Death and Nightingales

by Eugene McCabe

  For a while she lay trying to think. Billy would read her letter, learn what had happened, and regret his brutality. He would not howl as he did over her mother’s grave but would feel wronged and more sorry for himself than for her. Going back to Clonoula was unthinkable. There could be no returning; that was the last place on earth. Where so? Where to now? Alive beside her grave in her best travelling clothes without a farthing, nothing but her grandmother’s brooch and her mother’s ring, which could not buy a railway ticket, food, or medical help. She could not borrow from any of Billy’s wide acquaintances. Of two school friends, one was married in Southampton, the other in Fermoy. ‘So where?’ she said aloud. ‘It’s to Liam I go, to Liam Ward my love, that’s my destiny for today, there’s nowhere else to go.’

  He would not be overjoyed to see her alive without gold. ‘I have no choice . . . so be it.’

  She got up, and crawled in the direction of the double ditch. When the scrub gave way to more open woodland, she began to walk until she found a path leading to the county road. She crossed it, going through the same gates and gaps that Ward had gone, continuing on towards Brackagh. The countryside was quiet, asleep; no sound but the crowing of cocks and the high whirring bleat of snipe. At McMahon’s, and again at Rooney’s, sheepdogs came barking from their front streets, across fences and across the fields she was crossing. Unafraid, she ignored them. Dogs were quick to recognise gender and seldom attacked females.

  At the march of Rooney’s land, she climbed through dead bracken onto the scutch-spined lane leading up towards Ward’s cottage, from where she could look down to the small lake and watery bogs where she had helped him drag out a cow almost a year ago. Darker then, returning with the key when he was burying the cow with Blinky Blessing. Undertakers. A pair. Heroes.

  And of a sudden it seemed obvious to her that it must be natural for men to sit down together and plan the killing and burying of other men, women or children. She tried to imagine herself in the kitchen or the boiler-house at Clonoula talking with Mercy Boyle in such a way and the idea was so unthinkable, so ludicrous even to imagine that it must, she felt, be deeply unnatural. Now, for the first time, she became conscious of what was growing in her womb with a repulsion she would not have thought possible. She put the image forcibly from her mind and walked on up the lane.

  The door of Ward’s cottage was locked. She peered in the window, tried the back: also locked. Behind the water-barrel under the slated roof of a water-tank, she found the front-door key and let herself in. On the table there were two plates with rasher rinds smeared with egg. And two mugs and a half bottle of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey. She stared at this for what seemed like a very long time: a murderers’ meal. The hearth seemed dead and there was a feeling of bareness. The mantelpiece had been cleared. There were boxes under the long upright couch between the two small front windows, and alongside this couch a large trunk. She opened it and looked in. It was stuffed with shirts, trousers, jackets, socks and divided in two by rough boards. On the empty side there was one blanket. This was clearly the receptacle intended for Billy Winters’ gold.

  Innumerable times she had tried to imagine the bedroom off the kitchen, had visualised a white-washed room, a small, deep window, a brown clay-crazed floor, white-washed walls, a simple pine bed, a patchwork quilt, the smell of turf smoke. She opened the door and looked in. It was smaller than she had imagined, a personal smell competing with the smell of Lysol, the rumple of bedclothes on a very rough bed-frame, a cracked ewer, a smeared chamber pot. The white, bright walls she had imagined were yellow and as dirty-looking as the rumple of blankets. In the window a small mirror hung from a nail. In the greyish half-light, she looked into it to see Billy Winters’ handiwork. Her left eye was completely closed, her left cheekbone grotesquely swollen. Two of her lower teeth wobbled. She put her forefinger on them and as she looked she realised as she often did that she was a mirror-image of her mother and how her mother would have looked from time to time long ago. She heard herself say, ‘May God forgive you, Billy Winters, because I won’t.’

