by Phelan, Tom;
As the bus reached the end of the Four-Mile-Stretch, Corrigan turned the steering wheel slightly to the left, at the same time pressuring the accelerator to get up speed for the hill ahead. The image of the brown clergyman evaporated when, up ahead, he saw Paddy Kavanagh giving his lorry a rest on the small landing halfway up Beggses Hill on the Esker.
Corrigan took his foot off the accelerator, pushed in the clutch and let gravity bring the bus to a stop. As he switched off the engine, he made the decision that, no matter how long it took Paddy Kavanagh to reverse his sand-laden lorry up the rest of the hill, the delay was going to rule out any bog work this evening.
Suddenly feeling better than he’d felt all day, Corrigan opened the door and swung down out of his high seat onto the road. He pulled his trousers out of his secondary pair of cheeks. After throwing his cap back up into the cab, he rubbed the itching sweat-track out of his silver hair with the fury of a dog’s paw attacking a biting flea. After smoothing down the disturbed hair, the bus driver put his hands on his hips and arched his shoulders back. He saw Paddy Kavanagh getting out of his lorry and cupping his hands around his mouth.
“Can you give me five minutes, Joe?” the lorry driver called.
Corrigan cupped his own mouth and called back, “No hurry, Paddy. Take your time.” Kavanagh waved his thanks and slowly walked around his dilapidated lorry inspecting, kicking, poking, tugging, hoping. Another man got out of the lorry’s cab, and even though he could not make out his features, Corrigan knew it was Ned Bracken. “Poor old Ned. Takes any kind of work that comes his way. Shoveling sand all day is a killer.”
Corrigan bent at the waist, let his hands and head hang down until he felt the blood in his finger tips and eyes. This evening he was going to enjoy his colcannon and his eggs, and if the midges allowed, go for a walk with the missus along the river bank into the town for a half-one in Lee Reilly’s snug. His face was purple when he straightened up. He shook the pins and needles out of his fingers. When the feeling of fullness leaked back down out of his face, Corrigan bent over again, enjoying what the stretching was doing to his cramped shoulders and lower back. Between his legs he saw feet approaching and knew it was Ned Geoghan, the conductor, out for a stretch too. The feet stopped, and a voice that was not Ned Geoghan’s said, “Excuse me, driver.”
Although he responded to the imperious tone as slowly as he could, Joe Corrigan straightened up too quickly and brown clouds and streaks of light fled across his eyes. He put his hand on the bus’s mudguard and turned around. The brown clergyman was standing four feet away. The scarcity of the long, golden hairs lying across the dome of the churchman’s head highlighted his brown baldness, and it was this extra expanse of tanned skin that convinced Corrigan this man was from a country of dark-skinned people. The sparkling, clerical eyeglasses were set in gold-colored frames. The large, golden face was without blemish, well-fed without being fat. It was very obvious that the clerical suit had been fitted by a tailor. The black shoes were without animal dung, dust, dirt or muck—a veritable miracle in this land flowing with muck and shite.
Before the C.I.E. driver could say anything, the clergyman asked, “What are you doing?”
Despite the scorn he held for priests, Corrigan almost reacted on a nun-instilled instinct—almost started the motions of tugging his forelock out of respect for the cloth. But he easily checked himself. “If it looks like I’m stretching, then it’s stretching I’m doing,” he said. To show how much he had recovered from the nunnish brainwashing, Corrigan stretched his arms above his head and stood on his toes. “Aaaah,” he said. “There’s nothing like a great bloody stretch.”
“And what are the rest of us supposed to do while you’re out here enjoying your stretch?”
Corrigan saw sparking anger in the cleric’s eyeballs. Keeping his arms above his head, he said, “Oh, I would never make a suggestion to a man of such standing as yourself, but since you ask, you might like to walk on ahead and I’ll stop when we catch up with you so you can get back on the bus again.”
The sparks in the priest’s eyes became flames and, in his peculiar accent, now obviously underpinned with an Irish lilt, he said, “My good man, I paid for a seat on this bus to get to Gohen by six o’clock. I suggest that you suppress this sudden urge to perform calisthenics out here in the countryside, that you get back in your bus and drive it to Gohen without further delay.”
Unblinkingly returning the imperious stare, Joe Corrigan jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said, “My good man, there’s a lorry stopped in the middle of the road ahead of us. It’ll be out of the way in five minutes.”
