Lucinda Sly (4 page)

After Walter Sly and Lucinda Singleton had eaten their meal on the Thursday and had come to know each other better, even though Sly had a strong desire for drink, he didn’t mention a hotel or tavern while he was in her company. Lucinda was impressed by his demeanour that evening but it was a little early, with a long road ahead of them, to make any judgement. Sly questioned her about the place she came from.

‘It’s called Tullow,’ she informed him, ‘a country town like any small town in Ireland.’

Sly knew the county well, not to mention the lie of the land. Anybody who was involved in buying and selling horses would be travelling east, west, up and down through the countryside.

Before they parted that evening, Sly told her that he would be travelling closeby Tullow the following Sunday. He told her that a farmer who lived near there was looking for a working horse and that he, Sly, had one. Without a doubt, there wasn’t a word of the truth in his statement. He wanted to cast his eye over her holding to assess it as a dowry, that is if things developed that far. He was
greedy for land since he was a young man.

‘Why don’t you come to my house on Sunday?’ Lucinda suggested. ‘I’ll have some food ready for you.’

‘I’ll be there about two o’clock,’ Sly replied, barely concealing his excitement.

Sly walked Lucinda to her horse, which she had tied to a ring at the side of the street; he put the horse under the cart and made sure that the horse’s harness was properly fitted for the road. No sooner had Lucinda and her horse passed the top of the street than Sly headed for Langstrom’s tavern and his old ways. He would have until Sunday to recover.

When Lucinda reached home that Thursday evening, her two cows hadn’t yet been milked. Having unharnessed the horse and put him grazing in the haggard, she milked her cows, strained the milk and poured it into the dishes in the dairy. It was many a long day since she had been so satisfied in her mind.

‘Now,’ she sighed, ‘maybe after all my years of slavery God will grant me ease for the rest of my life. Oh, when I think of the
hungry
years I spent digging and harrowing, sowing and harvesting to pay my rent, not to mention having to put a bite in my son’s mouth and in my own … Yes, and to put clothes on our bones, he had
little
thanks but to half kill me before he headed out into the world. But, that said, if he came in the door this minute, I’d forgive him everything … Ah yes, Walter Sly … Is he as well-to-do as I sensed from his talk? A woman of my age should be careful. The next day I go to Carlow, I’ll enquire as to his pedigree. Who would know him better than the shopkeeper he sells his butter to? I am at an
age now where there is no room for making a mistake. It’s a fine thing to marry into a farm as long as I wouldn’t be a slave. I have done my slaving.’

It was late in the night when Sly arrived home. He was barely able to take the saddle off his horse in his drunken stupor. When he had ripped the buckle under the horse’s belly, the saddle fell to the ground. He took off the headstall and let the horse off through the barn down to the field.

‘Bad cess to you! Isn’t there a great hunger on you? By God, there will be no cow milked till morning. I’m tired from the work of the day,’ he yawned.

Sly sat in his chair in the corner, took his pipe from the hole in the hob and pushed the chair up on its two back legs, a habit he had when he was thinking deeply. A good day’s work, he felt. His chances of securing a wife were good, a wife who was accustomed to farm work, churning, who could sew a patch in the backside of trousers, bake a cake of bread, and split seed potatoes for the spring planting. Wouldn’t it be good to come in from the field after a long day’s work to a hot meal on the table before him? But he thought it would be some time before that happened. He would have to be careful as this was his last chance to find a wife. No intermediary came to his house with an account of a match these twenty Shrovetides past. When he had thought enough about what was before him, Sly got up from the chair, broke wind and staggered to the bedroom.

Lucinda rose early the following Sunday morning and put a hunk of pork into the pot on the hook over the open fire. She
would boil it for an hour and then put it on the hot coals on the side of the fire. That way, the meat and green cabbage would be softly boiling while she attended the service at the Protestant church a mile down the road.

In his own house in Oldleighlin, Walter Sly was up at the break of day in order to have the housework done and himself well shaved for the occasion before him. While he was milking the cows, a thought occurred to him that would make a good man of him in Lucinda’s eyes. He would call into Bilboa police station on his way to her house and attempt to entice Thomas Singleton to go with him for a reconciliation with his mother.

