by Edna O'Brien
“You call me a scorpion … so what does that make you?” Bugler asked, then added jocularly, “A snake. We are talking biblical, aren’t we?”
“Hit him, Joe … hit him.”
“He hasn’t the guts … Joe Chicken,” Bugler said, and then standing above him, he swore at him. “Get off my back, Brennan.”
“Get off my mountain,” Joseph said.
“It’s my mountain too … it’s halved.”
“Your half is only yours because your people worked for the landlords. They were bailiffs. They were hated. That’s why most of them emigrated …”
“Well, one of them is back,” Bugler said, taking him by the lapel and jerking him up. He struck him then, not a hard blow, more a gesture of vindication and disdain, and taken so by surprise, Joseph stumbled and hit blindly, aiming at the torso, and soon they were pegging into one another, chairs kicked back, people standing to one side, calling for it to stop, yet no one intervening, because that would mean thwarting the pride of one or the other. It didn’t seem very dangerous, just a skirmish between two men who were born enemies and no worse than any brawl in the street in the small hours of a Saturday night. When Joseph fell backwards there was alarm. Grabbing hold of the counter to get up, he touched on a tray of glasses which came crashing to the floor, broken pieces of glass scattered everywhere. As he stood up they saw that he was holding a thick shard and all was commotion then as a few of the men ringed around him appealing to him to put it down and Nelly telling Caimin, the young barman, to fly up the street to get a guard. Coming outside the counter she crossed and spoke to Bugler, who deferred to her and, picking up his hat, went out.
The aftermath became as rowdy as the brawl itself, with people reconstructing it, saying how quick it had been, how sudden and how close it got to becoming nasty. Joseph was brought to the fire, shaken, a thin rivulet of blood running down his neck, and women asking him if he was all right. Caimin, who was disappointed at the fact that it had ended so abruptly, began to describe it to the guard: the two types of punches, one an amateur and one a pro, with Bugler having the upper hand from the start, the macho, the know-how.
“Joe gave as good as he got,” one of the men said.
“Don’t be daft … He was nowhere near,” Caimin said, and taking the clipping from the floor, he asked Nelly if they could frame it and hang it as a souvenir of the night middleweight Brennan lost to the champion Bugler.
“Don’t mind him, Joseph … he raves,” Miss Carruthers kept saying. As new people came into the bar they were told different versions as to who started the fight, whose fault it was, who lost and who won. Nelly sat furious, ruing the stone jar that got knocked from a shelf and her dried flowers that were like hen meal over the floor. People pressed drinks on each other. Glasses of porter, three-quarters filled, stood like trophies on the counter, the fawn gouts of foam dimpling softly and subsiding into the yeasty brew. Joseph sat silently but with an expression of furious dismay in his eyes at the way he was being belittled.
“Bugler is a rat … An out-and-out rat,” one said to console him.
“I won’t allow that,” Nelly said sharply.
“That’s because he got you a gander for your goose.”
“So he did,” she said, reddening.
“And where did he get it … He stole it out of someone’s farmyard.”
“He’s a bad neighbour. He’s lethal,” Joseph said, for all to hear.
“So are you … After what you did to his dog … It was a lethal thing to lock him up,” Caimin said.
“His dog kept coming every night to bring our Goldie off to the woods … corrupting her.”
“Like his master,” Caimin said, egging him on now.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Your sister … She meets him in the woods. Their love nest …”
Joseph rose then and with a ludicrous sense of his own powers began to hit at Caimin, who egged him along, repeating the taunt, mentioning the part of the wood, the rug flung down beside the tractor, and presently they were locked in a fresh fight, with Caimin easily scoring, and for the second time in the one evening Joseph was seen tumbling backwards, except this time the trapdoor down to the cellar had been opened as crates of beer were carted up. He vanished before their eyes, down into a well, a darkness from which came the thud of his fall and then a dreadful silence.
