Lucinda Sly (3 page)

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if she’s that handsome I suppose she has a fine strong man at home minding the farm.’

‘No,’ Sly informed him. ‘In the short conversation we had, it slipped from her that she was a widow. And wait until you hear her name … it’s your own, Singleton’.

The policeman sat back staring Walter directly in the eye.

‘By any chance,’ he said, ‘did she call herself Lucinda Singleton?’

‘Look, now that you mention Lucinda,’ Walter replied, ‘that’s the name she gave herself.’

Singleton thought for a minute. He had had no contact with his mother since that fateful day he left her house and he hadn’t been next or near her since then. Then, suddenly, she crops up in the conversation between himself and Walter Sly. He had
intended
many times to go home and beg forgiveness for the beating he
gave her. But his courage failed every time.

‘Had she a horse and cart with her butter and bread in a
wicker
basket?’ he asked, tears welling up in his eyes.

‘She had a horse and cart with a basket sure enough,’ Walter replied, ‘but she had sold everything by the time we had our
conversation
.’

Sly looked straight at Singleton.

‘She is your mother, isn’t she?’ he demanded.

‘She is,’ the policeman admitted, ‘though it’s likely she would deny that she is any relation of mine.’

‘Oh for God’s sake! And I was thinking on my way here from Carlow that if you were any way related to her you would put in a good word for me,’ Sly ventured.

Singleton laughed when he heard that.

‘Oh, you scoundrel,’ he rounded on him. ‘That’s what brought you here and it wasn’t for friendship or the good of my health. To tell you the truth, if I put in a word for you, it would have the opposite effect … but I’ll tell you how to get to her and if she is willing to go to the well, so to speak, the second time you should listen carefully to me. She never liked to see a man drunk. Now, if you want to attract her, she sells her bread and butter in Carlow every Thursday during the milking season. My advice to you is to keep off the drink on the day you meet her and dress yourself in your Sunday clothes. When she has everything sold and the work of the day is behind her invite her to have a meal with you.’

Walter Sly’s eyes were jumping in his head with excitement.

‘I’ll do better than that,’ he offered. ‘I’ll buy a couple of loaves
of bread from her. Oh, Thomas, I’m more than grateful to you and I promise you that if things work out between me and your
mother
that I won’t forget you when the time comes. I have neither chick nor child and I have a fine farm of land.’

They finished the bottle of whiskey before Sly faced for home.

The morning after the fair, it was the cattle bellowing out in the field that woke Walter Sly, his head hanging from the side of the bed, his mouth as dry as a coarse bag, his head throbbing. He sat up in the bed and slowly and carefully put a foot out on the cold clay floor. He pulled up his trousers and walked unsteadily towards the kitchen. Bran, his dog, was sitting on the floor; he hadn’t had a bite of food from his master since the previous morning.

Sly headed for the dresser at the bottom of the kitchen, took the jug of sour milk and raised it to his head. He drank the
contents
of the jug, lifted his left leg and broke wind.

‘Ah, boy,’ he exclaimed, ‘I feel better now.’

It was then he remembered that he hadn’t milked the cows when he returned the previous night. He poured water from a bucket that was on a stool at the bottom of the kitchen into a dish on the table, plunged his hands into the dish and splashed the water on his face. A person couldn’t find a better way to wake himself up.

‘I’d better milk the cows before breakfast,’ he said, ‘before their udders burst.’

By the time he had eight cows milked and the milk strained into the dishes in the dairy he was sweating profusely.

‘Oh! The scourge of drink,’ he lamented.

When he had the cream skimmed from the previous morning’s milk, mess from the buttermilk made in the three-legged pot hanging on the crane over the fire, the potatoes heating in the hot ashes ready for breakfast and four hens’ eggs boiled in a saucepan on the embers at the side of the fire, Sly was starving. Bran would have to wait until his master had his belly full.

When he had eaten his fill, he put the two potatoes that were left over as well as a splash of fresh milk and a hunk of meat in Bran’s bowl; he made mess for the hens and threw it out to them at the bottom of the haggard. His cows had knocked a strip off the boundary ditch between his land and Ben Stacey’s, his neighbour. There was an ongoing dispute about this over the years. Sly had the same trouble with John Griffin, another neighbour. What
seldom
happens is wonderful and he saw no trace of his neighbours that day, something for which he was extremely grateful. His head was splitting from the previous day’s drinking and he would need all his wits to come around Lucinda Sly without spoiling things.

‘Maybe this is my last chance to get a wife,’ Sly considered, ‘I don’t want to grow old on my own.’

He planned to have a couple of glasses of whiskey and a couple of bottles of porter every night until Monday and then he wouldn’t taste a drop again until Friday. He expected he would have made contact with Lucinda Singleton by then and that he would have a good idea as to what his chances were.

