The most unlikely association of two people in the district was between Paddy and Richard. Neither of them came from the village, and since they were both ‘blow-ins’ the indigenous population felt no responsibility for either of them. Each was the antithesis of the other; Paddy spent every waking moment making or planning to make money, while Richard had no more interest in money than the man in the moon. The local community may not have felt any responsibility for them, but that didn’t mean they were ignored. On the contrary, they were both the subject of constant gossip, for each was guilty of one of the two unforgivable sins of rural Ireland: Paddy was a financial success, and Richard had no religion whatever; he wasn’t even a Protestant.
Paddy, in his late forties, was small, of average build with a head of dark brown hair. When he met you his round face rippled into a charming smile, accompanied by an earnest enquiry for the health and wellbeing of yourself and all belonging to you. Beneath this natural and winning charm was an acute intelligence that had a firm grasp of how business worked, and a determination to make it work for him. He was less of an outsider than Richard, in that he was from the county, but when he came to live in the village he was a stranger. He came as a youth straight from school to work on the building of the first County Council estate, and when it was finished he stayed on and worked as a labourer in the area for a few years before going to Dublin. He reappeared in the village eight years later, set himself up as a builder and never looked back.
Richard, on the other hand, had no connection with the district that anyone knew of. Recently he bought a cottage up a long lane, two miles outside the village. His arrival was the cause of much speculation: he was variously believed to be the last survivor of the great train robbers, an unfrocked priest or a Communist spy. Whereas Paddy was married with a family, Richard lived alone, but one rumour had it that he had a wife and children in England.
In due course it emerged that he was a university lecturer who had taken early retirement and wanted to live in the country. He was tall, thin and angular, bald with a few wisps on top. He lived to himself, appearing in the village once or twice a week for provisions. He was polite but formal and didn’t fit into any sector of the local community.
One day Paddy was walking land adjoining Richard’s cottage with a local auctioneer, with a view to buying another stretch of the only commodity that could establish beyond doubt that he was a man of substance. This was not land upon which to build, but to invest in and to farm. He was passing close to the ditch when Richard came out to throw scraps to his hens.
‘Good morning.’
Paddy knew as little about Richard as anyone did and was glad of the opportunity to talk to him.
‘It’s great to have the fresh eggs,’ said Paddy, ‘but farmers tell their wives there wasn’t a hen yet that didn’t die in debt.’
‘These ones are still in credit but I’m more interested in the quality of the eggs than the economics.’
By this time Paddy was on the ditch at the end of the garden.
‘There’s nothing like living in the country.’
‘No matter where you live there are pro’s and con’s; on balance I prefer the country.’
‘You need a lot of money to live well in the city.’
Richard did not respond. Paddy went on:
‘I suppose it depends on what you want.’
Richard finished scattering the scraps, turned up the saucepan and tapped the bottom.
‘True.’
He turned towards the cottage and Paddy re-joined the auctioneer.
In due course Paddy bought the land and as with the other pieces of land he had acquired, he stocked it with the help of a rogue of a cattle dealer for whom he had once built a house. He used to admit freely when he first bought cattle that if a beast were sick it would have to come up and tell him. However, he learned quickly and developed a good eye, and now did the herding himself, which brought him into contact with Richard from time to time.
At first they talked over the ditch; Richard was cautious of Paddy’s charming smile and his questions. Paddy’s curiosity, however, was not of the idle kind but arose from a genuine surprise that a man like Richard, who had in abundance the one thing he hadn’t got himself – education, should throw everything up and come to live in a cottage up a lane at the back end of nowhere. Richard in turn found Paddy perceptive and intelligent and eventually invited him into the cottage.
‘Coffee?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Well I’m having one. Tea?’
‘Thank s.’
