UPROOTED

I.

Spring had only come and already he was tired to death; tired of the
city, tired of his job. He had come up from the country intending to do
wonders, but he was as far as ever from that. He’d be lucky if he could
carry on, be at school each morning at half-past nine and satisfy his
half-witted principal.

He lodged in a small red-brick house in Rathmines that was kept by a
middle-aged brother and sister who had been left a bit of money and
thought they’d end their days enjoyably in a city. They didn’t enjoy
themselves; regretted their little farm in Kerry and were glad of Ned
Keating because he could talk to them about all the things they
remembered and loved.

Keating was a slow, cumbrous young man with dark eyes and a dark
cow’s-lick that kept tumbling into them. He had a bit of a stammer, and
ran his hand through his long limp hair from pure nervousness. He had
always been dreamy and serious. Sometimes on market days you saw him
standing for an hour in Nolan’s shop, turning the pages of a
school-book. When he couldn’t afford it he put it back with a sigh and
went off to find his old father in some pub, just raising his eyes to
smile at Jack Nolan. After his elder brother Tom going for the Church,
himself and his father had constant rows.  Now nothing would do Ned only
to be a teacher. Hadn’t he all he wanted now? his father asked. Hadn’t
he the place to himself? What did he want going teaching?  But Ned was
stubborn. With an obstinate, almost despairing determination he’d fought
his way through the college into a city job. The city was what he had
always wanted. And now the city had failed him. In the evenings you
could still see him poking round the second-hand bookshops on the quays,
but his eyes were already beginning to lose their eagerness.

It had all seemed so clear. But then he hadn’t counted on his own
temper. He was popular because of his gentleness, but how many
concessions that involved!  He was hesitating, good-natured, slow to see
guile, slow to contradict. He felt he was constantly under-estimating
his own powers. He even felt he lacked spontaneity. He didn’t drink,
smoked little and saw dangers and losses everywhere. He blamed himself
for avarice and cowardice. The story he liked best was about the country
boy who was directed to a pillar-box. “Indeed, what a fool you think I
am!  Put me letther in a pump!”

He was in no danger of putting his letter in a pump or anywhere else for
the matter of that. He had only one friend, a nurse in Vincent’s
Hospital; a wild, lighthearted, light-headed girl. He was very fond of
her and supposed that some day when he had money enough he’d ask her to
marry him; but not yet, and at the same time something that was both
shyness and caution kept him from committing himself too far. Sometimes
he planned excursions besides the usual weekly walk or visit to the
pictures, but somehow they seldom came to anything.

He no longer knew why he had come to the city, but it wasn’t for the
sake of the bed-sitting-room in Rathmines, the oblong of dusty garden
outside the window, the trams clanging up and down, the shelf full of
second-hand books or the occasional visit to the pictures. Half
humorously, half despairingly he’d clutch his head in his hands and
admit that he hadn’t the foggiest notion of what he wanted. He would
have liked to leave it all and go to Glasgow or New York as a labourer,
not because he was romantic, but because he felt that only when he had
to work with his hands for a living and wasn’t sure of his bed would he
find out what all his ideals and emotions meant and where he could fit
them in to the scheme of his life.

But no sooner did he set out for school next morning, striding slowly
along the edge of the canal, watching the trees become green again and
the tall claret-coloured houses painted on the quiet surface of the
water, than all his fancies took flight. Put his letter in a pump
indeed!  He’d continue to be submissive and draw his salary and wonder
how much he could save and when he’d be able to buy a little house to
bring his girl into; a nice thing to think of on a spring morning; a
house of his own and a wife in the bed beside him. And his nature would
continue to contract about him; every ideal, every generous impulse
another mesh to draw his head down tighter to his knees till in ten
years’ time it would tie him hand and foot.

2.

Tom, who was a curate in Wicklow, wrote and suggested that they might go
home together for the long week-end, and on Saturday morning they set
out in Tom’s old Ford. It was Easter weather, pearly and cold.  They
stopped at several pubs on the way and Tom ordered whiskeys. Ned was
feeling expansive and joined him. He had never quite got used to his
brother, partly because of old days when he felt that Tom was getting
the education he should have got; partly because his ordination seemed
to have shut him off from the rest of the family, and now it was as
though he were trying to surmount it by his boisterous manner and
affected bonhomie. He was like a man shouting to his comrades across a
great distance. He was different from Ned; lighter in colour of hair and
skin; fat-headed, fresh-complexioned, deep-voiced and autocratic; an
irascible, humorous, friendly man who was well liked by those he worked
for. Ned, who was shy and all tied up within himself, envied him his way
with men in garages and barmaids in hotels.

