I Could Read the Sky Read online

  Matt Doran comes by with his stick and his red dog.

  “She’s telling me all about the big city, Matt,” says Eileen.

  “That’s a place you wouldn’t get a clod of blue clay without paying for it,” he says.

  He squints then into the last of the sun and moves on.

  “What about Jim?” says Maura.

  “Gone. His brother sent him the fare. He’s in a tannery in Massatuchetts.” The way she switched the letters of words around sometimes. It was like Dermot with his wall eye. Or Da’s shortened finger. All those things about them would get you when you’re alone in the night like this. “After he left Kane came up in his horse and cart to see my Da. Mud all over the spokes. Mud on his boots. He takes off his hat and asks my Da can he marry me. Think of it, passing the rest of your life with a creature like that. Him with his red nose and his bald head. He’s filthy, Maura.”

  “What did your Da say?”

  I picture Eileen with the brows scrunched down over her nose. Two caterpillars facing off. Scratches the back of her head with one finger, just like Da. “‘It’s a good farm, girl,’ says he. ‘Plenty of cows.’ But he wouldn’t look at me. He knows I’d run away if he made me.”

  Eileen. If I just think of her voice I can hold it but I cannot find her face, aged eighteen. They all say she was lovely, black hair falling all the way down the length of her back that my father wouldn’t let her cut. The last thing he’d say the day he left for Lincolnshire – “And Eileen, please don’t cut your hair while I’m away.” The hungry way he’d look at you when he was leaving you couldn’t refuse him anything.

  She cut off her hair that September. In November she started to work for rich people in a house beside a lough to the south. Two years later she was in London.

  4

  I WAIT BY the door through the nights of this long winter week and then finally I get in. The green paint looks just fine in the evening light. Here in the room the air is neutral, like water in a bath, but inside the house it is warm and loaded. Eggcups full of whiskey. Turf. The glow of the lamp. Chicken bones, the sweat of the dancers, the holy things being put away by the priest. Then Da on the flute, very sweet.

  After Da my uncle Eamon gets up from his chair. Everything shining on him. The shoes, the ring, the teeth, the white shirt, his skin. His black hair shines too. He’s right next to me and he puts his hand on my shoulder for steadiness. His fingers like Da’s are smashed and maimed from the work in England but the only things anyone can ever see are the suit and the shining look of him. He draws a red banknote from his pocket and hands it me.

  “Let it be known that henceforth I am to be called by a new name,” he says. “There’s a man sold me a fine hat in Birmingham goes by the name Ros-coe.” He put great weight into the word. “That’s a name made for me, a name for a man would cut a dash on a city street. Roscoe.”

  With that he makes two fists, lets out a roar, and from a standing position leaps clean over the table in front of him. Not a glass nor a bottle nor a slice of bread stirs.

  He squats down then beside Eileen. “Half a pint of whiskey here!” he calls. Then he takes up Eileen’s hands and cranks her arm to get her to sing. “Now girl,” he says, “out with your voice.”

  All their voices. Matt Doran’s screech like a goose. The Tailor very low and sombre, like far-off thunder. Da asking Ma for a dance. Ma passing around the sandwiches. The Master giving out a poem about ingratitude. Heaney the Works Inspector down from Dublin played his harmonica and danced, coins and tobacco flying from his pockets. Uncle Roscoe walked once around the room on his hands and then out the door, everyone he passed paying respects to his new name. “Good evening, Roscoe,” they’d say. Eileen, her eyes closed, her head back, singing “Róisín Dubh”. Joe whispering later in the corner trying to imitate her.

  It was a night to remember.

  Eileen gets me out for a reel before the thick air closes in again and when I look up with her spinning me round it seems the whole galaxy is whirling above me.

  * * *

  5

  I AM UP on a high rock above the house in Labasheeda. Nothing behind me only the crest of the hill. The sky has the look of the sea in winter. Then it reddens, clears, and the whole of the valley below me fills with golden light. I turn slowly on the rock.