The clergyman looked up at the lorry sitting on the landing on Beggses Hill. “I should have known,” he said, meaning I’m surrounded by fools. He turned around to go back to the bus, but before he had gone two steps, Corrigan called after him, “Hey!” The priest stopped, but there was a split-second hesitation before he turned around. He glared at the driver.
“If you’d asked politely like any decent man would do, you wouldn’t have made an arse of yourself,” Corrigan said, and he resumed his calisthenics.
Five minutes later Paddy Kavanagh got into his truck and Ned Bracken cranked the lorry’s cooled engine to life. The clanging of metal was heard in the land as Kavanagh wrestled with gear lever and clutch. He stuck his upper body through the window and twisted his head toward the rear of his lorry. The engine groaned like an old woman changing position in her bed. In many forceful streams, smoke spewed out of the many-holed exhaust pipe and enveloped the sand-lorry. The groaning cloud slowly backed up the face of Beggses Hill like a doubtful saint wobbling up to heaven on a porous cloud. For one breathless moment it seemed to teeter, exhausted, on the crest before it slipped from view. Ned Bracken, walking to reduce weight, disappeared into the smoke.
His backside against the front of the bus’s mudguard, his arms folded across his chest, Joe Corrigan gazed at the spot where the lorry had sunk like a ship on the other side of a rolling wave. He heard footsteps approaching, but he didn’t turn around. It was the priest again. He stood beside Corrigan, too close, and asked, “Are we going to stay here all night?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m not,” Corrigan said, and he didn’t move, didn’t look at his inquisitor, just kept looking at Beggses Hill.
“When can we expect you to grace us with the service we paid for?”
“If you’re asking when will we get moving again, the answer is, in about two minutes. That’s how long it takes Paddy Kavanagh to turn his lorry around.”
“And then I suppose we’ll have to stay behind him all the way into Gohen.”
“You’re right at that! But I wouldn’t worry about it,” Corrigan said. “Paddy’s able to get his loaded lorry up to ten miles an hour on the level.”
“My good man, I’ve been traveling for a long time and I—”
Corrigan turned and bestowed on the cleric the look he reserved for cat shite stuck to the sole of his shoe. He spoke quietly and firmly—menacingly almost. “My good man, I’ve been traveling a long time myself. The other people on the bus have been traveling a long time. Paddy Kavanagh started loading his lorry at seven o’clock this morning, and it’ll be dark by the time he throws off the last shovelful of sand.” He ran appraising eyes down along the body of the cleric, then locked onto the ecclesiastical orbs until the clergyman blinked and left.
Trailing Paddy Kavanagh’s lorry, the bus arrived twenty minutes late in Gohen. While he was still fifty yards away from the Central Hotel, Joe Corrigan eyed the few people waiting to meet his passengers and deliveries. The young Bracken chap, his blond hair making him as obvious as one dandelion in an acre of lawn, was there as usual, waiting for the box of reels for the Picture House. Simon Peter Lamb’s boy, sitting on his bike with his hand on the Bracken boy’s shoulder, was there too, as Corrigan knew he would be, waiting for the box of day-old Rhode Island Red chicks under the canvas on top of the bus. Jimser Conroy, huge gut held up
off his thighs with a leather belt strong enough to hold a howdah on an elephant, was standing in the front door of his two-storied hotel, stoically hoping the bus was bringing him some custom. And of course, Con-I’ll-have-it-for-you-tomorrow-Carroll, the draper, was there waiting for his delivery from Clerys of O’Connell Street. There was no one else, except the mad-looking Coughlin woman from Drumsally on the far side of the Esker, but it was likely that she was just passing and had stopped to gawk.
“Maybe your man is coming to see Father Mooney,” Corrigan thought, “and maybe Mooney’s on the golf links.”
No sooner had the bus come to a stop than Corrigan could hear Ned Geoghan clambering up the metal ladder at the back. Switching off the engine, the driver climbed out of his cab and swung the door shut. As he went to the back of the bus to help with the unloading of the luggage and deliveries, the Coughlin woman strode past him. At the same time, the cleric with the golden hair stepped onto the footpath and looked around. The Coughlin woman, wisps of her thin red hair escaping from her hairnet, went directly to the priest and stood in front of him.
As he went by, Corrigan heard the churchman saying, “I hope you bought the motor.”
