Death and Nightingales

by Eugene McCabe

  She had stood very still, her hand on the door handle for what seemed like a minute before saying, ‘That’s low,’ and he had answered, ‘You’ve said it woman; and true.’

  Two decades later her clenched face still came back vividly. Why now did the two meal places set so neatly fill him with a kind of anger. Miss Beth; miscegenation; misbegotten! He lifted the silver cover, took a portion of cold bacon, stuffed it into his mouth and moved, chewing, to unlock the sideboard cupboard. He then brought a bottle of Locke’s Irish Whiskey and a tumbler to the table. He half-filled the tumbler and, still chewing, went out to the scullery for water.

  Mickey Dolphin, a faded towel round his waist, was filling a tin ewer from a very slow copper tap. He stepped aside to allow Billy to fill the small glass jug with water.

  ‘Hurry on man, fill her up.’

  Mickey put the ewer under the tap again. It seemed to fill very slowly:

  ‘Poor pressure,’ Mickey said, ‘on account of the dry time, the fountain must be low.’

  As both stared at the flowing water, Billy became conscious of a marked personal odour, a summer dormitory smell. He glanced down at Mickey’s feet: they were a dirty grey colour.

  ‘Did you ever hear, Mickey, about the auld fella who went to the doctor . . . a bit of a hum off him, so the doctor told him to wash. He did that and came back; still there was a hum.’

  ‘“Did you wash at all?”’ the doctor asked him.

  ‘“I did,” the auld fella said.

  ‘“How,” asked the doctor.

  ‘“Up as far as possible,” says he, “and down as far as possible.”’

  ‘“Go back so,” said the doctor, and wash possible?

  Both laughed, Billy a great deal louder and longer. As he crossed the yard to the loft bedroom over the coach house he called after Mickey:

  ‘Be sure and wash possible, Mickey.’

  On the way back to the dining-room the smile went from Billy Winters’ face as he topped the tumbler with water and stood looking out the window, as he had looked out every day since childhood. Trying not to think, he closed his eyes, moved away from the window and began glancing from object to object. On an upright Blüthner piano there was a goldfish bowl full of coral shells from a beach in Connemara alongside a vase of narcissi mixed with sprigs of beech in leaf. Between these, a silver-framed photograph of Cathy taken two months before her death, a face that now seemed haunted, as though she had an instinct or premonition of the terrible end awaiting her. He could never look at it without emotion, and avoided looking now. On the wall above the piano there was a sampler hand-stitched by his mother with flowers at the top and a sundial at the bottom. He knew it heart and now spoke it aloud biting out each word:

  ‘A garden is a lovesome thing

  God wot

  Rose plot

  Fringed pool

  Ferned grot

  The veriest school

  Of peace; and yet the fool

  Maintains that God is not.

  Not God in gardens

  When the eve

  is cool?

  Nay but I have a sign.

  ‘Tis very sure he walks in mine’

  Billy Winter quaffed a large mouthful of whiskey and muttered:

  ‘Aye, and the devil too!’

  Beside the portrait of his grandfather, stony-eyed and holding the beaver cap in his hands, there was a calendar with a pencil mark through all the dead days including today, Thursday May 3rd 1883 . . . Mr Percy French, renowned . . . in the Town Hall Enniskillen . . . Mr Keats, famous English poet . . . deceased . . . death and nightingales. Contrary as her mother and as devious, how could she be otherwise, begat in the viper’s bowels, in sheugh, hovel or loft; a poisonous replica. Behold her single in the field? Behold her coupled in the ditch with a proven thief? A suspected murderer?

  He was pouring again, topping the whiskey up with water, a flush of temper spreading over his face and neck as he jerked a glance at the portrait of William Hudson Winters and asked matter-of-factly:

  ‘What do you think, William? Am I an empty shell in a goldfish bowl to be spied on by a maidservant, reported to Constabulary, questioned by an Englishman? So much for Christmas bribes to the barracks, stout for the Constables, whiskey for the Sergeant. What does it add to? A bucket of piss! And who informed? Mercy’s knight in blue, her Constable companion, shit Shanley, Seamus Grin Shanley, her well informed, uniformed informer?’

