The Collected Stories

of his ten children had emigrated, four to Canada and America, the three others to England. Kathleen, the youngest, now sixteen, was left, with Biddy, who wasn’t herself, and Con, who would inherit the farm. But without the Lallys’ field it wouldn’t be easy for Con to keep going. Sooner or later he would want to marry the McKrill girl, and there’d always have to be a home for Biddy on the farm, and for a while at least an elderly mother and father would have to be accommodated also. Sometimes one or other of the exiled children sent back a cheque and Hagerty never objected to accepting it. But none of them could afford the price of a field, and he wasn’t going to ask them. Nor would Con accept these little presents when his time came to take over the farm entirely, for how could the oldest brother be beholden like that in the prime of his life? It wasn’t the same for Hagerty himself: he’d been barefoot on the farm as a child, which was when his humility had been learned.

‘Are you keeping yourself well, Mr Hagerty?’ Mrs Shaughnessy inquired, crossing the small bar to where he sat. She’d been busy with customers on the grocery side since soon after he’d come in; she’d drawn the cork out of his bottle, apologizing for her busyness when she gave it to him to pour himself.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘And are you, Mrs Shaughnessy?’

‘I have the winter rheumatism again. But thank God it’s not severe.’

Mrs Shaughnessy was a tall, big-shouldered woman whom he remembered as a girl before she’d married into the shop. She wore a bit of make-up, and her clothes were more colourful than his wife’s, although they were hidden now by her green shop overall. She had been flighty as a girl, so he remembered hearing, but in no way could you describe her as that in her late middle age; ‘well-to-do’ was the description that everything about Mrs Shaughnessy insisted upon.

‘I was wanting to ask you, Mr Hagerty. I’m on the look-out for a country girl to assist me in the house. If they’re any good they’re like gold dust these days. Would you know of a country girl out your way?’

Hagerty began to shake his head and was at once reminded of the bank agent shaking his. It was then, while he was still actually engaged in that motion, that he recalled a fact which previously had been of no interest to him: Mrs Shaughnessy’s husband lent people money. Mr Shaughnessy was a considerable businessman. As well as the Provisions and Bar, he owned a barber’s shop and was an agent for the Property & Life Insurance Company; he had funds to spare. Hagerty had heard of people mortgaging an area of their land with Mr Shaughnessy, or maybe the farmhouse itself, and as a consequence being able to buy machinery or stock. He’d never yet heard of any unfairness or sharp practice on the part of Mr Shaughnessy after the deal had been agreed upon and had gone into operation.

‘Haven’t you a daughter yourself, Mr Hagerty? Pardon me now if I’m guilty of a presumption, but I always say if you don’t ask you won’t know. Haven’t you a daughter not long left the nuns?’

Kathleen’s round, open features came into his mind, momentarily softening his own. His youngest daughter was inclined to plumpness, but her wide, uncomplicated smile often radiated moments of prettiness in her face. She had always been his favourite, although Biddy, of course, had a special place also.

‘No, she’s not long left the convent.’

Her face slipped away, darkening to nothing in his imagination. He thought again of the Lallys’ field, the curving shape of it like a tea-cloth thrown over a bush to dry. A stream ran among the few little ash trees at the bottom, the morning sun lingered on the heart of it.

‘I’d never have another girl unless I knew the family, Mr Hagerty. Or unless she’d be vouched for by someone the like of yourself.’

‘Are you thinking of Kathleen, Mrs Shaughnessy?’

‘Well, I am. I’ll be truthful with you, I am.’

At that moment someone rapped with a coin on the counter of the grocery and Mrs Shaughnessy hurried away. If Kathleen came to work in the house above the Provisions and Bar, he might be able to bring up the possibility of a mortgage. And the grass was so rich in the field that it wouldn’t be too many years before a mortgage could be paid off. Con would be left secure, Biddy would be provided for.

Hagerty savoured a slow mouthful of stout. He didn’t want Kathleen to go to England. I can get her fixed up, her sister, Mary Florence, had written in a letter not long ago. ‘I’d rather Kilburn than Chicago,’ he’d heard Kathleen herself saying to Con, and at the time he’d been relieved because Kilburn was nearer. Only Biddy would always be with them, for you couldn’t count on Con not being tempted by Kilburn or Chicago the way things were at the present time. ‘Sure, what choice have we in any of it?’ their mother had said, but enough of them had gone, he’d thought. His father had struggled for the farm and he’d struggled for it himself.

‘God, the cheek of some people!’ Mrs Shaughnessy exclaimed, re-entering the bar. ‘Tinned pears and ham, and her book unpaid since January! Would you credit that, Mr Hagerty?’

He wagged his head in an appropriate manner, denoting amazement. He’d been thinking over what she’d put to him, he said. There was no girl out his way who might be suitable, only his own Kathleen. ‘You were right enough to mention Kathleen, Mrs Shaughnessy.’ The nuns had never been displeased with her, he said as well.

‘Of course, she would be raw, Mr Hagerty. I’d have to train every inch of her. Well, I have experience in that, all right. You train them, Mr Hagerty, and the next thing is they go off to get married. There’s no sign of that, is there?’

‘Ah, no, no.’

‘You’d maybe spend a year training them and then they’d be off. Sure, where’s the sense in it? I often wonder I bother.’

‘Kathleen wouldn’t go running off, no fear of that, Mrs Shaughnessy.’

‘It’s best to know the family. It’s best to know a father like yourself.’

As Mrs Shaughnessy spoke, her husband appeared behind the bar. He was a medium-sized man, with grey hair brushed into spikes, and a map of broken veins dictating a warm redness in his complexion. He wore a collar and tie, which Mr Hagerty did not, and the waistcoat and trousers of a dark-blue suit. He carried a number of papers in his right hand and a packet of Sweet Afton cigarettes in his left. He spread the papers out on the bar and, having lit a cigarette, proceeded to scrutinize them. While he listened to Mrs Shaughnessy’s further exposition of her theme, Hagerty was unable to take his eyes off him.

‘You get in a country girl and you wouldn’t know was she clean or maybe would she take things. We had a queer one once, she used eat a raw onion. You’d go into the kitchen and she’d be at it. “What are you chewing,