Collected Short Stories (23 page)

The winter was stormy. Robert nailed boards on the outside of the windows to break the force of the tide, the door was shut early, and great fires of coal banked high in the wide grate. If no neighbour had come in for a céilidhe Robert lifted down his old schoolbag and took out his black Reading Book. Its pages were yellow and gave off a damp mouldy smell. Across the flyleaf there was written in scraggy letters: ROBERT GILL, KILCLIEF NATIONAL SCHOOLS, 1880.

‘I was a good hand-writer in them days,' he said, ‘but my fingers is now buckled with age.'

Peter got the book and was told to read aloud Robert's favourite lesson:
The Locusts … For twelve miles did they extend from front to rear, and their whizzing and hissing could be heard for six miles on every side of them. The bright sun, though hidden by them, illuminated their bodies, and was reflected from their quivering wings; and as they fell heavily earthward, they seemed like the innumerable flakes of a yellow-coloured snow. The poor peasants hastily dug pits and trenches as their enemy came on, in vain they filled them from the wells or with lighted stubble. Heavily and thickly did the locusts fall; they were lavish of their lives: they choked the flame and the water, which destroyed them the while, and the vast living hostile armament still moved on …

‘Them's the quare plague for you,' Robert commented. ‘We have the blow-fly here and the cleg, but thanks be to God, we've no locusts. They'd make short work of our wee bit of land.'

If Peter baulked at a word Robert supplied it without consulting the book for he knew it as well as Alice knew her prayer book. Alice was knitting a blue gansey for Peter and sometimes she'd pause and say ‘Is there nothing cheerful in that book? I'm tired of them sad stories.' Then she'd go on with her work and call Peter over beside her and measure the jersey against his chest. ‘It's a bit on the short side yet.'

‘Give him plenty of room in it,' Robert would put in, ‘for he's growin' like a bad weed and I must get him long trousers.'

The evening the gansey was finished Robert measured Peter's leg with a string, and the next morning he went off in the cart to Downpatrick. That day Alice was feeding the fowl and Peter saw her sway and fall to the ground. He carried her into the house, sprinkled cold water on her face, and she opened her eyes and slowly smiled at him: ‘I'm a silly woman to be fallin' on ye like that. Ye mustn't tell Robert on me.' But ever afterwards when Peter would gaze at her she'd smile and say: ‘What's wrong with ye the day, Peter, yer very quiet?' And at Mass on Sundays he noticed how she sat upon the seat and only knelt at the Consecration.

Coming home from Mass Robert and Peter walked together: Robert with the pipe in his mouth, and Peter with his thumbs stuck in his trousers' belt and his hob-nailed boots striking the road with great vigour.

He grew tall and strong and that spring he was able to hold the plough and put down a barbed wire fence to keep out the sheep. But the rabbits came into the young corn in spite of him, and one evening as they were setting snares Robert said to him: ‘They aren't as good as the frog.”

‘What frog?'

‘Well, that's a good one,' replied Robert, as he hammered a peg into the ground. ‘And ye tell me ye never heard of the frog. It bates all none of the lads or Alice told you about me and the frog.'

He lit his pipe, stuffed his hands in his pockets and began to walk from the sandy banks towards the house. The light was in the window and the wind was stirring in the grass.

‘There'll be a few rabbits in them in the morning, for a windy night brings them out on the prowl. Aw, if only we could catch a frog.' And then he began to walk slowly. ‘It was a night like this, only calmer, when I came out my lone to get a rabbit or two. I mind it well, Peter. It was very dark and there wasn't a star to be seen anywhere and there wasn't as much wind in it as'd sway a cobweb. And when I reached the hollow over there I heard a frog croaking, and I crept over on my hands and knees and caught him. Then I takes out a stump of a candle, lights it, and splatters a few drops on the frog's back, sticks my candle on top. What do I do now? Into the first rabbit hole I put my frog and in he hopped with the candle still flaring on top of his back.

