‘Ann? Don’t dream!’
‘No, Mrs Blythe.’
‘No? I found it on the floor here.’
‘It isn’t mine, Mrs Blythe.’ Once started, she was lying quite robustly. ‘It could have come off anything at all.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Blythe. ‘Why do you think it has these three little knots on the tassel, like the three knots on a friar’s belt?’
‘I couldn’t say anything about that. Would you like this water cooler, Mrs Blythe?’
Mrs Blythe felt with her right hand, but was very absent about it.
‘Do you think that this could have a religious meaning, Ann? Mightn’t there be cords just like this one used for this or that purpose in your religion?’
Ann was unravelling a flannel from around a heated brick. She burnt and shook her right hand.
‘I don’t know, ma’am,’ she said, conversational on the brink of the pit. Her stomach quivered with the giddiness of her earth that morning, and she chattered as the chasms opened up and down its length.
She poured the hot kaolin out of the pan into the flannel. Then she dropped a cloth into the hot water. She wondered would this be the last time she would be allowed to minister.
‘If you don’t mind me saying, Mrs Blythe, we must hurry or it will all go cold.’
When the dressing was at last finished, and Ann was leaving, she dawdled near the table, considering snatching the cord. Considering. In fact, she seemed to herself to have no freedom, as if the matter were being solved outside her own head by two parties who had no love for her. The hair’s-breadth supremacy of one of the parties sent her to the door – to all appearances, a sane girl.
Mrs Blythe found Terry Byrne charming to listen to for his store of cures and spells. None of his remedies cured modestly, and most of them worked through various blatant symbols as satisfying to the spirit as are the symbols of a sacrament. His cure for growths on the skin, for instance, was a sacrament far more than a cure. You lashed tight onto the afflicted part a lump of fresh beef. You lashed it so tightly that it became part of the person’s flesh, more or less, left it there till it began to smell, then buried it in the earth. As the maggots reduced it to dust, the skin or, at least, the spirit healed.
Mrs Blythe may have welcomed him for the sake of listening to his solemn herbal fantasies, or because what he prescribed often did her legs good, or because, by and by, she had him speaking of Mr Blythe’s repute in the town, it being suitably low. Probably, the fantasy and the gossip were all she wanted of him. The time came when he found that in Mrs Blythe’s presence, he could safely raise an eye-brow or make a mouth at Mr Blythe’s image. That was why he risked a smile when Mrs Blythe showed him the cord one day and said,
‘Mr Blythe found it in the town. What is the matter, Byrne? Is anything funny?’
‘No, oh no,’ he said.
‘Have you seen something of this nature before?’
‘Yes,’ he said shrugging.
‘Ah! I thought it may have been a Romish device.’
‘How is that, Mrs Blythe?’ Byrne asked.
‘Something devotional that Papists use.’
His lips twitched. He wanted to laugh again.
‘Yes, it’s that much all right, Madam.’
‘Is it something shameful.’
‘No. You couldn’t say shameful.’
‘Oh, tell me what you know, Byrne! Finish with the mum show! You’re a confirmed sniggerer, young man, and you must learn to do something about it.’
‘Yes, Mrs Blythe.’
‘Then please tell me.’
‘It’s a St Megan’s cord. Women wear it around the waist for this reason and that. It’s said to be a help in the keeping of the holy virtue.’
‘What do you mean the holy virtue?’
‘Well, the virtue of the angels, if you see what I mean.’
‘Chastity?’
‘Yes, Mrs Blythe.’
‘Poo!’ she said, and threw the cord on the table. ‘Hence the trembling lips when I remarked that Mr Blythe found it in the town.’
‘No. It was just a bit of a joke to myself, Mrs Blythe.’
‘You will not have further bits of jokes to yourself in this room then.’
‘If you say so, Mrs Blythe.’
For the purposes of argument, the lady took up the string once more.
‘Now, Byrne, Mr Blythe saw the woman who dropped this, and he offered it back to her, but she denied most strenuously that it was hers.’