  All the way on the left the Rathangan road taking a turn in under the oaks. Three milk canisters up on the wall beside Matt, his pipe, his stick and his red dog. Tullaherin starting its low rise under his feet. Murran’s field, Lally’s field. The field where Joe Roddy took a heart attack. The gambling pit. Wisps of purple over the bog. Some say there’s bones in it from the Famine. The waterfall, the sparkle and laughter of it. Ma with the hens, her shadow streaking up the limestone. Ballinaclash. Ardnageeha. Killycolpy. All the stone walls running over the land like the veins in my hand. John Hall with his pet goose building another wall to nowhere for he’s nothing to do. The Tailor in through his window, taking a soft cloth to his loom. Joe Connor arguing with his son under his gable wall. Knocksouna. Glenanaar. What’s that Matt said it meant? Glen of the slaughter.

  I open my eyes in Kentish Town. Always this neutral air. There is some grey light coming in but it hasn’t that cold steely look of the winter sea I could see from the rock. A chair beside the bed. Tablets. A shirt with little blue squares, the collar shot. A bottle of Guinness here and another on the ledge. Maggie’s rosary, crystal beads. The paper from home. The black box with the accordion. A bowl, spoonful of soup in it. A wardrobe made by people I’ve never met. The grey light crawls up my liver-spotted hands. I hear the dog dreaming in the other room. Is there a kind of sum to this? I wait.

  I get back. Dunnamanagh. Cush. Fenit, the wild place. The blackened walls where the Tans burnt out the O’Rourkes. Dunleavy’s field where they took the Beggarman to be shot. Kennedy’s dog nipping at the cows. Baby pushes her empty pram out before her from behind Tullaherin, the keys on the string around her neck shining in the light, Matt touching the brim of his cap to her as she passes. “If you ever see her astray on the road, guide her home,” he told me. “The mad may be blessed.” The well in the long field. Matt says there’s a fish in it will tell you how your relations are doing in America. The golden light shines on Kate Creevy, the Tailor’s daughter, as she walks down the lane. Blackberries. The MacDonaghs slumped over chairs in their kitchen saying the rosary. I see Dermot and Vincent looking for trout by the river. The coppery haze from the flat rocks in the evening light. Capparoe. Ellistrin. Mullaghareirk. Oola. Dromdorry. Suil.

  Labasheeda, the bed of silk.

  I turn on the rock.

  This is me.

  6

  THE SOUND OF the gun since early morning. Ma says Martin’ll have the townland cleared of every living creature by nightfall. She hates the sound of it. “It would put you in mind of the ambushes,” she says. But she’ll say nothing. He’s to pass his last day in Ireland killing all around him with Da’s gun.

  I cross over to Matt’s. His wife’s by the fire reading a letter. She’s Matt’s spectacles down on the end of her nose. He’s at the table moving around a parcel from America. The way he picks at it with the tips of his fingers to get it open you’d think it was a sick hen.

  “What’s the parcel, Matt?” I ask him.

  “Tom sent it from Chicago. You’d want to be an engineer to open it.”

  Two bangs of the shotgun from Martin.

  “Martin’s away tomorrow,” I tell him.

  “Martin. A young girl from Killycolpy. John and Patrick, the Tailor’s two lads. All for the train tomorrow morning. That leaves only the Tailor himself and Kate at home. I wonder will any of them get as far as Tom in Chicago.”

  He’s the string off now, then the paper. Inside is a box. He opens it with his blade and peers into it. He slips his hands down the sides and lifts out what’s inside. A square black shining thing with a crested top. Mesh across the front over hay-coloured cloth and the word “Comet”
written over it. Two big dials like owls’ eyes. A radio that came all the way from America.

  Matt turns the dial with a little click. A light goes on inside and then we hear a voice, very low. Matt looks up from his crouch and winks over to me.

  “Here, Maire,” he calls. “Tom’s sent us a black box from Chicago with a little man inside. He’s talking about how it’s raining up in Dublin. Let’s see does he speak like a Yank.”

  Matt turns the dial again and the voice crackles and slides. It’s like a fiddle tuning up.

  Matt cups his hand over his ear, leans over and says, “What’s that you said, sir?”

  Maire Doran rolls her eyes and goes back to her letter but I can see by the shake of her back that she’s laughing.

