An Irish Country Girl Page 6

  “You’d have to be the right buck eejit to pull a bunch of dandelions, so you would,” said Micky seriously. “Everybody knows if you do you’ll wet the bed that night.”

  Kinky thought it was interesting how different parts of the country had their own lore. Where she came from, some people believed that if a man didn’t shave on a Sunday he’d never get a toothache, but if you had a toothache or a gumboil, then carrying the two jawbones of a haddock in your pocket was a sure cure. Out on the west coast, they swore you should never ask a question of a dog, for if it gives you an answer you will surely die.

  “Never mind that about dandelions, Micky,” Irene said. “What did Connor do?”

  “He grabbed a towel, moistened it, and dabbed at the stain. Divil the bit came off on the towel. He scrubbed harder, harder, but not a bit of it would budge. He gave up. ‘What can’t be cured,’ says he, ‘must be endured. Getting the sap off won’t warm me up, and I’m frozen to the marrow.’

  “So he got some kindling and more branches and lit the fire, and as it was taking, he set to cleaning the blood out of his hair. There was a bump and a small cut, but a few days should see it healed.

  “The aspirin was starting to take effect and the fire was burning well, but he’d soon be out of peat again. Tomorrow he’d get the cart, drop by the O’Hanlons’, then go up to the bog. And sure if he needed more wood, wasn’t there still the blackthorn up in the field?

  “He warmed himself in front of the fire. All in all, as the chill left him and his pants started to steam and dry out, Connor reckoned things were improving, but now he’d stopped shivering he was hungry. He didn’t feel like cooking his supper tonight. He’d make a cup of tea and in his pantry he had a couple of crubeens, boiled pigs’ feet, to be eaten cold with vinegar.”

  “Pigs’ what? Trotters?” Colin screwed up his face. “I’d rather have skate and chips.” He looked at her. “Are you making that up to make us feel yucky, Mrs. Kincaid?”

  “Not at all, Colin Brown. They are delicious, so. You should try them.” She let her gaze sweep over the other young faces. “Do any of you know why a pig is such a valuable animal?”

  There was nothing but the shaking of heads.

  “Well, I’ll tell you,” she said. “You can eat every part of it except . . . except its grunt.”

  She had to wait for the giggling to stop before she could get back to the story. “Now,” said Kinky, “by the time Connor had finished his supper, this is what it was: it was dark outside, for the sun had gone down, so, and the fog had rolled in. When he went to draw the curtains, he could see it through the window, thick and wet and chilling.

  “He put his plates in the sink and pulled a book from a shelf, an old friend, The Hound of the Baskervilles. He moved the paraffin lamp and his rocking chair closer to the fire. Sure with the fog out there and he cosy in here, and content now he’d made up his mind not to be even remotely scared of faeries that didn’t exist anyway, wasn’t it just the night for a story about foggy moors and Sherlock Holmes and a great big, ghostly dog?

  “He sat and started to read. That Doctor Watson was an awful plodder of a man. Connor smiled. The fire warmed him. He thought he might just have a drop of the pure later. The cottage was cosy and safe . . . until he heard a clicking coming from—”

  Kinky was interrupted by the sound of ringing from the hall telephone. She flinched. “Hang on,” she said. “I’ll have to answer that. It could be a patient. People don’t stop getting sick just because it’s Christmas Day.” She left the lounge and headed downstairs, hearing the children’s chatter start quietly then begin to rise in volume.

  It wasn’t a patient; it was Jeannie Jingles on the phone. She’d met Maggie MacCorkle on the street, who’d told her she’d seen the children being brought in to Number 1. Jeannie was annoyed that Eddie, who was still recovering from pneumonia, was with them. He’d been told to come home when he’d been out for an hour.

  Kinky reassured Jeannie that Eddie was inside, warm and well, and she’d send him home very soon.

  Jeannie thanked Kinky, said she wanted him home by one, and because he’d been sick could someone walk him home?

  Kinky reassured Jeannie, then went back up to the lounge.

  The children had divided themselves into two factions. There was the “It’s all right, Connor’s going to be fine” group, headed by Hazel, and the “Connor’s in deep trouble, the Shee are going to get him” party, headed by Colin Brown. Ireland in a nutshell, Kinky thought, the people ready to argue over anything.

