The Aul’ Man

"Are the bottles clean?"

"What’s the difference?"

"If they’re not washed out right, the old lemonade’ll dirty the paraffin and it’ll not burn as good."

"They’ll be all right. Just fill them up."

Danny Taggart passed two grubby lemonade bottles across the counter. Harry Orr took them through to the rear of the shop where he filled them from the tank in the yard thinking, no wonder we don’t like Papists. He did not fill the bottles properly.

"That’ll be fourpence."

Danny paid the man and left.

He walked down the hill with the bottles wrapped in a sack. At home in Leslie’s Yard, he made sure the corks were well fixed and put the sack outside the kitchen door.

"Is ma dinner ready yet? I’m going back out."

Rina Taggart shooed the twins out of the kitchen. "Away youse go out and play." She wiped the flour off her hands on her apron. "The weans have had the last of the bread. You’ll have to wait till later when that bread comes out the oven. It’s just gone in."

"Fuck’s sake. It was the same last Friday."

"Well, if you’d give me more for the housekeeping and spent less in the pub, there’d be a dinner on a Friday as well."

He raised his arm to hit her.

"Ah dare ye." Rina was a well-built lass. She reached for a cooking pan. "I’ll do more than break your finger next time."

"Away to hell," he said putting on his jacket again.

"You’re not going out like that, are you? For God’s sake give yourself a wash. You’re like a bloody tinker."

He stormed out slamming the door. Seconds later it banged open again. Danny slunk in, collected the sack and left.

"Where’s ma Da going?" The door opened again.

"He’s away down to a meeting at the club, wee son. Here, there’s a carrot for you. It’s nice and sweet. Give that to Mick." She gave the boy the two carrots she had taken from the neighbours’ vegetable plot earlier. The boy went back out to the yard crunching contentedly.

Danny stood up to the bar in O’Sullivan’s. "Pint of heavy there Tommy. Put it on the slate."

"Sorry Danny, Mr. O’Sullivan said your slate’s too big. No more till you settle it."

"Fuck it." Danny took a shilling from his pocket and put it on the bar. He carried the pint and the sack to a table in the corner. This was the committee’s table. Francy Devine was sitting there.

"Did you get it?"

"Aye, that’s it there in the sack."

"When you going to do it?"

"Tonight. Sure I told you that yesterday. Give us a cigarette."

Francy gave him a Capstan. Danny lit up and coughed at the first drag.

"Christ, that’s good. Where did you get the money to buy Capstan? I never saw you with anything except Woodbine."

"Won at the bookies this afternoon. Thing came up at seven to one. I had a tanner on it. Won three and six. Eh, not bad."

At ten past ten, Benny O’Sullivan closed and locked the door of the pub. A dozen men stayed drinking till after two o’clock, among them Danny and Francy. Francy’s winnings were almost spent, and they were drunk.

"Right lads, I’m shutting up. I’m away to my bed. Drink up and away home, the lot of you." Benny wiped the dregs from the bar, wrung out the cloth and hung it over the beer-pump handles. The men straggled out onto the street after Benny had checked there were no policemen about.

"Come on." Francy followed Danny as he walked up the hill towards the school.

"I thought we were going to do Dickie’s?"

"No, I was thinking. We’ll do Moir’s instead. He’s just as big in the Lodge as Dickie. The butchers’ walls are all tiled. They’ll not burn. But the bakers will."

"Aye, I suppose you’re right," agreed Francy.

"Them bastards cannae burn Catholic shops and get away with it. Did you bring some rags to stick in the bottles?"

Behind the school, where they could not be seen, Francy produced an old shirt which he tore into small pieces. Danny unwrapped the bottles of paraffin. He gave one to Francy, who soaked the rags with paraffin. The rags were pushed into the necks of the bottles.

"Watch what you’re doing there. You’re spilling too much. For Christ’s sake there’ll be nothing left to set the fucking shop on fire with. You’ve got it all over your pants. You’re stinking with the stuff."

They walked back down to Fullarton Street. Carefully checking that there was no-one around, they stopped in front of Moir’s.

"Gie’s the matches."

Francy pulled them out of his pocket. Danny unwrapped the bottles and threw the sack on the ground. They both lit the rags and waited till they were well alight.