Ned Geoghan handed down the two brown suitcases, and Joe Corrigan placed them on the footpath. There were no nametags on them, just large black numbers inside white-starred labels. Then came the Clerys package, and when he turned around with it, Con-I’ll-have-it-for-you-tomorrow was waiting for the hand-off at Corrigan’s elbow. “Good man, Joe,” Con said, and he strode off with his little bit of profit under his arm.
When Ned Geoghan handed down the box for Simon Peter Lamb’s wife, the scrabbling feet of the dozen day-old chicks inside could be heard. As he called over the Lamb boy with a flick of the peak of his driver’s cap, Corrigan saw that the Coughlin woman and the priest were gone, were walking up the street. The woman was carrying the two suitcases.
The Lamb child wheeled his bike over and, when the Bracken boy yanked up the spring-loaded arm, the bus driver put the box on the carrier over the back wheel.
“Is your name Billy?” Corrigan asked, as Bracken carefully set the carrier arm against the box of livestock.
“No, sir. Barlow.”
“Barlow, as in Bartholomew?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I just saw your father in Mister Kavanagh’s lorry.” Corrigan turned to the Lamb boy. “And you’re one of Simon Peter’s lads?”
“Yes, sir. Mikey.”
“Your mother was a Hayes, wasn’t she?” Corrigan said. “And you’re a real Hayes yourself to look at. Tell me now, Mikey, how is it that day-old chicks don’t die of the hunger and they not fed since they were born?”
“When they come out of their shells, sir, they still have a bit of the egg yolk in their stomachs and that keeps them going for a few days until they learn to pick.”
“But isn’t the yolk the yoke they hatch out of?”
“It is, sir, but when the guts are made, they’re made around a little bit of the yolk and that’s still in there when the chicken is hatched.”
“Be Janey! I’ve always wondered about that, and no one was ever able to tell me. Where did you find that out?”
“In a book, sir.”
“I love books, myself. There’s nothing like books for finding out things,” Joe Corrigan said. “Did you ever hear of Boadicea?”
“No, sir.”
“Well you will someday. She was one great woman even if she was English.”
Ned Geoghan had climbed down the ladder with the flat box of reels in his free hand. “What does Mister Tracey pay you for doing this?” he asked, as he handed it to Barlow.
“Tuppence a day or into the Picture House for nothing.”
“I suppose you see every picture, then?” Geoghan asked.
“No, sir,” Barlow Bracken answered. “I give the money to my mother.”
“That’s a good lad,” Corrigan said. “How old are you?”
“Eleven, sir.”
“Only eleven and you helping out your father and mother with the money. You’re a good lad, Bartholomew Bracken.”
Barlow Bracken blushed.
With Ned Geoghan the only person left on the bus, Joe Corrigan drove up the empty street toward Bill Moore’s shed. When he went around the bend at Lee Reilly’s pub, he saw the Coughlin woman and her brother Eddie-the-cap and the brown priest standing at the back of a black Morris Minor. The lid of the boot was open, and the perpetually becapped one was lifting a suitcase into the car.
Rules are rules, and the C.I.E. rules said the bus could not be reversed unless the conductor stood outside to guide the driver. And so, Ned Geoghan, keeping himself in the frame of the rearview mirror on the side of the bus, guided Joe Corrigan into the shed. With a final sighing of springs the bus came to a stop and when the engine was turned off, the silence in the shed was loud.
As Corrigan turned the key in the door lock, Ned Geoghan came up from the depths of the shed. “Were you talking to that priest at all?” Corrigan asked.
“I never heard such a fussy old bollicks,” Geoghan replied. “He pissed and moaned the whole way home. You’d think he was the king of England, the way he was going on, complaining about everything.”
Side by side, they strolled to where their bikes were lying against a disused manger.
“God, he was real snotty to me. Did you see he was met by that quare Coughlin one and Eddie-the-cap?”
“He’s their brother home from India for his holidays.”
The two men rested their bikes against the low wall outside the shed.
“He’s the brother of them Coughlins?” Corrigan echoed. “I never heard of the Coughlins having a brother, never mind a priest in the family.”
Corrigan and Geoghan each pulled in a big half door and met in the middle.
“He’s their brother, all right—away for years. And he belongs to some religious order or other, so he kind of disappeared when he was about twelve. He told me he’s been traveling for three weeks from India and that the journey from Dublin to Gohen was the worst part.”