“Sweet Jesus,” Miss Carruthers said as Caimin, pleased at his heroics, shinned down the thin rope, and after what seemed an age he shouted back up, “He’ll live.”
There was laughter then and jokes about so much diversion in one night, enough to fill ten columns, the gallant story of swash and buckle in Nelly’s Bar on an otherwise lacklustre winter night.
IT WAS AZIZ’s night to be with Breege. Once a fortnight his father or a neighbour dropped him off and he came racing down the steps with his satchel and his tin box, which contained his medicines in case he got his little convulsions. She had found him some years before at the gymkhana, separated from all the other children, hiding behind a barrel because he was scared of runaway horses. As always, he stood in the middle of the kitchen, too shy to run to her and hug her skirt, the way he had when he was younger.
“I was expecting you two Fridays ago.” To that he hung his head, which indicated that mother and father were quarrelling again and he had to stay at home to keep them from getting a divorce.
“I have a new trick,” he said, taking out his prized pack of cards and flicking them with great dexterity. She was to pick a card while he closed his eyes, then return it to the pack, where he would magically find it. When he picked the wrong card he laughed, his laughter feeding in on itself, a husky laugh which she loved and which for no reason at all she sometimes heard in the empty kitchen like a bell or a chime starting up of its own accord.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, bowing and launching into his aria. It was in Italian, his tongue too thin for the cumbersome words and his making up for it with exaggerated gesture and an anguished swoon over a maiden long in dying. Then it was permission to lift the muslin cloth, to see what dainties she had made for him. They were iced buns with glacé cherries, and with his forefinger he touched the soft icing, bruised a few grains, and put them delicately to his lips.
“I know what I’m going to get you when I’m big,” he said.
“What?”
“An emerald.”
“An emerald!”
“Fionnula has emerald hair.”
“Who’s Fionnula?”
From his bag he took out a schoolbook which he had neatly covered with brown paper and began to read from it.
Our stepmother has changed us into four swans, Fionnula continued, and she put a spell on us so that we would remain in the shape of birds for nine hundred years. We had to spend the first three hundred years on a lake at Derravaragh, the second three hundred years in the icy waters of the straits of Moyle, and the third three hundred years on the island of Innisglora off the West Coast. However, though Aiofe, our stepmother, could rob us of our human form she could not take our voices away. We learned many things but most of all we learned to sing and soon our music and songs became known the length and breadth of Bamba. Those who came to see us would say that we were not ordinary birds because we could speak and because we could sing.
Closing the book he waited for the applause and joined in with it himself.
“And guess what?”
“What?”
“The stepmother was found out because the king asked for the mirror of truth and she couldn’t lie to that, and guess what else: our arithmetic teacher is having an affair with our arts teacher, they kissed in the toilets.”
“An affair,” Breege says.
“I’m a chatterbox.”
“Chatterbox,” she says, and squeezes his cheek. She loves his visits, she loves him, his skin the red brown of polished apples and his eyes identical to his mother’s eyes: big, sad, brown eyes with the yearn of D
amascus in them. His mother sometimes pined for home, her sisters, musk and amber, cooking spices and silken shawls, threatening to leave and bring him with her. That was when he got his fits, because he wanted his mother and father to stay together for ever.
They had had their supper when Joseph came in, his coat sleeve pulled way down over his hand.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing’s up … Why do women always think there’s something up?” he said vexedly to Aziz.
“Uncle Joe … Uncle Joe.” Aziz ran to him, but was pushed aside as he crossed to the stove and took out his handkerchief, which was bunched up.
“God Almighty … There’s blood on it,” Breege said, crossing over to make sure.
“He wanted to fight, your friend Bugler … He drew at me in Nelly’s Bar. Ask anyone. How could I not fight him … I couldn’t look myself in the eye again. Or you.”
“How did it end?”
