Collected Short Stories (22 page)

‘Aw now, they have to feed like everybody else,' Robert winked at Alice.

But Peter rose from his dinner and with his fists full of stones he made out to the field and scattered the gulls and the crows. The next day Robert let him harrow and laughed at the way he sprawkled over the soil. ‘Aw, Peter, yer not strong enough. But ye'll grow, and next year ye'll be sowing the grain yerself.'

Cold days passed and the brown field was swept by a frosty wind. Then came rain and the green shoots appeared above the ground. Buds came in the thorn bushes, but no birds sang in them. And one day when Robert saw Peter searching for nests he nodded his head. ‘Them bushes are poisoned with the salt water and there's no shelter in them. It's in from the sea the birds build,' and he pointed across his fields to the thick hedges and the clumps of trees that rose out of the kindlier land.

Whins came in bloom, the larks rose in the air, and the ewes gave birth to their young. It was time for putting in potatoes. People were in the fields from early morning and in the evenings the dead weeds were burnt and the air was filled with a pleasant smell.

Robert's potato field was small and his own horse opened the drills. The seed potatoes were carried out in crates from the dark barn. Peter forked the manure into the furrows and Alice placed the seed on top with their white teeth towards the sky. The plough moved down and the soil gushed over the seed. In two days they had sown the potatoes; and then Robert made lobster pots, Peter sitting beside him on the upturned boat learning the craft.

For weeks the wind stayed in the north and there came no rain. The soil turned grey and the young corn ceased growing. At Mass on Sunday they offered up prayers for rain and on the road home Robert joked with the neighbours: ‘The Man above is tired listening to us. His head is astray with our crankiness. When it does rain we want sunshine and when we have sun we want rain.'

But the days continued dry and warm, and Peter had to take the horse to a river a mile off and cart home barrels of water. The sun scorched the land, and the seedlings lengthened their white roots and sought strength and moisture in the darker earth. And in the evenings Robert stood at the gable of the house looking across the land at the sun going down in yellow glory from the naked sky.

Then the wind changed to the south and the air became soft with the promise of rain. Flocks of black cloud blew in from the sea and from their ragged edges rain fell like tails of sand. The soil softened, wet mists lay in the folds of the land, and in the evenings there was the smell of growing things.

The grass thickened and Peter had to take the cow along the sea-road and let it graze from the banks. Alice gave him a switch and when he went into the byre to fetch the cow Robert followed him. ‘If the policeman passing on his bicycle asks ye why the cow is trespassin' on the public highway tell him yer takin' her to the field. Do ye hear?' And he laughed loudly for he knew there wasn't as much grazing in his field as'd satisfy a goat.

As the cow grazed along the edges of the road Peter ran down the sloping bank to the shore and searched for crabs; and amongst the hard encrusted seaweed he found whitened corks and rusted tin-tops of bottles, and with these he made a boat with funnels and decks. He lay and watched the tide, like a river in flood, flowing out of the lough to the open sea. And one day when a coal-boat approached he forgot about the cow, so intensely did the boat hold his mind. It cruised about the bar waiting for the tide to turn and carry it up to Portaferry; then as it neared the shore he gazed at the white spurt of water that gushed from its side and at the smoke purling from the funnel. A man in his shirt-sleeves leaned over the rail and flung a bucket with a rope on it into the sea, and then he hauled in and swilled the water along the deck. Peter waited for him to do it again, but the hoot of a lorry startled him and he raced up to the narrow road where the driver abused him for having his cow loose.

Every day, now, he was to be seen with the cow along the road; and the neighbours got to know him and bade him the time of day, as they passed in carts, on bicycles, or on foot. He learned the directions of the wind, and when it blew soft and moist from the south-west and he saw in the distance the clouds pile up on the top of the Mournes he knew it was going to rain. But he never turned home. He sought shelter at the gables of tumbled-down houses or snuggled against grassy banks, knowing that the wind blew strong from the sea and slanted the rain from him. At such times he tore out stones from the bank and prodded the scurrying ants with a twig as they scrambled into their tiny holes. Then he would watch the gulls on the shore all facing windward and he knew they did that to keep their feathers smooth. Sometimes he gathered primroses and put them in a glass jam-pot in the ledge of the window; and once when he was gathering them a lark flew off her nest and he saw her five chocolate eggs, and watched day by day until the young birds had feathered and taken wing.

