Old Friends: The Lost Tales of Fionn Mac Cumhaill

by Tom O'Neill

  ‘Do you think so, though?’ she said.

  The next morning, she said she couldn’t drive Arthur to school, as she had an early meeting. Arthur understood. He could have cycled the seven miles, but it was very wet and the bike had no reflectors. She asked him would he wake Connie to ask him for a lift.

  Left to his own devices, Connie considered it an unnatural act to get out of bed before midday. His cows were never milked before one o’clock and the evening milking usually started when Connie came back from wherever he went gallivanting at about midnight. So it wasn’t an easy job to raise him. There was no point in calling, because he wouldn’t even hear the loudest shout above his own snoring.

  But he didn’t get cross about the cold water trickling through his hair and beard. As the first drop reached his open mouth he said, ‘Mmm, that’s a grand drop, Missus.’

  The rest of the contents of the jug had to wash over his face to make him sit up. He didn’t swear much. It almost seemed he was pleased to be asked.

  When they sat into Connie’s old Land Cruiser – he called it the Queen Mary – before he started the engine, he said to Arthur, ‘Any idea why your ma doesn’t want to drop you off today?’

  Arthur hesitated. Connie was looking straight at him. ‘I think it’s Magill. I think he might be freaking her out a bit.’

  Nothing more was said about that. Connie slowed and hooted as he drove past Trevor Saltee’s gates.

  ‘If I have to be up at unholy hours,’ explained Connie, ‘I don’t see why he should have a lie-in.’

  He didn’t stop at the speed limit sign. Or at the gates. He drove the thirty-year old Land Cruiser, with the exhaust hanging off it and doors held tight with baler twine, right into the school grounds, where only teachers’ cars were allowed. Right up to the front door.

  Magill picked up his courage and came out to tell Connie, ‘You there; you there, get out of the grounds; you can’t come in here with that contraption.’

  ‘“You there”? That’s not very polite,’ said Connie, opening the door and stepping out. ‘Pretending you don’t remember my name after beating the shite out of me every day for four years.’

  ‘Keep your distance, you great oaf,’ said Magill.

  ‘Come here to me,’ said Connie, laughing. ‘I don’t want to hurt you at all. My brother’s wife tells me she believes you are an amorous man.’

  Magill was retreating towards the door, but not fast enough. Connie got him. By the ears. He lifted his two feet off the ground, and held him right up at eye level. There he dangled for what seemed like ages, kicking and saying, ‘Don’t, don’t hurt an old man, Cornelius, let’s all be sensible, let the past stay in the past, please.’ He was almost squealing.

  Several of the other early people gathered around.

  ‘I’m not going to hurt you at all,’ Connie repeated. Then he pulled the principal closer to his bushy beard and it looked as if there was going to be a head butt. But instead Connie gave Magill a big kiss and then dropped him.

  ‘Oh, my Lord Jesus Christ preserve me,’ said Magill in utter confusion and disgust. ‘Oh, sweet mother of the divine Jesus, what are you after doing?’

  He put his hand to his mouth and literally ran inside, pursued by the lunatic laughter of Connie and all the lads in the yard.

  Connie shouted in, ‘Come on back out here Magill, you good thing you. You taste as sweet as mouldy rosebuds.’

  Every day after that, Magill hid inside whenever he heard the Land Cruiser approaching. Connie would give a few revs of Mary’s fine old diesel engine, before driving off with all the bystanders shouting, ‘How’ye, Connie,’ and ‘Good man, Connie.’

  One afternoon, Arthur took the familiar trip back down to the rath – even though he had been strictly forbidden to ever go near the place again. When the Old Man appeared, he said, ‘It’s good to see you again, a mhic.’

  It was daytime and the Old Man was on his own. No Conán. Or Etain. Or Bal.

  Arthur said, ‘There’s a favour I wanted.’

  The Old Man started talking as though he hadn’t heard Arthur. He was looking away.

  ‘In case we don’t see you again for a while – do you remember I was telling you before about how Mac Cumhaill was always guided by the spirt of Cumhall, never forgetting, never letting go? Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There were occasions, only two, when the guiding voice was lost to him and those were days of dark regret. Days when Mac Cumhaill made grave mistakes. One of those times involved a terrible mistake with Diarmuid, a man who was almost as close as a son to him. It’s why you never saw the spirit of Diarmuid wander with his old friends. That’s a story I won’t ever tell you. The other of those days was when Fionn Mac Cumhaill let his guard slip and had his own son taken when the boy was only eight. Taken to another world. The darkness that descended that day was blacker than the moonless night. His heart nearly burst with the wish to be able to tell the boy he was still ever looking for him and thinking about him; that he would see him now and then in a lone young deer that sometimes edged down to the waterside on winter evenings when Fionn Mac Cumhaill sat alone on the banks of Lough Derg, staring out across its choppy grey green expanse; that their spirits were still united and that he was certain they would meet again.’

  Arthur stared quietly back. He had never seen an old man weeping openly, making no attempt to stop the tears that were flowing in streams from him, and sobbing like a child. Arthur didn’t know what to say. He preferred things and people to be as he knew them. Not to change. He looked at his feet and waited a while. Then the Old Man, back in his old voice said, ‘Now. What was it you wanted to ask, a mhic?’

