A High Meadow E-Book

John B. Keane

• Herausgeber: Mercier Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1994

Seitenzahl: 468

Beschreibung

A High Meadow is full of comedy, tragedy and melodrama, all centred around the village of Ballybobawn and Eddie Drannaghy, the 'Ram of God' (a former trainee priest who was cynically seduced by the American wife of his cousin, fathered a child and was forced to leave the seminary), and his brothers Murt and Will. John B. Keane weaves an inimitable tapestry of rural life: people good and bad, weak and powerful; gardaí, priests and travellers, and towering above them all the personality of the Ram of God.

Leseprobe

MERCIER PRESS

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Blackrock, Cork, Ireland.

www.mercierpress.ie

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© John B. Keane 1994

ISBN: 978 185635 090 7

Epub ISBN: 978 1 7811 039 7

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 7811 040 3

TO EDEL WITH LOVE

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

About the Author

About the Publisher

One

THE RAM OF GOD was rudely awakened at five in the morning. Normally he was up and about at six-thirty to drive in the sixty milch cows for the morning milking. This morning, however, the elderly alarm clock which served him so faithfully for years was upstaged by the coarse bawling of his younger brothers, freshly arrived from the nearby village’s most notorious hostelry, The Load of S.

The Drannaghy twins, in their thirtieth years, noisily charged into his bedroom without the formality of a knock, announcing at the tops of their drunken voices that the day was well and truly broken.

‘Get up you long, lazy hoor,’ shouted Murt the taller of the pair whilst his brother Will with a single wild flourish swept aside the bed-clothes, which covered the pyjamaed form of the Ram of God.

‘What’s the matter?’ the Ram called out sleepily.

‘Will you listen to the hoor,’ Murt addressed his twin uproariously, ‘listen to the Ram. I’ll tell you what’s up Ram. The day is a beauty and there’s meadows to be cut. Up now like a good boy and get on the tractor and don’t come back from the High Meadow till every blade of grass is cut clean from its bosom.’

‘What about the cows?’ the Ram asked reasonably.

‘We’ll look after the cows.’ Will gave the assurance from a mouth, stout-stained and spittleful. Both reeked of stale drink.

‘The bull will want watching,’ the Ram of God warned. ‘Don’t turn your backs on him. He’s shifty.’

‘Not as shifty as a ram though.’ Will directed a playful kick in the general direction of his older brother’s genitals. Caught unawares as he struggled with his trousers the Ram lost his balance and landed on his buttocks on the bedroom floor. Often enough he had been sorely tempted to take the twins to task if only to knock their heads together but now, as in the past, he decided to indulge their clownish antics.

Drawing himself up to his full height as he buttoned his flies he towered over them although still in his bare feet. At six feet two, lean and paunchless, just gone thirty-five he presented a formidable figure. His hair still curled darkly above a sensitive, thin-nosed face, generous mouth, unintentionally wry. The twins were swarthier, several inches smaller with gnarly features and bushy brows that belied the mischievous humour lurking in their dark-brown eyes. Sober, they could be predictable enough but in drink they tended to exceed themselves especially after an intake of whiskey.

‘Mercifully,’ the Ram thought to himself, ‘they’re not whiskey drunk now, merely exhausting the effects of several pints of stout after a night and morning of roistering with the Cronane sisters from Ballybobawn village.’

In the kitchen the table had been laid by Nonie, the girl as she was called although she would be the last to deny that she had been in receipt of the old-age pension for several years. Grey woollen scarf tied round her neck and covering her head she stood crouched over the gas cooker, one of whose jets enflamed the bottom of the frying pan where a pair of rashers and three eggs simmered appetisingly. A cigarette hung from the side of her mouth, its inch-long ash suspended precariously over the pan, its length increasing menacingly as her inhalations contributed to the glow between ash and cigarette.

‘Sit there!’ Without looking behind her she sensed his presence in the kitchen.

‘The tea is drawn. You can pour away!’

Expertly turning the pan’s contents she faced him for the first time.

‘You’ll be starting with the High Meadow then?’

‘Might as well while the going is good. You’ll call those two for the cows and you’ll not forget to warn them about the bull.’

Without answering Nonie expertly transferred eggs and bacon to the waiting plate. The Ram of God made the sign of the cross with customary diligence before slicing an egg in half and impaling his fork in its yolk. Nonie withdrew the cigarette butt from her mouth and blew the ash downwards onto the floor before lighting a second Woodbine from the remains of the first. She sat at the side of the table, one arm draped across the back of her chair, the other resting on the table, her fingers toying with the tassels of the tea-cosy.

‘Will I throw a bit of dinner together for you or will you be coming back for it at mid-day?’

‘Throw something together if it isn’t too much trouble. There’s a day’s work up there between the three meadows and this kind of weather doesn’t last.’

‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you.’ Nonie took the cigarette from her mouth and laid it on the table as she located cheese and beef in the refrigerator. ‘You’d better watch out for yourself my boy! Those two are making plans this long time and I doubt if you’re included.’

‘Plans!’ the Ram echoed the word in mild perplexity as he launched into his second egg.

‘You’re thirty-five years of age,’ Nonie Spillane reminded him, ‘and you’ve a college education. Yet those two boobies would buy and sell you.’

The Ram of God looked at the ageing housekeeper in total perplexity as he buttered a slice of bread.

‘And them Cronane bitches, a rough and ready pair, bad as the boys, capable of downing several pints of lager each at a sitting! They don’t fool me neither nor their mother. Cute Mollie thinks she knows it all. ’Twould be more in her line to give the right weight in a pound of rashers. Supermarket my arse!’

