Friday Night 1971

Smell of work on the edge of the door. Sun settles into dusk. Friday night. A quiet descends on the house. The boys have gathered, gleaming from the scrub. Joe takes up his fiddle like a staff on his knee. ‘So now, what do you say tonight, Lyall’? 

His second Friday night with the men in the back parlour; women and girls gathered in the front after flirting on the silage all day, remembering his silence the week before. Knowing he would have to stand up a little.

‘Well,’ what to say, ‘well it’s not easy for me to say anything actually. Anything of interest to you. I haven’t really lived that interesting a life, and you Joe, from what I heard last week, have lived a lot.’ The men stirred. ‘Not too much, not too much. But maybe a jot more than yourself.’ Joe with a beard down to his belt, a life-time cop in New York City until ten years ago, ‘but lack of experience is no excuse for silence and a still tongue, is it Lyall? You must have something to say.’ John pushes, ‘So what do you say Lyall? What’s you’re topic?’ ‘Well, I could say a little, something, anything really.’ ‘About what?’ Christie who makes raffia chairs and rides a donkey. ‘What could you say Lyall?’

Without thinking he says, ‘What if what you say is sad?’ ‘Sure, everything’s sad some days Lyall,’ Jack Sullivan, with the two fields below, tended as if they were lovers, ‘I wouldn’t see that as an impediment would you Joe?’  Joe runs his thumb along the strings. ‘Sure we won’t know until he speaks.’ Eila at the open the door, leaning on the jam, ‘Will you say to us why you paid £1,400 for your place above. That’s sad. He could do that, couldn’t he John?’ John, who’d asked the same question in mild anger pitching silage this afternoon, now mellowed said, ‘He could if he wanted’. Lyall looked over at Eila, ‘Well I loved the look of it’. ‘And where did you first see it that you loved the look on it?’ He wanted to say I told you this already but to do so would compromise their conversation this afternoon where she’d explicitly said, ‘This is private Lyall, just between us’, and he’d felt the hook lodge and pull him toward her and he’d replied, ‘Naturally’. And now, ‘I saw a photograph of it on the mountain’. ‘And what kind of photograph would that be?’. ‘A Polaroid.’ All eyes on him. Christie is first. ‘A what?  Is that a big photograph or what Lyall.’ He knows what a Polaroid is. ‘No, a very small one’.  

Joe stroked his fiddle strings, ‘Then, is it this that’s sad Lyall? Buying a dot on a Polaroid mountain?’ Eila, now part of the pack. ‘How is it that an Englishman can come over here and pay £1,400 for a ruin on our own Irish soil sold through a Polaroid photograph? I’d say that’s a bit sad Joe, wouldn’t you?’ Mrs O’Shea came in from the front, checks the stew on the range, ‘Sad or not he did it and put as much of his back into our work today as any.’ She cut more apple pie for him and puts it on his plate, smiles and returns to the front room, to the ladies. He looked around the parlour. ‘Well, what you don’t know is that £1,400 is nothing for that place. If it was in England, it’d be worth £14,000. And anyway, I didn’t buy it for its monetary value and it’s not a sad thing to have done. Sadness comes from a broken heart. Or the loss of someone you love, not money.’

‘Ah well now Lyall,’ Joe ran the strings with his frayed bow, ‘which is it that you mean to speak of tonight, if not money? A broken heart or the loss of a loved one?’ Neither. He didn’t mean to speak of either tonight. ‘Which would ye say Christie, is the more sad, a broken heart or the loss of a loved one?’ Christie thought hard, pulling at his lip, ‘Well now, you would have to say that these two are very close, heart break and loss. Both make a sadness for which there are varying degrees.  You could well say that sadness comes of a heart broken by any manner of loss, but the question is how many times can a heart be broken, Joe?’

‘Sure, that’s the distinction that should be made in this question,’ Joe lay down his fiddle, looking over at Lyall with a smile, then, ‘what losses would break the heart over and over again Lyall?’ This wasn’t what he’d imagined tonight to be. ‘Well, this would be different for each person I think’. Joe again, ‘Well of course now that goes without saying, but to take your topic forward we need to know what kind of losses would break the heart and ignite the sadness occurring.’ Eila looks over, ‘If loss of something breaks the heart, then sadness pours through the crack and takes over. Could you see it that way?’ Christie coughed into his handkerchief. ‘You could, you could indeed girl, isn’t that the case Joe?’  ‘You could. Loss is the common denominator here, and no doubt, its loss that that breaks the heart.’