  “Settle down now,” she said. “Settle down. That was your mammy on the phone, Eddie Jingles. She says you’re not to stay too late.

  “Have I to go home right now? Before you finish?” Eddie’s lower lip trembled.

  “No,” said Kinky. “It’s twelve fifteen now so you’ve another three quarters of an hour, if Hazel will walk you home, your mammy said. She doesn’t want you out by yourself.”

  “I will. Sure I only live two doors away from Eddie,” Hazel said.

  Kinky thought the look Eddie gave Hazel would have served well on the face of a recently rescued shipwrecked sailor. She looked at her watch. “Settle down. Time is moving on, so.”

  She sat. “And this is what it was. Connor had heard a clicking. He looked around, but he couldn’t see the spider.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “He listened, listened. There. The noise was coming from the cupboard over the sink.

  “Connor rose very quietly and took a firm grip on his book. One good clout with it would make short shrift of the spider. He opened the cupboard door sloooowly, slooowly . . .”—she let her voice rise—“and jumped back!

  “The poitín bottle tumbled out and smashed in the sink, the fumes of the spirits stinging his nose. And the spider, pausing only to fix Connor with its hard eyes for a moment, hissed and scuttled out of the cupboard, leapt onto Connor’s shoulder, and bit his ear.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Jeannie Kennedy whispered and crossed herself.

  “Connor hit himself an awful rap on the shoulder with his book, but the spider was too quick. It had already hurled itself onto the floor and skittered into the mousehole before he could stamp his foot on it.”

  “You see, Hazel?” Colin sounded smug. “The Shee are out to get him, so they are.”

  Kinky ignored Colin. “Certainly Connor, who had been so sure that even if they did exist, the faeries were no threat, was having second thoughts now. He knew, he absolutely knew, that last night he’d put the bottle at the back of the cupboard. Something had pushed it to the front. And while he knew spiders would bite if you picked one up or tried to break its web with your finger, he’d never heard of one deliberately attacking.

  “At least there was one good thing, he thought, as he rubbed his ear. As far as he knew, there were no poisonous spiders in Ireland.”

  “Nor no thnakes, neither,” said Billy Cadogan. “Thaint Patrick drove them out, tho he did.”

  “He did,” said Kinky. “At least that’s what the legend says. But maybe it was the Druids he drove out of Ireland. The snake was one of the Druids’ chief symbols. Snakes shed their skin every year, and the Druids thought snakes died and came back to life, that they had eternal life and had to be worshipped.”

  “Never mind Saint Patrick. I think the Shee are trying to drive Connor out.” Eddie Jingles looked very serious.

  “And do you know, Eddie? Connor wasn’t sure. He was willing to accept that there were things science could not explain; he was even able to grant that there might be such creatures as faeries. After all, sensible people believe there is a monster in Loch Ness in Scotland.”

  “Aye,” said Eddie, “and I’ve seen a photo taken of it a wheen of years ago. There is one, right enough.”

  “Connor couldn’t have seen that picture, Eddie. It was taken after his time, but he did know that in August of the year 565, Saint Columba had rescued a man from the creature by ordering it to return to the depths of the loch. S
o, if there was a monster, there might be faeries. He reckoned he might have annoyed them by cutting down their tree. He rubbed his ear and felt the aches from his head and his hand, and the tingling in his forearm from the raven’s peck.

  “He glowered at the mess of broken glass in the sink. There would be no poitín tonight for a drop of comfort, he thought. And how in the name of the wee man could a spider, even one as big as that brute, be strong enough to shift a bottle?

  “Connor shook his head. All right. All right. Perhaps the faeries were trying to annoy him, but to believe they could do him serious hurt when the whole German army couldn’t was a hard lump to swallow. Wasn’t it? he asked himself. Wasn’t it?

  “He was puzzling on this when he heard a new noise from outside, a scrabbling on the door, a scritch-scritch-scratch. It sounded like an animal’s claws.”

  “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Micky said, with an evil grin.

  “More like a fox,” a wide-eyed Dermot Fogarty gasped.

  “That’s what Connor thought,” Kinky said. “Or something in the shape of a fox. He could hear his pulse hammering in his ears. His mouth was dry. His palms were sweaty.

