Lucinda Sly (9 page)

When every customer had a drink in his hand, Langstrom went over in Sly’s direction; he wanted to find out if he had cooled down since the time he bought his wife’s holding from him
without
telling him that it was beside the farm he had been willed by his uncle.

‘Has the last cow calved for you, Walter?’ he enquired delicately.

‘No,’ Sly replied, ‘not until the end of April. Christ, I’m
crippled
from work with a while. That strap I married has my heart broken. I had to let her know that I wear the trousers in my own house. But there were times when she was getting stubborn and trying to put the trousers on herself. That said, she is a great
worker
and, with the extra work I have to do with the cattle I have added to my herd, I can’t do all the farm work. When all the cows have calved, I’ll take someone in service. You don’t, by any chance, know any strong young girl who is scratching her backside for lack of work?’

Langstrom looked at him, surprised.

‘My good man,’ he smiled, ‘any young girl who has any
appearance
is in service in one of the big houses working in the kitchen by day and rattling the boards of the bed with the landlords by night. But, if it is a servant boy you want, there is a strapping young man at the top of the counter who is ready to go in service to any farmer who will hire him for a season.’

Sly looked at the young man and examined him from head to toe. He was strongly built and had a civil appearance.

‘Send him down to me in a while,’ Sly instructed Langstrom, ‘but don’t let on that we were talking about him. Upon my soul, but they are constantly looking for more and more money from season to season. I’ll pretend that I might be hiring a man, and then again, that I might not.’

Langstrom went about this business. While Sly was drinking another glass of whiskey, he noticed Langstrom’s head inclining in the direction of the young man. He took the drink that was in front of him and began walking towards Sly. He stopped at the empty space in the counter near Sly. He put his drink on the counter and looked cautiously over and back.

‘I’m told you’re looking to hire a farm worker,’ he said steadily.

‘Maybe I am and maybe I am not,’ Sly replied nonchalantly.

‘I won’t ask you again,’ the young man countered, ‘because I have almost made up my mind to go to the fertile plain of Munster. I have seen nothing since I came to this county but small farmers with petty, narrow minds and they are as miserly as Midas.’

That knocked a start out of Sly.

‘Take it nice and easy,’ he advised him. ‘Maybe you have met only the worst of us. And, yes, I am looking for a farm worker. Could you stay until the beginning of May?’

‘I wouldn’t,’ the young man told him. ‘Live horse and you’ll get grass is your plan, is it?’

‘Oh, not at all,’ Sly assured him. ‘What would you say to a year’s hire instead of a season’s hire, starting next Monday?’

The young man dropped his drink on the counter when he heard that.

‘That is, if your work is satisfactory,’ Sly added.

He wouldn’t throw his money away. He was too old for that.

‘I am a good milker, a good workman,’ the young man informed him. ‘I can plough a field with a team of horses with a light or heavy scribe, whichever suits the land. I am told that you buy and sell foals and horses. There is no man within fifty miles of here who can break a young colt as well as I can. I can churn as well as any woman and can bake bread as well. Have you any other
questions
?’

‘The Devil a one,’ Sly retorted, ‘but that it is a pity I didn’t meet you before I married my wife.’

They both laughed out loud.

‘I’ll pay you four pounds every three months and you will have a bed in the back kitchen and three meals a day beginning next Monday,’ Sly informed him.

‘I am Walter Sly,’ he introduced himself, ‘and my farm is in Oldleighlin.’

‘People call me John Dempsey,’ was the reply.

They had a few drinks together in order to get to know each other before they went their separate ways.

Early the following Monday morning the sun was shining on the green fields of Bilboa and up as far as the town of Oldleighlin. Lucinda Sly was driving in the cows for milking. Walter Sly was still snoring, his head hanging out of the bed on account of his drinking the previous night. Lucinda had a habit of talking out loud to herself if anything was bothering her, which was often since she married Sly.

What she was saying to herself this morning was that her patience was exhausted with regard to Sly’s drinking, not to
mention
that every bone in her body was aching from the beating she got from Sly and all the work she had to do on the farm. The day would come when she would stab him in the belly with the
four-pronged
pike while he was sleeping in bed.

