by Edna O'Brien
“Is the bird on yet?” said John Ryan, splaying his hands fanwise to get a bit of heat from the stove.
“We haven’t got her yet,” said Hickey, and Morgan cursed aloud the farmer that had promised him a cockerel.
“Get us a few logs while you’re standing,” Morgan said, and John Ryan reluctantly went out. At the back of the shop by a mossy wall he gathered a bundle of damp, roughly sawn logs. He was in dread that he would stain the new fawn Crombie coat that his mother had given him at Christmas.
“Any sign of anyone?” Morgan said. It was important that the man with the chicken got to them before the stranger.
“Not a soul,” John Ryan said.
“Bloody down,” Morgan said, and he went to the door to see if there was a sound of a horse and cart. Hickey lifted the lid of the saucepan to show Ryan the little onions that were in it simmering. He had peeled them earlier at the outside tap and had cried buckets. It was a new saucepan that afterward would be cleaned and put back in stock.
“How’s the ladies, John?” he asked. Ryan had a great name with ladies and wasn’t a bad-looking fellow. He had a long face and a longish nose and a great crop of brown, thick, curly, oily hair. His eyes were a shade of green that Hickey had never seen on any other human being, only in a shade of darning wool.
“I bet you’re clicking like mad,” said Morgan, coming back to the snug. He wished that he was John Ryan’s age and not a middle-aged married man with a flushed face and a rank liver.
“I get places,” Ryan boasted, and gave a nervous laugh, because he remembered his date of the night before. He had arranged to meet a girl behind the shop, on the back road which led to the creamery, the same road where Hickey had the mare and cart tethered to a gate and where Morgan kept the logs in a stack against a wall under a tarpaulin. She’d cycled four miles to meet him because he was damned if he was going to put himself out for any girl. No sooner had she arrived than she asked him the time and said that she’d have to be thinking of getting back soon.
“Take off your scarf,” he said. She was so muffled with scarf and gloves and things that he couldn’t get near her.
“I’m fine this way,” she said, standing with her bicycle between them. Half a dozen words were exchanged and she rode off again, making a date for the following Sunday night.
“So ’twas worthwhile,” Morgan said, although he had no interest in women anymore. He knew well enough that nothing much went on between men and women. His own wife nearly drove him mad, sitting in front of the kitchen fire saying she could see faces in the flames and then getting up suddenly and running upstairs to see if there was a man under her bed. He had sent her to Lourdes the summer before to see if that would straighten her out, but she came back worse.
“Love, it’s all bull …” he said. His wife had developed a craze for putting sugar and peaches into every bit of meat she cooked. Then she had a fegary to buy an egg timer. She played with the egg timer at night, turning it upside down and watching the passage of the sand as it flowed down into the underneath tube. Childish she was.
“I wish he’d come,” Hickey said.
“Which of them?” said John Ryan.
“Long John with the chicken,” said Hickey.
“He sent word yesterday that he’d be here this morning with my Christmas box,” Morgan said.
“ ’Twill be plucked and all?” John Ryan asked.
“Oh, ready for the oven,” Morgan said. “Other years I brought it up home, but I don’t want it dolled up with peaches and sugar and that nonsense.”
“No man wants food ruined,” said Hickey. He pitied Morgan with the wife he had. Everyone could see she was getting more peculiar, talking to herself as she rode on her bicycle to Mass and hiding behind walls if she saw a man coming.
They heard footsteps in the shop, and Ryan opened the door a crack to see who it was.
“Is it him?”
“No, it’s a young Gleeson one.”
“She can wait,” Morgan said, making no effort to get up. He was damned if he’d weigh three pennies’ worth of sugar on a cold day like this. The child tapped the counter with a coin, then began to cough to let them know she was there, and finally she hummed a song. In the end she had to go away unserved.
“In a month from now you’ll be well away,” Hickey said.
“It’s not a dead cert,” Morgan said. He had to keep some curb on his dreams, because more than once he or his wife had had a promise of a legacy and were diddled out of it. Yet inwardly his spirits were soaring and made better each minute by the great draughts of whiskey which he took from the bottle. The other two men drank from mugs. In that way he was able to ration them a bit.