  Suddenly he shouted very loudly, his voice carrying through the dining-room window:

  ‘Where in hell are they!’ Mickey Dolphin’s voice came back from the loft window across the yard:

  ‘I see Mercy, Sorr, from here, Sorr, she’s comin’ down through the wood beside the haggard . . . she’ll be five minutes off at most.’

  ‘And Miss Beth?’

  ‘Mercy’s alone, Sorr.’

  ‘Alone, is she? . . . and pray where is your gentle mistress Mercy? Do you know? Do I know? Does God know? The devil does for sure: with a conniving rat, a mongrel-eyed, thieving, skulking son of Cain; my Fenian gale-hung tenant of Brackagh, Liam Ward.’

  A sudden involuntary trembling brought tears to his eyes:

  ‘Ass haltered all my days to a brace of devious scheming clats! If the goldfish can be gawked at in the bowl . . . he can gawk back at the gawkers!’

  He then shouted loudly:

  ‘Mickey!’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  ‘Can you still see her?’

  ‘I can, Sorr.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Crossin’ the yard.’

  ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘I’ve shaved and washed . . . I’ve done . . . all possible.’

  ‘Get Punch in the gig, bring him up to the front and wait.’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  At the back door Mickey Dolphin met Mercy Boyle and whispered:

  ‘Christ, Mercy, he’s like a bag of weasels inside, shoutin’ after you a fright.’

  ‘We heard . . . for why, Mickey?’

  Mickey shook his head and shrugged:

  ‘Whatever it is he’s in there talkin’ to himself, worse again he’s tellin’ jokes . . . a sure sign he’s in wicked form.’

  As Mercy took off her field boots in the scullery, she heard Billy Winters’ voice: edgy:

  ‘That you, Mercy?’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  ‘Can I see you a minute?’

  ‘I’m comin’, Sorr.’

  There was a strong hum of whiskey in the room. She could see the bottle, the jug of whiskey, the empty glass on the dining-room table. For what seemed like a minute or longer he kept her standing on the pitchpine surround near the door. Not knowing what to do with her hands she found herself feeling the buttons of her smock, aware that he was angry, that she was about to be questioned, reprimanded or both. To quell the beating of her heart, she kept telling herself, Its no matter . . . I don’t give a tinker’s snot what he says; it’s the last time I’ll have to stand like this and be dressed down . . . no woman body in this house tomorrow to drudge in kitchen or dairy, to wash his shirts, empty his pots and boil his spuds . . .

  Although she was afraid she felt a little sorry for him, and he could see from the set of his face that whatever was in his head was making him very angry. When he did speak he looked at his feet and his voice was unexpectedly soft:

  ‘You brought tea to the bog, Mercy?’

  ‘We did, Sorr, yes.’

  ‘How did they manage today?’

  ‘There’s a sight of stuff spread, Sorr, tomorrow’ll see the end of it; they wrought well.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  The weather’s been lucky.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was another protracted pause. This time Billy Winters looked straight into Mercy’s eyes and kept looking:

  ‘Have you anything to tell me, Mercy?’ Mercy searched about in her head:

  ‘Jim Ruttledge found a go of bog-butter.’

  ‘Did
he?’

  ‘Twelve feet down or more, he’s goin’ to get Blessing’s ass to bring it up here tonight . . . it smells rotten.’

  ‘A secret burial?’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  ‘And smells rotten.’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  ‘Most buried secrets are dug up in the end, you know that?’

  ‘I do, Sorr.’

  ‘Nothin’s hidden forever in this world.’

  Billy Winters looked away and then said:

  ‘This way or that way, the truth will out . . . isn’t that so, Mercy?’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  ‘And where is Miss Beth now?’

  ‘Gone for the cows I’d say.’

  ‘Have you anything else to tell me, Mercy?’

  ‘Well . . . Blinky Blessing come after dinner and Albert got the business . . . He’s below in the old dairy with a spud in his mouth.’

  ‘A Blessing in disguise?’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  ‘For Albert . . . Death comes to us all this way or that, isn’t that so, Mercy?’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  ‘You fell on your knees to kiss Mr Parnell’s hand when he walked into this house two months ago, remember?’

  ‘Yes, Sorr.’

  ‘Has he housed you, fed you, paid you, forgone rent for years on end, helped your family in every possible way, employed your disadvantaged brother?’

