by Sara Dillon
That was East Galway of the soury fragrance of milk.
How little clutter there was in the landscape then. Animals. Wet trees.
How can I say it except that I fell in love in high volume; the amount, the degree, the sheer numbers. And I was nuzzled and loved without hesitation in return. So you can see why I say that it was Ireland that was the next reason I came to believe that I would have everything I wanted.
I’d only been there a week or so and Clement brought me to the wedding of one of my many cousins. The reception was held in a hotel outside Galway city, one of a number built in a long string along the inner coast. Despite being June, the wind was whipping. I borrowed a long, tight fitting green dress, the silliest thing I had ever worn in public, but it didn’t matter at all. I wore black patent leather shoes, purchased in Tuam. There was a madness I got into right away. I smelled it, saw it, held it like a rose made of frosting, put it to my lips.
There was a stream of baby chams that day, and dancing with Brother Anthony.
Oh, you are Catherine are you, I’ve heard about you. We know all about you, I heard over and again.
There was no resistance, no suspicion. It was being one of the tribe, that was it. Had I not been of the tribe, goodness know, but I was. I had only to intone a name or two and the name of a village, and all was square. Grand, sound as a bell.
The land and the sea came together in a kind of emptiness then, no mess, no grotesquerie.
As for the Tierneys, I fell in love with the whole family at once. It kept me busy, it actually did, going up to their house every day, twice a day. Leaving the crossroads and the Inn, turning left towards the lake, up the road, down the road, around a bend, and there was their house. It was a house like all the houses then, small and white and added onto here and there, but not much changed from the original, with its scrub evergreens for shading and the black and white dog just outside the open door. The rooster, the hens, scrabbling around the garden.
It started when I met old Jerome in the bar; the small lounge that is, he never went into the big lounge, and no one dared take his seat in the small one. I was always up and down from my room to visit Frank and the girls who worked with him behind the bar; if there were messages to be done across the street, I would go with the girls. Otherwise, I would go down to be teased and look around and listen and then go back upstairs and read. People would come in to use the phone; the locals didn’t have phones back then and you could hear them trying to get through to someone, yelling into the receiver.
Old Jerome was missing one hand, cut off in a turf machine some years before. He was comical and proud, and fussy about the color of his pint and what he chased it down with. One of this and two of that, in particular order. Proper order, he said about everything and Nuala, his daughter in law, had picked that up, and said proper order about everything too. Back at their house, Nuala and I readied Jerome’s lunch. The Angelus bell rang at noon. It rang again at tea time and I would head back to the Inn, the late sunlight on the road the most astonishing I had ever seen, everything lit up in excesses of gold and blue.
In the evening, I would poke my head in and Jerome would say, Come sit with me, laady. Sit up here now and listen.
Frank would come along from the other end of the bar, wiping his hands, laughing but a little concerned, was it all right with me, would I mind.
Now, Catherine, watch out for that one.
And what do you know about it, Jerome would fire back.
On his false hand was a fine leather glove, swish and fashionable in its way, not a hook or anything you’d have to look away from. In fact, he held this hand as if to better look at it, a kind of feature. Men came in and out in Wellington boots, their bicycles propped up on the wall outside.
Even back then, it had been some years since West of Ireland people held up their arms on entering a room and said, God bless all here, but in those days there was still a pause on all sides as men came in one by one, as if they wanted to say it, and we to hear it.
Now, laady, back when your mother was a little girleen, men were shot in that field over the way.
I sat close enough so I could feel the steam off Jerome’s coat. When he smiled, he would run one hand, the one with the glove, back and forth in front of his mouth, as if repressing some funny idea.
Whether Nuala liked living in the house with Manus’s family, I never knew. She didn’t say. Jerome’s wife had been killed in a terrible accident the same year Jerome lost his hand, so Nuala had to do everything; the animals, the land, the garden, the house, the lot. Nuala had gone to a girls’ school in Galway City, and later worked at the bank in Tuam; she was tall and smart and knew everyone. She rarely answered Jerome directly when we sat down to meals; rather, she smiled a big smile, one that let you see her teeth and gums, and turned to me with a nod. Now, she seemed to be saying.
It had all started when Jerome had asked me, Would you like to see a caaalf? And I went off with him to the older house that served now as a barn, and we watched the new calves bumping their heads up and down on the wooden buckets. The Celtic mugginess of the afternoons had set in; the longest and fairest days of the year, and the midges were flying in swarms all around us. You could smell the sun on the mud and the dry grass. The cars then were mainly Morris minors, and the road was almost always empty and quiet.
Then he wanted to know would I help with the turf that year, and I went with the younger son Joseph, Manus’s brother, and we walked the little old donkey down into the bog, where it stood, sullen and stamping its foot while we worked.
You wanted to do this, then, Da didn’t con you? Joseph asked me. Joseph was terribly shy; he sounded like he’d hardly had any practice in talking at all.
