Tarry Flynn by Patrick Kavanagh

Author:Patrick Kavanagh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2000-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

5

Life was too heavy on her feet in that place to leap dramatically when something apparently exciting happened.

The purchase of the new farm might seem to have given the Flynns a new outlet for their emotions, but the reality kept them sober. The only thing which might be said to give a kick of drama to the event was the fact that by all accounts their new next-door neighbour, Joe Finnegan, was lepping mad at the Flynns’ buying of the place over his head. Mrs Callan ‘who never brought a good story in her life’ informed Mrs Flynn that Joe Finnegan, drunk in the village the previous evening, had been threatening to make it hot for the Flynns.

‘The man is mad,’ said she to Mrs Flynn.

‘And who, musha, did he say all this to?’ asked Mrs Flynn.

‘It’s only what I heard,’ drawled the woman.

‘Bad luck to him, himself and his five pratie-washers,’ said Mrs Flynn. The ‘pratie-washers’ were the five daughters, Joe having been blessed with no son.

When she told Tarry about it he laughed and said he’d break Joe’s neck if he as much as opened his gob.

‘That’s the very thing you mustn’t do,’ advised the mother. ‘That’s what some of these cute customers like Eusebius would like. And the best thing would be not to go up at all the day afraid of the worst. Wait till the morrow, the fair of Shercock, for Joe is likely to be there. You can fence the gaps on the march between us and him when there’s no one about. The easy way is the best way.’ Tarry put the point of the bill hook on the bar of the gate and commenced filing the edge with great energy. ‘A man has to take the bull by the horns sometimes,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you I will.’

‘I don’t give a damn,’ said Tarry with petulant bravado.

The mother peeped over the wall and looked down the road.

‘These ones are worse since Lough Derg,’ she remarked. ‘And,’ added she as she wandered through the street, ‘I hope they get men out of it. Wouldn’t it be a good thing now that you have the hook sharp to go over to the Low Place and trim them briars that’s creeping through the new grass and not have the hands torn of ourselves when we’re pulling the hay for the cattle… Ah ha, good morning, Charlie, it’s early you’re on the go.’

‘Good morning, Mary. I was just going up as far as Cassidy’s; I hear they have a few stores for sale.’

‘You must expect a dear fair the morrow, Charlie?’

‘I have to take chance on that, Mary.’

‘Hurry over, Tarry, and get that job done and maybe you might go as far as the fair the morrow and see if you could get something. A man always learns in a fair’ – she was addressing Charlie now – ‘but this man of mine, there’s nothing for him when he goes there, only the face stuck in a book.

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