  “Here. Make yourself useful,” says Matt, and he hands me over a whistle. I remember Matt like that. The way he’d put on his spectacles and read out from the paper about General Franco. He’d read some lines, look out at us over the rims, and start in again, the voice rising. The face turning to the colour of a strawberry. He couldn’t reach the end. “I’ll go there and finish the blackguard myself!” he’d say, the paper thrown in a ball into the dust. I remember the little field it took him two years and a thousand creel-loads of sand to build. I remember him standing over his daughter’s coffin, those blue eyes that would go into you like spears misting over, a strong man broken. He shouted that night at the sky. I play him “The Pipe and the Hob” before I go.

  When I wake the next morning I think tonight there’ll be more room in the bed. Martin’s already in the kitchen walking around in his new shoes and coat. We’re all gathered in to say goodbye to him. The two geese are calling out from the bottom drawer of the dresser. Ma can’t stop moving around. Vincent looks like he’s cross it’s Martin going and not him. Da’s pulling up beet in England. Eileen gives Martin a photograph of Ma and Da in an oval wooden frame. Ma gives him a rosary and sandwiches. We shake hands with him, Dermot, Vincent, Joe, myself, then the girls. Brid is with the dog by the fire. She has on a little yellow dress and no shoes. There’s the grey powder of turf ash on her feet. Ma goes over to get her to say goodbye to Martin. “Shake hands with your brother now, Brid,” she says. Brid wasn’t even the length of Martin’s leg that time. He bends over with his hand out and she looks up. Her hand goes up but then she stops. She’s looking past him to the window by the north door. Everything in her face stops moving until it balls up like a fist when she begins to cry. “Rabbits,” she says. We all look to the window. Four dead rabbits upside-down looking in, their feet bound with fishing line. Their stomachs are opened up where Martin gutted them, blood matting the fur. Their mouths are open. Their dead eyes like little shards of coal. “Go on and say goodbye to Martin now, Brid,” says Ma. “No!” she says. I feel the pierce of her shriek in my ear. She holds her hands up to her chest and looks away. She’ll not touch him nor look at him now.

  Martin in New York. Sometimes I’d try to think of the wide avenues straight as drills through the buildings. Big fistfuls of dollars for Martin. One day he fell into a furnace and died.

  7

  A BOTTLE BREAKS high on the wall, the pieces of glass falling. Then the screech of a woman, vicious as a cat. She keeps it up under my window until she runs out of breath, then walks on. I picture her fat with long hair in a dirty pink cardigan, white socks on her ankles and rat-like eyes. I was nicely asleep.

  I turn on the light. The blister on the wallpaper up by the ceiling and the stain where I tipped over the stout. Maggie’s not here now.

  Inside the drawer I feel for the pictures and I take them out. Da by the house with a straw hat down over his eye and a grin on him like he’s just won at cards. I try to look right into him. Brid with the two old horses and then later in Florida with a big fish. She writes on the back it’s called a marlin. I never noticed that before. Dermot’s boy in his waiter’s gear at the hotel. Maggie raising a glass, the dress with bluebells. Maggie I can’t look at very long.

  I come to me in the jacket Ma bought me that Fair Day in the town. It had a name written on the lining at the back, I remember. J. Brady. I’m looking straight ahead, creases in my brow and around the mouth where I’m starting to smile, like I’m hearing a joke I know the end of. Lips shining a little somehow. Eyes clear as spring-water. Ma says the high bones and the clear eyes come from island people her side. The face lean down from the bones through to the chin. What I couldn’t do then. However did I come to have a head the shape of a television?

  The blaze and pop of the photographer’s light in his little room above the tobacconist’s. Ma watching. I can see nothing only white light until I feel him trying to get me out. He has to lead me by the arm. Brides on the wall. Alice Curran with red hair from Slieverue that Martin walked home one time from a dance. A nun all in white. The carpet is blue but worn to grey at the door. Rooms smell dead in the town.

  I turn out the light.

