Bird of Passage (3 page)

He had made sure he knew what to look out for, persisting with his questions in the face of their good natured protests that he would soon see where he was bound.  And then he might well wish himself back on the Holy Ground once more. That was what Micky had said, laughing, lighting his cigarette, cupping his hand round the match to shelter it from the wind. Knowing made Finn feel less insecure, even though it was all so strange and new, and he had little idea what to expect. This was his first trip to the tatties, to the potato harvest, and it had never occurred to him that he might be homesick. If the truth be told, he wasn’t really homesick at all, but the unfamiliarity of these new surroundings and new companions bothered him, and he was fearful. Perhaps he wouldn’t be up to the work. He had been warned that it would be back breaking. Worse, perhaps they would send him home again. And that would be a thing too terrible to contemplate.

‘Finn?  Finn?’

He turned. Francis O’Brien stood behind him, shivering, his teeth chattering.  He was clutching his arms around himself, hugging himself as though that might make a difference. As always, Finn felt the contrary emotions of irritation and pity. There was nothing he could do to help his friend and yet he felt that he ought to be able to think of something. His very helplessness in the face of the other boy’s vulnerability made him angry.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked, more sharply than he had intended.

‘Just a bit.’

‘Well, jump up and down then!’

Francis jumped up and down on his spindly legs, his feet, in the loose boots, slapping against the wooden deck, his palms clapping frantically against his upper arms, but the effort seemed to make him colder still, and his movements were half hearted at best.

‘Will we go below? Finn? Will we?’

‘I think we’ll be sick for sure if we go below decks, Francie. It’s bad enough up here. But there’s an awful smell of shite down there.’

Francis giggled at the word. The almost transparent skin of his cheeks flamed crimson. ‘Sure it does, you’re right, Finn.’

Francis was a slender, fair haired boy, with a face like a flower. This was his misfortune. Finn thought that you could have put him in a dress and a bonnet, and he would have made a passable girl. It was much better to be like Finn himself, a scowling, ugly, dark skinned lad, with nothing at all girlish about him. Black Irish, he had heard himself called. He had asked Micky Terrans what that meant, and the gaffer had said something about the Armada and shipwrecked Spaniards that made no sense at all to Finn. But Francis was as white as an angel. Even now, when the cold air had raised livid patches on cheeks, chin and forehead, even now, there was something soft and vulnerable about that face.

‘Will we be there soon?’ asked Francis. ‘What do you think, Finn?’

Finn shrugged. ‘I don’t know. How would I know? Micky Terrans says not. He says we’ve a long journey ahead of us at the other side. And it’ll rain later on for sure. He says he can smell it in the wind, and he’s never wrong.’

‘What do you do if you need to have a wee, Finn?’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve been holding it in all this time, Francie?’

‘I haven’t wanted to go till now.’

‘Jesus, Francie. You’ll do yourself a mischief, so you will. You have to go over the side. Stand here and go over the side. But make sure the wind’s blowing away from you.’

Francis grinned. Finn wasn’t aware that he was saying anything funny, but Francis laughed all the same. Francis seemed to think like your man in the bible who said that a soft answer turneth away wrath. Except that Finn didn’t think it did. Finn inclined to the belief that, once you were big enough and strong enough, a punch on the nose might be a better bet at turning away the wrath. But the trouble was that neither of them was big enough or strong enough. Not yet.

‘Will you stand there, and make sure nobody’s passing, Finn?’

‘I will so. Go on then. And you can watch out for me after.’

‘How do you know we’re to go over the side, Finn.’

‘Because I asked. I have a tongue in my head, and I asked Micky Terrans, didn’t I?’

‘I’d be scared to ask him, so I would.’

‘Jesus, Francie, you’d be scared to ask your own mammy, never mind Micky the Gaffer.’

