Collected Short Stories (7 page)

‘I like it here and I'm not going on no bus,' Mary said.

‘I like it here also for I was born and bred here and I'm glad to be back as Father Brannigan's housekeeper. Your duties are ended here and it would be better for you to go to Nazareth House in the city and stay there till work turns up.'

‘I'm going to no Nazareth House. I'm independent.'

‘I'm glad to hear it and would dearly like to believe it.' She glanced at the clock. ‘You've exactly fifteen minutes to get ready. Your case is in my room and I'll fetch it for you.'

‘You'll lay no hand on my case.'

‘I'll stand no more of your oul guff! Take yourself off quietly before I ring for the police.'

‘This is Father Doyle's kitchen.'

‘It was Father Doyle's but he has gone off to live with his mother and sister. The kitchen is now Father Brannigan's and mine, and I must hurry and get the place in order for his arrival.' She folded her arms and looked out the window at three people standing at the bus stop. ‘The bus will be along any minute now. If you miss it you'll have to hoof it – them's my last words to you,' and lifting the brush she began to sweep the kitchen, watching Mary out of the corner of her eye.

Suddenly Mary pushed back her chair from the table, squeezed the eggshell in her fist and threw the bits into the fire. She left the kitchen, and in a few minutes Liza heard her pounding across the room above her head.

Liza looked out of the window again. The three people had increased to five.

‘Miss Carroll, Miss Carroll,' she shouted up the stairs, ‘hurry like a good woman, the bus will be along any time now.'

Mary came downstairs with her case tied with loops of string. She sniffed as if she had a cold, and without a word she slipped out by the side-door.

Liza watched from the window. She saw her mount the bus and saw the bus move off, some withered leaves scampering at its heels.

‘Thanks be to God she's gone,' and she turned to make herself a cup of tea to steady her nerves.

In the large flat field that lay between the sea-road and the farm-house the O'Briens were at the spring sowing, wasting no minute of the lovely spell of weather that had at last driven out the winter's cold from the soil. Jim, the married son, worked the horses and the plough, and his young wife dropped the potato seed on the manure that the old father was forking into the furrows. Two little boys, bread crumbs on their jerseys and jam on their cheeks, were occasionally carrying boxes of seed to their mother or pausing to watch their granda and telling him they wouldn't eat potatoes that grew on such smelly stuff.

‘Ah, me boys, you'll be glad to eat anything if this accursed war lasts much longer,' he said to them, stuck his fork in the manure and took out his pipe. He blew through the shank and told the boys not to be lazy and to go and help their mother.

It was a fine April day, the sky a thin blue, larks loosening their throats in it, and a clean wind sweeping freely in from the sea and flattening the smoke from the fires of weeds and twigs that were burning in many of the fields around.

‘There's great heart in that soil, Jim,' the old man called out as the son passed up field with the plodding horses.

‘Ach, father, if there was some heart in the horses we'd have the field finished long ago.'

‘They'll do us rightly till the war is over and then we'll get the tractor. We'll get it son, never fear. Our name is down for one, high up in the list,' and he smiled as he watched the good-natured soil curve like brown water from the shining blades of the plough. ‘They're pulling fine, Jim, and this weather will hold up.'

‘If we'd the tractor we wouldn't worry what kind of weather it was. McKeever has three fields done and here we are plodding away with a pair of old horses.'

‘Don't condemn the horses till she's delivered. Next spring, please God, the war will be over and we'll have the tractor.'

‘McKeever knew to get one before the war started,' the son said, urging on the horses. ‘We're always late!'

‘We'll drive her when she comes – won't we, granda?' one of the little boys said.

‘You will, my lads, indeed you will. In a short while you'll be big lumps of fellas and you'll be able to give your granda a long rest,' and he spat on his hands and lifted the fork to do another spell of work.

‘They are fine grandchildren, fine biddable boys,' he said to himself; ‘and Jim had God's blessing about him when he married their mother. She's a good wife, a good daughter-in-law, a good worker – a whole trinity of goodness.' And he raised his head and looked across at her, bent over the drills, her wellingtons browned with clay, and her red head-scarf lifting in the wind. Beyond her was their comfortable farm-house and the baby's washing fluttering whitely on the clothes-line in the garden.

Everything looked lively, sheep calling to their lambs in the adjoining fields, gulls flying inland to the turned up soil, the twigs crackling in the fire at the foot of the field and the smoke taking the sting from the air. The sheepdog lay on an empty sack at the side of the hedge and the boys were piling the empty boxes at each side of him to make a kennel. Now and again they started in the direction of the fire, yearning to throw twigs on it. But they were forbidden to go near it, for yesterday some sparks had fallen on their jerseys and had burnt brown holes in them.

