Collected Short Stories (18 page)

‘That was enough to kill the buds,' said Clare. ‘The gum, as you call it, is their only protective against frost.'

‘It was himself he killed,' said Paul. ‘He had gone out from a warm fire in his slippers, out into the bleak air and got his death.'

‘And what happened to the poplars?' said Clare. But Sister Paul had turned her head to the window again and was trying to stifle the tears that were rising to her eyes.

‘What other trees grew in your neighbourhood?' continued Clare. Sister Paul didn't seem to hear her, but when the question was repeated she turned and said slowly: ‘I'm sorry that I don't know their names. But my father, Lord have mercy on him, used to say that a bird could leap from branch to branch for ten miles around without using its wings.'

Sister Clare smiled and Reverend Mother nudged her with her elbow, signing to her to keep quiet; and when she, herself, glanced at Paul she saw the sun shining through the fabric of her veil and a handkerchief held furtively to her eyes.

There was silence now in the sun-filled car while outside cyclists continued to pass them, free-wheeling down the long hill. Presently there was a rustle of paper in the car as Sister Francis drew forth from her deep pocket a bag of soft peppermints, stuck together by the heat. Carefully she peeled the bits of paper off the sweets, and as she held out the bag to Reverend Mother she said: ‘Excuse my fingers.' But Reverend Mother shook her head, and Clare and Benignus, seeing that she had refused, felt it would be improper for them to accept. Francis shook the bag towards Paul but since she had her eyes closed, as if in prayer, she neither saw nor heard what was being offered to her. ‘
In somno pacis
,' said Francis, popping two peppermints into her own mouth and hiding the bag in her wide sleeve. ‘A peppermint is soothing and cool on a hot day like this,' she added with apologetic good nature.

A hot smell of peppermint drifted around the car. Reverend Mother lowered her window to its full length, and though the air rushed in in soft folds around her face it was unable to quench the flaming odour. Somehow, for Reverend Mother, the day, that had hardly begun yet, was spoiled by an old nun with foolish habits and by a young nun unwise enough not to know when to stop questioning. Everything was going wrong, and it would not surprise her that before evening clouds of rain would blow in from the sea and blot out completely the soft loveliness of the sunny day. Once more she looked at Paul, and, seeing her head bowed in thought, she knew that there was some aspect of the countryside, some shape in cloud or bush, that brought back to Paul a sweet but sombre childhood. For herself she had no such memories – there was nothing in her own life, she thought, only a mechanical ordering, a following of routine, that may have brought some pleasure into other people's lives but none to her own. However, she'd do her best to make the day pleasant for them; after all, it was only one day in the year and if the eating of peppermints gave Sister Francis some satisfaction it was not right to thwart her.

She smiled sweetly then at Francis, and as Francis offered the sweets once more, and she was stretching forward to take one there was a sudden dunt to the back of the car and a crash of something falling on the road. The car stopped and the nuns looked at one another, their heads bobbing in consternation. They saw the driver raise himself slowly from his seat, walk back the road, and return again with a touch of his cap at the window.

‘A slight accident, Sister,' he said, addressing Reverend Mother. ‘A cyclist crashed into our back wheel. But it's nothing serious, I think.'

Reverend Mother went out leaving the door open, and through it there came the free sunlight, the cool air, and the hum of people talking. She was back again in a few minutes with her handkerchief dabbed with blood, and collected other handkerchiefs from the nuns, who followed her out on to the road. Sister Paul stood back and saw amongst the bunch of people a young man reclining on the bank of the road, a hand to his head. ‘I can't stand the sight of blood,' she said to herself, her fingers clutching her rosary beads. She beckoned to a lad who was resting on his bicycle: ‘Is he badly hurt, lad? He'll not die, will he?'

‘Not a bit of him, Sister. He had his coat folded over the handlebars and the sleeve of it caught in the wheel and flung him against the car.'

‘Go up, like a decent boy, and have a good look at him again.'

But before the lad had reached the group the chauffeur had assisted the injured man to his feet and was leading him to the car. The handkerchiefs were tied like a turban about his head, his trousers were torn at the knee, and a holy medal was pinned to his braces.

‘Put his coat on or he'll catch cold,' Reverend Mother was saying.