She didn’t see the man who was walking down the boreen behind her and could hear every word she said. He followed her to the cowshed without interrupting her. When she had guided the last cow into the shed she saw him and screamed loudly with the start she got.

‘Easy, woman,’ the man said. ‘I’m the farm worker your husband hired. Didn’t he tell you about me?’

She spent a while staring at him as if he had two heads.

‘A farm worker,’ she gasped. ‘He didn’t say a word to me about it. But, thanks be to God, it’s not before time. I’m Lucinda Sly. The Oldleighlin drunkard is still snoring. Listen, I have a habit of thinking out loud. Did you hear what I said?’

‘I didn’t catch a word you said,’ he lied. ‘I was too far away from you. By the way, I’m John Dempsey. If you like, I’ll milk the cows with you.’

Lucinda’s heart lifted when she heard this.

‘Oh, God be with you forever,’ she exclaimed. ‘It was He sent you to me. I am dying with pains in my bones since the start of last winter.’

They began milking. When a cow was milked, the pail of milk was strained into a big wooden tub. Little by little Lucinda would glance at the fine man the morning had brought her. A talkative man, a pleasant man, she reasoned, and a man who could get milk from the toughest cow.

They were stripping the last two cows when Walter Sly stuck his head in the door of the shed. He got a start when he saw Dempsey.

‘My soul to the devil,’ he blurted, ‘you are here already.’

‘He is here,’ Lucinda answered, ‘and he has milked the cows with me. Oh, boy! A noted milker. Will you go in, Walter, and hang the skillet of porridge over the fire?’

‘God be with you, woman,’ Dempsey spoke. ‘My belly is tied to my backbone with the hunger.’

Sly went towards the house without saying a word.

‘Look at that for blackguarding,’ Lucinda said to Dempsey. ‘If you weren’t here I would have got a belt of the cows’ spancel across the side of the head.’

‘Why would he do such a thing?’ Dempsey was surprised.

‘Because I told him to hang the skillet over the fire,’ Lucinda said.

When he heard this, Dempsey didn’t say a word but strained the pail of milk into the tub.

‘Have you any special place where you wash the pails?’ Dempsey asked her.

‘Turn yours upside down outside the door,’ she told him. ‘I’ll wash it myself when I have seen to the calves.’

Sly spent a week showing Dempsey what was to be done on the farm. Dempsey found out that he wouldn’t be idle while he was in service with Walter Sly. But, that said, Sly was married to a friendly woman who was an excellent cook. When it was drawing near suppertime, he would get the fine smell of baking coming through the kitchen door. Oh, it would give an appetite to one who had none.

As soon as Sly considered that his hired hand was familiar with the farm work, he let him know that he wouldn’t be around the farm as often during the day in the coming months as he would be buying and selling horses. He had shown him how to run the farm
and Dempsey would have to do the work. If there was ploughing or digging to be done, he would have to do it. If Lucinda needed a hand around the sheds or with the churning, he would have to help her, not to mention doing the spring sowing and the autumn harvesting as well. Dempsey’s heart lifted on hearing this as Sly was an awkward man at the best of times, and when he had a few drinks in him, he was worse. There was no need for Sly to show Dempsey how to run the farm because as soon as Sly had left him, Dempsey did the work his own way.

John Dempsey’s bed was in the back kitchen, which had a door leading out to the back haggard and the sheds. He could go out if he needed to make his water in the middle of the night and there was plenty of room beside the ditch for that. If a pin dropped in any room by day or by night, Dempsey could hear it as there was no door between the kitchen and Lucinda and Walter’s room, only a curtain so that they would have privacy. Dempsey would cover his ears when Sly came home having been gone, very often, from early morning until dawn the following day. No need to mention that his belly would be full of drink. It was Lucinda, the poor
creature
, who got the short end of the stick. Many times Dempsey had to restrain himself from going into their room and giving Sly a drubbing.

