All night, she knew, she would sit there, the muzzy image of Carol Dickson where he had left it, a yard away. She did not want to sleep because sleeping meant waking up and there would be the moment when reality began to haunt again. Her role was only to accept: he had a screw loose, she had willed him to be born. No one would ever understand the mystery of his existence, or the unshed tears they shared.
The Potato Dealer
Mulreavy would marry her if they paid him, Ellie’s uncle said: she couldn’t bring a fatherless child into the world. He didn’t care what was done nowadays; he didn’t care what the fashion was; he wouldn’t tolerate the talk there’d be. ‘Mulreavy,’ her uncle repeated. ‘D’you know who I mean by Mulreavy?’
She hardly did. An image came into her mind of a big face that had a squareness about it, and black hair, and a cigarette butt adhering to the lower lip while a slow voice agreed or disagreed, and eyes that were small, and sharp as splinters. Mulreavy was a potato dealer. Once a year he came to the farm, his old lorry rattling into the yard, then backed up to where the sacks stood ready for him. Sometimes he shook his head when he examined the potatoes, saying they were too small. He tried that on, Ellie’s uncle maintained. Cagey, her uncle said.
‘I’ll tell you one thing, girl,’ her uncle said when she found the strength to protest at what was being proposed. ‘I’ll tell you this: you can’t stay here without there’s something along lines like I’m saying. Nowadays is nothing, girl. There’s still the talk.’
He was known locally as Mr Larrissey, rarely by his Christian name, which was Joseph. Ellie didn’t call him ‘Uncle Joseph’, never had; ‘uncle’ sometimes, though not often, for even in that there seemed to be an intimacy that did not belong in their relationship. She thought of him as Mr Larrissey.
‘It’s one thing or the other, girl.’
Her mother - her uncle’s sister - didn’t say anything. Her mother hadn’t opened her mouth on the subject of Mulreavy, but Ellie knew that she shared the sentiments that were being expressed, and would accept, in time, the solution that had been offered. She had let her mother down; she had embittered her; why should her mother care what happened now? All of it was a mess. In the kitchen of the farmhouse her mother and her uncle were thinking the same thing.
Her uncle - a worn, tired man, not used to trouble like this - didn’ t forgive her and never would: so he had said, and Ellie knew it was true. Since the death of her father she and her mother had lived with him on the farm on sufferance: that was always in his eyes, even though her mother did all the cooking and the cleaning of the house, even though Ellie, since she was eleven, had helped in summer in the fields, had collected and washed the eggs and nourished the pigs. Her uncle had never married; if she and her mother hadn’t moved on to the farm in 1978, when Ellie was five, he’d still be on his own, managing as best he could.
‘You have the choice, girl,’ he said now, the repetition heavy in the farmhouse kitchen. He was set in his ways, Ellie’s mother often said; lifelong bachelors sometimes were.
He’d said at first - a fortnight ago - that his niece should get herself seen to, even though it was against religion. Her mother said no, but later wondered if it wasn’t the only way out, the trip across the water that other girls had gone on, what else was there? They could go away and have it quietly done, they could be visiting the Galway cousins, no one would be the wiser. But Ellie, with what spirit was left in her, though she was in disgrace and crying, would not agree. In the fortnight that passed she many times, tearfully, repeated her resolve to let the child be born.
Loving the father, Ellie already loved the child. If they turned her out, if she had to walk the roads, or find work in Moyleglass or some other town, she would. But Ellie didn’t want to do that; she didn’t want to find herself penniless because it would endanger the birth. She would never do that was the decision she had privately reached the moment she was certain she was to have a child.
‘Mulreavy,’ her uncle said again.
vI know who he is.’
Her mother sat staring down at the lines of grain that years of scrubbing had raised on the surface of the kitchen table. Her mother had said everything she intended to say: disgrace, shame, a dirtiness occurring when people’s backs were turned, all the thanks you get for what you give, for sacrifices made. ‘Who’d want you now?’ her mother had asked her, more than once.
‘Mind you, I’m not saying Mulreavy’ll bite,’ Ellie’s uncle said. ‘I’m not saying he’d take the thing on.’
Ellie didn’t say anything. She left the kitchen and walked out into the yard, where the turkeys screeched and ran towards her, imagining she carried meal to scatter, as often she did. She passed them by, and let herself through the black iron gate that led to the sloping three-cornered field beyond the outbuildings, the worst two acres of her uncle’s property. Ragweed and gorse grew in profusion, speckled rock-surfaces erupted. It was her favourite field, perhaps because she had always heard it cursed and as a child had felt sorry for it. ‘Oh, now, that’s nice!’ the father of her unborn baby said when she told him she felt sorry for the three-cornered field. It was then that he’d said he wished he’d known her as a child, and made her describe herself as she had been.
When it was put to Mulreavy he pretended offence. He didn’t expostulate, for that was not his way. But as if in melancholy consideration of a personal affront he let the two ends of his mouth droop, as he sometimes did when he held a potato in his palm, shaking his head over its unsatisfactory size or shape. Ash from his cigarette dribbled down his shirt-front, the buttons of a fawn cardigan open because the day was warm, his shirt-collar open also and revealing a line of grime where it had been most closely in contact with the skin of his neck.