‘The rabbits must have thought it was the Day of Judgment, for they raced out of the holes, big ones and wee ones, old ones and young ones, fat ones and skinny ones, black ones and brown ones, and out by another hole came the frog and I could see him in the dark and the candle as bright as a torch. He was like a trained dog the way he hopped out of one hole into another. And the rabbits tore round me and I cracked out with my stick and the squeals of them could be heard in the Isle of Man. And then a breeze sprang up and I saw the candle go blind, and I never seen trace of my frog from that day till this. And the next morning I never seen the like of it for rabbits: they lay dead in their hundreds, some of them were paralysed for life, and them that got away took till the sea and for weeks the shores was covered with their carcases. Cablegrams came from Australia asking me to name my price to banish their rabbits. I'd have went right away, but long journeys don't agree with Alice and so we stayed at home.'

When he had finished his story Peter waited for him to laugh, but Robert smoked away, and the light of the pipe lit up his eyes and there was a seriousness in them as if he were thinking of something else.

The next day when Robert had taken the horse to the blacksmith's, Peter questioned Alice about the frog.

‘Don't heed what Robert tells you. He always blathers when he gets somebody to listen to him. He told me many's a one, but never that one … The only rabbit he ever brought in was an ould thing a motor ran over one winter's night.'

‘Well was he at sea, Alice?'

“Deed, child, he wrought for whiles in Liverpool and was at sea for ten years. But it'd have taken him forty years to ramble the countries that he says he was in. Don't listen to him.' And she went on with her work scrubbing the table and halting now and again to look out the window at the green growth in the fields. She scrubbed vigorously and Peter smiled, remembering the day not long ago when she had fallen at the gable.

But one evening as they were making in from the fishing it was dark and there was a light in one of the bedrooms, and when they came ashore two women were there to meet them. ‘Alice is bad, Robert,' one said, and he hurried up the sloping bank to the house, leaving Peter to moor the boat.

Alice was in bed and she smiled weakly at him when he entered the room. There was a bruise on her forehead where she had fallen in her weakness.

‘I'll be all right in the morning,' she said, and she raised her hand and it fell limply on the quilt.

In the morning she could see the lovely white clouds of May go sailing across the sky. The gulls flew around the window, and the cold, fresh smell of the sea blew into the room. She could hear Robert calling the hens or throwing out the dregs of the teapot on the causeway. She tried to sit up, but she fell back, and her breathing quickened.

Robert talked to her about little things that livened their lives: ‘Do you mind the time, Alice, that the ould gypsy said you'd lose something soon? … Do you mind the time we had to fut it the whole way home from Crossgar? …' Alice looked at him and shut her eyes. ‘Ah, Robert, my memory is wearin' as thin as an ould shoe.'

Peter would come into the room and sit on the edge of the bed, and she'd stroke his hand. ‘Stay with me for a wee while, I be lonely when I hear no stir about the house.'

The priest came. Two days afterwards she was brought to the Downpatrick Infirmary, and one morning about three o'clock a policeman on his bicycle rapped loudly at Robert's door and when he hurried out of bed to open it he knew that Alice was dead.

For days a gloom hung over the house; Robert was quiet in himself, and at night he would sit in the light of the fire. He sold the cow, for there'd be nobody to look after her or milk her when they'd be at the fishing.

But even at the fishing he was quiet and full of unrest, and as he pared his tobacco he'd say: ‘I declare to God the tobacco they make nowadays is not what it used to be,' and he would hold out a chunk of it to Peter. ‘Smell that! D'ye not get an ould stale reek of it?' And before sundown he would order Peter to lift the anchor.

‘But we've another hour or two yet,' Peter would answer.

‘Do as yer bid. We must get in before dark. Lying out here like an ould plank that has nowhere to go!'

But one evening a head wind blew strong and they had to pull hard against it. It was pitch dark when they reached the little bay below the house. No light from the window warmed the sea, and looking up at it from the boat Robert said brokenly: ‘It's a lonesome looking place without a light. … The house is dead!' And Peter saw something of the man's mind and remembered the first night he had stepped across the threshold and how Alice had lit the lamp on the wall.

Now it was changed. The house was chilly with no fire reddening the grate. Crusts discoloured by tea lay on the table and dirty dishes were pushed to the side. The floor was unswept and ashes were high in the grate.

Robert bent to a few sticks and began chopping.

‘Sit down, Robert, and rest yerself and I'll light the fire.'

