Collected Short Stories (21 page)

‘Oh, sister, look at the boats!' The boy pointed at the docks where red funnels of ships rose in the air, the wintry sun shining on their varnished masts.

‘You'll see plenty of boats, Peter, where you are going. Come quickly now or you'll miss the train,' said the nun, walking along with her head down and her hands in her sleeves.

Around them was the pulse and traffic of the city, but Peter paid no heed as he began to spell aloud the enormous black letters printed on the shipping sheds: G-L-A-S-G-O-W, L-I-V-E-R-P-O-O-L, H-E-Y-S-H-A-M.

They came on to the iron-latticed bridge and in sight of the station. The nun walked slowly, allowing Peter to enjoy the grand view of the boats from the bridge. The harbour was blue and sparkled with cold sunlight, but under the bridge the water was brown and carried on its back whirls of soot and orange peel. Peter leaned over the parapet, fascinated by the long line of ships and the gulls that flew around them.

Over the bridge they went. A one-legged man sat beside his charcoal drawings and a few coppers lay in his cap, but Peter had no eyes for him; he kept craning his head towards the ships, and when he came into the chilly station he could see them no more.

‘Don't you worry, madam,' said the railway guard to the nun. ‘I'll see him right to Downpatrick.'

The nun placed a hand on Peter's shoulder: ‘Be a good boy now and work hard for your new master.' And as she passed out of the station she sighed: ‘They're getting a manly little fellow anyway.'

Peter, carrying his belongings in a brown parcel, walked along the platform, and the guard opened a carriage door for him: ‘Sit in there, and don't be sticking yer head out of the window. She'll be going out in a minute or two.'

The carriage was heated, the windows closed, and a stale tobacco smell lingering in the air. He sat down on the seat with the parcel on his lap, and waited for the train to start.

He was a sturdy lad of fifteen, black haired, dressed in a grey suit and grey stockings; and swivelled to a button on his coat was a label with his new address printed in ink:

PETER MCCLOSKEY,

c/o MR & MRS ROBERT GILL,

KILLARD,

STRANGFORD, CO. DOWN

He was fingering the label when the guard came in and told him about the people he was going to: ‘Aw, Robert Gill is as dacent a man as you'll find in the whole countryside. He'll be at Downpatrick to meet you … Aw, you'll have a nice place with Robert.'

Slowly the train moved out, and sunlight crossed and recrossed the carriage like pages turning in a book. Out past the backs of grey houses it rumbled and he saw chalk-markings on the doors, pigeon-sheds on the yard walls, a clothes-line with two pegs, and in one place the paper tails of a kite entangled in the telegraph wires. Stations with tin advertisements rattled past, and then came a great brightness in the carriage as the train raced into the open country.

The hedges were black and ragged, and deserted nests stuck out as clear as thrown sods. The fields were newly ploughed, and around the farm houses were hay stacks and bare trees. Sheep rushed madly from the thundering train; the long twisted roll of smoke shook itself over the fields, tore through the hedges, and trailed away in tattered rags.

Here and there at a station groups of shawled women with baskets waited for the train, and sometimes the guard opened Peter's door: ‘Everything all right, lad? It won't be long now till we're there.' He would wave his green flag and the train, with many a protesting grunt, would chug away from the silent box of a station.

The country became more hummocky, and from the window he saw the lovely triangular mountains of Mourne. Presently the train curved and rumbled between rushy lakes that were littered with wild ducks and suddenly the ducks arose and circled in great scattered flocks until the noise of the train was swallowed up in Downpatrick station.

Peter sat patiently in the carriage; doors opened and slammed; and then the guard appeared, accompanied by a small man smoking a pipe.

‘This is your lad, Robert. A fine lump of a fella he looks!'

Robert nodded his head and shook Peter's hand. They passed out of the station, Robert a little in front, the tail of his green-black overcoat spattered with mud, and a tweed cap on the back of his head. They went over to a cart where a woman stood at the horse's head.

