Great Irish Short Stories (32 page)

Liam O’Flaherty

OLD Paddy Moynihan was dead when the police appeared on the scene of the accident. He lay stretched out on his back at the bottom of the deep ravine below the blacksmith’s house. His head rested on a smooth granite stone and his hands were crossed over his enormous stomach. His battered old black hat was tied on to his skull with a piece of twine that passed beneath his chin. Men and boys from the village stood around him in a circle, discussing the manner of his death in subdued tones. Directly overhead, women and girls leaned in a compact group over the low stone wall of the blacksmith’s yard. They were all peering down into the shadowy depths of the ravine at the dim shape of the dead man, with their mouths wide open and a fixed look of horror in their eyes.

Sergeant Toomey made a brief inspection of the corpse and then turned to Joe Finnerty, the rate collector.

“Tommy Murtagh told me,” he said, “that it was you . . .”

“Yes,” said Finnerty. “It was I sent Tommy along to fetch you. I told him to get a priest as well, but no priest came.”

“Both the parish priest and the curate are away on sick calls at the moment,” said the sergeant.

“In any case,” said Finnerty, “there was little that a priest could do for him. The poor old fellow remained unconscious from the moment he fell until he died.”

“Did you see him fall?” said the sergeant.

“I did,” said Finnerty. “I was coming down the road when I caught sight of him on the blacksmith’s wall there above. He was very excited. He kept shouting and brandishing his stick. “The Pedlar poisoned me,” he said. He kept repeating that statement in a sing-song shout, over and over again, like a whinging child. Then he got to his feet and moved forward, heading for the road. He had taken only half a step, though, when he seemed to get struck by some sort of colic. He dropped his stick, clutched his stomach with both hands and staggering backwards, bent almost double, to sit down again on the wall. The next thing I knew, he was going head over heels into the ravine, backwards, yelling like a stuck pig. Upon my soul! His roaring must have been heard miles away.”

“It was a terrific yell, all right,” said Peter Lavin, the doctor’s servant. “I was mowing down there below in the meadow when I heard it. I raised my head like a shot and saw old Paddy go through the air. Great God! He looked as big as a house. He turned somersault twice before he passed out of my sight, going on away down into the hole. I heard the splash, though, when he struck the ground, like a heavy sack dropped into the sea from a boat’s deck.”

He pointed towards a deep wide dent in the wet ground to the right and said:

“That was where he landed, sergeant.”

The sergeant walked over and looked at the hollow. The whole ground was heavily laden with water that flowed from the mossy face of the cliff. Three little boys had stuck a rolled dock-leaf into a crevice and they were drinking in turn at the thin jet of water that came from the bright green funnel.

“Why did he think he was poisoned?” said the sergeant.

“I’ve no idea,” said Finnerty. “It’s certain, in any case, that he had swallowed something that didn’t agree with him. The poor fellow was in convulsions with pain just before he fell.”

The sergeant looked up along the sheer face of the cliff at a thick cluster of ivy that grew just beneath the overarching brow. A clutch of young sparrows were chirping plaintively for food from their nest within the ivy.

“According to him,” the sergeant said, as he walked back to the corpse, “The Pedlar was responsible for whatever ailed him.”

“That’s right,” said Finnerty. “He kept repeating that The Pedlar had poisoned him, over and over again. I wouldn’t pay much attention to that, though, The Pedlar and himself were deadly enemies. They have accused one another of every crime in the calendar scores of times.”

“’Faith, I saw him coming out of The Pedlar’s house a few hours ago,” said Anthony Gill. “He didn’t look like a poisoned man at that time. He had a broad smile on his face and he was talking to himself, as he came shuffling down along the road towards me. I asked him where he was going in such a great hurry and he told me to mind my own business. I looked back after he had passed and saw him go into Pete Maloney’s shop.”

“I was there when he came in,” said Bartly Timoney. “He was looking for candles.”

“Candles?” said the sergeant.

“He bought four candles,” Timoney said. “He practically ran out of the shop with them, mumbling to himself and laughing. Begob, like Anthony there said, he seemed to be in great form at the time.”

“Candles?” said the sergeant again. “Why should he be in such a great hurry to buy candles?”