The clock on the kitchen wall was striking for midday as Walter Sly lifted the latch on the door to set out on his journey. He took the brush from the kitchen to sweep any dirt or dust that might be on the floor or on the seats of the trap onto the ground. Maybe Lucinda would go for a ride with him towards
Kilkenny
. That is where many of the gentry travelled in their horses and coaches when they were courting young women. ‘Yes, if it is good enough for the gentry, it is good enough for Walter Sly,’ he figured.

When he reached the barracks in Bilboa, Sly tied the horse’s reins to an iron ring that was embedded in the pillar of the gate for that purpose. He hurried towards the door. He was just about to knock on the door when it opened. There, standing before him, was Constable Thomas Singleton who appeared to be in a great hurry. Behind him was Marie, his wife.

‘By God, you’re visiting early this blessed day, Walter,’ Singleton
observed. ‘Is it something urgent? We’re on our way to the service in the church.’

‘It is and it isn’t,’ Sly replied. ‘I’m travelling to your mother’s house and I was thinking since I heard about the argument between you, that it is time to hang your weapons on the wall and make up.’

Singleton laughed doubtfully.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that the two of you are … well, you know … friendly with each other. By God! But you’re a terrible rogue, Walter. It is many years since I left home and the way I
parted
with my mother still troubles me. Many times I planned to go home and fix things up but a week went by and a year went by and it is now so long that I would be ashamed to go into the house without a prior arrangement.’

Sly thought for a few seconds.

‘I understand your plight well,’ he assured him, ‘and I say that now is your chance to put things right before it is too late for both of you. By the way, I know that it troubles your mother as much as it troubles you.’

Singleton thought for a minute.

‘Do you know, Walter,’ he began, ‘you could let her know how upset I am for what I did to her and that I would have gone home long ago only that I was ashamed. Maybe if I were to go with you today it might be boiling water I’d get in the heels running down the road … If she responds favourably to what you say on my behalf I promise you that I will go home before the end of the week and I will bring Marie to meet her. Now we have to hurry to
church. The minister doesn’t like people to be late for service!’

Walter Sly faced the road with a satisfied mind. It was a
twelve-mile
journey from the barracks to Lucinda’s house but that was nothing to the horse or to himself. Sly often travelled a hundred miles to a fair. He even went to the Clifden fair in County Galway and that was well over a hundred miles.

Because this Sunday was a fine day, the road he was travelling was fairly busy; coaches were coming against him not to mention horses with riders on their backs, with more coming behind him and hurrying past.

When Sly suspected that he was getting close to the place where Lucinda lived, he stopped in front of a thatched house on the side of the road. The woman of the house was standing at her ease at the threshold watching the coaches and the pedestrians hurrying over and back.

‘God bless you, my good woman,’ he began, ‘would you know where Lucinda Singleton lives?’

When she heard this, the woman looked at him shrewdly. It was a few seconds before she replied.

‘A little way down the road in the direction you are travelling. There is a boreen on your right. It is the first house down that road,’ she replied, still looking at him inquisitively.

Sly guided the horse down the boreen just as he had been instructed. He saw the house a few hundred yards from him with farm buildings at the back. He pulled on the reins and stopped the horse in the middle of the road. He looked carefully at the fields behind the house. ‘I suppose,’ he reflected, ‘they would be
sufficient for a dowry. At my age I have no choice. This is my last chance.’ He guided the horse and trap up near the gable of the house. He jumped to the ground from the trap. He was about to unyoke the horse when the thought struck him that Lucinda might like to go for a ride out in the air. In any case, he was not a man who would be at his ease sitting in a stranger’s kitchen.

Sly knocked on the frame of the door even though it was open. Lucinda was bent over the pot of potatoes testing them to see if they were boiled.

‘Come in! Come in!’ she invited him. Sly walked slowly into the kitchen.

‘Oh, Lucinda,’ he began, ‘the water came to my teeth when I got the fine smell of food as I was walking towards the door. Pork and green cabbage I would say.’