Micky Terrans had been brusquely kind to the two lads in his care. He hadn’t wanted them on this trip at all, suspecting they were much younger than he had been told. They were supposed to be fifteen, but he was dismayed to see that they could be no more than twelve or thirteen. He had been promised good workers and an extra cut of their wages, and he had agreed to take them, on the understanding that they would be no trouble, would keep their heads down, and do whatever was required of them in the potato fields.  Finn seemed strong enough and might do alright, but Micky had almost sent the other lad straight back where he had come from. What could they have been thinking, to pass off this long thin drink of water as a good worker? But the man who had made the arrangements had been insistent, the boys needed to get away, and who was Micky Terrans to quarrel with a man of the cloth? So he would grin and bear it, get whatever work he could out of them, and hope that Finn might cover for his friend.

Micky Terrans had been right about the weather. The rain did come later, torrents of it, from a slate sky. The squad of tattie howkers was tucked into the back of an open lorry, although Micky himself drove up front, in the warm cab. The men and a handful of women covered themselves as best they could, crouching under tarpaulins that smelled of potatoes, as the truck bounced along for hours, but it was a miserable business. They were all weary, sick and chilled to the bone by the time they made the short sea crossing to the island, and climbed aboard another lorry for the journey to the farm. The rain stopped, and a thin sunlight filtered through the clouds. It was warmer here. Finn could smell the damp green of the land, laid over the scent of the sea. Beyond his confusion and fatigue, he felt a certain relief. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Here and there, they saw people working in the fields, or an old man stooped over his vegetable patch. On the road, two small children, no more than four or five years old,  pulled a reluctant puppy in their wake. They hauled their little prisoner onto the verge to let the lorry pass by, and waved. In a cottage garden, a young woman, taking advantage of the late sunshine and a stiff breeze, was pegging out a row of nappies and shirts. She wore a blue and white gingham pinafore. His mother had worn just such a pinafore. Finn had a memory of taking wooden pegs out of her pocket and handing them to her, while she put out the washing on the back green of the house where they lodged. That’s my good boy. That’s my good Finny.

The woman paused in her work, pushing her hair out of her eyes, and watching the tattie howkers drive past, but she neither smiled, nor waved at the incomers. They were a necessary encumbrance. Nobody welcomed them except the farmer and the island children, who were too young to know better.   

The farm was called Dunshee. The house was an ancient, slate roofed building with dormer windows on the upper floors. It was set on a plateau of high land, slightly at angles to the sea, to take advantage of the shelter afforded by an uneven ridge behind.  There was a clean courtyard, with byres and barns and stables. It wasn’t many years since the islanders had used horses to work the land.    

The men were to sleep in the byre, the women in a stone floored building which had been a dairy. The accommodation was spartan enough, but Micky Terrans remarked that it was better than it had once been, now that the government had got involved. And the sleeping arrangements at Dunshee were always better than most other places. This was one of the reasons why Micky preferred to keep his squad there as long as possible, paying the farmer for the privilege, and ferrying them about to other farms as necessary. Micky liked to keep his squad dry and reasonably well fed. The stalls were fitted out with low timber ramps and decent mattresses stuffed with oat straw. Each bed had two or three serviceable blankets. They were to sleep two to a stall, Francis and Finn together. There was a makeshift kitchen in an  outhouse, with a chipped Belfast sink and an old copper boiler for washing the clothes, a tap in the yard and even a proper flushing lavatory with a wooden seat. The little cubicle was whitewashed and smelled pleasantly of bleach.

‘I mind when you had to sew the tattie sacks together to make a quilt for yourself,’ said a stocky little man from Donegal,  Jimsy Murtagh. He said it as though he half regretted the loss of that time. Jimsy never looked at you straight. Finn couldn’t work out whether he had a squint, or was just shifty. He had a filthy tongue although when Micky was around he had to keep it under control. ‘And you would have the feckin’ rats running over you in the night. And nibbling away at your bedding, and your toes too if you weren’t careful. But this place is clean enough. And Galbreath does as much as any farmer can to keep the rats down. You boys don’t know you’re born, neither you do.’