  Back in the kitchen she looked through the drawers of the dresser till she found a knife that seemed right. She placed it under a pillow in the bedroom, stood looking at the pillow and thinking about this realised it would be discovered or wrenched from her hand. She returned it to the drawer. Whatever opportunity arose she would have to be certain of the outcome. She was aware that she was cold. Indifferent to it she sat at the kitchen table leafing through pages of The Farmer’s Journal and Impartial Reporter. There were unconfirmed rumours that Lord .Erne’s American bride had arrived with a dowry of twelve million dollars. Mr Percy French of world renown, etc. A bullock at Clones had attacked the Celtic Cross and had been put down by firearms from the local barracks. Mr Shirley of Carrickmacross would be giving an historical lecture on his ‘History of Monaghan’ at the end of the month in the Town Hall. Sir John Lentaigne, Inspector of Schools, would be a member of the fishing-party staying with Lord Rossmore. She then read in full about the hunger at Glencolumbkille and went on then to read advertisements:

  To Canada

  For three pounds.

  Holloway’s Pills; for purity of blood.

  Important discovery!

  No more suffering!

  Painless dentistry.

  Then to general news and headings:

  ARRESTS IN LONDON AND BIRMINGHAM.

  SEIZURE OF ENORMOUS QUANTITIES

  OF NITRO-GLYCERINE.

  EXECUTION OF JOE BRADY LAST AND YOUNGEST

  OF THE PHOENIX PARK MURDERERS.

  DAY APPOINTED, THURSDAY MAY 17th 1883.

  THE PHILADELPHIA PARTY AND MR PARNELL.

  On Monday morning a man residing within a mile of Maguire’s Bridge cut his daughter’s throat and afterwards his own. The coroner said both appeared famished in the extreme.

  At the bottom of the page there was an advertisement which said:

  HOW THE POOR LIVE

  by George R. Sims

  She turned to another page.

  In the column alongside this she read that: ‘John Gillis, auctioneer and valuer, was selling unreservedly the lease of a farm of land at Brackagh, six miles from Enniskillen, well watered and fenced, also a draycart and two strong working horses. Held as a yearly tenancy under William Hudson Winters at the judicial rent of twelve pounds per annum.’ She stopped reading and stared at the two blue-banded mugs, stained inside, at the plates smeared with egg and stringy chewed lumps of rasher rinds, the empty bottle of whiskey and the two glasses that looked cloudy even in candlelight. With hand and forearm, she pushed them all over the edge of the table. They clattered down, breaking and splintering as she rested her head in the crook of her arm, on the side of her face that was not throbbing. She blew out the candle, indifferent to the cold. It was only after a few minutes when she felt the cooling wetness on her arms that she realised she was crying.

  13

  Where was she now? Had she lost her nerve? Changed her mind? Gone off with Billy’s gold alone? No. He would have to persuade her to try again next week. Unless for some reason she had used the farmpass to the low road that bypassed the main avenue? Blinky had caught McCafferty’s mare and gone galloping to Enniskillen to watch if she boarded the early goods train for Belfast. He himself had climbed to Carn above the marble arches to see what he could see moving on either high or low road. Nothing. It was cold. In the sky there was a glow, a hint of the coming day. The moon had gone. Far below the crows were raucous in the beech trees around Clonoula. He went back down carefully avoiding farmyards, unable to avoid thinking of the business on hand.

  When he reached the long bog near Blessing’s cottage, he sat on a turf clamp, rolled a cigarette, lit it and sat waiting, watching, listening for Blinky’s return. One blow. Death would come so quick she would scarce know she had died, a shot pigeon or squirrel tumbling to earth. Useless to pretend that her eyes would not be staring at him through sleep; that her voice would not sound in oth
er women’s voices, the warmth of her body in other women’s, and all the while he would know she was buried deep at Clonoula. The rawest whiskey in strange places and far cities could not bury it from memory and dreams. All this he half-knew. Also he knew absolutely what the note brought by young Courtney meant. It read:

  ‘Ward: give back what you’ve stolen or be got yourself. Be certain of this before May ends.’

  A blunt warning. Blunt justice would follow as surely as it followed his uncle-in-law, James Carey, killed a few days ago at Port Elizabeth. They would follow and get him on a double count. He was a connection of James Carey’s, the most hated man in Ireland, and he had ‘stolen’ their funds; in his own mind, he had borrowed. They were calling it theft. To attempt Billy Winters’ gold any other way would be dangerous; let her steal it, then steal from her. The present plan was undetectable and had come about almost accidentally. Talking politics with Blinky one night, both drunk in his cottage, they had talked of guns from Germany shipped here to finish the job Parnell had ‘not the guts to finish’. Then almost unthinkingly he had said:

  ‘If I could make her get Billy’s gold, then bury her, we’d have guns and stuff enough to blow them all to hell out of here.’