‘She said it wasn’t hers at all?’
‘Yes. Why would she do that, that is what has me wondering.’
Byrne closed one eye and frowned.
‘I can’t see anyone in this town being modest about a Megan’s cord,’ he said.
‘Why do you say this town, Byrne?’
‘Well, the ladies of the town are a bit brazen, you could put it.’
‘Indeed you could put it that way, Byrne. Would ladies elsewhere be modest about it?’
Because Mrs Blythe’s owly face seemed oceans away from the soft decency of Wexford girls, Byrne wriggled his shoulders and looked up at the roof.
‘You’re going to keep asking me questions until you know all about this bit of string, aren’t you, Mrs Blythe?’
‘Of course I am going to keep asking you questions. Can’t you see how quaint this bit of string must seem to me?’
‘All right then. Young girls wear it to protect them against soldiers. If a mother has had too many children and the times are hard, she wears it to protect herself from getting with child. The women of Wexford are virtuous women. You’ve got to go a long way to find one who’s not.’
‘Heaven protect us, you have some unfortunate turns of phrase, Byrne.’
‘I’ve taken unfortunate turns of another kind in my day, God save me.’
‘God save you. Go on.’
‘I’ve even known girls to wear that cord after they’ve . . .’
‘After they’ve?’
‘After they’ve fallen. To stop themselves getting with child.’
‘So that they might be ashamed if anyone found them wearing it?’
‘Yes, the women of Wexford have such decent minds.’
Mrs Blythe sat back gently. Her mouth was tense with satisfaction, her eyes bunched up shut for the pungency of her cool anger. How she would scald and flay that girl!
But having hurried Byrne out, she found that her delicious fury would rather wait a day, as the divine fury which Halloran had called on himself had waited many a day, Halloran still walking whole and unblasted. And when her fury had waited a day, and she had been tended for a day by the hesitant girl, she found that it would rather withhold itself for a week. Then Halloran went off for some time on an excursion to the west with Captain Allen. When he had come back to the town, she decided, to her own surprise, that the argument was the Lord’s, that she had taken all the safeguards that a Christian mistress could take, that she would warn this Halloran away from the house, but beyond that, the argument was the Lord’s. And then, to her further dismay, she did not even warn Halloran away from the house. She waited, prisoner of that precious anger, and knew that she was wrong to wait, that Halloran had involved her in the Fall.
16
Captain Allen and his party went away twelve days in the wilderness, and all they found was that they were weak. On the first day, for instance, they walked only fourteen miles, though the country was easy. They marched in a plain of grass up to the knees, past sundry councils of those impending trees, raw, double-jointed, feeling boots on their earth and not saying a word, suspending judgement.
In the early afternoon of that first day, they found themselves being watched by a stock-still native family not unlike denuded a
cacias at a distance of a quarter of a mile. They were very thin, that family, but loped easily away. The crooked grey thickets consumed them like mist.
Allen’s party camped at night by a little scrubby river. It was, after its style, a harsh place. The trees raved with small dark birds, who sat like fruit on the branches, singing only a little more sweetly than cicadas. Damp came up through the long tubes of grass, cold at the roots and full of spiderwebs still wet from the night before.
In the trees was flood-wrack, good kindling. Halloran stood watch with the loaded musket. Through the blue twilight, the others gathered in the firewood quickly. He saw Private Terry Byrne aimless and pale in the shadows. Between Byrne and himself that was a startling kinship. For instance, Halloran was able to tell now that Byrne skulked as he did, plucking at dry branches, because he was oppressed by the sense of hell and of what is probably the same thing, of being tethered unto damnation by his own big, starchy boyo’s body. This dawdling stupor meant that Byrne would later make an attempt on Halloran’s ear and mourn down it about doomsday.
The birds all stopped singing at once, as abruptly as a choir of priests arrived helter-skelter at the last verse of the Office. There was a second of silence, and then, as one creature, they quavered upward in hundreds, reflected an instant and seethed northwards along the river. Byrne came straggling back to the fire-site. He carried a few twigs under his right arm.