‘What are you talking about?’ the Ram asked, not in the least scandalised by her profane mutterings. For the most part when she rambled on thus he took little notice of her.

‘I’ll tell you what I’m on about,’ Nonie exploded as she viciously rended the wrapper from a sliced-pan loaf. ‘Those two are set to divide the farm between them. I hear them. They don’t hear me but I hear them and that’s what they plan if ’tisn’t already done. Cute Mollie Cronane is calling the tune and you and me will be for the high road. I have my cottage but what’s going to happen to you?’

‘Are they getting married then?’

‘That’s the plan. Sure aren’t the four of them day and night below at Cronane’s and when they’re not there they’re in the Load of S.’

Suddenly Nonie raised an admonitory finger and tip-toed to the door of the twins’ bedroom. Gently pushing it ajar she peeped inside.

‘Like two pigs in a puddle,’ she threw the assurance over her shoulder to where the Ram of God was in the process of wiping his plate clean with the remains of a bread slice. Closing the door silently she succeeded in drowning out the noise of the resounding snores. Returning to the table she was silent for a while as she devoted her undivided attention to the making of the sandwiches.

‘You know what’s going to happen don’t you?’ She was fuming now.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ The Ram poured himself a second cup of tea.

‘Your brother Will and Kate Cronane will move in here when they come back from the honeymoon. Your brother Murt and Noreen Cronane will settle in below at the supermarket until their new house is ready.’

‘What new house?’ the Ram asked, his interest excited at last.

‘The house they’re going to build at the western end of the High Meadow. It’s all planned by Mollie Cronane. It has to happen soon because the Cronane finances won’t stand much more outlay. Those girls are drinking ten to twenty pints of beer between them every night and the twins aren’t exactly the last of the big spenders. All you have to do is put two and two together. Mollie is financing everything but she has her bellyful by now. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a double wedding before the fall of the year. You’ll be out on your ear this coming winter. Why didn’t you get a bloody BA itself? If you’d a degree you could tell the world kiss your arse!’

‘Too late for that now.’

The mournful rejoinder stung Nonie to further recrimination. ‘Did you think it was going to last forever. I warned you repeatedly that you should pull out. Get a job, look out for your own interests.’

‘I’ll be all right. God is good.’ The Ram spoke resignedly.

‘God hasn’t been too good to you Eddie boy!’ Rarely did anybody call him by his proper name. Few could remember it in the first place.

‘If God was good,’ Nonie was in full flight again, ‘you’d be included in your father’s will. He drew up his plan the day you went off to be a priest. You weren’t a week in college when the land was theirs. Oh there was a proviso of course. Your education was to be paid for but that was it as far as you were concerned. If your mother had been alive itself!’

***

THE NOONDAY ANGELUS SOUNDED from the village church two miles distant, the rich tones languorously imposing themselves on hill and valley and lingering faintly long after the final chimes had tolled. As soon as the first note assailed the hair-bedecked ears of the Ram of God he alighted from the tractor, formally crossed himself and sonorously recited the prayers of the holy Angelus.

Crossing himself secondly at the close of the recital he strode purposefully to a corner of the meadow where he had at daybreak deposited the satchel which contained his lunch. First, however, he would treat himself to a sojourn in his pale, unwrinkled pelt beneath the ascending June sun. He thought about a brief immersion in a pool fed by cold spring waters in the next field but, he told himself: ‘Better be sun-kissed than bathed. I can bathe any time but the sun may not be shining tomorrow.’

The Ram of God lay on his back in the southern corner of the High Meadow. Overhead a lark sang exultantly, straining its tiny voice-box until the sky seemed to overflow with the trilling mixture of joyous exclamations. As if by heavenly command the other sounds of the meadow were hushed into barely-discernible background subservience. ‘You would swear,’ the Ram of God spoke to himself, ‘that proprietorship of the meadow was his by divine right and yet there is no impertinence, no intrusion. His timing is perfect. This is the best part of the day, the part that most deserves acclamation.’

No sooner had the outline of the carolling lark vanished into the bluebell sky than the Ram of God drifted into a pleasing slumber. He lay with his rolled-up shirt and trousers under his head, his large, gnarly hands folded over the ghastly white of his stomach.

Near to where the Ram lay, a bobbing finch chirped happily past, glad to be in the shade of the dense whitethorn which formed a dividing hedge with the neighbouring meadow. Gradually an all-enveloping hush descended. As if by common consent the birds of the air and the denizens of the undergrowth succumbed to the mid-day lull. Activated by the unfamiliar heat the meadow was transformed into an incubator of growth and development. Instinctively the Ram stirred in his sleep and turned over on his stomach to escape the inevitable burning brought about by over-long exposure to the scorching sun. He grunted contentedly savouring the natural glow which pricked and coloured his back and buttocks. He lay thus for a half-hour and would have slumbered longer had not the distant sound of a female voice alerted him to his nude condition. Not daring to raise his head he listened, his eyes fully opened as he endeavoured to determine from where the voice was calling. It was certainly a girl’s voice and it was his name that was in question.

‘Ram! Ram! Where are you?’ It seemed to be coming from the direction of the gate which offered the only access to the High Meadow.

‘Ram! Ram! Where are you?’ the distant queries persisted. Lying flat on his back he first drew on his trousers and then his shirt. Shielded by the tall grasses all around he retied his flies, located his socks and wellingtons before raising his head to ascertain the identity of his unexpected visitor.

She sat astride the six-bar gate, her long legs tucked behind the third bar for balance, her palms resting on the uppermost, a pair of folded exam papers held firmly in her mouth as her eager eyes searched the meadow.

