Rainsongs Page 18
Don’t you worry about a thing, Paddy, old fellow. I’ll get a few of the lads and see to the milking, he reassures him. We’ll have those other cows rounded up in no time. You just go and rest yourself and get yourself sorted.
There are things we all fear. Loneliness, isolation. Colm tries to imagine what it’s like for Paddy with no one to rely on but himself. Day after day out in all weathers. He must be in his sixties now. He’s always been a model of fitness. Wiry and agile, up and down the mountain like a ram. Colm’s known him since childhood. He’s his da’s cousin. He used to meet him on his way to school in the lane as he was turning the herd out into the fields after early morning milking. He was always friendly. Even helping him to straighten the back wheel of his bike when, once, hurtling down the hill late for his lessons, he came off in a ditch. Paddy took him back to his white cottage, cleaned up his knee with Dettol and made him a mug of strong sweet tea. Then he’d brought the bike into the kitchen and bent the buckled wheel back into shape.
Colm knows that Paddy stayed home to mind his father but wonders if he ever had the chance of a different life. The done thing was to meet someone, marry, and have kids. Then hang on in there until the light went off for one or other of you. But things weren’t always so straightforward. For some, duty and health, even fear, got in the way. And now, how will Paddy manage? His neighbours will muck in while he’s in hospital. But after that? Everyone’s stretched.
How the fuck did those cows get out?
3
Worn out by the day’s dramas Colm takes himself off to the pub at the far end of the village. The only people in there are local. It’s a male domain. Everything’s familiar and strangers are rarely expected except during the summer when they’re searching out live music. On damp winter evenings the same men while away rain-sodden hours playing darts. Many lack any human comfort except for pub company and alcohol. Tonight there’s an old fella in from the next village. Ruddy-faced, with bad teeth, he never removes his cap and is rabbiting on to a couple of other fellows standing at the bar. Colm’s seen him before but doesn’t know his name.
Cattle prices will never recover, he’s saying to his neighbour, who isn’t listening. I may as well sell the land to the German. Sure the chances to make money are as scarce as hen’s teeth.
Colm orders a pint and settles himself on a stool in the far corner on the other side by the fire, under the framed print of Jesus with a bleeding heart. He’s not in the mood to be sociable and spends the evening staring at the glowing turfs.
As closing time approaches the crowd playing darts gathers round the bar eager to get in their last orders. They heave and jostle. Each determined to shove the others out of the way and squeeze through the gap to the front. These men are serious drinkers. Most have been working outside all day and are still damp from the recent downpour. The patterned linoleum is awash with their muddy footprints. There’s only minutes to go, to down another pint before they are flushed out into the night.
Your man in the cap is still wittering on to no one in particular. He’s been drinking all evening but the limited drinking time left won’t allow him to relieve his bursting bladder—the lav is at the end of the unlit yard—as well as finish the two pints and the short he’s just ordered. His dress is the same as most of the other men in the bar. A flat tweed cap, never removed except in church, bed or at the doctor’s. A dark jacket and trousers tucked into large green Wellingtons. A tieless shirt frayed and incorrectly buttoned. Haphazardly tucked into his leather belt.
Everybody is talking and no one listening. Like their pints, these men’s stories need to be finished before closing time. They crowd round the counter pushing and shoving, packed together in a huddle of animal warmth like heifers at the cattle market. Suddenly Colm is aware of a pungent smell mingling with the beer fumes and unwashed bodies as your-man-in-the-cap, still on to no one in particular about the Galway v Mayo match, casually reaches for his new pint. But his dilemma appears to have been solved and his oversized Wellingtons put to good use. The other drinkers pull back. Their vague sense of propriety breached as a pool gradually seeps across the muddy floor.
Colm downs the rest of his pint, zips up his jacket and gets up to leave as the old fella is tipped from pub’s warmth into the sobering night, to stumble his lonely, waterlogged way home.
