Death and Nightingales

by Eugene McCabe

  Billy Winters stared at the mild grey eyes, the saintly hair and the kind-seeming mouth. No hint of the brutal anywhere:

  ‘Someone at the crossroads dance?’

  ‘It was smashed when I got home . . . It’s Ward or Blessing, both your tenants.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I’m certain: it was one of the two, or both.’

  The Canon tapped his riding-crop on his knee, began to say something, stopped and then said:

  ‘You employ them, Billy.’

  ‘No, no, they buy filler and stones at the quarry . . . it’s the council pays them. Then of course they pay me.’

  ‘It’s your quarry.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘You could refuse them.’

  Billy Winters was too startled to answer at once:

  ‘I could . . . yes.’

  ‘You should. Blessing is a wretched creature. Ward is worse; he’s evil or near it.’

  ‘He’s full of himself to be sure . . . but evil, that’s a big word, Leo.’

  ‘Certainly he’s a bad egg.’

  During a pause the Reverend Leo McManus stared through the open porch door as a flurry of pigeons winged high from the beech trees. He followed their flight till they went out of vision.

  ‘You’ll have to explain to me why,’ Billy said. The Canon hesitated and then said:

  ‘I’m not at liberty to disclose.’

  Moral Constabulary? Confessional secrets? Something more sinister?

  ‘You do a lot of work for us here in Fermanagh, Billy . . . and all that marble-work in Monaghan Cathedral.’

  ‘Is this a class of blackmail, Leo?’

  ‘It’s a request.’

  Billy jerked his elbow in the direction of the Bishop’s letter lying on the window-ledge behind him.

  ‘Has this anything to do with it?’

  ‘No, I’m very certain not.’ After another brief pause the Canon said:

  ‘You don’t have to take my word.’

  ‘I have no reason to doubt it,’ Billy said, ‘but I’ll have to say why . . . to Ward.’

  ‘At my request . . . he’ll understand.’

  Why Ward, Billy wondered? Son of a canal lock-keeper near Cootehill, orphaned early, more dragged up than reared by Old Tom Ward his poacher, poteenmaking uncle at Brackagh; a spell at Florencecourt as an upgraded stable boy where there was talk of the big-house girls being too fond of the stable, and a question of theft; a while in the west with Boycott; then away to America for years and back now with this drawling talk; haulier, quack-doctor, notions of himself, hard to see why this priest was so extreme against him.

  The brass tongue of the main door clicked and moved inwards and Mercy Boyle came into the porch carrying a tray covered with a lace cloth, three cups and a pot of coffee, a sugar bowl and a jug of cream. Mercy placed the tray on the bench alongside the Canon as he stood, muttering, ‘Too much, too much, my own breakfast waiting, no call for all this bother,’ mixed in with a greeting to Mercy, ‘It is Mercy Boyle, isn’t it . . . how are you Mercy?’

  ‘I’m well, your reverence.’ Beth held the door for Mercy to leave, closed it and moved to take the Canon’s proffered hand.

  ‘You can give her a double shake there,’ Billy said, ‘It’s her birthday, and she saved a cow from bloat in the black dawn.’

  Beth smiled back at the smiling men . . . two fathers . . . neither mine, she thought, as Billy rambled on, mock-ordinary with an avuncular Irishness, a manner he used with country priests, farm-hands and quarry workers, never with horse-Protestants or at the R.D.S.

  She was pouring the coffee, aware from the nature of the silence that she had intruded on some private manner. She could see the letter addressed to Billy, unopened, with the waxed, Episcopal seal of Clogher.

  ‘And how,’ asked her parish priest, ‘do you propose to celebrate the day?’

  Supposing they could mind-read . . . The thought was so bizarre it brought a faint flush to her cheeks as she said quickly:

  ‘Making butter, bringing tea to the bog and there is a pig to be killed.’

  ‘Who does that for you?’ the Canon asked.

  ‘Blinky Blessing,’ Billy said.

  ‘Ah.’

  From the corner of her eye she could see Billy wink across at the parish priest.