It was nightfall when they reached home. Their father was in his
shirt-sleeves at the gate, waiting to greet them, and immediately their
mother rushed out as well. The lamp was standing in the window and threw
its light as far as the whitewashed gateposts. Little Brigid, the girl
from up the hill, who helped their mother now she was growing old, stood
in the doorway in half silhouette.  When her eyes caught theirs she bent
her head in confusion.

Nothing was changed in the tall, bare, whitewashed kitchen. The harness
hung in the same place on the wall, the rosary on the same nail in the
fireplace by the stool where their mother usually sat; table under the
window, churn against the back door, stair without banisters mounting
straight to the attic door that yawned in the wall—all seemed as
unchanging as the sea outside.  Their mother sat on the stool, her hands
on her knees, a coloured shawl tied tightly about her head, like a gipsy
woman with her battered yellow face and loud voice.  Their father,
fresh-complexioned like Tom, stocky and broken-bottomed, gazed out the
front door, leaning with one hand on the dresser in the pose of an
orator while Brigid made the tea.

“I said ye’d be late,” their father proclaimed triumphantly, twisting
his moustache. “Didn’t I, woman?  Didn’t I say they’d be late?”

“He did, he did,” their mother assured them. “’Tis true for him.”

“Ah, I knew ye’d be making halts. But damn it, if I wasn’t put astray by
Thade Lahy’s car going east.”

“And was that Thade Lahy’s car?” their mother asked in a shocked tone.

“I told ye ’twas Thade Lahy’s,” piped Brigid, plopping about in her long
frieze gown and bare feet.

“Sure, I should know it, woman,” old Tomas said with chagrin. “He must
have gone into town without us noticing him.”

“Oye, and how did he do that?” asked their mother.

“Leave me alone now,” Tomas said despairingly, “I couldn’t tell you, I
could not tell you.”

“My goodness, I was sure that was the Master’s car,” the mother said
wonderingly, pulling distractedly at the tassels of her shawl.

“I’d know the rattle of Thade Lahy’s car anywhere,” little Brigid said,
very proudly and quite unregarded.

It seemed to Ned that he was interrupting a conversation that had been
going on since his last visit, and that the road outside and the sea
beyond it, and every living thing that passed before them, formed a
pantomime that was watched endlessly and passionately from the darkness
of the little cottage.

“Wisha, I never asked if ye’d like a drop of something,” their father
said with sudden vexation.

“Is it whiskey?” boomed Tom.

“Why? Would you sooner whiskey?”

“Can’t you pour it out first and ask us after?” growled Tom.

“The whiskey, is it?”

“’Tis not. I didn’t come all the ways to this place for what I can get
better at home. You’d better have a bottle ready for me to take back.”

“Coleen will have it. Damn it, wasn’t it only last night I said to
Coleen that you’d likely want a bottle? Some way it struck me you
would. Oh, he’ll have it, he’ll have it"

“Didn’t they catch that string of misery yet?” asked Tom with the cup to
his lips.

“Ah, man alive, you’d want to be a greyhound to catch him.  God
Almighty, hadn’t they fifty police after him last November, scouring the
mountains from one end to the other, and all they caught was a glimpse
of the white of his arse. Ah, but the priest preached a terrible sermon
against him—by name, Tom, by name!”

“Is old Lahy blowing about it still?” growled Tom.

“Oh, let me alone now!” Tomas threw his hands to Heaven and strode to
and fro in his excitement, his bucket-bottom wagging. Ned knew to his
sorrow that his father could be prudent, silent and calculating; he knew
only too well the cock of the head, the narrowing of the eyes. But like
a child, the old man loved innocent excitement and revelled in scenes of
the wildest passion, all about nothing. Like an old actor he turned
everything to drama. “The like of it for abuse was never heard, never
heard, never heard! How Coleen could ever raise his head again after it!
And where the man got the words from! Tom, my treasure, my son, you’ll
never have the like.”

“I’d spare my breath to cool my porridge,” Tom replied ironically. “I
dare say you gave up your own still so?”

“Ah, I didn’t, Tom, I didn’t. The drop I make, ’twould harm no one. Only
a drop for Christmas and Easter.”

The lamp was in its own place on the rear wall and made a circle of
brightness on the fresh lime-wash. Their mother was leaning over the
fire with joined hands, lost in thought. The front door was open and
night thickening outside, the coloured night of the west; and as they
ate, their father walked to and fro in long ungainly strides, pausing
each time at the door to give a glance up and down the road and at the
fire to hoist his broken bottom to warm. Ned heard steps come up the
road from the west. His father heard them too. He returned to the door
and glued his hand to the jamb. Ned covered his eyes with his hands and
felt that everything was as it had always been. He could hear the noise
of the strand as a background to the voices. |

“God be with you, Tomas,” the voice said.

