by Therese Down
In the days leading up to Christmas, Donal exchanged his suit and shoes for the garb and boots of an Irish farmer and helped out with wood chopping, milking, and tending the pigs. The house was jovial and Mr Kelly was wreathed in smiles from morning to night, delighted to have his boy back home and helping him about the place. In the evenings, Donal would regale his family with stories of college life and teaching, making them howl with laughter at his imitations of Holy Ghost Fathers or foolish boys. He told them nothing of his increasing involvement with the IRA.
On Christmas Eve morning, Donal hitched the donkey to the cart and drove Deirdre into Golden village. There was just a post office and shop combined, a small bar, a butcher, and a shabby-looking barbershop in Golden’s main street. There had been a grocer’s but it had closed down in the Emergency declared by de Valera when world war broke out. Food rationing and the embargo on many imports meant there were no fruit or vegetables to be had which farmers did not grow themselves. Oranges and even apples were exotic now and Ireland reverted to the potatoes, cabbage, and swedes which had always been her staples. The tiny post office rarely had an up-to-date paper for sale. When there was a paper delivery to Golden it was a treat if they were just one day out of date. Those who could read well enough to follow the fluent prose and political arguments of The Irish Press or The Irish Times were mainly youngsters and uninterested in such things. Most got their news by mouth and hearsay, from fellas who could read and had an interest in the news at home and abroad, or who brought tales “from the field” to bars and late evening meetings in kitchens.
Deirdre collected the family’s rations of tea and sugar from Mr Kiernan who ran the post office and handled the village post. Now, he distributed the rations for everyone in Golden, too.
Donal enquired of his wife, who served in the shop, if she had a newspaper.
“Wait now, and I’ll see.” Mrs Kiernan was small and round, of uniform width from her shoulders to her hips. She wore thick brown tights which wrinkled at the ankles, and the brown brogues of rural Irish women who were not otherwise in rubber boots. She rummaged beneath the counter, breathing heavily through her mouth with the exertion of bending, leaning one arm on her thighs to allow her to peer sideways into the recesses of the under counter shelf. “Wait a minute, now, and we’ll see…” And then she reached one hand into the shelf and pulled out a single newspaper, a copy of The Irish Times. Mrs Kiernan straightened up with a grunt and narrowed her eyes to peer at the date of the paper, her mouth still open, experimenting with various distances from her face to aid ocular clarity.
“Can I help there, Mrs Kiernan?” asked Donal eventually, impatient to see the paper. He had had no news of the Plant affair since he had left Cashmel a week ago.
“Go on, so. Sure your young eyes might be better than my own.” She passed the paper to him across the counter. Its date was the nineteenth of December. He told Mrs Kiernan.
“A recent one, then. I knew there was one of them in it.” She looked pleased, nodded at him. “Do you want it?” Donal said he did.
“Give me a penny then, so.”
“But Mrs Kiernan, it’s almost a week out of date!”
“And there’s plenty will have it if you don’t want it,” came the reply and Mrs Kiernan stretched out her hand for either the penny or the paper.
“Just one sec, now, Mrs K.” Donal smiled charmingly at her, riffled quickly through the first few pages, scanning them up and down. His eye fell on a modest heading somewhere around page three and a brief column alluded to the Devereux murder trial’s being inconclusive. There was no news. “No, you’re all right, thanks. I don’t want it after all. Sorry for your trouble now.” Donal handed her back the paper with a wink. Mrs Kiernan hmphed and snatched it back.
“Sure it’ll be grand for setting your fire this evening, Missis,” added Donal cheerfully, “and a very happy Christmas to you.”
As Joe Morgan had predicted in O’Hallorahan’s on the night of the eleventh of December, George Plant had been rearrested and so had his accomplices, Walsh and Davern. In spite of the nolle prosequi Criminal Court verdict, Plant, Walsh, and Davern were detained in prison. As he and Deirdre climbed into the donkey cart and covered their laps with a thick woollen rug against the December chill, Donal nodded at his sister, but his eyes betrayed the anger he felt at what he considered was a terrible injustice.
“Are you all right, Donny?” enquired Deirdre, wondering what could have upset her brother in the fifteen minutes since she had last seen him.
