between themselves.

“Ye'll get wet,” said Sean to the two brothers.

“Cait will make room for me under her shawl,” said Tom.