Cold spring, p.5
Cold Spring, page 5
He had spent his working life teaching in the local school, apart from two years in a school in north Dublin. He didn’t like the city. He yearned for the country and long evenings fishing after school closed at three. Almost inevitably, he married Sheila, a local girl whom he’d known since boyhood. It was a happy marriage, and it would have been even happier if they’d been blessed with children. From habit they now did everything together. They devoted their lives totally to each other. There had never been anyone else to amuse or distract. They had weathered no great storms. They could both look back on a calm sea and reasonably prosperous voyage. It was only now towards the end that he felt they had missed out on life’s great adventure.
The thought came to him last summer on their first holiday on the continent. At the end of a week in Rome they visited the Sistine Chapel for the second time. He looked up at Adam and Eve slinking out of the Garden of Eden and knew that he had wasted his life. It was a feeling that pursued him all the way home and continued to rise like an intrusive outcrop to vex and distract at odd moments of the day and night. He could not mention it to Sheila, of course. Instead he thought up little projects for himself. The new turf shed, he realised, was one of these.
‘Ambrose will be coming in the afternoon.’ He looked up as he stirred his tea.
‘I suppose he’ll expect to eat with us,’ Sheila said.
‘I suppose he will.’
‘I don’t care for him very much. There’s something about him that isn’t altogether wholesome.’ She’d always been difficult to please in men. To be fair, she was equally critical of women.
‘He’s good with his hands, and he knows more about block-making than I do.’
‘I suppose I’ll have to put up with him, then,’ she said.
He himself wasn’t overfond of Ambrose either, and not just because he was a newcomer in the townland. Somehow he didn’t behave like an Englishman, or anyone’s idea of how an Englishman might behave. English people, he knew from his reading, were self-reliant. They minded their own business and kept their own counsel. By instinct they were conservative. If anything, they were over concerned about doing the right thing. From the start Ambrose seemed to enjoy makeshift living. He saw himself as an artist, gloriously untrammelled by the conventions that bound the neighbours he’d left behind in England. At least that was the impression he sought to give. He and Sharon had come to Leaca to experience something of what they called ‘Neolithic living’ before it was too late. In their attitudes they themselves seemed anything but Neolithic. They had the look of city people, they talked like city people, and they knew how to get the most out of their neighbours.
Ambrose was keen to make friends. He saw himself as a citizen of the world, equally at home in London, Paris and Timbuktu. He was pushy and insinuating. He assumed that he was one of the locals just because they stopped to speak whenever they met him on the road. As Daniel well knew, you could live in Leaca for five generations without being accepted by the likes of Muiris, who saw himself as ‘an old residenter’ in contrast to all mere residents. Muiris was never done talking about sean stoc Leaca, the old stock of Leaca. Now that Paddy Canty had gone, he saw himself as the last of the breed. Needless to say, he saw Ambrose and Sharon as spindrift blown in on the wind.
Ambrose was in the habit of borrowing books from Daniel, and more often than not he had to be reminded to return them. He was also in the habit of giving him poems and short stories for his comments. The poems were sentimental and self-indulgent, and the short stories shapeless. So far he had not had anything published, but non-publication did not deter him from writing. Daniel read his efforts with some reluctance. Though Ambrose demanded what he called ‘an honest appraisal’, what he really expected was unstinting admiration. At the slightest hint of criticism he would say that the author’s intentions had been misunderstood. Only he knew what these were, and only the most attentive reader would ever discover them.
‘I’ll be happy if he doesn’t bring me yet another of his poems,’ Daniel said.
‘You’re far too easygoing. You should tell him you can’t read his writing, and that he should save his stories till they’re printed in book form.’
Ambrose arrived at two in the afternoon carrying a large brown envelope.
‘I fear the worst,’ Sheila said when she saw him coming up the lane. ‘That envelope is big enough to hold the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid all together.’
‘Dia sa teach,’ Ambrose said from the door. It was one of the many irritating things about him, his attempts at the Irish phrases he’d picked up from the neighbours.
‘Come on in,’ Daniel said.
‘Something that came back in the post this morning.’ He handed Daniel the envelope. ‘Maybe you’d have a look at it and see if you agree with the publisher.’