“God and Mary be with you, Teig.” (In Irish they were speaking.) “What
way are you?”

“Well, honour and praise be to God. ’Tis a fine night.”

“’Tis, ’tis, ’tis so, indeed. A grand night, praise be to God.”

“Musha, who is it?” their mother asked, looking round.

“°Tis young Teig,” their father replied, looking after him.

“Shemus’s young Teig?” she asked.

“’Tis, ’tis, ‘tis.”

“But where would Shemus’s young Teig be going at this hour of night?
’Tisn’t to the shop?”

“No, woman, no, no, no. Up to the uncle’s, I suppose.”

“Is it Ned Willie’s?”

“He’s sleeping at Ned Willie’s,” Brigid chimed in in her high-pitched
voice, timid but triumphant. “’Tis since the young teacher came to
them.”

There was no more to be said. Everything was explained, and Ned
smiled. The only unfamiliar voice, little Brigid’s, seemed the most
familiar of all.

3.

Tom said first Mass next morning, and the household, all but Brigid,
went. They drove, and Tomas in high glee sat in front with Tom, waving
his hand and shouting greetings to all they met. He was like a boy, so
intense was his pleasure. The chapel was perched high above the
road. Outside, the morning was grey, and beyond the windy edge of the
hill was the sea. The wind blew straight in, setting cloaks and
petticoats flying.

After dinner, as the two boys were returning from a series of visits to
the neighbours’ houses, their father rushed down the road to meet them,
shaking them passionately by the hand and asking were they well. When
they were seated in the kitchen he opened up the subject of his
excitement.

“Well,” he said, “I arranged a grand little outing for ye tomorrow,
thanks be to God,” and to identify further the source of his
inspiration, he searched at the back of his neck for the peak of his cap
and raised it solemnly.

“Musha, what outing are you talking about?” their mother asked angrily.

“I arranged for us to go over the bay to your brother’s.”

“And can’t you leave the poor boys alone?” bawled his wife. “Haven’t
they only the one day? Isn’t it for the rest they came?”

“Even so, even so, even so,” Tomas said with mounting passion. “Aren’t
their own cousins to lay eyes on them?”

“I was in Carriganassa for a week last summer,” said Tom.

“Yes, but I wasn’t, and Ned wasn’t. ’Tis only decent.”

“°Tisn’t decency is worrying you at all, but drink,” growled Tom.

“Oh!” gasped his father, fishing for the peak of his cap to swear by,
“that I might be struck dead!”

“Be quiet, you old heathen!” crowed his wife. “That’s the truth, Tom, my
pulse. Plenty of drink is what he wants, where he won’t be under my
eye. Leave ye stop at home.”

“I can’t stop at home, woman,” shouted Tomas. “Why do you be always
picking at me. I must go, whether they come or not. I must go, I must
go, and that’s all there is about it.”

“Why must you?” asked his wife.

“Because I warned Red Pat and Dempsey,” he stormed. “And the woman from
the island is coming as well to see a daughter of hers that’s married
there. And what’s more I borrowed Cassidy’s boat and he lent it at great
inconvenience, and ’twould be very bad manners for me to throw his
kindness back in his face. I must go.”

“Oh, we may as well all go,” said Tom.

It blew hard all night, and Tomas, all anxiety, was out at break of day,
to watch the white caps on the water.  While the boys were at breakfast
he came in, and leaning his two arms on the table with his hands joined
as though in prayer, he announced in a caressing voice that it was a
beautiful day, thank God; a pet day with a moist, gentle little bit of a
breezheen that would only blow them over.  His voice would have put a
child to sleep, but his wife continued to nag and scold, and Tomas
stumped out again in a fury and sat on the wall with his back to the
house and his legs crossed, chewing his pipe. He was dressed in his best
clothes; a respectable blue tail-coat and pale frieze trousers with only
one patch on the seat of them. He had turned his cap almost right way
round so that the peak covered his right ear.

He was all over the boat like a boy. Dempsey, a haggard, pock-marked,
melancholy man with a soprano voice of astounding penetration, took the
tiller and Red Patrick the sail. Tomas clambered into the bows and stood
there with one knee up, leaning forward like a figure-head. He knew the
bay like a book. The island woman was perched on the ballast with her
rosary in her hands and her shawl over her eyes, to shut out the sight
of the waves. The cumbrous old boat took the sail lightly enough, and
Ned leaned back on his elbows against the side, rejoicing in it all.

“She’s laughing,” his father said delightedly when her bows ran white.

“Whose boat is that, Dempsey?” he asked, screwing up his eyes as another
brown sail tilted ahead of them.

“’Tis the island boat,” shrieked Dempsey.