Sly was succeeding with his plan about drinking. Though his friends in the tavern didn’t understand why he was easing off on the drink, he was too smart to inform them that a woman was the reason for this. He even kept away from those in the company who would spur him to drinking. He would leave the tavern as early as eight o’clock. One of his companions opined that the age was catching him and that his stomach wasn’t healthy enough to deal with large amounts of drink.

During the following week he was determined to make his own butter on the Wednesday and bring it on the Thursday to the shop in Carlow where he sold it. That way, he would be in Carlow on the same day that Lucinda Sly sold her wares on the side of the street. He contacted the shopkeeper he dealt with and he was happy to stock his butter every Thursday.

The following Thursday dawned without a cloud in the sky. Sly hadn’t had a drink since the previous Monday night. He hadn’t felt as healthy in many a day but his stomach was rumbling with excitement. He put a couple of potatoes to roast in the hot ashes while he was milking the cows.

When he had done the household chores and had eaten
breakfast
, it was time to ready himself for the day and the task before him. He took the boiling kettle from the crane over the fire and poured some water from it into a dish on the table, got his razor and stropped twenty times on a strap of leather that was hanging on the side of the window. He wanted a clean shave without
cutting
himself under his ear or nose and with no patches on his face as was usual. This was a special day. His clothes from his shoes up
to the few ribs of hair on his head would have to blend with his clean-shaven face and everything would have to be exact. Because he had no polish to shine his shoes he got an old rag and rubbed it in the soot that was baked onto the back of the fireplace and applied it to them. Before he left the house to go to Carlow he
hurried
down the room to where an old mirror was hanging. Then he put the small, black woollen hat he wore on Sunday on his head and regarded himself in the mirror. ‘By God! Walter,’ he beamed. ‘Even if you are middle-aged, you will get the women to look at you yet.’

The clock was striking midday before the horse had eaten a handful of oats and was saddled for the road. Sly put an extra
half-stone
of oats in a small bag that he would hang on the hook of the saddle if he were going on a long journey. Who knows? Maybe this would be a long day. He hung another little bag containing the butter from the week’s churning on the other side of the saddle.

As soon as Sly reached town he stabled his horse in the
shopkeeper’s
stable and gave him his bag of butter. The shopkeeper weighed the butter on his scales. Sly suspected that the
shopkeeper
, John Cooney, didn’t let the scales settle properly.

‘One stone and three pounds of butter,’ the shopkeeper informed him. ‘That’s seventeen pounds at threepence-farthing a pound.’

‘Hold it a minute, John,’ Sly interrupted. ‘Did you ever hear from the priest you go to Mass to about the sin of the weighing?’

‘I must admit,’ John replied innocently, ‘that I didn’t. I don’t
think it’s written in any catechism of the Catholic Church.’

‘It should be,’ Sly said mockingly. ‘I heard in a sermon from the minister in the church that I go to, that the sin of the weighing is the most common sin on shopkeepers’ souls when they go before God.’

‘Tell me about the sin of the weighing,’ the shopkeeper replied, ‘because the priest in the church were I go said that the worst sin is for a man to chase a family from their holding and then to grab it for himself.’

It was said that Walter Sly had chased a family from their
holding
which was bounding his because he was given a claim to it by the Crown as he was a Protestant.

‘Put the butter back on the scales,’ Sly ordered him, ignoring the hint the shopkeeper threw in his direction.

This Cooney did, placing weights measuring seventeen pounds on the other side of the scales. The butter raised the seventeen pounds in weights.

‘Put another pound weight on the scales,’ Sly said
triumphantly
, ‘and that will level the scales.’

The shopkeeper did as he was told. Then the weights went down slowly.

‘What did I tell you?’ said the shopkeeper. ‘There are too many weights on the scales now.’

‘Try the half pound weight,’ Sly demanded with rancour in his voice.

‘I will not,’ Cooney countered. ‘Your horse will have eaten its
value in hay before you take him from my stable this evening.’

The shopkeeper made up the price of the butter and extended it to Sly.

‘I have more important things to be doing than listening to the prattling of a gombeen on the side of the street,’ was all Sly said.

He turned on his heel and dashed out the door leaving the shopkeeper with a satisfied grin on his face.

The main street was crammed from top to bottom with stalls full of goods expertly laid out by housewives with a view to
attracting
the eye of prospective buyers: some of them selling their
butter
, others selling potatoes, cabbage and vegetables; three or four more standing by the rails of their horse carts with every screech coming from the bonhams inside the rails.

‘Nora, where is Jack?’ Sly inquired of a woman who was
standing
by a rail of bonhams.

