THE FIFTH D

Ardvale, County Galway, West of Ireland: 1895

“Enough, do you hear me, Edith. I’ve had enough of it! Does he think he can scatter his fly blows all over the county and nothing will be said! Good God, woman, this is Ir

eland – a God-fearing country, not the land of the heathen!!

“Hush now, Stephen. You’ll go getting a stroke or something. Sure he’ll learn his lesson this time – you see if he doesn’t!”

“Can he not control himself, Edith – or better still marry. The young one of the Stevensen’s up at Ballybehan is a pretty little thing and of good stock. Tell him I’ve said enough – not a penny more until he’s settled down – but suitably mind, I don’t want trollops in the family!”

Many times before this day, Edith Corbaille had been landed with the task of defending her youngest – and favourite – son from the wrath of his father and his own stupidity.

Thomas was 20. He would escape the myriad responsibilities that would be the lot of his eldest brother, Stephen, five years his senior, when he inherited the main family estate. He was striking to look at, a silver-tongued rogue, and totally feckless.

News had come to the household in the normal way, via gossip in the servants’ quarters. Maggie Ryan, still only 15, had that morning given birth to a baby boy who was, so the grapevine reported, the image of his daddy – right down to the distinctive cleft chin and even at such a tender age a hint of the red hair that was to come. This was the third such infant born in the vicinity in as many years.

Thomas himself had come upon the news through his small coterie of companions – the idle younger sons of the gentry, who met up for devilment and the craic as often as they could. He thought it prudent to delay his return until his father had had time to simmer down – or more accurately until his mother had had sufficient time to calm him down.

Thomas left the home of his close friend Anthony Redmond, and digging his heels purposefully into the sides of his mount, he rode across the fields, which were part of his family’s estate. He passed the huddles of cottages, with stacks of peat outside the doors, smoke issuing from the chimneys despite the splendid Spring sunshine. Turf was the only means of cooking and however meagre the provisions available, food and the cooking and eating of food, provided families with their only comfort – not only the slaking of thirst and hunger, but in the warmth of sharing their time, and companionship, in such bleak and uncompromising times.

Reining back the horse, he lithely jumped down; throwing the reins to a small lad sitting disconsolately on a doorstep, chin on hands. “Here you young fellow tie this up for me and stop your mooching about.” Thomas did not even pause, but pushed open the door of the second cottage in the row and strode in. He nodded his head in the direction of an old woman huddled before the fire, who immediately clambered to her doddery legs and made haste to retreat into a far corner of the dark cottage.

“Sit yourself down, Grandma” he instructed brusquely. “Don’t fret yourself, I’m not staying.”

He walked across to the trestle bed in the far alcove of the dingy room. On this lay a pale, mousy haired child, whose frame scarcely seemed able to support her own weight, let alone the infant that had lain inside her belly. A drawer lay next to the bed in which, made comfortable on snow white linen and fleece, lay a tiny baby.

The visitor came close to the girl. “Are you well enough, Maggie?” he said. “Is there anything you need just now?”

Maggie turned her big eyes towards him – eyes which seemed even more saucer-like surrounded by a small waif-like face which was wan and bloodless. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she shook her head.

“That’s all right so” said Thomas. “You look after yourself do you hear, and be sure to take care of your baby”.

As he strode to the door, he turned just before reaching for the latch and said “I’ll send Calum down with some necessities for ye all …..You’ll be fine. You’re a canny girl and you’ll manage grand. If you need anything, send Mikey or John Joe and get them to tell Mrs. Shanahan that I said she was to let you have what you need.”

Duty accomplished, Thomas rode back across the spring green swathe of hillside, coming upon his brother, Stephen, who was barking out orders to labourers. They were casting a sullen look in their master’s direction, seemingly unimpressed by his ill-humour and criticism of their lack of industry. As Thomas passed, they turned their gaze in his direction, one of them catching a firm grasp on his neighbour’s sleeve as if to restrain him from action, understandable in the heat of the moment, but likely to be sadly rued in times to come.

“So get on with it, ye bunch of idle buggers, or I can assure you that you will all be only too easy to replace, and where would ye’re families be then!” Stephen swished the reins of his horse catching the animal a firm crack on the neck, and slamming his heels into its sides, rode off at break-neck speed after his brother.

“God forgive me, but I pray that the devil breaks his bloody neck and rots in hell with the rest of his clan – that vermin Thomas not the least of them too”! angrily said John Joe Ryan as much enraged with himself at his cowardice in not speaking his mind to Stephen or Thomas Corbaille as he was with Thomas Corbaille for bringing shame on his sister, and making a bastard of his new nephew.

Stephen, whose ill-use of horses at least matched his younger brother’s ill-use of women, easily caught up with Thomas. “You wait on there …. just the one I wanted to see …. I’ll thrash you to within an inch of your life, do you hear me .... I’ll take your feckin’ head of your shoulders ……”

“Go on then …. for all the good it will do ye …. who are you to play the role …. you’re neither me da, nor me priest …. Thank God!”

“How could you be so bloody stupid, Thomas. If the Sullivan wench and the Donovan young one weren’t bad enough, you had to ride John Joe Ryan’s sister – for God’s sake man, he is one of my best men, and they have been on this land in those cottages since time began – his father and grandfather before him – indeed before our father and our grandfather too!”

“For Jaisus sake, Stephen, you talk as though they were our class of people – they are peasants for Christ’s sake, - just that”! ……. Droit de Seigneur, or whatever that phrase is…. if Pa nor yourself is going to exercise the ‘Droit’, then I will on your behalf – by proxy …….” He laughed, hugely taken with his own joke.

“You have no sense man, not an ounce of honour in your entire body – when are you going to sort yourself out and grow up and become a man!”

“I should have thought that was what you were harping on about – that I had proved myself a man once too often!” Thomas rode off, now shrieking with laughter, with Stephen left suffused with anger and rage looking at the ever retreating rear end of his brother’s horse.