by Tom Phelan
As if caught in a beam of sunlight, the muddy faces of the three men lit up.
“Hey, Billy!” Uncle Jack shouted.
Dad stopped the mares, and he and Podge came off their seats.
“Good man, yourself, Billy,” Podge said as they shook hands.
Dad greeted his brother-in-law. “Did you come all the way from London dressed like that?” Everyone laughed.
Their chatting was short-lived. Billy persuaded Dad to use the McCormick reaper, that he himself would keep the mares moving. “Give it a go, JohnJoe.”
Soon the animals were unyoked from the mower and yoked to the long shaft of the reaper. With Dad at the reins in its high seat and with Podge and Uncle Jack walking behind, Billy talked to the mares. “Up girls! Keep her going! Come on, girls!” he chanted, and they moved forward without much effort.
When the machine was lined up for the next swath, Dad called, “Now, Billy!” He slammed the machine into gear, and the horses slowed against the sudden weight.
“Hupp hupp hupp!” Billy threatened, and he slapped each equine rear end with the thin end of the pole. The horses charged out of their hesitation, and for the next two hours he did not let them falter, his urgent hupps and unrelenting ash pole urging them on.
I climbed over the gate and sat beside Eddie in the hedge.
“Isn’t Billy terrible big?”
“He’s a giant.”
When the final strip of wheat had fallen to the blunted cutting blades, Dad pulled back the main lever and all the working parts of the binder shuddered to a stop. There was silence except for the swish of the big wheel in the stubbles as Dad kept the mares moving until they reached the gate. The three horses suddenly became as limp as the stallion in Ramsbottom’s yard after he had horsed our mare. Dad, Podge, Billy, and Uncle Jack gathered around the binder, and I could see the strength that each had maintained for hours leaving their bodies. Without speaking, they unhitched the tacklings from the binder. Eddie opened the gate, and the men and the animals passed through and onto the lane. He and I followed, kicking at the clumps of solid clay that had been pounded into the hollow parts of the mares’ hooves with every step taken in the wet field.
After the horses had drunk their fill at the tank under the loft stairs, Billy took his turn at the tank, stripped to the waist, and washed himself. We children had never seen a half-naked man before, and we pulled aside the lace curtains in the kitchen to look at Billy soaping himself under the arms and around his chest. He dipped his head in the tank and covered his hair and face with suds, then turned to the windows across the farmyard and danced a little jig to make us laugh. Eddie carried out Billy’s clothes and when Billy had dried himself he unhooked the barn door and disappeared into the darkness. A few minutes later he emerged, dressed in his finery once more.
Billy was a magnificent worker to whom no task was insurmountable, a man whose motto could have been, “We’ll chance it, lads.” During that visit home in the 1940s, Mudd died. After the funeral Billy returned to England, where he led a peripatetic life, working on the roads and buildings for several decades before he finally went back to Ireland. He never married.
When Billy eventually entered Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Mountmellick, I could not imagine this giant of my childhood laid low by debilitating old age. I was living in New York by then, and Mam asked me to write to him. I barely knew Billy, so I wrote about the day he sang “Noreen Bawn” in the farmhouse kitchen and then helped save our wheat.
When he died my letter was under his pillow.
41
FLYING THE NEST
As my days in Mountmellick Boys School were coming to an end, I gathered my scholastic records and letters of recommendation and an application form and sent them off to Knockbeg junior seminary, a boarding school in south Laois. Father Patrick Maher, Knockbeg’s rector, soon invited me to come for an interview.
In late summer, brandishing a new haircut and a new navy blue suit with long trousers, I set off for Knockbeg with Mam in Padraig Scully’s motorcar. For forty miles I herded a belly full of butterflies, until the sight of the downward sweep of a tree-lined avenue toward a stately, mansion-like building launched me into a state of enchantment. As the purring motorcar floated down a small hill, we passed two playing fields, the goalposts blue and white. Close by was an odd-looking structure with a verandah, which could have been in a picture set in India with mounted troops in colorful regalia trotting by.