‘Och, Sister, don't worry about me,' the man was saying. ‘Sure it was my own fault. Ye weren't to blame at all. I'll go back again on my own bicycle – I'm fit enough.'

Reverend Mother consulted the chauffeur and whatever advice he gave her the injured man was put into the back of the car. Sister Francis was ordered into the vacant seat beside the driver, the baskets were handed to Paul and Clare, and when the man's bicycle was tied to the carrier they drove off for the hospital in the town.

The young man, sitting between Reverend Mother and Sister Paul, shut his eyes in embarrassment, and when the blood oozed through the pile of handkerchiefs Reverend Mother took the serviettes from the baskets and tied them round his head and under his chin, and all the time the man kept repeating: ‘I'm a sore trouble to you, indeed. And sure it was my own fault.' She told him to button his coat or he would catch cold, and when he had done so she noticed a Total Abstinence badge in the lapel.

‘A good clean-living man,' she thought, and to think that he was the one to meet with an injury while many an old drunkard could travel the roads of Ireland on a bicycle and arrive home without pain or scratch or cough.

‘'Tis a blessing of God you weren't killed,' she said, with a rush of protectiveness, and she reached for the thermos flask from the basket and handed the man a cup of tea.

Now and again Sister Paul would steal a glance at him, but the sight of his pale face and cup trembling in his hand and rattling on the saucer made her turn to the window where she tried to lose herself in contemplation. But all her previous mood was now scattered from her mind, and she could think of nothing only the greatness of Reverend Mother and the cool way she took command of an incident that would have left the rest of them weak and confused.

‘How are you feeling now?' she could hear Reverend Mother asking. ‘Would you like another sandwich?'

‘No, thank you, Sister; sure I had my good breakfast in me before I left the house. I'm a labouring man and since I'm out of work this past three months my wife told me to go off on the bike and have a swim with myself. I was going to take one of the youngsters on the bar of the bike but my wife wouldn't let me.'

‘She had God's grace about her,' said Reverend Mother. ‘That should be a lesson to you,' and as she refilled his cup from the thermos flask she thought that if the young man had been killed they, in a way, would have had to provide his widow and children with some help. ‘And we were only travelling slowly,' she found herself saying aloud.

‘Sure, Sister, no one knows that better than myself. You were keeping well into your own side of the road and when I was ready to sail past you on the hill my coat caught in the front wheel and my head hit the back of your car.'

‘S-s-s,' and the nuns drew in the breath with shrinking solicitude.

They drove up to the hospital, and after Reverend Mother had consulted the doctor and was told that the wound was only a slight abrasion and contusion she returned light-heartedly to the car. Sister Clare made no remark when she heard the news but as the wheels of the car rose and fell on the road they seemed to echo what was in her mind:
abrasion and contusion, abrasion and contusion
. ‘Abrasion and contusion of what?' she asked herself. ‘Surely the doctor wouldn't say “head” – abrasion and contusion of the head?' No, there must be some medical term that Reverend Mother had withheld from them, and as she was about to probe Reverend Mother for the answer the car swung unexpectedly into the convent avenue. ‘Oh,' she said with disappointment, and when alighting from the car and seeing Sister Francis give the remains of her sweets to the chauffeur she knew that for her, too, the day was at an end.

They all passed inside except Reverend Mother who stood on the steps at the door noting the quiet silence of the grounds and the heat-shadows flickering above the flowerbeds. With a mocking smile she saw the lawnmower at rest on the uncut lawn and found herself mimicking the gardener: ‘I'll have it all finished today, Sister, I'll have it all finished today.' She put a hand to her throbbing head and crossed the gravel path to look for him, and there in the clump of laurel bushes she found him fast asleep, his hat over his face to keep off the flies, and three empty porter bottles beside him. She tiptoed away from him. ‘He has had a better day than we have had,' she said to herself, ‘so let him sleep it out, for it's the last he'll have at my expense … Oh, drink is a curse,' and she thought of the injury that had befallen the young man with the Abstinence Badge and he as sober as any judge. Then she drew up suddenly as something quick and urgent came into her mind: ‘Of course! – he would take the job as gardener, and he unemployed this past three months!' With head erect she sped quickly across the grass and into the convent. Sister Paul was still in the corridor when she saw Reverend Mother lift the phone and ring up the hospital: ‘Is he still there? … He's all right? … That's good … Would you tell him to call to see me sometime this afternoon?' There was a transfigured look on her face as she put down the receiver and strode across to Sister Paul. ‘Sister Paul,' she said, ‘you may tell the other Sisters that on tomorrow we will set out again for the shore.' Sister Paul smiled and whisked away down the corridor: ‘Isn't Reverend Mother great the way she can handle things?' she said to herself. ‘And to think that on tomorrow I'll be able to see the poplars again.'