Richard went out to the kitchen at the back. Paddy looked around the room. Most of the downstairs of the original cottage had been made into a single room with a wood burning stove at one end. It was untidy but comfortable; there were mats of various kinds on the original floor of stone flags. There was a substantial leather upholstered armchair facing the stove, with a small table beside it on which was an angle-poise lamp, a tobacco pouch, two pipes and all the paraphernalia and grime that go with smoking a pipe. Under the front window was a refectory-type oak table, covered almost entirely with books apart from a small area at the end near the stove. On this there was a used cereal bowl and spoon, a milk jug, a plate and knife, a napkin in a ring, a pot of marmalade and a set of condiments. Opposite was a glass-fronted bookcase, full of books, and more books in piles on every available surface and on the floor. There were pictures positioned randomly on the walls, and at the opposite end to the stove there was a large piece of abstract sculpture in wood that was out of proportion to everything else in the room.
Richard reappeared, riddled the stove, opened it and threw in a couple of logs.
‘Sit down.’
The only chairs that hadn’t got books on them were the leather armchair and one at the dining end of the table. He spotted a stool under the table that he pulled out and sat on it. Richard closed the door of the stove, increased the draught and went back to the kitchen. For a moment Paddy thought of the building site and wondered if the roof trusses had been delivered, but it didn’t seem to matter; it was all aeons away; he was in another world.
Richard came back, made space and put a tray on the table.
‘I suppose you’ll soon have to make up your mind whether you’re a builder or a farmer.’
‘I don’t think so. When it’s a matter of either/or I usually take both.’
‘Will you have time for both?’
‘What I haven’t time for I can pay someone to do. Anyway the brother runs the building for me; leaves me time to think and plan. You have to think and plan if you want to stay ahead.’
‘Stay ahead of whom?’
‘Everybody else. There’s only a certain amount of money out there and it’s a case of getting what you can before someone else does.’
Richard opened the stove door and sat back into his chair.
‘What do you want all this money for?’
‘It’s the way you get respect; people think more of you in a brand new Merc than a third-hand “banger”. Anyway it’s a challenge. I get a kick out of being a step ahead.’
‘Where does that leave me with no car at all?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Why?’
‘You have something else.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You have education.’
‘Would the people who envy your Merc think as much of my education?’
‘They wouldn’t, but I would, and what I’d really like is both, but it’s too late now.’
Paddy, still in his over-coat, pushed back from the stove which gave out great heat.
Between the stove and the tea Paddy was too hot. He put down his mug and undid the buttons of his overcoat.
‘Take it off.’
‘Ah, I better be going.’
He opened his coat and picked up his mug.
‘Have you read all these books?’
‘Most of them, at some stage.’
‘Why do you keep them?’
‘I sometimes wonder, especially since I moved here, but there’s something about books that makes it hard to part with them.’
There followed a long silence that Paddy broke.
‘Much and all as I need education I’m not sure what it is.’
‘It’s knowing enough to know what you don’t know. To say you’re not sure what it is, is a good start.’
There was a further silence while Paddy tried to make sense of this, then Richard went on:
‘It’s part of what marks us off from the animals – our ability to reflect on our condition, to make ourselves the object of our own thought, and speculate about how we got here and what we’re doing. Despite having that capacity, most people don’t use it. They take everything on trust from other people who have the arrogance to think they have all the answers.’
‘Do you mean the Church?’
‘The Church, the State, big business. All the institutions.’
Paddy stood up and this time he took his coat off and pushed his stool a little further away from the fire.
‘I go to Mass every Sunday and perform all my religious duties, and believe that if I didn’t I’d never get on.’
‘Getting on is nothing to do with religion, Paddy. That’s superstition, pure superstition. Religion has to do with trying to make sense of this mysterious life we’ve got to live. It’s nothing to do with making money or believing there’s a God who’ll look after you if you
behave yourself.’
Paddy noticed that for the first time Richard had used his name; it somehow helped to built a trust between the uneducated builder cum farmer and the retired academic.
Paddy knew he had to go. If the trusses hadn’t been delivered the men would be wasting time. He stood up and put on his coat, and Richard went with him as far as the back door. Paddy went down the garden and over the ditch. A delicate covering of frosted cobwebs lay like a mantle of lace on the gorse and along the ditches. The sun had made no impression on the blanket of grey mist. Paddy buttoned his coat against the cold that he felt intensely after the warmth of the room. He reached his car and drove back to the village. He arrived at the site and found that everything was in order. His interlude in the cottage was still buzzing in his head.