  I am walking with Ma up the town after having my photograph taken. Lovely baskets filled with eggs and straw. Crates of butter kept fresh with cabbage leaves. Cakes. Herrings. Mackerel. Dulse. Men with their backs to the wall, smoking. Has no one in the town anything to do? The travelling cinema. There’s Lord Masborough’s Packard. Every tenant south of the river will be beating birds out of the fields for the next fortnight. Ma stops before a little man with a long neck standing behind a row of tea chests. “Everything for the home and farm.” The standings with the cash clothes where Ma bought my jacket. I watch Dermot go by tapping the flank of the Banshee with a stick. She’s a wary look in her eye, poor creature. Horses, donkeys and cattle walking up the street. Pens of geese and ducks making a racket. Pigs with their heads low. The animals have taken over the town. I think of a picture I saw of the King of England and a trail of men in plumes and robes and short trousers on Coronation Day.

  Peter Egan drives up with a load of turkeys. His shirt is black with soot from sitting under the chimney all day. My cousin Joe Brennan is standing at the door of a pub.

  “How does a thing like that have so many birds?” he asks me.

  I tell him all about how the only work Peter Egan will turn to is poaching fish and stealing fowl. I’m glad to be talking to Joe. Peter Egan has a special interest in turkeys, I tell him. He has a son my age told me that old Peter put out a report to the farms beside him that for two nights running he saw a motor car rise up out of the bog into the air with lights blazing, dead people inside roaring to get out and the Man in Black at the wheel. When no one would leave their homes at night he took away all the turkeys he wanted. “Catch them by the beak,” he told the lad. “That way they won’t call out.”

  Joe laughs. “You deserve a drink of stout for that,” he says, and hands me the glass. I take some, my second taste of it after Uncle Roscoe let me drink from his.

  “Where are you for?” I ask him.

  “Up the town.”

  We fall in beside the animals. I look around for Ma and Dermot and when I can’t find them I feel a little strange. It seemed that at home everybody always knew where everybody was. There’s sun but it doesn’t get to the street because of the buildings. Sometimes it would blind you like the photographer’s bulb when it would hit a high window. I’ve a heifer beside me, a big pig behind. The horses near have to be dragged. The smell of them all together in the air. Kate Creevy in the bakery taking tea with her aunt. Every time I see her it’s like I take a blow to the chest.

  “When’s Dermot getting married?” says Joe.

  “February.”

  “There might be something for you above so.”

  I don’t know what he means. But amn’t I something to be walking up the town with a hard man like Joe? Lads from the town leaning into the wall. “Which are the beasts, the cows or the buff shams?” says one. I remember all the names they called me in Ipswich and Barnstaple and Luton. Joe could take two of these lads one in either hand by the collar and pitch them into the river if he wanted. I know what they do all day
in the town. They hold up the walls.

  Dermot and the Banshee take a left turn into the square. Once she’s taken from there I’ll not see her again. Three years cleaning her byre and taking her milk to the creamery. I see the buyers standing under the trees, the farmers leading in their beasts. They look so solemn you’d think it was a procession in church.

  Joe keeps on. Outside Neeson’s public house at the end of the town nine young lads and three girls are standing before four farmers in their jackets and caps. Another drives up and joins them. There’s Jerry Blake, Patsy O’Hagen, Dan O’Driscoll. Mary and Philomena Sweeney from Tobermoney. I don’t know the others. Joe and I stand in with them. I hear the buyers making offers in the square. The farmers are having a great gawk at us all from near and far. I wonder what the Banshee will bring and who will take her. Joe walks over to talk to the farmer who came up on his pony and trap. I look over to the square to see is Dermot coming out. When I turn back there’s a man before me. He’s thin lips and stains of porter at the corners of his mouth. He hasn’t shaved, an orangey-red stubble covering his jaw. His face is so fat you can barely see his eyes. Ma takes a dim view of men who don’t shave.

  “Can you mind horses and cattle?” he says.

  “I can.”

  “Can you cut turf?”

  “I can.”

  “Can you operate machines?”

  “I can.”

  “Would ten shillings and your bed and board do you?”

  “It would I suppose.”

  “All right so,” he says. “Come to this place tomorrow morning.”