  ‘It’ll not be all workaday, I have a surprise or two up my sleeve.’

  And so have I, she thought, sitting with her cup alongside Billy. And I hope to God this man opposite doesn’t start on now about family resemblances the way Old Lily Cole did once: mouth, nose, hands, eyes, voice, on and on, more painful for Billy than for me. From tomorrow on all that awkardness would end forever.

  Billy suddenly pointed a stubby forefinger at the Canon and said:

  ‘You’ll be at the Town Hall tonight, Leo?’

  ‘That requires a dispensation and an early booking . . . I have neither.’

  ‘Pity; I was at Trinity with him.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a college man.’

  ‘I am and I’m not . . . One year engineering, and then my father became sick . . .’

  ‘So you know him?’

  ‘Knew . . . Twenty-eight years ago . . . He was plain Willy French then before he became the world-famous Percy French.’

  There was a silence and Billy filled it by saying:

  ‘I’m told he’s a gifted painter.’

  ‘A dead area for me . . . I’m colour-blind.’

  ‘You can knock a snipe left and right, I’ve seen you; and drop a trout-fly on a saucer from twenty yards.’

  The Canon smiled; pleased. Billy turned and said to Beth:

  ‘It’s a man like Leo you want, Beth, a keen sportsman, a good gardener, farmer and a sound Christian gentleman to boot, also he keeps bees . . . She’s very choosy this one, I’ve brought them out here by the cartload; all sorts, overbred and underbred, young bucks and not so young, fellas in the bank, strong farmers, millers, merchants, apprentices to law, accountancy and architecture. She’ll have nothing to do with any of them.’

  ‘Nor they with me, Sir,’ Beth said quietly.

  ‘You give them no chance, girl.’

  ‘You’ll find the right man in your own good time,’ the Canon said.

  ‘I’m not looking,’ Beth said, got up and walked with her cup of coffee from the porch to where the red setter was lying on the gravel. It stretched out its neck in shy greeting as she hunkered, stroking its head. Both men watched.

  ‘You embarrassed her there, Billy.’

  Billy Winters shook his head.

  ‘She goes her own pad, you wouldn’t have a notion what’s in her head; her mother the same, you wouldn’t know what’s in any woman’s head,’ and then added, almost sourly, ‘bar the obvious!’

  The coupling image thrust itself into the priest’s mind and he wrenched away from it, frowning. Quaffing the rest of his coffee he stood up and said:

  ‘I’ll go, Billy.’

  The red setter suddenly jerked up its head, ears cocked, head alert and staring over at the porchway. Without looking around Beth knew the priest must now be preparing to leave. She half-heard the exchange of banalities and the mock camaraderie camouflaging what she knew both felt about each other. Long ago, the bitter arguments with poor Mama. Why did he still pretend?

  She waved to the departing priest who imparted his benediction, watched him for a moment leaving, the dog running in circles around the grey horse, and then went over to the porch where Billy was reading the Bishop’s letter. He handed it to her without comment and she saw the Episcopal crest and the address.

  Latlurcan House,

  Bishop’s Residence,

  Dublin Road,

  Monaghan,

  Thursday, May 3rd, 1883

  Dear Billy,

  A not so young man called Maurice Fairbrother called with us today. He had authority from Dublin Castle (Revenue Department) to look into our accounts. We obliged. He had a particular interest in all marb
le, masonry and stone-work supplied by you, and all monies, transactions exchanged. Father Benny Cassidy gave him a trunk full of papers all to do with the Cathedral and the cost of completion. He scarcely looked at them. We both thought he asked very Jew questions about what was supposed to be his interest.

  Later I talked with him. His father is a steward at Chatsworth (Duke of Devonshire’s seat) and so naturally we talked about the late Lord Frederick Cavendish and he became very affected when I expressed my very real horror at the manner of his brutal death in the Phoenix Park. Thereafter, he talked to me about matters privy (not secret) to the Crown and I of matters privy (not secret) to the Church. He has a good grasp of both. I can tell you he is no Revenue Commissioner but what he is, I know not. He asked about you in a way that I thought curious. He intends calling on you tomorrow. Like me I suppose you have learned long ago to expect the unexpected, to believe the incredible, to be wary of all men at all times.