‘Well, that’s a quare one,’ Mulreavy said, his simulated distaste slipping easily from him, replaced by an attempt at outraged humour.
‘There’s a fairish sum,’ Mr Larrissey said, but didn’t say what he had in mind and Mulreavy didn’t ask. Nor did he ask who the father was. He said in a by-the-way voice that he was going out with a woman from Ballina who’d come to live in Moyleglass, a dressmaker’s assistant; but the information was ignored.
‘I only thought it was something would interest you,’ Mr Larrissey said.
Their two vehicles were drawn up on the road, a rusting Ford Cortina and Mulreavy’s lorry, the driving-side windows of both wound down. Mulreavy offered a cigarette. Mr Larrissey took it. As if about to drive away, he had put his hand on the gear when he said he’d only thought the proposition might be of interest.
vWhat’s the sum?’ Mulreavy asked when the cigarettes were lit, and a horn hooted because the vehicles were blocking the road. Neither man took any notice: they were of the neighbourhood, local people, the road was more theirs than strangers’.
When the extent of the money offered was revealed Mulreavy knew better than to react, favourably or otherwise. It would be necessary to give the matter thought, he said, and further considerations were put to him, so that at leisure he could dwell on those also.
Ellie’s mother knew how it was, and how it would be: her brother would profit from the episode. The payment would be made by her: the accumulated pension, the compensation from the time of the accident in 1978. Her brother saw something for himself in the arrangement he hoped for with the potato dealer; the moment he had mentioned Mulreavy’s name he’d been aware of a profit to be made. Recognizing at first, as she had herself, only shame and folly in the fact that his niece was pregnant, he had none the less explored the situation meticulously: that was his way. She had long been aware of her brother’s hope that one day Ellie would marry some suitable young fellow who would join them in the farmhouse and could be put to work, easing the burden in the fields: that was how the debt of taking in a sister and a niece might at last be paid. But with a disaster such as there had been, there would be no young fellow now. Instead there was the prospect of Mulreavy, and what her brother had established
in his mind was that Mulreavy could ease the burden too. A middle-aged potato dealer wasn’t ideal for the purpose, but he was better than nothing.
Ellie’s mother, resembling her brother in appearance, lean-faced and with his tired look, often recalled the childhood he and she had shared in this same house. More so than their neighbours, they were known to be a religious family, never missing Mass, going all together in the trap on Sundays and later by car, complimented for the faith they kept by Father Hanlon and his successor. The Larrisseys were respected people, known for the family virtues of hard work and disdain for ostentation, never seeming to be above themselves. She and her brother had all their lives been
part of that, had never rebelled against these laid-down mores during the years of their upbringing.
Now, out of the cruel blue, there was this; and as far as brother and sister could remember, in the farmhouse there had never been anything as dispiriting. The struggle in bad seasons to keep two ends together, to make something of the rock-studded land even in the best of times, had never been lowering. Adversity of that kind was expected, the lot the family had been born into.
It had been expected also, when the accident occurred to the man she’d married, that Ellie’s mother would return to the house that had become her brother’s. She was forty-one then; her brother forty-four, left alone two years before when their parents had died within the same six months. He hadn’t invited her to return, and though it seemed, in the circumstances, a natural consequence to both of them, she knew her brother had always since considered her beholden. As a child, he’d been like that about the few toys they shared, insisting that some were more his than hers.
‘I saw Mulreavy,’ he said on the day of the meeting on the road, his unsmiling, serious features already claiming a successful outcome.
Mulreavy’s lorry had reached the end of its days and still was not fully paid for: within six months or so he would find himself unable to continue trading. This was the consideration that had crept into his mind when the proposition was put to him, and it remained there afterwards. There was a lorry he’d seen in McHugh Bros. with thirty-one thousand on the clock and at an asking price that would be reduced, the times being what they were. Mulreavy hadn’t entirely invented the dressmaker from Ballina in whom he had claimed an interest: she was a wall-eyed woman he had recently seen about the place, who had arrived in Moyleglass to assist Mrs Toomey in her cutting and stitching. Mulreavy had wondered if she had money, if she’d bought her way into Mrs Toomey’s business, as he’d heard it said. He’d never spoken to her or addressed her in any way, but after his conversation with Mr Larrissey he made further enquiries, only to discover that rumour now suggested the woman was employed by Mrs Toomey at a small wage. So Mulreavy examined in finer detail the pros and cons of marrying into the Larrisseys.
‘There’d be space for you in the house,’ was how it had been put to him. ‘Maybe better than if you took her out of it. And storage enough for the potatoes in the big barn.’
A considerable saving of day-to-day expenses would result, Mulreavy had reflected, closing his eyes against the smoke from his cigarette when those words were spoken. He made no comment, waiting for further enticements, which came in time. Mr Larrissey said:
‘Another thing is, the day will come when the land’ll be too much for me. Then again, the day will come when there’ll be an end to me altogether.’