Nuala and I made them tea in bottles at the house and walked it up the road to the bog. Joseph sat back and drank from the bottle. Christ tis hot, Nuala, he said, and they laughed. He was dressed in an old white shirt, a formal one, with the worn cuffs turned up. Manus worked for a builder and was always off in far flung places, following the work, so he missed out on all of this, was never there for calves or turf. It made things odd for Nuala, as if Manus was a kind of stranger she stayed with only when he came to town; otherwise, she took care of his dad and brother, saw to their needs.
It strikes me now that it was not far off the summer solstice when I arrived; and from that many other things follow. They put up a huge tent at the crossroads for a dance. I know now it was the beginning of the end of such events, but I couldn’t have known it at the time. The band set up in the corner; the ladies stood behind the drinks stall. They had strewn sawdust around the edges; was it to spit on or to keep the dancers from falling, I wasn’t sure. Jerome put out his arm with the missing hand, the leather glove, inviting me to dance with him, not an old time waltz but a whirling step of his own, his cap at the same angle on his head the whole time. I saw the ladies lined up, looking at us disapprovingly. I wasn’t even seventeen yet and he was sixty; we whirled and he laughed and I saw the ladies’ faces but didn’t mind them. I didn’t see Nuala watching, but later she smiled the same big smile with her gums showing and pushed back her glasses and said, That was a lot of whirling and stomping you were doing, shaking a leg, Cat.
Maybe it was that night I realized that the sky in June and into July never got completely dark there; it remained purple as if lit up from behind; expectant, refusing to sleep, no matter how tired. And I found out how very tough people in Galway were when it came to catching forty winks, then up again to move the cattle from one field to another.
Have you a key, Cat? Frank doesn’t make you go up and in through the window, does he? Nuala’s face was lit up by the bonfire. Joseph held my hand as we sat in the tall grass near the old deserted house that served as a barn; this was one time of year for bonfires, though there were other times as well, as in October.
She invited me to go with them, with Manus’s sister Eileen and herself, out to Connemara where Manus was at work building a hous
e. It’ll be good craic, she promised, as casually as you please. We had a seat as far as Galway, but would have to thumb from there. In those days, Galway City came to a sudden end at its edge, and the grass sang a separate song as we left the grey streets and houses. Nuala pointed out where she had gone to school, and seemed completely at home and familiar with that place where the road parted company with the ordinary world.
As I remember it, the road changed abruptly; it seemed to be made of some other material, something that melted when looked at too closely.
And in fact, it was only after a few minutes walking out of the city that animals began to follow us. Animals seemed to come out of nowhere then; donkeys, sheep, cats and dogs. It was the donkeys that really tagged along with you, though. They were curious, and if they could have, would have been asking our names, where we came from and where we were going. They followed just behind, politely, with only the tiniest suggestion of mistrust. Their manes were shaggy; they were inured to weather, the rain falling or the Celtic sun fanning over them.
And just as you thought they would come the whole way with you, they disappeared without anyone calling them or making a fuss; they just ceased to be there behind you on the road, evaporating. Sheep were too lazy for all that; they would lie there looking aggrieved, watching you pass, faces turned crossly into the wind. Their favorite spot to lie down was right at the edge of the road, half in and half out of clumps of grass.
Nuala and Eileen and I sat on the back of an old wooden lorry, completely open in the back, swaying to and fro. Nuala was laughing and showing her gums; she loved using a bit of Irish and didn’t often have the chance. The black and white sheep dogs understood only Irish. Dia dhuit ar maidin.
There were lots of famine houses there; in fields and on little roads leading nowhere, except down to the water. In houses where people were living, I smelled seaweed and milk. I heard an even louder whistle of wind, but Nuala was undaunted.
Every now and again it rained down on us, then the rain passed over and was gone.
It felt like no one from the outside had come there yet; we were the first ones. Voices were very loud. Things cost small amounts of money; a loaf of bread wrapped in paper; a wagonload of turf; the scalding smell of a fire in the grate; bacon.
It’s in Carna, Cat, that they’re building the house, said Nuala.
Although I hadn’t, I felt as if I’d gone up to a very high altitude, and could barely manage to continue. Everything became rock; you wondered how people lived here; the deep grey clouds closed down over the earth, and then let go again. Nothing more than this was happening; only we were moving forward over the road.
Tis easy to take a boat to the Aran Islands, you know, Cat, Nuala told me. If you don’t mind getting seasick. Maybe next time.
Nuala loved getting out of one car and waiting for the next; had no hesitation about getting in, and always held off telling the driver who she was or where she was coming from, would pepper him with many questions first.
I began to feel faint; the weather kept changing every few minutes, the sky went from dark to light, people appeared and disappeared. It felt as if we were down low and flat against the grass, but in the distance mountains rose up inexplicably. Nuala’s conversations in Irish sounded like murmuring or a heartbeat, unintelligible yet familiar. The road was narrow, scarcely wide enough for two cars to pass at the same time. Something bracken brown yet bright played about at the horizon. Waves of air and salt and grass moved over us.
There was such a place then. I saw it. And on that day, on our way to Carna, I went inside it, as one had to do then.
You went through, and disappeared into the other side. Roads did, buses, cars, donkeys. Clouds and pools of water. Houses you thought were there.
