Chapters

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11 - 12 - 13 -14
15 - 16 - 17 - 18
19 - 20 - 21 - 22
23 - 24 - 25 - 26

The Author

Synopsis

Copywrite © Gavin Sclanders : 2007

The farmhouse, milking-sheds and barns were gone. In their place were a simple cottage and a crude shed. Instead of the hosed-clean, concrete forecourt was a cobbled yard with the shit of years between its rough stones. Through the open door of the cottage, Hannah could see two men arguing.

A woman appeared from behind the shed as the younger of the men tripped leaving the cottage and fell to his knees. Scrambling up, he spoke to her, kissed her cheek, and strode off through the thick hawthorn hedge. He crossed the field through the herd of cows lying in the sun chewing the cud. He paid no attention to them, passing through them as he had the hedge, as though they were not there.

A gentle hand touched her shoulder.

"Your auntie Bernadette has the kettle on for a cup of tea. Do you want one?"

Hannah jerked under the hand.

"I’m sorry lassie. I didn’t see you were having a wee sleep."

It took a few seconds for Hannah to gather her senses. Her book lay on her breast, defeated by the warmth of the sun, the droning of insects and the smell of fresh-cut hay. Higher-Leaving Certificate exams had finished two weeks previously. Now she was in Carlingford for a holiday. The peace and pace of Ireland suited her better than the demands of family-life in Scotland.

Her grandparents had opened the Castle Inn fifty years ago, now passed on to her uncle James. Mack and Ann Sleanagh had moved into their retirement cottage when James took the pub over. Today Hannah was at Rathhamilton, the farm of a distant cousin, where the Sleanaghs had their roots.

"Are you all right lassie? I think you were far away just then."

"Sorry, Gran, what did you say?"

"Do you want a cup of tea?"

"Is there any lemonade?"

"Are you all right?"

"I had the strangest dream. I dreamt that there was a wee cottage with a thatched roof, there where the barn is. And over there was a wee shed with lots of trees round it. Two men were fighting and there were hens flapping all over the place. There was a woman as well. And then one of the men walked off down to the main road, but he went straight through the hedge there, as though it wasn’t there, and those cows too; just walked through them like they weren’t there. Then he just disappeared, and you woke me up."

Ann Sleanagh looked at her grand-daughter. "Have you been talking to your auntie Cath?"

"No. Why?"

"No reason lassie. Just wondering. Why don’t you tell your granda about your dream tonight when we get back to the house. He’s interested in dreams. He’s got all sorts of ideas about what they mean."

"I had a dream down in the pub the other night just like this one. The same young man was in it. He was in the wee bar at the back, drinking whiskey with a different old man, and he was crying. I think he was drunk, for the old man had to help him to walk. They walked straight through the wall at the back of the pub. The place was full of spinning-wheels."

Ann Sleanagh put her hand on her grand-daughter’s shoulder knowing that the gift had been passed on again.

"Tell your granda tonight. He’ll be really interested to hear about it."

Ann Sleanagh went to get the lemonade.

*****

"You’ve heard of the second-sight?" Mack Sleanagh raised the teacup in his arthritic fingers and sipped his earl grey. His grey-blue eyes peered over the rim of the cup through his spectacles at his grand-daughter.

"Of course."

"You believe in it?"

"I don’t know. It’s something old people talk about. They didn’t understand the world the way we do today. I mean, look at all the scientific knowledge we have now. They had to find an explanation for things, and they put it down to the supernatural. I’m sure there are still a lot of things we can’t explain. My friends and I used to talk about things like this at school, but it was all so much philosophising. The church didn’t help with all it’s mumbo-jumbo."

"Now that could be the aul’-man, your great-grandfather Cormac, talking."

"Sorry, I’m not a great one for the church. The nuns at St. Augustine’s put me off for life."

"That’s all right Hannah. You’ll find your own way to God. He’ll be waiting for you when you’re ready for him. As you know, I have great faith in God and His holy mother. We Sleanaghs have a gift which is passed from generation to generation. My father Cormac had it, your auntie Cath in Kerlaw has it, or rather had it. Now you have it, she hasn’t got it any more. Folk call it the second-sight. In the family we call it ‘the gift.’ We describe the sightings as ‘visits.’ You’re a late developer. The first visit usually comes at about the age of fifteen or so. What are you now, nineteen?"