"Right." Danny drew back his arm and threw the bottle through the shop window. Francy took a step backwards, tripped over the sack and dropped his bottle. Danny’s bottle erupted inside the shop just as Francy’s smashed on the pavement. There were two eruptions but only one explosion.

Danny watched as Francy writhed on the pavement. His thin screams were cut off very quickly as the flames seared his throat and lungs.

"Dear Jesus."

Danny plunged into the path beside the Co-operative building and the burn. He did not stop till he was in Seabank, twenty minutes later.

*****

"Aye, I sold two bottles to an Irish lad yesterday."

"Know his name?" Harry Orr’s was the second shop Sergeant Park had visited.

"Naw, but I know the face. He’s from the town. I’ve seen him coming out of O’Sullivans. Not very big, black hair, wee moustache, corduroy trousers and a blue jacket. The jacket had a tear at the back. I remember seeing it as he walked out the shop. Gave me a big mouth when I told him the bottles needed to be clean. That’s how I remember him. Did he set fire to Moir’s last night? Is that other one all right? There was only one that bought the paraffin. There was nobody with him."

"No, the other one’s dead. Died in Kilmarnock Infirmary this morning. Just as well. He was burnt to a cinder. Not a bit of skin left on him."

Danny was picked up that afternoon in O’Sullivan’s. The two policemen could still smell paraffin on his trousers. Harry Orr, identified him as the buyer of the paraffin the previous day.

Six weeks later, Danny was sentenced to twenty years, at the High Court in Glasgow. When asked if he wished to say anything, Danny erupted in fury.

"Youse fuckin’ Orange bastards. Who got twenty years for setting fire to Sleanagh’s shop the month before me and Francy did Moir’s? Eh, tell me that? There was never a single fuckin’ polis went round asking any fuckin’ thing. Youse had no bother with that. It was just a Papist shop. But when it happens to one of your own, that’s a different fuckin’ matter. Fuck the lot of youse."

"Take him down."

*****

When Maggie was on holiday, she did not believe in rising early. It was ten o’clock and there was still no sign of her getting up. Beth indulged her. She had left school some weeks earlier, having sat her Higher Leaving Certificate in four subjects, Beth thought she was due a bit of spoiling. Not a natural student like a lucky few, Maggie had to work for her results.

The letter-box clacked and a large brown envelope plopped onto the door-mat. Beth left the big Belfast sink where she was washing bed-sheets in the back-kitchen. Drying her hands, she walked through to the passage to pick up the post.

On His Majesty’s Service.
Scottish Education Authority.

To:                            Miss Margaret Sleanagh,
                                            37, Hillhead St.,
                                                       Kerlaw,
                                                                   Ayrshire.

"Oh my God. It’s them. They’ve come."

"Maggie. Maggie. MAGGIEEEE," she called up the stairs.

Maggie appeared at the top of the stairs. Unwashed, in her curlers, she was not a stirring sight at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning.

"Maggie, put your dressing-gown on and come on down. Your Highers have come."

By the time Maggie came into the kitchen, the kettle was singing and Beth was setting the cups for tea. Maggie sat at the table with the envelope in her hands. Beth hovered. The three younger children were off somewhere with their friends.

Beth warmed the pot and poured the hot water away. Two spoons of tea and one for the pot were scooped into the tea-pot, which was brought to the kettle on the range. The aroma of fresh-set tea filled the kitchen. Beth set the pot to brew under a multi-coloured, woollen cosy knitted by Cath at school some years earlier. The sunlight, broken by the waving branches of the pear-tree, shafted in through the window.

"Well, aren’t you going to open it then?"

"I’m scared Mammy. What if I’ve failed? You know that if I don’t pass them all, I don’t get a certificate at all "

"Lassie, if you’ve failed them, you’ve failed them. Life will go on. You’ll just have to take a job that’s not as well-paid as one you could get if you’ve passed. Now don’t be daft. Open it up and see what you’ve done. Here let me open the envelope for you."

Beth took the letter from her, picked up the knife she had used to butter some bread earlier and wiped it on a dish-cloth. She slit it open.

"Here."

Maggie drew the stiff paper from the envelope. She turned it over.

"All four," she said quietly.