“Fine,” he replied. “Mrs Kiernan tried to rob me of the price of a paper and it was a week old.”
“Did you buy it?”
“I did not! I read what I wanted real quick and gave it back to her – the cheek of it.”
Deirdre laughed out loud that such a thing could have upset him so and Donal, taking the reins of the donkey cart and looking across at his sister, laughed with her and clicked the donkey forward.
“You’d better watch your back now, Donal,” quipped Deirdre. “You’re a marked man.”
“Do you think she’s slipping into her highway woman gear and galloping across country to cut us off at the pass?” Deirdre laughed afresh at the ludicrousness of her brother’s question. “That’d be some outfit, boy,” he went on. “Sure she’d look like one of them big fat bluebottles that get stuck in the windows.”
“Donal!” Deirdre chided him. “That’s very unkind, now,” but she added, “I’ve never seen a fly that fat.” And they laughed and joked all the way home.
Caitlin was to be married on the ninth of January 1944. Mick had decided that as the three banns had been read and the wedding was imminent, it was high time the couple met. Christmas Day seemed the obvious occasion for such an encounter. So, more nervous than he had been when he had first set off to Malachai Brett’s house less than three months before, in search of a marriage match, Jack Flynn arrived on Christmas Day morning to pay his respects to his future in-laws, and to meet his wife to be.
He sat by the Spillanes’ parlour fire looking fierce and scrubbed raw. His greying hair was moistened and combed back from his forehead, accentuating the hollows of his cheeks, the set of his jaw. His eyes burned and shifted beneath the bushes of his unkempt brows as if seeking an escape route. He sat on the edge of his seat, wringing his cap repeatedly in the space between his knees. Even the stretch of his breeches over his sharp knees looked threatening. Maureen noted the red spots along his starched collar line, and swallowed in sympathetic discomfort.
“Well, Jack,” began Mick, cordially enough, “will you have a drop of the hard stuff?” He noted the loss of weight and the pallor of his neighbour’s complexion, and put it down to hard work and worry about the wedding.
“Aye,” mumbled Jack distractedly. It would be something to do, to hold a glass.
“Have you heard again from yer man from Bord na Bainne – Ryan?” Mick turned from the whiskey bottle, handed Jack his glass as he spoke. News of tuberculosis infection travelled fast in rural Ireland, and farms where it had been identified had to be named so that trade in livestock with the affected farmer would not result in spread of the disease. There were few catastrophes Irish farmers feared more than the sentence which followed the outbreak of TB in a herd. It could mean financial ruin, and this possibility had not escaped the attention of Mick Spillane, now that he had such a close interest in Jack Flynn’s prosperity.
“No. After Christmas now.”
“Do you think it’s bad, Jack?”
Jack tried to focus on what Spillane was saying and once he had replayed the question in his head, realized it had been asked less from concern for his welfare than Spillane’s own.
“I don’t know, now. Sure, we’ll see when the results are in.”
“A terrible thing, Jack.” Spillane shook his head. “A terrible thing for you.” Jack swigged his whiskey. He hadn’t had a drink in years. The fire in his throat made him gasp. Maureen almost sniggered as his eyes were flush
ed from their lairs in wide surprise.
“Will you have another, Jack?”
“Aye,” gasped Jack and handed his empty glass for refilling. His belly warmed, and the heat which spread through his chest was strangely soothing of the fire he now carried with him everywhere.
“Well, hello, Jack.” Mrs Spillane emerged from the kitchen, flushed and smiling, extending a hand in greeting. Jack did not rise. He tried clumsily to pass both his cap and glass to one hand, without success. “Ah, don’t worry with all that,” said Mrs Spillane, amused. “Sure, we’re not strangers.” He nodded cursorily; one side of his mouth twisted briefly in a sort of smile. He swigged his whiskey, more carefully this time. “And has Mick told you that Maureen here is to enter the convent in January? We’re very proud of her, so we are.” Mrs Spillane smiled at her daughter and waited for Jack to say something congratulatory. He said nothing, too strangled by the constraints of politeness to be able to converse. He nodded, slurped his whiskey, then lifted his index finger from the glass to insert it between his collar and throat. When he lowered it, Mick again replenished the glass, though he had begun to worry that an inebriated Jack Flynn could be a lot less than useful on this occasion. And it was only ten thirty in the morning. He was careful with the third measure.