‘Marvellous night this is, Corporal,’ he muttered, shivering. ‘No soft mattress and mothering paps tonight.’
‘They’re waiting for your kindling.’
Halloran nodded at the men, who had made their two piles of wood and were advising the marine with the flint and steel.
‘Ballocks to you!’ Byrne articulated softly, and joined them.
Halloran feared, from the way Byrne stood apart from their vulgar urgency, that he would indeed become soulful as the dark came on. When the firewood creaked and a tongue of flame jumped, four men hastened to add the choicer bits of faggot, but Byrne turned his back.
The meal was made and eaten, Allen and his lieutenant dining at their own fire twenty yards from the others. At the men’s fire, there was a tendency to speak low and stifle laughter, for the inland exacted a mild awe. But Allen, feeling equal to any pagan waste, chuckled whenever he wanted to. In such an open space, beside the little straggles of flame, his laughter sounded like a revelation of weakness.
At last, Byrne brought Phelim his meal and took the flint-lock from him. Halloran moved in towards the fire, but remained standing. He was miserable with the cold and hunger; and some type of feverishness of the flesh, not directed at Ann, numbing all his aspirations, moved in his belly in definite, warm arcs. He felt too blunted even to understand how perilous was its slug-blind persistence. In this state, he didn’t wish to debate man’s latter end with Byrne, but neither did he want to join the tight little group around the fire.
It was a good fire. He felt its heat on his face and lifted one foot at a time towards it, holding in both hands the very hot plate of beef stew thickened with pease-meal.
Behind him, Byrne let himself shiver audibly, give a small giggle of cold.
‘This is a fearful lonely place,’ he called to Halloran. ‘Here we are, lost in the dark on the scruff of the world. On the very scruff of the world.’
‘Yes,’ said Halloran. He looked at the darkness between the stars. Since you looked up to the darkness in the northern world, here you were in fact looking down into a pit of stars, and sometimes you saw yourself as poised over their lance-points ready to plummet; yet, behold, you would remain.
He shuddered. He champed his food like a barbarian, to discourage Byrne from becoming reflective.
‘How’s Ann, God be her light?’ asked Byrne, spacious as a bishop.
‘Ollump,’ said Halloran through clods of meat in his mouth. He had often been involved in strange dialogues with Byrne over Ann. Byrne would be devil’s advocate and put forward the reasons why Ann should not be treated with more respect than other women; and Halloran would lop them down with increasing fury, sometimes with main force. The insane thing was that Byrne seemed happy to be quashed, that the argument was undertaken by him in a spirit very much like that of a pilgrim. It made you wonder about the strange, regal place Ann must have held in his mind.
‘Is she enjoying life at the Blythes’?’
‘Yes.’
‘That Blythe is a dirty old boy.’
‘And you’re a dirty young one, and so am I, I suppose. Name a fellow you know who’s put off the old man and put on the new.’
‘God forgive us all, I’ll say that. But he’s a dirty old boy.’
‘He behaves himself with Mrs Ulcer Blythe to keep her eye on him.’
‘Why don’t you liberate Ann from the Blythes’, Halloran?’
‘Why don’t you drown yourself?’
‘She could have her own hut down on the brook. Mrs Blythe is such a terrible strict woman, Ann could be easily liberated, singing iddiddly-iddididdly-itytyty.’
Halloran glanced at the camp-fires, and with the plate still in his hands, swung his knee sharply up into Byrne’s underbelly. When Byrne sunk coughing onto his haunches, propping himself with the musket, Halloran saw him as he must have always seen himself, a large soft Irish boy lost in the wilderness. But, numb tonight, Halloran felt no pity.
‘I’ll make you unfit to liberate a Slaney sow if you come that talk,’ he whispered. ‘I might as well tell you, I’m not in the mood for you.’
Byrne cried. His voice was very thin.
