Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh Page B

he was telling a lie if he didn’t try to mention some books. So he said: ‘Shaw, father.’
    He had read about Shaw in the newspapers, but had never read a line of Shaw’s.
    â€˜Have you a Rosary?’ asked the Confessor.
    Tarry had not but he said: ‘Yes, father’ in the hope of getting out of the confessional as quickly as possible. He had made it awkward enough as it was.
    â€˜You should read the
Messenger of the Sacred Heart,
’ said the Confessor. ‘Do you ever read the little
Messenger?
’
    â€˜Yes, father.’
    â€˜Continue to read it, my child; in that little book you will find all the finest literature written by the greatest writers. And give up this man, Shaw.’
    In all he could not have been less than twenty minutes in the confessional and considering that there was a long impatient queue on both sides of the confessional – among whom were Charlie and Eusebius – and that that confessor had the reputation of being very quick and easy – which was why he had such queues waiting to tell their sins to him, no wonder that Tarry’s lengthy period in the confession box caused such surprise.
    â€˜Shaw’s a hard man,’ remarked Charlie later, when they were standing outside Magan’s shop. Charlie hadn’t the faintest idea who Shaw was but he thought that by mentioning the name someone might reveal the secret behind it. No one knew, and Charlie was disappointed.
    â€˜You were a long time in the box with the priest, I hear,’ said the mother when he got home. ‘Did you kill a man or what?… You’ll have to cut them yellow weeds in the Low Place the morrow and not have the fields a show to the world. What did you say that made him keep you?’
    â€˜It’s a sin to tell a thing like that.’
    â€˜Whatever you do anyway, I wouldn’t like to think of you knocking around Dillon’s house, not that I’d ever believe you’d do anything, but you know the big-mouths that’s about this place.’
    â€˜You needn’t worry.’
    The Mission came to an end with a brilliant display of lighted candles and the massed congregation of old men and women straightening their bent backs and vowing to renounce the World, the Flesh and the Devil. They promised to control their passions, and Tarry, as he watched the scene of self-abnegation from the gallery, got a queer creepy feeling in the nerves of his face which something that was ludicrous and pathetic always made him feel. Petey Meegan was thumping his breast and looking up towards the coloured window with an ecstatic gaze.
    Old thin-faced, long-nosed Jenny Toole had a frightened look, thinking of the dangers she faced in a world of violent men.
    The crowds went home and once again the clay hand was clapped across the mouth of Prophecy.
    He cut the ragweeds and the thistles the following day. The yellow maggots wearing football jerseys which crept on the blossom fell to the ground. These maggots would become winged if they had lived long enough. Some day he, too, might grow wings and be able to fly away from this clay-stricken place. Ah, clay! It was out of clay that wings were made. He stared down at the dry little canyons in the parched earth and he loved that dry earth which could produce a miracle of wings.
    He thought of Mary Reilly. By a miracle the day might come when he’d have no trouble in getting her – or one even more beautiful. Greater miracles had happened. He hoped that she did not think that he was really responsible for the mauling she got at Drumnay cross-roads, for he wasn’t. Indeed, that was the last thing he would think of doing. It wouldn’t be past Eusebius, for all his talk.
    He would like to be able to warn the girl of the dangers she was going through, warn her of men like Charlie and some of those other slick blackguards who frequented the dance hall and who were such close friends of Father Markey. Ah,