She nodded.

"I’m not sure I want this gift Granda. Sounds kind of weird to me. Can I see into the future? Am I going to see terrible things that are going to happen and not be able to do anything about it?"

"No Hannah. Thank God, there is no clairvoyance. It’s a gift, not a burden. Having said that, there is an element of duty involved. Let me explain. What you saw the last couple of days was in some way an introduction. It seems that the first visit is a vision of something in the past. By the sound of it, what you saw was my father Cormac being disinherited and leaving the farm here in Rathhamilton.

The aul’-man was visited once by a young man who had been murdered in Kerlaw, and whose parents back in Ireland didn’t know. He wrote to them and told them. That is the element of duty. We have always assumed that the visits were from unhappy souls who needed help to find peace."

"How often does it happen, these visits?"

"I have no idea. The ones with the gift don’t say much about it. Once they tell somebody it’s started, they usually never mention it again. As far as we can tell it’s very infrequent, but I just don’t know."

"So what happens now?"

"Well, it’s not so much that it’s a big secret. It’s more that it’s something special and private. A few of us in our generation know about it. Most don’t. I wouldn’t say anything to any-one till some-one says something to you. Your granny and I will let it be known that you have it. I’ll tell Cath first. She’ll be relieved. She didn’t like it.

It’s up to you to watch for signs of the next one. You’ve handled it quite well, but then you’re that bit older. The ones that come to it earlier are more likely to be confused or even afraid. Watch them when they turn fourteen or so. It’s always Sleanaghs."

He ruffled her red hair. "Find some nice man to be happy with and have lots of bairns. Here, I want you to have something. Wait there a minute."

He returned a few minutes later with an old shoe-box.

"I’m not getting any younger, lassie. I’m 76. Your great grand-father Cormac wrote a letter every year to his uncle Thomas, the wheelwright. Uncle Thomas kept them all, and I found them in the house when your granny and I came over here in 1923. Thomas left me his house when he died. After Thomas died, the aul'-man wrote to me. I stuck the box in a corner, and every year, I put the letter in it. You take them. It’s a real history of the Sleanaghs for the last ... oh, it must be at least eighty-odd years now. Your auntie Leslie in Irvine has been writing to me since the aul’-man died. They’re yours now. I’ll tell her you’ve got them."

Later, back in Kerlaw in the privacy of her bed-room, Hannah opened the box of letters. The oldest ones were yellow and brittle.

Carefully, she took the first one out of the envelope.

*****

how are you both? I am nearly finished my job in the office. This year I was in the accounts department. This is the third year I’ve been there, and I like it. I had no idea how much money the company made. I was astonished. I go up to Glasgow in three weeks to start university. I am going to study modern history. I’m really looking forward to that – all them student parties. I can’t wait!!!

*****

"Bedamned to you old man. Bedamned to your damned farm, and bedamned to your damned inheritance."

Cormac faced his father across the room. Deepened to black by emotion, his brown eyes flashed. The silence lengthened. A slane of peat crumbled and flamed in the hearth, breaking the silence and briefly lessening the gloom in the drystone cottage that was their home. Sparks drifted upwards around the blackened kettle hanging on the spit. The hot smoke carried them up to cool and add to the tendrils of soot hanging around the hole left open in the thatch to let the smoke out. Chickens flapped and fled at his raised voice, raising dust from the slate flags on the floor of the single room. The two farm dogs sleeping in the yard cocked their ears at their flight but soon closed their eyes again. Working dogs were used to shouting.

High summer in the year 1889 in Rathhamilton, the family farm on the shores of Carlingford Lough, was hot and dry. The sheep were on the hill and the cattle were finding forage along the edge of the water. There, the Glenore to Newry railway tracks had created a plateau above the rocks where fine grass grew. The pratie shaws behind the house were yellowing for want of rain. The peat had been cut and was drying on the hill, above where the sheep were cropping the grass among the heather. The sun was halfway across the August afternoon sky. Cormac and Hugh were pitting their wills as they had been doing since the spring. The lack of jobs to be done on the farm left time for their difference to be re-opened and raked over.

Hugh took a red handkerchief from his pocket. Wiping his brow, which stretched to the back of his head, his close-set, short-sighted eyes squinted down a long thin nose at his son.

"I’m sorry Dada." Cormac tried to repair the damage done by his outburst.. He had not called his father that since he began doing a man’s work on the farm nine years ago when he had turned fourteen.