Believe me the queerest man I ever met was a schoolmaster, a distant relation of my own, a man by the name of Neeson. He was unmarried, and like most of my relations he was bald, but that had nothing to do with his queerness. He was the principal of a two-teacher school in the townland of Killymatoskerty about five miles from Ballymena, and in that draughty cage of a school I taught under him for one long, miserable year. Of course if I had known the manner of man he was I wouldn't have gone near him.

I was young and had little knowledge of the world when he first put his paws on me. I was just out from the Training College when a letter, without a stamp, came to me from Master Neeson saying he required an assistant and that he could get me appointed. I paid the surcharge on the letter and wrote accepting the job. A week later another stampless letter arrived telling me that he would meet my train on Saturday at Ballymena and escort me to my digs at Killymatoskerty. The letters without stamps puzzled me and, being suspicious by nature I came to the conclusion that Master Neeson had innocently given the letters to a schoolboy to post and that the lad had pocketed the stamp-money.

‘About your letters,' I probed cautiously when I was walking with him from Ballymena station.

‘Yes, yes, of course,' he answered, taking my arm confidentially. ‘Now you're going to tell me about the stamps. Sure I knew you wouldn't mind paying a penny or two for a letter. You know, Michael, it's very difficult to get stamps where I teach, and I just toss the letters – the ones to my special friends of course – into the roadside post-box. Soon enough, Michael, you'll learn that teaching in Killymatoskerty has its little drawbacks, its little inconveniences – miles away from civilisation.' And then he told how he had tried every garage in Ballymena to hire a car to drive us out to Killymatoskerty and divil the one was to be had for love nor money: ‘McCambridge's is the only garage I didn't try,' and he took my arm and whispered to my ear: ‘Maybe, Michael, you'd have better luck than I.' It was very warm as we walked along the sun-scorched street, and Master Neeson took of his hat and fanned his shiny head. He pointed out McCambridge's to me and while he held my suitcase I went up and stood waiting in the thick greasy heat of the garage. In a few minutes I was waving and smiling at him: ‘Come on – we're in luck!'

When we were seated in the motor he rubbed his thin little hands together: ‘It's grand, Michael, we were lucky enough to get a car. A five-mile-walk in that heat would suffocate you.' And as the car raced into open country I looked out at the fields and saw men stripped to the waist sweeping scythes through the ripe corn. ‘Grand harvest weather, Michael,' and he put down the window and felt the cooling breeze on his bald head. Hens slept in holes under the shade of the hedges and a dog licked the drops that dripped from a pump. At a wayside pub I stood the Master a bottle of stout and while he was drinking it he told me that on account of his weak digestive system only one bottle agreed with him.

Into the car we got again and I lay back and lit my pipe. He asked what kind of brand I smoked and I asked him to try a fill. He borrowed my matches, lit his pipe, and put the matchbox in his pocket.

‘Nice cool tobacco,' he said. ‘You'd get nothing like that around these parts … My God, that's a grand blend! A lovely blend!' – his admiration mounting with each puff. ‘Leave it to you to pick out the good stuff!' and he joined his hands across his stomach, closed his narrow little eyes, and blew out the smoke with whistling satisfaction. Then he pointed the shank of his pipe at Slemish where cloud-shadows were moving to pilfer the sun from the fields. ‘Climb up there some day and you'll see the grandest sight in Ireland … All County Antrim spread at your feet and a breeze that you could drink coming up from the sea! I could be happy there myself herding pigs!' and he opened his mouth in a gale of laughter.

At his house he ordered the driver to stop, and he got out for a few minutes telling me to stay where I was as I had still another two miles to go. From where I sat I could see the grey school; its three windows with empty flowerpots, a few discarded lunch-papers lying at the porch, and the red post-box built into the pillar of the gate.

