Amongst Women (2 page)

‘Are you all right, Daddy?’ they called out.

When it was dear that he was, Rose cried, ‘You frightened the life out of us, Daddy.’

‘That bloody bird has been annoying me for days.’

‘You’ll get your death of cold standing there at the open window,’ Maggie complained and Rose brought the window down.

‘You didn’t miss anyhow.’ Rose was intent on laughing away the incongruity of the situation.

‘I don’t think Daddy ever missed,’ Mona said.

‘The closest I ever got to any man was when I had him in the sights of the rifle and I never missed.’ The voice was so absent and tired that it took some of the chill from the words.

He allowed Rose to take the gun away but not before he had removed the empty shell. He dressed and had breakfast with them at the table. The gun was returned to its usual place in the corner of the room and no more mention was made of the dead jackdaw.

‘Tired again,’ he said simply after an hour and went back to his room.

Maggie was taking a plane to London that night and Sheila and Mona were driving her to the airport. The two girls would not be back till the following weekend. Moran stood with Rose in the doorway watching the car drive away. He waved weakly after the car but he did not speak as Rose shut the door and they turned back into the house.

Monaghan Day had revived nothing but a weak fanciful ghost of what had been. After Easter and many other alarms, when none of the girls was able to be in Great Meadow, Rose had her sister buy a brown Franciscan habit in the town. In spite of the hush and emptiness of the house, the two women smuggled the habit in like thieves and later that evening Rose hid it among her most intimate articles of clothing in a part of the wardrobe that Moran never opened.

The attempt to revive Monaghan Day was a gesture as weak as a couple who marry in order to try to retrieve a lost relationship, the mind having changed the hard actual fact into what was comfortable to feel.

On the last Monaghan Day that McQuaid came to the house Moran was on edge as he waited for him as he had been on edge every Monaghan Day, the only day in the year that McQuaid came to Great Meadow. Since morning he had been in and out of the kitchen where Maggie and Mona were cleaning and tidying and preparing for the big meal. Though Maggie was eighteen, tall and attractive, she was still as much in awe of Moran as when she had been a child. Mona, two years younger, was the more likely to clash with him, but this day she agreed to be ruled by Maggie’s acquiescence. Sheila, a year younger still, was too self-centred and bright ever to challenge authority on poor ground and she pretended to be sick in order to escape the tension of the day. Alone, the two girls were playful as they went about their tasks, mischievous at times, even carefully boisterous; but as soon as their father came in they would sink into a beseeching drabness, cower as close to being invisible as they could.

‘How do the lamb chops look?’ he demanded again. ‘Are these the best lamb chops you could get? Haven’t I told you time in and time out never – never – to get lamb chops anywhere but from Kavanagh’s? Has everything to be drummed in a hundred times? God, why is nothing ever made dear in this house? Everything has to be dragged out of everybody.’

‘Kavanagh said the steak wasn’t great but that the lamb was good,’ Maggie added but Moran was already on his way out again, muttering that not even simple things were made clear in this house and if simple things couldn’t be made clear how was a person ever to get from one day to the next in this world.

The two girls were quiet for a long time after the door closed; then suddenly, unaccountably, they started to push one another, boisterously mimicking Moran: ‘God, O God, what did I do to deserve such a crowd? Gawd, O Gawd, not even the simple things are made clear,’ falling into chairs laughing.

A loud imperious knocking came on the tongued boards of the ceiling in the middle of the rowdy relief. They stopped to listen and as they did the knocking stopped.

‘She’s no more sick than my big toe. Whenever there’s a whiff of trouble she takes to her bed with the asthma. She has books and sweets hidden up there,’ Mona said. They waited in silence until the knocking resumed, insistent and angry.

‘Boohoo!’ they responded. ‘Boohoo! Boohoo! Boohoo!’ The knocking made the boards of the ceiling tremble. She was using a boot or shoe. ‘Boohoo!’ they echoed. ‘Boohoo! Boohoo!…’

The stairs creaked. In a moment Sheila stood angrily framed in the doorway. ‘I’ve been knocking for ages and all ye do is laugh up at me.’

‘We never heard. We’d laugh up at nobody.’

‘Ye heard only too well. I’m going to tell Daddy on the pair of ye.’

‘Boohoo!’ they repeated.

