litlover
10-04-2005, 06:58 AM
'She used to smile, your Annie. Brung smiles to us that could be doin' with an occasional twinklin' eye.'
Croskery sat with the accustomed halfun in his thick fingers.
'What's that?'
'I said, I remember her smiling once in a while. Long gone, them laughin' days. She's changed, our Annie, and no mistakin.'
Vinnie Ahern eyed his only customer with unaccustomed respect. It wasn't often the old fellow had anything more adventurous to tell than the death of a bull or some scandal heard in another pub. Small towns, and small minds, made much of little and his remarks sent Ahern spinning back through the years.
*****
Fourteen years, now, had his bride lived amongst these Leitrim men. Her coming had meant a change in the village. Folk, older than his parents, could not remember new blood about this place. And coming to him; Ahern the silent, Ahern the gruff. No village lip spoke well of him in those days, nor ill, it should be said. His manner had not seemed the sort to attract, nor hold, a woman. Public house keeping had been the living of his parents, not his. Servitude, for such he regarded it, and listening to the banalities, had not come as easily to him as to them. His mother's people had kept house in the village since before the Famine, while his father had taken to serving drink as easily as to supping it. But, before the coming of Annie he had relaxed for the while, gravely set his mind to making do, to making a go. He was an only child, and only children grant their parents' unspoken wishes.
Annie had come with her Aunt, old Mary Pleasance, who'd gone to serve in the big houses of Liverpool twenty five years before - twenty of those for a Parish Priest. All the village believed that the laughing girl who'd come amongst them was that priest's child and that Mary was her mother, not her aunt. Sixteen bright years she'd been then, to Ahern's thirty. They'd met daily as the smiling girl passed the grey-slate pub on her way to chapel. Old Mary insisted the child honour the Old Faith. So, each morning Ahern tugged his forelock to the newcomer on her way to eight o'clock mass. Often she'd speak, her dark eyes reflecting the sky, asking how he was doing, remarking on the weather or the prospect of a decent harvest. She seemed not to notice the island reserve he carried on him like a cloak. The taciturn Ahern would only redden, cast his eyes to the ground and kick gravel while she chirped on, unselfconscious as a bird, as though relishing the challenge of opening this clam of a man. One day she asked his name. With tongue thick as yesterday's cream he answered, 'Brendan.' He already knew hers. The whole village knew. For she breathed the freshness of youth, the smart of new beginnings on the old place. Months after the halting grunt of his name old Ma Ahern foretold a wedding.
And under the reluctant sun of an April Saturday they had married, the seventeen year old bride kissing the weathered cheeks of bachelors and barmaids in a gale of ringing laughter. Even old Croskery's rheumy eyes had shone that holy day.
*****
Ahern slapped the bar and turned towards the gilded mirror. In the fly-speckled glass he saw his forty-five year old reflection and kicked an imaginary stone aside.
'Have one on the house, you oul bollix,' he said to the old farmer, ' Ye know that smiling's for brides. And hasn't Ireland that effect on the best of them.'
Croskery sat with the accustomed halfun in his thick fingers.
'What's that?'
'I said, I remember her smiling once in a while. Long gone, them laughin' days. She's changed, our Annie, and no mistakin.'
Vinnie Ahern eyed his only customer with unaccustomed respect. It wasn't often the old fellow had anything more adventurous to tell than the death of a bull or some scandal heard in another pub. Small towns, and small minds, made much of little and his remarks sent Ahern spinning back through the years.
*****
Fourteen years, now, had his bride lived amongst these Leitrim men. Her coming had meant a change in the village. Folk, older than his parents, could not remember new blood about this place. And coming to him; Ahern the silent, Ahern the gruff. No village lip spoke well of him in those days, nor ill, it should be said. His manner had not seemed the sort to attract, nor hold, a woman. Public house keeping had been the living of his parents, not his. Servitude, for such he regarded it, and listening to the banalities, had not come as easily to him as to them. His mother's people had kept house in the village since before the Famine, while his father had taken to serving drink as easily as to supping it. But, before the coming of Annie he had relaxed for the while, gravely set his mind to making do, to making a go. He was an only child, and only children grant their parents' unspoken wishes.
Annie had come with her Aunt, old Mary Pleasance, who'd gone to serve in the big houses of Liverpool twenty five years before - twenty of those for a Parish Priest. All the village believed that the laughing girl who'd come amongst them was that priest's child and that Mary was her mother, not her aunt. Sixteen bright years she'd been then, to Ahern's thirty. They'd met daily as the smiling girl passed the grey-slate pub on her way to chapel. Old Mary insisted the child honour the Old Faith. So, each morning Ahern tugged his forelock to the newcomer on her way to eight o'clock mass. Often she'd speak, her dark eyes reflecting the sky, asking how he was doing, remarking on the weather or the prospect of a decent harvest. She seemed not to notice the island reserve he carried on him like a cloak. The taciturn Ahern would only redden, cast his eyes to the ground and kick gravel while she chirped on, unselfconscious as a bird, as though relishing the challenge of opening this clam of a man. One day she asked his name. With tongue thick as yesterday's cream he answered, 'Brendan.' He already knew hers. The whole village knew. For she breathed the freshness of youth, the smart of new beginnings on the old place. Months after the halting grunt of his name old Ma Ahern foretold a wedding.
And under the reluctant sun of an April Saturday they had married, the seventeen year old bride kissing the weathered cheeks of bachelors and barmaids in a gale of ringing laughter. Even old Croskery's rheumy eyes had shone that holy day.
*****
Ahern slapped the bar and turned towards the gilded mirror. In the fly-speckled glass he saw his forty-five year old reflection and kicked an imaginary stone aside.
'Have one on the house, you oul bollix,' he said to the old farmer, ' Ye know that smiling's for brides. And hasn't Ireland that effect on the best of them.'