Not one person was in sight. Padraig drove through the open gate in the silver-painted railing and around an island of grass with a circular bed of flowers in the center. He brought the motorcar to a stop at the double doors guarded by a silver cannon on each side.
Father Maher greeted us. Tall and broad, he smiled as he said, “You must be Tom . . . and this is your mother.” Even before I withdrew my hand from his, I knew he was no prickly Father McCluskey.
I had expected the rector and I would head to his office for the interview, but instead, with Mam on one side and me on the other, he took us on a tour of the school, all the time chatting and asking me questions.
“Were you an altar boy, Tom?”
“Yes, Father.”
“Introibo ad altare Dei,” he said, and I replied, “Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.”
“Dominus vobiscum.”
“Et cum spiritu tuo.”
We walked through the study hall with its skylights, a line of windows on one side, and eighty two-seater desks arranged in rows.
“The roof is galvanized and when there’s heavy rain you can’t hear your ears, but at the same time the sound makes you feel safe and dry.”
“Like when you’re warm in bed and there’s a storm?” I said.
“Exactly. . . . Do you read books, Tom?”
“Yes, Father.”
“What were the last three you read?”
“Riders of the Purple Sage, King Solomon’s Mines, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Which was the best?”
“Riders of the Purple Sage. It was sunny all the time in Utah.”
Father Maher showed us the boot hall with its two rows of cubicles, each big enough for a pair of shoes. “One of our rules is that all the boys change into their black shoes before they go outside; the brown ones are for inside. This helps keep the floors clean.”
“Where’s the fireplace?” I asked.
“We don’t have one, Tom. All the buildings are heated by hot water in pipes.”
I couldn’t imagine living without a fireplace. What would we all sit around when the wind was howling and the rain spilling?
I kept wondering when the interview would start.
The rector led us outside and waved a hand at the unmowed playing fields. “That green and red pavilion is where the boys dress before games.”
I thought of all the times I had changed into my shorts and jerseys in the bushes beside the football field in Mountmellick, hoping that when the match was over no one would have thrown my clothes high up into the hedge.
Over a rusted-brown iron fence Father Maher pointed to the weir on the Barrow River a couple of hundred yards away. “Do you know what a weir is, Tom?”
“It’s for holding back the water to make the river deep for boats.”
“That’s right. . . . Of course the students are not allowed beyond this fence.”
We passed a large tank at the back of the ball alley. “That’s where the gas for the science room is made,” Father Maher said.
Then he caught me by surprise. “How is Father McCluskey?” he asked.
I hesitated for a moment, then spoke. “I served mass for him this morning. He was very nice,” I lied.
Soon our tour was completed, and we arrived back at the main building. Now we’ll have the interview, I thought. But instead Father Maher said, “Tom, go and ask the driver of the motorcar to come in and have tea and biscuits with us.”
“Look at me oul dirty boots,” Padraig said to me, as he rubb
ed them on the legs of his trousers. “And look at me dirty hands. I’ll try to keep them in my pockets.”
As we approached the door he said, “The priest must be a nice man if he’s inviting the driver in. Imagine Father McCluskey asking me to his house for tea!”
Father Maher extended his hand to the driver, who said, “Me name is Padraig, Father. Excuse the state of me hand.”
“A bit of honest dirt never hurt a man.”
During the tea Father Maher made it easy for everyone to talk.
“Padraig, if I was going to buy a motorcar, what do you think I should get?”
“Has your husband all the hay in, Missus Phelan?”
“Has your father any sugar beet, Tom?”
“He has,” I said.
“And Tom is a great thinner,” Mam said. I could feel my face redden.
“Do you use a hoe, Tom?”
“No, Father. We tie sacks around our knees and crawl along on them.”
“How many acres?”
“Three, Father.”
“That’s a lot of kneeling and thinning.”