“’Tis not, Dempsey. ’Tis not indeed, my love. That’s not the island
boat.”

“Whose boat is it then?”

“It must be some boat from Carriganassa, Dempsey.”

“’Tis the island boat, I tell you.”

“Ah, why will you be contradicting me, Dempsey, my treasure? ’Tis not
the island boat. The island boat has a dark-brown sail; ’tis only a
month since ’twas tarred, and that’s an old tarred sail, and what proves
it out and out, Dempsey, the island boat sail has a patch in the
corner.”

He was leaning well over the bows, watching the rocks that fled beneath
them, a dark purple. He rested his elbow on his raised knee and looked
back at them, his brown face sprinkled with spray and lit from below by
the accumulated flickerings of the water. His flesh seemed to dissolve,
to become transparent while his blue eyes shone with extraordinary
brilliance. Ned half closed his eyes and watched sea and sky slowly
mount and sink behind the red-brown, sun-filled sail and the poised and
eager figure.

“Tom!” shouted his father, and the battered old face peered at them from
under the arch of the sail with which it was almost one in tone, the
silvery light filling it with warmth.

“Well?” Tom’s voice was an inexpressive boom.

“You were right last night, Tom, my boy. My treasure, my son, you were
right. ’T’was for the drink I came.”

“Ah, do you tell me so?” Tom asked ironically.

“’Twas, ’twas, twas,” the old man said regretfully.  “’Twas for the
drink. ’Twas so, my darling. They were always decent people, your
mother’s people, and ’tis her knowing how decent they are makes her so
suspicious.  She’s a good woman, a fine woman, your poor mother, may the
Almighty God bless her and keep her and watch over her.”

“Aaaa-men,” Tom chanted irreverently, as his father shook his old cap
piously towards the sky.

“But, Tom! Are you listening, Tom?”

“Well, what is it now?”

“I had another reason.”

“Had you, indeed?” Tom’s tone wasn’t encouraging.

“I had, I had. God’s truth, I had. God blast the lie I’m telling you,
Tom! I had.”

“’Twas boasting out of the pair of ye,” shrieked Dempsey from the stern,
the wind whipping the shrill notes from his lips and scattering them
wildly like scraps of paper.

“’Twas so, Dempsey, ’twas so. You’re right, Dempsey.  You’re always
right. The blessing of God on you, Dempsey, for you always had the true
word.” Tomas’s laughing leprechaun countenance gleamed under the
bellying, tilting, chocolate-coloured sail and his powerful voice beat
Dempsey’s down. “And would you blame me?”

“The O’Donnells hadn’t the beating of them in their own hand,” screamed
Dempsey.

“Thanks be to God for all His goodness and mercy,” shouted Tomas, again
waving his cap in a gesture of recognition towards the spot where he
felt the Almighty might be listening. “They have not. They have not so,
Dempsey. And they have a good hand. The O’Donnells are a good family and
an old family and a kind family, but they never had the like of my two
sons.”

“And they were stiff enough with you when you came for the daughter,”
shricked Dempsey.

“They were, Dempsey, they were. They were stiff.  They were so. You
wouldn’t blame them, Dempsey.  They were an old family and I was nothing
only a landless man.” With a fierce gesture the old man pulled his cap
still further over his ear, spat, gave his moustache a tug, and leaned
at a still more precarious angle over the bow, his blue eyes dancing
with triumph. “But I had the gumption, Dempsey. I had the gumption, my
love.”

The islands slipped past; the gulf of water narrowed and grew calmer,
and white cottages could be seen scattered under the tall ungainly
church. It was a wild and rugged coast, the tide was full, and they had
to pull in as best they could among the rocks. Red Patrick leaped
lightly ashore to draw in the boat. The others stepped after him into
several inches of water, and Red Patrick, himself precariously poised,
held them from slipping.  Rather shamefastly, Ned and Tom took off their
shoes.

“Don’t do that!” shrieked their father. “We’ll carry ye up. Mother of
God, yeer poor feet!”

“Will you shut your ould gob?” Tom said angrily.

They halted for a moment at the stile outside Caheragh’s.  Old Caheragh
had a red beard and a broad smiling face.  Then they went on to
O’Donnell’s, who had two houses, modern and old, separated by a yard. In
one lived Uncle Maurice and his family, and in the other Maurice’s
married son, Sean. Ned and Tom stayed with Sean and his wife. Tom and he
were old friends. When he spoke he rarely looked at Tom, merely gave him
a sidelong glance that just reached to his chin and then dropped his
eyes with a peculiar timid smile. “’Twas,” Ned heard him say, and then
“He did,” and after that “hardly.”  Shuvaun was tall, nervous and
matronly. She clung to their hands with an excess of eagerness as though
she couldn’t bear to let them go, uttering ejaculations of tenderness,
delight, astonishment, pity and admiration.  Her speech was full of
diminutives: “childeen,” “handeen,” “boateen.” Three young children
scrambled about the floor with a preoccupation scarcely broken by the
strangers. Shuvaun picked her way through them, filling the kettle,
cutting the bread, and then as though afraid of neglecting Tom, she
clutched his hand again. Her feverish concentration gave an impression
that its very intensity bewildered her, and made it impossible for her
to understand one word they said. In three days’ time it would all begin
to drop into place in her mind and then she would begin quoting them.