‘Over here Mary!’ The Ram of God waved both arms as he called out to the sixteen year old. Lithely she leaped from the gate and ran towards him, the papers now clutched in her right hand, her long legs tripping over the shorn sward, leaping the uniform rows of tufted swathes, sometimes pirouetting, other times tumbling but all the time reducing the distance between herself and the Ram of God who stood now with hands on hips, a broad smile etched on his unshaven face, his eyes twinkling in appreciation at the unrestrained limberings of the flowering adolescent whose presence illuminated even more the bright enclosure of the High Meadow.

‘Mary Creel,’ the Ram of God thought, ‘’tis a wonder she can laugh and sing at all with the father she has and the mother little better than a mute drudge. The eldest of six in a home where poverty is rife and love is at a premium and yet she skips and dances as though she were the light of her father’s eye, her mother’s pride and joy, an heiress to vast estates and title most high.’

‘How did you get on?’ the Ram asked as she handed over the pink examination papers, the colour to indicate the higher grade English classification.

‘I think I did well,’ Mary responded breathlessly.

‘Let’s see how well you really did my girl!’ the Ram spoke with mock severity as they both sat on the rapidly drying meadow-grass. He asked several questions and seemed pleased with the answers. He fingered the stubble at the forefront of his chin and asked several more. He expressed satisfaction.

‘I also think you did well!’ He returned the papers which she folded neatly and thrust into her frock pocket. The Ram was certain he had seen the frock before. It could be that it was a cast-off of one of the better-off girls in the village of Ballybobawn where Mary resided in one of the council houses at the eastern side of the village although it was more likely an examination gift from the Presentation nuns in the convent which Mary attended in the town of Trallock some seven miles to the west of Ballybobawn.

‘I don’t know if I got this right or not.’ She knelt by his side and placing one hand on his shoulder pointed at the final question in the second part of the paper.

The Ram of God was deeply touched. Here was this beautiful, burgeoning girl placing infinite trust in a man whose reputation as a one-time philanderer, rightly or wrongly, exceeded that of any other within a radius of twenty miles. Silently he thanked God for endowing him with the grace to be able to respect and revere a creature of such naiveté and innocence. He followed her finger carefully, intoning the question and providing the answer all in one breath.

‘I got it right.’ Mary joined her hands in delight and rose to her feet.

‘Have you had anything to eat?’ the Ram asked.

‘Well no,’ Mary answered with some hesitancy. ‘I came here straight from the school bus. Nonie told me you were in the High Meadow.’

‘Sit down. Sit down,’ the Ram commanded expansively. ‘There’s surely enough here for two.’

In the satchel was a pint-sized flask of tea, an enamel mug, chipped but clean, an apple and three stout, well-stocked sandwiches.

‘You take this,’ the Ram said tendering the apple. ‘I can’t imagine how it got in there. I never eat apples.’

He poured half the contents of the flask into the mug and added some sugar and milk which Nonie had thoughtfully provided. They ate silently, relishing each mouthful.

‘I didn’t realise I was so hungry,’ Mary admitted after she accepted half of the third sandwich.

‘The meadow is a great place for the appetite,’ the Ram explained.

***

THEY HAD KNOWN EACH OTHER for two years, ever since Mary came to assist Nonie Spillane on a part-time basis across the summer. Her first day had very nearly been her last. Will, the smaller of the twins, had lured her into one of the bedrooms on some pretext or other while Nonie was cycling towards the village. Fortunately the Ram of God happened to be in the vicinity. He would have passed through the farmyard as was his wont on his way to one of the outhouses but some undefinable force arrested him. He stopped in his tracks suddenly aware of a deadly silence. He sensed that something untoward was happening but where? He listened, holding his breath lest he miss out on a tell-tale indication of the foul presence which he now knew to be at work somewhere.

The scream which suddenly shattered the quiet was unequivocal in its urgency. It was a despairing, panic-filled plea. The Ram charged into the farmhouse praying fervently that he might arrive in time. In the bedroom Will Drannaghy, a crazed look on his face, savoured every movement of the struggling girl held firmly around her slender waist, her back pressed against his unyielding stomach.

Seizing him by the scruff of the neck the Ram had cuffed him smartly across the face, knocking him to the ground.

‘Are you all right?’ He put the question gently to the terrified girl. She nodded, the shock still evident on her face.

‘You sure?’ Again she nodded.

‘Up you!’ the Ram shouted to the cowering twin. He helped him to his feet.

‘You go to the kitchen and wait for me.’ He spoke in tender tones to Mary who seemed now to be none the worse for her ordeal.

‘Try that again,’ the Ram said to his badly shaken brother, ‘and I’ll kill you.’

A brief look of protestation died on the twin’s face as he caught the Ram of God’s cold eyes. He suddenly felt it to be in his best interests that he remain silent.

‘If the girl reports you,’ the Ram spoke matter of factly, ‘you’ll get at least twelve months but that’s nothing to what I’ll do to you if you ever interfere with her again. Now we’ll go down to the kitchen where you’ll apologise and assure her that you’ll never even look her way again.’

Later the Ram explained to Mary that she could, if she wished, complain to her parents or go to the local guards’ barracks.

‘I don’t believe he’d have done you any serious harm,’ the Ram assured her, ‘although what he did was bad enough for anything. The trouble is that if you complain him to the barracks you might come worse out of it than he. However, in the final reckoning, it’s you who must decide.’

‘He’s apologised and I think he means it,’ Mary had said, ‘so it might be best to forget it.’

