Men of No Property (3 page)

“Mother, mother,” he said quietly and she managed a smile. He called for the children and drew the boy close while Norah brought the little girl. The old lady tried to look from one to the other of them. Then, giving up the struggle, she closed her eyes and died.

“Father Russell” said the prayers for the dead and only his careful saying of the words might have distinguished him from a parish curate, Peg thought. There were not many men in Ireland after the years of famine who had not heard them often enough to know them by rote.

“Will you bring the children up?” he said then to Norah, rising from his knees. And seeing so many faces peering silently into his as he gazed about, he called out: “God bless all here!”

At the steps he took the child from Norah’s arms and carried her up. Vinnie followed and Norah after him. At the hatchway he told the mate that Mary Dunne was at rest.

Peg bit her lip and set to the chore of laying out the dead woman while the living hung back in fear of what she might have died of. She had no more than put a comb to the woman’s hair, however, when two grim-mouthed seamen came down with their rude winding sheet and thrust her away, attending the body themselves. The emigrants were often too fond of their dead, and Mary Dunne was given a quick burial with only her family attending.

Peg waited and waited for Norah to come down. She’d been pining the voyage, Peg thought, to go to the priest and now wasn’t missing the chance. Some went up and some came down when the hatchway opened, but Norah was not among them, and presently the word came down that the priest wanted Dennis Lavery. Hard then were the eyes of the women upon her. Well Peg knew what they thought of her, with their men sighing after her when she passed and doing their best to come on her in a tight place so she’d need to squeeze by them, and never the men were blamed but herself only, the women plaguing Norah with their accounts. They’d sidle up to her with a bit of goose grease for the baby and a tongue lathering to tell some new tale of Peg’s immodesty. Sitting snug with Dennis Lavery, they’d say, pretending to teach him his letters as though ever a woman taught a man aught but temptation. Ah, this was their favorite tune, the tempting of Dennis Lavery, for they knew that in her heart Norah herself was cherishing him. A plague on the lot of them, Peg thought—a parcel of creepers, as Young Ireland called them. And the devil a care she had for Lavery either, save the pleasure of seeing him lap up the learning.

Norah came down then, snuggling the child as though she had borne her. What a thing it would be to part her from that when they got to New York, Peg thought, as hard as parting her from the old man, drunk as he was, the morning they skipped Ireland.

“I thought you’d leave her with the priest,” Peg said.

“And what’d he do with her?” said Norah.

“Did you ask him?”

“I did not. Dennis is keepin’ the boy with him till we get there.”

“And you’re not keepin’ her any longer, mind,” said Peg. “What did the priest have to say to you?”

“He’ll give you a book if you go up to him, Peg.”

“Was it me you confessed to him?” Peg cried.

Norah put the child into the bunk and gave her a bit of sugared rag to suck on. “I needed to tell someone what we did to Pa,” she said, “and I’m easier for it now.”

So, Peg thought, she had confessed to a man who was no priest at all the sin of escaping Ireland, how they had sold one thing and another out of the house, and counted the old man his share, never letting on to him what they planned to do with theirs while he spent his on the drink. “I wonder,” she said in bitter sarcasm, “is Pa the easier for it.”

And that set Norah into a burst of tears. She pounded her fists on the hard straw pallet. “Oh, Peg, I keep thinkin’ of him gropin’ round the house with the candle to see are we home yet.”

“Put it out of your mind!”

“I can’t. I try but I cannot.”

“Then I’ll give you the picture to drive it out, him foulin’ himself on the stoop of a Sunday mornin’.”

“Stop it, Peg! You’re possessed of the devil.”

“Then stop it yourself. You’ve a wonderful way of forgettin’ the bad and mindin’ the good. I’ve not and I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget Jimmie Dolan comin’ round to walk me to church and runnin’ off when he seen him. There wasn’t a decent thing in him my mother didn’t nail there. He fell in a heap when she went, and for all of me he can lie there till he rots.”

“I hope you’re never in as much need as him,” Norah said fiercely.

“If I am, I hope they’ve the sense to let me lie in the gutter. I’m goin’ up now and take the air.”

“Peg, you don’t understand. You’re too young to know what a man suffers.”

“Am I?” She swung around the post and whispered: “Then I’ll learn first what a man pleasures, thank you.”