Joe began, eyes half closed, contemplating loss, ‘Now Lyall, your subject is a matter of some complexity and feeling if we look at it deeply. So, to proceed, there are stages to this Lyall. Let us break the topic down. Look into loss and see the way it moves through the heart to sadness. We could start with a common loss that might cause a heart to ache, not break’. John sat forward nodding. Mumbled half agreement from Christie and Jack, each have stories of common loss. ‘And then you might have an uncommon loss that cracks the heart open to a sadness but recuperates over time.’ Christie folded his arms, ‘You could.’ ‘And then you could have a catastrophic loss that would obliterate the heart into a smithereen of sadness, as you would imagine occurred in Mary as she gazed on her son at the end thinking him dead.’ Lyall fell in with, ‘Death and loss would be catastrophic for anyone, Joe.’ Eila looked at him hard, ‘Not if there’s grace and redemption in the suffering of it.’ ‘Are you sure there is such a thing?’ He mumbles half to himself.

John picked up the poker, ‘I think I have it Joe.’ ‘Go ahead now John.’ ‘You would measure sadness on a rod, as you say Joe, at one end the common, at the other the catastrophic loss, each mark on the rod showing the broken heart and its sadness’. Eila barged in, ‘A common sadness might be livened by the loss of a trinket; an uncommon sadness could be the ending and loss of a romance, an absolute end I mean; and the catastrophic sadness would include a death and loss of love itself’.

Joe smiled, ‘We are getting some order in this for you Lyall.’ Eila went to John, taking the poker held flat between his hands. ‘So the common loss and heart ache is nothing, it’s what a chicken feels when she lays an egg so we put that here’, she licked her finger and cleared a mark on one end of the poker, 'the uncommon goes in the middle here; and the catastrophic at the end here where the heart is crushed to dust. And each mark would tell the story of a broken heart.’

All contemplated the rod in a silence broken by Eila, ‘But isn’t there a different kind of loss Joe? One that doesn’t break the heart, or cause it to ache with sadness, but makes it sing?’ ‘Ah, the loss of constraint girl, the loss of the constraint is to what you refer. This loss cuts you loose. But there’s a danger to it.’ Christie sighed into a chord of his own, ‘There is too. A great danger. In fact you could say this loss is the most dangerous and could lead to the greatest sadness. Sure this is topic in itself.’ Joe considered, ‘Ay, the loss of constraint, and one we’ll turn to another night.’

Jack puffed on his long pipe, ‘And then you have the loss of an animal. A lamb for example, lost on the mountain, or a chicken taken by the fox. Or a loss of a field to a bet. Or hay to a bad rain. There’s money in such losses.’ Joe held up the bow, ‘These are material losses you might say Jack, and sure, could result in a sadness or more, but these don’t fit easily on our rod. It is the psychological view we are taking not the material in this case, do you see?’ ‘I do Joe, I do, but remember now, there is a way where the loss of the material can lead to the loss of the psychological, and that is often the case, but I take your point. We are considering the effect on the heart, not the pocket, isn’t that right.’ ‘You have it boy, you do.’

Now Lyall spoke blind, playing along, ‘And there’s the loss of respect.’ Eila pounced, ‘You don’t lose respect Lyall, you give it up.’ All nodded along. Again without thinking, ‘Okay, then there is a loss of friendship, you can lose the friendship of someone.’ ‘That you can,’ Joe tightened his bow, ‘That you can Lyall, if someone turns against you and breaks your heart, but this loss is also self-inflicted, for you always has the friendship until you give it up.’

‘As we do,’ Christie soulful, ‘Now Lyall, how many broken friendships do you see in the valley?’ Pause. ‘None. You don’t see any do you? Well we here now do see them. There are people here who haven’t spoken or looked to each other for two generations or more for the sake of a broken fence, let alone a broken heart.’ Joe shifted and waved his beard. ‘We might be well moving the goalposts here Chris, we don’t want to confuse the poor fellow with the history of Garranes.’ Eila bit again, ‘Sure he’s confused already enough as it is. He hasn’t really told us what loss and sadness he’s talking about. And he hasn’t told us yet why he bought up above except that its worth a £1,400 punt.’ Jack leant forward, eyes bright, ‘Did you lose your dog Lyall? That’s a terrible sad loss, to lose a dog.’

Mrs O’Shea brought turf in for the range, door clanking open, sparks floating to soot. She smiled as she adjusted the Tilley to give more light, urging defiance despite the pity in her eyes, then returned to the ladies.