“Poor man!” said Finnerty. “He was very old and not quite right in the head. Lord have mercy on him, he’s been half-mad these last two years, ever since he lost his wife. Ah! The poor old fellow is better off dead than the way he was, living all alone in his little cottage, without anybody to feed him and keep him clean.”

The sergeant turned to Peter Lavin and said:

“Did the doctor come back from town yet?”

“He won’t be back until this evening,” Lavin said. “He’s waiting over for the result of the operation on Tom Kelly’s wife.”

“All right, lads,” the sergeant said. “We might as well see about removing poor old Moynihan.”

“That’s easier said than done,” said Anthony Gill. “We weighed him a few weeks ago in Quinn’s scales against three sacks of flour to settle a bet. Charley Ridge, the lighthouse keeper, bet a pound note that he was heavier than three sacks of flour and Tommy Perkins covered the pound, maintaining that he would fall short of that weight. The lighthouse keeper lost, but it was only by a whisker. I never saw anything go so close. There were only a few ounces in the difference. Well! Three sacks of flour weigh three hundred and thirty-six pounds. How are we going to carry that much dead weight out of this hole?”

“The simplest way, sergeant,” said Guard Hynes, “would be to get a rope and haul him straight up to the blacksmith’s yard.”

Everybody agreed with Hynes.

“I’ve got a lot of gear belonging to my boat up at the house,” said Bartly Timoney. I’ll go and get a strong rope.”

He began to clamber up the side of the ravine.

“Bring a couple of slings as well,” the sergeant called after him. “They’ll keep him steady.”

All the younger men followed Timoney, in order to give a hand with the hauling.

“There may be heavier men than old Moynihan,” said Finnerty to those that remained below with the corpse, “but he was the tallest and the strongest man seen in his part of the country within living memory. He was six feet inches in his bare feet and there was no known limit to his strength. I’ve seen him toss a full-grown bullock without hardly any effort at all, in the field behind Tom Daly’s pub at Gortmor. Then he drank the three gallons of porter that he won for doing it, as quickly as you or I would drink three pints.”

“He was a strong man, all right,” said Gill. “You could heap a horse’s load on to his back and he’d walk away with it, as straight as a rod, calmly smoking his pipe.”

“Yet he was as gentle as a child,” said Lavin, “in spite of his strength. They say that he never struck anybody in his whole life.”

“Many is the day he worked on my land,” said Sam Clancy, “and I’ll agree that he was as good as ten men. He could keep going from morning to night without slacking pace. However, it was the devil’s own job giving him enough to eat. The side of a pig, or even a whole sheep, would make no more than a good snack for him. The poor fellow told me that he suffered agonies from hunger. He could never get enough to eat. It must have been absolute torture for him, when he got too old to work and had to live on the pension.”

Timoney came back and threw down two slings, over the low wall where the women and girls were gathered. Then he let down the end of a stout rope. Sergeant Toomey made one sling fast about Moynihan’s upper chest and the other about his knees. Then he passed the end of the rope through the slings and knotted it securely.

“Haul away now,” he said to Timoney.

The two old sparrows fluttered back and forth across the ravine, uttering shrill cries, when they saw the corpse drawn up slowly along the face of the cliff. The fledglings remained silent in obedience to these constantly repeated warnings, until old Moynihan’s dangling right hand brushed gently against the ivy outside their nest. The light sound being like that made by the bodies of their parents, when entering with food, they broke into a frenzied chatter. Thereupon, the old birds became hysterical with anxiety. The mother dropped a piece of worm from her beak. Then she and her cock hurled themselves at old Moynihan’s head, with all their feathers raised. They kept attacking him fiercely, with beak and claw, until he was drawn up over the wall into the yard.

When the corpse was stretched out on the blacksmith’s cart, Sergeant Toomey turned to the women that were there and said:

“It would be an act of charity for ye to come and get him ready for burial. He has nobody of his own to wash and shave him.”

“In God’s name,” they said, “we’ll do whatever is needed.”

They all followed the men that were pushing the cart up the road towards the dead man’s cottage.

“Listen,” the sergeant said to Finnerty, as they walked along side by side. “Didn’t The Pedlar bring old Moynihan to court at one time over the destruction of a shed.”

“He did, ’faith,” said Finnerty, “and he was awarded damages, too, by District Justice Roche.”

“How long ago was that?” the sergeant said.

