Collected Short Stories

First published in 1978 by Poolbeg Press

Published in 2002 by Blackstaff Press

This edition published in 2012 by
Blackstaff Press
4c Heron Wharf, Sydenham Business Park
Belfast
BT3 9LE
with the assistance of
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland

© Text, the estate of Michael McLaverty, 2002
© Introduction, Seamus Heaney, 1978, 2002

© Afterword, Sophia Hillan, 2002

© Cover image, Thurston Hopkins / Getty Images

The quotation from ‘D-Day' appears with the kind permission of the McFadden Estate

All rights reserved

Michael McLaverty has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

Cover Design by Dunbar Design

Produced by Blackstaff Press

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

EPUB ISBN 978-0-85640-040-7

MOBI ISBN 978-0-85640-041-4

www.blackstaffpress.com

www.blackstaffpress.com
/ebooks

Michael McLaverty was born in County Monaghan in 1904 and grew up in Belfast, spending childhood holidays on Rathlin Island. He became a schoolteacher in Belfast and was later a headmaster there until his retirement.

One of Ireland's most distinguished writers, he is best remembered for his short stories and for the novels
Call My Brother Back
(1939) and
Lost Fields
(1941).

He died in 1992.

Thanks and gratitude to Sophia Hillan, editor and joint literary executor, for her advice, literary expertise and deep commitment to retaining Michael McLaverty's place in Irish literature; to Ronan Sheehan for his insight into copyright and publishing matters, which enabled the fruition of this edition; to John Boyd for his enthusiasm, humour and suggestions about publishing; to Sheila, Kevin and Colm for their co-operation and trust in the decisions of the literary executors; to Michael Cregan for his intellectual support and interest. Thanks also to Anne Tannahill, Managing Director of Blackstaff Press, for her vision and belief in the timing of this edition, and to her dedicated staff for all their work.

Maura Cregan, Literary Executor

April 2002

In memory of Michael McLaverty and his wife, Mollie

Michael McLaverty wrote and talked with an artist's passion. When I met him first in 1962, he was headmaster of St Thomas's Intermediate School in Ballymurphy, where I was a student teacher. He would come into the English class to conduct, for the benefit of a less than literary 4B, elaborate and humorous conversations about the good effect of poetry. ‘Did you ever remark, Mr Heaney,' he would enquire, ‘when you see the photograph of a rugby team, that you can always pick out the boys who studied poetry by the look on their faces?' Faithfully and fallaciously, I would reply, ‘Yes, Mr McLaverty,' and ‘There you are now,' he would say to them, closing the case triumphantly, then leave the room with a warning: ‘Work hard and when you leave school, don't end up measuring your spits on some street corner!' He had them in the palm of his hand. They were delighted by the way his talk heightened their world of football teams and street corners and they were affected by the style of his concern.

But Michael was as concerned to educate the taste of this young graduate as he was to promote the interests of those veteran pupils. ‘Look for the intimate thing,' he would say, and go on to praise the ‘note of exile' in Chekhov, or exhort me to read Tolstoy's ‘Death of Ivan Ilych', one of his sacred texts. For if fidelity to the intimate and the local was one of his obvious strengths as a writer, another was his sense of the great tradition that he worked in, his contempt for the flashy and the topical, his love of the universal, the worn grain of unspectacular experience, the well-turned grain of language itself ‘Don't be reading newspapers, they'll only spoil your style,' he would advise me, more than half in earnest.

I wish this book had been available then. His achievement in the short story had been greeted and praised by editors and critics such as Middleton Murry and Edwin Muir, but by the early sixties both
The White Mare
(published in a small edition by Richard Rowley's Mourne Press in Newcastle) and
The Game Cock
(a fuller collection issued by a commercial publisher in 1947) were out of print, as were the novels. It is sad to reflect that for two decades most of his exemplary work was unavailable, although it was heartening to find audiences in the seventies responding so strongly to
Call My Brother Back
when it was reissued by Riverrun, and to Poolbeg's selection of the stories,
The Road to the Shore
, published in 1976. The purity of the art, the sureness of touch and truth of vision, were unmistakable.

Michael McLaverty has been called a realist, and we can agree to that description. The precision with which he recreates the life of Belfast streets or Rathlin shores or County Down fields and the authenticity of the speech he hears in all those places – the documentary accuracy of this affords much pleasure. But realism is finally an unsatisfactory word when it is applied to a body of work as poetic as these stories. There is, of course, a regional basis to McLaverty's world and a note-taker's reliability to his observation, yet the region is contemplated with a gaze more loving and more lingering than any fieldworker or folklorist could ever manage. Those streets and shores and fields have been weathered in his affections and recollected in tranquility until the contours of each landscape have become a prospect of the mind.