‘He is in the place you usually are,’ she replied sourly, ‘throwing back the drink.’

Sly cast his eye on the litter of bonhams.

‘They are at least three months old,’ he observed judging their age.

‘Put another fortnight with it,’ Nora answered. ‘I’d prefer to be rid of them. We have only two pits of potatoes left and two sows to feed for the winter … My soul to the devil, Walter, you’re all dressed up today. If I didn’t know you as well as I do, I’d say you were on the lookout for a wife. But I think you’re past it. Ha! Ha!’

When he heard that, he turned his back on Nora and faced up the street on his mission.

He wasn’t long walking when he saw Lucinda Singleton in a convenient patch across the street. This is the woman who had
distracted
his senses all week. His eyes were wide open this time as he hadn’t put a drink to his lips for four days. Sly walked slowly towards Lucinda pretending to examine the loaves of bread and the bowl of butter in front of her. She looked carefully at this
well-dressed
man who was standing before her.

‘I’ll take two loaves of bread,’ Sly said steadily. ‘I heard that you sell the best bread in town.’

‘Don’t mind your soft talk because you won’t get it a penny cheaper. Three pence ha’penny to you and to everyone else,’ Lucinda replied.

She wrapped paper around the two loaves and gave them to him.

‘Three pence ha’penny apiece – that’s seven pence,’ she said curtly.

‘And they’re worth a lot more,’ Sly replied gently. Lucinda stared at him.

‘Do I know you, or have I seen you before?’ she demanded.

Sly smiled.

‘Do you remember last Thursday, the in-calf heifer sale?’

Lucinda’s eyes jumped in her head when she heard this.

‘You,’ was all she could say. ‘The rogue with the cattle! I can tell you that you had enough to drink that evening.’

‘To tell you the truth, Lucinda … that’s your name, isn’t it? I had enough, all right. I came to town today especially to apologise to you for my conduct last Thursday,’ Sly replied.

Lucinda laughed.

‘You did indeed,’ she said. ‘Off with you now and don’t be mocking an old widow.’

Sly moved a step closer to her.

‘I’m seldom like that,’ he lied, ‘and if I can do you a favour to make up for it, I will.’

Sly’s words moved her.

‘Forget about it. I forgive you,’ she said softly.

When Sly saw her being moved, he thought that this was his chance.

‘Do you know,’ he ventured, ‘as reparation for my sins, maybe I could buy you a bite to eat later on.’

When she heard this, Lucinda looked at him doubtfully.

‘I hardly know you,’ she retorted. ‘How do I know that you’re not a murderer or one of those scamps that’s forever luring gullible women on the road?’

Sly laughed heartily on hearing this.

‘I am Walter Sly,’ he told her, ‘fifty-two years old and never had the courage to seek a wife … I live on the finest farm in Oldleighlin. Question any of my neighbours about my pedigree and I promise you that they won’t have a thing to say against me except that I drink the odd drink. Yes! And I wouldn’t do that but for the fact that there’s nothing before me at home only the cold walls of the house and a dog in the corner. If I had a wife at home, I would be in a hurry to return to her.’

Lucinda stood listening, at the same time sizing him up as he stood in front of her. After a while she spoke:

‘I can’t leave my bread and butter on the side of the street to go rambling with you. Come this way in two hours and if I have sold my wares, then maybe I’ll let you buy me some food.’

‘You know,’ Sly replied excitedly, ‘I have some things to do around town myself; I’ll be back to you in a while.’

Sly went down the street like a swallow in flight humming to himself.

‘A good start is half the work,’ he observed. ‘Oh boy, I’d better take it easy with her and not show too much enthusiasm. What was the advice her son Thomas gave me? Yes, that she was a shrewd woman.’

Meanwhile Lucinda paid extra attention to her stall, at the same time thinking deeply.

‘Maybe I saw the worst side of him on market day,’ she
considered
. ‘Without a doubt a man has a right to drink a drop now and again as long as he doesn’t make a tramp out of himself. When I see him clean-shaven today, upon my soul but he is a fine man. I
suppose
it will do no harm to get to know him better. I have spent most of my life on my own and I’m tired of it. Maybe my chance has come today.’

Lucinda had sold her bread and butter within an hour and a half, the basket was tied in the cart and a small sack of corn was hanging at the horse’s head. She looked up and down the street. She was thinking that it was time the man who was to take her to the eating house appeared.

She hadn’t long to wait as Sly was coming up the street in a great hurry.

‘Now, my good woman,’ he panted, ‘have you your mind made up or will I be shortening the road for home?’

‘It’s not every day a woman gets invited to a meal,’ Lucinda smiled.

The two of them walked up the street together in the direction of the eating house and all eyes were on them.