Norah flung the flat of her hand at her.

Peg dodged it and said: “What did the priest have to say to your blather?”

“He was in it with you,” Norah said, “more’s the pity. He said pa was beyond savin’.”

“And I suppose you had an answer to that with your conscience?”

Norah lifted her chin. “I asked him why we were beyond tryin’. And he said God Himself would have to give me the answer to that, and it maybe the riddle of Ireland altogether.”

D
ENNIS LAVERY HAD BEEN
standing at the ship’s rail marveling at the great wide cleanness of the sea. He was a good sailor. There were some in the ship’s belly who had not been up since the sailing. They should be forced up and not down, he thought, for his own strength doubled when he faced the wind. The wonder to him now was that he had not run away to sea as a boy. He had dreamed of it often enough. But the furthest from home he had ever ventured was the ride in a tinker’s caravan into the Wicklow hills. He would likely not be going to America at all if a brother were not there ahead of him.

Still, he had known a wonderful transformation the day he made up his mind on America, and with every step toward it, he became more of a man than he had known of himself before. He tested the strength of his back with every challenger, and with the very day of sailing he had tried the power of his tongue, and to his own satisfaction he had bested a born agitator parrying words with him on the Liverpool dock. What a discovery that for Dennis Lavery! There was no more to becoming a leader of men than a man’s declaring himself a leader. There was no more to speaking than spitting the words out. What had prompted that first rise in him, he did not know. No more than restlessness, perhaps, or the lumped dumbness of them he was amongst. Perhaps it was the fire in the eyes of Margaret Hickey daring him to be more than the rest of them for he had seen her the moment she stepped on the dock. A shiver of pleasure ran through him with the thought of her.

He had known one girl only and her a gypsy’s half-wit who took to him when he was fifteen. She had tortured him to be a man to her and scalded the manhood out of him. Now he had it back again, and time at twenty-three. Nor was her lithe sweet body all he saw in Peg, he reasoned. Oh, she was fair, with the fine high forehead, the brown hair with the gold in it flowing out like a silk shawl when she loosed it, the quick smile and the gleaming teeth; but it was the proud word that won him, and her generous heart. Her wit provoked the clown in him and set him dancing. The green daring of her eyes stung him to long plans of a world he could make which even she would wonder at. Even now while she taught him letters, he gave her words for them she had not dreamed the sweet sound of. And, he hoped, seeing her turn them over in her mind to better get a hold on them, he was himself settling more deep inside her with every one she cherished. Oh, mother of the world, he thought, I could leap from mast to mast at the promise of a sight of her, dry the ocean with the heat she kindles in me.

He watched now, his mind no longer to the glory of the sea but to the image of Peg’s rising out of the hatchway. He willed her coming. No games would she play with him, no giddy, giggling games like the rest of them, pretending to chance upon him when all the while they had plotted their course.

Margaret Hickey, he whispered into the wind, I want you. I’m thinking of you and nothing but you. Put down the nonsense you’re scribbling for some poor cuddy. He wouldn’t know a rosebud from an egg of horse dung or he wouldn’t be down there. Come up, Peg. My heart is calling you.

And, as often happened, when she came into his vision close upon the white heat of his dreams, her presence, after the first leap of his heart, chilled him. He cursed himself for his fears. Love was a torturing thing. It turned a man into a croaking toad when he wanted a golden tongue. He turned quickly back to the rail and himself played the game he scorned in women, pretending not to have seen her come up.

By the flounce of her skirts seen from the corner of his eye, he could tell she was in a temper and bringing it to him.

“Fancy it!” she said to his back as though she cared not whether she spoke to him or the sea. “That fine, high sister of mine went to the priest about me.”

He turned and smiled, secure himself in her temper with someone else. “I’d love to’ve gone to a priest about you myself,” he said slyly, hoping she would find the kernel of earnestness in it.

If she heard him at all, she did not let on. She frowned and shaded her eyes against the shock of sunlight on the water. He tried to think of another way to pursue it when she cooled off.

“And him no priest at all,” Peg said. “There’s the shame of it, goin’ up with her rigmarole to a stranger.”

“Eh?” said Dennis, thinking again himself about the man called Father Russell. It had struck him from the beginning that there was something familiar about his face, but he had put it down to maybe him being a missionary, and having preached some time or other in Ireland. “What is he then?”