‘I think that’s wise,’ the Ram had agreed, ‘and you have my assurance that nothing like it will ever happen again.’

Mary settled in happily after that. Each evening he walked her to the outskirts of Ballybobawn village and watched after her as she took the left hand turn along the road which led to the nearby council houses.

Midway through the summer of the second year he was relieved of his responsibilities when she had told him there was no longer any need for his guardianship. It happened one evening as they neared the cross. A teenage boy appeared in the distance as if from nowhere and was about to vanish into that place from whence he first took shape when Mary waved urgently before making her excuses to the Ram of God.

Feeling pleased with himself the Ram turned for home, glad that she had altogether forgotten the episode involving his brother Will nor had Will breathed a word, not even to his twin.

***

THE LUNCH OVER THEY walked to the highest point of the meadow, their gazes sweeping the sun-drenched valley where lay the drowsy village of Ballybobawn. Far away to the west the shimmer of the distant sea dazzled the eye and in between a warm haze hung between land and sky. Everything was now subject to the early afternoon lassitude. Soon it would lift and the cattle in the fields around bestir themselves before resuming the grazing of the fragrant pastures. The ripe meadows too would be subjected to fresh onslaughts. The bustle of the forenoon would slowly return as the afternoon traffic resumed its bustle, to and from Trallock on the right, to and from Cork on the left. The Ram of God examined his watch.

‘Glory be to God!’ he shouted in mock alarm, ‘it’s half-past one in the day and there’s a whole third of the High Meadow remaining to be cut. Haven’t you got anything to do my pretty miss?’

‘I have. I have,’ Mary called back as she ran towards the gate. ‘I have to go to Ballybobawn for the groceries. Nonie Spillane will kill me.’

The Ram folded his arms and surveyed his progress. There was a time before the advent of the rotary mower when it might have taken as many as three full days to dock the High Meadow. Now with the ancient but still perfectly functioning Ferguson 135 he could easily cut as much as two and a half acres in the hour. Two and a half more hours and he would be through. Then he would move on to the three other meadows, each approximately thir-teen acres.

Of the one hundred and twenty acres which made up the farm almost fifty-nine acres were devoted to meadowing. Drannaghys’ was the last remaining substantial farm in the district which had not, as yet, changed over to silage. By the Ram of God’s reckoning the three lesser meadows lower down ought to be sufficient to carry an extra twenty milch cows with a change-over. The Dran-naghys ought also, by all the known norms, to be the laughing stocks of the countryside when it was so patently obvious that they were losing profits hand over fist because of their dependence on a hay crop. As it was, however, nobody was laughing because of the circumstances which obtained at the farm. The Ram, as everybody well knew, was no more than a glorified servant boy, dependent on his brothers for the bite and sup and a weekly wage which was modest enough by local standards. The Ram, as anybody in Ballybobawn would tell you, had no claim at all to the Drannaghy place. It was the exclusive property, dwelling house, outhouses, barns and machinery of the twins Murt and Will and here lay the crux of the matter.

All three brothers were only too well aware that a change-over to silage would increase the milk yield which was below their allotted quota. It would also make more land available for fat stock or grain or even beet. It would reduce the amount of work involved in the day-to-day running of the farm. Unfortunately for the twins they could not agree on a precise method of change. Since the beginning of their relationship with the Cronane sisters the plans, which had been professionally drawn up for the transition to silage, were stored with the deeds of the farm and other moulding documents in the family safe, a hiding place, without lock or key. The twins, influenced by Mollie Cronane, the belligerent matriarch who ran the family supermarket unopposed and was making fair bids to dominate the entire village together with a large part of the contiguous countryside, decided to postpone the implementation of the silage plans until the farm was legally divided and each twin was free to put his own plans into operation.

‘That way,’ Mollie Cronane shrewdly pointed out, ‘you’ll be able to back each other up instead of crossing one another the length and breadth of the day.’

Mollie privately complained to her silent husband Tom that the joint courtship was now proceeding for a full five years.

‘It’s time,’ said she one sleepless night, ‘to put the boot in!’

As a consequence of this decision she called the daughters together early the following morning and directed them to the musty sitting-room which was used only for the entertainment of important visitors such as nuns or priests or relatives who might be holidaying from the distant USA.

Mollie first drummed one finger on the breast-bone directly above her daughter Kate’s ample cleavage and simply said, ‘Sit down there Madam!’ She executed an identical manoeuvre with Noreen. When both girls were comfortably if inextricably seated in the rather inadequate and venerable arm-chairs she produced a ten pack of tipped cigarettes from her own cleavage, lit one, inhaled deeply and returned box together with matches to that well-protected spot where they had earlier rested.

Mollie addressed herself first to the older daughter. The information which she wished to solicit was simply whether or not they were still determined to marry the Drannaghy twins. On being assured that they were she tendered what she believed to be sage advice.

‘Then marry the hoors,’ she said, ‘or ye could be beaten to the draw. I don’t care what means ye use but I want positive results before the summer is in its bloom.’

This ultimatum was issued the morning after Easter Monday. Less than three months elapsed before they triumphantly announced to their delighted mother that the marital altar was well and truly in sight.

‘Did they propose?’ Mollie asked.

‘Yes,’ the girls had answered in unison.

‘And was there rings?’

‘Not yet,’ Kate answered, ‘but we’ll have them the weekend. As it is we have better than rings.’

‘And pray,’ Mollie demanded, ‘what could be better than rings?’

Kate came forward a step answering brazenly, ‘I’m two months gone and this one here is three.’