‘I was just telling the housekeeper I'd not be back for tea,' he said, sinking down on the seat again. He clapped and rubbed his hands: ‘We can have tea together in your digs and celebrate the evening. You'll be at the very pinnacle of comfort where I'm bringing you.' He put his pipe in his pocket and leaned forward with a hand on my knee: ‘You'll get plenty of fresh eggs and fresh butter and bacon and chickens.' And he said this with such keen delight that even the very words seemed to contain the flavour of the food. The car stopped at a slated farmhouse, and while Master Neeson carried in my suitcase I paid the driver.

In the low sitting-room – two steps down off the kitchen – we dined off cold chicken, beetroot and fresh lettuce. Master Neeson, with his head down near the plate, simply tore at the food and at the end wiped his mouth with the palm of his hand and winked an eye: ‘If you don't mind, Michael, I'll wrap up this leg of chicken for my housekeeper just to show her how a chicken should be cooked.' He wrapped it carefully in a piece of newspaper, put it in his pocket, and sat down in the arm-chair. Though the air was warm there was a fire of turf in the grate and he stretched out his short legs in front of it and joined his hands across his stomach. His boots were thickly soled, and though he was a thin man he wore a celluloid collar with a black bow, a Donegal tweed suit and a silver chain with a heavy watch. ‘If you don't mind, Michael,' he said, blinking his eyes, ‘I'll have forty winks. That glass of stout has overpowered me and the long walk in to meet the train was very exhausting. You know, Michael, I didn't want you to be straying round Ballymena like a lost pup.'

I slipped out to have a look at the countryside and when I came back the Master was snoring, the tea dishes cleared away. I sat down quietly and while I was looking for something to light my pipe I noticed a piece of greasy newspaper lying in the fender and in the red heart of the fire the dark outline of a chicken bone. The smell of my tobacco wakened him and he took out his pipe and asked me to oblige him with another fill. Shortly afterwards he left for home.

For the first few weeks it never occurred to me to criticise Master Neeson, but I couldn't close my ears to the gossip of the country people, for whenever his name was mentioned there were surreptitious giggles and furtive winkings of the eye: ‘You haven't a spare match on you,' someone would say, imitating Master Neeson's voice. The group would give an inward chuckle until someone else would drawl: ‘Now you wouldn't happen to a have a wee tiny bit of solution to mend a puncture,' or ‘I hear Master Neeson needs a new housekeeper – don't all rush!' I learned from them that he cut his own turf in the moss, wheeled it out himself, and instead of employing a man to cart it home he very ingeniously made a one-wheeled trailer, affixed it to the back fork of his bicycle and in this way was able to bring home six or seven basketfuls of turf after school-hours. When he cycled past the houses someone was sure to say: ‘There's Master Neeson away by' and someone ask: ‘Has he the baby with him?' – meaning the basket on the trailer.

In school he was like a machine, now and again glancing out of the window in dread of an inspector's visit. He tried very indulgently to fashion my life in accordance with his own: ‘Always be early, Michael! Never miss a day! Keep your books corrected; and above all – oh, above all – keep to the timetable!' He was a slave to that timetable and even in the coldest days of winter he would be out in the yard, his hat on his head, putting his shivering class through their physical jerks. One morning I was late; I came in at 9.30 and inserted 9.15 in the teachers' roll; he told me that it was dishonest and that I had committed a serious breach of the regulations. He lectured me on punctuality; then he lectured me on thrift, producing from his desk a little black notebook which he assured me was twenty years old. He licked his thumb and turned the pages: in it he had tabulated the names of past pupils who had owed him pennies or halfpennies for books. Then he whispered into my ear: ‘When you know the country people as well as I do you'll find they're all out to fleece you!'

At lunch-time I didn't go home, but made tea on a primus stove. And one day he joined me and gave as much praise to the tea as he had done to the blend of my tobacco, rubbing his hands and saying: ‘Michael, that housekeeper I have can't make tea. I think I'll get rid of her.' He could form habits quickly and every day now he sat down with me at lunch-hour and gave out his unctuous litany. But the gossips had affected me; I was ashamed of him and never revealed to anyone that he was a distant relation of my own. Then after Christmas I bought a second-hand bicycle and cycled to my digs at lunch-hour, leaving him to tinker, if he liked, with my primus stove.

