In Turbulent Times

excerpt

FOUR
‘I’ll wet a pot of tea for us, Joe,’ Caitlin said. ‘It’s nice of you to drop in and see us again when I’m sure you have a lot to do with your leave.’ She warmed a brown teapot with water from the kettle on the range and carried it into the scullery, from where she continued talking in a louder voice. ‘I hope you’ve been to see Nora. She’d be upset if you were home and didn’t drop in on her.’
Joe sat in Michael’s chair. ‘Yes, I saw her yesterday after the funeral. I didn’t see Liam though. He’s still in Belfast.’
‘Poor Liam,’ Caitlin called out. ‘What a horrible ordeal he’s going through. But that’s him. When anything goes wrong or when something bad happens, it’s always Liam that people call on. Or it’s always Liam who offers to help.’
‘He’s a good man,’ Joe said loudly enough for Caitlin to hear.
Caitlin returned to the kitchen. ‘The tea’ll be ready in a few minutes.’
‘Where’s Mr Carrick?’ Joe asked.
‘He’s up the loaney with Robert Hanlon.’
‘Robert Hanlon?’
‘An artist from Belfast. He paints the most beautiful landscapes in oil and watercolour. He has rented the old cottage for weekends and holidays. It’s a base for him to hike in the hills from. Up there he can draw or paint or whatever. He and Michael are bringing water into the cottage by pipe from the Tamnagh Burn. So the old cottage now has water at the turn of a tap. Michael was lucky to get hold of a length of hosepipe when everything goes to the war effort these days. We have tap water in the scullery now. And out in the yard.’
‘But no electricity yet,’ Joe observed.
‘Not yet. But it’s coming,’ Caitlin announced. ‘Before long you won’t know the place, Joe. Michael has a tractor now and a mechanical reaper and binder for the harvest. He has more land under cultivation than ever …’
‘Because of the war.’

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The Unquiet Land

excerpt

Respectfully, of course. I think we can call on the infinite power and all-knowingness of God. And God is good, Caitlin. He knows what is best for each and every one of us. Yes, if you ask my honest opinion, the Carney boy was beyond saving by medical means. I believe, and believe fervently, that God intervened to spare his life.”
Those words had had more of an impact on Caitlin and on her future than Dr Starkey could have realised. He had looked at Caitlin with his wise, compassionate eyes and knew what was going on in her head. But he could hardly have guessed the full consequence of his words. Like the stone-man’s wedges they opened a crack in the monolithic relationship between Caitlin and her father.
“Why don’t you talk to Father Padraig?” Dr Starkey had suggested. “He is better versed in these matters than I am.”
Caitlin had deferred talking to Padraig. Looking ahead like a traveller on a long road, she could see the priest at a parting of the ways, waiting for her, watching her approach. The sun was low behind him, and his thin body cast a monstrous shadow across her path. She could not see what lay along either of the roads at whose branching the priest stood, but she knew she would have to choose the one or the other.
҂
A month after Joe-Joe Carney’s miraculous recovery Caitlin met Padraig in the village. She had not seen him for several days, not since he had come to the house for a meal. He had had his hair cut short and he looked different. He seemed taller, and his thin face even more emaciated. In his black priestly garb he appeared even paler than usual.
“Hello, Caitlin,” he said. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, Padraig.”
“No,” Padraig said right away. “Something is troubling you. What is it?”
“What makes you think that something is troubling me?”
“I can see it in your eyes. They look disturbed. And I think you have been avoiding me of late.”
“Padraig, that’s not true. You had dinner at our house not so long ago.”
“Yes, but I invited myself, Caitlin.” Padraig looked into her eyes for a moment; they were more disturbed now. “I feel like a stranger in Finn MacLir’s house. Even an unwelcome stranger.”
“No, Padraig. Never unwelcome. And never a stranger.”
“Are you talking for yourself, Caitlin, or for both of you?”

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The Unquiet Land

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No one knew how long the Burn had offered safe haven to boats harassed by the North Channel storms. But the longships of the rampant Danes were here a thousand years ago. Nowadays the herring trawlers and the stone coasters of the home ports crowded into it and quarrelled over room like gulls on a cliff. Their ropes criss-crossed on the granite bollards; their fishing nets and floats draped the harbour walls; and granite square-setts, stacked upon the wharfs, awaited shipment to the city streets of Britain.
Today the harbour was quiet; only three yawls and a few rowing boats were moored there. The water was as still as treacle. Across the river from the entrance to the harbour, diagonally opposite to where Caitlin stood, the ruins of Killyshannagh Chapel, also known as the Sailors’ Church, rejoiced in having been released from the choke of ivy and brambles and thorn trees that had hidden it from sight for a large part of the three hundred years it had stood there. Shipwrecked sailors, vagrants and unbaptized babies were buried in the overgrown field behind the crumbling stone walls. Caitlin’s grandfather, Big George Corrigan, one of the unloved travelling people, was buried there. So was her mother. Caitlin herself often wished she could be buried there, within sight of the hills and the sound of the sea, but no burials were permitted there now except by consent of the district council, but even that was most often withheld. Finn MacLir had a permit allowing him to be buried there in the same grave as his first wife, the tragic Roisin Corrigan, but his burial could well be the last at Killyshannagh. Beyond the harbour and the ancient church and the stone-walled fields behind it, the chevroned line of mountains gleamed as if they had been painted in enamel on the blank backdrop of the sky.
Caitlin stepped on to the wharf and crossed to the edge of the harbour, where Nora was standing, looking down. Only then did Caitlin see the figures. The scene had looked empty and lifeless, with only the glint of reflected sun to highlight it like a watercolour. But figures were clustered on one of the fishing boats, some standing, exchanging words and glancing down into the centre of the group where others crouched over or hunkered round something on the deck. Caitlin felt uneasy. She clasped her sister’s hand, and Nora glanced at her.
A few yards to their left, old Tom Stump—his real name was Stevenson—sat on a bollard with his short leg stretched in front of him, his clasped hands resting on the pads of his crutches. He was watching what was going on below him in the boat and did not notice Caitlin till she spoke.

