A Son of Aran (3 page)

‘Don't leave it too long,' she whispered as they said goodbye at Kilronan pier. She waved and blew him a kiss as she boarded the Dun Aengus where it was berthed in deep water. He returned to the cottage, lonesome and downcast—firstly, because of his mother's absence, and now that Saureen had departed.

‘Cheer up,' Máirtín said when, concerned as ever for his friend, he dropped in with a bottle of
poitín
(whiskey). ‘Have a shot of this, it will put new heart into you,' he urged.

As they sat around the dying embers of the hearth fire late into the night and finished the bottle of spirits, Peadar poured out his feelings of loneliness.

‘I'm going to leave Aran and live in Galway for a year or two. I'm sure I'll get a job in MacDonacha's fertiliser factory—they're always looking for able-bodied workers. I've grown fond of Saureen; I think she might have similar feelings towards me. In Galway we'd be close to one another and if she agrees I'd like to marry her. Will you look after the house and keep it safe from the storm? And will you take charge of the bit of ground and the cattle until I get back? As for the hooker, I'm sure you'll get someone to work with you at the fishing. The rest I'll leave to your own discretion. I'll write to you from time to time; you have my address in Galway if you need me.'

Máirtín listened to all that Peadar told him.

‘Of course, I'll look after things for you as long as you want,' he answered as he gave him a firm handshake. ‘I wish you the best of luck in Galway. I hope you find happiness there. It's only natural that you should want the company of another woman after losing your mother, but I think you shouldn't rush into any hasty decision about marriage— there'll be lots of time for that.'

MacDonacha's foreman took stock of this well-built, brawny-armed, man who approached him for a job in the fertiliser factory.

‘Hm, I reckon he'll fit in well here. I need strong able-bodied workers who can lift two-hundred-weight bags of fertiliser and stack them high in the store—we have lots of townsmen who can use a shovel, but we sure can do with some stronger men for the heavier work.'

‘You're from Aran, aren't you,' he commented. ‘We've had islanders working here in the past. We were sorry to lose them when they moved to other employment. You may start to-morrow on a month's trial. If you prove your worth we'll probably keep you on.'

Peadar found a place to live in Shantalla within walking distance of the factory; he started work the following day. Two pounds ten a week wasn't a great wage but it was enough to keep him going for the present. If MacDonacha's found him suitable they might increase his pay in the course of time. He renewed his acquaintance with Saureen. They met in the evenings whenever her round of social engagements permitted. They went for long walks along the promenade to Blackrock, and shared a drink in one or other of the hostelries en route before he left her back to her house on Long Walk. She never invited him beyond the front door— he hesitated to ask her why.

‘All in good time,' he thought to himself.

Occasionally as he retraced his steps along the Long Walk, he met a well dressed gentleman in a flowing black coat and tall hat sauntering in the opposite direction, wielding a silver mounted cane as he walked. At work some associates to whom he told his story remarked, ‘You'd need to watch out for yourself on the Long Walk at night; some unsavoury characters are known to frequent that place.'

‘And what would bring them down there?' asked Peadar. ‘Surely they could as easily take the air in Claddagh Park or along Sea Road?'

‘I don't think it's sea air those bucks are after,' one man said laughingly. The others hung their heads and didn't respond. Although he laughed with him, Peadar was puzzled by the man's remark, but he didn't want to show his ignorance of what might attract men to the area. Saureen was dismissive when he told her what the man had said.

‘Don't be listening to those fellows,' she said, ‘they don't know their arse from their elbow. What would they know about people on the Long Walk or their business?'

She didn't allow Peadar's return to interfere with her routine. They met on a regular basis; sometimes they went to the Town Hall cinema. On one occasion she took him dancing to The Hanger. Peadar wasn't conversant with modern slow waltzes and foxtrots but, whenever a céilidhe and old time dance was called, he was able to hold his own in battering the floor. Saureen, proud to show him off, cut a dash as she paraded him before her acquaintances.

‘An unusual association!' one woman was heard to comment. ‘I wonder what she's up to—a city woman taking up with a man from the Aran Islands? There's more here than meets the eye.'