“Bad,” he said, and he stuffed the handkerchief into the fire. Then he switched out the light and they sat in the dark kitchen, the shadow of the flames leaping on the kitchen wall, Aziz on her lap, scared, his stockinged toes curling and uncurling, the handkerchief burning, Bugler’s blood burning, a scorching smell and then a gasp from each as they heard a car stop outside.
“I’m denying everything … and so are you,” Joseph said, afraid.
They waited and then heard the car go on, and thinking it was Bugler, Breege said, “That must be him now … Going on up home.”
“Thanks be to God,” Joseph said, and then he fell to his knees and in the dark began to pray aloud: “I beseech thee, most sweet Lord Jesus Christ, grant that thy passion may be to me a power by which I may be strengthened, protected, and defended. May thy wounds be to me food and drink, by which I may be nourished, inebriated, and overjoyed.”
“What’s wrong with Uncle Joe?” Aziz whispered, and began to shake the way he did prior to his fits.
GUARD SLATTERY PACED as he read out part of the statement which he had typed for the third time. He was proud of how smart he had been, smart and cute, getting Joe Brennan to talk, to rave, stitching himself up until there was no retreat. He was proud of how he pounced on him while he waited in line at the creamery for his tankard of milk to be taken in, walking up to him quite casual, saying, “We have a complaint that you assaulted a man,” Brennan denying it at first, saying, “You have the wrong man,” and then conceding and saying, “It was to teach him a lesson.” It was a breeze from then on, just a question of convincing him that he was better off coming down to the barracks and making a statement because denying it was absurd, too many people knew. Going in the barrack door he recalled how Brennan stalled and tried to back out of it and how he had to push him in, telling him he was more likely to get off if he pleaded guilty. They had chatted about this and that to get him in a relatively relaxed mood, and eventually he babbled.
“On the night of the eleventh instant I was in Nelly’s Bar, where I had two hot whiskies for a cold. Mick Bugler came in and goaded me. Earlier he tried and failed to return a cheque to me which I had sent him in the post for work he did. He removed stones from the pasture, but I didn’t want any charity from him, which is why I had sent him a cheque. He threw it back at me. In the pub one word led to another and we had a scuffle, where I incurred a cut down my neck. People stopped the fight and Bugler left. I left soon after and got into my van to drive home. I had no intention of seeking him out. All I wanted was to be up home and in bed. At Lyon’s Cross there was a car in front of me letting somebody out. I knew this car to be Bugler’s. It was a girl, a woman, he was letting out and he took his time over it. She climbed the gate and up the hill towards the Glebe House, where there are squatters. I’d given him plenty of time. I then blew the horn a good few times and still he didn’t move. He opened the door and shouted back at me and told me to ‘fuck off.’ He then closed the door and stayed where he was on the road. I blew the horn a few more times. I then got out and went over to his car. I opened the driver’s door and started punching him with my right fist. I suppose I was mad at the time. I then went and took a stone off the wall …”
* * *
He put it aside then until he had some lunch to tickle the brain cells. He was imagining himself standing up in the court for the first time in his life giving such professional evidence. On the table beside him were the various exhibits which he had taken from the scene — a bottle of Lourdes water, dirty swabs of cotton wool with which he had soaked up the bloodstains on the ground, loose money that had fallen out of Bugler’s pocket, various stones, and the one big stone, the big fella, covered in bits of vegetation and dried blood. In a neat hand he began to label each one.
* * *
The morning the summons came Joseph decided to hide it for the time being.
THE CIRCUIT COURT
Michael Bugler
Plaintiff
and
Joseph Brennan
Defendant
You are hereby required, within ten days after the service of this Civil Bill upon you, to enter, or cause to be entered with the County Registrar at his Office at the Court House, an appearance to answer the claim of Michael Bugler.
And take notice that unless you do enter an appearance you will be held to have admitted the said claim and that Plaintiff may proceed therein and judgement may be given against you in your absence without further notice.
THERE WERE TWO solicitors in the village, O’Dea, a local, and a Mr. Leveau, who came from the city and took his lunch in the hotel before going to his rooms. As soon as Joseph sat with him he realised his mistake. The long, uninterrupted flow of speech was addling him.