‘You think I’m joking. You’ll pay for this before it’s over.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I’m sick and you won’t even bring up a drink.’

They gave her a jug of barley water and a clean glass.

‘You know what day it is and McQuaid is coming from the mart. He’s in and out like a devil. You can’t expect us to dance attendance up the stairs as well. If he comes in and sees you like that in the door he’ll have something to say,’ Maggie said but Sheila slipped back upstairs before she finished.

They draped the starched white tablecloth over the big deal table. The room was wonderfully warm, the hotplate of the stove glowing a faint orange. They began to set the table, growing relaxed and easy, enjoying the formality of the room, when Moran came in again from the fields. This time he stood in the centre of the room, plainly unsure as to what had brought him in, his eye searching around for something to fasten on, like someone in mid-speech forgetting what they had to say.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Everything is all right, Daddy.’

‘Be sure the chops are well done,’ he said and went out again. No sooner had the door closed than Mona, released from the tension of his presence, let slip a plate from her hands. They stood watching dumbly in horrible fascination after it shattered. Quickly they swept up the pieces and hid them away, wondering how they would replace the plate without being found out.

‘Don’t worry,’ Maggie comforted Mona who was still pale with shock. ‘We’ll find some way round it.’ They were too sick at heart to mimic or mock this mood away. Anything broken had to be hidden until it could be replaced or forgotten.

Outside it was cold but there was no rain. It was always cold on Monaghan Day, the traditional day poor farmers sold their winter stock and the rich farmers bought them for fattening. Moran was neither rich nor poor but his hatred and fear of poverty was as fierce as his fear of illness which meant that he would never be poor but that he and all around him would live as if they were paupers. Moran had no work in the fields but still he stayed outside in the cold, looking at hedges, examining walls, counting cattle. He was too excited to be able to stay indoors. As the light began to fail he retreated into the shelter of the fir plantation to watch the road for McQuaid’s car. If McQuaid had a big order to fill he mightn’t come till after dark.

The light was almost gone when the white Mercedes came slowly along the road and turned into the open gate under the yew tree. Moran did not move even after the car stopped. In fact, he instinctively stepped backwards into the plantation as the car door was thrown open. Without moving he watched McQuaid struggle from the car and then stand leaning on the open door as if waiting for someone to appear. He could have called out from where he stood but he did not. McQuaid slammed the car door and walked towards the house. Not until he was several minutes within the house did Moran leave the plantation. He came slowly and deliberately across the fields to the back door. Though he had lived for weeks for this hour he now felt a wild surge of resentment towards McQuaid as he came into his own house.

McQuaid was seated in the armchair by the fire. His powerful trunk and huge belly filled the chair and the yellow cattleman’s boots were laced halfway up the stout legs. He did not rise from the chair or acknowledge Moran’s entrance in any way except to direct the flirting banter he was having with the girls to Moran.

‘These girls are blooming. You better have your orchards well fenced or you’ll be out of apples by October.’

The words were said with such good humour and aggressive sureness that it would have been impossible to take offence. Moran hardly heard; all resentment left him as quickly as it had come: McQuaid was here and it was Monaghan Day.

‘Michael.’ McQuaid reached out of the chair and took Moran’s hand in a firm grip.

‘Jimmy.’ Moran responded with the same simplicity. ‘Have you been here long?’

‘Not long. I had a fine talk with these girls. They are great girls.’

Moran walked across to the curtained press where he kept medicines and took out a glass and a full bottle of Redbreast. He poured out a large measure of the whiskey and brought it to McQuaid. Maggie placed a jug of spring water on the table. ‘Say when,’ Moran poured the water into the glass. McQuaid held out the glass until it was three-quarters full.

‘You’ll need it after the mart,’ Moran said.

‘I don’t need it but I’ll do much better than that. I’ll enjoy it. Good luck everybody.’

‘How did it go?’ Moran asked with a heartiness that didn’t suit him.

‘The same as every other Monaghan Day,’ McQuaid said.

‘Was it good or bad?’ Moran continued.

‘It was neither good nor bad. It was money. All the farmers think their cattle are special but all I ever see is money. If a beast is around or below a certain sum of money I buy. If it goes over that I’m out.’