  Arthur asked if he could call the wren again.

  Dreoilín appeared and said, ‘Arthur, is the lack of worry starting to wear off? I’ll polish it up for you.’

  Arthur surprised himself and spoke up, just as Dreoilín was about to again cure him of caring a damn about the school work or anything.

  ‘I was wondering, would it be possible this time for you to do it for me, the school work, if that wouldn’t be too much trouble?’

  ‘Well, it’s not exactly much more trouble,’ said the bird, ‘but what difference would it make to you? Having no worries is the same feeling whether it comes as a result of having done tasks that seek to enslave you or as a result of having stopped caring about them.’

  ‘I understand. And thank you for that.’

  ‘So, what’s the problem?’

  ‘It’s my mother. She…well, she is kind of a bit worried about me, I suppose,’ Arthur said, slightly embarrassed. ‘So I brought some of my books down in the rucksack today.’

  Arthur was sure he saw a smile drift across the Old Man’s face.

  ‘But, doesn’t she know,’ said the bird, ‘that you’re doing more important things?’

  The Old Man intervened.

  ‘Dreoilín, you’re wasting time arguing with this man. Why don’t you just do as he has requested?’

  ‘Sure, what would I know about algebra and ox-bow lakes?’ said Dreoilín.

  ‘I thought you were supposed to be the greatest magician,’ said the Old Man. ‘If you can’t do it, why did you offer to do the work for him?’

  ‘I’m not that good. I can’t put what’s in those books into that head,’ he said nodding towards Arthur, ‘or maybe I can do it this once. But when you get back from whatever yarns this old chancer takes you on today, there will be someone in your own house who will be able to help you with all of your work every day.’

  Arthur took out his English copybook. To his amazement, the synopsis of Hamlet was all written in his own scrawl. And in the maths book, the algebra was all done. And what’s more, he didn’t need to revise for the upcoming Irish test because it all suddenly looked as easy as if he had been speaking the language all his life.

  He was still staring down in confusion when the Old Man stood and said, ‘A daytime welcome can quickly wear thin in the home of the sí. But you will always be
welcome here any night that you decide to come back to us.’

  Then he and Dreoilín were gone.

  When Arthur went home, there was no one there except Connie who had come into the kitchen to make himself a thick sandwich with cheese, crisps and ketchup. He made a second one for Arthur.

  ‘I don’t suppose…’ started Arthur. ‘There wasn’t anyone else in the house when you came in?’

  ‘What are you on about, bud?’ said Connie.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Later, when his mother came home, Arthur said, ‘Maybe if I wanted help to do a bit of the school work now and then, you’d be the one that they said could help me?’

  His mother let her handbag slip onto the floor. She started talking really fast. ‘Arthur, love, yes. That’s the…those are the most wonderful words…Yes, I’ll try, of course. Who said? No, but I’ve always been hopeless at explaining anything… It’s not me who should help you… But hold the thought… I think it might be Connie.’

  ‘Connie?’ Arthur was surprised. ‘But I thought you said Connie only got as far as the woodwork and metalwork in school?’

  ‘Connie?’ she laughed. She picked up a letter from the table. It was addressed to Dr Cornelius McLean. ‘Why do you think they call him that?’

  ‘I dunno,’ said Arthur. ‘I thought it might be some of his friends having a laugh. You know the strange names they call each other.’

  ‘Connie did the tech alright. And then got into UCC. And then on a scholarship to Berkeley. Some big degree in ancient archaeology. They made him a professor. The youngest ever. And he was writing for newspapers and playing in a band and things were really starting to go great for him. And then one day shortly after…well, immediately after Dad’s funeral, he threw it all in. He said the only work he was interested in was here. And he came back to run the farm full-time and fell back in with his old, strange friends and got himself into all kinds of shenanigans that you don’t need to know about. And, well, you know the rest.’

  ‘Ancient archaeology?’

  ‘Old buildings…Old bones…The ways people used to live…Don’t ask me.’

  Arthur never asked Connie about any of that. He preferred him the way he was. But the next day he asked Connie if he wouldn’t mind helping him try to figure out some maths. He was so far behind that he didn’t understand any of it. He was expecting Connie to laugh at him or tell him a joke. But Connie seemed delighted. He opened Arthur’s maths book as eagerly as he would the Vintage Tractor Trader. His voice even changed when he was at the books.

  He said, ‘Hmmm. Now let me see. Let me see. Let me see. Oh, Christ. How do they always manage to turn simple, clear and beautiful ideas into a hotchpotch of unutterable horse shite?’

  He scanned through Arthur’s books in less than an hour.