Young Niall O’Donnell came in with his girl; one of the Deignans from up
the hill. She was plump and pert; she had been in service in town. Niall
was a well-built boy with a soft, wild-eyed sensuous face and a deep
mellow voice of great power. While they were having a cup of tea in the
bare parlour where the three or four family photos were skied, Ned saw
the two of them again, through the back window. They were standing on
the high ground behind the house with the spring sky behind them and the
light in their faces. Niall was asking her something, but she, more
interested in the sitting-room window, only shook her head.

“Ye only just missed yeer father,” said their Uncle Maurice when they
went across to the other house for dinner. Maurice was a tight-lipped
little man with a high bald forehead and a dry snappy voice. “He went
off to Owney Pat’s only this minute.”

“The divil!” said Tom. “I knew he was out to dodge me. Did you give him
whiskey?”

“What the hell else could I give him?” snapped Maurice. “Do you think
’twas tea the old coot was looking for?”

Tom took the place of honour at the table. He was the favourite. Through
the doorway into the bedroom could be seen a big canopy bed and on the
whiteness of a raised pillow a skeleton face in a halo of smoke-blue
hair surmounted with what looked suspiciously like a mauve
tea-cosy. Sometimes the white head would begin to stir and everyone fell
silent while Niall, the old man’s pet, translated the scarcely audible
whisper. Sometimes Niall would go in with his stiff ungainly swagger and
repeat one of Tom’s jokes in his drawling, powerful bass. The hens
stepped daintily about their feet, poking officious heads between them
and rushing out the door with a wild flutter and shriek when one of the
girls hooshed them. Something timeless, patriarchal and restful about it
made Ned notice everything. It was as though he had never seen his
mother’s house before.

“Tell me,” Tom boomed with mock concern, leaning over confidentially to
his uncle and looking under his brows at young Niall, “speaking as a
clergyman, and for the good of the family and so on, is that son of
yours coorting Delia Deignan?”

“Why? Was the young blackguard along with her again?” snapped Maurice in
amusement.

“Of course I might be mistaken,” Tom said doubtfully.

“You wouldn’t know a Deignan, to be sure,” said Sean.

“Isn’t any of them married yet?” asked ‘Tom.

“No, by damn, no,” said Maurice. “Isn’t it a wonder?”

“Because,” said Tom in the same solemn voice, “I want someone to look
after this young brother of mine.  Dublin is a wild sort of place and
full of temptations. Ye wouldn’t know a decent little girl I could ask?”

“Cait! Cait!” they all shouted, Niall’s deep voice loudest of all.

“Now, all the same,” Tom said, “Delia looks a smart little piece.”

“No, Cait, Cait! Delia isn’t the same since she went to town. She has
notions of herself. Leave him marry Cait!”

Niall rose gleefully and shambled in to the old man.  With a gamesome
eye on the company, Tom whispered:

“Is she a quiet sort of girl? I wouldn’t like him to get anyone rough.”

“She is, she is,” they said, “a grand girl!”

Sean rose quietly and went to the door with his head down.

“God knows, if anyone knows he should, and all the times he man-handled
her.”

Tom sat bolt upright with mock indignation while the table rocked. Niall
shouted the joke into his grandfather’s ear. The mauve tea-cosy shook;
it was the only indication of the old man’s amusement.

4.

The Deignans’ house was on top of a hill high over the road and
commanded a view of the countryside for miles. The two brothers with
Sean and the O’Donnell girls reached it by a long winding boreen that
threaded its way uncertainly through little grey rocky fields and walls
of unmortared stone which rose against the sky along the edges of the
hill like lace-work. On their way they met another procession coming
down the hill. It was headed by their father and the island woman, arm
in arm, and behind came two locals with Dempsey and Red Patrick. All the
party except the island woman were well advanced in liquor. That was
plain when their father rushed forward to shake them all by the hand and
ask them how they were. He said that divil such honourable and kindly
people as the people of Carriganassa were to be found in the whole
world, and of these there was no one a patch on the O’Donnells; kings
and sons of kings, as you could see from one look at them. He had only
one more call to pay and promised to be at the Caheraghs’ within a
quarter of an hour.