  ‘No, Sorr.’

  ‘No. Have I been unkind to you ever?’

  ‘No, Sorr.’

  ‘Well then? Who would you pick between, the Fenian betrayer James Carey or the Christ-betrayer, Judas Iscariot?’

  Mercy could see from the veins pulsing down his neck that he was barely composed and was now moving out of control as he bit out each word.

  ‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Sorr.’

  ‘Not say . . . Mercy; tell . . . you tell me now what you’ve told about me outside this house; the malice, the slander, the lies.’

  He shouted the word ‘lies’ so loudly that she felt her hand moving to her mouth:

  ‘Why are you hiding your mouth, girl? We all blunder from time to time but some blunders are beyond forgiveness.’

  ‘I done nothin’, Sorr, said nothin’ ‘bout you to anyone.’

  ‘And now you lie to my face . . . Time was you’d be whipped for that girl, and will be when I get back . . . if you’re not gone, you and your gulpin’ brother.’

  The word ‘gulpin’ smarted as sharply as a slap on the face, bringing tears to her eyes. She was tempted to say ‘You’d be a sorry man if you did the like, ’cause my father can pull a cow from a sheugh on his own and I have four strong brothers who are not ‘gulpins’.

  Before she could answer, Billy Winters was gone through the dining-room door that led to the hall and front door to where Mickey Dolphin was waiting with the gig ready to draw away. She was conscious that the room had become blurred and that her whole body was trembling with fear and outrage.

  Mickey Dolphin had heard the shouting from the dining-room and the word ‘lies’. He avoided looking at Billy Winters as he stepped into the gig, causing it to tip sideways and creak on its springs. Talk would have to wait until they were well down the avenue. Far beyond Dacklin and Brackagh and the Cuilcagh Mountains, the western sun was drowning in the blood of the Lower Lough. Mickey now saw Billy Winters take two tickets from the inside pocket of his jacket. He looked at them without seeing them, flicked them angrily with a forefinger and replaced them in his pocket. He then stared at the sinking sun.

  As the gig approached the gatelodge, Beth emerged from behind a cattle drinking-well framed by whitethorn and elderbush. She paused to look down as twelve cows continued to plod across the side of the hill in the direction of the house and yard. She shaded her eyes to look down, looking and not wanting to look lest she would have to wave with both arms as she had done dozens of times as a child.

  Billy Winters kept staring ahead towards the gatelodge lest she would see him looking up and begin to wave. Never, ever again. She had thrown herself away, shamefully, deliberately, secretly. There would be no more waving, no false farewells. He would say nothing. He would watch and wait, listen to her lies, glide and hover above and when the time was right, swoop and tear her treachery to pieces.

  It seemed monstrous to him now that she was standing exactly where his mother had stood, about this time of year thirty years ago. She had been gathering elder blossom, had taken off her straw hat and waved down. He and his father had waved back and the seemingly foolish calling had echoed and re-echoed up and down and across the fields, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye . . . God be with you. Jim Ruttledge had found her unconscious an hour later and carried her to the house: She had recovered enough to talk a little, and say: ‘Then throw me away!’

  As they passed the gatelodge, Winnie Ruttledge waved from a clothesline. Billy Winters and Mickey Dolphin returned the greeting as the gig went through the globe-topped piers and turned right down the street past a row of single-storeyed thatched dwellings, one of them two-storeyed, the post office-cum-public house and grocery. Barefoot children playing on the street were careful not to let Billy Winters see their protruding tongues, the single- and double-thumb nose salutes, the carefully subdued tongue-farts. Billy could read these antics in Mickey Dolphin’s eyes and pursed lips:

  ‘What are they at, Mickey?’

  ‘You know yourself, childer, shapes and faces.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘It’s the old quarrel, Billy Sorr . . . Mr Parnell has the whole country set agin’ every breed of landlord.’