  Then he closed them and said in what was going to be a very familiar tone, ‘Now, you see, bud, there’s very little to this. Don’t mind the book. All you need to understand about algebra is this…’

  After that, in the afternoons, before doing any school work, Arthur rambled around the farm with Connie. He learned how to milk the cows. He found out how to poach the river on Tuesdays when Trevor was away down at the mart making notes on what everyone was getting for their cattle. He learned how to tickle the trout and remove them from the river without ever a hook being stuck in them for sport. He shot pigeons and trapped magpies. He was often sent on dusk raids to rearrange and relocate objects on Trevor Saltee’s very tidy farm. These missions included knocking down perfect stacks of hay bales and moving cows from one end of the farm to another. They were carried out not out of any vengeance – Connie didn’t have that in him. It was purely that Connie delighted in how Trevor would hop from one foot to the other when he came into the yard in a rage, yelling, ‘You wouldn’t happen to know anything about my flipping cows at all, I suppose, Con McLean?’

  ‘I am hard set to mind my own, Trev, let alone keep an eye on yours,’ Connie would roar across the yard, laughing like a madman. ‘Will you come in for a drop of tea, like a civil man, and not be standing there looking out of your mouth at us?’

  Trevor would leave, muttering in rage, but afraid to say any more to Connie.

  And Connie wasn’t going away as much as he used to. Lots of nights he stayed home now. Often the friends would visit and talk till the early hours. Arthur’s mother seemed not to mind them as much and would sometimes stay up playing cards with them and listening to their bull-shit. Other times it was just the three of them in the house and Arthur would hear Connie teasing his mother about whatever TV programme she was watching or her telling him about some of her work stuff. Arthur didn’t know if something was getting going between his mother and Connie, but if it was, he wouldn’t really mind now.

  One very cold December day Connie said to Arthur, ‘I see you’re not going down to the rath anymore.’

  ‘I do still, now and again,’ said Arthur.

  ‘You’ve had enough of the sí and all those people?’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe in them.’

  Connie looked at him questioningly and then said, ‘A mhic, I think you already know that they walk among us. It took me longer to accept. I ran off to search the world for scientific explanations. But I always knew that I am part of it and it is a part of me. I had to come back where I belonged – at the gateway of the worlds.’

  He had never addressed Arthur in that way before. Arthur went quiet.

  ‘Com’ere, I have a couple of things you might like to see.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘You have to first let me know that you’ll be OK.’

  ‘What would that involve?’

  Arthur knew Connie well enough now not to assume any task was going to be too easy.

  ‘It would involve hiding your knowledge well and not ever ever telling anyone, under any circumstances, ever.’

  ‘OK.’

  That would be no bother for Arthur, as there were a lot of things he’d been hiding well and not telling anyone about for a long time now.

  ‘Seriously now,’ said Connie, looking very intently at Arthur, ‘if they know, they will come to try to take these things away and lock them up in a vault to be studied by people who won’t understand anything.’

  Connie looked all around to make sure there were no cars coming down the lane, no sign of Arthur’s mam at the windows, no sign of Trevor at his lookout post on the Brown Hill Field where he sometimes stood with binoculars, trying to catch Connie doing something illegal. Then he nodded to Arthur to follow him out to the back of the hayshed into his tractor workshop.

  He started removing stacks of dead batteries, buckets of burnt engine oil, and armfuls of blue baler twine, all from the bin where he kept stuff he was reluctant to dump in case he found a use for it some day. Then he lifted the massive steel bin from its spot. There was a dirty carpet offcut covering the floor under it.

  ‘Pull that back, Art,’ he said.

  Arthur did. The floor underneath was completely clean. There was a steel door in the middle of it.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Arthur.

  ‘What does it look like?’ said Connie.

  ‘It looks like the same kind of safe you keep the shotgun in’.

  ‘There you go. Here are the keys.’

  Arthur was just as anxious to cut to the heart of this matter, as he was entirely curious now. He put a key into each of the locks and opened the cabinet as he had watched Connie doing with the gun safe. It looked empty at first.

  ‘Put your hand in,’ said Connie.

  That instruction worried Arthur. Knowing Connie and his tricks, his hand could touch anything from warm cow-dung to a nest of pet rats. And all there would be after that would be roars of laughter from Connie. On the other hand, this door definitely hadn’t been opened in a long time. If it was a trick, it was a very elaborate one.

  He looked into Connie’s face. There was no trick here. He was absolutely quiet and his mouth w
as serious for once. He actually seemed to be shaking.

  ‘Go on,’ he said, almost whispering.

  Arthur did. He felt something cold like metal. There were two objects. He could feel what they were. He ran his fingers over the fine curves and ridges. Heavy enough for the size of them. He held his breath and lifted them out. Under the bright lights of the tractor workshop, there was no doubting it. The long scabbard had all of the intricate engravings. The sword handle was still perfect. The large ruby remained in the heart of the magnificent shield, proud of the dent where it had protected its owner from a falling tree. The bronze that connected ancestors still duskily reflected the lights of the shed. Arthur felt a cold shiver move across his shoulders.

  ‘We’ll have to find a new place for these,’ said Connie, ‘and there’s more. You are now a part of it. They live among us and they also live through us. That’s a weight on your shoulders, but I think you are able for it.’

  Arthur didn’t feel any weight. This brought everything together. Even before Connie spoke, Arthur knew what he was going to say.

  ‘This is not the end, a mhic. It’s only the beginning.’