4
Eugene takes off his muddy boots and pads to the table in his thick socks. It’s been a good day. He’s been out shooting with Joe and his accountant. They bagged a few birds, which are strung up by their feet in the cold pantry. He opens a bottle of whiskey and pours a glass for each of his guests and the gillies. A fire roars in the grate. Caesar and Brutus lie by the hearth, their heads on their paws, their coats steaming. Hunting prints cover the walls. There’s a pair of antlers over the door and the shelves are lined with books in beige and maroon tooled leather that he rarely opens. The Polish cook has left supper laid out on the long oak table. Leek and potato soup. A crusty loaf. Veal and ham pie, plus a large stilton and a bottle of port on the silver coaster. The men cut chunks of bread and cheese and sip their whiskeys in companionable silence as the logs crackle. Their skin is glowing from the rain and wind and their limbs ache from the tramp over the moors. They discuss the shoot, business and Eugene’s plans for Bolus Head. In this company there’s no need to explain himself.
The room smells of dogs, wet tweed and cigars and the drinking goes on till the early hours. After his guests leave Eugene flings on his wax jacket and takes Caesar and Brutus out. Their black silhouettes bound across the wet lawn towards the beach in the moonlight. A wind is blowing in off the sea. Warmed by whiskey he stands watching as they chase across the dark sands before calling them to head back up to the house.
Siobhán is away in Dublin so he can look forward to a restful night.
5
It’s late. The stove is lit and the curtains drawn against the rain. Brendan’s books are spread all over the floor. Martha has been trying to sort them into piles. Those she’ll keep. Those she will give away. There are gallery catalogues from long-forgotten exhibitions and glossy books on the Euston Road School and The Art of Italy. Others are on the flora, fauna and sacred sites of Ireland. So this is it. This is her life. Her husband gone. Her child gone and nothing but remnants. Open in front of her is a leather-bound Black’s General Atlas of the World, published in Edinburgh and Dublin in the early 19th century that Brendan must have bought at some antiquarian book fair. Each plate has been engraved on steel. There are sixty-one maps from the ‘latest and most authentic sources’. All coloured by hand and divided with thin sheets of yellowing tissue paper. A chart of isothermal lines gives the mean annual temperatures in different parts of the world. Another shows the comparative lengths of America’s rivers. They straggle down the page like capillaries in an anatomical diagram. The long threads of the Mississippi and Amazon, the bulbous St Lawrence with its lakes like cancerous growths, its stubby, womb-shaped inlet at the mouth. On the opposite page are the world’s mountain ranges grouped like the flaps of a Victorian children’s theatre. The blue and brown hills of the British Isles. The ranges of Europe and Africa that fade away into the white peaks of Asia and what’s called Oceania. She’s always been fascinated by maps. It was something she and Bruno shared. He’d spread them on the floor, then find the most remote island and ask how long it would take to get there. Whether she thought it was inhabited and what sort of animals might live there. What was this dream of being separate, far from any continent, with the chance to begin anew? This concept of a new utopia gave desert islands their meaning. Shakespeare understood that in The Tempest. So did the monks who went out to the Skelligs to build a Christian refuge on those virgin crags. An uncontaminated haven in a contaminated world.
Wednesday
1
Eugene is sitting over his morning coffee going through the architects’ plans ready for his afternoon meeting. He likes the firm�
�s positive attitude, the proposed use of light and space, and unusual materials. The mixture of tradition and innovation, boldness and understatement. He knows that it will be sensitive building a spa up on the headland. But people will get used to it. He wants to make it a landmark building. Something that will be talked about as an example of good design. He’ll be using local stone and wants to frame the Skelligs in the big plate glass window. He’s been looking at pictures of Tate St Ives with its views over Porthmeor Beach. That’s the effect he wants to achieve. He may not be building an art gallery but it will be a gallery of sorts. To the body and relaxation. And, as he told Martha, the place will provide new jobs. Of course, they’ll mostly be for cleaners and groundsmen. The masseurs and therapists will have to be brought in. But they’ll still need to rent local places, drink in the pub. That’s how prosperity works.
