No Country: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Mrs. Shaughnessy leaving her key with Padraig’s ma—I seldom saw Padraig as fretful as he grew by the third week of September. ’Twas then he conceived of his plan, confiding first to me and then to Mr. O’Flaherty.
    We expected Padraig back in a month, maybe a little more, but by the end of October surely, even if he did stop and gawk, for his head was full of stories from our Mr. O’Flaherty and many of the places of those tales lay on his path. He was planning to walk and perhaps take the jaunting car to Drogheda and then to Clontarf, which was a stone’s throw from Dublin, in time for the monster meeting on October 8, maybe even meet the great Daniel O’Connell himself. I would not put that beyond our Padraig.
    He did a great studying of maps, and consulted Mr. O’Flaherty, who had been to Kells, to Drogheda, to Birr Castle, and even to Dublin, where he, a young man then, had seen Swift’s house. Mr. O’Flaherty’s da, he told us, had seen the Dean himself, riding by on his carriage when he had gone once to Dublin.

Padraig
Mullaghmore, County Sligo
September 1843
    I wanted to strike the blows, aye, bloody and felling, to bring back the old glory days. Brendan loved stories for their own sake, savouring the sweet and sad pith of our Irish tales—but I longed for the sweat and gore of the strife itself. All our Irish songs moved my blood about, and I was so stirred, that lads like Brenfi Clarke or Charley Keelan edged closer, ready to follow me to death. But I knew I would be the first one to charge ahead.
    Even our childish games sprang from everything I had absorbed of our history: I would be Brian Boru in the rough-and-tumble games, mock battles among the trees and abandoned shepherd huts as we drove the Norsemen or the English to defeat. We brandished sticks for swords, used stones for missiles. By the time we returned home, we were hoarse and bruised, but victorious.
    By sixteen, I went to every last meeting in Sligo, or wherever nearby they speeched about the wrongs done to us Irish, and our undeniable rights. It was always Brendan who would draw me back to earth when I raged against the slowness of time, in oureveryday Mullaghmore, and my mother wrapped me in her strong love. I was ready to take up arms in the great uprising everyone said was brewing, but seemed to me to be forever on the pot!
    Just last year, I got into an argument with a sailor from Belfast who was jawing fun at our speeches, and though I was only fifteen then, I knocked him about, and he flailing away at me too. We ended in the seawater and kelp by the wharf, and I was for keeping his stupid head underwater until he had a good bellyful of our good Sligo sand, but the watchers all clamoured for me to let him go, for they feared for his lungs and life. So I did, but not before I gave him a black eye for good measure. Och, he scrambled off after his lesson, though he had been full of huff before.
    Once the worthies from Dublin or Kerry or wherever the speakers came from were gone, our Sligo would slip right back to its sleepy ways, and us with our daily plod, while I chafed. Mr. O’Flaherty said that the great stir was in the offing.
    “When!” I fumed.
    “Very soon, Padraig,” said Mr. O’Flaherty, “I pin my hopes on Dan O’Connell.”
    “All he has to do is to send out his call,” I grumbled.
    •  •  •
    A H, BUT THERE was one more tide that threw me about. I would amble over to Brigid’s, and whistle low so her ma did not hear, and Brigid would pretend some chore beyond the haycocks and trees, and I would catch up, and she, breathless and pink, would pretend I was not there. But I was there—and she in my strong surrounding arms.
    One day she was near to fainting with pleasure, and after shelet me touch that sweet fern between her legs, I knew next time there would be no turning back, and for certain I would be entangled with her, forever and evermore. That time I came home, kissed and bitten, branded like a