Lies the Mushroom Pickers Told

by Phelan, Tom;

  Doul Yank’s thievery was turning into an ache in Peggy’s stomach.

  “He’s terrible interesting, and as brown as a hen egg. The girls only wanted to see the pictures in the stereoscope. They were pretending to do their homework, waiting for him to finish telling Paul and me about the Hindus and the Muslims and what’s going on since the English left. There’s been terrible killing, and I’m afraid the girls might be having nightmares. Of course their ears pricked up entirely when he started whispering to Paul and myself about what the Indians do to each other with those terrible machetes, chopping the hands and arms off each other with one swipe. Can you imagine someone coming at you swinging a billhook? I’d die of the fright, myself, before he even got near me—dirty my knickers at least. Go up!” As if to get away from the image of the amputating billhook, Estelle slapped the pony’s rump with the flat of her hand. The pony made a feeble buck within the confines of its tacklings, told Estelle with its arse to feck off.

  “Doul . . .” Peggy began, but Estelle didn’t hear her.

  “The stereoscope is a great contraption. There’s two pictures exactly the same stuck to a piece of cardboard beside each other. You put the cardboard in a frame and look through two eyeholes with glass in them and the two pictures become one picture and you’d think there’s space between the people far back and ones near your eyes. The pictures were great and terrible at the same time. You’d think you were standing right there in the middle of everything, but the people in them were terrible skinny and mad looking. One man wearing a sheet had bits of sticks for crutches and a lump of a stump hanging there like the end of a sausage tied up with a twist of twine. There wasn’t a blade of grass anywhere, just heaps of dust and rocks, and a few cows with their hips sticking up like two sticks in an empty sack and humps between their shoulders. There was one man on his hunkers with nothing only a rag around him, and the boniest knees you ever saw, and the thinnest legs—God! I’d hate to see his privates—two raisins and a dead minnow. He was stripping the skin off a cow, and big birds looking down at him from the bushes. Any animal is terrible to look at without its skin, all bloody and gutsy. Only certain people are allowed to skin cows, and only the vultures and the kites are allowed to eat them, and people dying of the hunger in the streets every day. The cows are sacred, and if a Hindu eats beef he’s finished for ever, straight to hell with him. Did you ever hear the likes? The cows go anywhere they want and do their dung all over the place. Sacred cows, I ask you! The girls couldn’t look at half the pictures, after all the looking forward. There was another with a man holding the body of a monkey by the feet in one hand and its head in his other one. It reminded me of John the Baptist’s head on the plate in that picture in the convent. How do the nuns pass that every day going in to eat?” Estelle rippled the reins along the pony’s back, but the old pony would not be bullied, and its steady trot did not change.

  Peggy quickly loaded her lungs, but Estelle wasn’t finished yet.

  “When the English wanted to torture a Hindu, they pushed beef down his throat and rubbed cow fat all over him. They tortured the Muslims the same way, only with pig. Aren’t the English a terrible crowd altogether? Father Coughlin said now that they’re gone out of India, his school has to raise all its own money, that neither the Hindus nor the Muslims will support a Catholic school. He hopes the people of Gohen and Clunnyboe and Drumsally will be very generous. When he left, Paul said, ‘That’s why he came home—to raise money. He’ll be back with the hand out.’ There we were thinking he was visiting us just to be nice, to show us the pictures, and all he was doing was softening us up for a donation to his school. I hate when people do that—you think they’re all friendly, and then you find out they’re after something. Asking the likes of us for money for a school in India and we lucky if we can afford to go to the pictures once a month. Go up.” Again, the leather reins rose and fell, and the pony took no notice.

  “Doul Yank . . .” Peggy said, but Estelle was already off at full steam on a different track. “And did you ever think you’d see the Civil Servant riding down the road with a woman, and the woman Deirdre Hyland, no less? I thought that one would only marry a vet, or a doctor or a solicitor or a draper. God, she has terrible notions that one, talking with an accent like she was from London or somewhere. And the Civil Servant taking to her like a duck to water. I’d love to be a fly on the wall the night of their wedding. Imagine the Civil Servant with nothing on, only his glasses. Hyland without her clothes! It’s the real proper ones you have to watch out for. She’d be the kind to surprise everyone, and it wouldn’t surprise me if she’ll surprise the son of Lalor by falling to her knees in front of him to worship his relic.” Estelle exploded in laughter.