“It must be over twenty years,” said Finnerty.

“A long time before I came here,” said the sergeant. “I never heard the proper details of the story.”

“It was only a ramshackle old shed,” said Finnerty, “where The Pedlar used to keep all the stuff that he collected around the countryside, rags and old iron and bits of ancient furniture and all sorts of curiosities that had been washed ashore from wrecked ships. Moynihan came along one day and saw The Pedlar’s ass tied to the iron staple in the door-jamb of the shed. Lord have mercy on the dead, he was very fond of playing childish pranks, like all simple-minded big fellows. So he got a turnip and stuck it on to the end of his stick. Then he leaned over the wall of The Pedlar’s backyard and began to torment the ass, drawing the unfortunate animal on and on after the turnip. The ass kept straining at its rope until the door-jamb was dragged out of the wall. Then the wall collapsed and finally the whole shed came down in a heap. The Pedlar was away at the time and nobody saw the damage being done except old Moynihan himself. The poor fellow would have got into no trouble if he had kept his mouth shut. Instead of doing so, it was how he ran down into the village and told everybody what had happened. He nearly split his sides laughing at his own story. As a result of his confessions, he very naturally didn’t have a foot to stand on when the case came up before the court.”

The dead man’s cottage looked very desolate. The little garden in front was overgrown with weeds. There were several large holes in the roof. The door was broken. The windows were covered with sacking. The interior was in a shocking state of filth and disorder.

“He’ll have to stay on the cart,” said Sergeant Toomey, after he had inspected the two rooms, “until there is a proper place to lay him out like a christian.”

He left Guard Hynes in charge of the body and then set off with Joe Finnerty to The Pedlar’s cottage.

“I couldn’t find the candles,” he said on the way. “Neither could I find out exactly what he had for his last meal. His little pot and his frying pan were on the hearth, having evidently been used to prepare whatever he ate. There was a small piece of potato skin at the bottom of the pot, but the frying pan was licked as clean as a new pin. God only knows what he fried on it.”

“Poor old Paddy!” said Finnerty. “He had been half-starved for a long time. He was going around like a dog, scavenging for miserable scraps in shameful places. Yet people gave him sufficient food to satisfy the appetite of any ordinary person, in addition to what he was able to buy with his pension money.”

The Pedlar’s cottage was only a few yards away from Moynihan’s sordid hovel, to which its neatness offered a very striking contrast. It was really very pretty, with its windows painted dark blue and its walls spotlessly white and the bright May sunlight sparkling on its slate roof. The garden was well stocked with fruit trees and vegetables and flowers, all dressed in a manner that bore evidence to the owner’s constant diligence and skill. It also contained three hives of honey-bees which made a pleasant clamour as they worked among the flowers. The air was charged with a delicious perfume, which was carried up by the gentle breeze from the different plants and flowers.

The Pedlar hailed the two men as they were approaching the house along a narrow flagged path that ran through the centre of the garden.

“Good day,” he said to them. “What’s goin’ on over at Paddy Moynihan’s house? I heard a cart and a lot of people arrive there.”

He was sitting on a three-legged stool to the right of the open doorway. His palsied hands moved up and down, constantly, along the blackthorn stick that he held erect between his knees. His legs were also palsied. The metalled heels of his boots kept beating a minute and almost inaudible tattoo on the broad smooth flagstone beneath his stool. He was very small and so stooped that he was bent almost double. His boots, his threadbare black suit, his white shirt and his black felt hat were all very neat; like his house and his garden. Indeed, he was immaculately clean from head to foot, except for his wrinkled little face. It was in great part covered with stubbly grey hair, that looked more like an animal’s fur than a proper human beard.

“It was old Paddy Moynihan himself,” said the sergeant in a solemn tone, “that they brought home on the cart.”

The Pedlar laughed drily in his throat, making a sound that was somewhat like the bleating of a goat, plaintive and without any merriment.

“Ho! Ho! Did the shameless scoundrel get drunk again?” he said in a thin high-pitched voice. ‘Two months ago, he got speechless in Richie Tallon’s pub with two sheep-jobbers from Castlegorm. He had to be taken home on Phil Manion’s ass-cart. There wasn’t room for the whole of him on the cart. Two lads had to follow along behind, holding up the lower parts of his legs.”