the new national school where his sister taught. His first job was in a local sand and gravel pit, where he learned to weld and fix machinery; soon, he was driving a sand lorry for the pit, and then purchased an old lorry of his own, drawing merchandise to and from the Belfast and Dublin docks. On the potholed roads it was more important to be a good mechanic than a driver, and by his early twenties he had four lorries of his own. At the outbreak of the war he switched into tillage contracting and made serious money.
Seeing compulsory tillage about to disappear with the ending of the war, he sold out early, preserving and increasing the money he had made. For a few years he had a sawmill before buying the railway station, its land and buildings and some miles of track, when the small branch line was closed. In the middle of a long recession it went cheaply and he had to borrow very little. A bank manager he knew from the town card school gave him the loan, which he quickly repaid by dismantling and selling off the track, rails and sleepers and buildings that he didn’t want. At thirty, he owned a small empire and had no debts at a time when only the old established traders, the priests, the doctors, the big farmers had money and all the trains to the night boats were full. From such a position many men of his age would have expanded; he contracted. The only regular employment he gave was to a young boy, taciturn and intelligent, from a house close to his own on the same part of the mountain. Whenever he needed other workers he employed casual labour. When whatwas left of the railway line was broken up and sold off or stored, he began to buy old lorries, tractors, farm machinery to sell for spare parts and to put down fuel tanks. And when the four small railwaymen’s cottages that had come to him with the station became vacant, he installed bachelors he knew who had grown too old to work their mountain farms and wanted to move into the town. He charged them no rent and in return they helped about the sheds and in the big field of scrapped machinery on the edge of the town, while they were able. They were all silent, withdrawn people who spoke little, but seemed to understand one another perfectly and to get on well together without talking. When they died or had to go into the Home, he replaced them from the same stock, much as he replaced the black-and-white sheepdogs he was attached to. He did not drink or smoke and his fondness for cards was profitable. His luxuries were the new, expensive cars he liked to drive and the big meals he enjoyed every day in the hotel. With thick curly brown hair, an alert, pleasant appearance, his manner easy and assured, he was attractive to women in spite of an unconcealed, long-held determination to avoid marriage as he had avoided school. When he had the lorries on the road, he had several girls, all of them small and pretty; and then after a few years there was just the one girl, small too and pretty, Annie May McKiernan, and for nine years they went out together, meeting on the same two evenings every week.
He called for her in his big car where she lived with her parents and brother on their comfortable farm. They went to dances and films and the local plays. Gradually, he became almost another member of her family, helping her brother with the machinery on the farm, driving her parents to the seaside at Strandhill and Bundoran and later to Manorhamilton Hospital.
When her father and then her mother died, he was as helpful and as present about the house as any member of the family, but soon afterwards her brother wanted to marry and bring ayoung woman into the house. Pressure was put on Annie May and on her suitor of many years. As they exchanged presents that Christmas while sitting in the big car, she said, in her placid way, “Aunt Mary wants me to go out to her in New York. You know, if something doesn’t happen soon I think I’ll go out to America around Easter.”
It would
Seeing compulsory tillage about to disappear with the ending of the war, he sold out early, preserving and increasing the money he had made. For a few years he had a sawmill before buying the railway station, its land and buildings and some miles of track, when the small branch line was closed. In the middle of a long recession it went cheaply and he had to borrow very little. A bank manager he knew from the town card school gave him the loan, which he quickly repaid by dismantling and selling off the track, rails and sleepers and buildings that he didn’t want. At thirty, he owned a small empire and had no debts at a time when only the old established traders, the priests, the doctors, the big farmers had money and all the trains to the night boats were full. From such a position many men of his age would have expanded; he contracted. The only regular employment he gave was to a young boy, taciturn and intelligent, from a house close to his own on the same part of the mountain. Whenever he needed other workers he employed casual labour. When whatwas left of the railway line was broken up and sold off or stored, he began to buy old lorries, tractors, farm machinery to sell for spare parts and to put down fuel tanks. And when the four small railwaymen’s cottages that had come to him with the station became vacant, he installed bachelors he knew who had grown too old to work their mountain farms and wanted to move into the town. He charged them no rent and in return they helped about the sheds and in the big field of scrapped machinery on the edge of the town, while they were able. They were all silent, withdrawn people who spoke little, but seemed to understand one another perfectly and to get on well together without talking. When they died or had to go into the Home, he replaced them from the same stock, much as he replaced the black-and-white sheepdogs he was attached to. He did not drink or smoke and his fondness for cards was profitable. His luxuries were the new, expensive cars he liked to drive and the big meals he enjoyed every day in the hotel. With thick curly brown hair, an alert, pleasant appearance, his manner easy and assured, he was attractive to women in spite of an unconcealed, long-held determination to avoid marriage as he had avoided school. When he had the lorries on the road, he had several girls, all of them small and pretty; and then after a few years there was just the one girl, small too and pretty, Annie May McKiernan, and for nine years they went out together, meeting on the same two evenings every week.
He called for her in his big car where she lived with her parents and brother on their comfortable farm. They went to dances and films and the local plays. Gradually, he became almost another member of her family, helping her brother with the machinery on the farm, driving her parents to the seaside at Strandhill and Bundoran and later to Manorhamilton Hospital.
When her father and then her mother died, he was as helpful and as present about the house as any member of the family, but soon afterwards her brother wanted to marry and bring ayoung woman into the house. Pressure was put on Annie May and on her suitor of many years. As they exchanged presents that Christmas while sitting in the big car, she said, in her placid way, “Aunt Mary wants me to go out to her in New York. You know, if something doesn’t happen soon I think I’ll go out to America around Easter.”
It would
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