‘I’ve often watched you in the past and wondered how you know exactly the right time to enter the bidding, the right time to leave,’ Moran praised. His fascination with McQuaid’s mastery of his own world was boyish. He had never been able to deal with the outside. All his dealings had been with himself and that larger self of family which had been thrown together by marriage or accident: he had never been able to go out from his shell of self.

‘I don’t know how I know that,’ McQuaid said. ‘All I know is that it cost me a lot of money to learn.’

The girls had the freshly cut bread, butter and milk on the table. The lamb chops sizzled as they were dropped into the big pan. The sausages, black pudding, bacon, halves of tomatoes were added soon after to the sides of the pan. The eggs were fried in a smaller pan. Mona scalded the large teapot and set it to brew. The two girls were silent as they cooked and when they had to speak to one another spoke in quick, urgent whispers.

‘This looks like a meal fit for a king. It makes me want to roll up my sleeves,’ McQuaid said in praise and plain enjoyment at the prospect of it as the plates were put on the table. He finished his glass of whiskey with a flourish before rising from the chair.

The two men ate in silence, with relish, waited on by the two girls. As soon as McQuaid pushed his empty plate contentedly aside he said, ‘These are great girls but where are the missing soldiers?’

‘Sheila is upstairs with a cold,’ Maggie pointed to the ceiling. ‘And Michael is gone to our aunt in the mountains for a week.’

‘Where’s Luke then?’

The girls looked from McQuaid to Moran and back to McQuaid again but they did not speak.

‘We don’t know where he is,’ Moran said reluctantly. He particularly disliked parting with information about the house. ‘You couldn’t open your mouth in this house before he left but he’d be down your throat.’

‘If I know you I’d warrant he was given his money’s worth,’ McQuaid laughed gently and when Moran didn’t answer he added, ‘The young will have their way, Michael. Anyhow I always liked Luke. He is very straight and manly.’

‘I respect all my children equally,’ Moran said. ‘How are your lads?’

‘You know they’re all married now. I don’t see much of them unless they want something and they don’t see much of me. They’re good lads though. They work long hours.’

‘And the good lady?’

‘Oh, the old dosey’s all right. She needs plenty of shouting at or she’d go to sleep on her feet.’

They had married young and their three sons married young as well. They lived alone now in the big cattle dealer’s house with the white railing in the middle of fields. He was seldom in the house except to eat or sleep and when he was all he ever did was yell, ‘Get the tea. Polish the boots. Kick out that bloody cat. Get me a stud. Where’s the fucking collar?’ ‘In a minute, Jimmy. Coming. On the way. It’s here in my very hand,’ his wife would race and flurry and call. Then he would be gone for days. She would spoil her cats, read library books and tend her garden and the riotous rockery of flowers along the south wall of the house that he encouraged the cattle to eat. After days of peace the door would crash open: There’s six men here with lorries. Put on the kettle. Set the table. Get hopping. Put wheels under yourself. We’re fucking starving!’ There was never a hint of a blow. So persistent was the language that it had become no more remarkable than just another wayward manner of speaking and their sons paid so little attention to it that it might well have been one of the many private languages of love.

The dishes had been washed and put away. Mona went to join Sheila upstairs. Maggie was going visiting. Another night Moran would have questioned her but not tonight.

Years ago Moran loaned McQuaid money when he had started in the cattle business but now McQuaid was the richer and more powerful man and they saw little of one another. They came together once a year to slip back into what McQuaid said were the days of their glory. Moran was too complicated to let anybody know what he thought of anything. Moran had commanded a column in the war. McQuaid had been his lieutenant. From year to year they used the same handrails to go down into the past: lifting the cartwheel at the crossroads, the drilling sessions by the river, the first ambush, marching at night between the safe houses, the different characters in the houses, the food, the girls… The interrogation of William Taylor the spy and his execution by the light of a paraffin lantern among his own cattle in the byre. The Tans had swarmed over the countryside looking for them after the execution. They had lived for a while in holes cut in the turf banks. The place was watched night and day. Once the British soldiers came on Mary Duignan when she was bringing them tea and sandwiches. The Duignans were so naturally pale-faced that Mary showed no sign that anything was other than normal and she continued to bring tea and sandwiches to men working on a further turf bank. Seeing the British soldiers, the startled men sat and ate though they had just risen from a complete meal.