The Tay Is Wet (3 page)

Timmy woke up lying on a wooden bench inside the classroom. The boys who had assisted him were standing in a corner, their faces creased in pain. They were deeply upset at what happened to Timmy and also because of the pain they felt from the headmaster’s cane which now lay on his desk.

‘How do you feel now, Timothy Deery?’ said the headmaster.

‘Sore head, sir.’

‘You’re lucky that’s all that’s sore. I’m surprised at an intelligent boy like you.’

Timmy’s older brother, Sonny, was ordered to take him home. They say that his mother, Margaret, was so worried about him that she wanted him brought to hospital. However, he recovered sufficiently to come to school the next day and appeared none the worse for his escapade. The headmaster had the pony moved away from the school. About a month or so after these
events things started to go less well at school for Timmy. He
lost his place on the school football team and from being one of the top pupils academically he began to slip down into the bottom half of his class. From then until the end of primary school Timmy continued to regress and somehow got left behind the other pupils. The only activity in which he did not slip back was the choir. He loved to sing and to this day he is still one of the finest singers you could wish to hear.

When it came to moving on from primary school there were many stories about why Timmy never made it to secondary. It is said that Margaret Deery, Timmy’s mother, blamed the headmaster. Certainly there was a difficult meeting between Timmy’s parents and the headmaster and that his mother fought vainly that he should go to secondary school. She said fourteen was too young an age to start work. The headmaster, apparently, advised her that Timmy’s examination results were so poor that he would not be able for it. His father said he could do with more help on the farm and that was the deciding factor. Margaret Deery always maintained that until the pony incident he was the most intelligent of her seven children, four of whom
became doctors.

Margaret Deery’s life also changed at this time. She was no longer the jolly open-hearted person with the infectious laugh so beloved of her family and friends. Sometimes her thoughts were as black as the pony whose wild outline and flashing eyes were ever in her mind. About one year after Timmy left school, on a cool evening in late autumn, Margaret had another unusual experience, which, again, changed her life, but this time for the better. She became more serene and contented with life.

The rest of the family had been gone from early morning to Roggart, as it was market day and they had cattle to sell. An exhausted Margaret had flopped down in the wooden armchair in front of the open range. The dark kitchen was lit only by the bright and flickering logs as she was too tired to light the oil lamp after a crowded day of cleaning, bedding, milking and feeding on the busy farm. Her eyelids felt heavy as she half dozed and followed the fluttering fireplace shadows through
half closed eyes. There was a noise outside and then a muffled
knock on the door.

‘Come in,’ she said, and then in a more raised voice, ‘it’s not locked.’

The door swung open and framed in the doorway was none other than the black pony. Margaret eyed him suspiciously. He seemed smaller and more docile and quite unlike the wild red-eyed creature which had haunted her thoughts since the time of Timmy’s accident.

‘What brings you here? Is it to gloat over what you did to my son?’

She spoke calmly and, strangely enough, she felt quite calm and was unsurprised when the pony answered her in a deep but clear male type voice.

‘I come on a mission. Humans talk about “horse sense” but they seldom show any. My advice for you is this. Remove the blinkers which you have worn for the past year and you will see a fuller picture of your son. Timothy is content in his own wonderful world. His gifts are many:- a tranquil mind; nature’s fields, rivers, lakes and hills; the music of his voice; his imaginary world of cinema; friendships; family love; coming together in church; his uncomplicated honesty and frankness. You must
not make a halter to lead him like an ass. You are a wise woman and I wish you well.’

Before she could answer, the black pony whirled around and, as he went through the doorway, his rear hooves kicked back and clipped the door shut. Margaret Deery listened until the galloping sound faded away, then her eyes closed and she drifted into a deep sleep. She awoke to find her husband and other family members chattering and laughing about all they had seen at the market. She hugged a startled Timmy who was reading a Tom Mix comic which his father had bought for him. He responded ‘Ah, mam, that mushy stuff is barred in the Wild West.’

They all laughed. Mr Deery asked how her day had been and had she done anything exciting.

‘Oh, nothing too exciting,’ she replied, ‘just horsing around as usual.’

The following day at breakfast Timmy said ‘I wonder what
knocked a lump of paint out of the kitchen door.’

Oilly planned his fair wife to beguile

With his head soaked in paraffin oil

But the smell from his pate

So frustrated his mate

That it caused her to go off the boil

Timmy Deery was a simple man. Yet, there came a time when all of Timmy’s neighbours agreed that, on this occasion, he had shown the wisdom of Solomon. It all centred on a seemingly intractable dispute between two elderly brothers who lived in the neighbourhood.

Andy and Oilly Malooney were two brothers who married two sisters and lived in two adjoining houses in the Meath countryside near the small town of Roggart. They were now old and retired from work. When they were young men they were very close and shared everything. They worked hard together on the farm. They got married in the same church on the same day.

They built their two houses adjoining one another and put an interconnecting door in the common adjoining wall so that they and their families could move freely between each other’s homes. In fact it was like one big house with one big family living in it. Well, maybe not a “big” big house, because in those days people only built houses big enough to eat and sleep in,
with a kitchen and one or two bedrooms. If visitors called (and visitors were always calling in those days) they were entertained in the kitchen and they, of course, also entertained the people of the house, by bringing news and stories from around the countryside.

In appearance the two brothers looked completely different. Oilly still had a thick head of (now grey) hair while Andy had become totally bald. Oilly was very proud of what he called his “well thatched roof” and he always judged other men by how much hair they had. This irritated Andy.

‘Oh, your man is going bald,’ Oilly would say derisively. ‘He must be on the way out.’