Beth’s heart sank. "All four what, sweetheart?"

"I passed them all Mammy. I passed them all."

The two women, for Maggie was no longer a girl, flew into each others arms.

"I told you. Didn’t I? I knew it was going to be all right." Beth hugged her eldest daughter. Another of her children was a success. They all had decent jobs. John had his own shop, and now one of them had a good education, with a bit of paper to prove it.

"I swore none of mine would ever be servants to folk that were better off than us, like I had to do. And now look at us. We’ll be having a house-maid of our own before long." She swelled with pride; good pride; pride in herself and in the achievements of her family. Maggie passed her a handkerchief to dry her eyes.

A month later, Maggie was interviewed for the position of junior clerk at Watson’s the solicitors in the Rodden Street. On the first of September, dressed in a new, dark, pleated skirt, white blouse and smart, black and white, herring-bone blazer, she started her first job.

*****

"I want you to write every week, you hear." Beth gave Ann a hug. "He’ll not write, the great lazy lump that he is." She wagged a finger at Mack. "So I’m waiting on you to do it. Promise?" .

"Aye Mammy Sleanagh. I promise." She and her husband of less than eighteen months, went down the gangplank onto the wee puffer.

The two harbour-workers dragged the gangplank onto the quay, cast off the ropes from the bollards and left the Sleanaghs to their farewell waving. The water churned at the stern and, the small ship puffed its way across the harbour, slipped between the piers and went out of sight behind the one on the left. It was the first day of August 1924. A beautiful summer day, not a ripple showed on the firth.

"They’ll have a nice sail over to Ireland. How long will it take?"

"Mother, we told you half a dozen times. They’ll be there this time tomorrow morning." John checked his watch; five past ten. He put his arm round Beth’s shoulders and gave her another handkerchief. That made it three.

Mack and Ann’s whole household was on board the Duke’s Loch. The entire cart had been hoisted on board with the load tied onto it. It had been lashed to the deck in front of the fore-mast. They planned to sell the cart when they arrived in Carlingford. It had cost fifteen shillings from Gus Alexander, the coal-merchant, who had bought a new one. The old cart, scrubbed clean of years of coal-dust was still able to carry a load. Gus had brought it to Winton for them as part of the price, and was now on his way back to Kerlaw astride Sunny, the Clydesdale that had hauled it to the harbour.

The Duke’s Loch was a coaster which plied up and down the west coast of Scotland and over to the North of Ireland. It was bound for Giles Quay in County Louth, with a cargo of rails from Glengarnock steel-works for the Dundalk to Glenore Railway. Giles Quay was thirteen miles south of Carlingford. The ship would make the small detour into Carlingford to off-load them and their cart.

The coaster sailed away from Winton harbour taking Beth’s first-born with it.

*****

Cormac closed the front door and came back into the kitchen.

"Who was that?" He looked over at Beth, who saw the glint in his eye. He handed her the telegram.

"A girl, Meg. Five pounds, six ounces. Both well. Mack," she read out. "A girl at last. I was about ready to give them lassies a piece of my mind. It’s time I had a wee grand-daughter after seven boys." She stood up and kissed him.

"Why don’t you go and see Mack and Ann, and wee Meg? We’ve got the money." She was quiet for a while.

"If you come. I’ll go. You’ve never been back in 35 years. It’s time you went back. Harry’s not getting any younger. He must be 57 now. You’ll be 59 next month. You’ve never seen your own nephews, nor their weans. I’d like fine to go, but I’m not going on my own."

"I wonder? I could talk to George McGregor and see if I could get a week off. We get five days off a year now, since the Union negotiated the new pay-rates at the New Year. With that new lassie in the office, he can miss me for a week.

He was thoughtful for a few moments.

"D’you know it’s been 38 years. I’m that glad you made me go to the night-school. I don’t think I could have kept working in the yard at my age. Do you remember how I wouldn’t go, and how easy it was in the end? I didn’t know I had it in me. I often wonder whether you really would have taken the boys and went back to your mother’s."

"Aye, I often wonder too." They were both quiet for a few moments.

"I’ll ask him on Monday. If he says yes, we’ll go at the beginning of next month for a week."