Tongues wagged. Oblivious to all that was whispered or said, Peadar was glad to be seen in her company. He was happy in his new environment. He was close to the love of his life. The more he saw of her the more he wanted to spend his life with her. On a Sunday in September, arm in arm, they climbed among tufts of blooming heather on the hills west of Bearn, and gazed in rapture across Galway Bay to Ballyvaughan and Black Head. Far out to sea the Aran Islands, shrouded in a delicate haze of blue, appeared to rise from the sea like scenes from a fairy tale.

‘Somewhere out there is Hy Brasil, the Isle of the Blest,' Peadar told her, as he related the legend to her.

‘I'd like to search for that island some day,' he added with passion. ‘I know it's out there somewhere. My mother claimed it was where my father went. He was so happy there he never returned.'

In a spontaneous moment of wellbeing he whispered, ‘Saureen, will you come with me to Hy Brasil? I'd like if we could find the place and be together on it. I love you very much. Will you marry me?'

‘Of course I will, Peadar,' she replied. ‘I thought you'd never ask me.'

For weeks afterwards Peadar floated on air. He hadn't used his lovely tenor voice since his mother's death; now he sang quietly to himself as he carried bags of fertiliser in MacDonacha's factory and on his way to work. He improvised the words of his favourite song, ‘Eileen, my Eileen,' to read ‘Saureen, my Saureen.'

He sang it to her whenever they were alone:

Saureen, my Saureen,

Wait for me, Saureen.

Delighted with his patronage, she even tried to join in. ‘That song has a ring of sincerity,' she thought.

‘When will we have the big day?' she asked, when the traditional period of mourning for Peadar's mother was over. ‘I'd like if we were married in spring.'

‘Will we go back to Aran then?' Peadar asked. ‘I'd need to do a few things with the cottage and to bring a fresh supply of turf from Connemara for there's no fuel on the island.'

‘Peadar, love, that might be a problem. I need to be in Galway on account of my business. I could fix up my place on the Long Walk or, if you'd prefer, we could go back to the house in Sickeen where I was born—there's nobody living there now. Don't worry about turf—I'll keep you warm wherever we are.'

This was the first indication Peadar had that they might not be going back to Aran.

‘What was this about business?' She had never before mentioned that she had a business.

He was reluctant to inquire in case it upset their relationship; he wouldn't want anything to come between them at this stage.

‘I suppose I'll have to settle for whatever you want,' he said, ‘but I'll need to go back to Aran frequently, and to stay there for a week or two at a time, planting and reaping. That's where my home is and that's where I want to settle. It holds many memories for me. It's where I want to bring up our family if we are blessed with children.'

‘Don't worry, Peadar, I'll come to Aran in my own time when I get things settled in Galway.

Peadar had to be satisfied. Their marriage on the twentieth of April, 1934, was a quiet affair. Festy and a waitress friend of Saureen agreed to be their witnesses. After the ceremony in the parish church the group adjourned to the Globe Hotel where they drank glasses of whiskey and pints of porter to wash down a sumptuous meal of bacon, cabbage and potatoes. In his best tenor voice Peadar entertained the company with renderings, (as gaeilge), of An Spailpín Fánach
,
Thíos i Lár an Ghleanna and other Irish favourites.

‘What could be better than this?' he exclaimed to Saureen when they boarded the evening train to Clifden. ‘Are you happy?' he asked, as they divested in their bedroom in the Atlantic Hotel.

‘Very happy,' she replied. ‘I love you Peadar—I hope we'll be together always. Peadar broke into his improvised song:

Saureen, my Saureen,

I love you too, Saureen.

The weeks after they returned to Galway were like an extended honeymoon. Peadar's heart sang with joy as he resumed work at the fertiliser plant. His mates at work were openly friendly; they congratulated him on his marriage but, when they thought he was out of earshot, their remarks about women of their acquaintance who lived on the Long Walk tended to be less than complimentary. Phrases such as ‘fancy women' and ‘bits on the side' were thrown around in conversation. Peadar didn't really understand their significance. Never for a moment did he think that they referred to his wife.