  “Scritch-scritch-scratch. And now he could hear a low-pitched whining. He went to the corner, lifted his double-breasted shotgun, loaded it, and went to the door.

  “He cocked both hammers, threw the door wide, and stepped swiftly back. He jammed the butt of the gun into his shoulder, but as he aimed and tightened his finger on the trigger, he saw what had been scratching.

  “‘Tess . . . Tessie.’ Connor lowered the gun and uncocked it. ‘Och, Tessie, I could have killed you.’ He knelt and put his arms round the dog’s neck. He could smell her, feel her hot breath and wet rough tongue on his cheek. ‘So you didn’t like being out there all alone in the fog? I don’t blame you.

  “ ‘Tonight,’ he said, as he closed and bolted the door, ‘you’re sleeping in here.’ And he wasn’t sure if it was because the dog hated the fog or because he wouldn’t object to having her company. He led her to the fire. ‘Down.’ She settled, put her head on her front paws, and stared at him.

  “Connor sat back into his chair. The bump on his head throbbed, his forearm itched, his ear smarted, the cut on his palm stung. And he knew that he’d been rattled just before he’d opened the door, not knowing what might be on the other side.

  “He’d go to the O’Hanlons’ tomorrow all right on his way to the peat bog. He’d ask Mrs. O’Hanlon’s opinion—everyone knew she was a wise woman. He didn’t have to take her advice if he didn’t want to.

  “But she might have some ideas about why he thought he’d heard a voice telling him to beware the fox, the raven, and the spider.

  “Maybe he’d just ask her about that—before the snow flew.”

  9

  “Next morning, a Monday it was, Connor put the donkey between the shafts of the cart, called for Tess, and set off for our farm and his peat bog. There were no snow clouds and the fog had gone. It was one of those November days when the sky is blue as a forget-me-not, the air crisp in your lungs, and the light so bright the edges of everything look as if they’d been etched with a sharp chisel. All the colours—the yellows, the russets, the greens, the reds—were bright enamels, not the usual pale pastels and charcoals of winter.

  “His nose was full of the scents of whin flowers and peat smoke and ploughed earth.

  “The sounds of the countryside were crisp, of hooves and iron-rimmed wheels on tarmac, jackdaws and rooks cawing across the sky, sheep bleating, and over the next hill, from down in the valley, the barking of a dog.

  “And there was not a fox nor a raven to be seen.

  “Connor strode along, whistling to himself ‘The Wearing of the Green,’ ‘Planxty Gordon,’ ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley.’ Maybe, he thought, now the night was over, he was making a fuss about nothing. Maybe, after he’d apologized for not showing up yesterday, he’d say nothing to Mrs. O’Hanlon. If he did, he knew she’d take him seriously, but Fidelma might laugh at him. And he’d not like her to think him a foolish, ill-educated, superstitious man.

  “Of course, he remembered, on a Monday she’d be at her work at the linen mill in Clonakilty, so he’d no need to worry about her overhearing. But he decided he’d think on it later, for the sun was warming the air. It was a day to lift his spirits and banish his concerns.”

  “Sounds lovely, Mrs. Kincaid,” Dorothy said.

  Kinky smiled. “It was, and wasn’t I stuck at home with the bronchitis?”

  “Bet you got off school for a clatter of days. That’s wheeker, so it is.” Colin was clearly envious.

  “I liked school, and I’d rather have been there than bundled up in a blanket, sitting in the kitchen, coughing and keeping Ma company while she washed pots in the sink. Mind you, if I hadn’t been at home, I’d not have heard the things I’m going to tell you next.

  “There was a knock on the door and in comes Connor. I thought it strange the way he had his scarf wrapped round his face.

  “ ‘Good morning, O’Hanlons,’ says he. ‘Can I come in?’

  “ ‘Come right ahead,’ says Ma. ‘I’m glad to see you looking fit and well. We were worried about you yesterday. Art had to go on to the match by himself. We won, by the way.’

  “ ‘Grand, so,’ he said. ‘Something came up. I couldn’t make it so I popped in today to let you know I’m fine.’ Then he noticed me sitting by the stove. ‘Are you not at yourself, Maureen?’ he enquired.

  “I shook my head and coughed.

