THE LONG ROAD TO UMMERA

  Stay for me there. I will not fail
  To meet thee in that hollow vale.

Always in the evenings you saw her shuffle up the road to Miss O.’s for
her little jug of porter, a shapeless lump of an old woman in a plaid
shaw! faded to the colour of snuff that dragged her head down on to her
bosom where she clutched its folds in one hand, a canvas apron and a
pair of men’s boots without laces. Her eyes were puffy and screwed up in
tight little buds of flesh and her rosy old face, that might have been
carved out of a turnip, was all crumpled with blindness. The old heart
was failing her, and several times she would have to rest, put down the
jug, lean against the wall, and lift the weight of the shawl off her
head. People passed: she stared at them humbly: they saluted her: she
turned her head and peered after them for minutes on end. The rhythm of
life had slowed down in her till you could scarcely detect its faint and
sluggish beat. Sometimes from some queer instinct of shyness, she turned
to the wall, took a snuff-box from her bosom and shook out a pinch on
the back of her swollen hand. When she sniffed it, it smeared her nose
and upper lip and spilled all over her old black blouse. She raised the
hand to her eyes and looked at it closely and reproachfully as though
astonished that it no longer served her properly. Then she dusted
herself, picked up the old jug again, scratched herself against her
clothes and shuffled along close by the wall, groaning aloud.

When she reached her own house, which was a little cottage in a terrace,
she took off her boots, and herself and the old cobbler who lodged with
her turned out a pot of potatoes on the table, stripping them with their
fingers and dipping them in the little mound of salt while they took
turn and turn about with the porter jug. He was a lively and philosophic
old man called Johnny Thornton.

After their supper they sat in the firelight, talking about old times in
the country and long-dead neighbours, ghosts, fairies, spells and
charms. It always depressed her son, finding them together like that
when he called with her monthly allowance. He was a well-to-do business
man with a little grocery shop in the South Main Street and a little
house in Sunday’s Well, and nothing would have pleased him better than
that his old mother should share all the grandeur with him: the carpets
and the chaneys and the chiming clocks. He sat moodily between them,
stroking his long jaw, and wondering why they talked so much about
death, in the old-fashioned way, as if it was something that made no
difference at all.

“Wisha, what pleasure do ye get out of old talk like that?” he asked one
night.

“Like what, Pat?” his mother asked with her timid smile.

“My goodness,” he said, “ye’re always at it. Corpses and graves and
people that are dead and gone.”

“Arrah, why wouldn’t we?” she replied, looking down stiffly as she tried
to button the open-necked blouse that revealed her old breast. “Isn’t
there more of us there than here?”

“Much difference ’twill make to you when you won’t know them or see
them!” he exclaimed.

“Oye, why wouldn’t I know them?” she cried angrily.  “Is it the Twomeys
of Lackaroe and the Driscolls of Ummera?”

“How sure you are we’ll take you to Ummera!” he said mockingly.

“Och, aye, Pat,” she asked, shaking herself against her clothes with her
humble, stupid, wondering smile, “and where else would you take me?”

“TIsn’t our own plot good enough for you?” he asked.  “Your own son and
your grandchildren?”

“Musha, indeed, is it in the town you want to bury me?” She shrugged
herself and blinked into the fire, her face growing sour and
obstinate. “T’ll go back to Ummera, the place I came from.”

“Back to the hunger and misery,” Pat said sourly.

“Back to your father, boy.”

“Aye, to be sure, where else?” he said scornfully. “But my father or my
grandfather never did for you what I did. Often and often I scoured the
streets of Cork for a few ha’pence for you.”

“You did, amossa, you did, you did,” she agreed, looking into the fire
and shaking herself; “you were a good son to me.”

“And often I did it,” said Pat, full of self-pity, “and the belly
falling out of me with hunger.”

“Tis true for you,” she mumbled, “ ’tis, ’tis, *tis true.  "T’was often
and oftén you had to go without it. What else could you do and the way
we were left?”

“And now our grave isn’t good enough for you,” he complained. There was
bitterness in his tone. He was an insignificant little man and jealous
of the power the dead had over her.

She looked at him with the same abject, half-imbecile smile, the
wrinkled old eyes almost shut above the Mongolian cheek-bones, while
with a swollen old hand like a pot-stick, it had so little life in it,
she smoothed a few locks of yellow-white hair across her temples—a trick
she had when troubled.