"I have no taste for farming. I’ve no taste for Rathhamilton any more. I’m going to America. Liam Brady wrote last month that he earns four dollars a week in Chicago, working in the stock-yards. They need men who know cattle. I’m going to take a boat at Belfast and go to New York."

"Who the hell said you could go to America? You never asked me. How are you going to find the fare? Don’t think you can come to me for it."

"I’ll find the money. I’ve asked father James to write to Liam. He’ll sponsor me. He’s settled with a wife and already has two sons, and him only five years there. Dada, there’s no-one here for me to marry. If I stay here, I’ll end up marrying somebody I’m half-related to. We’re already related to half the folk in the parish. How many folk do you see who’re not right in the head? There’s at least half a dozen of them. If we keep marrying among ourselves, in fifty years we’ll all be eejits. And then who’ll inherit the farm?"

"Damnation. You’re the oldest. It’s your birthright. Will you walk away from what any young man would wish his older brother dead for? It’s the way of it. You have no choice in it. The land belongs to you. No lawyer in Ireland would dare draw up a paper taking away your right to it. Your brother Harry would not sleep in his bed waiting for you to come back to claim it. He won’t take the farm. Damnation, but you’re an unbiddable torment of a man. If you were one of the dogs, I’d shoot you."

Since he inherited the farm, Hugh’s expectation had always been of handing the farm over to Cormac and spending his autumn years working around the farm as long as he could. That was the way Hugh had taken over from his father. Old Pat had spent eight more years being tolerated by his son Hugh and his wife Biddy. True to tradition, Biddy had not been tolerated by Pat’s wife, Meg, who remained head of the household until she died. Biddy had no intention of tolerating Cormac’s wife when she came.

"Father, I am not going to take the farm," he grated through clenched teeth. "I am not going to work it. I am not going to stay in Rathhamilton. If I can’t do this with your blessing, you’ll force me to leave here without it."

"Blessing? A blessing you want? Over my dead body."

"Listen damn you." The young man lost control of his temper again.

"I want to finish the year, get the cattle sold, and this year’s lambs. We’ll get the praties out of the ground, and the turf is already cut and drying. We should get most of it down off the hill before the leaves turn. It will take at least that long before Liam’s letter arrives. father James wrote away last month, so Liam should have it soon. I was hoping to take passage from Belfast in the spring. We’ll have the whole farm ready for the new spring, and Harry can start right in. It’ll be a well-made bed that he’ll have no bother lying in."

He lowered his voice, getting his anger under control again.

"I’ll have Father James write a letter for me to sign, saying that I pass my inheritance to Harry. Then he’ll sleep at night. Don’t make me go away in sorrow, for going I am."

"I’ll be damned if I’m the one who breaks the Sleanagh line of father to son. We’ve had the land for generations. We even held on to it in the famine. My fathers for generations past would turn in their grave if I passed it on to any-one but you, the first-born. I’ll not have it any other way."

"Dammit, you will be handing it on to your son. Why does it have to be the oldest?"

"If you do not take over and work the farm, you can take yourself off to America this very day. If you cannot do my bidding, then you’re no son of mine."

Cormac’s face darkened under his lowered brows. The tang of peat glowing in the hearth and the smell of baking wheaten-bread on the griddle would ever, in all his years to come, remind him of Ireland.

"We’re too different old man, you and me. You’re stuck in the old ways. I can hear new ideas and see that not all the old ways are the best. When Harry marries that Maguire girl he’s sniffing around, and provides you with a pack of half-witted eejits for grandweans, remember that she’s our first cousin. Think then of the strong sons and bonny daughters I’ll have fathered in America. Then you’ll weep the same bitter tears I’ll be weeping on that boat, watching Ireland going down in the east forever."

"You and your new ideas. That damned shanachie, Fergus Sweeney, filling your damned head with nonsense. When I see him next, I’ll take a fence-post to the back of his head. How many others has he infected with his damned new ideas. There won’t be a son left in the parish to hand a farm over to when he’s finished. All you ever needed to know is how to plant praties and keep cattle."

"You old fool. The world is changing. This life’s finished. Small farms like this are finished. Your generation will be the last to live like this. Even if Harry takes it over, he’ll not die here like our fore-fathers did. At some point, he’ll have to go into a town to find work. We’re hardly keeping body and soul together here as it is."