  ‘Bury,’ Blinky had repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ he had said, ‘bury’. Blinky had gone into a reverie, his mouth slightly open. When he came out of it he suddenly banged his fist on the table:

  ‘Christ, man, but that’s the smartest move I ever heard tell of, they’d be hunting her the world over and she’d never be got ’cause she couldn’t be got . . . not six feet under.’

  The next day with sobriety he was less certain. Afraid of seeming afraid he had blustered approval. From then on the plan had grown to where and when and how. Thus far it was not going as they had planned.

  From a long way off, he heard the sound of steel-shod hooves on the dark road, then silence. Five minutes later he saw a figure at the other end of the bog. It could only be Blinky making his way homewards. Ward stood; Blinky saw him and began walking towards him:

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothin’ . . . you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Jesus, where is she, Liam?’

  ‘Still above, asleep maybe.’

  ‘Maybe she got afeard and changed her mind or maybe somethin’s wrong . . . maybe Billy catched her at the safe.’

  ‘Doped and footless?’ Ward shook his head.

  ‘He’d straighten and sharpen if he thought his gold was for the high sea . . . Christ I’m hungry, are you?’

  ‘You’re always hungry, Blinky.’

  They began to walk, threading their way through lines of drying turf towards the thatched roof of Blessing’s cabin in a hollow, a wisp of smoke twisting from the single chimney.

  ‘Someone’s on the move early,’ Ward said.

  ‘That’s Mammywee – she be’s up footerin’ half the night then sleepin’ half the day; contrariness!’

  As they went down a stone lane leading to the back of the cottage they heard a high-pitched call that sounded like: ‘Heyaw . . . hengs! Hengs! Hengs! Hengs! Heway!’ and then the rattle of a bucket and the noise of ducks, geese and hens flapping, and bantams flying out of the low ash trees behind the cabin.

  ‘That’s what the brother calls “the Chinese hen call”,’ Blinky said.

  When Mary Blessing saw that her son was talking to someone through the side of his mouth she moved from near the doorway out into the middle of the street and called out:

  ‘That you Attie? what bould scrap is traipsin’ the country with you at this hour? Have yous no shame?’

  ‘It’s no scrap, Mammywee.’

  ‘Someone’s jookin’ behind the gable: I seen her.’

  ‘Him: it’s our friend and neighbour, Liam Ward.’

  ‘Surely to God he’s not hidin’ from me . . . is he?’

  Ward stepped out from the gable to where he could see Mary Blessing, a tall dumb-bell-shaped woman with brown unblinking eyes set in a halo of white hair; as good-looking a woman as her son Blinky was ugly:

  ‘Not hiding Mam,’ Ward said, ‘I’m on my way home.’

  ‘And well you should be, son: what has the pair of you out till this ungodly hour?’

  Neither Ward nor Blinky replied. Mary Blessing persisted:

  ‘Is it God’s work? or the devil’s?’

  ‘Neither,’ Blinky said.

  ‘Whose so?’

  ‘Ireland’s,’ Blinky said.

  Mary Blessing changed her bucket of mash from the right hand to the left, blessed herself and said:

  ‘Is it patriots yous are . . . Fenians?’

  When neither Ward nor Blinky responded, she said:

  ‘If yous are caught stealing that stuff from Billy Winters’ quarry they’ll lock you away forever.’

  ‘We’ll not be caught at anything,’ Blinky said.

  During this exchange Ward’s expression did not alter. After a silence Mary Blessing said:

  ‘Come in so, yous are bound to be hungry.’

  When Ward shook his head and made to move away, Mary Blessing’s voice went up a register:

  ‘You’re not away to an empy house, Liam, and you up all night . . . you’ll come in for five minutes and ate what’s ready here.’

  Blinky now muttered to Ward:

  ‘You’d best not offend Mammywee.’