  I married you, I christened Elizabeth and we have been friends and you have dealt honestly with me down the years and I feel my impression of this man Fairbrother might prove helpful. By the way, how is Elizabeth? I hear she grows more and more like your poor Catherine. Tomorrow I go to Enniskillen to marry a niece and hope to enjoy an evening with Percy French. Will you be there? And Elizabeth? If not, my best regards, and if either of you are travelling this way be sure to call.

  Yours sincerely in Christ,

  James of Clogher +

  P.S. Father Benny tells me there are some monies outstanding. They will, Deo volente, be paid before November ends. Jimmy.

  As Beth handed the letter back to Billy she said:

  ‘He’s a Castle agent, Sir.’

  ‘A spy?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘What could he want with me; with us?’

  ‘Information, that’s their job.’

  ‘He’ll be in the wrong shop so.’

  Billy stood looking at the letter, re-reading bits of it, and Beth ventured:

  ‘Unless it could be to do with Mr Parnell staying here.’

  ‘What bearing could that have?’

  ‘Enough for the Castle to be curious.’

  ‘To hell with it all; it’s your birthday . . . let’s go in and have breakfast, you’ve been up since black-dark.’

  Billy folded the letter and put it in his waistcoat pocket, took Beth by the elbow and guided her down the hall toward the dining-room.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me?’

  ‘You were deep asleep, Sir.’

  ‘Nonetheless.’

  ‘Next time I will.’

  ‘You’re worth your weight in gold, girl.’

  ‘Am I, Sir?’ she asked.

  May sunlight poured into the dining-room through the high windows, shining on the lead polish of the slate hearth and lighting the metal and glass on the rosewood dining-room table. Mercy had filled a large glass vase with rhododendrons, clematis and green fronds. She had set the table especially with white and blue ware and a good silver cutlery, and as they sat she placed before each a pan-fried breakfast and left a bowl of scones between them. Both thanked her and for a few minutes Billy questioned Beth for more details about the cow and the bloat, making her re-tell every detail step by step. As she answered, part of her mind became aware of another recent dawn and very different circumstances.

  She had come down just before light, alerted by noise and clatter in the kitchen. Yes she could cut meat, yes she could butter bread, and while she did this, Billy had sat at the dining-room table splashing more whiskey onto the table than into his glass as he talked about travel and quarries and business and contracts all mixed with maudlin references to her mother. When it became tedious and incomprehensible, she moved to leave. He had gripped her thigh, his mouth opened foolishly and she remembered thinking ‘If I had a gun now in the other hand, I could put it in his mouth and pull the trigger.’ She kept looking steadily into his bloodshot eyes. He loosened his grip, swayed to his feet, ‘Your legacy girl, your inheritance, all in that safe, waiting for you.’ For a moment he stood as if undecided, looking from her face to the corner of the room. Then he was kneeling selecting the keys he kept clipped to his body night and day.

  ‘Bring over that lamp.’

  She carried over the oil lamp and held it up as he picked three keys. The first, a long iron key, opened the panelled door in the wainscoting; the second, a plug key, allowed a cast-iron door to slide sideways; then the one of the safe proper, an elegant two-sided brass key. The oiled tongue clicked within and there was a sense of weight as he turned the handle and the door swung open. The first thing she saw was the three-cornered beaver hat, like the one in the portrait of his grandfather, a swart-looking man holding a parchment in one hand, the beaver hat in the other. There was a scar running from the wintry left eye to the straight line of his upper lip; an Indian hatchet, Billy maintained. With a wheezy cackle he put the hat on his head and stared up at her: a latter-day likeness of the portrait merged with the knowing, grinning face of a drunkard.

  There were rolled parchments, bundles of faded envelopes on open shelves, sandalwood caskets and mother-of-pearl boxes, a black log-book and a large bottom drawer the width of the safe. This he opened with a separate key which he took from within the safe. As he opened it with his left hand his right plunged into a glitter of gold coins. He took out a fistful, pulling off the beaver hat, and thrust them both up towards her and the light of the lamp.