“Musha, take me back to Ummera, Pat,” she whined.  “Take me back to my
Own. I’d never rest among strangers. I’d be rising and drifting.”

“Ah, foolishness, woman!” he said with an indignant look. “That sort of
thing is gone out of fashion.”

“I won’t stop here for you,” she shouted hoarsely, in sudden impotent
fury, and she rose and grasped the mantelpiece for support.

“You won’t be asked,” he said shortly.

“I’ll haunt you,” she whispered tensely, holding on to the mantelpiece
and bending down over him with a horrible grin.

“And that’s only more of the foolishness,” he said with a nod. “Haunts
and fairies and spells.”

She took one step towards him and stood, plastering down the two little
locks of yellowing hair, the half-dead eyes twitching and blinking in
the candlelight, and the swollen crumpled face with the cheeks like
cracked enamel.

“Pat,” she said, “the day we left Ummera you promised to bring me
back. You were only a little gorsoon that time. The neighbours gathered
round me, and the last word I said to them and I going down the road
was, ‘Neighbours, my son, Pat, is after giving me his word, and he’ll
bring me back to ye when my time comes.’  . . . That’s as true as the
Almighty God is over me this night. I have everything ready.” She went
to the shelf under the stairs and took out two parcels. She seemed to be
speaking to herself as she opened them gloatingly, bending down her head
in the feeble light of the candle.  “There’s the two brass candlesticks
and the blessed candles alongside them. And there’s my shroud, aired
regular on the line.”

“Ah, you’re mad, woman,” he said angrily. “Forty miles! Forty miles into
the heart of the mountains!”

She suddenly shuffled towards him on her bare ects her hand upraised,
clawing the air, her body like her face blind with age. Her harsh,
croaking old voice rose to a shout.

“T brought you from it, boy, and you must bring me back. If ’twas the
last shilling you had, and you and your children to go to the poorhouse
after, you must bring me back to Ummera. And not by the short road
either!  Mind what I say now! The long road! The long road to Ummera
round the lake, the way I brought you from it. I lay a heavy curse on
you this night if you bring me the short road over the hill. And ye must
stop by the ash tree at the foot of the boreen where ye can see my
little house and say a prayer for all that were ever old in it and all
that played on the floor. And then—Pat! Pat Driscoll! Are you listening?
Are you listening to me, I say?”

She shook him by the shoulder, peering down into his * long miserable
face to see how was he taking it.

“I’m listening,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Then”—her voice dropped to a whisper—“you must stand up overright all
the neighbours and say—remember now what I’m telling you! ‘Neighbours,
this is Abby, Batty Heige’s daughter, that kept her promise to ye at the
end of all.’”

She said it lovingly, smiling to herself, as if it were a bit of an old
song, something she went over and over in the long nights. All West Cork
was in it: the bleak road over the moors to Ummera, the smooth grey
pelts of the hills with the long spider’s-web of the fences ridging
them, drawing the scarecrow fields awry, and the white-washed cottages,
poker-faced between their little scraps of holly bushes looking this way
and that out of the wind.

“Well, I’ll make a fair bargain with you,” said Pat as he got
up. Without seeming to listen, she screwed up her eyes and studied his
weak, melancholy face. “This house is a great expense to me. Do what I’m
always asking you.  Live with me and I’ll promise I’ll take you back to
Ummera.”

“Oye, I will not,” she replied sullenly, shrugging her shoulders
helplessly, an old sack of a woman with all the life gone out of her.

“All right,” said Pat. “’Tis your own choice. That’s my last word, take
it or leave it. Live with me and Ummera for your grave, or stop here,
and a plot in the Botanics.”

She watched him out the door with her shoulders hunched about her
ears. Then she shrugged herself, took out her snuff-box and took a
pinch.

“Arrah, I wouldn’t mind what he’d say,” said Johnny.  “A fellow like
that would change his mind tomorrow.”

“He might and he mightn’t,” she said heavily, and opened the back door
to go out to the yard. It was a starry night, and they could hear the
noise of the city below them in the valley. She raised her eyes to the
bright sky over the back wall and suddenly broke into a cry of
loneliness and helplessness.