They locked glares, each seeing the terror in the eyes of the other at the turn of events neither had wanted or expected.

"Fuck off to America then. I don’t need you."

"Right, I will."

Cormac turned towards the shaft of light in the door and walked out through the rays of sunlight still visible in the swirling dust raised by the fleeing chickens. As he had done dozens of times in the past, he caught his toe on the raised flag that was the door-sill. He stumbled and fell out the door into the dust of the yard.

"Even the damned house is against me," he cursed under his breath. He got up as Hugh laughed, never thinking that he was leaving.

Biddy was behind the house in the cobbled yard between it and the byre. Walking back from collecting eggs from the hen-boxes, she had heard raised voices. She guessed their cause but not their content, and certainly not the outcome. She saw Cormac round the corner and walk towards her, brushing the dust off his pants.

"Mammy, we’ve had hard words, the old-man and myself. They cannot be turned back and I have to go. I’ll find a priest who’ll write letters for me. Father James will read them for you. I’m going to Liam Brady in Chicago, so don’t you be worrying that I have nowhere to go."

He put both hands on her shoulders and kissed her on the cheek, a thing he had never done in his life. She looked up into his eyes. Cormac was a small man, but Biddy was tiny. Her blue eyes and red hair, now streaked with grey, attested to the Viking presence in Ireland generations ago.

He took her hands in his, let them go, turned, strode round the corner of the house and walked down the winding farm track to join the road from Newry to Dundalk. Turning left he took the road west to Newry. He had never been further than Carlingford, which was three miles from the farm. Newry was twelve miles further at the head of the Lough. It was a frightening, unknown prospect.

Belfast was somewhere to the north, beyond Newry.

*****

Anger fought with sorrow and kept the upper hand for many hours till darkness began to fall. Dusk coincided with hunger, which made him face his empty belly and lack of a roof over his head. After leaving the farm, he had walked west on the road for a quarter of an hour, then turned off into a thicket of bushes. Here, he lay in the sun going over and over the day’s events in his mind, ever modifying them with better arguments to convince his father that what he said made sense. The reality however, persisted.

Standing up, he pulled the dry grass from his coarse shirt and pants. Picking the hairy heads of wild barley out of his jet-black hair, he climbed the gate onto the road and continued into Carlingford where he went to Thomas Sleanagh’s workshop. Thomas the wheelwright they called him. He made spinning-wheels, and was Cormac’s unmarried uncle. Cormac rapped on the door with his knuckles and pushed the door open.

"Cormac my man, you’re late on the road. How are you?"

"Homeless, penniless, and disinherited," he replied, great sobs finally getting the better of his anger.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph. What has the man done now? Sit down there. There’s a drop of something in the press." Thomas stood up from his chair by the fire and took a bottle and two dusty tumblers from a cupboard.

"Get that down you."

Over several tumblers of whiskey, Cormac told his story. The whiskey on an empty stomach soon made him drowsy and maudlin. Thomas brought him to the hay-byre, rolled his jacket under his head for a pillow, covered him with a blanket and left him to sleep.

Cormac woke the next morning with a dry mouth and headache. He took off his shirt and washed in the green, moss-furred rain-butt. He finished by sticking his head into it. Picking up his shirt and jacket, he dripped his way into the workshop where Thomas was already at work. Thomas looked him over.

"Feeling better?"

"No."

Thomas took him through into the house where he made a breakfast of coarse wheaten bread and smoked herring. Cormac drank a whole jug of milk before starting on the food and a pot of tea. When he had finished, he stood up. Brushing off the light coating of beech-wood dust his trousers had collected, he looked round the room. The dust was everywhere. It made him aware of the smell of fresh-sawn wood.

"So. What do you do now? You going back to make your peace with the old-fella?" Thomas stroked at a chisel with a fine whetstone. His big hands and fat fingers seemed ill-suited to his calling as a maker of delicate woodwork. He scratched his head of brown curls with the point of the stone. Sprinkling water on the stone he continued to work the chisel.

"Don’t be bloody stupid. I’ll not have the life of a dog if I go back now. No. It’s for the best. I was always leaving. I was being foolish thinking it could be done peaceably."

"So what’ll you do? You could stay with me and learn the trade. There’s a decent living to be made, and I’ll not be here forever."