  Last Sunday, the London Times had been gloomy about Ireland. Evictions, rack-renting, hunger, murder, and class hatred seemed likely to continue for the foreseeable future. An anonymous source quoted Parnell as saying: ‘“The murder of Lord Frederick in the Phoenix Park and its aftermath, the hanging one by one of the Fenian ‘invincibles’, had set back the clock in Ireland for a hundred years or more. A people who could produce such murderers as the ‘invincibles’ were about as fit to rule themselves as hottentots.” Is this the same man who said frequently in America, “We in Ireland will not be satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps us bound to England”? This kind of insane sabre-rattling may please Irish Americans; it also helped to create the murderous “invincibles”. Mr Parnell, like it or not, has connived at the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish.’

  ‘I’m afraid,’ Billy said, ‘our Mr Parnell is a trouble-maker. God knows where he’ll lead us.’

  Mickey Dolphin switched the whip across Punch’s back and said:

  ‘A while back, Billy Sorr, you told us all he was the greatest man ever you met – maybe the greatest man in the world, at the minute.’

  ‘Great men,’ Billy said, ‘can be great trouble-makers.’

  ‘Aye! and some little men too, it’s the old wrong was never put right.’

  ‘Right or wrong, where were ye before we came?’

  ‘Where we are now, Billy Sorr, in our own country.’

  ‘And who did you put out? And who did they put out?’

  ‘A scholar could tell you that, Sorr.’

  The road now dipped away from the hamlet of Clonoula down toward the lower lake, now framed in a countryside laced in a glory of whitethorn. Behind them the smoke from the house and cottage chimneys was rising straight up. The weather was due to continue fine from Malin Head to Dingle Bay. Old Moore’s Almanac was forecasting a dry summer.

  Outside the village, two white goats, their front legs roped to one another, caused Mickey Dolphin to tighten on the reins and wait till the goats struggled off sideways towards the ditch:

  ‘Cangled goats,’ Billy muttered. ‘Are they Blessing’s blessed goats?’

  ‘They could be no one else’s,’ Mickey said.

  ‘In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy goats,’ Billy said dispensing a priestly benediction towards them.

  Mickey Dolphin laughed sho
wing gapped brown teeth:

  ‘If you were one of us, Billy Sorr, you’d earn hell for that class of mockery.’

  ‘Can’t Protestants earn hell too?’

  ‘They’re all goin’ there anyway.’

  Billy Winters laughed and mock-punched Mickey Dolphin:

  ‘You’re in better form this evening Mickey.’

  ‘I am, Sorr.’

  ‘What in God’s name was all that this morning?’

  ‘All what, Billy Sorr?’

  ‘All the kneeling and weeping at the bog-hole.’

  ‘That, Sorr?’

  ‘Yes that . . . what was in your head?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know, Sorr.’

  ‘Can’t you tell me?’

  ‘Some day, maybe.’

  ‘Why not now?’

  For quite a while Mickey Dolphin did not respond. Billy Winters kept staring, waiting for an answer, forcing Mickey to say: ‘On Miss Beth’s birthday, May 3rd, a terrible thing happened me . . . a long time ago.’

  ‘Can I hear?’

  ‘I’d rather not, Sorr.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  The gig went spanking along the county road, keeping to the line of the loughshore, with a gentle creak of harness, the rhythmic clip of steel on stone. Somewhere an ass trumpeted. They went on through greening fields and meadows under tall roadside trees, through the townlands of Tully, Clonshanco and Dernagola until they reached a straggle of houses outside Enniskillen. On then past the grandiose portals of the Portora Royal School, across the bridge and into the island town. The main street and public houses were thronged with people and horse traffic and everywhere there were posters advertising the visit of Percy French to the Town Hall.

  As Mickey Dolphin unharnessed and stabled Punch in the yard of the Imperial Hotel, Billy Winters went into the tavern and ordered a pint of draught Guinness and a scoop of Locke’s. They had half an hour. The performance was due to start at seven.

  10

  On the second floor of Enniskillen Town Hall Mr Gary Pringle could see, through a gap in the high door, the low platform where Miss Sarah Egerton, organist at St Anne’s Church of Ireland, had been playing melodies now for almost half an hour, all of them associated with Mr Percy French. Having exhausted these she was now moving uncertainly to other popular pieces. She sat at an upright piano placed sideways to the audience. To the right of this piano there was a podium ready for Mr French, on which were placed a paraffin lamp, a glass and a decanter full of water. The large reception chamber was full. It was warm, and an usher was trying to open the high, broad windows with a long pole.