Lucinda Sly (8 page)

After supper that evening he sat by the fire, took off his shoes and laid them at his feet. Lucinda was washing the ware
in a dish at the bottom of the table.

‘You have been very quiet there for a while,’ Sly said to her. ‘Is there something bothering you?’

‘There is,’ she told him. ‘Your drinking has gone to the dogs; you come home unable to get off your horse or walk in the door without stumbling and then you snore, you give every hop in the bed not to mention farting until bright morning … You have no thought for the desires of your wife in bed beside you. I am a woman who has desires and all you do is satisfy your own. As well as that, you haven’t been doing your fair share of the farm work for a while. That is not the bargain we made before we married.’

Sly straightened himself in the chair with a snarl.

‘Neither of us will be able to gain anything from the farm until next spring. As soon as the cows are calving, I’ll hire a servant boy or girl for you who will do the heavy work.’

Lucinda put down the ware she was drying and looked at him with an odd stare.

‘You’ll get a servant girl or boy and what will you be doing?’ she demanded. ‘Scratching your backside in the taverns in Carlow town.’

‘My good woman,’ Sly informed her, ‘I will be doing what I should have been doing for the past year instead of attending to you and trying to satisfy you. I’ll be selling and buying horses and, to do that, I’ll be travelling far from home to the fairs.’

‘There are more than two hundred acres around the house that need to be improved,’ she reminded him. ‘There are boundary ditches to be repaired, potatoes still in the earth, winter is upon us
and we’re in danger of frost that would spoil all the potatoes.’

Yes! It took her almost a year to get that much off her chest. It had come to war between them.

Walter Sly spent some time reflecting on what Lucinda had said and thinking to himself, was this the same small,
mild-
mannered
woman he walked out with for half a year and then married.

‘Sooner or later I’ll have to show her where the woman’s place is in this house,’ he was thinking. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that it would be better for her to mind the house she was living in as she had no other from the time her own house and farm were sold and he had the money in his pocket intending to buy twenty horses on the strength of it. But he held his tongue on this occasion. He didn’t want to go to the fair with bad blood between them. He considered he had said enough for the time being. He had his whole life to control her when he was at home.

After a while when their anger had subsided a little, and Lucinda was seated by the fire knitting, Sly broke the silence.

‘I’m going to the horse fair in Ballinasloe tomorrow,’ he told her. ‘I’ll be gone for three or four days. Do you think you can do the farm work without me?’

Lucinda raised her head and cast a lethal eye in his direction.

‘Off you go to the fair. There is nothing to be done only to dig the potatoes,’ she replied.

‘I hired our neighbour, Michael Connors, and he told me he will begin digging the potatoes next Monday,’ he said. ‘His two boys can pick them. I told him to put them in a pit in the field.’

When Lucinda heard that, it eased her a little. ‘Go to the fair,’
she told him, ‘and buy your foals or horses but don’t come home blind drunk. I don’t mind a few drinks but if you are drunk stay outside in the stable until you come to your senses.’

Walter didn’t reply but looked into the heart of the fire
pretending
that he didn’t hear a word.

Sly had an early breakfast the following morning. After he had shaved himself, he dressed in his Sunday clothes and put on a tall black hat he got as a present from a buyer of horses a year
previously
. It was the same hat that sealed the deal when he was buying the black foal he still had and that he would ride to the fair. He thought that good luck would go hand-in-hand with the hat and the horse. Sly was full of superstition.

When he had washed and shaved, put on his shoes and leather gaiters up to his knees, he took his riding crop that was on top of the dresser and slapped his left gaiter with it. Lucinda, who was going through the door having given mess to the hens, got such a fright she almost dropped the empty dish.

Sly raised his hat as he was going past her as a sign that he was leaving. Lucinda followed him as far as the door and watched him jumping on the horse’s back and after he had prodded the horse with his crop he went trotting down the boreen and out of sight.

‘The Devil go with you and your horse,’ Lucinda said beneath her breath. ‘Why did I marry that scamp and not stay in my own house? Yes, and if he continues drinking constantly, I won’t put up with it much longer.’

Because it was the month of November, there were only two cows to be milked and they would have been dry as well only they
had slung their calves and it was late in the autumn when they were bulled again.

The thought struck her that she should travel to her old house and visit Mary Joy. If she left immediately, she would be back home before nightfall. Even though she was a fast walker it would take most of the morning and up to lunchtime before she reached Mary’s house a couple of miles from the town of Tullow.

