The Village of Longing by George O'Brien

Author:George O'Brien [George O'Brien]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843512547
Publisher: The Lilliput Press
Published: 2011-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

3

The whipper-in put the heart crossways on me, yet I felt free to repudiate him. His behaviour was hateful: I hated him right back. I don’t think older people were quite able, or willing, to be so cut-and-dried in their reactions – and I mean not only in their reactions to the whipper-in, whose mode of discipline they seemed to approve, shouting commands of their own to support his, but also to the gentry at large. They seemed in some way tied psychologically to the gentry’s presence.

The tie took various forms. For one thing, the valley had no history of rebelliousness: poaching was about the only form of local deviance – by no means a trivial one, to my mind, but one which has no place in the legends of the national struggle that were handed down to us (which may be unfortunate). And then when I saw those old lads admiring Royal Tan, or when I noticed Moss and his cronies doffing their caps as an elegant black roadster swished by, or even at the races looking at gaggles of elderly labourers leaning on the paddock fence and gazing in deep amaze at the steaming, exemplary creature now being fussed by the foulard fraternity (I wonder where they got those neckerchiefs, the ones with the pattern of amoeba swimming on a piss-yellow field) – simply being present in the particular theatre of gestures suggested to me that some principle of unity, or at least of implication, was at work.

I even saw it at home. Staunch though Mam was in her nationalist affections – none stauncher: she’d bite the head off anyone who dared murmur a demurral – she still bought a Poppy every year. There weren’t many in the town who were invited to, either. But Miss Anson always came to our house and received a half-crown to remember the fallen of Flanders by. And if Geo objected he was soon made to desist. Of course, Mam had her own memories of the Great War, of the boys she knew who never came back from it (quite a number volunteered to go from loyal Lismore). Her first daughter was born on Armistice Day; she was christened Mary but known forever as Peace. And what did Georgie know?

It must have been hard for his generation. The patterns of close attachment between master and man had loosened considerably by the time George came into his manhood, and responsibility for moral exemplification had passed entirely to the officers of another empire, the clergy. No wonder he, my father and my father’s Dublin friends had no time for priests. Yet there were elements of the whipper-in about Geo too, in his fiery temper, his unpredictable vitality, his ability to make me fear him. But it was all unwitting. The instrument on horseback acted deliberately, secure in his power for the time being. George struck out blindly, innocently, as though through the bars of a cage, as though to snap for good his real and imagined bands.

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