  Ward shrugged almost inperceptibly and followed mother and son into the warm firelit kitchen. They sat at the table facing the hearth as Mary Blessing dropped the kettle two notches and swung the crook over the flame, ladling porridge from a pot on the hearth into two bowls. She then set about putting milk, scones and butter on the table, lit a candle, turning up the wick of the paraffin lamp which hung between an oleograph of Saint Patrick banishing the snakes from Ireland and a picture of Pope Pius the Ninth smiling infallibly and blessing the Blessing kitchen in Fermanagh. Mary poured herself a mug of tea and sat on a creepie in the hearth opposite Ward. She was looking directly into his eyes as she said:

  ‘I’ve only the two sons left out of the dozen I reared. The poet fella inside never laves the bed and this fella here’s hardly ever in it!’

  Ward smiled remotely as she went on.

  ‘Itself did yous have any success at all last night?’ Blinky began to blink rapidly, stopped eating and craned round to look in Ward’s face, got no help and said:

  ‘That story has to travel on a bit yet.’

  ‘Liam, you’re a man of the world and they say a clever man, can you keep this cratur of mine out of harm’s way?’

  It was a direct question. Ward was forced to reply:

  ‘He’s wit enough and fit enough to mind himself.’

  ‘Like too many in this country all wit and no sense.’

  The bedroom door alongside the hearth opened and Wishie Blessing appeared, barefoot, yawning, a railway greatcoat over his nightshirt. He was peering through bottle-end spectacles, a week’s stubble on his face. Mary Blessing greeted her son as he padded towards the front door:

  ‘You’ll take a bowl of stirabout, Wishie son?’

  ‘Naw.’

  ‘A mug of tay?’

  ‘Naw.’

  ‘A griddle scone?’

  ‘Naw.’

  ‘You want nothin’?’

  ‘Naw.’

  ‘No breakfast at all?’

  ‘Naw.’

  Wishie was now out of sight. As the splash of urine came hissing noisily off the cutstone gully near the front door, Blinky leaned over to Ward and whispered:

  ‘The bard of Brackagh adds his bladderful!’

  Ward was still smiling as Wishie came back to the kitchen. He paused looking at the food on the table, then glanced up at the clock on the mantel-shelf. Again Mary Blessing pressed him to eat something. This time he responded sharply:

  ‘It’s the middle of the friggin’ night . . . who could ate breakfast? Where were these two hoeboys till this hour?’

  ‘On Ireland’s busin
ess,’ Mary Blessing said.

  ‘That a fact!’

  ‘That’s what they tell me.’

  ‘Manoeuvres is it lads?’ Wishie asked. ‘Are yous plannin’ to take over Dublin Castle next weekend?’

  ‘Bates lying up in bed,’ Blinky said, ‘writin’ ballads and playing with your mickey.’

  Wishie did not respond to this jibe except to mutter as he left the kitchen:

  ‘Crude bollocks.’

  Mary Blessing got up, lifted the teapot and said:

  ‘Yous’ll break the weather with that bad talk; and you Attie, you shouldn’t annoy him like that . . . he can’t help himself in the morning, poor Wishie, and the father was identical: very slow to wake. And if he does seem a bit sour of himself I can tell you he writes the sweetest wee poems ever you seen, about the wee twisty roads and the wee humpy fields and the windy rivers and the holy wells and the great loughs. And the best ones of all are about the black-hearted villains who stole our land and murdered and starved us these hundreds of years, and how hell’s not torture enough for what they done to us.’

  ‘It’ll take more than one of Wishie’s ballads to shift the like of Billy Winters or Lord Erne.’

  ‘Jape all yous want . . . our Wishie’s a different breed of patriot, that’s all; and every bit as good as either of ye.’

  Ward stood suddenly and began moving towards the door saying:

  ‘That was a good breakfast, thank you, Mam.’

  ‘Sure you ate less than a wee banty . . . are you craw-sick, son?’

  ‘Craw-full, Mam.’

  Blinky followed him out and walked with him as far as the gable of the house. When well out of earshot, Blinky said:

  ‘If you hear tell of anythin’ get word to me.’

  ‘About what?’ Ward asked, ‘there’s nothin’ to tell. We’ll bide our time and try again.’

  Blinky watched Ward walk away into a shoulder-high mist which had risen and thickened, spreading all over Brackagh bog in the coming light.

  He then left the apron of stoned ground at the gable, went down the rutted lane, overgrown on either side with knotted ash and blackthorn, until he came to an iron gate. He climbed it, found an area in the double ditch, stooped, relieved himself and stayed hunkered facing out towards the mist unfolding over the haggard meadow.