‘I’m reading Crime and Punishment at the moment,’ Daniel said, by way of discouragement.
‘Lucky man. I’m too busy writing to have time to read anything.’
Daniel took the proffered envelope and laid it on the table. ‘I suppose we’d better make a start while the afternoon is still young,’ he said.
He had lifted gravel from the river and had bought two bags of cement in Melvin’s. He had borrowed moulds from Tom Barron and an extra shovel from Muiris. To give him his due, Ambrose put his back into mixing and tamping the concrete. He was stronger than Daniel, and once he got going he was happy to keep at it. They worked doggedly throughout the afternoon, pausing only for a cup of tea at five. Ambrose was preoccupied. For a long time he didn’t say anything. The only sound he uttered was an occasional grunt.
‘I’ll be glad when this investigation is over and the culprit arrested,’ Daniel said as they tamped the last of the concrete. ‘It’s a terrible nuisance. I never bolted my door before going to bed until now.’
‘I don’t have a bolt on mine, just a latch and nothing else.’
‘None of us will sleep soundly till the culprit is caught.’
‘Who do you think did it?’ Ambrose asked.
‘Like everyone else, I’m hoping the Sergeant and Inspector Harper will find out.’
‘They interviewed me for over an hour, asking the same questions over and over again, as if they suspected I was spinning them yarns.’
‘They questioned everyone in Leaca.’
‘But not for over an hour!’
‘It’s their job to suspect everyone and leave no stone unturned.’
‘Someone must have told the Sergeant something against me,’ Ambrose said. ‘He had the air of a man who thought
I had something to hide.’
‘He knows that someone does, I suppose.’
‘But you don’t think I’m guilty.’
‘Well, of course not. Every man is innocent till found guilty by judge and jury.’
‘If only everyone thought as you do. People look at me on the road as if I were an impostor. “Blame the blow-in” written on every face.’
‘I think you’re being oversensitive, imagining things that aren’t there.’
‘I wish I hadn’t gone to help Canty that morning. The florin he paid me was dearly bought. The Sergeant kept asking me about it. He thinks I found out where Canty kept his money. I kept telling him he took the coin from his hip pocket but it didn’t seem to register.’
‘He asked us all the same questions. He even questioned Tom Barron, Paddy Canty’s closest friend.’
‘Maybe I am too sensitive. It’s the price I pay for being a writer. Still, I’d like you to know I didn’t do it.’
‘And I’d like you to know that I didn’t do it.’
Ambrose looked at him. ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ he said, brightening.
Dusk was already gathering when they downed tools. Between them they had made sixty-one blocks.
‘There’s nothing more we can do now except leave them to cure,’ Ambrose said.
‘We can have dinner in the meantime.’ Daniel led the way into the house.
Sheila had prepared a rich lamb stew with turnips and carrots mashed together. Ambrose was hungry. He ate everything she set before him and didn’t say no to a second helping. He ate purposefully and in silence. It was only
when they had finished that he asked Daniel if he had read his poem. For a moment Daniel was at a loss. Ambrose
was in the habit of giving him at least half a dozen poems a week.
‘Which one do you mean?’ he asked.
‘The one that begins, “Today I asked a stone a question.”’
‘I thought it derivative,’ Daniel said. ‘I remember once reading a poem in Irish that began with the same statement.’
‘You must admit that it’s arresting.’
‘But it isn’t original.’
‘I don’t know a word of Irish poetry. If it already occurs in Irish, it only shows I’m on the right track.’
‘I suppose you could call it uncanny,’ Daniel said.
Ambrose laughed appreciatively. ‘You’re right there,’ he said. ‘And isn’t that why they won’t publish me? They’re scared, you see.’
‘Scared of what?’
‘Of an Englishman who can write more Irish than the Irish. I’m thinking of adopting an Irish pen name, just to fox them. I’ve had sixty-two rejection slips since I started writing. I’m hoping “Peadar Mac Grianna” will do the trick.’
Sheila offered him more tea to unseat him from his hobby-horse, but Ambrose was not to be thrown. It was not until Daniel said that he was looking forward to making a start on his latest work that he rose to go.