  And Peggy smiled. While the loud laughter soared, Peggy’s inward eye saw Doul Yank with his fistful of brown five-pound notes that rightly belonged to her and Mattie, saw him sloping out of the bank like a horrible snake in the grass. If Mikey Lamb hadn’t seen him, she and Matt wouldn’t have found out till the bollicks was dead. And by that time Doul Yank could have taken out the entire value of the farm. And what was the fecker doing with the money?

  Estelle leaned in and brought Peggy back by putting her hand on her knee. “It won’t be la-di-dah-Deirdre when Lalor gets going. Can you picture it? Then all the refinement gone out the window, and she grunting and sweating like an old sow under a boar, squealing for more.” Estelle threw back her head and made a whinnying noise that segued into mirthful laughter. And before the laughter had run its course, she was talking again, her voice so tautly pitched it was in danger of collapse. “If they don’t go away for a honeymoon, I swear I’ll be outside their window on the first night. Even if they do go away, I’ll be there outside the window their first night back.”

  During Estelle’s commentary, Peggy suddenly grew weary of her attempt to talk about Doul Yank; had grown weary of Doul Yank sitting inside her head. “What is there to talk about anyway? Just that he’s borrowing money against the farm that’s supposed to be ours when he dies.”

  Her eyes wandered into the finely inscribed curlicues and flourishes painted on the curving shafts of the trap; they followed the open circles within open circles, all joined together with roaming lines that could have been stylized, thorned vines, and in these vines Peggy’s mind numbly came to rest and she heard all over again what Mikey Lamb had told her and Mattie, what Mikey’s father and mother made him tell them.

  “Brendan Healy and myself were waiting with the Picture House money, and Mister Gorman was leaning across the counter whispering to Mister Gorry, and Mister Gorry got this big book from under the counter, and when he found the right place, he spun it around and said, ‘Sign there, Mister Gorman.’ And when Mister Gorry was counting out the fivers, his fingers were a blur like a wheel in the pictures, and Mister Gorman spread himself all over the counter like a turkey with its wings around the young ones when there’s a hawk, so no one would see. But I stepped over to the side, and I could see the brown fivers flying through Mister Gorry’s fingers so quick you could hardly see them. I thought there must be a hundred fivers, and then Mister Gorry picked up the pile and went through it again very slow, and I counted, too, and there were only twenty fivers. Mister Gorman put the money in his inside pocket before he turned away from Mister Gorry.”

  When she finally dragged herself out of the painted thorns, the spire of the Protestant church in Gohen was peeping above the elm trees surrounding Blennerhassets’ Stud Farm. Estelle was laughing again, and she gleefully gave the pony a sharp thwack on the arse with the end of the reins. The somnolent pony jerked awake and, with unexpected alacrity, broke into a short and angry gallop, causing the trap to undulate jerkily like a boy-blown paper boat in a basin. Noises of apprehension sprang out of the women and each clasped the side of the trap. Then dramatic sighs of relief escaped from Estelle when the pony suddenly returned to her previous gait.

  They passed the Blennerhasset Stud Farm and Estelle, still blind to h
er friend’s distraction, chattered on about the preparations the Coughlins had made for the homecoming of their brother—new thatch, new whitewash, and new geranium. Peggy’s eyes wandered off again until they came to rest on the brass railing on the front of the trap with its upcurled ends channeling the leather reins from the driver’s hand to the brass ring embedded in each side of the pony’s straddle. As her eyes lost their focus, she eased herself into the gentle rocking motion of the trap. Just beyond the brass rein-rail, the blurred haunches of the pony hypnotically muscled with each step trotted, and a distant clipping and clopping was synchronized to the rising and falling of the haunches. The swaying of the pony’s head, the movement of the haunches and the unending flow of tarred road into her eyes’ edges harmonized into a symphony, and Peggy’s brain threw up silhouettes on a distant horizon. And there was Doul Yank in his snipe-shooting uniform and with his snipe-shooting double-barreled shotgun, heading across the fields on one of his snipe-shooting safaris, and Peggy heard the words Mister Howard had spoken to her husband: “Death is the only thing that can stop Mister Gorman from taking the money out of the bank and using the farm as collateral. Remember, it’s his till he dies.”