“Oh, oh, oh,” she groaned, “’tis far away from me Ummera is tonight
above any other night, and I’ll die and be buried here, far from all I
ever knew and the long roads between us.”

Of course old Johnny should have known damn well what she was up to the
night she made her way down to the cross, creeping along beside the
railings. By the blank wall opposite the lighted pub, Dan Regan the
jarvey in his bowler hat and black oilskin coat was standing beside his
old box of a covered car with his pipe in his gob. He was the jarvey all
the old neighbours went to. Abby beckoned to him, and he followed her
into the shadow of a gateway overhung by ivy. He listened gravely to
what she had to tell him, sniffing and nodding, wiping his nose in his
sleeve or crossing the pavement to hawk his nose and spit in the
channel, while his face with its drooping moustaches never relaxed its
discreet and doleful expression.

Johnny should have known what that meant and why old Abby, who was
always so open-handed, sat before an empty grate sooner than light a
fire and came after him on Fridays for the rent, whether he had it or
not, and even begrudged the little drop of porter that had always © been
give and take between them. He knew himself it was a change before
death, and it all went into the wallet in her bosom, and at night in her
attic she counted it by the light of her candle, and when the coins
dropped from her lifeless fingers, he heard her roaring like an old cow
as she crawled along the naked boards, sweeping them blindly with her
palms. Then he heard the bed creak as she tossed about in it, and the
rosary being taken from the bed-head, and the old voice rising and
falling in prayer; and sometimes when a high wind blowing up the river
roused him before dawn he could hear her muttering: a mutter, and then a
yawn; the scrape of a match as she peered at the alarm clock—the endless
nights of the old—and then the mutter of prayer again,

But Johnny in some ways was very stupid, and he guessed nothing till the
night she called him, and going to the foot of the stairs with a candle
in his hand, saw her on the landing in her flour-bag shift, one hand
clutch.  ing the jamb of the door while the other clawed wildly at her
few straggly hairs,

“Johnny,” she screeched down at him, beside herself with excitement, “he
was here!”

“Who was there?” he snarled back, still cross with sleep.

“Michael Driscoll, Pat’s father.”

“Ah, you were dreaming, woman,” he said in disgust.  “Go back to your
bed, in God’s Holy Name.”

“I was not dreaming,” she cried. “I was lying broad awake, saying my
beads, when he come in the door, beckoning to me. Go down to Dan Regan’s
for me, Johnny.”

“I will not, indeed, go down to Dan Regan’s for you,”

Johnny snarled. “Do you know what hour of night it is?”

“’Tis morning.”

“Four o’clock!” he shouted. “What a thing I’d do!  _. . Is it the way
you’re feeling bad?” he added more gently as he mounted the stairs to
her. “Do you want him to take you to hospital?” :

“Oye, ’’m going to no hospital,” she replied sullenly, turning her back
on him and thumping into the room again. She opened an old chest of
drawers and began fumbling in it for her best clothes, her bonnet and
cloak.

“Then what the blazes do you want Dan Regan for?”  he cried in
exasperation.

“What matter to you what I want him for?” she replied with senile
suspicion. “I have a journey to go, never you mind where.”

“Ach, you ould oinseach, your mind is wandering,” he said. “There’s the
divil of a wind blowing up the river.  The whole house is
shaking. That’s what you heard.  Make your mind easy now and go back to
bed.”

“My mind is not wandering,” she shouted. “Thanks be to the Almighty God
I have my senses as good as you.  My plans are made. I’m going back now
where I came from. Back to Ummera.”

“Back to where?” Johnny asked in stupefaction.

“Back to Ummera.”

“You’re madder than I thought,” he said. “And do you think or imagine
Dan Regan will drive your”

“He will drive me, then,” she said, shrugging herself as she held an old
petticoat up to the light. “He’s booked for it any hour of the day or
night.”

“Then Dan Regan is madder still,” he said furiously.

“Leave me alone now,” she muttered stubbornly, blinking and
shrugging. “I’m going back to Ummera, and that was why my old comrade
came for me. All night and every night I have my beads wore out, praying
the Almighty God and His Blessed Mother not to leave me die among
strangers. And now I’ll leave my old bones on a high hill-top in
Ummera.”