‘I mustn’t keep you from your pleasure,’ he said. ‘You’re my only reader and critic. Who knows, one day you may be famous.’
‘I think he’s mad,’ Sheila said when he’d gone. ‘Is he mad enough to kill for money? That’s what I’d like to know.’
‘He may be a nuisance but he’s harmless,’ Daniel said.
‘Today I asked a stone a question. It may be good poetry in Irish but I doubt if ten professors could convince me it’s good poetry in English.’
6
Red Miller was mending the fence that had caused the trouble between himself and Paddy Canty. To judge by the look on Canty’s face when he saw the damage, you’d think it was the boundary of hell itself that had been breached. Canty was impossible, even at the best of times. He saw everyone under seventy as a stripling. He himself was above the law, of course, since he happened to be the oldest man in Leaca. No wonder Canty and Muiris Mór got on so well. They were two of a kind.
Still, it was unfortunate that he and Canty had had words, and even more unfortunate that the Sergeant had got wind of it. From the very beginning, he could tell where the Sergeant’s questions were leading. And then there was that detective bloke from Sligo. Inspector Harper, he called himself. He was worse than the Sergeant. It was obvious he’d been trained not to believe a word he was told. So where did the Sergeant and Harper get their information? From Muiris, who else?
Muiris was another impossible neighbour. Always going on about the O’Donnells and the old Irish aristocracy of Donegal. Naturally, he saw himself as one of them. He claimed direct descent from Red Hugh O’Donnell on his father’s side, and on his mother’s side direct descent from Colmcille. All baloney, as everyone knew, everyone except Muiris.
It was laughable how he tried to behave like an aristocrat, or as he imagined an aristocrat might behave. One sports night he and Red Miller were drinking in Cashel. It was a warm evening and the pub was crowded, when suddenly everyone looked suspiciously at the man next to him. Red Miller looked at Muiris, and Muiris looked at Red Miller. ‘Was that you, Muiris?’ Red Miller asked. Muiris drew himself up to his full height of six foot four and sniffed magisterially. ‘It’s over twenty-three years since I last farted,’ he said seriously. Red Miller felt like saying, ‘It must have been a good one,’ but he didn’t. Muiris was not a man to take a joke.
In his prime he was said to be the strongest man in the parish. One evening when a group of men were standing outside Jamie Byrne’s shop talking about cod fishing, a man from the Bachta made a slighting remark about fishermen that didn’t go down well with Muiris. Putting out his big hand and placing it on the crown of the shorter man’s head, he slowly turned the head so that it was looking over its owner’s shoulder. He pressed down on the crown, gently at first and then with all his might. The man’s legs gave way beneath him and he sank to his knees on the pavement. Muiris held the man down without losing the thread of his conversation. Only when the man said, ‘Sorry, Muiris, I didn’t mean it,’ did he release his grip. The man got to his feet and staggered off down the street as if drunk, though everyone knew he was a teetotaller. Muiris kept up his conversation with the other men, as if completely unaware of the strength that had gone out of him. The following day he was the talk of the glen. No one ever dared cross him again. Red Miller was only a lad at the time. He saw it happen with his own two eyes.
He’d been watching the Sergeant pedalling up the brae long before the Sergeant spotted him. Dismounting with obvious care, he laid the bicycle against the pier of the gate.
‘I’ve got bad news for you. I’ve been instructed to arrest you and take you to the barracks for further questioning.’
‘You can question me here,’ Red Miller said.
‘It’s out of my hands. I’m only acting on Inspector Harper’s orders.’
‘How long will the questioning take?’
‘That depends on your answers. You could be held overnight or even longer.’
‘You must be crazy. You know I didn’t do it.’
The Sergeant thrust out his chest and then his chin. ‘If you don’t come willingly, I’ll have to take appropriate measures,’ he said.
‘I can’t leave my ewes in the middle of lambing. Surely you must know that.’
‘The law, like the tide, waits for neither man nor ewe.’
‘Give me time to get someone to look after my sheep and cattle. When that’s done, I’ll come to the barracks on my own. I don’t need an escort. You’ll be the laughing stock of the parish, Sergeant. I’m as innocent as that newborn lamb there.’
‘I’ll give you till six o’clock this evening,’ the Sergeant said, going back to his bicycle.