Peg shook her hair out in the wind, the way it would drive a man wild, wanting to run his hands through it. “My own guess is he’s one of the Young Ireland bunch, running out of the country in a priest’s robe.”

“By the glory, that’s it!” Dennis cried. “I’ve been tryin’ to think where I’d seen him. Wait now—he had a bit of a beard—it’s on my tongue. His name’s on the tip of my tongue.”

“He’s not Mitchel,” Peg said. “He was transported in spring.”

“And it’s not Duffy nor O’Brien, nor Meagher of the Sword…”

Peg shrugged. “You know more of them than I do.”

“Aye,” said Dennis bitterly. “I know more of them than they do of the likes of me sure, gentlemen all.”

“’Twas no gentleman on the dock,” said Peg.

“He’d ’ve quit them soon enough at home, him on the dock. He was a workin’ man. There! I know who he is, the one masqueradin’ a priest. ’Tis Farrell, Stephen Francis Farrell.”

“Ah-ha,” said Peg, “he was the editor of
Irish Freedom
till it was banned. I knew he had the learnin’ when I heard him speak, and a handsomer man I never seen.”

“You’d say the same of the devil if you seen him in breeches,” Dennis snapped.

She construed the reproach to her own liking. “You’re that bitter against him?”

“I am,” Dennis said, laying abuse on the heavier for his jealousy of her praise. “The fine words he had for us many a night, and the soles of his feet when it came time for risin’. Does he think because we lift the sledge from mornin’ till night we can’t bring it down as sure on a skull as a stone? Let me tell you somethin’, Peg: when Ireland’s aflame, it’ll be the workin’ men set torches to her, and not them spellin’ her out in Gaelic and Greek.”

“Beautiful words, Dennis. You’ve the power of beautiful words.”

He looked again to the sea. Praise from her ran through him like water. “The power of words,” he said, “and the heart of mush.”

“What are you belittlin’ yourself for all the time?”

“Peg, it’s with you only.” He caught at the rail to keep his hands from her. “You’ve the power over me now no woman ever had, and I’ve a great strength of my own. I won five pound at the Wicklow Fair throwin’ the king of the tinkers, and him the strongest man comin’ out of Galway in twenty years.”

Peg laughed and he looked at her. Her eyes were as sharp as her small white teeth.

“Is it to wrestle with you, you’re tryin’ to ask me?” she mocked.

The shame burst through him for his body was crying out to crush against hers and he had no way of gentleness and no words to disguise his want—only a boast of strength to coax her mockery. He lifted his foot and gave a great kick to one of the water kegs roped in a row. The staves split like a fan, the fresh water rushing over the deck.

“Hey, you bloody Paddy,” the watch cried down from the crow’s nest. “You’ll get the lash for that, you will!” He pulled the whistle to his mouth and getting the deck watch from the pilot house, pointed at Dennis.

Peg caught at his arm. “What’d you do that for? Run down below and I’ll soothe them.”

“I’ll stay and watch the soothin’,” he said. “There’s more hurt in your tongue than there is in a lash.”

“Don’t be a fool, Dennis. My tongue’s got no more schoolin’ than your toe has.”

There was softness and pity in her heart for him after all, he thought. With the taste of her mouth on his the lash would be a tickle on his back.

“Peg, I’m out of my mind for you, don’t you see?” he tried to explain as he caught her and pulled her to him.

For an instant her eyes met his and little flames seemed to spring into them. Her fingers, strong and nimble, played down his body from chest to thigh.

“Surely they’ll kill you…” she started.

He smothered the words with his mouth and thrust her legs back with his own as he drove their bodies against the side of the ship, crushing his arm between her and the rail. Whether she was struggling against him or urging a hunger of her own upon him he could not tell.

Not until they pulled him from her and he saw the wrath of her eyes did he realize that her teeth upon his lip were venomous. She kicked out at him, aiming, he knew, at his groin. He had deserved it, hurting her, and yet he was confused even beyond his passion. He yielded to the iron grip of the seamen as they flung him face downward on the deck and then pulled him up again, his arms pinned behind him and his legs roped to within a few inches of one another. They forced him around before her. She stood, sucking in great gasps of air, her breast rising and falling in the quickness of her need for it. Her eyes on his were searing, tearless and full of scorn. No hurt was in them.