They looked over the Deignans’ half door. The kitchen was empty. The
girls began to titter. They knew the Deignans had watched them coming
from Maurice’s door. The kitchen was a beautiful room, woodwork and
furniture, home-made and shapely, were painted a bright red-brown and
the painted dresser shone with pretty ware. They entered and looked
about them. Nothing was to be heard but the tick of the cheap alarm
clock on the dresser. One of the girls began to giggle hysterically.
Sean raised his voice.

“Are ye in or are ye out, bad cess to ye?”

For a moment there was no reply. Then a quick step sounded in the attic,
and a girl descended the stairs at a run, drawing a black knitted shawl
tighter about her shoulders. She was perhaps twenty-eight or thirty with
a narrow face, sharp like a ferret’s, and blue nervous eyes.  She
entered the kitchen awkwardly sideways, giving the customary greetings
but without looking at anyone.

“A hundred welcomes. ... How are ye? ... ’Tis a fine day.”

The O’Donnell girls giggled again. Nora Deignan looked at them in
astonishment, biting nervously at the tassel of her shawl. She had tiny,
sharp white teeth.

“What is it, aru?” she asked.

“Musha, will you stop your old kimeens,” boomed Tom, “and tell us
where’s Cait from you? You don’t think ’twas to see your ugly puss that
we came up here?”

“Cait!” Nora called in a low voice.

“What is it?” another voice replied from upstairs.

“Damn well you know what it is,” bellowed Tom, “and you cross-eyed
expecting us since morning. Will you come down out of that or will I go
up and fetch you?”

There was the same hasty step and a second girl descended the stairs. It
was only later that Ned was able to realise how beautiful she was. She
had the same narrow pointed face as her sister, the same slight features
sharpened by a sort of animal instinct, the same blue eyes with their
startled brightness; but all seemed to have been differently composed
and her complexion had a transparency as though her whole nature were
shining through it. “Child of Light, thy limbs are burning through the
veil which seems to hide them,” Ned found himself murmuring. She came
upon them in the same hostile way, blushing furiously. Tom’s eyes rested
on her; soft, bleary, emotional eyes, incredibly unlike her own.

“Have you nothing to say to me, Cait?” he boomed, and Ned thought his
very voice was soft and clouded.

“Oh, a hundred welcomes.” Her blue eyes rested for a moment on him with
what seemed a fierce candour and penetration and went past him to the
open door. Outside a soft rain was beginning to fall; heavy clouds
crushed down the grey landscape, which grew clearer as it merged into
one common plane; the little grey bumpy fields with the walls of grey
unmortared stone that drifted hither and over across them like blown
sand; the whitewashed farmhouses lost to the sun sinking back into the
brown-grey hillsides.

“Nothing else, my child?” he growled, pursing his fat mouth.

“How are your”

“The politeness is suffocating you. Where’s Delia?”

“Here I am,” said Delia from the doorway immediately behind him. She had
slunk round the house in her furtive way. Her bland impertinence raised
a laugh.

“The reason we called,” said Tom, clearing his throat, “is this young
brother of mine who’s looking for a wife.”

Everyone laughed again. Ned knew the oftener a joke was repeated, the
better they liked it, but for him this particular joke was beginning to
wear thin.

“Leave him take me,” said Delia with an arch look at Ned, who smiled and
looked at the floor.

“Be quiet, you slut!” said Tom. “There are your two sisters before you.”

“Even so, I want to go to Dublin ... Would you treat me to lemonade,
mister?” she asked Ned with her impudent smile. “This is a rotten
hole. I’d go to America if they left me.”

“America won’t be complete without you,” growled Tom. “Now, don’t leave
me hurry ye, ladies, but my old fellow will be waiting for us in Johnny
Kit’s.”

“We’ll go along with you,” said Nora, and the three girls took down
three black shawls from inside the door.  Some tension seemed to have
gone out of the air. They laughed and joked between themselves.

“Ye’ll get wet,” said Sean to the two brothers.

“Cait will make room for me under her shawl,” said Tom.

“Indeed I will not,” she cried, starting back with a laugh.

“Very shy you’re getting,” said Sean with a good-natured grin.

“’Tisn’t that at all but she’d sooner the young man,” said Delia.

“What’s strange is wonderful,” said Nora.

Biting her lip with her tiny front teeth, Cait looked angrily at her
sisters and Sean, and then began to laugh.  She glanced at Ned and
smilingly held out her shawl in invitation, though at the same moment
angry blushes chased one another across her forehead like squalls across
the surface of a lake. The rain was a mild, persistent drizzle and a
strong wind was blowing. Everything had darkened and grown lonely, and
with his head in the blinding folds of the shawl, which reeked of
turf-smoke, and his arm about Cait, Ned felt as if he had dropped out of
Time’s pocket.