“He’s a miserable old bollicks,” Corrigan said, as he locked the two doors of the shed together with the heavy chain.
“Well, if he’s not miserable himself, he makes everyone around him miserable,” Ned Geoghan said. He put his left foot on the bike’s pedal and pushed off. As he swung his right leg over the saddle, he said, “I’ll see you in the morning, Joe.”
“Right y’are, Ned!”
When Joe Corrigan rode his bike out onto the street, Mikey Lamb was wobbling by on his bike with Barlow Bracken on the bar, Bracken holding the film reels to his chest with his free hand. When he caught up with the boys Corrigan slowed down. “Will I give you a push to get you going, lads?” he called from behind.
“Yes, please, Mister Corrigan,” Mikey Lamb replied.
“Hold on, so,” said the driver. “Here I come.” As he sidled up beside the boys’ bike, he could hear the peeping of the chicks in the box on the carrier. He put his right hand on the small of Mikey’s back and gave him a boost forward.
The wobble went out of his bike as Mikey pedaled furiously and got up a head of steam.
“Thanks, Mister Corrigan,” the two boys called together, and Joe Corrigan turned off into Long Barn Lane and headed home to his colcannon and two fried eggs. He was bursting with the good news for his wife that instead of the bog tonight, they were going to walk into Lee Reilly’s for a half-pint each. He’d tell the Missus how a chicken gets hatched around a piece of egg yolk.
Their riverside walks sometimes ended with great action between the sheets before they went to sleep, neither of them with a stitch on.
18
The Terrible Thought
1951
In which Estelle Butler, lifelong friend of Annie Mulhall, niece-in-law of Doul Yank, dispenses delicious gossip, but Annie is too distracted to enjoy the dished dirt.
FOR SOMEONE ACCUSTOMED to traveling along r
utted, overgrown lanes in an unsprung, iron-shod, and chain-encumbered cart, there was an elegance to traveling on a smooth, tarred road in a trap with rubber-tired wheels, sensitive springs and leather draughts. A person could chat without having to compete loudly with clanging iron and jangling chains—not have to worry that the conversation would go over the roadside hedges into greedy ears.
Peggy Mulhall, wife of Mattie, niece-in-law of Doul Yank, was sitting in Estelle Butler’s trap, very pleased with herself in her cushioned seat. The two women, friends since First Babies, were facing each other, their knees occasionally touching. The only sound, besides Estelle’s voice, was the unrushed clip-clopping of the pony’s hooves.
Peggy’s satisfaction would have been more complete if only she could have banished her thieving uncle-in-law from her mind. She was so needful to talk with her friend about Doul Yank that she was impatient for Estelle to finish dispensing her accumulated gossip. Besides a few hums and haws, Peggy did no speculative wallowing in Estelle’s latest news, hoping that her restraint would speed things along. Peggy sometimes resented Estelle’s selfish command of the conversation. Sheila Quigley, wife of Quick, and their mutual friend, had no qualms about silencing Estelle’s mad loquacious gallops with a vocal tackle of her own.
Father Jarlath Coughlin had visited Estelle, Paul and their two girls on Thursday evening. “It’s hard to imagine he’s the brother of Bridie and Eddie. He’s so . . . he talks so nicely—little ups and downs like he’s nearly singing. And it’s almost a sin how clean he is. Not a speck under his fingernails, and you know the way the dirt gets ground into a man’s hands? Well, he has the cleanest hands I’ve ever seen on a man, or a woman for that matter, cleaner than the Protestant minister’s wife. And you’d cut yourself open on the creases in his trousers, they’re so sharp. The girls could see the red of the fire in his toecaps. But the best of all were the cufflinks. His brown skin, the black suit, the white shirt and the gold cufflinks—he looked so . . . so perfect, so rich, so refined. That’s exactly it—refined. Cufflinks made of gold, mind you. And the gold rims of his shining glasses! Paul beside him in his old clothes and Wellingtons looked like a pile of fresh horse dung with steam rising; such perfect skin and it so brown and clean you’d love to get bare with him between the sheets even if only to feel him all over. I’d say he even has a golden rod.” Estelle slapped Peggy on the knee and sent a stream of laughter arcing over the hedges. Peggy forced a smile. In Peggy’s mind her friend’s name had always lent Estelle a certain degree of poshness—“Estelle” sounded a bit Protestant. And so, Peggy was always mildly surprised when vulgar stuff came out of Estelle’s mouth.