He had to go out to the shop for the next customer because it was the schoolteacher’s maid, and they gave him quite a bit of trade. She wanted particular toilet rolls for her mistress, but he had none.
“Will you order them?” the maid said, and Morgan made a great to-do about entering the request in the day book. Afterward the three men had a great laugh and Morgan said it wasn’t so long ago since the teacher had to use grass, but now that she was taking a correspondence course in Latin, there was no stopping of her and her airs.
“And do you know,” said Hickey, although he’d probably told them before a hundred times, “she cancels the paper if she’s going away for a day, what do you think of that for meanness, a twopenny paper?”
“There he is!” said Hickey suddenly. They heard a cart being drawn up outside and a mare whinny. Hickey knew that mare belonged to Long John Salmon, because like her owner, she went berserk when she got into civilized surroundings.
“Now,” said Morgan, raising his short, fat finger in warning. “Sit tight and don’t let neither of you stir or he’ll be in here boring us about that dead brother of his.”
Morgan went out to the shop, shook hands with Long John Salmon, and wished him a Happy New Year. He was relieved to see that Long John had a rush basket under his arm, which no doubt contained the cockerel. They talked about the weather, both uttering the usual rigmarole about how bad it had been. Patches of snow still lodged in the hollows of the field across the road from the shop. The shop was situated between two villages and looked out on a big empty field with a low stone wall surrounding it. Long John said that the black frost was appalling, which was why he had to come at a snail’s pace in case the mare slipped. Long John said that Christmas had been quieter than usual and Morgan agreed, though as far as he could remember, Christmas Day was always the most boring day in his married life; the pubs were closed and he was alone with his missus from Mass time until bedtime. This year, of course, she had added peaches and sugar to the turkey, so there wasn’t even that to enjoy.
“I had a swim Christmas Day,” Long John said. He believed in a daily swim, and flowers of sulphur on Saturdays to purify the blood.
“We had a goose but no plum pudding,” Long John added, giving Morgan the cue to hand him a small plum pudding wrapped in red glassette paper.
“Your Christmas box,” Morgan said, hoping to God Long John would hand him the chicken and get it over with. He could hear the men murmuring inside.
“Do you eat honey?” Long John asked.
“No,” said Morgan in a testy voice. He knew that Long John kept bees and had a crooked inked sign on his gate which said HONEY FOR SALE.
“No wonder you have no children,” said Long John with a grin.
Morgan was tempted to turn on him for a remark like that. He had no children, not because he didn’t eat honey, but because Mrs. Morgan screamed the night of their honeymoon and screamed ever after when he went near her. Finally they got separate rooms.
“Well, here’s a jar,” said Long John, handing over a jar of honey that looked like white wax.
“That’s too good altogether,” said Morgan, livid with rage in case Long John was trying to do it cheap this Christmas.
“Christ Almighty,” Hickey muttered inside. “If he doesn’t hand over a
chicken, I’ll go out the country to his place and flog a goose.”
As if prompted, Long John then did it. He handed over the chicken wrapped in newspaper, ordered some meal stuffs, and said he was on his way to the forge to get the mare’s shoes off.
“I’ll have it all ready for you,” said Morgan, almost running from the counter.
“You’d think it was a boar he was giving away,” said Hickey as Morgan came in and unwrapped the chicken.
“Don’t talk to me,” said Morgan, “get it on.”
The water had boiled away, so John Ryan had to run in his patent-leather shoes to the pump, which was about a hundred yards up the road. He thought to himself that when he was a qualified doctor he’d run errands for no one, and Hickey and Morgan would be tipping their hats to him.
“It’s a nice bird,” said Hickey, feeling the breast, “but you’d think he’d wrap it in butter paper.”
“Oh, a mountainy man,” said Morgan. “What can you expect from a mountainy man.”
