“Have you ever decided what you’ll be when you grow up?”
“It depends on the exams mostly. Whatever I get. There’s not much use in thinking.”
Though he’d felt this night that he might be able to be a priest, a real priest, the one thing that was worth being. He’d felt he might be about good enough.
“Exams,” he heard Mahoney. “By the columns of names these days in the Independent it appears that half the country will have passed an exam for something or other soon. Passed to ate one another if you ask me, for where’ll the jobs come outa? Only the ones with the pull will get the jobs. I know what I’m talking about.”
“Pull doesn’t count in some of them. Not for the University Scholarship nor the call to train for a teacher or the E.S.B. And there’s always England,” was said harshly.
“No, I didn’t mean that. We all know any fool can go to England once he gets his hands on a fiver. I didn’t mean that. I know you’ve had it in your head to be a priest so I was just wondering what you intended to try to be,” the voice was gentle enough for once, upset by the harshness of, There’s always England. There was the temptation to be easy, not to keep him always outside, and the longing to confide, the world on your own was a cold place.
“I often think I might, if I could be good enough.”
“I guessed as much myself. It’s a good life and a clean one and you don’t have bostoons trying to sit on you as in most jobs. God’s your boss.”
“You’d be all reared then and I could sell the old land and come to live with you. I could open the door for those calling and find out what they wanted and not have them annoying you about everything. I could fool around the garden, and the bit of orchard at the back. We could bring the old tarred boat and go fishing in the summer.”
That was his dream, but there was no response. He grew aware of his own voice and stopped. He’d be given nothing. The dream was not the other’s dream. Perhaps too much had happened or lives were never meant to meet. The eagerness left his walk, he was let seem foolish to himself, and broken. No response came. Not even when he placed his hand on the shoulder that was now almost tall as his own.
“If it happened that you did, we’d have good times that way, wouldn’t we?”
“We would. We’d have good times.”
“What do you think the chances are that you’ll go on?”
“I don’t know. It’s too hard to know. It depends on too many things.”
9
THE LINE OF BLACK CATTLE TRAILED ALL THAT WINTER ROUND the fields in search of grass, only small patches in the shelter; always a funeral of little winter birds in their wake in the hope that the rocking hooves would loosen the frozen earth down to the worms. And in the evenings they’d crowd at the gate to low with steaming breaths for their fodder.
No rain came, a cloudless Easter, and a cloudless May, grass no higher in the fenced-off meadows than in the pastures, the young oats stunted, the apple blossoms scorched in nights of white frost.
When it broke it was too late in June: the quick unhealthy growths the sudden rains brought infested the cattle with worms, and it was a struggle to survive, anxiety and senseless recrimination never far away.
“It’ll be the poor-house. I’m saddled with such lazy misfortunate bastards, we’ll have the poor-house anyhow, something to look forward to at the end of our days when we expect some ease and respect. God, Ο God, Ο God.”
Joan and Mona had left National School and were about the house. Mahoney decided in that pinching autumn to send Joan out into the world.
She’d become a common drudge since leaving school but the prospect of a job brought her no pleasure. She cried by the window the first night it was mentioned. She saw the same drudgery everywhere and what she knew was less to be feared than what she didn’t.
Mahoney tried the newspapers first, but they yielded nothing, and in the end he had to write in chagrin to Father Gerald, who got her a job in a draper’s shop near where he was curate.
He called to collect her and the usual preparations greeted his coming into an evening as lifeless and as starched as always. The conversation people make to avoid each other went shuttlecock for two agonized hours, before Mahoney made excuse to get out.
“We’ll leave the lad and yourself together, father. You might have things to talk about, school and that, together. We’ll look after Joan’s getting ready and leave you alone.”
The room apologetically emptied, they were alone.
“So the first bird is leaving the nest?” the priest said.
What was there to do but nod in vague depression, she was going, all departures touched in some way everyone’s departure, became disturbing echoes.
“You’ll not feel till your own turn?”
“No, father.”
“You have no final inkling of what you might do yet?”
“No. It’ll depend on the exams.”
“Do you still think of the priesthood?”
“Yes, father, if I could be good enough.”
“It was a great pity you were never sent to the Diocesan Seminary, the time your father wanted you to stay at home from school altogether.”
“But there’s the Mission Colleges?”
“Yes, but as a last resort. They do good work but the fact remains that they class you with the second-raters for Africa. But if you do very well in the Leaving it may be possible to get you even into Maynooth.”
He smiled in reflection, “Doors open under the right pressures. We are cousins. And if we cannot help our own who can we help! But don’t worry, all you can profitably do now is work hard at your studies. Perhaps next year you can come and stay with me for part of the summer holidays, and we can talk properly then?”
“Thank you, father.”
“That’s settled then, it’s late, we could find the others and go — I hate driving in the late night, it gets so hard to keep eyes on the road!”
They found Mahoney idle with the others in the kitchen, Joan ready to leave, and they left immediately. There was something breaking at the priest’s car in the way she kissed them good-bye, Mahoney visibly disturbed as he stooped into the smell of brilliantine that damped her dark hair.
“We’ll write. We’ll write. Take care of yourself,” he said.
They opened the green gates for the car and watched the headlights search into the hills before they were lost.
He was restless when he came in, pacing about. He started to cram the bits of twine scattered about the house into an empty tea-box.
“Scattered everywhere about, no care, nothing ever done right in the house.”
He got boards and stood them on their ends against the kitchen wall, and laid one across two chairs for planing. The plane wasn’t sharp enough; so on the black bone wet with bicycle oil he sharpened it and complained.
Soon he was in his shirt-sleeves, the kitchen too warm, beads of sweat glistened as he drove the plane over and back, the long white shavings littering the floor. He didn’t finish. He’d no interest once this savage need to do was exhausted.
“Sweep up the shavings, they’ll make kindling,” he said, and he pulled the old Morris car seat up to the fire, its red leather faded, in the wooden frame he’d made for it. He put on his coat and got the pack of cards and play ing-board. He sat and laid the playing-board across the unpainted arms of the frame. As he began he looked suddenly an infant enclosed in its pen chair.
The others stood as sentinels about or went outside. Joan was gone, a breath of death in the air, Mahoney was playing, nothing in the silence but his lonely playing, the shuffling of the deck, swish of the sharp boxing together, as he dealt them out on the board those worn cards of patience flicking. The yellow cat stretched in the ashes. A low pursing came from his lips as he deliberated where each card would best fit. King of Diamonds for the Ace, Eight of Clubs for the Nine, the Seven by lucky chance for the Eight. He gathers together again what is left. Three by three he counts them out on the unpainted playing-board, red and black, from count to count till no move is left. He gathers them all violently into a heap to begin the journey over again to the same dead end or to reach what he’d been playing for, all the cards magically leaping to their ordered places, once in every four or five hundred times — long lighthouse patience.