They waited in Caheragh’s kitchen. The bearded old man sat in one
chimney corner and a little barelegged boy in the other. The dim blue
light poured down the wide chimney on their heads in a shower, with the
delicacy of light on old china, picking out surfaces one rarely saw, and
between them the fire burned a bright orange in the great whitewashed
hearth with the black swinging bars and pothook. Outside the rain fell
softly, almost soundlessly, beyond the half door. Delia, her black shawl
trailing from her shoulders, leaned across it, acting the part of
watcher as in a Greek play. Their father’s fifteen minutes strung
themselves out to an hour, and two little barefooted boys had already
been sent off to hunt him down.

“Where are they now, Delia?” one of the O’Donnells would ask.

“Crossing the fields from Patsy Kit’s.”

“He wasn’t there so.”

“He wouldn’t be,” the old man said. “They’ll likely go on to Ned Kit’s
now.”

“That’s where they’re making for,” said Delia. “Up the hill at the far
side of the fort.”

“They’ll find him there,” the old man said confidently.

Ned felt as though he were still blanketed by the folds of the
turf-reeking shawl. Something seemed to have descended on him that
filled him with passion and loneliness. He could scarcely take his eyes
off Cait.  She and Nora sat on the form against the back wall, a
composition in black’ and white, the black shawl drawn tight under her
chin, the cowl of it breaking the curve of her dark hair, her shadow on
the gleaming wall behind.  She didn’t speak except to answer some
question of Tom’s about her brother, but sometimes Ned caught her
looking at him with naked eyes. Then she smiled swiftly and secretly,
and turned her eyes again to the door, sinking back into
pensiveness. Pensiveness or vacancy? he wondered. While he gazed at her
face with the animal instinctiveness of its over-delicate features, it
seemed like a mirror in which he saw again the falling rain, the rocks
and hills and angry sea.

The first announced by Delia was Red Patrick. After him came the island
woman. Each had last seen his father in a different place. Ned chuckled
at a sudden vision of his father, eager and impassioned and aflame with
drink, stumping with his broken bottom across endless fields through
pouring rain with a growing procession behind him. Dempsey was the last
to come. He doubted if Tomas would be in a condition to take the boat at
all.

“What matter, aru?” said Delia across her shoulder.  “We can find room
for the young man.”

“And where would we put him?” gaped Nora.

“He can have Cait’s bed,” Delia said innocently.

“Oye, and where would Cait sleep?” Nora asked, and then skitted and
covered her face with her shawl. Delia scoffed. The men laughed, and
Cait, biting her lip furiously, looked at the floor. Again Ned caught
her eyes on him, and again she laughed and turned away.

Tomas burst in unexpected on them all like a sea-wind that scattered
them before him. He wrung Tom’s hand and asked him how he was. He did
the same to Ned.  Ned replied gravely that he was very well.

“In God’s holy name,” cried his father, waving his arms like a windmill,
“what are ye all waiting for?”

The tide had fallen. Tomas grabbed an oar and pushed the boat on to a
rock. Then he raised the sail and collapsed under it and had to be
extricated from under its drenching folds, glauming and swearing at
Cassidy’s old boat. A little group stood on a naked rock against a grey
background of drifting rain. For a long time Ned continued to wave back
to the black shawl that was lifted to him. An extraordinary feeling of
exultation and loss descended on him. Huddled up in his overcoat he sat
with Dempsey in the stern, not speaking.

“It was a grand day,” his father declared, swinging himself to and fro,
tugging at his Viking moustache, dragging the peak of his cap farther
over his ear. His gestures betrayed a certain lack of rhythmical
cohesion; they began and ended abruptly. “Dempsey, my darling, wasn’t it
a grand day?”

“’Twas a grand day for you,” shrieked Dempsey as if his throat would
burst.

“’Twas, my treasure, twas a beautiful day. I got an honourable reception
and my sons got an honourable reception.”

By this time he was flat on his belly, one leg completely over the edge
of the boat. He reached back a clammy hand to his sons.

“’Twas the best day I ever had,” he said. “I got porter and I got
whiskey and I got poteen. I did so, Tom, my calf. Ned, my brightness, I
went to seven houses and in every house I got seven drinks and with
every drink I got seven welcomes. And your mother’s people are a hand of
trumps. It was no slight they put on me at all even if I was nothing but
a landless man. No slight, Tom, no slight at all.”