‘We know all about rats, don’t we Francie?’ muttered Finn, when he had gone, leaving them to make up their beds.

‘We do so. But this is great, Finn! Do you not think this is a great place?’

‘Let’s wait and see, eh?’

Later on, there was a feast of boiled potatoes and tea, with plenty of bread and jam, while they on long benches, on either side of a big wooden table. The table was full of saw marks and paint rings, but the food was plentiful. Afterwards, some of the men filled their pipes and went outside for a smoke. They weren’t supposed to smoke in the byre for fear of fires. The breeze had dropped with evening, and the air was still and cool, the sea a mirror. They leaned against the wall, and puffed away,  gazing towards the mainland, content to be resting after the exertions of the journey. When it grew darker, they came indoors, and somebody passed around a bottle of whisky.  Micky Terrans would have disapproved, but he had gone away to his own lodgings, down in the village, by then.  Jimsy brought out a battered squeezebox, and played Oh Danny Boy and one of the men sang along, the rest of them joining in the chorus.  When they asked who else could carry a tune, Finn nudged Francis. Francis coloured up, and shook his head, but Jimsy had seen the exchange. ‘Come on lad. Don’t be shy. Are you a singer?’

Francis nodded.

‘Then give us a song! What can you sing?’

‘He can sing the Curragh of Kildare,’ said Finn. ‘Go on, Francie!’

Jimsy struck up the first few notes, and Francis stood up and sang, his voice wavery at first, but growing in confidence.

 ‘
The winter it is past, and the summer’s come at last,

and the little birds they sing in the trees.

Their little hearts are glad, but mine is very sad,

for my true love is far away from me
...’

It was his one talent. He had a sweet voice, and he sang well, his voice dipping under and over the notes, embellishing them in a dozen ways. The men and women fell silent. There could not be one of them who had not heard it before, many times. It was a song that told of youth and heartbreak and hurts that could never be repaired. Afterwards, Francis sat down, blushing even more fiercely at the praise for his singing. Finn nudged him in the ribs.

‘They liked that!’ he whispered to his friend. ‘Do you know any others?’

‘A few. I’ll need to think.’

Francis was sometimes called upon to sing in the church, but was seldom asked to sing the old songs he had learned from his grandmother.  He had once sung the Salley Gardens at a Christmas concert, but that was about the sum of it and besides it had not turned out well. He had drawn attention to himself, and that was not a good thing. But perhaps it would be different here, among these people.

‘I’ll see what I can remember.’

The boys had begun to yawn widely, and the yawning proved infectious. Soon after this, they went to their beds, the women to their own quarters, the men to their stalls. The blankets smelled musty, as though they had been stored away for a long time. Finn fell asleep almost immediately. He woke up in the night, woke from a dream of buzz saws, alarmed by the extreme dark and the unfamiliar surroundings, but especially by the chorus of snores from the older men. But the day had exhausted him, so he snuggled back down and drifted off to sleep. He dreamed again and this time, the dream was familiar. It came to him often in the cold school dormitory where the boys sighed and shivered in their sleep and the rats scurried in the walls, and sometimes came closer than that.

He was a little boy again, back in Dublin with his mother. It was a light summer night, and they were in the warm room at the top of the lodging house, with the window open. They were in bed. Snug as two bugs in a rug, his mammy said. She was in behind him, her two arms around him, her body moulded against his back. She held him close, even though it was warm, and they were sweating gently.  He could feel her breath against his neck, and he could smell her apple blossom talcum powder.

In the dream, he climbed out of bed, and went walking down the stairs with their brown lino, down past half a dozen closed doors, towards the front hallway that smelled of boiled cabbage and bacon.  And although he was quite alone, he didn’t feel afraid. It was dark now, but the moonlight filtered into the hallway through the green and red stained glass panels in the door. He could find his way easily enough, and so he carried on, down towards the cellars. He had never been here before, but doors opened as he approached them, his feet floated down the stairs without touching them, and it was a pleasant sensation.