‘I ought to shoot you here and now, you frowsy-gutted bastard. My God, I will and tell Allen the thing went off by mistake.’
But, of course, he didn’t.
Halloran spoke.
‘Now you’ve got your voice back, Brian Boru, stand up. I’ve got my boot, such as it is, lined up with what’s more precious to you than the whole Communion of Saints.’
In fact, Byrne got up as humbly as from prayer.
‘I’m a joke of a man, Corporal darling, there’s no use clouting you black and blue as I could indeed. I’d still be just as much a joke of a man.’
‘If you say so.’
‘Yes I say so. How does a man who’s such a joke save himself from hell-fire?’
‘Dear God in heaven,’ said Halloran, ‘save him and shut him up.’
‘Tell a poor man, Halloran.’
‘You tell me, Terry Byrne. I know nothing on the subject.’
‘I don’t believe that. You’re known to be a regular bugger of a good man.’
‘If I have not charity, says St Paul, I am like sounding brass. And I don’t think a knee in the ballocks is anyone’s idea of charity. You’d better go elsewhere.’
‘You’re hedging on me, Halloran. Everyone knows you’re as clean as a lamb. But me, I’ve fathered two children in this land. That’s a poisonous sin, fathering bastards. Not at all clean, not as clean as murder. Crack, he’s dead, you can’t do anything but pray for him, confess it and tend his grave. It’s clean, you see and finished. But this one? The children are growing in the sun, walking in the street, Halloran. They grow up and the sin grows up. How does a man like that save himself?’
‘I’ve told you before. I don’t know.’
‘Did I tell you about my dream?’
‘About the pit?’ said Halloran, warding off the story with his hands. ‘You told me.’
‘I was deep in a pit of –’
‘Of black soil, like at home.’
‘Like at home. And did I tell you about the man at the top of the pit hurling clods of earth on me, and the man . . .?’
‘And the man was God, and wore ox-blood gaiters like a wealthy farmer.’
‘Yes. Heaven and earth, what a dream!’
‘You know
the waste-pit beyond the shipyards, how it drips out over the rocks. I had a dream like that after eating oysters there.’
‘You’re making a mock of me. You’re a heartless sod to have the power to help me and you won’t.’
‘Some people can’t even go to hell with dignity,’ thought Halloran. He cleaned his plate slowly with flour-cake. He did not think of Ann. His soul was brash and animal, and his feet were cold.
‘Listen to me, Terry Sinner!’ he said. ‘Nobody is saved. That’s straight from Rome, my boy, straight from the muzzle of the big gun. Everyone is sitting on hell’s brink, one cheek on, one cheek over. Who are you to be let off, with your two bastards?’
‘It’s wrong to scoff at a poor feller in search of his God.’
‘His God? Your god? Their god is their belly. And in your case, the little bit stuck on.’
‘Damn you!’
‘Be a big boy, Terry. Go and be a big boy.’
There was drowsy laughter, not at them, from the fire. Halloran watched the brows, chins, noses of the men all transfused with light, rinsed by flame, all glinting. It was possible to see these fellows as pitiable, riding their raft of light in an illimitable sea.
‘Keeping an eye out, Corporal?’ came a voice not aware that it was in an ocean. Allen’s.
‘Sir!’
Silence and the cold. Eli, eli.
For his own part, Byrne began to surmise.
‘I will have to do something that changes my whole tune.’
Phelim snorted. He cared little for Byrne’s basic tune, however played.
‘I will have to be a martyr, and pay all my debts in a second, with one gush of blood. Unless I save myself in a second, quick as the temple veil getting ripped, I’m finished. If they give me so much as two seconds, I’ll be fornicating in my mind in the second one.’
‘Then you study up to be a martyr,’ Phelim advised him. ‘A lion in an arena won’t give you much time to go astray.’
‘No, that it wouldn’t.’
The boyo gave a well-rounded, sad laugh, and started to go.
‘Well, you see, acts of contrition are out for me, and there’s no priest. So only a martyr is left.’