“I’m glad I’m not a farmer,” Padraig said. “Too much nonstop work for me.”
“Me, too,” Father Maher said. “I was brought up on a farm and I spent many a day in the beet field.”
When the last cup of tea was finished, Padraig returned to his motorcar, and I braced myself for the interview that would determine whether I would be accepted into Knockbeg. But instead Father Maher said, “Congratulations, Tom. You will be a member of the new class beginning on the sixth of September.”
My spirits soared, but I was puzzled.
When I sat into the taxi, Mam said, “Isn’t Father Maher a nice man, and he interviewing you all the time and you not even knowing?”
For the next couple of weeks, from waking up to falling asleep, I thought only of Knockbeg and the football fields, the study hall, the weir, the dormitories, the ball alley. I thought of the difference between cranky Father McCluskey and Father Maher, who spoke to me as if nothing else was going on in his world.
My family began preparing me for life in boarding school. While turning the turf on the bog with me one day, one of my sisters said, “When you’re in Knockbeg, you’ll have to sleep in the top part of your pajamas, not your shirt.”
“You better start practicing not spitting,” Dad told me. “If you spit in Knockbeg, they’ll say you’re a tinker. And never borrow money from anyone. If you’re asked for some say you don’t have any.”
“Don’t lick your knife.”
“Always have a handkerchief in your pocket,” Mam said. “Don’t pick your nose.”
Mam bought me a new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste and two boxes of Kiwi polish, one black and one brown. “I won’t be there to shine your shoes on Saturday night,” she said. “You’ll have to do them yourself.”
Mam also got me a small sewing case, a nail brush, and six pairs of wool socks. She did not buy me any undershirts or underpants because at that time in farming Ireland only girls wore them.
One of my sisters held up the nail brush. “Do you see this, Tom? Use it all the time. There’s nothing worse than the dirty nails of someone picking a potato out of the bowl.”
“And don’t wear your socks in the bed or you’ll have cold feet the next day.”
“The lavs in Knockbeg will be like the ones in Aunt Teresa’s convent. Don’t forget to flush.”
Mam washed and ironed two pairs of sheets, two pillowcases, two shirts, and two laundry bags.
“Now, Tom,” my sister said when we were alone, “don’t be surprised if Dad is not in the yard when you’re leaving in Padraig’s motorcar. Mam told me he’s very sad that you’re going away.”
Time crawled until my last day on Laragh Lane arrived. Missus Fitz brought me a bag of homemade fudge. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she shook my hand goodbye. “Just in case I die before you come home again, Tom, remember you promised you’ll pray for me poor oul soul in your first mass.”
Dad opened the high galvanized gate an hour before the motorcar was due. “Padraig might come early,” he said.
Eddie carried my black suitcase outside and left it near the pump. I didn’t know what to do with myself. In my suit and shiny shoes, I was too dressed up to do any jobs. I was too excited to sit down and read. Eventually, I went out to visit some of the farmyard houses—the car shed, turkey house, pig house, new stable, barn middle house, stable, cow house, boiler house. I pushed in the doors and just stood there, looking in. It was hard to accept that I would not be doing my jobs there in the coming winter; I’d not have to put on my old clothes until I came home at Christmas, and I was sad and happy at the same time. I couldn’t imagine Dad and Mam and my sisters and brothers going on about the daily farm work without me.
I was turning away from the boiler house when my sister ran out, shouting, “He’s on the Canal Line!” and within two minutes Padraig was slowly driving into the yard.
I quick-stepped out to the haggard to find Dad. But he wasn’t there. I decided to look in the turf shed, and when I’d gone through the gate at the end of the yard I saw him on the far side of the pasture walking toward the Bog Field. I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, “Goodbye, Dad!”
He turned around and waved.
“Goodbye, Dad,” I called again, and then I cried.