In the evenings shelduck flew in flocks from the upper reaches of the lough and fed amongst the weedy stones and green glut below the house. He often tried to get near them, but they were always the first to fly off and alight again on the other side of the lough. Lazily the gulls would follow, and the shore would be deserted when Peter had gone back to the house. As darkness fell he would stand at the bedroom window, gazing at the windy light of the buoy on the lough's mouth and farther out the winking lights of ships passing through the night.

The summer came, the crops grew and hid the clay in the fields. Robert tarred and painted his boat, spread her brown sail in the sun and patched it in places where the mice had gnawed it. Hens' feathers stuck to the tar, the sun blistered it and Peter burst the blisters with his fingers. The day arrived when she was carried from the side of the house to the shore. Robert taught him how to row and how to feather his oar; and in the evenings he stood proudly at the door, feeling the hardness of his muscles, and looking at the boat lying up on the stones.

In the mornings they were up when the fields were grey with dew, the sea cold and colourless, and the sky dull. The whole world would be asleep but themselves and the sea. The spoke little to each other as Peter pulled towards the line of corks that marked the lobster pots. Robert, standing in the stern, would heave in the pots, cautiously take out the blue lobsters and then rebait with stale fish. The chilly air would fling the sleep from Peter, and resting on the oars he would scan that low, wide land with its white houses, dead and deserted, and nothing astir now but the beasts in the fields and an odd gull swaying in the air. Far out at sea the steamers, lonely and black, seemed to catch a deadness from the morning. But when the sun burst forth and flung a broken quivering light upon the sea, mist rose from the land, whiteness came to gulls, and the cows coughed as they got up from the crushed-warm grass.

‘'Tis the best time of the day to be up, Peter. You could thrive on that air; there's great strength in it,' and Robert would smoke his pipe as he tied the toes of the lobsters with bits of string. ‘If you left them boyos too long in the pots they'd find their way out again; and you'd think to look at their ugly mugs that they'd no intelligence. But them big crabs! I don't think they could find their way out of an empty can!'

In again, Alice would have the fire going and bowls of hot tea and eggs on the table. And one morning when they had finished their breakfast Robert told Peter to get the spade, and at low tide they went off to dig in the sand for lug worm. ‘I'll bring you out to the banks this day and we'll give the whiting a quare scutching. Do you think ye'd be fit to pull her out?'

‘I could row her the whole way myself,' Peter replied with great eagerness.

After the dinner Robert got ready the hand-lines and Alice filled a can with buttermilk and in another can put bread and scallions.

‘This'll help to keep away the hunger till yiz come in again,' and she handed the cans to Peter.

‘And listen, Alice,' said Robert turning at the door, ‘when Kelly comes round about the lobsters, don't be soft with him. Tell him my orders: a shillin' a-piece for the lobsters or no sale.'

She watched them go down to the boat. Peter in front carrying the cans, and Robert with an oar under his arm and the fishing gear in a basket.

They rowed out to the mouth of the lough and when they reached the open sea they hoisted the sail. A few boats were already on the banks and when Robert saw them he said with great pride: ‘Them boats is too far south for this tide. Wait'll ye see where Robert'll anchor,' and his eye scanned the coast. ‘We'll not be there till the boat's in line with the Mill and the Black Rock,' and he pointed to the land and taught Peter the ‘marks'.

‘Go up to the bow, now, and pitch out the anchor when I tell ye.' Robert jabbed at the water with his oars, his eyes fixed on the mainland. ‘Now!' he shouted.

Out went the anchor, and the rope burned through Peter's hands until the anchor found bottom. The boat swung round and bobbed up and down on the waves. A few gulls floated near and called loudly when the sun shone on them from a blue gap in the clouds.

Robert showed Peter how to bait the hooks, and in a few minutes the lead sinkers on the lines were flung over the side and were racing for the sandy bottom. They hauled in together and Peter laughed with delight when he saw a whiting on each of his hooks.