Johnny was easily pacified. It promised to be a fine day’s outing and a
story that would quieten a pub, so he made the tea for her, and after
that went down to Dan Regan’s little cottage, and before smoke showed
from any chimney on the road they were away. Johnny was hopping about
the car in his excitement, leaning out, shouting through the back of the
car to Dan and identifying big estates he hadn’t seen for years. When
they were well outside the town, himself and Dan went in for a
drink. While they were inside the old woman dozed.  Dan Regan roused her
again to ask if she wouldn’t take a drop of something, and at first she
didn’t know who he was, and then she asked where they were and peered
out at the pub and the old dog sprawled asleep in the sunlight before
the door. But when next they halted she had fallen asleep again, her
mouth hanging open and her breath coming in noisy gusts. Dan’s face grew
gloomier.


“’Tis all right,” said Johnny hastily. “She’s only tired.”

“I dunno,” said Dan. He looked hard at her and spat.  Then he took a few
turns about the road, lit his pipe, put on the lid. “I don’t like her
looks at all, Johnny,” he said gravely. “I done wrong. I see that now. I
done wrong.”

After that, every couple of miles he halted to see how she was, and
Johnny, threatened with the loss of his treat, shook her and shouted at
her. Each time Dan’s face grew graver. He walked gloomily about the
road, clearing his nose and spitting in the ditch. “God direct me,” he
said solemnly. “”Twon’t be wishing to me. Her son isa powerful
man. He’ll break me yet. A man should never interfere between
families. Blood is thicker than water.  The Regans were always unlucky.”

When they reached the first town he drove straight to the police barrack
and told them the story.

“Ye can tell the judge I gave ye every assistance,” he said in a
reasonable, broken-hearted tone. “I was always a friend of the law. I’ll
keep nothing back—a pound was the price agreed. I suppose if she dies
twill be manslaughter.  I never had hand, act or part in
politics. Sergeant Daly at the Cross knows me well.”

So when Abby came to herself she was in a bed in the hospital. She began
to fumble for her wallet and her parcels, and her shrieks soon brought a
crowd of unfortunate old women about her.

“Whisht, whisht, whisht,” they said. “They’re all in safe
keeping. You’ll get them back.”

“I want them now,” she shouted, struggling to get out of bed while they
held her down. “Leave me go, ye robbers of hell! Ye night-walking
rogues, leave me go!  Oh, murder, murder! Ye’re killing me.”

At last an old Irish-speaking priest from the town came in and comforted
her. He left her quietly saying her beads, secure in his promise to see
that she was buried in Ummera whatever her son might say. As darkness
fell, the beads dropped from her swollen old hands and she began to
mutter to herself in Irish. Sitting about the fire, the ragged old women
whispered and groaned in sympathy. The Angelus rang out from a near-by
church.  Suddenly Abby’s voice rose to a shout and she tried to lift
herself on her elbow in the bed.

“Ah, Michael Driscoll, my friend, my kind comrade, you didn’t forget me
after all the long years. I’m a long time away from you but I’m coming
at last. They tried to keep me away from you, to make me stop among
foreigners in the town, but where would I be at all without you and all
the old friends? Stay for me, my treasure.  Stop and show me the
way... . Neighbours,” she shouted, pointing into the shadows with her
finger, “that man there is my own husband, Michael Driscoll. Let ye see
he won’t leave me to find my way alone. Gather round me with yeer
lanterns, neighbours, till I see who I have. I know ye all; ’tis only
the sight is weak on me.  Be easy, now, my brightness, my own kind,
loving comrade.  I’m coming. After all the long years I’m on the road to
you at last... .”

It was a spring day, full of wandering sunlight, when they brought her
the long road to Ummera, the way she had come from it forty years
before. The lake was like a dazzle of midges; the shafts of the sun,
revolving like a great mill-wheel, poured their cascades of milky
sunlight over the hills and the little whitewashed cottages, and the
little black mountain cattle among the scarecrow fields, The hearse
stopped at the foot of the lane that led to the roofless cabin, just as
she had pictured it to herself in the long nights, and Pat, looking more
melancholy than ever, turned to the waiting neighbours and said:

“Neighbours, this is Abby, Batty Heige’s daughter, that kept her promise
to ye at the end of all.”