EPILOGUE
On a June day in 1965, I was one of thirty-two newly ordained priests processing down the aisle of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Carlow to the triumphal music of Palestrina’s “Christus Vincit”—Christ has conquered. Mam and Dad and my siblings had made great financial sacrifices to support me through the years of preparation for this day. My family was proud of me, I was proud of me. I was twenty-four, and I thought I had the world by the tail.
Eleven years later, totally disillusioned, I left the priesthood. Durt Donovan was right.
* * *
A FEW YEARS after escaping the clerical life, I strolled around the farmyard on a summer’s evening. It was dry and musty and soaked in the memories of childhood. On the barn wall still hung the two slatted sideboards of a horse’s cart, blue like a blackbird’s eggs. The half-doors of the middle house were still hanging crooked; the same chain hung there with the big link at the end to hook onto the same piece of bent iron set into the wall. I touched the smooth link, held it between my fingers, and saw Dad and myself pulling on a rope tied to the protruding yellow ankles of a calf still inside its mother. I heard the cow moaning and Dad saying “Now!” and I felt the calf slipping and saw the cow’s end stretching into a large O. I heard my brother Eddie behind me saying, “I’m ready to go, Tom.”
Dad was dying. In a midnight phone call to New York, where I’d been living for a decade, Eddie had called me home to Ireland. Now we were going to Saint Vincent’s, where Dad was living his last days.
It was as if he had been waiting for me, as if he knew that I had been standing outside the door. He held his arms feebly in the air, as if reaching out to take a baby.
“Tom!” he cried.
“Dad,” I sobbed as we awkwardly clutched each other, my wet bearded face next to his trembling toothless mouth, the son bending down, the father reaching up, each clutching at something that had slipped out from between them and grasping at it for a fleeting moment.
I got down on my knees beside the bed and held the backs of my father’s fingers against my forehead, and my sobbing body made noises in the springs of the bed. I felt my father’s free hand in my hair, touching, resting there. I heard his cries, like the creaking of an old barn in the wind.
“Tom,” he said eventually. “I was hoping you’d come home to rake the stubbles. You’d better use Whiteface, even though she’ll drive you mad with that tail of hers, swiping at flies even when there’s none to swipe. The wheel rake’s over in the Sandpit Field near the gate. Be careful coming through the Hollow Field gate! It’s barely wide enough—and don’t forget to put the greas
e on the axle.”
Watching my father’s face, I saw the old eyes looking at the past, watched them wander all over the farm, unable to separate the layers of time, seeing people and horses in the wrong years and seasons. The words flowed out of knots of time trapped in his memory, rising inconsequentially to the surface like random bubbles floating up from the deep bottom of a dark boghole. He spoke again.
“How much time did they give you?”
“Two weeks.” I got up and pulled the straight-backed chair to the bedside.
“Two weeks! . . . I told Eddie two weeks ago to move the cattle out of Pillsworth’s into Conroy’s. But he wouldn’t listen. They’ll skin Pillsworth’s, and he won’t have a bit of grass in the spring.”
The lostness of my father’s mind added to my sadness, and I bent my head to my chest. I cried as foals were born and horses died, as the rain ruined harvests and cattle broke down fences, as hay was saved and bits of football matches were replayed, as fields were ploughed and neighbors emigrated.
I left the room, and in a dark corner in the corridor I cried in silence. I did that every day for two weeks.
On my last day home, I was sitting in the wide hedge that straddled the spine of the Sandpit and Hollow fields. In the slanting sun, rabbits nibbled their way from the safety of their burrows, their noses twitching. I was staring into the hollow below when I became aware of someone approaching. The rabbits hopped, then vanished.
It was Eddie swishing his way through the tall sour grass that grew in the shadow of the hedge. I moved my hand in greeting, and Eddie checked a sitting place with the side of his boot.
I spoke first. “The last time I was home, I sat here with Dad. He fired shots at a rabbit three times—and missed. I don’t think he really wanted to hit it. It was the first time he’d looked through a telescopic sight, the first time he’d seen a rabbit grazing up close.”