Lucinda put the cover on the pot and took a step backwards, her face covered with sweat from being bent over the fire. She turned towards Sly, a glow on her face like that of a young girl meeting the love of her heart for the first time. She stretched out her hand towards him and shook it heartily.

‘I hope you are hungry,’ she said. ‘It will be ten minutes before the potatoes are boiled. Sit down on the settle.’

Sly sat on the settle watching her every move. He was thinking that, even though neither of them was in the bloom of youth, it was good that they wouldn’t spend the rest of their lives alone. But, that said, their friendship hadn’t grown to that as yet. That was obvious from the signs that were there the last time they met.

Sly observed the woman preparing the meal. He was thinking
what a fine life he would have if he managed to sweep her off her feet. If he were married to this woman, with all her talents, his farm would be one of the finest in County Carlow.

‘Sit down to the table, Walter,’ she invited him.

Sly couldn’t take his eyes off the table as he approached it. One wouldn’t see the like of the meal that was on it even in the
landlord’s
house on Sunday. ‘This woman has to be on the lookout for a partner just like I am. God in heaven, wouldn’t a glass of whiskey go down well now,’ he thought, his body trembling all over.

‘Here we are now. I hope you like pork and the cabbage is very good at this time of year,’ Lucinda said in order to put him at his ease.

They both sat down and began to eat. They made light
conversation
while they were eating and it was during the meal that Walter mentioned Thomas Singleton. When she heard her son’s name, silence fell for a few seconds. Then Lucinda spoke in a firm voice:

‘Are you very friendly with my son, Thomas?’ she asked of him.

‘Upon my soul, I am,’ Sly informed her. ‘He has done me a
couple
of favours over the past few years. A gentleman.’

Lucinda shook her head.

‘I’m afraid, Walter, that unless a miracle happened since he left the shelter of this house you don’t know him rightly,’ Lucinda lamented.

Sly washed down a chunk of pork with a mouthful of milk and moved back a half foot from the table.

‘Oh, Lucinda,’ he looked at her, ‘he told me about the bad
feeling that grew up between you. He told me that he was young when it happened and that he had no sense. He often intended to seek you out and ask your forgiveness, but, every time he came within a mile of your house, the shame wouldn’t let him stand before you and say that he was sorry for the hardship he caused you.’

Lucinda laid her knife and fork on the table and looked straight at Sly.

‘Did he say that?’ she asked him softly.

Sly looked at her earnestly.

‘As sure as my parents are buried in the graveyard outside Carlow town, he said that to me,’ he promised her. ‘Do you know that I would like to bring the two of you together and make friends of you again?’

‘Do you think if I invited him and his family to come to my house that he would come?’ she asked with a glimmer of hope in her voice.

‘I am certain that he would,’ he told her.

During the meal, they got to know each other much better. Walter let Lucinda know the important work her son was doing for the locality and for the Crown. He let her know that he would personally see to it that Thomas would come to her house without delay.

Even though their conversation was sensible and personal,
neither
Lucinda nor Walter went overboard. Sly told her how lonely his life was, particularly during the long winter nights when he would be sitting alone in the kitchen, the north or east wind
whistling angrily around the chimney outside.

Without a doubt, Lucinda had a couple of questions about what she had heard from people she knew on the streets of Carlow. She felt it was right to question him about his carousing in the
taverns
. It was best to question him now before things went too far and she was tied to a drunkard.

‘Walter,’ she said, ‘it has come to my attention that you spend a lot of time drinking and carousing in the taverns.’

The mouthful of milk Sly was drinking almost choked him with the start he got at Lucinda’s question.

‘Who told you that?’ he stuttered. ‘I’m not denying that I take a couple of drinks but I wouldn’t call it carousing. Some of my work involves buying and selling horses along with my work on the farm. It is the custom when an animal is bought or sold to have a few drinks to seal the bargain. Maybe, now and then, I would have a drink or two over and above but I promise you if I had a good wife at home that I wouldn’t be drinking in the taverns all night. I’d have a drink or two when the bargain was made and head straight for home to my darling wife.’