A season went by and Dempsey saw little of Sly by day. He had sown two acres of potatoes along with a couple of acres of oats, not to mention a half acre of turnips and the same of mangolds. Ben Stacey, Sly’s nearest neighbour, spent a week ploughing with Dempsey and Dempsey returned the favour when Stacey was
doing the spring sowing. Neither of them wanted Sly with them as he wasn’t the neatest of workers when it came to sowing, but give him a colt to break and he would be in his element.

When he wasn’t at a fair, Sly spent most of his days drinking in Langstrom’s and fighting with the buyers he used to deal with.

One day he was fighting with the Brennans, who used to live close by his own farm but who he had evicted a year earlier. One of the Brennans threatened to kill him. There were three of them and they were strong men.

When he got home, Lucinda put his supper before him. He was in a foul humour and had a couple of deep cuts on his cheek and on his eyebrow. He got up out of his chair by the fire and he almost stumbled as he was pulling it towards the table.

‘Where was the fair today?’ Lucinda asked sarcastically. ‘In Langstrom’s tavern I suppose.’

John Dempsey was just coming in the door. He saw the mood Sly was in and looked fearfully at Lucinda, who was taking a joint of mutton from a skillet that she had put on the side of the fire. Although Sly had had a lot to drink, he saw his opportunity for a treacherous attack on her. He got up drunkenly from his chair. Lucinda was bent over taking the mutton from the skillet when Sly drew a kick on her and she banged her head against the leg of the hob. When Dempsey saw that, he could turn a blind eye no longer. He punched Sly so hard in the face that he collapsed on the flat of his back in the middle of the kitchen.

‘Come on now, you bastard,’ he exploded. ‘What kind of a man would kick a woman?’

Lucinda got up gingerly, looked fondly at Dempsey and then turned to look at her husband stretched groaning on the kitchen floor.

‘I hope the bastard is dead,’ she spat.

She put her arms around Dempsey’s waist and kissed him.

‘How did a kind, pleasant woman like you marry that animal?’ he began. ‘Leave this house or you will go out the front door in a white deal box. You are married to a madman.’

Lucinda kissed Dempsey again. That put a different
complexion
on things but Dempsey put such thoughts out of his head. He picked Sly off the ground and tossed him into the chair.

Although he was only half Lucinda’s age, Dempsey had the same feelings for her that he would have had for a younger woman. Sly was still not stirring in the chair but soon they heard him
snoring
intermittently. They knew then that he was in a drunken sleep and he wouldn’t wake up even if the house fell on him. Lucinda caught Dempsey by the hand and guided him to the bedroom.

This didn’t surprise him as, from the way she looked at him this past while, he knew that she desired him and that Sly was giving her no satisfaction in bed. Dempsey was a confirmed bachelor and it had been a long time since he had lain with a woman. He knew that Lucinda was a good woman who wouldn’t betray a secret.

Sly didn’t wake up until dawn. He had no memory of the blow in the face he got from Dempsey, or, if he had, he didn’t pretend to, but that was the first night Lucinda and John Dempsey lay together and it was the beginning of their troubles.

Every day, as soon as Sly left home, Dempsey would hurry
through the fields towards the house and it wasn’t always to have a bite to eat. He would help Lucinda with the churning and milking as well. But he wasn’t always able to save her from Sly’s fists. He advised Lucinda to go for advice to the minister of her church unknown to Sly for fear she would get a worse beating from him.

One day as she was returning home from the butter market in Carlow it happened that she was passing the minister’s house. She halted her horse and cart outside his gate. She tied the horse’s reins to the poll and faced the door. Her heart was throbbing. How could she tell a stranger that her husband was constantly abusing her? She knocked on the door. It opened suddenly. The minister, John Doyne, was at the door.

‘Oh Lucinda,’ he greeted her. ‘Come in, come in! What brings you here? Look, sit on the chair. The maid will bring you some food.’

‘There’s no need,’ Lucinda responded. ‘I’m on my way home from the market and I will have to milk the cows and do other jobs when I get there. I have come for your help and advice. My
husband
beats me unmercifully when he comes home from the tavern at night full of whiskey.’