Cold frosty weather set in and I took a day off. He was up to see me after school-hours and sat on the edge of the bed, talking incessantly: ‘The average is going down …When a teacher stays away it's a bad example for the children … There'll be forty per cent absent tomorrow.' He ran his forefinger round the circumference of his celluloid collar and stretched out his empty palm over the bed-clothes: ‘What capitation-grant will I lift at the end of the year? Nothing! Not a solitary penny!'

‘But I've a temperature!' I almost shouted.

‘A temperature! A young man like you to have a temperature! My God you talk like a medical student! Do you know how many days I've missed within the last twenty years?' I had heard it all before so I turned my head to the wall. He leaned over the bed-clothes: ‘Not one day have I missed! There's a record for you … And here you are – a young man with rich, luscious blood to be talking about a temperature!' Then he whispered close to my ear: ‘You'll be in tomorrow, Michael? Don't let me down.' To get rid of him I said ‘Yes!' and though the next morning I arrived after ten I was confronted with his ponderous watch which lay ticking beside the teachers' roll. He rubbed his hands, and while I signed my time on the roll-book I was conscious of his scrutinising eyes.

I was tired of him and looked out for a change. Easter approached, and he described with great volubility how he was yearning for the week's holidays. ‘Where do you intend going?' I asked him.

‘To the old home … To my mother's across the Bann … I never go anywhere else on my holidays. I've been doing that for the past thirty years – there's a record for you!' And that Easter when I was going to Ballymena to catch the train I saw him perched on his bicycle ready to set off for his mother's. He had on his only suit – the heavy Donegal tweed; a spring clip was fixed to the rim of his hat and attached to it was a piece of cord which in turn was swivelled to a button on his coat. On the trailer was a crate of hens, poking out their heads, and chuckling hysterically when a dog came over and sniffed at them. ‘Have a good time,' he said to me and then got down from the saddle and whispered: ‘I'm taking some of the hens with me for the week. That housekeeper I have would starve them.' But later when I came back after the week's holidays it was rumoured throughout the country that he had taken the laying hens with him for the week and left the others with the housekeeper.

I avoided him now as much as possible and saw little of him except during school-hours or when he rode past the house on a sunny afternoon on his way to the moss. But towards the end of June he asked me to his house to help him with the rolls and averages for the school-year.

It was late in the evening when I arrived, and his housekeeper brought me into his bare little sitting-room. The turf was set in the grate, the white papers sticking out ready to be lit. She told me that Master Neeson had to go out as the parish priest had sent for him, and she handed me a note which the Master had left. In it he advised me how to proceed with the calculations and admonished me – underlining the words heavily – to be sure and do the calculations in pencil and he would check them.

‘Would you put a match to the fire?' I asked the housekeeper.

‘Oh, sir,' she said, twisting her apron, ‘I think you shouldn't light it till the Master comes back. There's a way in lighting it or it'll smoke the place.'

I bent down and lit the fire and she stood with a hand to her cheek, watching me. I smiled to her: ‘I'll take the blame.' She stared at me with wide knowing eyes and then went out quickly.

On a round table near the window was a corkless bottle of ink with a jagged top, a pen, four roll-books backed with brown paper and on the ledge of the window a few dead flies, a
Superseded Spelling Book
and a Nesfield's
English Grammar
. In that atmosphere I worked steadily for two hours, looking through the window now and again to see if the Master were coming. I lit the lamp, but there was little oil in it and after half an hour it went dead. I hammered on the table for the housekeeper, but she didn't hear me, and getting up I struck matches and went to look for her. She was sitting in the kitchen, a kettle simmering on a sunken fire, a skimpy light stretching from the lamp on the wall which was bare except for a grocer's calendar.

I turned the lamp up full. ‘Oh, Sir!' she started. I told her about the lamp in the room. She shook her head and told me that the Master had the key of the outhouse where the oil was stored. I sat on the table and chatted to her and because I had a splitting headache I asked her to make me a cup of tea.

‘Sir, sir, I couldn't!' and she looked up at me with frightened eyes. ‘Not till Master Neeson arrives.' I understood everything, and I stretched up my hand to the mantelpiece and lifted down the tea-canister. ‘I'll make it!' I said. ‘Many's the cup I made in school for the Master.'