For devilment they threw pieces of sod at their granda when his back was turned, and when he looked towards their mother and not at them they began to laugh. They raised their heads and spied out the larks like crumbs of clay against the blue sky. They tried to count them but were forever losing sight of them or counting ones they had already counted before. Then a screeching of brakes made them turn their eyes to the sea-road where an army car with a canvas cover had pulled up.

‘Soldiers!' the boys shouted.

‘They'll shoot the pair of you,' the granda called out as he saw them scamper to the foot of the field, the dog after them.

The granda rested his arms on the fork and saw five men, three in uniform, come out from the back of the jeep. They stretched their arms, stamped their feet on the road, and lit cigarettes. ‘Nothing like the army for laziness,' he said to himself; ‘if they'd wield this fork for an hour or two it'd slacken the hide on them.' The men gazed seawards, swung their arms back and forth to warm themselves and leisurely returned to the car and took things from the back of it. The old man spat out and eyed them with intense but puzzled curiosity. Two of the men paced the road, stretching a steel tape-measure that flashed in the sun like a live eel. They were up on the fence now, scanning the fields. The dog was barking at them, and the sheep in the nearby field were moving towards a grassy mound, the only hump to be seen in all that flat countryside.

The car moved some perches along the road and again the men got out, carrying with them a white pole with black and red markings.

Jim halted the horses when his father asked him what he thought the army men might be doing.

‘God knows, father, what they're up to. They mightn't know themselves. Maybe they're going to plant a gun on top of the mound or make stores for bombs.'

‘They'll plant no gun or no bombs on my land!'

They saw the strangers enter the sheep-field and close the gate behind them. They saw one place the white pole near the foot of the mound and another erect a gadget on a tripod, stoop and peer through it, his hands resting on his thighs.

‘Divil's own cheek!' the old man said, and throwing down his fork he crossed the potato field and shouted across a narrow stream that divided it from the sheep-field.

‘Eh, eh, what is it you're wanting there?'

‘Surveying, old man, surveying!' one said and wrote something in a notebook he carried in his hand.

‘Surveying what?'

They didn't answer him but lifted the tripod and marched off round the mound as if they knew the lie of the land as one reared on it.

All enthusiasm for his work drained away from the old man as he watched them disappear behind the small hill. He had heard of land being taken over by the army in other parts of the county but had hoped that nothing like that would befall him. Not a square foot would he give them! Let them go and seize some boggy stretch that's no good for beast nor crop! He spat into the stream and buttoned his coat. He saw them come round from the back of the hill, saw them take the path past Dan Mullan's old house and heard Dan's old dog raise its hoarse bark. Horses had halted in other fields, and nothing moved now but gulls on the turned-up soil and the warm smoke from the fires drifting inland and hazing the distance.

In about two hours' time the strangers returned to the road and when their car had driven off the old man kept mumbling to himself, debating with his uneasy thoughts and urging Jim to quit for the day. He'd have no peace of mind till the meaning of this sudden trespass upon his land had been unravelled.

‘Och, father, forget about them. We might never see light or sight of them again. They're probably some young officers learning about War.'

‘And what kind of war could they learn about in an old field that grazes sheep? And why didn't they answer me civilly when I spoke to them? “Surveying” they said and walked off as if I was an old stump of a tree you'd strike a match on.'

‘You needn't blame them. They're only carrying out orders.'

‘I don't like it, Jim. They're up to no good. I don't like it, I tell you!' and he stuck the fork in the ground and told him to unyoke the horses.

And that evening he urged his son to hurry at his supper and cycle into the village to see if there was any talk about the strangers.

Old Dan Mullan came over for his usual visit. He knew nothing; the strangers had said nothing to him, didn't even bid him the time of day but marched on past his house with maps and strange-looking gear. No, they had no guns with them as far as he could see. Both agreed that it boded no good.

It was late that night when Jim came back and there was no one in the kitchen except the old man smoking at the fire and Mary smoothing the clothes at the table.

‘There was talk and rumours of talk,' the son said as he hung up his cap at the back door.

‘Aye.'

‘No one knows for certain what's afoot. Some say they're going to build barracks of some sort.'

‘But they can't build on a man's land without permission. Are all rights to be choked and smothered because there's a war on?'