She put on her Sunday shoes she had bought for her wedding and a black shawl. Down the boreen she went, her heart as light as the thrush singing from the top of a furze bush. Since it was Friday, Carlow town was reasonably busy. Pig farmers sold their bonhams and fat pigs there every Friday. It was a long walk south-east to Tullow and Lucinda was regretting that she didn’t bring the horse.

By the time she reached the top of the boreen that led to her own house she had to loosen the thongs of her shoes. She sat on the side of the boundary ditch between her farm and the Joys’. She drew a long breath of relief, her head raised in the direction of the sky so that she could fill her lungs with the fresh air of her home. Then she cast her eye over the ditch at her farm and, down in a corner of a field, her own felt-covered house.

‘How is it that there is smoke coming from the chimney?’ she wondered. She forgot the thongs of her shoes, jumped to her feet and hurried in the direction of her house.

‘Walter didn’t tell me that the house was let,’ she said as she
hurried
towards the door. She raised the latch and, without knocking, opened the door.

Who should be sitting on a settle at the side of the kitchen in
front of her? Langstrom, the tavern keeper from Carlow. He got such a fright when the door opened so suddenly that he nearly fell off the settle. Lucinda looked at him for a few seconds.

‘Do you mind telling me what you are doing in my house?’ she demanded. By this time she was frothing at the mouth with venom.

Langstrom stood in the middle of the floor.

‘Didn’t Walter tell you that I bought the house and land from him?’ he answered.

Lucinda walked in circles around the kitchen.

‘Are you sure that you haven’t just leased it?’ she demanded again.

‘Oh no!’ Langstrom retorted. ‘I had my eye on this place since my uncle left me the farm down the road in his will.’

‘Oh that bastard Sly,’ Lucinda swore. ‘I made a bad bargain. I told him to let the land and, if possible, to rent the house. The attorney was present when I put it to Walter. And wasn’t it he who promised me faithfully that that is how it would be.’

Langstrom looked at her with a strange look.

‘The attorney has no such thing in writing,’ he informed her.

‘You are right about that,’ Lucinda agreed, ‘but I can tell you that my name is in the will he made before that same attorney. If that is the kind of man I married, well two can play at that game. To satisfy my curiosity, how much money did you give him for the farm and house together?’

Langstrom looked at Lucinda, then down at the floor.

‘One hundred pounds outright and I got three pounds luck,’ he told her.

‘Wasn’t it nice of him?’ Lucinda said. ‘The house and land together are worth at least two hundred pounds particularly as the one who was buying it has a farm beside them.’

‘Maybe he didn’t know that I had been willed a farm nearby,’ Langstrom countered.

‘The stump of a fool,’ Lucinda thundered. ‘What came over me to marry him?’

Lucinda rushed out and slammed the door after her. She was talking to herself on the way to Mary Joy’s house. Never in her life had she been betrayed like this… But deceit catches up with the deceiver.

Mary welcomed her friend heartily.

‘Sit down, Lucinda,’ she greeted her, ‘and tell me all about your life in Oldleighlin – your purse full and women attending to you every time you ring the bell.’

Lucinda sat, tired and weary, on the settle.

‘Oh, Mary, my dear,’ she sighed, ‘the opposite is the case. I am married to an old codger who has no respect for women. Don’t be talking about him in bed – he’s useless. He thinks women were put into the world to be servants to men and to do the housework and farm work as well.’

Mary stood in front of her staring at her in surprise.

‘Ah, tell the truth,’ she laughed. ‘He is noted for his deeds under the covers.’

‘God’s honest truth,’ Lucinda told her, ‘he throws his leg over
me, in and out and plups! He stretches himself backwards and in a short time he is snoring.’

‘You don’t say it,’ Mary said in disbelief. ‘He had a reputation once for … oh, excuse me, you are married to him.’

‘Out with it, Mary, my dear,’ Lucinda insisted. ‘I was told after I married him that there wasn’t a tinker woman going the road that he hadn’t mounted. To give Mary Walsh her due, she gave me that information when she heard I was walking out with him but a few other women who were selling butter on the side of the street told me it wasn’t true. Now they are all saying it.’

‘Give him a chance,’ Mary advised her. ‘Maybe it is lack of
practice
. Listen! I was hanging out clothes on a bush a little while ago. I saw smoke coming from your chimney. I knew then that you had come to visit your old home.’