Mr Larrissey had crossed himself. He had said no more, allowing the references to land and his own demise to dangle in the silence. Soon afterthathe jerked his head in a farewell gesture and drove away.
He’d marry the girl, Mulreavy’s thoughts were later, after he’d heard the news about the dressmaker; he’d vacate his property, holding on to it until the price looked right and then disposing of it, no hurry whatsoever since he’d already be in the Larrisseys’ farmhouse, with storage facilities and a good lorry. If he attended a bit to the land, the understanding was that he’d inherit it when the day came. It could be done in writing; it could be drawn up by Blaney in Moyleglass.
Eight days after their conversation on the road the two men shook hands, as they did when potatoes were bought and sold. Three weeks went by and then there was the wedding.
The private view of Ellie’s mother - shared with neither her daughter nor her brother - was that the presence of Mulreavy in the farmhouse was a punishment for the brazen sin that had occurred. When the accident that had made a widow of her occurred, when she’d looked down at the broken body lying there, knowing it was lifeless, she had not felt that there was punishment in that, either directed at her or at the man she’d married. He had done little wrong in his life; indeed, had often sought to do good. Neither had she transgressed, herself, except in little ways. But what had led to the marriage of her daughter and the potato dealer was deserving of this harsh reprimand, which was something that must now be lived with.
Mulreavy was given a bedroom that was furnished with a bed and a cupboard. He was not offered, and did not demand, his conjugal rights. He didn’t mind; that side of things didn’t interest him; it hadn’t been mentioned; it wasn’t part of the arrangement. Instead, daily, he surveyed the land that was to be his inheritance. He walked it, lovingly, at first when no one was looking, and later to identify the weed that had to be sprayed and to trace the drains. He visualized a time when he no longer travelled about as a middle-man, buying potatoes cheaply and selling at a profit, when the lorry he had acquired with the dowry would no longer be necessary. On these same poor acres sufficient potatoes could be grown to allow him to trade without buying in. Mulreavy wasn’t afraid of work when there was money to be made.
The midwife called down the farmhouse stairs a few moments after Mulreavy heard the first cry. Mr Larrissey poured out a little of the whiskey that was kept in the wall-cupboard in case there was toothache in the house. His sister was at the upstairs bedside. The midwife said a girl had been born.
A year ago, it was Mr Larrissey, not his sister, who had first known about the summer priest who was the father of this child. On his way back from burning stubble he had seen his niece in the company of the man and had known from the way they walked that there was some kind of intimacy between them. When his niece’s condition was revealed he had not, beneath the anger he displayed, been much surprised.
Mulreavy, clenching his whiskey glass, his lips touched with a smile, had not known he would experience a moment of happiness when the birth occurred; nor had he guessed that the dour-ness of Mr Larrissey would be affected, that whiskey would be offered. The thing would happen, he had thought, maybe when he was out in the fields. He would walk into the kitchen and they would tell him. Yet in the kitchen, now, there was almost an air of celebration, a satisfaction that the arrangement lived up to its promise.
Above where the two men sat, Ellie’s mother did as the midwife directed in the matter of the afterbirth’s disposal. She watched the baby being taken from its mother’s arms and placed, sleeping now, in the cradle by the bedside. She watched her daughter struggling for a moment against the exhaustion that possessed her, before her eyes closed too.
The child was christened Mary Josephine — these family names chosen by Ellie’s mother, and Ellie had not demurred. Mulreavy played his part, cradling the infant in his big arms for a moment at the font, a suit bought specially for the occasion. It wasn’t doubted that he was the father, although the assumption also was that the conception had come first, the marriage later, as sometimes happened. There’d been some surprise at the marriage, not much.
Ellie accepted with equanimity what there was. She lived a little in the past, in the summer of her love affair, expecting of the future only what she knew of the present. The summer curate who had loved her, and whom she loved still, would not miraculously return. He did not even know that she had given life to his child. ‘It can’t be,’ he’d said when they lay in the meadow that was now a potato field. ‘It can’t ever be, Ellie.’ She knew it couldn’t be:
a priest was a priest. There would never, he promised, as if in compensation, be another love like this in all his life. ‘Nor for me,’ she swore as eagerly, although he did not ask for that, in fact said no, that she must live her normal life. ‘No, not for me,’ she repeated. ‘I feel it too.’ It was like a gift when she knew her child was to be born, a fulfilment, a forgiveness almost for their summer sin.
As months and then years went by, the child walked and spoke and suffered childhood ills, developed preferences, acquired characteristics that slipped away again or stubbornly remained. Ellie watched her mother and her uncle ageing, while they in turn were reminded by the child’s presence of their own uneasy companionship in the farmhouse when they were as young as the child was now. Mulreavy, who did not go in for nostalgia or observing changes in other people, increased his potato yield. Like Mr Larrissey, he would have preferred the child who had been born to be a boy since a boy, later on, would be more useful, but he did not ever complain on this count. Mr Larrissey himself worked less, in winter often spending days sitting in the kitchen, warm by the Esse stove. For Ellie’s mother, passing time did not alter her belief that the bought husband was her daughter’s reprimand on earth.