“Where is Caitlin? Maureen, would you ever go and find her?” Mrs Spillane’s voice was high and false. “That girl takes an age to dress herself – she’s as vain, now!” Jack stared into his glass, squeezed his cap. Without looking up he felt Maureen move out of the parlour and heard her climb the stairs. He felt the exchange of anxious looks between Spillane and his wife and he cursed them silently for the dreadful fear in his belly. However, the fear was less insistent, more… abstract than it had been. To hell wit them, he thought, and the thought was accompanied by a sharp jerk upwards of his head, causing Mrs Spillane to jump. She laughed to cover her embarrassment. Jack fixed the Spillanes with a defiant glare and looked away again.
“Will you have Christmas dinner with us, Jack?” asked Mick with forced conviviality.
“Do,” added Mrs Spillane. Both were relieved at the reply.
“No, no – thanks. I have plenty of stuff to eat back at the farm.”
“Excuse me, now, Jack, a second. I have to tend the meat.” Mrs Spillane left the room and shed a few hot tears as she lifted the kettle pan to check on her ham. Composure recovered, she returned to the tiny parlour. As she crossed the hall, Caitlin descended the stairs behind Maureen. She was pale and her hair was scraped back from her face in a severe knot. Her eyes were red and her mouth set. She held herself straight, though her eyes betrayed her fear. She looked for all the world like a princess on her way to a dragon.
“Well, now, and here she is,” announced Mick, relieved to see his daughter at last, for he had found nothing else to say to Flynn, who seemed to feel no need to initiate conversation. Mick rose from his chair and indicated to his daughter to sit down. She assumed the edge of the seat, hands in her lap, studying the man opposite her with an increasingly fearless intensity. Jack glanced at her briefly, barely raising his eyes to her face.
“Well,” he muttered. She said nothing. He focused on the ground, his heart pounding so that he felt dizzy, gripped his cap even tighter. He was far too immersed in his own terrifying ordeal to once consider hers. She watched his nervousness with growing anger. She scowled at his old man’s hair and his furiously working raw-shaved jaw, the spreading redness of his throat. Mick saw the gathering fury in his daughter’s expression and sought to diffuse the tension.
“Well, here’s to ye both – a Happy Christmas!” And he gulped his whiskey. Jack could not return the toast, for all his concentration was spent in keeping his head and neck from trembling. Mick took his stubborn silence for shyness and decided to withdraw. Perhaps if they were left alone, they might talk.
“Maureen, go into the kitchen and help your mother with the dinner. I must go and make sure we have enough logs for tonight. ’Tis cold out there, boy!” And rising, he rubbed his hands together, laid a warning hand on his younger daughter’s shoulder, and squeezed it tightly. She shrugged it off roughly. “Pour Jack another drink, there, Caitlin,” he instructed before he left the room. “Make sure he feels welcome.”
“Why are you doing this?” Each word was enunciated distinctly and carved itself on Jack’s fuzzy brain with the knife edge of its contempt. He was shocked and looked at her almost beseechingly for a moment. But the hatred in her face steeled his heart.
“What?” he retorted, gruffly.
“Why are you… marrying me?” she hissed, thrusting her face forward, wanting to intimidate him. He searched his head for answers, but none presented itself, and he seemed to flounder, unable to make sense of the thoughts which shot by him. He looked at her again, embarrassed now; he felt very old. He stood up, felt the energy dissipate with movement, and his head cleared a little.
“I have a farm to run. So have your father. Both of us need… need…” What did he need from her? Good Lord above; he couldn’t tell her. She waited. “I need a hand, and he need the money.”
