William Trevor - The Hill Bachelors

The heifers didn’t need seeing to, as he had known they wouldn’t. They stood, miserably crouched in against the wall of a fallen barn, mud that the wind had dried hanging from them. His father had taken off the roof when one of the other walls had collapsed, needing the corrugated iron for somewhere else. He’d left the standing wall for the purpose the heifers put it to now.

Paulie, too, stood in the shelter of the wall, the puddles at his feet not yet blown dry, as the mud had on the animals. He remembered the red roof lifted down, piece by piece, Kevin waiting below to receive it, Aidan wrenching out the bolts. He had backed the tractor, easing the trailer close to where they were. ‘What’s he want it for?’ he’d asked Kevin, and Kevin said the corrugated iron would be used for filling the gaps in the hedges.

Slowly, Paulie walked back the way he had come. ‘D’you think of coming back?’ Aidan had said, saying it in the yard when they were alone. Paulie had known it would be said and had guessed it would be Aidan who’d say it, Aidan being the oldest. ‘I’m only mentioning it,’ Aidan had said. ‘I’m only touching on it.’

*

Blowing at the turf with the wheel-bellows, she watched the glow spread, sparks rising and falling away. It hadn’t been the time to make arrangements or even to talk about them. Nothing could have been more out of place, and she was glad they realized that. Kevin had had a word with Hartigan after the funeral, something temporary fixed up, she could tell from the gestures.

They’d write. Frances had said she would, and Aidan had. Sharon would write for Kevin, as she always did. Mena would. Wherever it was they stopped to say good-bye to one another they’d talk about it and later on they’d write.

‘Sit down, Paulie, sit down,’ she said when her son came in, bringing the cold with him.

She said again that Father Kinally had done it beautifully. She’d said so yesterday to her daughters in the car, she’d said it to Kevin and to Aidan this morning. Paulie would have heard, yet you’d want to repeat it. You felt the better for it.

‘Ah, he did,’ Paulie said. ‘He did of course.’

He’d taken over. She could feel he’d taken over, the way he’d gone out to see were the heifers all right, the way it was he who remembered, last evening and this morning, that there was the bit of milking to do, that he’d done it without a word. She watched him ease off the gum boots and set them down by the door. He hung the waterproof on the door hook that was there for it and came to the fire in his socks, with his shoes in one hand. She turned away so that he wouldn’t notice she’d been reminded of his father coming into the kitchen also.

‘Aren’t the heifers looking good?’ she said.

‘Oh, they are, they are.’

‘He was pleased with them this year.’

‘They’re not bad, all right.’

‘Nothing’s fetching at the minute, all the same.’

He nodded. He naturally would know times were bad, neither sheep nor cattle fetching what they were a year ago, everything gone quiet, the way you’d never have believed it.

‘We’re in for the night so,’ she said.

‘We are.’

She washed the eggs Mena had collected earlier, brushing off the marks on them, then wiped the shells clean before she piled them in the bowl. The eggs would keep them going, with the rashers left over and half a saucepan of stew in the fridge. ‘You’ve enough for an army!’ Kevin had said, looking into the deep-freeze, and she reminded him you had to have enough in case the weather came in bad.

‘What’d we do without it?’ she said now, mentioning the deep-freeze. They’d had half a pig from the Caslins, only a portion of the belly used up so far. ‘And mutton till Doomsday,’ she said.

‘How’re they these days, the Caslins? I didn’t notice Maureen at the funeral.’

‘Maureen married a man in Tralee. She’s there since.’

‘Who’s the man?’

‘He’s in a shoe shop.’

They could have gone to the wedding only it had been a period of the year when you wouldn’t want to spare the time. The Hartigans had gone. They’d have taken her but she’d said no.

‘Hartigan came back drunk, you should have seen the cut of him! And herself with a frost on her that would have quenched the fire!’

‘He’s driving down in the morning. He’ll pick me up.’

Rashers and black pudding and fried bread were ready on the pan. She cracked two eggs into the fat, turned them when they were ready because he liked them turned. When she placed the plate in front of him he took a mouthful of tea before he ate anything. He said:

‘You couldn’t manage. No way.’

‘It wasn’t a time to talk about it, Paulie.’

‘I’ll come back.’

He began to eat, the yolk of the eggs spreading yellow on the plate. He left the black pudding and the crisp fat of the bacon until last. He’d always done that.

‘Hartigan’d still come down. I’m all right on the bit of milking. I’m all right on most things. The Caslins would come up.’

‘You couldn’t live like that.’

‘They’re neighbours, Paulie. They got help from himself if they wanted it. I looked over and saw Kevin having a word with Hartigan in the graveyard. It won’t be something for nothing, not with Hartigan. Kevin’ll tell me later.’

‘You’d be dependent.’

‘You have your own life, Paulie.’

‘You have what there is.’

He ate for several minutes in silence, then he finished the tea that had been poured for him.

‘I’d have to give in notice. I’d have to work the notice out. A month.’

‘Think it over before you’ll do anything, Paulie.’

*

Paulie harboured no resentment, not being a person who easily did: going back to the farmhouse was not the end of the world. The end of the world had been to hear, in Meagher’s back bar, that life on a farm did not attract Patsy Finucane.

As soon as he’d mentioned marriage that day he knew he shouldn’t have. Patsy Finucane had taken fright like a little young greyhound would. She’d hardly heard him when he said, not knowing what else to say, ‘Ah well, no matter.’ It was a nervousness mixed in with the stout that had caused him to make the suggestion, and as soon as he had there was no regaining her: before she looked away that was there in her soft grey eyes. ‘I won’t go back so,’ he’d said, making matters worse. ‘I won’t go back without you.’

When they sat again in Meagher’s back bar after the funeral Paulie tried to put things right; he tried to begin again, but it wasn’t any good. During the third week of his working out his notice Patsy Finucane began to go out with a clerk from the post office.

*

In the yard she threw down grains for the hens and remembered doing it for the first time, apprehensive then about what she’d married into. Nor had her apprehension been misplaced: more than she’d imagined, her position in the household was one of obedience and humility, and sometimes what was said, or incidents that occurred, left a sting that in private drew tears from her. Yet time, simply in passing, transformed what seemed to be immutable. Old age enfeebled on the one hand; on the other, motherhood nurtured confidence. In the farmhouse, roles were reversed.

She didn’t want distress like that for any wife Paulie would eventually bring to the kitchen and the house. She would make it easier, taking a back seat from the start and be glad to do so. It was only a pity that Maureen Caslin had married the shoe-shop man, for Maureen Caslin would have suited him well. There were the sisters, of course.

During the weeks that followed Paulie’s departure, the anticipated letters came from Mena and Frances and from her daughter-in-law Sharon on behalf of Kevin, and from Aidan. The accumulated content was simple, the unstated expectation stated at last, four times over in different handwriting. Aidan said he and Paulie had had a talk about it. You are good to think of me , she wrote back, four times also.