will keep the water stirred and good while it sits under its damp muslin cloth by the door.
For some reason I think of Mary Callan in her lone bed, no type of human body to lie at her side, in a filthy nest no doubt of fetid sheets. Perhaps on mere straw she lies, in the manner of the old days, when cottagers and the like could not stretch to such matters as linen. In the straw they all lay down, adults and children and many of them, and in the low part of the room the beasts lay down, the milking cow and a calf if they were lucky, and if more fortunate than most, the prized personage of the pig. It was the slope in the floor that kept the emissions of the animals well down from the sacred precinct of the hearth, where the human animals gathered and took their farthings of ease at nightfall. It is my suspicion that Mary Callan holds to these emergencies and customs yet. Should this awake a shadow of sympathy in me, such a dark, solitary life so near to our own? I suppose it should and does, but I damn her dirty bucket anyhow.
Now when the gloss of daylight has brushed every stone, and the sun itself moved beyond the gable of the milking shed, and I have chastised Sarah for her neglecting to put Daisy and Myrtle back up to the grass, and given them an unaccustomed night under the spidery rafters, and I have roused the two children and brought porridge to their niche in the fireplace, where they lurk now with spoons like the mites they are, Billy Kerr comes in to us. I am not so surprised to see him, since he may have things to do to right the old trap, or some such plan, nor am I so vexed. The services of the previous day have given me a lingering endurance of him, with his round face speckled with unshaven hairs. His chin and cheeks are like wood infested with a damp bloom. There seems to be a big bone across his shoulders so he looks perpetually like a man with a wooden yoke for two buckets, except there are no buckets, only some mysterious invisible weight that stoops him slightly. As a woman with a hump myself, I would not care to see the children you would get off of such a man, no more than I would have cared to risk children out of myself, though the great need was there, certainly. It might well be crooked children he would give a woman.
No matter for that, Sarah greets him kindly and sets him at the scrubbed table and fetches tea to him again. Maybe he senses the relaxation in me, because he is not annoying or dark with me this day, but glances over at me and smiles in a brotherly fashion. Maybe he thinks the ring is in my nose now, the danger is less in me.
‘That’s a great mass of sunlight now,’ he says, ‘stretching the height of Keadeen mountain and I don’t think we will see rain again for a week. So between the recent rain and the sun, anyone with potatoes sown will be happy. The Dunnes of Feddin have half an acre sown. They were sitting up with their boiled eggs this morning as happy as pigs in muck.’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’ says Sarah. ‘They’re hard to work. Did you put in those spuds for them, Billy Kerr?’
‘I did. The four worked side by side. We were fitting in spuds and singing. Good work.’
‘Well,’ says Sarah, edging the cup with its rings of blue and white closer to his hand because he has not drunk yet, ‘it is a good thing to have the spuds to put in, and the ground, and the people to do the putting. Me and Annie will sow our own store soon, I am sure.’
‘We most certainly will,’ I say. ‘Most certainly.’
The children sit in the niche of the fire, staring at the talking adults. Their dim spoons travel from bowl to mouth, bowl to mouth.
‘They are certainly grand children,’ says Billy Kerr. ‘They must get right feeding in the big city. How’s that boy today, hah?’
The boy stares out at him, the man who the day before has played with him on the green road. And yet nothing issues forth from him, no easy talk or smile.
‘You see,’ says Billy Kerr,
For some reason I think of Mary Callan in her lone bed, no type of human body to lie at her side, in a filthy nest no doubt of fetid sheets. Perhaps on mere straw she lies, in the manner of the old days, when cottagers and the like could not stretch to such matters as linen. In the straw they all lay down, adults and children and many of them, and in the low part of the room the beasts lay down, the milking cow and a calf if they were lucky, and if more fortunate than most, the prized personage of the pig. It was the slope in the floor that kept the emissions of the animals well down from the sacred precinct of the hearth, where the human animals gathered and took their farthings of ease at nightfall. It is my suspicion that Mary Callan holds to these emergencies and customs yet. Should this awake a shadow of sympathy in me, such a dark, solitary life so near to our own? I suppose it should and does, but I damn her dirty bucket anyhow.
Now when the gloss of daylight has brushed every stone, and the sun itself moved beyond the gable of the milking shed, and I have chastised Sarah for her neglecting to put Daisy and Myrtle back up to the grass, and given them an unaccustomed night under the spidery rafters, and I have roused the two children and brought porridge to their niche in the fireplace, where they lurk now with spoons like the mites they are, Billy Kerr comes in to us. I am not so surprised to see him, since he may have things to do to right the old trap, or some such plan, nor am I so vexed. The services of the previous day have given me a lingering endurance of him, with his round face speckled with unshaven hairs. His chin and cheeks are like wood infested with a damp bloom. There seems to be a big bone across his shoulders so he looks perpetually like a man with a wooden yoke for two buckets, except there are no buckets, only some mysterious invisible weight that stoops him slightly. As a woman with a hump myself, I would not care to see the children you would get off of such a man, no more than I would have cared to risk children out of myself, though the great need was there, certainly. It might well be crooked children he would give a woman.
No matter for that, Sarah greets him kindly and sets him at the scrubbed table and fetches tea to him again. Maybe he senses the relaxation in me, because he is not annoying or dark with me this day, but glances over at me and smiles in a brotherly fashion. Maybe he thinks the ring is in my nose now, the danger is less in me.
‘That’s a great mass of sunlight now,’ he says, ‘stretching the height of Keadeen mountain and I don’t think we will see rain again for a week. So between the recent rain and the sun, anyone with potatoes sown will be happy. The Dunnes of Feddin have half an acre sown. They were sitting up with their boiled eggs this morning as happy as pigs in muck.’
‘Why wouldn’t they?’ says Sarah. ‘They’re hard to work. Did you put in those spuds for them, Billy Kerr?’
‘I did. The four worked side by side. We were fitting in spuds and singing. Good work.’
‘Well,’ says Sarah, edging the cup with its rings of blue and white closer to his hand because he has not drunk yet, ‘it is a good thing to have the spuds to put in, and the ground, and the people to do the putting. Me and Annie will sow our own store soon, I am sure.’
‘We most certainly will,’ I say. ‘Most certainly.’
The children sit in the niche of the fire, staring at the talking adults. Their dim spoons travel from bowl to mouth, bowl to mouth.
‘They are certainly grand children,’ says Billy Kerr. ‘They must get right feeding in the big city. How’s that boy today, hah?’
The boy stares out at him, the man who the day before has played with him on the green road. And yet nothing issues forth from him, no easy talk or smile.
‘You see,’ says Billy Kerr,
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