The minister looked at her in surprise.

‘Are you telling me,’ he asked in disbelief, ‘that Walter Sly beats his wife? I have known that man for years and he wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘I’m telling you,’ she repeated, ‘that if somebody doesn’t talk to him, my body will be buried in the cemetery before long.’

On hearing this, the minister jumped from his chair.

‘Go home, my good woman,’ he said, ‘and do your duty as a wife. Prepare his food, patch his clothes and do your duty in the marriage bed and don’t let me see you at my door with balls of lies coming out of your mouth. Off you go now. Soon women will be looking for the vote or a seat in parliament. The cheek of them.’

Poor Lucinda went out the door more confused than she was going in. When she reached home, Dempsey was driving in the cattle. She enquired had he seen any sight of her husband.

‘I don’t think he’ll be at home until late tonight,’ Dempsey replied. ‘He took the white colt. He said he had twenty miles of road before him.’

Lucinda’s heart lit up when she heard this. Dempsey unyoked the horse and led it into the field before helping Lucinda with the milking.

While they were milking, Lucinda told him about her visit to the minister. She was so upset that she had to lay her head against the cow’s belly for a rest before she could continue milking.

‘Oh, John,’ she pleaded, ‘what am I to do now? I am denied by my own Church. “Go home”, the minister told me, “and do your duty as a good wife” and he mentioned the bed too … As if he could do anything in bed. He is too heavy with drink, it takes him ten minutes to locate it and when he does he has nothing but a bit of wrinkled skin. I can see that he is spreading rumours about me around the place. Hardly any of the women who sell butter on the side of the street salute me now. Yes, and those who do, call me “the hag of the butter”.’

‘Ah, my good woman,’ Dempsey soothed her, ‘they are jealous
of you because of the quality of your butter.’

When the milk had been poured from the tub into the dishes in the dairy, they both washed the pails and headed for the house.

Dempsey had put down a big turf fire as he knew, with Sly gone and not due to return until late that night, they would have a fine cosy time by the fire. That was the night that Lucinda put the thought in Dempsey’s mind that there was room in her bed for only one man and that he, Dempsey, was her choice.

On hearing this, Dempsey grew afraid. He was happy enough with the way things were between Lucinda and himself. Never in his life had he got so much pleasure from a woman as he had from this gentle woman. But the battering she received from her
husband
when he, Dempsey, wasn’t around to protect her greatly disturbed him. ‘Right so,’ Dempsey thought to himself, ‘what is the solution to the problem? He is often enough seated on the chair where I am sitting.’

‘What can we do about Walter?’ he suddenly blurted out loud.

‘Look at the axe by the wall of the house,’ Lucinda pointed out. ‘One blow with the edge of that axe will split his head.’

Dempsey sat back on the chair with two wide eyes.

‘That’s murder,’ he protested. ‘Do you know what happens to murderers? They are hanged.’

‘You are right, John,’ she persisted. ‘If there is any proof against the one who did the deed. You could stay here as a farm hand and we could bar the two doors of the house every night and what do you think would happen?’

‘I know you are at the end of your tether with Walter,’ Dempsey
continued, ‘but murder! In God’s name, gather your senses, Lucinda. I never heard of anybody who did such a deed escaping the gallows.’

‘What kind of man are you at all?’ Lucinda taunted him. ‘Or have you any feelings for me?’

This struck him like a blow to his face.

‘Look, Lucinda,’ he went on, ‘leave it to me. We’ll have to come up with a better plan than splitting his head with an axe. Think of all the blood that would be around the kitchen.’

Lucinda’s face lit up on hearing this as she felt that Dempsey was a clever man who would come up with a better way of getting rid of Sly. She got out of her chair and sat on his knee. They spent some time fondling each other.

‘We had better go to bed before Walter returns,’ Dempsey urged her.

Up they went to the bedroom and such was Dempsey’s desire for Lucinda that he was ripping the buttons of his flap on the way.

They were only a minute in the bed when they heard the latch of the door being lifted. They looked at each other.