What McLaverty said of a wordy contemporary could never be said of his own stories: ‘Exciting at first blush, but not durable.' His language is temperate, eager only in its pursuit of exactitude. His love of Gerard Manley Hopkins is reflected in a love of the inscape of things, the freshness that lives deep down in them, and in a comprehension of the central place of suffering and sacrifice in the life of the spirit never in that merely verbal effulgence that Hopkins can equally inspire. His tact and pacing, within the individual sentence and the overall story, are beautiful: in his best work, the elegiac is bodied forth in perfectly pondered images and rhythms, the pathetic element qualified by something astute.

Michael McLaverty was a contemporary of Patrick Kavanagh and, like him, a Monaghan man by birth. He shared the poet's conviction that God is to be found in ‘bits and pieces of everyday', that ‘naming these things is the love-act and its pledge', but was averse to the violence of Kavanagh's invective and satire. His voice was modestly pitched, he never sought the limelight, yet for all that, his place in our literature is secure.

Seamus Heaney, 1978/2002

Brendan stood on the big stone near the byre, letting the rain splash on his bare head and dribble down his face. It was cold standing barefooted on the stone, but he didn't seem to mind, for now and again he'd stick out his tongue to catch the tickling drops. The byre door was open and the dark entrance showed the rain falling in grey streaks; it stuttered in the causeway and trickled in a puddle around the stone, carrying with it bits of straw and hens' feathers. Beside him was a steaming manure heap with a pitchfork sticking in the top, its handle varnished with the rain. Under a heeled-up cart stood hens, humped and bedraggled, their grey eyelids blinking slowly with sleep.

Brendan shouted at them and laughed at the way they stretched their necks and shook the rain off their feathers. He waited until they hunched again to sleep and then he let another yell followed by louder laughs. A white duck clattering from behind the byre caught his attention. It stopped, looking from side to side, then it flapped its wings and quacked loudly. Brendan thought this was a sign for the rain to stop and he clodded the duck with a few lumps of turf. He looked up at the sky and out to sea. The sky was grey: the Mull of Kintyre was smothered in fog; and turning round he saw a tonsure of mist on Knocklayde. He smiled at the prospect of more rain.

Presently, a latch clicked and his mother flung out a basin of water which splashed on the cobbles, the sleepy hens awakening and racing towards it. For a moment the woman leaned on the half-door, looking at her son, at his brown jersey black with rain around the shoulders, his tattered trousers clinging to his wet-pink knees, and his bare legs streaked with mud.

‘Brendan, boy!' she shouted. ‘What in under Heaven are ye doin' there? Come in out o' that this minute or ye'll be foundered.'

Brendan hopped off the stone, and as he entered the house he ducked when his mother made a clout at him. Inside he stood near the hearth with the steam rising from off his clothes and the rain trickling darkly on the stone floor.

‘Dry yerself with that cloth, you silly boy: do ye want to go like yer Granda?'

Brendan didn't speak; he sat down on a stool near the fire, rubbing his head with the cloth, and thinking of Granda – poor Granda that died last month! If his mother only knew, it was like Granda he wanted to be; not to be dead, but to be able to tell the weather. His Granda could always tell when it was going to rain or snow.

Brendan pictured him sitting at the corner of the hearth, leaning forward on his stick, and the red handkerchief with the white spots sticking out of his pocket. He saw his brown beard and moustache, and the dark toothless mouth that reminded him of a thrush's nest. In his mind he heard his Granda groaning and saying: ‘There's bad weather in it, Brendan me son; there's bad weather coming for I feel it in my bones.'

‘And how do you feel it, Granda?' Brendan would ask.

‘When you're old like me, me son, it's maybe you'll feel it too, but God grant you won't. Standin' out on the mountainside with the sheep and it rainin' heaven's hard, and you without another coat to your back. And out at the fishin' at night with the cold wind and the frozen lines, and your trousers clammed to your knees. Your boots squelchin' in the shughs after divils of cows, and maybe not a bite of shop's meat from one year to another. In water and out of water, in shughs and out of shughs; ‘tis them things, Brendan, that'd make you feel it; ‘tis them things … ‘

‘Under Heaven, Brendan,' shouted his mother, interrupting his thoughts, ‘you're scorchin'!'

Brendan became aware of the biscuity smell of scorched clothes and felt his damp legs and knees sticky with heat. He still held the cloth in his hand.

‘Gimme that,' said his mother, taking the cloth and vigorously rubbing his head. ‘Get up to bed now for ye have me heart scalded this blessed day.'

Brendan asked for a piece of bread and went up to the room off the kitchen. His younger brother Bob was already asleep. Brendan stood at the little four-paned window, eating his piece, and looking out. He could hear the lighthouse rockets shattering the rain-cold air and he knew the mists were thickening on land and sea. It was getting dark. The hens had left the shelter of the cart and gone to roost, the manure heap still steamed, and Prince, the sheep-dog, nosed around the byre with soaking paws and his hairy tail corded with rain. Brendan wondered could Prince tell the weather for he was always in water and out of water, in shughs and out of shughs.