‘Alice!' Robert said to her. ‘This is our boy … What's this now yer name is? … Peter! A good solid name! “Thou art Peter and upon this Rock” … Man, I knew my catechism when I was at school. And do ye know, the schoolmaster wanted me to go on for the Church …'

‘Here quit the swaggering till we get on the road,' interrupted Alice. ‘The boy's perished with the cold. I'm sure you're hungry, son … Come on, Robert, and we'll go over to Fitzsimons' atin'-house for a mouthful of tay.'

They crossed to a shop that displayed in the window dishes of soda farls and four bottles of lemonade, a flowerpot with no flowers, and a card announcing in scraggy letters: TEA, BREAD, and BUTTER – 6d.

When they came out again, the faint sun was low in the sky, a frosty wind was skimming over the road, and the horse was stamping impatiently. They moved slowly out of the hilly town, Robert and Alice walking alongside the cart, and Peter sitting in it with a black shawl pinned around his shoulders. Up and up they climbed, with Downpatrick, a grey town of hills and hollows, clumped behind them. The sun had now exhausted itself, and its light shone on the ploughed land and the gables of white cottages.

They topped the braes and descended towards flat-spreading land with the long arm of Strangford Lough stretching into it. Robert motioned with his pipe to a white column that marked the mouth of the lough and the open sea. ‘Fornenst that is the house, Peter. We're down at the very jaws of the sea!' And he stook the rope-reins of the horse and she moved quickly down the hill. He looked at his big watch and then turned his head towards the lowering sun: ‘It'll be dark afore we're home.' And he handed the reins to Alice and pared a stump of a candle for the lamp. His hands were red with the cold and when he shut his fists white marks appeared on his knuckles.

The cart bumped and jolted on the road. A cold wind swept over the land and the candle brightened in the increasing darkness. The horse began to pull harder and a brisker sound rattled from her hooves as she came into the full blast of the sea. The land was now dark and lights from the scattered homes glimmered like little sparks; Peter could see them through the bare hedges and sometimes his eyes shut as he gazed at the shadows of the wheel revolving in the light of the lamp. But when he heard the waves break on the stones he sat up alert and occupied, gazing across the black land to the steely sea.

The horse stopped and Robert stretched himself and groaned: ‘Thank God, we're landed!'

They key was turned in the door, and Alice, without taking off her hat and coat, went cautiously over to the oil-lamp on the wall, and when it was lit Peter saw the interior of his new home. The fire was out, the floor was stone flagged, a towel hung from a nail on the back door, and above it was a horseshoe covered with silver paper.

Robert stamped about and rubbed his hands: ‘That night's as dark as a grave. Hurry up, Alice, and get a blink in the fire.'

Then he began to spar playfully with Peter. ‘Man, boy, when I was at sea I was a great fighter. I mind once when we landed at Bombay and one of them Indian coolies – aw, a towering giant of a fella – he starts to give up ould guff.'

‘Here!' ordered Alice. ‘Will you stop your ould guff and hack a bit of stick for the fire … Here, child! He wouldn't think of offering you a seat itself with his ould blether. Sit over at the hearth, though there's no fire in it ‘tis warmer than around the door.'

Peter sat on the stool. Above him were black rafters with rows of salted fish and coils of rope, and in one corner an old checked school-bag which caught his eye every time he raised his head.

Soon the sticks were crackling and Robert, with his overcoat around him and his cap pushed back from his bald head, took a chair by the fire. He began to light his pipe and Peter watched the glow on his brown face and his eyes shining as dark as sloes. He pulled deeply at the pipe and pressed the lighted paper down into the bowl.

‘Do ye know,' says he, without taking his eyes off the bowl of the pipe, ‘what is the nearest thing to death about a house?'

Nobody answered him and he made another spill to light his pipe. ‘Well, I'll tell ye … A hearth without a fire and a house without a woman!'

He spat into the fire with great satisfaction and swayed back on the chair till its front legs rode off the floor.

Alice listened to him and her mind stumbled back through the years, and from the tangles of her memory she sought for the things that had been her life: marrying Robert when he came from sea; buying the house and the land; black winters and poor harvests that they had lived through; and now when old age had crept upon them they had brought in a boy to help with the land and the fishing. She turned and saw him with his hands on his knees, her shawl around his shoulders and the pin of it catching the firelight. She sighed to herself: ‘The years are flying.' And as if to hold them back and get something done she bustled so quickly about the table that Robert looked at her with pride. ‘Man, Alice, you're the girl can hustle herself when hunger's in the air.'