*****

They took Lawson’s taxi to Winton harbour to catch the day boat to Belfast which left at ten o’clock. It was a four hour sail, and the weather was fine. They had salmon, potatoes and green peas for their dinner on board the Duke’s Isle.

Beth felt like the Queen of England. She had never been in a motor car, or sat down to a meal other than in a house before. She had never been more proud of him than when he paid the bill and gave the waitress thruppence for a tip.

They took the train from Belfast to Dundalk, where Harry met them. There were no big changes. Cormac recognised most of what he saw. The farm though, had changed. Harry had pulled down the old house. A fine two-storey house stood on the site of the old byre. A barn and a milking-shed were where the old house had been. The old zigzag farm-track up the hill had been replaced by a modern tar macadam road which was straight. He had bought the adjoining farm from the O’Harra’s when old Mick died. On the expanded acreage, he had built up a pedigree herd of Ayrshire dairy cows. He was one of the most prosperous farmers in Co. Louth.

"Come and meet the family. This is Bridie, the light of my life and the mother of my weans." He introduced a bright-eyed woman with a babe on her hip.

"Oh it’s lovely to see you both at last. You’re very welcome to Rathhamilton. You must be exhausted after all that travelling. I’ve got the kettle on. The tea won’t take a minute. This is Robert, Gerry’s youngest," she said. "Our third grandson."

"Have you no lassies either?" Beth laughed, taking Robert from her, rocking him in her arms. "I’ve just had my first girl after seven boys. I was beginning to think the Sleanaghs weren’t making wee girls anymore."

"Where’s our Mack?" Cormac asked. "I thought he’d be here to see us."

"He’ll be down from the town after ten o’clock, when the pub shuts. He has a grand business there. Devine’s was the only place you could get a bit of a drink in Carlingford before Mack opened his place in Thomas’s old workshop. Sure Devine’s is only a shebeen. Mack’s is really nice. He’ll take no nonsense from any of them. You can take the wife there without any bother. Take your wife? You could take your old mother. You could even take your granny. Swear, and he’ll have you out of there in a minute. And the Holy Name; you’ll not hear that taken in vain in Mack’s."

"Here, take your coats off. Bridie’s got the kettle on. You’ll both be dying for a cup of tea. We’ll take a walk up and see Ann and baby Meg in a minute. It’s only a step up the road towards the town, and it’s a nice evening for a bit of a walk. You know they bought the old Maguire house. You remember Maggie. She’s away to America these twenty years or more."

"Aye, I thought you were going to marry her at one stage."

"Don’t be daft. She was our cousin for God’s sake. She’s the last of them. When Auntie Mary and Uncle James died, there was none of them left. Willie Donaghue the lawyer, sold it for her; to Mack. Sent the money to her in California."

*****

"Have you seen this Da?" They were alone in the living-room after the womenfolk had gone to bed.

"What’s that Mack?"

"It’s that photo we got taken in the back garden when we were children."

Mack lifted a framed photograph from the sideboard. He brought it over to his father.

"Good God. Have you still got that thing. I remember I sent it to uncle Thomas, the Christmas after it got taken. Our one will still be in a drawer somewhere in number 37."

"It was always on his mantle-piece, said Harry.

"Do you remember the picnic Da?"

"I remember the football. God I was buggered afterwards." Cormack had a good laugh. "Them were the days, eh?"

"Here Scotsman, let me put something in that glass. You’ve been sitting empty there for ten minutes now. I can’t believe how you’ve lost your Irish accent. There’s just a wee trace of it left if you’re listening for it."

"Is that so? I never gave it a thought. That’s a nice drop of Jameson’s. Go on then. Just a mouthful though; to be sociable. - Not that wee a mouthful."

"I’ll have a wee drop as well Uncle Harry. Tell me about my granda. The Aul’-man here hardly ever talked about him."

"The old-fella could be a funny bugger when he took it into his head."

"Not like the Sleanaghs then," said Mack laughing.

"He and your daddy here, were like chalk and cheese; Hugh was as stubborn as God could make them; stuck in the old ways. Your daddy here was always trying to convince him about some new-fangled idea.

You know Cormac, he never mentioned your name again after you walked out. Not once. And it was a good number of years before he and Thomas were on speaking terms again."