‘And ye tell me ye never fished in yer life before … Well, well, it's hard to believe it. It must be in the blood … Ye'll see them other boats comin' over to us when they see how we're killing … D'ye think ye could find it again?'

Peter faced the land. ‘Get the Mill and the Black Rock in line with the boat and out with yer anchor!'

Robert laughed loudly at the way Peter answered him and added: ‘Yer a purty intelligent fella … Ye must have been born on the sea.'

And so they lay out for hours, sometimes Robert smoking or handing round the can of buttermilk and the bread. Peter loved it and only wished now that he could smoke a pipe like Robert. He watched the gannets bursting into the sea and the cormorants with their long necks flying near the surface, but when the Ardglass herring boats appeared in the south he shouted excitedly: ‘Look, Robert, at the long line of boats.'

‘Them's the Ardglass men going out in the heel of the evening … It's a grand sight to see them … But it's the Dutch boats ye want to see; a lovely sight with their coloured sails. It's like a procession with banners.'

Peter listened as he told about other parts of the world, but all the time his eyes were on the herring drifters, watching the distance shorten between them. ‘Are they tryin' a race, Robert?'

“Deed, by my sowl, they might be! But it's not always the first boat gets the most herrin'.'

They hauled in the anchor and moved to a fresh mark, and when the sun had set they made for home. The evening was without an air of wind and they had to row, Robert advising Peter to take it easy as they had a long pull ahead of them. To the left at the foot of the sky were the hills of the Isle of Man with a big steamer passing near.

‘That boat's goin' to Liverpool from Belfast,' said Robert; and Peter remembered the day he had spelt aloud the words on the shipping sheds.

‘And are there many boats in Liverpool?' he asked.

‘Aw, hould yer tongue!' Robert spat over the side. ‘They're as thick as the corn in the fields; they choke each other for space – boats from all parts of the world! That's a sight! It wasn't the first time Robert was in Liverpool. And d'ye know that's where I signed on my first boat.'

He began to tell how he had left home for Belfast and sailed for Liverpool. He told of the foreign countries that he had seen, fights at sea, and how once in a fierce storm he was flung out of his bunk and had broken his arm.

Peter listened to him in silence.

‘What d'ye think of that for a life?' Robert finished.

Peter startled, his eyes were shining, and he gave a nervous little laugh.

Behind them the beam from St John's Lighthouse was lengthening in the wading dark. They rowed with long slow sweeps and soon they rounded the point and came into their own quiet bay. Alice had the light in the window and its beam made a shivering path upon the sea.

In below the house they landed and when Alice heard the thump of the oars she came down to meet them. She crossed her hands over her breast when she saw the white mass of fish.

‘Well, yiz did get one or two.'

Robert didn't answer her.

‘And had you any luck, Peter?'

‘Any luck!' And Robert told about the way Peter fished: ‘In the line goes and up it comes – a pair of whiting on it every time.'

Peter smiled and pulled with all his strength when they hauled the boat. There was silence; waves jabbled amongst the stones and a fish flapped in a last leap. Out on the bar the buoy's light shone and a chilly air rose up from the sea. Robert would roll up the sail, Peter bail out with a tin the brackish water, and together they would walk slowly towards the warm light in the doorway. Peter would chop sticks for the morning's fire and then take a last look round at the sheds. Sometimes he would stay out too long and Alice would come to the door: ‘Peter, are you there? Come on in or ye'll be foundered. There's a draught comes through the mouth of the lough that'd clean corn!'

And when the door was shut for the night, the blinds hooked to the window, the dishes washed and put on the dresser, Robert would take out his pipe, and Peter begin paring a piece of wood that was gradually taking on the shape of a boat. Alice would salt the fish and in the sunny mornings put them on the low hen-house roof and cover them with netting wire.

Week by week their stock of fish increased; the corn ripened early and their potatoes were good. At night when Peter had gone to bed they'd sit close to the fire and talk about him and the year that was ending. ‘That boy has brought us great luck … Thanks be to God for him!' And they'd fall silent and feel a deep peace breathing in the house.