There was silence for a few seconds. Then Lucinda cleared her throat.

‘It wasn’t I who put down that fire,’ she told her. ‘Walter sold my house and land without even telling me.’

Lucinda burst out crying and the two women put their arms around one another.

‘God save us,’ Mary comforted her, ‘but how did he manage to sell the house and land? Didn’t he have to get your permission to do that?’

‘I had put the house and land in Walter’s name, you know, as a dowry for our wedding,’ Lucinda informed her.

‘Here,’ said Mary, ‘have a cup of milk.’

The two women spent a couple of hours going over everything
that happened to Lucinda since she left her home. They would not see each other again until the beginning of spring as Mary’s cows were dry for a month. Mary wouldn’t be at the fair again until the end of January. Their chat brought some relief to Lucinda. Walter would be at the fair for three days and she would be alone with her thoughts and would have time to think deeply about her married life in the years that were before her. She would have to confront Walter as soon as he came home in order to clear the air. Would there be peace between them or would it be out and out war? But Lucinda wasn’t about to spend her remaining years as a slave to a blackguard, attending to him every time he whistled. ‘I won’t be any man’s servant,’ she vowed to herself.

Late in the evening of the following Tuesday, Lucinda was sitting beside a blazing turf fire she had lit. She was finishing the second of a pair of socks. Outside the darkness of night was creeping on the brightness of evening. Walter wasn’t home from the fair yet but she was expecting him. The fair finished on Sunday and if he had bought a couple of foals it would give him all he could do to reach the house before dark.

She was just finishing the last few stitches on top of the sock when she heard the sound of horses’ hooves approaching the house. She jumped out of her chair and left the four knitting needles and the sock in the place where she was sitting. Out she went and opened the stable door so that her husband could guide the foals or horses he had bought into the stable without too much trouble. As soon as the three foals were tied up in the stable he took the saddle from the black horse and tied him in his own stall. After he had left a few sops of hay for the foals and put a handful of oats in a bowl under the horse’s head, he hung the s addle on the crook behind the horse. Lucinda went back into
the house without so much as greeting him.

She had caught hold of the sock and had her eyes fixed on her work by the time Sly came in the door. He looked in the direction of the fire beside which Lucinda was intent on her knitting.

‘Are you thinking of boiling a pot of potatoes on that bonfire you have there?’ he began. ‘Upon my soul but you have two bags of turf burning in the heart of that fire.’

She looked hatefully in his direction.

‘I haven’t had a noggin of whiskey or a man to lie beside me for three nights,’ she fumed.

‘Ah, my good woman,’ Sly placated her. ‘Like everyone else I like a good fire, but if you had your way you’d burn all the turf in Ireland.’

Lucinda got up without another word, got a plate from the dresser and put the hot shoulder of mutton that was in an oven at the side of the fire on his plate. There were half a dozen potatoes in the oven as well and she put them on his plate also.

Sly sat at the table and ate the food hungrily. He left the plate as clean as if it had been licked by the dog.

‘I suppose you had enough to drink at the weekend?’ Lucinda reproached him.

Sly looked at her, none too pleased at what she had said.

‘I hadn’t,’ he told her, ‘but since you mention whiskey I’m going to saddle the horse again and go to town for a few.’

Oh boy! When Lucinda heard this she jumped to her feet.

‘I have been here with three days and three nights,’ she turned on him, ‘milking, churning and baking while you have been roving
all over the country drinking and throwing your arse about. You’re only a few minutes inside the door of the house when you’re
thinking
of getting on your horse to go drinking with your friends. Do you mind telling me where the money is coming from?’

Sly was not accustomed to having a woman barking questions at him.

‘There was plenty of money in this house before you set your foot on the kitchen floor and, before you go any farther with this cross questioning, it’s none of your business,’ Sly replied.

When she heard this, Lucinda exploded.

‘Upon my soul,’ she shouted, ‘if it’s the money you got from Langstrom for my house and farm that you’re throwing away, it is my business.’

That stopped Sly in his tracks. How did she find out when she was in the house for three days?

‘Tell me who told you I sold your holding?’ he demanded. ‘And, to put matters right, from the day you were willing to marry me it was mine from then on.’

‘But you promised to lease the house and the grazing of the land,’ Lucinda replied crossly.