“What?” she almost cried out, then lowered her tone again so as not to bring her mother from the kitchen. “So, you want a skivvy and he’s willing to sell me into slavery, is that right?” Jack couldn’t answer. He paced the room like a beast emerging from the effects of a tranquillizer, sought to make sense through the whiskey and the years of silence and brutality. He wanted to comfort her, was full of the memory of her astonishing beauty on the night she had played the accordion, wanted to tell her how much he hoped she would be his… salvation, but he knew no words to calm or solicit. He struggled like a man in a foreign country. She spoke again. “So, how much is he getting for me, hmm? What am I worth?” He felt her rise from her chair and approach him. He crushed his eyes closed in desperation for a moment, then looked into her face.
“Ask him that.”
“Leave me be,” she hissed, coming nearer. “Don’t make me marry you. You’re an old man, for goodness’ sake. It’s, it’s… disgusting!” Jack watched her face contort with contempt, and the fire in her eyes leapt to his, as a flame from one roof to another.
“Don’t kid yerself too much, now, missie,” he hissed back at her, leaning forward to do so. She was forced to take a step backwards so as not to make physical contact with him. “You’re not the be all and end all! You’ve a strong back and can milk a cow and clean a house and that’ll do for me. As far as I’m concerned this is a… transaction, nothing more, so don’t be codding yerself about anything, anything… else.” Now he was determined to erase from her mind any thought that he wanted her for carnal purposes. He was filled with the righteous indignation of his forty- three years of perfect chastity. “There’s nothing… disgusting,” he spat the word, imitating her contempt, “about me, let me assure you.” He looked at her a moment longer and could tolerate no more. He walked past her, out of the parlour and, finding the back door, threw it open and strode into the dark December afternoon. Mrs Spillane came rushing from the kitchen at the sound of the door slamming shut.
“Where’s Jack?” she asked, bewildered.
“He’s gone,” came the tart reply, “and he will not be coming back.” And Caitlin ascended regally to her bedroom.
Back at home, Jack reproached himself in an agony of shame and frustration. What was he doing, what was he doing? He sank to his knees in fervent prayer, begging God to guide him, the Blessed Virgin to soothe him. Finally, he curled his joined hands in a vice- like grip and beat his forehead with them. He would not marry her. To hell with the bargain! He would manage alone. Then he felt the pain in his chest ignite and his lungs seemed to erupt. It had never been so bad. He rolled helplessly on the floor, convulsed in a relentless spasm of pain that gave birth to cough after cough. As he gasped and retched, he put his hand to his mouth. When he took it away, there was blood at the base of his index finger and it ran thickly towards his palm. He contemplated it in wonder,
then panic seized him again. What was wrong with him? But even as he asked, he knew it could be nothing other than tuberculosis. When Jack eventually rose to his feet, it was with one thought on his mind. He would take Caitlin Spillane to the altar, and soon. She was now the only chance he had of making sense of anything he had ever done or believed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Three days after Christmas, just after Jack had finished eating his lunch and was having a cup of tea in his kitchen, there was a knock on the door.
“Yes!” he shouted, getting to his feet and glowering at the door. The letter from the Environment Department had arrived before Christmas, telling him an appointed vet would be arriving on this day.
“Mr Flynn?” the vet greeted him, letting himself in. “I’m glad to find you in. Michael Brennan, Bord na Bainne vet. I believe you’re expecting me?” Jack said nothing but eyed the sergeant standing behind the vet. The sergeant coughed into a fist.
“Well, Jack,” he said. The two had gone to school together. The vet explained the gard’s presence.
“Sergeant Locke is required by law to accompany me. The eradication of TB from herds is official business, Mr Flynn. May I?” Jack watched the two men approach the kitchen table and the vet put his briefcase on it. Jack did not like the big sergeant in his kitchen, the shiny buttons on his uniform and the way he squared his shoulders. He knew why he was there all right. Many a farmer could not tolerate the enforced destruction of his cattle; the law man was there primarily to protect the vet. In this role, Locke was an antagonism to Flynn before the results of the tests were made known to him.
The vet delved into his briefcase for papers. “I’ll get straight to the point.” Jack still said nothing. “Four of your cows are tubercular and must be destroyed immediately. The rest must be re-tested before you get the all clear. I’m sorry.” Jack muttered something incomprehensible and sat down heavily again. When he did not accept the test results the vet was handing to him, the vet placed the papers on the table. “Have you anyone to help you with this – rounding them up and… disposing of them afterwards?” Jack shook his head.