That night Mollie slept soundly for the first time in months, her early fitful snoring abating quickly and giving way to a richly satisfying repose which lasted for several uninterrupted hours. In the morning she twined her beads around her podgy fingers and whispered the Rosary.

‘I could not,’ she told herself between decades, ‘have carried those two another week. I must have invested in a hundred and fifty casks of lager these past five years. Now they’ll be nicely settled, thanks be to God and His holy Mother, within a stone’s throw you might say and two better customers for a supermarket you wouldn’t find if you were to scour the countryside. It will have to be a double wedding but, far more important, it will have to be quick.’

Tom Cronane, her husband and nominal head of the Cronane household, feigned sleep when his daughters made their dramatic announcements. He had become embittered over the years by his wife’s parsimony towards him. How often had he watched as she plied Murt and Will Drannaghy with red and white wines from the beleaguered supermarket whilst he sat parched, a mute witness to their boisterous celebrations. ‘Dang the lot of ’em,’ he said to himself as for the thousandth time he surrendered himself to the tender embraces of his night-time partner Madeleine Monterros, the heroine of his adolescence, from the time he first saw her in Mexican Paramour at a Sunday matinee in the town of Trallock. Sometimes he had little difficulty in conjuring up her heavenly face but other times despite his most committed concentration the lovely features which enraptured him failed to materialise.

***

THE RAM OF GOD alighted from his faithful Ferguson at half-past three in the afternoon. The last of the meadow grass lay at his feet. It had taken him eight hours, not counting the lunch break, to get the better of the twenty acres. The crop was heavier than usual and would have a likely yield of two and a half tons to the acre. He stood for a moment admiring the long parallel swathes, the earlier mowing wilting as it dried, the more recently cut reflecting the brilliance of the afternoon sun, generating more heat now than at any other time of the day. If the fine weather continued the crop would be ripe for the first turning any time after mid-day the following day. If it held fine there would be a second and third turning before the introduction of the baler on the third day, but first things first, the Ram of God reminded himself as he mounted his iron steed and made tracks for the adjoining meadow.

The thousands of bales scattered over the High Meadow were testimony to the industry of the Ram of God. By the fourth day he had broken the back of the baling. The new grant-aided baler was the envy of the countryside and already he had accepted several commissions from local small farmers. He should be able to make inroads into the outside work as soon as the home meadows were baled.

Two

MOLLIE CRONANE WAS OUT of bed with the first light on the last day of June. The fine weather which arrived three days earlier, contrary to all forecasts, still prevailed. The night before, at the end of its final news bulletin, Radio Éireann confidently predicted that the trough of high pressure directly overhead was unlikely to be deposed for several days. Mollie was no lover of fine weather. People seemed to eat less. She knew from experience that the heat produced an indifferent attitude to food. Almost every household in Ballybobawn produced its own lettuces and onions and there was an abundant supply of freshly-run sea trout.

The nearby river Ogle, largely unsupervised by water-keepers, played host to thousands of these most palatable of seasonal visitors chiefly during the closing days of June. For the vast majority there was no return journey. They ended up on the tables of rich and poor alike, particularly the latter who were the poachers-in-chief of the locality and who did not tire so easily of the fishy fare, day in, day out.

Mollie sighed deeply and arched her plump arms over her dark head at the same time stretching her short, bare feet under the mahogany desk. Her brain had grown weary from the changing compilations of the various expenses which the forthcoming weddings would involve. She poured herself a cup of tea and lit her first cigarette of the day. As she relaxed before drawing up a final assessment of the financial demands which would be made upon the family resources she heard the barely discernible sounds of the gently plopping hooves on the roadway outside the window of the tiny office which was attached to the supermarket proper. She rose instantly and went to the main shop window which afforded an unrestricted view of what was happening outside at any hour of the day or night. Upon beholding the horses she frowned.

‘Tinkers’ nags!’ she spat the words out viciously. Tinkers, in strict terms, they were not. The antecedents of some may certainly have been itinerant tinsmiths with limited skills but the owners of the off-white and skewbald horses congregated uncertainly at the cross of Ballybobawn were now possessed of no apparent skills save the driving of Hiace vans which had replaced the traditional horse-drawn caravans so common to previous generations.

The tinkers involved here, as Mollie knew well, were of the settled variety possessed of council houses in nearby Trallock or one of the many other towns and villages as far north as the city of Galway. Gradually they would converge from all over the south and west of Ireland on the town of Killorglin where every year was held the great fair of Puck. The itineraries of those farthest away began several weeks before. Others departed at later dates right up to the very eve of the festival depending upon their proximity to the colourful mid-Kerry town.

Mollie noted the trio of fettered mares which brought up the rear. If the fettered animals were so near the main herd it meant that they had dined across the star-filled night in a field not all that far from where they were now gathered. Mollie was always angered by this annual incursion into her bailiwick.

‘They’re no bloody asset!’ she repeatedly told her family as she cautioned about the dangers of relaxing their vigilance for even a single moment while these unwelcome visitors remained in the supermarket.

Mollie was correct in her suspicion that the horses had grazed locally. A short while before, just as the first cocks had begun to crow, they were driven from a poorly-fenced field on the outskirts of the village by a flaxen-haired garsún and a red-haired girl, both barely out of their teens. There was no noise, no giddy-ups nor rump-smacking. The horses sensed the urgency of the unspoken commands and responded by heading unswervingly, without whinny or bustle, for the gap through which they had entered. Only their affrighted eyes registered their alarm. Their instant co-operation suggested an awareness as sensitive as their masters that the powerful, clover-filled mouthfuls, ravenously filched whilst the native herbivores slept or rested, were not theirs by right. Only now at this late stage of their leisurely pilgrimage were they beginning to add flesh to the once well-defined ribs and slack rumps of a harsh winter and late spring. Eyes still filled with uncertainty they lifted their delicate nostrils into the morning air. Suddenly the boy and girl reappeared as though from the ground and silently ushered their noble charges towards the council houses at the end of the village.