‘The government, they say, can do whatever they damn well like. They say they can seize a man's land and pay him compensation.'

‘Nothing can compensate a man for the loss of his land!' the old man shouted, and rose from his chair.

Mary looked towards the room where the children slept and the old man lowered his voice and told of the number of years the O'Briens had worked and tilled and improved that land outside. And do you think he was going to hand it over to any government to hack and ruin! He was not!

‘No use, father, crossing a bridge before you come to it. There mightn't be a grain of truth in any of the rumours.'

‘Sure if they were going to take over a field or two you'd be the first to hear of it, granda,' Mary said and brought him a light for his pipe that had gone out.

‘I suppose you're right, Mary, I suppose you're right,' and he lifted a lamp and went out to have a look at the cows.

‘Not a word to him, Mary,' Jim said in a low voice. ‘But the sergeant in the village was saying he heard on good authority they were going to build an aerodrome in the flat of the land.'

During the next few days the car came again and the strange men in uniform were seen, crossing and recrossing neighbouring fields, and in the evenings they were gone, leaving no traces behind them except the rib-marks of the car's tyres on the grassy side of the sea-road. And in the farmers' minds they left a disquieting curiosity that seized on every rumour and magnified it.

At the end of three weeks, after showers of rain and the green potato tops struggling into vigorous life on the drills, the postman handed a letter to Mary O'Brien.

‘I've a fine handful of these letters with me this morning,' he said. ‘I've even one for Dan Mullan.'

She looked at the letter, closed the door, and handed it to the old man. He opened it, saw the strange typescript, and gave it to his son to read. He read it slowly, and slower still came the realisation of what it contained. They were ordered to leave their farm and have all goods and chattels thereon removed within three months. Compensation would be agreed upon by the parties concerned.

‘I'm not going!' the old man shouted. ‘I'm not stirring hand or foot from the land that reared me!' He strode about the kitchen, stamping his feet, and gazing out the window, his fists resting on the table.

‘Sit down and take your breakfast, granda,' Mary said.

‘I'll not eat till I come back. I'm going out.'

Jim and Mary stared at him, afraid to ask him where he was going. They saw him take his stick and go out along the sea-road, the dog at his heels.

The old man saw nothing, heard nothing, not even the plunge of the sea breaking on the stones below the road. He turned to the left, disappeared behind the grassy mound and headed for the priest's house. The priest had just finished his breakfast, the housekeeper clearing away the dishes when the old man rang the bell at the door. The housekeeper ushered him into the sitting room where he sat, his eyes fixed on the chair-dents that were like paw-marks in the polished linoleum.

He gave the letter to the priest, and though the priest already knew what it would contain he read it slowly. A month ago he had already written a letter of protest about the prospective aerodrome and had pointed out that a graveyard lay in the vicinity. His protest did not postpone the prepared plans and they assured him that the graveyard did not come within the boundaries of the commandeered territory.

‘It's bad news, Tom,' he said folding the old man's letter. ‘And it's hard news!'

‘But surely, Father, they can't drive a man from his own land. Drive him out on the road like a pack of worthless tinkers.'

‘They could drive me from mine if it stood in their way.'

The old man stared at him, uncomprehending, enraged at an unseen force against which priest nor man had any power.

‘What's to be done, Father? We've no place to turn to. All our lives we've worked honestly, paid out debts, and buried our dead when their time came.'

The priest explained that there were others in the parish, all those in the hollow, who would get their notice to quit. He said something about the cruelty of war, about suffering, and about the cruel inhuman element that emerged from war's preparation and war's prolongation. He spoke of countries ravaged by war, countries where not one farmer or two farmers but thousands were driven out on the roads with nowhere to lay their heads. The old man listened, but everything the priest was saying seemed far away, like something out of a history book, something that bore no relation to him or his family.

‘We can do nothing, Tom, but will what God wills,' and he rested his hand on the old man's shoulder. ‘Make up your mind to go and get ready at once. And get a high valuation put on your land. That's my advice to you,' and he told him of the letter of protest he had written, and that there was no human feeling, no mercy, in officialdom.

‘But maybe, Father, the war will end in three months.'

‘It's not likely to end in three months – it may take years.'

‘Then we'll have to go, Father. There's no hope anywhere.'

The priest nodded his head, aware of the foolishness of tethering the old man's mind to a hopeless hope.

‘I'll bide by what you say. We'll go, but we'll try not to go far afield. A man of my years can't live far away from his own people. My people that lie at peace under the sod outside.'