At last we came to a crossroads where we heard the sound of hammers from inside a partly built house; the sun had come out, everything seemed more normal and calm. The sky was suddenly a boring blue. Manus looked out at us, put his hands on his hips and said, It took ye long enough. He and Nuala smiled at each other; his white shirt fanned out in the wind like a sail. Nuala lied and told him I was chatted up by a lorry driver.
That night, we all went out to the lounge in a small hotel nearby. I had never seen such darkness; summer must be coming to an end, I thought, or was it because of nearness to the sea, the road was so dark as we crossed it that you could not even tell where you were walking. As we entered the bar, we heard the hubbub common to every bar in Ireland, except that here the talking was mainly in Irish, though the speakers kept looking over, as if overly conscious of the difference in language. As I felt it, they were worried that someone from the outside would either want them or not want them to be speaking Irish, having been sent to check up on them.
Manus had the face of old Jerome, though nicer, and sad in a way Jerome was not. Like Joseph, he never mentioned his father, to speak either well or ill of him. We ranged ourselves around a table and Nuala ordered rum and cokes for the ladies.
The brown froth of the Guiness, which I could never like, and the brown coke in the rum and coke, after all the brown light and the brown trim of the hotel, the dark brown darkness, the dart board, the brownish sounds; the rum and coke went straight to my head. I met some French boys who had come on bicycles. I had had enough rum and coke to speak French with them and Nuala laughed, saying, Cat, the way you rip through the French!
I exchanged addresses with them, though even in that state I knew I would never write to them, ever, and they would never come to East Galway as they promised to do, to see the Inn. As we went off to bed, the three of us in one room at the end of the hallway, I began to call out, I love Joseph, do you hear that, I love Joseph.
It seemed to be the funniest thing Nuala ever heard. She and Eileen fell down laughing on the bed. I smelled the dampish linen, the dawn on its way, and I slept, invisible, in Carna.
So it was no wonder that Nuala leaned over me that night I stayed over at Jerome’s place and whispered, Which one do you really like the best, Cat?
So began my unfortunate tendency to embrace motifs in volume, to link place and person, to go to excess in my wanting many at once, but only after a fashion and in the way I wanted.
It did become complicated, awkward after a while.
Brothers
To add to all this, after several months at Frank and Nell’s, I began to listen for a particular voice, a particular sound, down below my room; the door from the outside would open, the other voices would stop, a drink would be ordered. I knew it was John Joe Gormley, who had been barred on many occasions, the worst thing that could happen to you there, barred, banned, exiled, banished. As was my tendency, I began to think most of all about Gormley, since he had the greatest effect not only on others—that wasn’t it—but rather on the air around him.
He would come in with his brothers in tow, muttering and mumbling with them, in a close line as if they were part of a fence, a wall, moving in time with each other. Brandy, Frank, one of them might say, but they got nowhere. Everyone else would stop talking and Frank most times would refuse them service. Frank hated conflict, so would say under his breath, Don’t you know yourself, Gormley?
I might pick just this time to go below and visit Jerome, sit by and watch as the regulars quietly took Frank’s part, and waited until Gormley and his brothers left.
On one such night, John Joe came through the small lounge to use the gents or the telephone, passed us by and then turned, whirled around abruptly, and looked me straight in the eyes.
Frank lived in fear that I would bring a man up the stairs to my room, though I would hardly have had the courage to do that. He began to watch me closely in the evening, to see whether there were unexplained disappearances. The long windy days of summer came to an end, and I had the great luxury of not having to return to anything; no school, no anything, just riding my borrowed bike, stopping at every hillock and lake and watching the boggy land and the green fields change color as the clouds passed
by overhead on their way to the sea. Some days it was too wet, and all I had to do was watch the rain hitting my window at a slant; unevenly, in fits and starts.
There was nothing I had to do, except to be in East Galway.
Clement called by for me many days, the ordinary days, and we went out on his motorbike visiting. He took me to more of my mother’s relatives, the dark kitchens, the old delft brought out for showing. The dogs that had to be called out to and chastened before they would let us cross into the front garden. Yeer, get out of that, you old bast’d ya. Then the suspicious look at us, Clement who in some cases hadn’t been seen for some years, and the young girl with him. Then adding turf to the fire, to make it blaze up, and the teapot, and the whiskey. Clement smiling with delight, as he managed to talk them around and get me into another cottage, You can never know what to expect, Cat, he would warn me, laughing.
Clement would drop me back at the Inn, his eyes shining with fun, unstrapping his helmet, refusing to come inside. He believed in me then, at the side of the road with the motorbike, and years later, on into time immemorial, I was beyond criticism, reproach, could never do wrong, could never be thought of in the same category with wrong. Cat, Cat, he jaggled my arm up and down. Next time we’ll go round to the old home place, your Gran would have talked about it.
One particular evening, as I went inside I could feel that something had happened. I heard Frank’s feet pounding back and forth on the wooden plank that ran behind the bar; he tried to smile at me but couldn’t.
They’ve been in, Cat, he said. The worst of the lot.
Frank wanted to keep them out for good, but you couldn’t do that unless there was some incident. He knew he couldn’t completely count on my loyalty, though he wasn’t sure what the disloyalty might entail.