‘You’ll have the Hiaces along any time now,’ Mollie spoke wearily to herself, ‘and after the Hiaces you’ll have the women with babes in arms and they pretending they never heard of dole or childrens’ allowances and what harm but many of them are helping themselves to double doses or even more.’

Tom Cronane sat erect in his bed. Although still half-asleep he smelled the equine contingent the moment they halted at the cross. His eyes still remained closed. There was a bemused look on his wrinkled face. The voices of the young itinerants came to him from far away as he nodded his drowsy head confirming to himself that what he smelled and heard was part of the annual migration to Puck Fair.

They would spend a week, maybe ten days, in the boglands to the west of the council houses. From now until October there would be rich pickings for the horses in the myriad passages which criss-crossed the boglands. Odd, Tom often thought, how they never dallied on the return journey; probably had too many other festivals to visit before the frost of late autumn nights put paid to their wanderings. He lay back on the bed and scratched his lower abdomen. His thoughts drifted to the dark-skinned Madeleine Monterros.

Downstairs his wife of the puckered face glared at the final reckoning, then pursed her rich lips into a soundless whistle. Gradually her features relaxed into a becalmed state of resignation. This, in turn, was replaced by a triumphant smirk. She would at least be relieved of the responsibility of providing for two unmanageable daughters and there was the added compensation of procuring two weddings for the price of one.

One hundred and eighty guests at ten pounds apiece came to eighteen hundred pounds. Flowers would account for an extra hundred. Then there was the question of a wedding cake; at least two hundred Mollie reckoned. Clothes, to include dresses for brides and bridesmaids as well as the immediate family, had come to a thousand and to arrive at this figure she had been obliged to cut her cloth without room for flounces or frills. Fortunately, the four boys already possessed presentable suits.

Finally, there was the matter of settling with the clergy. There were some in the parish who might give more but the vast majority would give far less. After the most careful consideration she had arrived at a figure of two hundred pounds. To be fair to the parish priest, Father O’Connor, he was neither a grasping nor a demanding man and would cheerfully or so it seemed have accepted any amount she might choose to give him. Mollie told herself righteously that the presbytery account for groceries would have to reflect her investment. Father O’Connor’s reply when questioned regarding matrimonial fees was to suggest whatever a family could afford. Everybody in the parish said he was easily accommodated. His curate, Father Hehir, according to himself, had the life of Reilly and spent most of his time perfecting his swing on Trallock’s recently-developed golf course.

Mollie lit the third cigarette and looked at her watch. The time was eight-fifteen. She located a referee’s whistle in the pocket of her apron and went to the foot of the stairs which led to the bedrooms. First came a well-sustained blast which lasted for several seconds. This was followed by several shorter blasts ending with a second sustained summons before she paused to regain her breath and inhale deeply from the cigarette.

She idled at the foot of the stairs for half a minute or so before repeating the calls. All the blasts, long and short, had one thing in common. They were all shrill and all calculated to penetrate the deepest sleep. The four Cronane sons made their appearances on the landing simultaneously. They knew better than to dawdle when their mother took to the whistle. Upon beholding her matriarchal form at the foot of the stairs they descended silently and solemnly. In order of age downwards they were Cha, Sammie, Donie and Tomboy. Normally the daughters, Kate and Noreen, would arrive downstairs before the boys but of late they were afforded preferential treatment because of their special conditions known only to themselves, their parents and, of course, their husbands-to-be. Today she would allow them to sleep until noon. All that was now required to send her carefully-wrought plans awry was a miscarriage. She would take every possible precaution to ensure that this did not occur.

After lunch they would drive to Trallock where she would see to it that they were publicly displayed before the curious eyes of town and countryside, eyes that were capable of vetting her charges comprehensively with seemingly cursory glances. Now was the best time for the physical exposition Mollie had in mind. In a few short weeks the girls would be showing. In stature they were small like herself. She recalled that she had looked as if she had been carrying for six months after only three months of pregnancy. The girls would be out like barrels in no time at all. First they would visit the leading draperies and shoe shops, not that she had the slightest intention of purchasing anything but the girls would be seen to be possessed of their natural shapes and that was all that Mollie wanted.

As her sons prepared their breakfasts Mollie advanced several steps up the stairs and blew her whistle once more. This time she indulged in just two sustained blasts but each was of such duration that even the boys were obliged to stuff their ears with their fingers. At length Tom Cronane appeared on the landing. He wore a white silk dressing gown over his pyjamas.

‘I’m not deaf,’ he called down with undisguised annoyance.

‘I know you’re not deaf,’ Mollie threw back, ‘but we have a priest to see this morning and I have to go to town after lunch to finalise the arrangements for the reception.’

‘You can put away the whistle,’ her husband spoke peevishly. ‘I’ll be down as soon as I shave and dress.’

Tom was more bitter than usual on the occasion. The sound of the whistle had caused Madeleine Monterros to vanish from his dreams.

Tom was almost twenty years his wife’s senior and now at sixty-five he looked more like a man in his eighties. Over the past year he had grown prematurely senile. Nobody was more aware of his decline than Mollie. He himself refused to acknowledge that any change had or was taking place. Mollie, for her part, was more annoyed with him than sorry for him. He had grown extremely cantankerous of late but mercifully he hadn’t touched a drink for almost three months.

