Lark's Eggs by Desmond Hogan Page A

walked into the fire ablaze had someone not held her and comforted her and satiated her as her moans grew to the sound and shape of seals in bays west of Ballinasloe.
    â€˜Eileen wake up. Do you know what’s happened? They’ve killed an old man.’
    Eileen looked at her daughter. ‘Who?’
    â€˜Tinker lads.’
    Eileen stared. So death had come at last. They’d killed an old man. ‘May they be cursed,’ she said, ‘for bringing bad tidings on our people. May they be forsaken for leaving an old way of life, for doing what no Travelling people have ever done before.’
    As it happened the old man was not dead. Just badly beaten up.
    Some Tinkers had gone to rob him, took all and hit him with a delft hot-water jar.
    Â â€˜The Travellers have already gone from the green.’
    â€˜Ballinasloe fair week without the Tinkers,’ Eileen said. ‘What a terrible sight the green must be.’
    She saw more Tinkers than she’d ever seen before.
    They came like apostles as a priest rummaged with broken words.
    â€˜Is it dying you think I am? Well, it’s not dying I am,’ said Eileen.
    She saw five children like the seven dwarfs. ‘These too will grow to drink cider outside the Gresham in Dublin,’ she thought, as candles lit and the priest talked about the devil.
    Her great-grandson Owen was living with a rich American woman in an empty hotel in Oughterard. ‘What next?’
    Her head sunk back.
    She saw Joseph again and the flames and wanted again to enter but knew she couldn’t. She woke.
    â€˜If it’s dying I am I want to die in peace. Bring me to the crossroad in Aughrim.’ A Pakistani doctor nearly had concussion but the solemn occasion speeded up as a nun intervened.
    Young nurses watched Eileen being carted off.
    They laid her on the ground and a Galway woman keened her. The voice was like sharp pincers in her ears.
    Now that they were saying she was on the verge of death ancient memories were budging and a woman, the lady of the manor, was moving again, a woman in white, standing by French windows, gazing into summer.
    She’d had fuzzy blonde hair and maybe that was why she’d looked at Joseph more closely the first time she saw him. She had the same eyes, twinkling brazen eyes.
    She heard again the lady’s voice. ‘No, I won’t go in,’ answering her husband. ‘It’s not evening. It’s just the afternoon.’
    Eileen woke.
    The stars shone above like silver dishes. The bushes were tipped with first frost.
    She stirred a bit. ‘Is it better I’m getting?’ she wondered. She moved again and laughed.
    Her bones felt more free. She lifted her head. ‘They might be killing old men but they won’t kill me.’
    Â She stirred. A girl heard her.
    Women shook free from tents and gazed as though at Count Dracula.
    In the morning she was hobbling on a stick.
    She hobbled down the lane and gazed on the Galway road. ‘I’ll have duck for dinner,’ she said. ‘Ye can well afford it with all the shillings you’re getting from the government.’
    At Christmas she was able to hobble, albeit with the help of a stick, into the church, crossing herself first with holy water.

The Man from Korea
    Afterwards it had the awkward grace of a legend; a silence when his name was mentioned, an implied understanding of what had happened. Few know what actually happened though, so to make it easier for you to understand I will make my own version.
    I was five when he came to town, a child at street comers. I was an intensely curious child, a seer, one who poked into everyone’s houses and recalled scandal, chagrin and disgrace. I know all about the Hennessys and if I don’t let me pretend to.
    He came in 1956. He was a young man of twenty-nine but already there was something old about him. He recalled the fires of the Korean War. He’d been an American pilot there.