The Collected Stories

the family had been dragged. Mrs Colleary told her rosary, and prayed for the soul of her husband, and for her daughter’s soul. It was the morning of a Tuesday in May, a month after the funeral.

In another bedroom an old man, distantly related to the family, remained in his bed. Of everyone in the farmhouse, only he no longer dwelt on the scandal that had occurred. He had been upset by it at the time, but with the passing years it had settled in his mind, as had so much else in a long life. He was a small, wizened man who had spent most of that life on this farm. His relationship to the remaining Collearys was vague.

The house where the family lived was large and square and white, facing a grassy hill, its back to the distant sea. The hall door had been nailed in place a long time ago, to keep out draughts; a slated roof, obtusely pitched, was scarcely visible. The gravel sweep that lay between the house and the hill was weedless; the windows that looked out on it were curtained heavily with net and velveteen. The front of the house was where appearances were kept up. At the back a cobbled yard, with a hay-barn and outhouses, and a feed-shed where potatoes and swill were boiled, was less tidy. A porch in need of repair led to sculleries and kitchen.

Weeding a field of mangolds that ran to the edge of the cliffs, Hiney heard in the distance the engine of the post van, and knew by the direction it came from that the van was on its way to the farmhouse. Would an abrupt, buff-enveloped notice announce the withdrawal of the tillage grant? Or was there at last a communication from the Appeal Commissioners? Sunshine warmed Hiney’s shoulders and his head as he bent over the mangolds, the impassive solemnity of his countenance unaffected by speculation. His waistcoat hung loosely; his collarless shirt was held at the neck by a stud. More likely it was the bill for the diesel that brought the post van down the avenue, he guessed.

The old man was visited in his bedroom by Mrs Colleary. She spoke to him about the weather, reporting that it was a brightly sunny morning. But it was always uncertain whether or not he comprehended what was said to him, and this morning he gave no sign that he did. The old man’s age was as mysterious as his relationship to the family; he was perhaps ninety-four or -five. Mrs Colleary visited him first thing every morning to make sure he was all right.

Maura Brigid fried bacon in the kitchen. She had set the table the night before, the last to leave the kitchen, as she always was. She pushed the bacon to one side of the pan and dropped slices of griddle bread into the fat. She heard her brother’s footsteps in the yard, and for an instant imagined his slow walk and his wide, well-shaved face, his dark hair brushed flat on either side of its parting, his lips set dourly, his blue eyes expressionless. Work was what Hiney thought about, work that had been completed, work that had yet to be done. His life was the fields, and his tractor, and the weather.

The letter that had arrived lay on the stone floor of the scullery passage, just inside the door from the yard. When there was a letter the postman opened the back door and placed it on the passage floor, propped against the wall, since there was no letter-box and nowhere else to put it. Entering the house, Hiney picked up the communication that had just been delivered. It was not the bill for the diesel, nor was it about the tillage grant or the appeal that had been lodged with the tax commissioners. It was a white envelope, addressed in a sloping hand to Maura Brigid. Hiney was curious about it. He turned the envelope over, but nothing was written on the back.

In the kitchen Mrs Colleary said she thought the old man would get up today. She always knew if he intended to get up when she visited him first thing. The anticipation of his intentions might have shown as a glimpse in his eyes or in some variation of the sound he emitted when she spoke to him: she had no idea how the impression was conveyed, only that she received it.

‘I have an egg ready to fry for him,’ Maura Brigid said, that being what the old man had for breakfast. Bacon he couldn’t manage.

Hiney placed the letter on the table beside his sister’s knife and fork. He sat where he always sat, on the chair that had been his father’s in his lifetime. ‘Move into his place, Hiney,’ Mrs Colleary had said a few weeks after her husband’s death in 1969, when Hiney was still a boy.

‘Did Paidin bring a letter?’ Mrs Colleary did not question the delivery of a letter since the letter was clearly there and could have arrived by no other means than with the postman: her query was her way of expressing surprise. She could see that the letter was a personal one, and from where she stood she could see it was addressed to her daughter.

Maura Brigid, having placed three plates of food on the table, sat down herself. Mrs Colleary poured the tea. Maura Brigid examined the envelope much as her brother had done. She did not recognize the handwriting.

Dear Mrs Lawless, I am writing to you from my conscience. There is repentance in Michael, that’s all I’m writing to say to you. There is sorrow in him also, left behind after the death. Poor Michael is tormented in his heart over the way he was tempted and the sin there was. He told me more times than once that he would endeavour to make recompense to you for the pain he inflicted on you. I am writing to advise you to pray to Our Lady for guidance at this time in your life. I am asking you to recollect the forgiveness She displayed in Her Own Life.

‘It’s from Father Mehegan,’ Maura Brigid said, ‘the priest that did the funeral.’

She handed the letter to her mother because all letters that came to the farm were read in that general way. Mrs Colleary noted without comment what Father Mehegan had written. Hiney read the letter in silence also.

‘I hear him on the stairs,’ Mrs Colleary said. A few moments later the old man entered the kitchen, his shirt not yet buttoned, his trousers hitched up with ragged braces. A vest that had been drained of its whiteness through washing was exposed, its two buttons not fastened either. He sat down in his usual place to await his breakfast. Maura Brigid rose to fry his egg.

‘Is he off the hunger strike yet?’ the old man inquired, lost in a confusion that evoked for him a distant past. ‘Will MacSwiney go to the end, Hiney?’

‘He will.’ Hiney nodded in his solemn way. Indulging such dislocation of time was not unusual in the farmhouse.

‘I was saying he would myself.’

Michael does not know I’m writing to you, the priest’s letter ended. That’s in confidence between us. It was three years since Michael Lawless and Bernadette had run off in the middle of a July night. Maura Brigid had been married for six months at the time and no particular lack of accord between husband and wife had warned of what was to occur. No hint as to the direction of her affections had ever slipped from Bernadette. No note had been left behind.

‘Isn’t it a terrible thing, Hiney, that they’d let poor MacSwiney go to the end?’

‘It is all right.’