“Now, we could be dealing here with a known symptom, the inferiority of the returned exile … not a native son … a bit of an outsider. It may not be visible to a lay person, but dealing as I do with human nature in all its vacillations, I pride myself on recognising the symptoms of your Mr. Bugler. Estrangement I call it. It is not the diaspora as such. Diaspora has more of a global connotation, a mass feeling prevalent among those who, though they have never met, know themselves to be aliens in an alien land. Estrangement occurs in the mind. Are you with me? This Mr. Bugler might have had some hard knocks, snubs, hardships, call it what you will. A sheep farm in Australia, or for that matter in Timbuktu, is a dive, a rough place, totally uncivilised. A bachelor life into the bargain. Slights, insults, other races calling him a Paddy or a Mick. Poles, Swedes, Germans, somehow, they all see themselves as being that little bit superior to Paddy and to Mick. Couple these sneers, these taunts, with a bachelor existence and you arrive at a bit of a complex. Add to it the lonely sheep station, a few dogs for friends, some boozing on a Saturday night, and you arrive at a displacement, by which I mean the longing for home. Are you with me? The irony is that this mythic home means more than it might to you or to me. We know who we are. To a man like him, faraway hills look green. There would be no actual memories in his childhood. It would be a question of stories around a fire, recitations, Mother Macree ad nauseam. Voyeuristic if you will, but memories all the same. No roots. The need for the root becomes the grail. And of course, of course, he never dreamed that it would become real, that he would actually inherit a farm and a shack. His fantasy converted into fact.” He thought for a moment, removed his spectacles, wiped them with a chamois, and said it was not the first time he had had to deal with such a case, the overweening ambition of the returned exile, and then he felt it his duty to spare a word for Bugler’s uncle, who had died so tragically, said no farmer with any sense would go into a field with a bull, even his own bull.
“What do you think will happen to me … what’s the worst that will happen to me?” Joseph asked.
“My dear man … not so fast. I’m trying to paint you a picture of the psychology. Bugler is summoned home because of a tragedy … He gets a letter off over in Australia. He’s told about his inheritance and he has to make a choice whether to engage an auctioneer to sell it or
to come home and make a fist of things. I have to say that I do have a sneaking admiration for the way he has set about it single-handed … reclaiming whole areas of marsh, I understand.”
“He’d like to take me over.”
“But you did hit him … that is a plain and incontrovertible fact.”
“I did.”
“And you’ve given your statement to the Garda.”
“I had to … They wrung it out of me … that young guard.”
“So my task is how to play it to the judge.”
“Will he fine me … or will I go to gaol, which?”
“That reminds me of a little story. In the district court a few mornings ago two motorists are down for speeding, a lady and a gent. The gent, who had only been doing ninety miles per hour, is fined two hundred pounds, and the lady, who had been doing one hundred and ten miles per hour but had flashing eyes, gets off with a caution, because she flattered His Honour.”
“I’ll think it over,” Joseph said, rising, perspiring.
“I know what you’re thinking, Mr. Brennan … You’re thinking that you would be better off with Mr. O’Dea up the street. Mr. O’Dea, who trebles as undertaker, cattle jobber, and man at the Bar … he’s more your cup of tea.”
“I’ll think it over.”
“That will be twenty-five guineas,” Mr. Leveau said, and he stood by the oil heater, warming his hands, a frigid smile on his face as he watched Joseph take out the notes, eventually having to search in his pocket for shillings and sixpences, to make up the required sum.
HOSTS OF SEAGULLS circled at different altitudes, their long-drawn-out wails spiteful, as if one batch cried back to outdo another. Their shrillness coming down out of the whey-green cavity of sky onto the court building and onto the groups bunched up in coats and anoraks, summoned from their fields and their holdings, into a kingdom of judgement. The cries of the seagulls more raucous far than the crows at Cloontha.