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The Unquiet Land

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“Oh he loved her, Caitlin. He always loved her. He chased her for ten years or more before she accepted him. Longest wooing I ever heard of. Finn MacLir does do things for people because he feels sorry for them. That’s in his nature. He rescued poor Padraig from an unbearable life in Scotland and adopted him so as to give him a name. He took pity on me and brought me here to look after you and Nora and then he married me. He’s as soft as goose-down, Caitlin. With a heart of warm butter.”
“In spite of his outward show of swagger and bravado,” Caitlin said.
“Yes. Swagger and bravado. That’s your father. Roisin was just the opposite. She was one of those women who are left alone to take care of an aging father and, in her case, a brother as well. Poor Roisin. There are so many women who are caught like that. I always think of Maeve Muldoon. Remained a spinster till she was forty-three, caring for a sick old mother, and then she died of cancer while her mother lived to be eighty-three or -four. Your mother’s was a sad story too, Caitlin. She had her boyfriends, including Finn MacLir, but she didn’t marry. Her duty, as she saw it, was to keep her father’s home going. By the time her father died and Tom went to America, Roisin was already over thirty. Tom wanted her to go to America with him, but Finn wanted her to be his wife. That was an easy choice for Roisin to make. They were so happy here for a year or more. As much a pair of devoted lovebirds as Nora and Flynn.”
“Then Nora and I were born.”
“Yes. And it was too much for your mother, poor woman. Maybe if there had been only one of you, she might have survived. But a twin birth was too much for her. She died, and Finn was heartbroken. Dear God in heaven, I’ve never seen a man so … so … destroyed as Finn MacLir when your mother died. I know. I was here when you were born.”
“Poor Father,” Caitlin murmured. “He doesn’t deserve the blows he’s had to suffer.”
Now, seated on the rock by the shore, watching another wave break, Caitlin thought of Michael. Michael came to work for Finn MacLir after the Neelys left. Michael was Seamus Slattery’s nephew, and Finn had immediately taken a liking to the young man. He accepted Michael as the son he had not found in Padraig. At first glance there seemed to be no good reason why he should, for the two men were as different as sea and soil. Michael lacked Finn’s intellect; his wilful, blustering self-confidence; his extroversion; his exuberant enthusiasms. Michael was quiet, sensitive, introverted, and shy. But he shared Finn’s compassion and Finn’s love of man and earth …

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The Unquiet Land

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“Not necessarily on the scaffold though,” Flynn said with a doubting smile that dismissed the whole business.
“No, but a violent end nevertheless,” said the gypsy woman with conviction. “Sainmhíniú. I know.”
“She’s right, Flynn,” Nora said uneasily. “The cross is there clear enough.” She looked at the tinker lady with fright in her eyes. “What happened to the other man you saw this sign on?”
“He was murdered,” said the gypsy. “Last year in Dublin.”
Nora turned her frightened eyes on Flynn, but Flynn placed his arm around her shoulder and smiled. “I’m surprised at you, Nora Casey,” he said. “God decides how and when we die. That’s what you’re always saying, isn’t it? If I’m to die a sudden and violent death, then it’s His will and you can’t quarrel with it. So don’t be paying too much heed to this palm-reading nonsense. I might live to be a hundred and die falling down the stairs.”
Flynn Casey was an ardent, vindictive Republican who had earned a reputation in Corrymore through having been in Dublin at the Easter Rising in 1916. No one knew what he did at the Easter Rising, but he came home with his arm in a sling, a bullet in his shoulder, and a hatred in his heart for Englishmen and Unionists. He was a quiet, shy, young man with eyes so squinty they seemed to be shut most of the time. His wide shoulders and big-boned frame gave him a stocky appearance, but his height was well above average. He made few friends, and when he announced that he was moving permanently to Dublin, that he would never live in a tiny province under the tyrannical rule of England, hardly anyone said they would miss him. The consensus was that he’d bring trouble to the village. Trouble dogged him like footprints on the beach. On the other hand no one wanted to lose his young wife, the popular Nora.
Nora poured two cups of tea. “Is Caitlin home?” she shouted to her stepmother in the scullery.
“No. She’s gone to meet Michael who’s down at the harbour.” Mother Ross came into the kitchen, drying her hands on the skirt of her black, polka-dotted apron. She sat down at the well-scrubbed table and spooned sugar into her teacup. “Now, what has you bursting with happiness like a lark with song?”
“Flynn’s home.” The smile widened across Nora’s round face again.
“What’s happened to his plans to move to Dublin?” Mother Ross prayed those plans had foundered. She wanted Nora and her toddler son to stay in Corrymore.

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