  ‘That’s what helped put the shine on this place a hundred years ago . . . French gold, the beaver loot of three million square miles.’

  He nodded up towards the portrait, ‘His motto, “Watch and seize.”’

  He wheezed out another coughing laugh and repeated, ‘Watch and seize,’ then, dropping his voice to a loud whisper, he said, ‘And he did . . . Look!’

  Again he thrust the coins up into her face. She had stepped back startled, although long familiar with the mythology of the founding grandfather, and how he had signed up with the ‘Company of Adventurers’ in London in 1770, and sailed for Canada and Hudson Bay. She had heard tell of the white limbo of three million square miles where fur-traders made and lost fortunes, and took to whiskey and squaws. She knew of the brutishness of life and death out there, and how, that first winter, trekking up-river, their canoe had smashed on rocks, tumbling eight of them into the icy water. With all provisions lost, they had dug themselves in to await the return of the Cree Indian guide with food, clothing and help. One by one, over the next two days, his companions had died, in a cold so pitiless it could freeze quicksilver. Finally alone, after fighting off wolves and Arctic foxes attacking both the dead and the dying, he had shed bitter tears and closed his eyes – as he thought for ever – to open them in a smoky tepee under the warmth of a beaver blanket.

  And how, in the years that followed, when war between England and France was almost continuous, an opportunity had presented itself. A French frigate and an English warship had been pounding each other with cannon fire round and round Hudson Bay since dawn. By noon the sides of both ships were so shattered the crews could see each other in the lower decks, as in an open-fronted dolls’ house: priests and surgeons on both going about their duties in blood-stained aprons and surplices. Late that evening, tacking with guns faced away, the French captain called on the English captain to surrender. He refused, calling on the Frenchman to surrender. The Frenchman then sent for brandy to toast the courage of the Englishman, who sent for whisky to toast the courage of the Frenchman, and the battle continued. Watching this from the steps of a trading post with three comrades, Billy’s grandfather said, ‘We’ve watched enough: time to seize.’ That night they loaded fifteen thousand beaver pelts into a sloop and sailed away to the north of France where they sold them for five boxes of gold; one for each of the crew, two for Captain Winters.

  Suddenly, then, as though aware of what he was doing and saying, Billy replaced the gold and the beaver hat, locked the safe and, m
oving away from the corner, said almost matter-of-factly, ‘If you mind your step, girl, bide your time, play your part,’ he thumbed back in the direction of the corner, ‘this could all be yours . . . this, and what I’ve added.’

  The next morning he pretended to have forgotten everything. Was she to inherit? . . . and how mind her step? . . . submit while he over-stepped! And what part would she play? Bedmaker, shirt-washer, egg-boiler, stablegirl and dairymaid with Mercy Boyle to help? . . . probably live till he was ninety, might even marry again when she was long past childbearing.

  She was re-filling the teacups when she heard Billy say now:

  ‘Your parish priest had his new glasshouse smashed.’

  ‘Mercy was telling me.’

  ‘Was she there? At the crossroads? Drinking and devil-dancing?’

  Beth heard her own laugh mixed in with Billy’s chuckle as she said:

  ‘Such a shame, where else can they meet . . .?’

  ‘He hunted them with his riding-crop; did Mercy mention that?’

  He watched her face for reaction; none. The haunted face of an insomniac, darkish rings under her eyes, red-brown hair Gretel-plaited, and a full mouth so like Cathy’s, it was heart-wrenching. All through breakfast she gave the impression of being remote, almost unlistening, yet she had been out across fields and down the yard, and helping to prepare breakfast:

  ‘You’re tired Beth . . . you must be.’

  ‘Not very, Sir.’

  ‘You slept well.’

  ‘Until the beast woke me.’

  ‘You should have woken me.’ Her mouth shaping words, her mind elsewhere, Billy noticed; thinking what?

  ‘Leo say’s he knows the blackguard.’

  ‘Yes?’