‘Thank you, God,' he prayed every day, ‘for sending Saureen my way.'

From their front door, he loved to watch boats coming and going in the Claddagh Basin and he frequently talked with fishermen on their return from a day's fishing. With his knowledge of the sea around the Aran Islands they had much in common. He was able to discuss with them where the best fishing grounds were to be found, and what species of fish were likely to be running at different seasons of the year. The Claddagh men respected his knowledge and invited him to join them on fishing trips whenever he was off work. He became familiar with fishing boats that plied in and out of Galway docks, and he was competent to take charge of any vessel when other hands were occupied pulling in nets or packing fish. He enjoyed this new found taste of his former life with Máirtín—he wished they were fishing together again back home in Aran. A cargo ship named The Sansander arrived regularly in the deepwater with fertilisers for MacDonacha's. On those occasions, Peadar and his mates helped with unloading the cargo. While the ship was in dock, they worked side by side with the dockers and crew. The latter were of mixed nationality. Most of them had a poor knowledge of English and couldn't speak of their origins or travels. The captain, a tall good-looking man, spoke perfect English. He frequently left the ship to visit haunts downtown. Looking at him closely, Peadar thought to himself, ‘Haven't I seen that fellow somewhere before?' Offhand he couldn't recall the circumstances.

The outside of the two-storey house on Long Walk looked dilapidated; inside it was comfortable. On the ground floor one large room doubled as a kitchen and living room while another was a bedroom. Basic washing and toilet facilities were provided in a small annex to the rear of the building. To Peadar's amazement, two rooms upstairs were permanently locked. When questioned about these, Saureen told him that these were her business premises. They had to be kept under lock and key as her work was confidential.

‘You see the telescope by the window,' she said to him one day, when she showed him into the front room.

‘I use it to keep watch on ships and boats that come and go in the bay. A friend of mine in the Customs likes to have information on any suspicious activities that arise, such as boats transferring goods from one to the other. It has something to do with smuggling and evading customs duties.'

‘And what is in the other room. Can I look in there too?'

‘I'm sorry, Peadar, that's where I keep confidential information; I can't let you see that.'

‘How come my wife doesn't trust me to see the information she compiles?' Peadar wondered. He shrugged his shoulders, but didn't comment further. In Aran he was aware that goods were often washed ashore on the tide— bales of rubber, barrels of oil, planks of wood from vessels that had foundered or been wrecked at sea. Items found were supposed to be surrendered to the customs authorities but few finders bothered to do this. To compensate them for salvaging the articles, they reckoned that they were entitled to keep anything that came their way. It was a case of ‘finders keepers.' Sometimes they sold their booty to visiting boats—the few pounds they received made life on the island more bearable. Peadar was uneasy that his wife might be involved in giving information to the customs men about any of his friends' boats and they might get to know about it. He had heard stories of bodies being found in the docks with no evidence of how they got into the water. He recalled the man he had seen on Long Walk the first night he visited there.

‘Was he a customs man?' he wondered.

Rhona was disappointed that Saureen didn't come back to work in the café. She had been a willing worker and was popular with the patrons. While Peadar pursued his job in MacDonacha's, she seemed preoccupied at home during the day. They went together to one of her favourite pubs a night or two each week. There she introduced him to her friends and liked to show him off as her conquest. Peadar felt embarrassed, particularly when he observed some of the company passing covert winks to one another behind Saureen's back. He didn't understand this reaction among friends—back home in Aran people were more direct. There, at least you knew who your real friends were. On nights when Saureen went out on her own, Peadar occupied himself with meeting some of his workmates for a pint in a local pub. He visited Festy or chatted with his fishermen friends. Usually he was home before her—quite often she showed signs that she had been drinking. He never upbraided her for her behaviour— why should he? Wasn't it normal for women to drink in Galway! One particular night as he walked along the quay, he observed a tall man linking her arm-in-arm. The man faded into a doorway as they neared the house. Was this the man he had seen leaving on the first night he visited her at the Long Walk? Peadar decided to say nothing.