  “ ‘Well, I hope you’ll soon be better,’ says he, and with such a smile in his eyes didn’t I feel the healing in it? ‘I’m sorry I’ve no sweeties today.’

  “ ‘Thanks, but never worry,’ I said. ‘My throat’s too scratchy to eat them.’

  “ ‘And how are you, Connor?’ Ma asked. ‘I see by the bandage on your hand you’ve been in the wars.’

  “ ‘Och, sure I was clumsy. I cut myself. It’s nothing. Nothing at all.’ And yet by the tone of his voice it didn’t sound like nothing. As he spoke, his scarf slipped and I saw a red stain on his face.

  “Ma frowned as she looked at it; then she dried her hands on her apron, went to the kitchen table, sat, and said, ‘Connor MacTaggart, it is none of my business, so, but if you’d care to, have a seat and tell me about what it is that does be troubling you.’

  “I watched him hesitate, start to shake his head, and then make as if to speak. Suddenly, he tore off his caubeen, held it in one hand, jerked out a chair, and sat at the table. I think they both forgot about me, so I just held my wheest and sat there listening like a fly on the wall.

  “ ‘Mrs. O’Hanlon,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure how to start, but . . .’ He grinned. ‘Mrs. O’Hanlon, I feel an awful buck eejit . . .’

  “ ‘There’s no need, Connor,’ Ma said. ‘A lot of folks get embarrassed when they want to talk about the Shee.’

  “Connor started back in his chair. ‘How did you know what I wanted?’

  “It was Ma’s turn to smile. ‘Do you think it’s because I have the sight?’

  “Connor swallowed. ‘The people in these parts do say so.’

  “Now she laughed. ‘It’s not that, Connor. It’s not magic. You were bound and determined to cut down a blackthorn on Saturday, were you not?’

  “He hung his head.

  “ ‘Since then you’ve been having bad luck. You cut your hand . . .’

  “His eyes widened and he glanced at his bandage. ‘I hit my head a ferocious dunder, too,’ he said in a low voice.

  “Ma leant forward, took his chin in one hand, and turned his head. She peered, then took a short, sudden breath. ‘And the Shee have marked you, so,’ she said.

  “Connor’s hand stroked his cheek. ‘I thought it was only sap.’

  “Ma said nothing. She just looked at him and for a moment her black eyes were soft as if she were gazing on a sick child. Then her eyelids narrowed and she said with an edge in her voice, �
�Connor MacTaggart, you do know fine it’s not sap.’

  “I’d only ever heard her sound like that if one of us children was for getting their head in their hands. I stared at Connor and I wondered if he was for it.

  “Connor looked down at the floor, fiddled with his caubeen, sighed, then said quietly, ‘I’m not saying I’m asking for help now, but supposing . . . just supposing a fellah thought the Shee were after him . . . is there any way at all to get them to go away? Put out milk at night or leave the fire burning so they can warm themselves while we’re asleep?’

  “Ma sighed. ‘They do like those things, or even a drop of poitín left in the glass, but they won’t be put off by a drink or a bit of warm if they’re cross and are tormenting a body.’ Ma leant back and folded her arms across her bosom. ‘For an animal being plagued by the faeries you take a hot coal and you sweep it all round the beast and above and below . . . but I don’t think it would work for a man. Not if they’re really angry—’ ”

  “And they can get fit to be tied,” Micky Corry broke in. “My mammy told me one night when I wouldn’t go to sleep that the faeries would get cross as two sticks with me and they’d come and take me away and leave an old creature with a narrow face and bony fingers in my place . . .”

  Kinky saw Colin Brown on the verge of making a comment, probably a sarcastic one, then obviously thinking better of it and staying silent.

  “And she said if they did, she’d have to pass the . . . she called it a changeling . . . she’d have to pass it through a blacksmith’s fire to get it to go and me to come back.”

  “Honest to God?” Dorothy asked, wide-eyed.

  “Cross my heart,” Micky said and did. “And she said there’s worser things too, isn’t that right, Mrs. Kincaid?”

  “It is. I heard of one that very November morning from my Ma. ‘Connor,’ says she, ‘it was a blackthorn and it was the eleventh of this month. ’Twas a terrible thing you did, so.’

  “Connor blushed and hung his head.