‘I made every attempt to do that and I completely failed,’ Sly told her. ‘The holding was too small. I got a good price for the house and land together. Even Langstrom doesn’t know what he’ll do with it but I suppose he had too much dry cash in his house and it was safer to invest some of it in a patch of land.’

Lucinda shoved her face into Sly’s.

‘You stump of a fool,’ she began. ‘I’ll bet he didn’t tell you that
he was willed the land next to mine by an uncle who died a month ago.’

‘What would that have to do with the price of land?’ Sly replied in a dour voice.

‘Because it would add to his farm and he has a house on his land now which he hadn’t until he bought my holding,’ Lucinda told him.

Sly realised, on hearing this, that he had made a big mistake but couldn’t find it in his heart to admit it. He took his cap that was hanging on the wall and hurried towards the door.

‘I won’t be long. As soon as I quench the thirst I got on the road I’ll come home,’ he promised her.

He opened the front door and Lucinda followed him.

‘Off you go,’ she said, ‘and stay out till morning if it suits you but sleep in the stable when you come home because both doors will be barred.’

‘Do that and you will find one of the bars in two halves in the middle of the kitchen and you will be on your way out to the
stable
,’ Sly replied scathingly.

Lucinda slammed the door after him. She stood in the middle of the kitchen and began to cry.

‘Oh, Lucinda Singleton,’ she wailed, ‘you didn’t make a good bed for yourself at the end of your life.’

She sat by the fire looking to see if she would get an answer to her troubles in the flames. Would she bar the doors or would she let it pass on this occasion and go to bed? She got up and made to bolt the doors twice but changed her mind. She thought that,
maybe with the whiskey in him, he would go out of his mind and injure her. For some time now, Walter Sly had been changing in his demeanour. He wasn’t the same man that wooed her into
marrying
him. Maybe this was the real Walter Sly that was emerging. You have to live with someone to know them. He had sold her house without telling her. Where would she go if she had to escape from her husband? She was too old to begin afresh. ‘Yes,’ she conceded, ‘I made my bed and now I’ll have to lie in it and take the rough with the smooth.’

It was late that night before Lucinda lay under the covers. Her husband hadn’t returned. She didn’t sleep but was listening
carefully
, expecting every minute to hear the sound of the horse’s hooves trotting down the boreen. She was tossing and turning for a long time with every sort of thought racing through her head. ‘If he is drunk,’ she thought, ‘he will be looking for his conjugal rights and he will have no pity for me lying under him. It took me a few days to walk properly after he was astride me the last time. Upon my soul, he’s only an animal.’

Despite her best efforts, she fell asleep. She woke with a fright with her husband pulling her from the bed on to the floor.

‘Are you the strap who was going to bar the doors of my house?’ he bellowed. He was blind drunk.

‘In God’s name, Walter,’ she pleaded, ‘have you lost your mind?’

He lifted her off the ground. She was screaming like a baby.

‘After I shared my house with you, you strap,’ he continued, ‘you should respect me under my own roof.’

Then he stripped the clothes from her back and kicked her in
her belly so hard that she fell against the wall. He went into the kitchen, got the horse whip and beat her unmercifully, then took her clothes and threw them down on her.

‘Go out yourself and sleep in the loft of the stable,’ he roared. ‘Isn’t that the bed you were giving me when I came home this evening?’

Lucinda attempted to get to her feet while all the time Sly was whipping her. Then he caught her by the hair. He pulled her to the kitchen and then in the direction of the front door. He gave her three more lashes of the whip and threw her out the door. He slammed the door after her.

Lucinda heard him bar the door inside. She realised then that she would have to sleep in the loft of the stable. She ran across the haggard crying so loudly that she could be heard far from home.

‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘hadn’t I a fine life before I saw Oldleighlin. It would have been easy to see that if the old man I married was in any way eligible he’d have been picked up years ago, but that didn’t happen until Lucinda Singleton, the fool, came along. My God, it isn’t good to be too gullible in this life.’

She went in the stable door. It was pitch black. The three foals began to jump in the air when they heard the crying and talking near them. She stopped crying and shouting and began to feel her way in the dark.

After a while, she laid her hand on the ladder that led to the loft. As soon as she was safely up in the loft she put on the clothes Sly had stripped off her. She was glad she had her clothes as there was a chill in the air from the frost outside and the north wind was
whistling through the stable’s old window. The loft was half full of hay which could easily be let down into the horses’ manger during the winter. When Lucinda had put on her clothes, she made a nest for herself in the hay and covered her body with it too. After a long time, during which she was considering her plight, she fell into a deep sleep and, unusually for her, she had a terrible nightmare.