They put the chicken in and added lashings of salt. In twenty minutes or so it began to simmer and Morgan timed it on his pocket watch. Later Hickey put a few cubes of Oxo in the water to flavor the soup. Morgan was demented from explaining to customers that all he was cooking was a sheep’s head for a dog. Hickey and John Ryan sat tight in the snug and smoked ten cigarettes apiece. Hickey got it out of John Ryan that the girl of the night before was a waste of time. He liked knowing these things, because although he did not have many dates with girls, he liked to be sure that a girl was amenable.
“I didn’t get within a mile of her,” John Ryan said, and regretted telling it two seconds later. He had his name to keep up and most of the local men thought that, because of being a medical student, he did extraordinary things with girls and took terrible risks.
“I didn’t fancy her anyhow,” John Ryan said, “I’ve had too many women lately, women have no shame in them nowadays.”
“Ah, stop,” said Hickey, hoping that John Ryan would tell him some juicy incidents about orgies in Dublin and streetwalkers who wore nothing under their dresses. At that moment Morgan came in from the shop and said they ought to have a drop of the soup. He was getting irritable because he had been so busy at the counter, and the whiskey was going to his head and fuddling him.
“If I could begin my life again I’d be in the demolition business,” Morgan said for no reason. He imagined that there must be great satisfaction in destroying houses and breaking up ornamental mantelpieces and smashing windows. He sometimes had a dream in which Mrs. Morgan lay under a load of mortar and white rubble, with her clothes well above her knees. Hickey got three new cups from the shop and lifted out the soup with one of them. By now the stove was so hot that dribbles of spilled soup sizzled on the black iron top. It was the finest soup any of them had ever tasted.
“Whoever comes in now can wait, ’cos I’m not budging,” Morgan said as he sat on the principal chair and drank the soup noisily. It was at that very moment Hickey said, “Wisht,” and a car was heard to pull up. The three of them were at the door instantly, and saw the rather battered V8 come to a halt close to the wall. The driver was a small butty fellow with red hair and a red beard.
“Oh, Red Hugh of the North,” said Hickey, casting aspersions on the car and the rust on the radiator.
“I don’t like his attire,” said John Ryan.
The man wore no jacket but a grayish jersey that looked like a dishcloth, as it was full of holes.
“Shag his attire,” said Morgan, and went forward to greet the stranger and apologize for the state of the weather. It had begun to rain, or rather to hail, and the snow in the field was being turned to slime. The stranger winked at the three of them and gave a little toss of the head to denote how sporting he was. He was by far the smallest of them. He spoke in the clipped accent of the North, and they could see at once that he was briary. He seemed to be looking at them severely, as if he was mentally assessing their characters.
“Matt O’Meara’s the name,” he said, shaking hands with Morgan but merely nodding to the others. In the snug he was handed a large whiskey without being asked whether he was teetotal or not. He made them uneasy with his silence and his staring blue eyes.
“Knock that back,” Morgan said, “and then we’ll talk turkey.”
He winked at John Ryan. Ryan was briefed to open the proceedings by telling the fellow how rain played havoc with every damned thing, even gates, and how one didn’t know whether it was the oxygen or the hydrogen or some trace minerals that did such damage.
“You’d ask yourself what they add to the rain,” Ryan said, and secretly congratulated himself for his erudition.
“Like what the priest said about the French cheese,” said Hickey, but Morgan did not want Hickey to elaborate on that bloody story before they got things sorted out. It would have been better if Hickey had been given porter, because he had no head for spirits.
“Well, we have plenty of hay sheds,” Morgan said, and the man smiled coldly as if that was a foregone conclusion.
“How many have you contracted?” the man asked. He showed no courtesy but, Morgan thought, business is business, and tolerated it.
“If we get the gentlemen farmers, the others will follow suit,” Morgan said.
“How many gentlemen farmers are there?” the fellow asked, and by doing a quick count and with much interruption and counter-interruption from Ryan and Hickey, it was concluded that there were at least twenty gentlemen farmers. The man did his sums on the back of his hand with the stub of a pencil and said that that would yield a thousand pounds and stared icily at his future partners. Five hundred each. Morgan could not repress a smile, already in his mind he had reserved the hackney car for Friday and Saturday evenings. He asked if by any chance the man had brought a sample and was told no. There were dozens of hay sheds in the North where it had been used, and if Morgan wanted to go up there and vet them, he was quite welcome. This man had a very abrasive manner.