Red Miller stood watching as he freewheeled down the Ard Breac. He would have to tell Tom Barron about his problem. Tom was reliable. He would know what to do.
* * *
When Tom Barron told Nancy that he was going to another meeting at Muiris Mór’s, she asked if Muiris was the only man in the townland who could think for himself. She would never understand why Muiris had such influence over other men. There was nothing special about him except his height and vanity. Whenever he called a meeting, the other men came trotting. Of course, no woman was ever invited. The meetings were always held at the house of a bachelor or widower, so that the men could drink poteen together and pretend to be important. Tom was as bad as the rest of them when it came to Muiris. He would listen to Muiris when he wouldn’t pay attention to anyone else. It was his only fault. He was solid and sensible in every other way.
‘What’s the meeting about?’ she asked.
‘Red Miller. He asked me to look after his ewes and lambs while he’s in custody.’
‘You don’t need a meeting for that, do you?’
‘I need help. I’ve got my own sheep to look after.’
‘You won’t get much help from Muiris, surely?’
‘We’ll have to take it in turns. We’re all in the same boat, short of help. If anything happened to me, I’d expect the neighbours to lend you a hand. Miller may not be everyone’s idea of a good neighbour but his sheep are like everyone else’s.’
He took his hat from its peg and put it on in front of the mirror, adjusting it carefully so that it looked as if it had been put on casually. From the window she watched him go down the lane in the gathering dusk. He was a bit of a dandy, was Tom. He always got her to polish his shoes for Mass on Sunday and had her brush the shoulders of his jacket before he left the house. He and Muiris were the only men in the townland who wore a hat on Sunday. All the others wore peaked caps. Tom bought his first hat as soon as they got married, a grey felt hat with a silk band and white silk lining. She always thought he looked good in a hat. Somehow it suited the shape of his face, and when he wore it with his tweed overcoat in winter, she would tell him that he looked like Joe Rooney, the Fianna Fail TD. Naturally, that would please him, though he’d be sure to say that Rooney was good for nothing but shouting his head off on public platforms.
Muiris on the other hand looked like the devil himself in a hat. He had a long body and a long thin face and his hat looked as if someone had hung it on a stick. She couldn’t say which of them started wearing a hat first. Probably Tom. More than likely Muiris started wearing one so as not to be outdone. Muiris was deep. Whenever he met her on the road he would raise his hat, but he wouldn’t stop to talk unless she started a conversation first. Then he would look out over her head as if he was addressing the mountain behind her. He wouldn’t smile, not even with his eyes, and he would end the conversation when it suited him by saying, ‘Sure, we must be saying something to pass the time.’ He would never forgive her. More than likely he hadn’t forgiven Tom either. He was quite capable of trying to get even.
She was pleased that Jim was coming home next month to help with the cutting of the turf. She took his letter from behind the clock and put on her spectacles. She liked reading his letters, because his handwriting resembled her own and because he could twist an expression to make her laugh. For a journalist he wrote short letters. When she asked him why he didn’t write longer, he said that he was so used to writing for money that he had forgotten how to write for pleasure. He never wrote to his father, always to her, but he would be sure to mention him. Sometimes he would enclose a fiver for her to spend on herself, but she always bought something sensible for the house. She was proud of Jim. As a boy, he was good at farm work and good at his books. He could turn his hand to anything. She wasn’t surprised when he won a scholarship, but she was disappointed when he became a journalist. Somehow she had expected him to do something more useful, something a bit more solid. He was still young, of course, only thirty-six. There was no knowing what he’d turn to next. She had written to tell him about Paddy Canty’s death, and she’d sent him the cutting from the local paper. He was friendly with Paddy. He had been making a collection of his old stories, what he called the seanchas. He always spent time with him whenever he came home. He had written an article about him for the Irish News, and he was writing a book about Leaca in his spare time because, he said, it was a way of life that would vanish with the old generation. He was right there. The young people had gone. Soon the place would be left to the crows and foxes. Having folded Jim’s letter and put it back in its envelope, she lit the oil lamp, took a pen and notepad from the mantelpiece and sat down at the table. Jim was bound to be interested in the latest news about Red Miller.