Darkness had fallen, the rain had cleared, the stars came out of a
pitch-black sky under which the little tossing, nosing boat seemed lost
beyond measure. In all the waste of water nothing could be heard but the
splash of the boat’s sides and their father’s voice raised in tipsy
song:

 _“The evening was fair and the sunlight was yellow, I halted, beholding
    a maiden bright, Coming to me by the edge of the mountain, Her
    cheeks had a berry-bright, rosy light.”_


5.

Ned was the first to wake. He struck a match and lit the candle. It was
time for them to be stirring. It was just after dawn, and at half-past
nine he must be in his old place in the schoolroom before the rows of
pinched little city faces. He lit a cigarette and closed his eyes.  The
lurch of the boat was still in his blood, the face of Cait Deignan in
his mind, and as if from far away he heard a line of the wild love-song
his father had been singing: “And we’ll drive the geese at the fall of
night.”

He heard his brother mumble something and nudged him. Tom looked big and
fat and helpless with his fair head rolled sideways and his heavy mouth
dribbling on to the sleeve of his pyjamas. Ned slipped out of bed
quietly, put on his trousers and went to the window.  He drew the
curtains and let in the thin cold daylight.  The bay was just visible
and perfectly still. Tom began to mumble again in a frightened voice and
Ned shook him awake. He started out of his sleep with a cry of fear,
grabbing at the bed-clothes. He looked first at Ned, then at the candle,
and drowsily rubbed his eyes.

“Did you hear it too?” he asked.

“Did I heard what?” asked Ned with a smile.

“The thing in the room,” replied Tom from his dream.

“There was nothing in the room,” said Ned. “You were ramaishing, so I
woke you up.”

“Was I?” asked Tom. “What was I saying?”

“You were telling no secrets,” said Ned with his quiet laugh.

“Hell,” Tom said in disgust, and stretched out his arm for a
cigarette. He lit it at the candle-flame, his drowsy red face puckered
and distraught. “I slept rotten.”

“Oye,” Ned said quietly, raising his eyebrows. It wasn’t often Tom spoke
in that tone. He sat on the edge of the bed, joined his hands and leaned
forward, looking at Tom with wide gentle eyes. “Is there anything
wrong?”

“Plenty,” said Tom.

“You’re not in trouble?” Ned asked without raising his voice.

“Not that sort of trouble. The trouble is in myself.”

Ned gave him a look of intense sympathy and understanding. The soft
emotional brown eyes were searching him for a judgment. Ned had never
felt less like judging him.

“Ay,” he said gently, vaguely, his eyes wandering to the other side of
the room while his voice took on its accustomed stammer, “the trouble is
always in ourselves.  If we were contented in ourselves the other things
wouldn’t matter. I suppose we must only leave it to Time. Time settles
everything.”

“Time will settle nothing for me,” Tom said despairingly.  “You have
something to look forward to. I have nothing. It’s the loneliness of my
job that kills you. Even to talk about it would be a relief, but there’s
no one you can talk to. People come to you with their troubles, but
there’s no one you can go to with your own.”

Again the challenging glare in the brown eyes, and Ned realised with
infinite compassion that for years Tom had been living in the same state
of suspicion and fear, a man being hunted down by his own nature; and
that for years to come he would continue to live in this way, and
perhaps never be caught again as he was now.

“A pity you came down here at all,” stammered Ned flatly. “A pity we
went to Carriganassa at all. ’Twould be better for both of us if we went
somewhere else.”

“Why don’t you marry her, Ned?” Tom asked earnestly.

“Who?” asked Ned.

“Cait”

“Yesterday,” said Ned with the shy smile he had whenever he said
something he’d thought over, “I nearly wished I could.”

“But you can, man,” Tom said eagerly, sitting up on his elbow. Like all
men, with frustration in his heart he was full of schemes for
others. “You could marry her and get a school down here. That’s what I’d
do if I was in your place.”

“No,” Ned said gravely. “We made our choice a long time ago. We can’t go
back on it now.”

Then with his hands in his trousers pockets and his head bowed he went
out to the kitchen. His mother, the coloured shawl about her head, was
blowing the fire.  The bedroom door was open and he could see his father
in shirt-sleeves kneeling beside the bed, his face raised reverently
towards a holy picture, his braces hanging down behind. He unbolted the
half door, went through the garden and out on to the road. There was a
magical light on everything. A boy on a horse rose suddenly against the
sky, a startling picture. Through the applegreen light over Carriganassa
ran long streaks of crimson, so still they might have been
enameled. Magic, magic, magic! He saw it as in a children’s picture-book
with all its colours intolerably bright; something he had outgrown and
could never return to, while the world he aspired to was as remote and
intangible as it had seemed even in the despair of youth.

It seemed as if only now for the first time was he leaving home; for the
first time and for ever saying good-bye to it all.