"I should have come back to see Thomas, but I couldn’t get up the courage to come back while he was still here. I’m heartsore that I never came back to see my mother, not even to bury her."

"They’re all together in the same plot, the three of them, up on the hill at Cooley Church. I’ll take you up there in the morning. I put up a nice stone for them."

"Aye. I’d like to do that. We’re a crazy, bloody family. We don’t know when we’re well off, having folk that loves us. We’re poor at loving each-other in this family."

"Well, I don’t know about that. Maybe at showing it. But maybe that’ll change, now that we’re getting a bit older," said Mack.

Cormac turned to his son.

"Never let the sun go down on your anger. After I walked off the farm, I tried to make that the principle that guided me through life. God knows, you’ve all heard me say it often enough. It’s a hard lesson to learn for yourself."

"Why did you never come back Cormac? It’s got to be more than just not wanting to face Hugh."

"Ach, Harry. It was the last thing he said to me before I left. That you’d not sleep in your bed at night, waiting on me coming back to claim the farm. At the end of the day, I just had my Irish up. I didn’t want to come crawling back to him. He’d have made me feel small for coming back to him. He’d have forced me to say sorry, and I’d probably have said it just to make Biddy happy. I wanted him to come to me and tell me he was sorry.

Ach, there were times I was on the point of buying a ticket for the boat, but the thought of him looking down his nose at me that way, ... Remember the way he used to do that."

Cormac contemplated the Jameson’s in his glass for a long moment. A wee tear trickled down the side of his nose and fell into it.

"You coming back to claim the farm was in the back of my mind now and then, especially at the beginning. But when you started doing well in the shipyard, I had no bother with it anymore. Oh, I knew all about you. Thomas shared all the letters you wrote; first written by the priests, then by Beth, and then when you started writing yourself. We took them to the priest to read them for us. I never learned it myself, and Thomas surely couldn’t. I never said a word to the Old- man, though I did tell my mother. She never said a word to him either."

"Did you never have a notion to come over to Scotland then?"

"I thought about it off and on. But there never was time. I’ve been working my backside off on the farm here. This didn’t just happen by itself, you know. The bank owned me, lock, stock and barrel; three times. First, when I bought O’Harra’s, then when I built the house and barns, and again when I was building up the herd. I’m nearly free of them. Should be next year, please God."

"Where’s Gerry and Graham?"

"You’ll see them tomorrow. They’re away down to Tipperary, having a look at a bull. I’ve a notion to go into the breeding business. Been breeding my own now for a couple of years. The herd is big enough now to need another breeding bull. Can’t afford any more inbreeding. I can have the new fella service the other herds round here too. With a bit of luck I might even make a profit on him."

"We haven’t done too bad, the lot of us," Cormac said. "Our lot in Kerlaw are doing all right in the shops. There are three of them now. Did you know that?"

He turned to Mack. "There’s one in each of the three towns. John’s in the Kerlaw shop himself, Paddy’s in Seabank, in Harbour Street, and Hugh’s in Princess Street in Winton."

Turning back to Harry, he continued, "I can’t believe what you’ve done with the farm. It was just a wee holding when I left. If I’d known it would turn into this, I might not have walked away from it. Mind you, I was never a farmer. I could never have made this of it. I hope you’re not going to have the same trouble with Gerry, as Hugh had with me."

Harry took a sip of whiskey.

"It’s still legally yours you know." He looked over the rim of his glass at Cormac.

Cormac stared at his brother. "Are you kidding me on?"

"I am not."

"Holy mother of God. Jesus, man. Why did you never say anything?"

"Don’t know. Never really thought about it. I was talking to Willie Donaghue the other week; you know, the lawyer. I said you were coming over. It was him that said it was still legally yours. There was never a will, and no-one contested me taking over. There was never any reason to do anything about it. Everybody just accepted it the way it was. Even the bank never asked any questions. I just signed whatever they put in front of me."

Two days later, in Willie Donaghue’s office in Carlingford, Cormac sold the farm to Harry for one pound. They spent it on a bottle of Jameson’s whiskey, got thoroughly drunk, and, to the astonishment and delight of the other customers, were asked to leave by Mack for their rowdy behaviour.

It was talked of in the town for years after.

*****

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