“If you want, I can go elsewhere,” he said.
Hickey saw that the fellow could become obstreperous, and sensing a rift, he said that if they were going to be partners they must all shake on it, and they did.
“Comrades,” said the fellow, much to their astonishment. They abhorred that word. Stalin used that word and a woman in South America called Eva Perón. It was the moment for Morgan to remind Hickey to produce the eats, as their visitor must be starving. Hickey sharpened his knife, drew up his sleeves, and began to carve like an expert. He resolved to give Ryan and the visitor a leg each and keep the breast for himself and Morgan. Up at Brady’s, where he had worked for seventeen years, he had never tasted a bit of the breast. She always gave it to her husband, even though he drank acres of arable land away, threatened to kill her more than once, and indeed might have, only that he, Hickey, had intervened and swiped the revolver or pitchfork or whatever weapon Brady had to hand. The stranger, deferring food, began to ask a few practical questions, such as where they would get lodging, whose hay shed they ought to do first, and where he could store the ladders and various equipment if they came on Sunday. The plan was that he and his two men would arrive at the weekend and start on Monday. Morgan said he would get them fixed up in digs, and it was agreed that, pest though she was, Mrs. Gleeson wasn’t such a bad landlady, being liberal with tea and cake at any hour. The stranger then inquired about the fishing and set Hickey off on a rigmarole about eels.
“Well take you on the lake when the May fly is up,” Morgan said, and boasted about his boat, which was moored down at the pier.
“There is one thing,” said the stranger. “It’s the deposit.” He smiled as he said this and pursed his lips.
Morgan, who had been extremely cordial up to then, looked sour and stared at the newcomer with disbelief. “Do you think I came up the river on a bicycle?”
“I don’t,” said the stranger, “but do you think I came up the river on a bicycle?” and then very matter-of-fac
tly he explained that three men, the lorry, the gallons of the expensive stuff and equipment had to be carted from the North. He then reminded them that farmers all over Ireland were crying out for his services. A brazen fellow he was. “I want a hundred pounds,” he said.
“That’s a fortune,” said Hickey.
“I’ll give you fifty,” said Morgan flatly, only to be told that it wasn’t worth a tinker’s curse, that if Morgan & Co. preferred, he would gladly take his business elsewhere. Morgan saw that he had no alternative, so he slowly moved to the safe and undid the creaky brass catch.
“That needs oiling,” said Hickey pointlessly. The place seethed with tension and bad feeling.
The money was in small brown envelopes, and the notes were kept together with rubber bands, some of them shredding. Morgan did not go to the bank often, as it only gave people the wrong idea. He did not even like this villain watching him as he parted them and counted.
The man did not seem either embarrassed or exhilarated at receiving the money; he simply made a poor joke about its being dirty. He confirmed the arrangements and said to make only two appointments for the first week in case the weather was bad or there was any other hitch. He put the money into an old mottled wallet and said he’d be off. Despite the fact that Morgan had provided eats, he did not press the fellow to stay. He did not like him. They’d have a better time of it themselves, so he was quite pleased to mouth formalities and shake hands coldly with the blackguard.
Once he had gone, they fled to the snug to devour their dinner and discuss him. John Ryan took an optimistic view, pointing out that he did not want to slinge and was therefore a solid worker. Hickey said that for a small butty he wasn’t afraid to stand up to people, but that wasn’t it significant that he hadn’t cracked a joke. Hickey could see that Morgan was a bit on edge, so he thought to bolster him.
“Anyhow, he’ll bring in the spondulicks,” and he reminded Morgan to make a note of the fact that he had paid him a hundred pounds, as if Morgan could forget. Morgan dipped the plain pen in the bottle of ink and asked aloud what date it was, though he knew it already.