Peter sat quite still. Outside was the noising sea, and he thought of the boats that he had seen in the morning, leaving the orphanage with the nun, the train and the guard, and then the tiresome journey on the cart. It seemed such a long, long time for one day.

‘Now, Peter, eat yer fill. Butter his bread for him, Alice. … Them newspapers tell ye not to eat goin' to bed. But don't heed them. Always take plenty of ballast aboard for a night's journey.'

Alice smiled and he noticed that she was eating nothing.

‘Are yer pains back again, Alice?'

‘No, no, the journey's upset me,' and she split a farl in two and forced herself to eat.

After the tea Peter drowsed by the fire, listening to the slow contented pulls of Robert's pipe and Alice making a yellow mash for the hens. Then the sounds became blurred, his eyes closed, and his head jerked towards the fire.

‘Yer dying with sleep, Peter!' and Robert stretched out a hand and patted his knee.

He smiled sleepily, and Alice lit a candle and brought him across the kitchen to his room. The air was cold, the bed low, and boxes and trunks along the walls. She thumped the pillow a few times and drew in her breath sharply as a pain stabbed her side. Peter looked at her anxiously and she smiled. ‘Good-night now, and don't forget yer prayers. And blow out the candle.'

He lay for awhile listening to the sea; and later when Alice peeped into the room to see if he had blown out the candle he was fast asleep.

In the morning, instead of the white enamel bed of the orphanage and the noisy chatter of boys, he found himself in a dark little room. Coats with newspapers on the shoulders hung on the door and gulls flew past the window. A bucket clattered and Alice shouted: ‘Away on, you thief … There's that rogue of a gull back again, Robert. I can't leave a pick of hens' mate about the place but she throttles it!'

Robert stamped his feet at the threshold.

‘I'll lame her one of these fine days! That's the same girl that lifts the salted fish! Ai, I'll give it to her!' The gull called and dipped low over the house and a fistful of gravel followed in her wake.

Every morning there was the same taunt, but the gulls paid no heed and flocked around unconcernedly. The days were short and cold. The white cottage with its tarred roof overlooked the sea, and in stormy weather the spray flung itself at the windows, swished on the roof, and the gulls forsook the shore.

Slowly Peter fitted into his new life, and he would often sit with Robert on the upturned boat at the side of the house. The boat was propped on flat stones and made a shelter for the hens in wet weather; and one day when Peter himself had crawled under it Robert had seen him and shouted in to him: ‘Look hard and tell me if ye see any seams of light in her roof.' And when Peter had answered ‘No!' Robert began to praise the great timber that was in her and to tell Peter of the grand fishing they'd have as soon as June arrived.

It was now March, the days dry and blustery, and the sea very blue. Robert's land was ready for the plough and one dry morning he and Peter were early astir. They went out to a last year's potato field which lay grey and uneven under a cold sky.

The plough tore it up without bother. Peter walked in front of the plough and lifted stones out of its way, while behind Alice gathered in her lap potatoes that had lain in the soil all winter. Day by day Peter learned Robert's phrases: ‘There's no nourishment in land that's easily ploughed,' or ‘The soil here'd kill no horse: it's too dry and sandy,' or ‘It's a hungry bit of land and you have to keep feedin' it with manure.' And Peter repeated these to himself and to the boys he met in the evenings or coming from Mass.

When the field was opened Robert began to sow the seed using a bed-sheet looped around his neck as a carrier. He sowed the one way, scattering the grain with his back to the wind for it was blowing fiercely. Peter stood to the side clodding at the gulls and the crows and pouring buckets of seed into the sheet. The small field was at the back of the house and sheltered from the sea by a scraggy line of thorn bushes; they were now stooped and black and from their lower thorns sheep's wool streamed in the wind. To keep himself warm Peter raced and shouted at the birds, and even when Alice called him for his dinner he looked angrily out of the window at the crows waddling over the brown soil and pecking at the seed. ‘Them's the thieves; they'll have all the corn ate if we don't hurry.'