“If we don’t get our death out of this we’ll be alright,” Mahoney said when it was over. “Sixteen fleas in the bed. We’ll just have to get boxes of ddt and fumigate the whole house tomorrow. Do you think you’ll be able to go to sleep now?”
“I’ll be able to sleep.”
Mahoney’s eyes caught the red on his own thumb-nails as he turned to quench the lamp. He brought them closer in fascination, bending his hair dangerously into the heat of the lamp.
“Your blood and mine,” Mahoney said. “Those bastards feeding all the night on our blood. The quicker we get the ddt the better. Just think of it — those bastards feeding all the night on your blood and mine.”
He blew out the flame and got into bed. The heavy blankets were marvellous and warm after. There was no repulsion as their flesh touched deep down in the clothes. There was no care of anything any more.
“Try and get some sleep, it’ll be soon morning.”
“Good night, Daddy.”
“Good night. Try and get some sleep like a good man.”
4
FATHER GERALD CAME EVERY YEAR, HE WAS A COUSIN AND HIS coming was a kind of watch. Mahoney hated it, but because of his fear of a priest’s power he made sure to give the appearance of a welcome.
The front room was dusted and swept, the calico covers removed from the armchairs. A fire burned in the grate from early morning. A hen was killed and cooked for cold chicken, the set of wedding china unrolled out of the protective sheets in the bottom of the press. Though even in the lamplight and the friendly hissing of logs on the fire, the cloth bleached in the frost white as snow on the table, the room remained lifeless as any other good example.
“What do you want to be in the world?” the priest asked as the evening wore.
“I don’t know, father. Whatever I’m let be I suppose.”
“That’s good truth out of your mouth for once,” Mahoney asserted. “It’s not what you want to be, it’s what you’ll be let be. He’ll be like me I suppose. He’ll wear out his bones on the few acres round this house and be buried at the end of the road.”
“We’ll be all buried,” the priest insisted with an icy coldness, and it made the father crazy to do some violence.
“I sincerely hope so,” he’d no care left whether he con¬ cealed his hatred or not any more. “It’s some comfort to know that if you’re not buried for love’s sake you’ll be buried for the stink’s sake at any rate.”
A flush coloured in the priest’s pale and sunken cheeks but he stayed calm.
“He may not have to slave on any farm. He’s been always head of his class.”
“I was head of my class once too and far it got me.”
“Times have changed. There are openings and oppor-tunities today that never were before.”
“I don’t see them if there is, you can go to England, that’s all I see.”
He’d not be like his father if he could. He’d be a priest if he got the chance, and there were dreams of wooden pulpits and silence of churches, walking between yew and laurel paths in prayer, an old house with ivy and a garden, orchards behind. He’d walk that way through life towards the un-namable heaven of joy, not his father’s path. He’d go free in God’s name.
“Don’t worry. Work at your books at school and we’ll see what happens,” the priest said as he shook hands at the gate.
“Work at your books,” the father mimicked as his car left. “They’re free with plans for other people’s money, not their own. There he goes. Christmas comes but once a year.”
He worked through the winter as hard as he was able and in summer won a scholarship to the Brothers’ College. There wasn’t much rejoicing.
“Take it if you want and don’t take it if you don’t want. It’s your decision. I won’t have you blaming me for the rest of your life that the one chance you did get that I stood in your way. Do what you want to do.”
He knew Mahoney wanted him to stay from school and work in the fields.
“I’ll take it,” he said in spite of what he knew.
“Take it so and may it choke you but I’ll not have you saying in after years that I kept you from it.”
“I’ll go,” he said and he knew he was defying Mahoney, some way he’d be made pay for it.
A second-hand bicycle was got and fixed up. In September he started.
He hadn’t long to wait for trouble. The new subjects didn’t leave him much time to give the help in the fields Mahoney had been used to. There was constant trouble, it rose to a warning when he refused to stop for the potato digging.
“I can’t. I’ll miss too much. Once you fall behind it’s too hard to catch up.”
“Go but I’m warning you that what I dig must be off the ridges before night.”
“I’ll be home quick. The evenings are long enough yet.”
“That’s your business. But I’m warning you it’ll be your own funeral if they’re not off the ridges before night.”
The first two evenings they were able to have the ridges cleared before dark. Mahoney seemed disappointed. He kept complaining, he wanted trouble, and he had only to wait for the next evening to get his chance. It came stormy, the sky a turmoil of black shifting cloud, and the wind so strong on the open parts of the road that not even stepping on the pedals could force the bike much faster than walking pace. The others were afraid in the kitchen when he came home late.
“Our father’s wild. We’ll never get what he’s dug picked before night,” they were afraid.
It started to rain as he gulped his meal, the first drops loud on the pane, and it was raining steadily by the time they were on their way to the field.
Between the lone ash trees, their stripped branches pale as human limbs in the rain, Mahoney worked. The long rows of the potatoes stretched to the stone wall, the rows washed clean on top by the rain, gleaming white and pink and candle-yellow against the black acres of clay; and they had to set to work without any hope of picking them all. Their clothes started to grow heavy with rain. The wind numbed the side of their faces, great lumps of clay held together by dead stalks gathered about their boots.
Yet Mahoney would not leave off. He paid no attention to them. He had reached close to the stone wall and he was muttering and striking savagely with the spade as he dug.
“He’ll never leave off now. There’s no knowing what he’ll do,” it was Joan.
“It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all.”
Then they saw him come, blundering across the muddy ridges.
“Give me the bucket in the name of Jesus. Those bloody spuds’ll not pick themselves.”
He heaped fistfuls of mud into the bucket with the potatoes, in far too great a rush, and the bucket overturned and scattered his picking back on the ridge. He cursed and started to kick the bucket.
“Nothing right. Nothing right. Nothing ever done right. All lost in this pissin mess.”
The blue shirt was plastered to his body under the army braces and showed naked. They thought he was going to go for them.
“I’ll get me death out of this. Such cursed yokes to be saddled with. No help, no help,” he turned to the rain instead.
“I’ll get me death out of this pissin mess,” he cursed as he went stumbling over the ridges to the house.
“That itself is one good riddance,” was the harsh farewell after him in the rain.
They went on picking but it was hopeless, the dark was thickening. They were walking on the potatoes.
“We’re only tramping them into the ground, Joan.”