When Tom drank he persevered until he had utterly exhausted himself. Sometimes his alcoholic escapades would last for several days at the end of which he would take to his bed and remain there for the best part of a week until his health partially returned. His most recent outbreak had very nearly been the death of him. He was just not physically capable any more of containing a sustained intake of intoxicating liquor. Most of the population of Ballybobawn awaited his next alcoholic foray with mounting interest. He had never let them down in the past; it wasn’t likely that he would in the future.

***

MOLLIE CRONANE, NEE PURLEY, originally came to work in Cronane’s as a domestic at the age of twenty.

‘The only reason,’ she confided to a friend at the time, ‘why I am demeaning myself is to make enough so that I can go to England and from there to Australia. There’s no future for girls like me in this part of the world. There’s nothing thought of us. I have no fortune and although I’m not badlooking I’m no raving beauty either. The best I can hope for is a small farmer or a labouring man, maybe a tradesman if I’m very lucky. I’ve seen enough poverty and I don’t want to see any more.’

Mollie Purley was unfair to herself when she suggested that she was not bad-looking. She was, in fact, an attractive young woman with a curling dark mass of hair and darker, sparkling eyes as well as a lively disposition and a buxom figure which rarely went unnoticed by members of the opposite sex. Before descending from her humble home in the nearby mountains to the Cronane General Store, as it was then, she had already turned down several offers of marriage. She had only taken one seriously. He was a small farmer in his late twenties but the land was encumbered by substantial debts and she had shied away from the prospect of a continuation of the lifestyle which she had been used to all her life.

Mollie’s other suitors were either middle-aged or elderly and while at least two were comfortably off she could not see herself, by any stretch of the imagination, wasting her young life on either. She had seen the debilitating changes wrought on other girls who succumbed to the prospect of security. After ten or twelve years and several children they grew old before their time. Holiday-making exiles home from England and America were often hard put to recognise the friends and companions of their youth. Husband and children took precedence over all else as a matter of course. It was fashionable under the circumstances for over-worked mothers to neglect themselves. To be seen to be indulging themselves would have been contrary to tradition, a sort of betrayal of the accepted martyrdom which went with all too many poverty-stricken marriages. The girls who carved out infin-itely better lifestyles in exile privately thanked their lucky stars while at home on holiday.

Mollie was aware from the beginning of Tom Cronane’s drooling shenanigans and while she did nothing to encourage him she made no attempt to assume a mantle of false modesty while he was in the vicinity. Tom’s mother Madge took a more jaundiced view of the likely effect this sonsy addition to her staff might have on her bachelor son, now in his fortieth year. She resolved to get rid of her at the earliest opportunity. After three months in service Mollie accumulated enough money to cover the fare to England and to allow her a few days’ relaxation before taking up employment in pursuance of her declared intention to settle in Australia.

One day in the course of her upstairs duties she found herself making up the bed of her mistress Madge Cronane. To her surprise the door of the small safe which she always found closed was wide open. At first she suspected it might be a trap but from the bedroom window she could clearly see Madge standing, hands folded, at the other side of the street engaged in deep conversation with Tom Dudley the proprietor of Tom’s Tavern.

The first interesting item to catch Mollie’s eye was a post office savings certificate held jointly by Madge and her husband Charlie. The investment involved amounted to twenty thousand pounds. She rose quickly and went to the window in order to ensure that Madge was still engaged in conversation. Assuring herself that the exchanges would last for some time she instituted a more leisurely search of the safe. There were two insurances jointly held and both due to mature in less than four years. Mollie Purley was pleased to note that one would benefit the holders by twenty thousand pounds and the other by twenty-five thousand pounds. There were numerous bank statements but even to Mollie’s untrained eye it was evident that the current account overdraft was minimal.

Finally there was a sizeable jewel box which when opened showed itself to be filled with Victorian sovereigns. By Mollie’s reckoning there must surely be two hundred. The fact that the jewel box which was possessed of a lock was left open convinced her that a trap had been set. There was also a cigar box filled with bank notes of varying denominations. Madge Cronane was still holding forth to Tom Dudley whose interest seemed to be waning for now he was beginning to hail passers-by in the hope that a rescue would be forthcoming.

When Madge returned to the shop she went straight to her bedroom. From an adjoining room, where she was in the process of tidying up, Mollie listened attentively to the muted jingling of the sovereigns. At that moment a strange voice came from the foot of the stairs.

‘Are you there Mrs Cronane?’ came the unfamiliar, stentorian call.

Madge did not answer immediately. She was checking the bank notes against the figures in a passbook which rested on top of the safe. After a while she came to the landing. Unaware of Mollie’s presence in the nearby room she went part of the way down the stairs.

‘Thank you for coming sergeant,’ she addressed the serious-faced custodian of the peace in low tones. ‘I suppose you could call it a false alarm,’ she said taking him by the arm and walking him as far as the front door of the store.

Mollie came in her bare feet to the landing where she had no difficulty in picking up every word. She knew Sergeant Holly by sight. Like all of her kinfolk in the mountains she lived in fear of uniforms. Collecting her shoes she climbed to the attic which was her bedroom.

As she sat on the hard bed she was overcome by a cold fury which, when it subsided, was followed by a resolve which revealed a dimension in her that she had not been aware of previously. Mollie made up her mind there and then that she would never go to Australia nor indeed for the moment would she cross the Irish Sea as had so many of her ilk unless it was for a holiday in the distant future. She would fix Madge and some day too she would have her own back on Sergeant Holly.