He’s just heard from one of his men about the accident. That yesterday Paddy was airlifted to Kerry General. What the hell was he doing trying to get a heifer out of a ditch on his own? He’s an experienced stockman. He must have known he couldn’t pull her out by himself. There was no need for him to end up in hospital. Donald was only supposed to let the cows out of the field so Paddy would waste his morning chasing them over the mountain and have the frustration of rounding them up. All Eugene wanted was to wear him down a bit. Make him think twice about continuing to farm on his own up there. No one was supposed to get hurt. That hadn’t been on the agenda. He hopes that Donald did it in the dark so no one saw him. People know he does odd jobs for Eugene. They might put two and two together. But it’s impossible to get any sense out of him so there’s no real need to worry. He’d better take Paddy over a bottle of whiskey. Now he’s laid up, he might see the wisdom of settling for a quiet life. If he wasn’t so stubborn, then none of this would have happened. What’s he hanging on for anyway? He must be close to retirement and has no children. He won’t be able to go on running the place much longer anyway. Apparently it was Colm who found him and called the emergency services. God knows what he was doing up on the mountain.
Eugene takes out his pen and underlines some points with thick black lines that he needs to take up with the architects. In the margin he absentmindedly draws a house with four windows and a sloping roof with smoke coming out of the chimney. He puts down his pen to admire his doodle. Then adds a dog by the front door. He must have another word with Martha. She still hasn’t got back to him about her strip of land. He wonders whether he should ask her out to dinner. Woo her a bit. She must be lonely. If he plays his cards right they could come to some amicable arrangement that might just suit them both.
2
It’s raining heavily. The light is fading. Perhaps he isn’t going to come. Martha is sitting by the window watching the rickety headlights of a tractor bump up and down over the muddy potholes as it returns from dropping off fodder to the cows in the high field. After it’s disappeared the lane is completely dark.
He offered to come by and look at her stove when she’d texted to say that it was belching out thick black smoke. A BIRD, MAY B, he answered. WLL TRY 2 GET OVER WHEN FINISHED LOT 2 DO. She sits listening to the wind lifting the corrugated roof on the outhouse. Outside the steep cliffs fall away into the sea. Behind the cottage there’s nothing except damp fields leading up onto the windswept moor, a fox sleeping deep in its earth, and a huddle of sheep sheltering by a gatepost bound with baler twine. In a ditch a stoat follows the movements of a small vole, waiting for its chance.
She’s decorated the windowsill with pebbles from the beach adding them to Brendan’s collection, gathering driftwood and shells as if she was still a child. When she wakes before dawn she makes tea in the small blue pot, then pulls on an old sweater over her nightdress, before getting down to work on his papers. At lunch time she heats up some soup or walks the mile down to Cable O’Leary’s for a cheese and pickle sandwich. Midweek the place is usually empty. Just a couple of old fellows sitting in the corner with their pints or the bloke from the garage playing on the fruit machine.
3
When Colm visits Paddy in hospital he looks old and frail. There are purple bruises under his eyes and an orthopaedic collar round his neck. The doctors say he’s going to be alright but he’s taken quite a kicking. He has a couple of broken ribs and needs time to recuperate. It’s played on Colm’s mind all day. What will the old fellow do? What will happen to his land and the cottage? There was some talk from the social worker of a nursing home. But Paddy was so distressed at the suggestion that the hospital agreed to give his sister a call. Nora, is coming over from Cork to look after him till he’s back on his feet. At least that way he can go back home.