"Ah no Uncle Thomas, the whole point is that I’ve got to get out of Ireland. I might as well stay on the farm as come here. And there’s no future for a young man in spinning-wheels. Soon we’ll all be buying factory-made cloth, even factory-made clothes one of these days." Cormac walked around the room, too restless to sit still.

"Ah, that’ll never happen boy. How could any machine tease the wool out like the fingers of a woman? Never happen. You listen to a man that knows the trade. Come in with me. I always regretted never marrying and having a son to pass the skill onto."

"Thank you, no, Uncle Thomas. I’m going to Belfast to take a boat to America. I’m going to Chicago. Liam Brady is going to sponsor me, and we’ll both work in the stock-yards."

Thomas looked at him. "Have you not heard? Liam’s dead. His mother got the letter three days past. Father James read it for her. Crushed by a bull in the pen. Rope broke and it got loose. Liam never had a chance."

Cormac stopped by the window. Aware again of the wood-dust; this time coating the glass. The sunlight fought its way in from the lane outside.

"Mother of God. Poor Liam; his poor young wife and bairns. What’ll happen to them? God help us. What am I going to do now? I’ve burned my boats. I’m a dead man. I only know farming, and what farmer needs a hired man when he’s got half a dozen sons to feed? Liam’s dead, so I cannot go to America. God help me."

The door of the workshop banged open.

"Thomas, where the hell are you?" Larry Rourke came through from the workshop into the house. "Have you got that much money that you can afford to sit on your backside drinking tea with your relations all day? Where’s that wheel I promised our Eileen for her wedding? It’s this Saturday, and she’ll cut off my head if it’s not ready." He paused.

"Good day to you young Cormac. How’s that father of yours?"

"Good day Larry. My father is in good health."

"Tell him I was asking for him."

"I’ll do that when I see him, thank you."

Larry owned one of the fishing boats in Carlingford harbour. Cormac’s hesitance aroused his curiosity. There had been talk that Cormac was at odds with Hugh.

"And when will you be seeing him then? Not had a falling out have youse?"

"Ah Larry, you’re an awful man. The lad’s just broken with his father and is off to America. It was not a happy parting. Now leave him in peace, for he’s not in the mood for talking about it right now. Come through and I’ll get you Eileen’s wheel. She’ll like it. I put some extra ornamentation on it for her." The two big, muscular men went through to the workshop. Cormac heard their voices through the open door.

"Cormac, come through here a minute," Thomas called after a time.

"You’re not all that big, but I’ve heard you’re a strong wee bugger," said Larry looking at him.

"Our Paddy Joe has broken his leg and won’t be back on the boat this side of Christmas. I’m a man short on the nets. Thomas says you’re leaving for America, but have no sponsor. Fish the autumn with me and I’ll set you off in Scotland when Paddy Joe gets back on his feet. No sponsor needed in Scotland, and there’s plenty of work in Glasgow. You’ll get a wage and a twentieth share of the catch, same as Robbie and Kevin."

"What’s the wage?"

"Ninepence a day at sea. We’re out most days if the weather’s good; except Sunday. Robbie and Kevin mostly never get less than three shillings a week, plus another three shillings or so for their share of the catch."

Cormac never had money and had very little idea of its value. He looked at Thomas who understood what was troubling him.

"It’s fair money for hard work. You could stay with me in the meantime. I’ll probably get the rough edge of Hugh’s tongue for harbouring his fugitive son. But then I’ve had that before. I’ll suffer it again." He grinned at Cormac. "In your shoes, I would take it. It’ll do you no harm to see something other than farming. You’ll be able to put something by to get you started in Glasgow or wherever you decide to go."

Cormac stuck out his hand to Larry. "I’ll do it. Thanks Larry." They shook hands firmly and it was done.

Many’s the day Cormac rued that handshake as he hauled on the soaking, heavy nets, his fingernails gone, his blood washed away by the stinging salt-water. Paddy Joe’s leg needed more mending than they thought. It was a cruel winter; cold and stormy. Christmas came and went and winter began to ease. Paddy Joe’s leg mended at last and Cormac retired from the fishing. He had four sovereigns and a half-crown in the bag under Thomas’ workbench.

"We’ll be going to Scotland to sell a catch in a week or two. I’ll tell you when we’re going."

Larry paid him his last wage, shook his hand and wished him well.

*****
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