  Peggy Mulhall pulled in such a loud chestful of air that she sounded like a victim of apnea who has seen the glow of the Pearly Gates but who has opted to come back to her warm bed for another while. Estelle asked, “Are you all right, Peggy?”

  But an ass-and-cart came into view around the corner ahead and distracted Estelle. Spud Murphy, the bell ringer, public masturbator and general factotum of all the Catholic institutions in Gohen, was on his way to the Blennerhasset Stud for a load of Protestant horse dung for the nuns’ flower garden. Even the nuns believed that Protestant horse dung had greater potency than Catholic horse dung because Protestant oats had the same good qualities as the barley they sold to Mister Guinness for his porter. Despite the unusually hot sun, Murphy was wearing his standard general factotum uniform of ragged cap, buttoned-to-the-throat dirty gabardine overcoat, and turned-down Wellington boots. In the center of his noisy conveyance Spud was standing up with the reins casually caught in the fingers of one hand. One flap of his overcoat was pushed aside, and the other hand was in his trousers pocket, sufficiently active to suggest that he was working himself up to a public performance. His entire body was turned slightly toward the center of the road, and he was showing off his cartmanship to the best advantage. He was in complete syncopation with the forward movement of the cart, his knees allowing for the short ups and downs of the backband in the straddle. The onlooker would have been convinced that, no matter what the ass did to throw everything out of kilter, Murphy would maintain his heroic pose. In another context he could have been a David in Carrara marble or a plumed chevalier laughing at a Dutch painter.

  Estelle was not impressed. “Off to the stud for a load of Protestant horseshite, Spud?” she called, and she nudged Peggy Mulhall’s knee.

  “Missus Blennerhasset always gives me tea and jammy bread, with sugar in it,” Spud called back, nonsequitoriously, and his hand inside his trousers went into high gear.

  “Be gob, she’s a decent woman,” Estelle called back, as the cart and the trap passed on the road, each gliding past its background of high margin-grass and leafy bushes.

  “That’s a grand trap you have there,” Spud called back, almost turned completely around in the distancing cart, not showing the slightest concern for his balance. “Grand soft wheels and springs, and I wouldn’t have the bones shook out of me at all. Yeer two fine looking women. Ohyaah!” He suddenly bent over.

  “Isn’t he a terrible yoke,” Estelle said. “How many times has Father Scully told him to stop pulling his wire in public? All the clouts he’s got from every man in Gohen, and he still does it. And will you look at him? You’d think he was in Duffy’s Circus, standing on the back of a galloping horse and holding onto nothing except his willie.”

  Even though the esquire’s words were still ricocheting around her skull, Peggy smiled for Estelle. She was intensely relieved that she had not mentioned Doul Yank to Estelle, had not let loose her raging anger. A thought, too terrible to be told to anyone, had crossed her mind. She was so alarmed at the thought that she pushed it away, afraid that Estelle might see what she was thinking. Jesus! She felt her back begin to itch from a sudden surge of sweat. Quickly, she burst out, “What had you in the house for Father Coughlin to eat?”

  “Nothing, only bread and butter and jam. I wasn’t expecting him for another week.”

  The high wall around the Protestant churchyard threw back the sounds of the pony’s hoofs on the road.

  “I’d better get something. He might come to see us soon,” Peggy said. “Maybe a bit of ham and a tomato and a pan loaf and a bit of Coleman’s mustard. And maybe a few chester cakes as well.”