Eila is half looking at him, waiting. ‘You can lose your mind.’ He sagged biting his lip. Fuck.  Eila can’t resist, ‘And did you find yours yet up there on the mountain? Did you? Among the rush and the sheep?’ Christie, eyes closed scratched his ear, ‘Well that’s not an easy thing to find is it Joe? The mind?’  ‘Ah, the mind, an easy thing to lose, not an easy thing to find.’ Christie opened his eyes, ‘And is it not madness to lose a mind Joe?’ ‘It is known to be so, but Lyall hasn’t the madness yet, so his mind is still with us for a while at least. But does loss of mind fit our scheme here? Are we sure that a heart break connects to a loss of the mind, Lyall?’ It’s a question he must answer, ‘Well, the two are related. Mind and heart. Heart and mind’. John played with the poker as if measuring up a child, ‘So, will we add this to the rod Joe?’  ‘No. You’d need a new rod for loss of the mind,’ Joe answered, ‘You could have degrees of a loss of mind but on a different rod.’

Eila sensed the vein she wanted from him, ‘And where would you say your lost mind would sit on that rod Lyall? Would it be common or uncommon?’ He shifted, heaved, caught by the question. He should have seen this coming. ‘Or catastrophic? Would you have a catastrophic loss of the mind Joe? On the rod?’ ‘You would have to include it, but the rod would have no use to the catastrophic. It would be over.’ Jack stirred ‘That it would, and it’s been close through the years.’ The topic was closing down.

John said something to Christie in Irish and Eila laughed at the back of her hand. ‘He said did you have much of a mind to lose in the first place.’ Lyall laughed, ‘That’s my problem, I don’t really know about mind at all, John, what is it? Do you know? Does anybody here know?’ Joe cut in, ‘Steady Lyall, what we have here is the subject in hand. We now know we have common and uncommon degrees of loss that may be felt in the sadness of a broken heart. We have a measure of catastrophic loss and we have included the mind as an adjunct to the play, which can itself be lost.’ He grazed the room expectantly; all were with him.

‘So now, Lyall, what do you say, where would your loss and sadness sit on the rod? How many broken hearts do you have in your hand?’ Silence. ‘Well now, using our rod as the measure, in which category should we put your loss?  Would it be common or uncommon?’ He sat as a bird waiting for shot, ‘Common’ he said, wondering if he should have told the truth. Christie waved vaguely in the air, ‘Thanks god.’  ‘And would it be the common loss of love and the heartbreak in that?’  ‘It would, and I lose my mind a bit.’ Eila smiled to kill, ‘Sure isn’t that an English indulgence Joe? Can we not put indulgence on the rod as well John? And bar sweet romantics from the house?’ Joe began to play low and slow, fiddle waking to its part as he sang in Irish:

I invoke the land of Ireland

Much coursed be the fertile sea,

Jula’s laughter from the other room filtered in and Mrs O’Shea’s voice along with Eileen’s and the girls orchestrated the mood of the Friday evening. Eila translates for Lyall, an echo in tune with his mood.

Fertile be the fruit-strewn mountain

Fruit-strewn be the showery wood,

Showery be the river of waterfalls,

Of waterfalls be the lake of deep pools,

Joe spoke softly, scraping slowly across the strings, ‘Well now Lyall, the mind is never still; it is always running. So to lose it altogether could be a terrible trouble’. Christie chuckled, ‘It might not be a bad thing, Joe, to stop it running for a while. In fact it could be a pleasure.’ ‘And if it were such a pleasure why isn’t everyone doing it?’

deep pooled be the hill-top well,

a well of tribes be the assembly,

and assembly of kings be Tamair,

‘Sure that’s a reasonable question Lyall, what do you say?’ Lyall looks up from the music as Joe paused to tune strings, and gazes at Eila sat on the rug leant against Joe’s chair, saying nothing. ‘So now, do we have it John?’ John mused the poker, ‘Well now Joe I think that completes the form of the rod. And it is a comprehensive tool of measurement of the topic.’ Joe looked over at Lyall, ‘So have you found your place on the rod, Lyall?’ He looked back at Joe, ‘I have Joe, I think I have.’ Joe continued to play and sing:

Tamair be a hill of tribes,

The tribes of the sons of Mil,

Of Mil of the ships, the barks.

Let the lofty bark be Ireland, lofty Ireland darkly sung

An incantation of great cunning

Eila leant across under the music and tapped him on his foot, ‘And is it your love Lyall, that brings you here and makes you long to leave, both at the same time. Is it now?’

The great cunning of the wives of the Bres,

The wives of Bres, of Buaigne;

The great lady of Ireland

Eremoth had conquered her,

Ir, Eber have invoked for her.

I invoke the land of Ireland.

Joe ended with four Ailiu iath nErenn’s of the last line. Eila repeats them in English for Lyall and asks, ‘And what do you invoke when your love sends you to loss, Lyall’? He sat quiet and lost, settling in for a while, for the night. Happy to hear his silence Eila looked him full on in the face, laughing, ‘Sure, but you’re young still, and the common is a fine place to be as you start out. And I’ll wonder about you, how you’ll do on the edge of catastrophe.’