From that moment forth she set her cap for Tom. She did it subtly and guilefully so that Tom believed he was the assertive party but time was of the essence if Madge was to be outsmarted. From the limited outlook of her background and upbringing the stakes seemed unbelievably high to Mollie but she was possessed of all the trumps. All she had to do was play them with care.

The inevitable happened of a sultry evening in late July. Madge went with a party of friends to Trallock in order to attend a funeral. To assuage any suspicions which the older woman might entertain Mollie asked for permission to spend the night at her home in the mountains. Madge readily acquiesced. The removal of the remains would take place at eight-thirty. Even if Madge were to return from Trallock directly after paying her respects Mollie would have plenty of time to complete the planned operation.

For the occasion she chose a black threadbare frock which she had recently outgrown. The tight-fitting cotton accentuated her breasts and buttocks so that she would present a voluptuous rather than a plump figure when she would enter the sitting-room. She combed her hair in the privacy of the tiny bedroom for the umpteenth time. She decided to forego stockings. The black patent, high-heeled shoes contrasted favourably with the creamy silk of her calves. She loosened a second button on her front. She needed to be striking and provocative as well as sensual on that vital first entrance. He needed to be smitten with such force that he would follow blindly to his mother’s bedroom which was the unlikely location chosen by Mollie for the gamble of her life. The satisfaction which she would derive from being conscious of the place of surrender would far exceed any joy which she might derive from the act itself.

Tom sat reading a trade journal when Mollie Purley entered to ask if he might have the correct time.

‘Time!’ he murmured without looking up to see who had asked. ‘The time is twenty minutes to eight.’

‘Will I draw the curtains?’ Mollie asked.

Tom looked up for the first time.

‘Curtains!’ he returned, his mouth open, his interest instantly primed.

She did not await his reply but slowly crossed the room before utilising every contour of her barely concealed figure to draw the curtains together.

‘Sit down! Sit down a minute for God’s sake!’ he called out desperately as she was about to leave the room.

‘I’d love to,’ said Mollie as she stood framed invitingly in the doorway, on her face the most apologetic and disarming of smiles, ‘but I have so many things to do upstairs.’

‘Upstairs!’ He whispered the word to himself brokenly. He found himself unable to swallow. His mouth suddenly turned dry.

‘Upstairs!’ He repeated the word as he rose unsteadily to his feet.

She did not close the door behind her. Her perfume beckoned like an invisible finger in her wake. He found his teeth chattering as he climbed the stairs. He had never felt so light-headed.

In the bedroom her back was turned to him as she smoothed the pillows on his mother’s bed. When he seized her urgently from the rear she exclaimed in tones which were far from aggrieved that he was exceeding himself. When he ripped away the flimsy front of the cotton frock all she said by way of protest was ‘No, no Tom! You mustn’t!’

Tom acted as though he hadn’t heard and truth to tell it was quite possible that he truly hadn’t, so faint had been her vocal objections. Not in the least deterred either way Tom laid her out lovingly on his mother’s bed. She indulged his every whim, was at once limp and gymnastic, girlish and womanly, tantalising and fulfilling. She overwhelmed him as she herself seemed likewise to be overwhelmed. Sometimes she mewed like a kitten. Other times she clawed like a cat. She grunted, groaned and snorted as well as producing a whole range of sounds, exciting and original, which made the ears of her conquerer tingle and his pulse quicken as it had never quickened before. Finally she swooned when the limp figure which had been so assiduously astride her dissolved panting by her side, the ravages of the demanding rampage showing on his pinched but grinning face.

When Madge Cronane arrived home from the Trallock funeral she found the lights on and the curtains drawn in the sitting-room. When her son failed to answer her calls she quite rightly presumed that he had gone to bed early. Before bolting the doors for the night she paid a hasty visit to Tom’s bedroom. She was about to knock gently on the door but refrained when the reassuring sounds of his profound snoring assailed her ears. He rarely snored and never like this. He must have put in a harder day than usual.

The wench Mollie Purley had gone to her home for the night and good riddance thought Madge. In fairness, however, she was obliged to concede that the creature was an outstanding worker, possibly the best domestic she had ever employed but there was something there that made her wary something sinister that she could not quite define. She had thought of giving her notice at the end of the three months which had just expired but could find no adequate grounds. Her latest efforts to ensnare her had not succeeded either. There was nothing tangible which she could hold against her and yet Madge was certain that the mountainy girl boded no good for the Cronane household. Her every instinct warned her that prompt action was an absolute necessity. Within the next few days she decided she would make her move. The girl would have to go.

Mollie and Tom involved themselves in three further sessions of unchaste dalliance and although in Tom’s eyes none was as lustfully fulfilling as the first he was, nevertheless, enthralled with this captivating and sultry cailín from the mountains. Tom was certain that the rapturous heights to which they had initially ascended might again be scaled if sufficient time was put at their disposal. As it was the meetings were hurried and furtive and took place in such diverse places as the turf shed, the back seat of Tom’s Morris Oxford and finally in the little attic bedroom one morning while Madge Cronane was attending early mass at Ballybobawn parish church.

This was to be their last clandestine encounter. Shortly afterwards Mollie informed Tom that she was expecting a baby and that he was the father. Tom could not quite make up his mind whether he should laugh or cry. He had been in many an en-tanglement but he had never succeeded in making a girl pregnant before. This made him want to laugh, to exult in his prospective fatherhood. However, the thought of his mother’s reaction was so chastening that he wished the ground would open and swallow him up. He decided that marriage was the only honourable course open to him. His decision was reinforced by the thought that he would have undisputed legal access to the transcendent favours of Mollie Purley for the remainder of his natural life.