He turned from the window and knelt on the bare, boarded floor to say his prayers. He prayed to his Granda to help him to tell the weather, and his mind wandered to the school and to the boys asking him what kind of day will it be tomorrow. He glowed at the thought and snuggled in beside his warm brother. He put his cold feet on his back and Bob wakened and threatened to shout to Mammie if he wouldn't lie over.

‘All right,' said Brendan. ‘I was going to tell you how to tell the weather, but I'll not do it now.'

‘Ach, no one could tell the weather only Granda,' replied Bob sleepily.

‘Couldn't they? Granda told me the secret and I can tell it.'

Bob didn't reply and tried to sleep again. But Brendan lay awake and thought he felt something, felt his shoulders cold, and wondered if that's what Granda felt.

‘Bob,' he said, putting his cold feet on his brother again, ‘there's going to be rain tomorrow.'

Bob heard him, but didn't speak, and soon the two boys fell asleep.

In the morning they set off for school, Brendan taking his little brother by the hand. It wasn't raining, but the air was cold and damp. The sky was grey like the evening before, and water lay in the cart-ruts along the road. Below them the sea lay calm with dark paths zig-zagging across it, while the hills around were sodden and beaten into cold, shrivelled shapes. As their bare feet slapped the wet road, Brendan kept telling his brother how he had foretold the weather, and little Bob listened with great belief and pride. Now and again they'd stop and look at the imprint of bare feet on the rain-softened road trying to guess what boy had passed along before them.

When they got into the one-roomed school there was an air of restless gaiety, for tomorrow was to be the School Sports. Bob was full of his big brother's magic, and began telling everyone how his Brendan could tell the weather. Then one little boy put up his hand saying, ‘Sir! Sir! He says his brother can tell the weather.'

The master looked over at Brendan whose toes were twitching under the desk.

‘Can you forecast the weather?' asked the master. Brendan's face got red and the master smiled. ‘I never knew we had a prophet in the school before. And what kind of a day will it be tomorrow?' he added. But Brendan never spoke.

On account of the Sports the school was let out early, the scholars gushing from the door in all directions. Brendan and Bob were not alone now. The three lighthouse boys were with them, chaffing about the weather.

‘What'll it be like for the Sports?' says one. ‘Oh, Prophet of Israel,' says another, imitating the master's voice, ‘what will there be tomorrow?' Brendan walked on in silence and they laughed and chanted:

Oh, the prophet!

The prophet!

The rick-stick-stophet!

Then Brendan stopped, and felt, felt something. ‘I'll tell ye –' he says, ‘if ye want to know. There'll be rain tomorrow, bucketfuls and bucketfuls of it.'

‘And how do you know?' they all said together.

‘It's me Granda that learned me before he died.'

A great silence came on them.

‘Tell me how to do it and I'll give you a puffin's egg and I'll show you me robin's nest,' asked one earnestly. Brendan didn't answer and they walked beside him, looking at him as if he were a black man.

He turned into the house and his companions walked on for a while in silence.

‘I bet you a million pounds he can't tell the weather,' ventured one.

‘You're right,' said another, ‘for doesn't Father McKinley get us to pray for a good day when the Bishop is comin' for Confirmation.'

‘We'll see tomorrow anyhow; but mind you his Granda was a quare ould fella and me Da often said he was an ould witch,' replied the eldest.

From the kitchen window Brendan watched his three companions disappear down the road and he knew that they were talking about him. He clenched his fists and wished with all his might for rain tomorrow, while his Granda's words, like an old rhyme, ran through his mind – ‘in water and out of water, in shughs and out of shughs, ‘tis them things that make you feel it!'

After the dinner he went off with Bob to the lake to sail boats. Brendan's was a Norwegian schooner, a flat, pointed stick with two big goose feathers. A nail with a piece of cord was stuck in her stern so that she could tow Bob's little, one-masted vessel. Brendan watched his boat crinkling the water, leaving a trail behind it like a swimming duck. With his trousers rolled up he waded out as far as he could go, following his boat and chanting – ‘in water and out of water, in shughs and out of shughs.'

Coming home he was wet to the skin, but there was great joy in his heart for he felt now there'd be rain tomorrow.

That night he prayed for a long time, prayed to God and to his Granda to bring on the rain, and in bed he thought he felt whatever Granda felt. At one time he was sure he felt the rain at the window, but it was only the fuchsia leaves brushing against the pane. He lay for a while thinking of wet days with the rain sizzling in the lake, the hens hunched up under the cart, the ducks suttering in the shughs, and Prince running across the kitchen floor with wet paws. And from such thoughts sleep came.

In the morning he awoke and lay listening, listening for the sound of rain. But outside the birds sang and in the window a large fly buzzed. He raised himself on his elbows and stared around. A blue sky was framed in the window. The sun was shining and a leafy shadow of the fuchsia bush trembled on the white-washed bedroom wall. The birds' songs came clearer now to his keener wakefulness. He looked at his sleeping brother. Then he lay back on the pillow, and dripping drearily into his mind came thoughts of his companions jeering and shouting –
The Prophet! The Prophet!