When he was twelve years old he had heard an old neigh-bour, who was a respected animal quack, say that paraffin oil, which was used as fuel for lanterns, was a powerful agent for growing human hair. And so he kept a bottle of this under his bed and every night he rubbed a liberal amount into his prized
tresses. This was why he was called “Oilly.” His real name was
‘Oliver.’ He was ten years married when his wife gave him an ultimatum. The poor woman had endured, with great fortitude, the stinking paraffin fumes and the grimy pillow cases, not to mention the danger of the kids lighting matches. He had recently begun to mix a very pungent tractor TVO oil to the paraffin.

‘Either that oily concoction goes or I go!’ she said, seething with rage.

She’d been gone about six weeks when, by a strange coincidence, Andy’s wife also upped stakes and left. This occurred because she objected to having to cook and wash for both families.

When the two brothers became too old to work on the farm their sons took it over and it was around this time that the trouble between them started. Both Andy and Oilly had shown little interest in politics (or indeed in anything other than farming) until after they retired. They would usually chase away whatever politicians called to their door at election time (on one occasion Andy ushered a politician off the premises at the point of a four-grained dung fork) but this time things were different. A local election took place in the county and Andy and Oilly had
a major falling out over which candidate they would vote for. The candidate who lived nearest to them was Sylvie Dianne— an active loquacious man of sixty years old and Andy decided that he was the man for the job but Oilly had one big reservation about Sylvie. The poor man was as bald as an egg and Oilly maintained that Joe Jameson, who was a Ronald Reagan look-a-like, with the finest head of black hair you ever saw, was the superior candidate. Anyway Joe Jameson won the seat by a narrow margin and that night Oilly joined in the celebrations. One of the brother’s fields high up on a hill was known as the “Furzy Field” because it was covered by a large number of furze bushes. A tradition in the neighbourhood was to light bonfires outside at night to mark all kinds of successes, such as football victories, weddings, and elections.

Andy was in a foul mood that evening. Not only had he backed the wrong man in the election, but he had spent the past two hours lighting the kitchen range and preparing a cabbage
and bacon dinner for himself and Oilly. He had even wet the tay
and now there was no sign of his brother, also it had got quite dark outside. And then Andy got a shock. Looking out the back window he noticed a fire up on the hill behind the house. Then suddenly more fires started to appear and soon there were about twenty of them with flames leaping up into the dark night sky.

‘Gad damn it, the furzy field is being burned,’ he shouted to himself.

Then grabbing an old shotgun which they used for frightening crows in the potato field Andy raced out of the house and up the hill to the furzy field. There were figures flitting about whooping and laughing in the semi darkness. Andy began firing the shotgun, at first up in the air and then seeing no reaction he fired a blast lower down. He heard someone scream and the shouting died down. He then found himself surrounded by a dumbfounded crowd of men, most of whom he knew as his friends and neighbours from the locality.

‘What the hell is going on here?’ Andy shouted.

‘We were just burning a few furze for Joe Jameson’s great win in the election,’ said Sonny Deery, who was Andy’s next
door neighbour. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing with that oul gun?’

‘You’re only after shooting your own brother,’ said Timmy Deery.

‘You’re a goddam infernal idiot,’ said Ivor Nale.

Andy was shocked to the core. ‘He, he’s not dead is he? Ooh good God almighty, I deserve to be hung for this.’

Oilly moaned and held his arm. He had received a slight graze on his upper arm.

‘Are, are you all right, are you all right, speak to us, are you bleeding?’

Andy had got a far greater scare than his brother. In fact, he was in a state of shock.

Sonny gently took the old gun from him and checked it to make sure the cartridge cylinder was empty. Then putting it across his shoulder he walked away, leaving Andy and Oilly to
settle their differences between themselves.

A shower of rain started to fall but it did nothing to diminish Oilly’s temper. He was fuming with rage. He shouted at everyone within earshot to quench all the fires, most of which had already gone out because of the rain. Andy was still in shock after realizing that he could have killed his own brother. He stood open-mouthed and trembling. Oilly stalked off without a word and headed straight home to his house.

Andy stood alone among the black ash residue of the recently burnt furze bushes. After about ten minutes he began shuffling slowly towards the house with a heavy heart. He thought there was only one bright spot among the travails of the evening and that was the fact that Oilly seemed to have received no serious injury at all. True, he was in a rage because he had been shot at by his own brother, and in front of all his neighbours. This hurt his pride and put him in a bad temper. The trouble with this was that, while Andy was quick-tempered, he was also quick to forgive and forget, while Oilly was the direct opposite. Oilly would hold this grudge forever and a day against his brother. Andy eventually reached home and seeing the light in Oilly’s house he
thought he had better apologize for what happened. He twisted the doorknob as usual but found the door was locked. He knocked a few times but got no response so he went into his own house and went to the interconnecting door between the two houses. Here he got a shock. The door was gone and the space was filled up crudely with six-inch solid concrete blocks. There were piles of wet cement splashed on his floor after the hastily botched block building. Oilly certainly meant business.

The next morning Andy awoke to the sound of hammering and banging from behind the blocked-up doorway. Somebody was knocking down the blocks, some of which fell into Andy’s side and on to his parlour or sitting room floor. A loud whistling was heard and Andy recognized Ivor Nale. He shouted through at Ivor.

‘What the hell is going on out there, Ivor is that you? What on earth are you doing?

‘I’m rebuilding these blocks for Oilly. He was banging on my
door at six o’clock this morning, said it had to be done immediately.
He said he’s not setting foot in this house until your place is completely closed off, sorry Andy but I’m just following orders.’