‘And d'ye think I'm not fit to light my own fire?' he answered crossly. ‘Fill the kettle with water if ye want a job and see that the hens are all in.'

Robert stuck a lighted candle to an upturned bowl, placed it on the table, and sat down to the tea. He buttered a piece of bread for Peter. ‘Eat up now, for I like to see a growin' lad eat his fill … Ye'll have to make yer own in the mornin' for I'm going to Downpatrick.'

And Robert went to his bed and lay awake, his mind disordered. He thought of Alice and prayed for her soul; he thought of Peter. ‘A brave lad, but if I show him he's too useful he'll override me. I must be firm with him.'

In the other room Peter was standing at the window. A high moon had arrived in the sky and where it shone on the water he could see the rise and fall of the waves. Down on the beach was the boat, and a glint came from the bailing tin that lay beside it. Out at sea a big steamer passed with her port-holes all alight, and he watched them until they were swallowed up by the night.

In the morning he was up first and Robert was not astir. He lit the fire. It was past nine o'clock when Robert came into the kitchen, pulling his braces over his shoulders.

‘Why didn't you call me, boy? Didn't ye know I was for Downpatrick?'

‘I thought maybe ye'd changed yer mind.'

‘And how'd I have changed my mind?'

Peter didn't answer him. He put a few sticks below the kettle and the water sizzled.

Robert got down on his knees, pulled out his boots from below the table, and knocked them hard against the stone floor.

‘Get the horse in the cart and I'll wet the tea … Will ye have a pair of eggs?'

‘I won't have any eggs.'

‘And why won't you have an egg?”

‘I don't want one, that's all.'

Peter went out. When he came in again, Robert had bowls of tea on the table and two boiled eggs on Peter's plate. They supped the tea loudly and a contentment filled Robert when he saw Peter eating the eggs.

A hen came in through the open door, looked sideways at the table, and snatched a crust from the floor.

‘Whisht on out o' that,' Robert rattled his boots at it. ‘Ye'd think they never seen mate in their lives; it must be the sea air gives them the appetite.'

Peter said nothing.

‘I'll be back as soon as I can,' Robert shouted from the cart. ‘What's this now the size of boots ye take?' And then he added quickly and in a sharper tone, ‘Weed a few drills to-day; that yellow weed will have the purties destroyed,' and he looked at his growing potatoes and the yellow weed thick amongst them. Soon he turned his back to the sea and made inland; once he looked back and saw Peter standing against the gable.

It was late in the afternoon when he reached Downpatrick, and it was sunset when he was ready to leave, a bag of yellow meal in the cart, a young lamb with its feet tied, bacon and candles, a few badly-tied parcels, and a pair of heavy boots for Peter. It was still bright but the rain was falling and, sitting in his cart, he sought shelter under a big chestnut tree. The heavy drops rattled down through the leaves and he pulled up the ears of his coat and threw an empty sack over the young lamb. He hated the long journey before him and recalled the day they had brought Peter along the same road and how Alice had pinned her shawl about his shoulders. ‘God be good to her but she was the kindly craythure!'

The rain slackened and he moved off. He felt cold. Steam arose from the horse's back and rainwater lay near the tailboard, straw floating on it. The brown paper parcels were sodden. He shut his eyes and dozed.

The headlights of a motor wakened him and he drew the horse to the side and lit the lamp. The cart jolted in the puddles on the road. He shrugged his shoulders. He'd soon be home; the fire would be reddened for him, the kettle on the boil, and the lamp in the window. He urged on the horse and presently came within the sound of the sea. The waves rolled in slowly and broke with a tired splash …

Peter leaned over the rail of the boat that was taking him to Liverpool. It was dark and cold, the deck wet, and all the passengers gone below except himself and an old seaman who walked quietly up and down. Out from the ship's side the waves swirled white and beyond them was darkness, and beyond that again lighthouse beams swept the sky.

Peter hailed the seaman: ‘Could you tell me where Strangford Lough would lie?'

The seaman stood beside him. ‘There's the Copeland Light aft and there's St John's Lighthouse; midway between them would be Strangford – a treacherous lough!' and he paced the deck again.