In it, her husband, Walter Sly, was above her; she was tied to a tree; Sly had two hooves like a donkey’s and he had a four-pronged pike with which he was attempting to stab her. Beside the tree there was a big, deep hole and there was a blazing fire at the
bottom
. There were people in the middle of the fire pleading for mercy from anyone who would put out the fire …

Lucinda woke in a cold sweat. The second time she woke she couldn’t close her eyes again so afraid was she. No woman was ever as grateful as Lucinda when morning dawned. She knew that she wouldn’t be able to suffer many nights like the one before she went out of her mind. But she didn’t know where to go or who to turn to. Her heart missed a beat when the stable door opened. Walter was at the door. He stood peering up at the loft.

‘Lucinda,’ he said, ‘come into the house and make breakfast for me and have a bite yourself. Then go about your jobs and we’ll forget about what happened last night.’

That took her by surprise. Yes, that would do until she thought of a better plan. At least she would have the comfort of the house. She had her own churn and could earn a few shillings herself. But surely there was something she could do with the animal she had married.

Lucinda stayed in the loft until Sly left the door. She climbed down with one eye on the door and the other on the rungs of the ladder. As she crossed the haggard she saw her husband going up through the field with some jute bags under his oxter. ‘Thanks be to God,’ she said to herself. Sly had put down the fire. What is
seldom
is wonderful. She took the skillet and hung it on the crook in order to boil the porridge. She put four eggs into the kettle that was singing on the side of the hearth. Breakfast was just ready when Sly came in the door.

‘I could eat a horse,’ Sly began as if nothing had happened the previous night. But Lucinda had learned a hard lesson. From now on, she would be very careful with every word she spoke in front of her animal of a husband.

In the weeks and months after that night, Sly drank less. He concentrated on the work of the farm but, then, in the middle of February, the cows began to calve and, as soon as a calf was three weeks old, Sly would take it to the fair. He began drinking again and very often Lucinda wouldn’t see him until she had the cows milked in the morning.

One morning while they were eating breakfast, Lucinda felt that Sly was in good humour.

‘Walter,’ she began, ‘do you remember at the start of the winter we were saying that, maybe, when things got busy on the farm, you would hire a servant girl or boy? More than half the herd are
milking
and all the work is falling to me this past fortnight. Before long, I’ll be churning twice a week.’

Sly didn’t reply for a few seconds.

‘Look, Lucinda,’ he answered eventually, ‘leave it with me for a few days.’

Sly had to go to the fair a few days afterwards as he was selling three of his calves, from three weeks to a month old. It so
happened
that calves of that age were in great demand with cattle
buyers
from north Munster. Some of the big farmers did no churning. They concentrated on dry stock for the British market. They had large holdings with fertile land that could grow plenty of grass and wheat at little cost. Sly kept some of the heifer calves as his cows were getting old and he liked to keep his own breed of cattle. As well as that, he had more than enough milk left after churning with two-year-old cattle turning their noses up at it.

Tuesday was the day of the fair for young calves in Carlow. Sly got up early that morning, put the turf rail on the cart with a sop of straw in the bottom and harnessed the black horse to the cart. It was a hard, cold March morning with an icy edge to it. Farmers used to be afraid that the cold weather would give their calves the scour and the only remedy they had for it was to mix a fistful of flour in hot water containing four spoonfuls of glucose.

There were a few hundred calves for sale at the fair that day and it didn’t take Sly long to sell his three animals. That was no wonder as they were fed on new milk from the day they were born. Some farmers would take the cream from the top of the milk for churning and feed the buttermilk to their calves. There would be a gloss on the calves fed on new milk that the other calves wouldn’t have.

As soon as Sly had sold his calves and the money was in his
pouch, he headed straight for Langstrom’s as he usually did. There were a dozen farmers there before him, all of whom had sold their calves.

When he had got a glass of whiskey from Langstrom and had saluted some of the farmers he knew, he found a seat near the
bottom
of the counter and sat down contentedly without talking to anybody. He was pondering how he could satisfy the strap of a woman he was married to.

‘She is a top-class worker,’ he conceded, ‘but when something gets into her head, I make out that the seventeen devils from hell get into her to put her astray.’