Colm spends the afternoon trying to catch up. There’s a gig to organise in Waterville and they’ve been booked for a wedding next weekend for which they’ll be well paid. There’ll be folks from all over and it’s a good opportunity for him and Niall to get better-known. And he needs to get down to the corn merchant to pick up some pellets. There’s been little time in the last couple of days to think about his poems or Martha’s comments. Life has got in the way. After he finishes work he gets in his van and drives up past Bolus Head to check on Paddy’s place. He promised he would keep an eye. A few of the other farmers on the hill are helping care for his stock. So everything’s covered for the moment. A full moon is hanging over the cottage, casting lily pads of light across the bay. Paddy’s washing flaps on the line in the starlight. Colm unpegs his pyjamas, overalls and socks, takes them inside and folds them in a neat pile on the kitchen table. Then he goes to check the turf reek and fasten the banging lean-to door.
As he drives back down the hill he notices the light is still on in Martha’s cottage. He pulls up outside and stops the van. He’d forgotten, what with all that’s been going on, that he said he’d take a look at her stove. Anyway, for some reason, he suddenly wants to see her. When he knocks, she comes to the door in her socks, wrapped in a big scarf. Standing in a ring of light on the doorstep holding a torch, he can barely see her face.
Colm. How nice to see you, she says softly. Come in. I was just about to go to bed. As you can see I was trying to make sense of this pile of Brendan’s papers and not getting very far. It’s freezing in here. I can’t get the stove to light.
He takes off his heavy jacket and hangs it on the back of the chair, then pokes and prods around in the stove, shining his torch up the dark flue.
What I thought. There’s a whole load of shite up there. It probably got dislodged by the wind. It should be okay now, he says, giving it another poke so a whole pile of soot covered debris falls onto the hearth, which he sweeps up in the dustpan and tips outside the front door. D’you have any fire lighters?
A black streak of soot runs across his brow and down the bridge of his nose like war paint.
Better have a bit of a wash, if you’ve got a towel?
As the stove begins to heat up a smell of coal dust fills the room. She goes to the dresser and takes out a clean towel, still stiff from the line, and places it by the kitchen sink. Colm pulls up the sleeves of his thick jersey with his teeth to avoid getting covered in soot. His white, hairless arms are sinewy and there’s a small tattoo visible beneath the dirt. Turning on the taps with his elbows like a surgeon, he rubs his forearms with the transparent disc of carbolic from the cracked saucer on the draining board. She stands in the doorway watching as the water runs black, then clear, a fist closing in her stomach.
Can I get you a drink? Wine? Whiskey? I think you’ve earned it. It was good of you to come over so late.
He takes the offered glass in his wet hand, then sits down in the easy chair by the stove, placing it on the floor and dries his arms, his wrists, the thin webbed skin between his fingers with the towel.
Sure ’twas no bother, Martha.
Is anything wrong? She asks. If you don’t mind me saying so, you look rather tired.
Wrong? Well, not exactly.
But you’re right I am tired. It’s good to sit down for a bit. It’s been a difficult couple of days. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the accident yesterday. Paddy O’Connell, you know from the white cottage up top, was hurt on the mountain and had to go to hospital. I was the one who found him.
Hurt? How was he hurt?
Well somehow his cattle got out. If you ask me someone cut the fence. Though who’d do a feckin’ stupid thing like that I’ve no idea. But Paddy slipped trying to pull a cow out of the ditch. She fell on him, broke his ribs, and hurt his neck. He was airlifted to hospital.
Hospital?
Yer. The cattle were all over the mountain and Paddy is such a careful man.
Something in Martha grows cold. Eugene. Surely he wouldn’t stoop so low?
Have you any idea how it happened? It’s probably nothing to do with anything, and I don’t want to be the instigator of rumours but do you happen to know about Eugene’s plans up on the headland? By the way, are you hungry? I’ve some homemade soup on the stove if you haven’t eaten. Would you like some?
Ah that would be grand, Martha, he says stretching out his long legs and relaxing into the sofa, realising how comfortable he feels in this candle-lit book-lined room.
I’m bushed.
Outside the wind is blowing. Shadows from the stove flit across the ceiling like owls.
No, he says taking a sip of whiskey. He knows nothing about Eugene’s plans. Does that mean he’s trying to get rid of Paddy?