  “God! Don’t give him too much, or he’ll think you’ll be giving him a big donation when he comes begging. If I were you, I’d give him nothing but tea and bread and butter. No jam.”

  On the streets of Gohen, people began to appear who needed to be greeted, and as the two friends nodded, waved and good morninged, the pony, unguided, trotted along the main street and turned into the yard behind Ramsbottom’s shop, where it knew it would have a long sleep standing up in the shafts.

  19

  In the Sunroom

  In which Elsie Howard begins to tell Patrick Bracken, once called Barlow, about a family tragedy, but Sam unwittingly interrupts and talks about the same tragedy he has kept buried for a long time.

  “STOP, PATRICK,” MISTER HOWARD said. He began to struggle out of his chair. “Le bladaire runneth over again,” he said when he’d stood up.

  “Sam!” his wife said. “There are other words for this bodily need of yours. You could at least say you’re off to exfuse.”

  “I did use my French to take the vulgar edge off. I’m off to exfuse, Patrick,” Sam said. “But no matter what you call it, there’s no getting around the fact that le vessie vieux is shrinking. And the hands are shaking, and the underpinnings are beginning to go. Getting old—being old—is one big pain in the arse. I never thought it would be like this. And the damn thing, old age, creeps up so subtly that you don’t even notice it. One day you wake up and you’re old. It’s so disappointing.” He shuffled a few steps as he tried to work up a head of steam. “So disappointing,” he said again and leaned a hand on the door jamb.

  Missus Howard turned to Patrick. “Sam thinks he should still be able to run a marathon, even though he hasn’t broken into a run since he robbed Morgans’ orchard when he was twelve. One of the newly minted garda took him by the ear up to his father’s office. He would have been on the books only he had a friend—his father—in high places.”

  Sam turned around. “I never shot a swallow with a pellet gun,” he said. “That’s what she did, Patrick. Shot a swallow, and her father had told her a hundred times that if you kill a swallow your cows will milk blood. She shot it while it was sitting on the peak of the roof of her own house, and it rolled down the slates and fell at her feet. She still feels guilty.”

  “I do. I still feel guilty even though it was seventy years ago.”

  Sam leaned his shoulder against the jamb. “She might be guilty about shooting a swallow, but she has no problem asking me to put a pellet into a cat’s arse while it’s doing its load in her flower beds.”

  “There’s a difference, Sam, between an innocent swallow and a crapping cat.”

  “A crapping swallow dropped its load into some fellow’s eyes in the Bible and blinded him. He probably thought all swallows should be wiped off the face of the earth. And there’s no such thing as an innocent swallow and a guilty cat. Both are behaving within their instinctive rules, and neither has any feelings about what they do. It’s we who ascribe bad intentions to them.”

  Patrick asked, “If we ascribe goodness or badness to the normal behavior of animals, then who decides where the line is, which life form should be on whic
h side of the line—fleas and honeybees, for instance; goldfinches and scall crows; wasps and wagtails; maggots and mute swans; unloading cats or purring kittens?”

  Sam said, “There’s a sect in India called the Jains, and there’s no dividing line for them. They believe in the sacredness of every form of life, some of them going so far as to wear masks so they won’t inhale and kill small flying things. Some have servants to sweep the ground where they’re going to walk so they won’t step on any creepy crawlies.”

  “That’s a bit mad,” Elsie said.

  “Not for them,” Sam said. “Patrick put his finger on it: who decides what deserves to die and what to live? We decided a long time ago that fleas don’t deserve to live, but that squirrels do. We wipe out whole colonies of ants, but we’ll free one honeybee from a spider’s web. We’ll chop a rat into little bits with a spade but pick up a kitten and stroke it and even kiss it. That line, and what goes on which side, can be pushed up into the human life form. Look at what Hitler and the Nazis did: they put millions of people on the far side of the line and did away with them like they were fleas. Look at Stalin.”

  “We don’t have to go to Europe or Russia looking for examples, Sam. Each side in any warring situation is less than human to the other side,” Patrick said.