Once or twice during the day he remembered his early morning cup of tea and the warm comfortable room full of books. There were many questions he had, but felt he couldn’t ask on his first visit. What did Richard do all day? What was the big piece of sculpture? And the one he couldn’t ask: had he money.
That evening, although it was unusual for him to talk to Teresa about his day, when he arrived home he stood in the kitchen and told her everything about Richard and the cottage. He went into the sitting-room to watch the news but couldn’t concentrate. He looked around the large room with expensive furniture and an expanse of flower-patterned carpet, the luxurious suite with elaborate trim, the ceiling to floor velvet curtains and escalloped pelmets with swags and tassels. There were cheap reproduction pictures on the walls and a gilt standard lamp beside the television. There wasn’t one book in the room. Apart from the youngsters’ schoolbooks there probably wasn’t one book in the house.
After tea Paddy talked to Teresa again about Richard.
‘What’s the use of an education like he has if you don’t use it to make something of yourself?’
‘He has made something of himself.’
‘But he doesn’t contribute to the economy, or give employment. If we all sat around reading books all day the country would be in a queer state.
The next time Paddy was herding, Richard was in the garden and asked him in again. This time Paddy wasn’t so awe-struck.
‘Do you mind me asking you a question?’
Richard pulled out a chair for him.
‘You can ask me anything you like.’
Paddy sat down.
‘What do you do all day?’
‘I get up, have breakfast, clean the fire, wash dishes, then I read and write a bit. Some days I do some washing or go to the village for groceries or perhaps for a walk. Then I may read again, and I have to cook. There isn’t much spare time.’
‘What do you write?’
‘Letters. I keep in touch with my friends, and other bits and pieces.’
Richard went into the kitchen and reappeared with a mug of tea and a mug of coffee. He gave the tea to Paddy and sat down.
‘And do you not feel the need to achieve something?’
‘I achieve a lot. I survive and I have time to myself to read.’
‘Yes, but if you don’t do something practical or produce something what do you get out of life? To get satisfaction you need competition; to get ahead of somebody or something.’
Richard pared some tobacco and packed it into his pipe.
‘That’s a bottomless pit, Paddy. I did it for long enough. The more you get ahead the more you need to go further and the deeper you dig yourself into the pit, and the reason you do it is to get the approval of other people, and at the end of the day nobody else gives a damn.’
Richard lit his pipe while Paddy assimilated what he had said. He flicked his match onto the hearth and went on:
‘Your need for other people’s approval means you’re letting them run your life, and I got fed up with other people running my life.’
That gave Paddy a handle on the conversation that he grabbed hold of and took off in his own direction, missing the point:
‘Nobody else runs my life, and the more money I have the freer I am of other people.’
‘You may be free in small things, but the more money you have the more you want and the more precarious you become as you risk more to accumulate more. You become enslaved to your own ego and become more dependent on people who work for you and the bank manager who lends you money.’
This was more in Paddy’s line than talk of digging the kind of pits Richard talked about.
‘I’m not depending on them, they depend on me and if I win they win and if I lose, which I have no intention of doing, they lose, and that’s what makes life interesting. If there was no risk there would be no kick in winning.’
Soon Paddy didn’t need to be invited into the cottage, but called from time to time when he was herding. After he sold the cattle, when he was passing on the way back to the village he would drive up the long lane to Richard’s cottage and the two would sit and talk for ages. Richard sometimes went with Paddy on his trips to Dublin and inevitably had a bag of books with him on the way home.
Paddy would banter:
‘Haven’t you enough of those auld books without buying more? It’d suit you better to put a lick of paint on that cottage of yours.’
‘Paint on the windows won’t improve my quality of life. Anyway if I do that I’ll only have to do it again in a few years.’
‘No matter what, I still envy you your education.’
‘All anyone needs in order to be better educated is to make up their mind to it, and to a man of your intelligence and determination that should be no trouble.’
‘I’ve left it too late.’
‘It’s never too late. The problem is “the master” won’t let you.’
‘You’d be in a quare way without “the master” all the same, and anyway money is not my master, it’s what it can do for you.’
One morning Paddy called to the cottage to return a book that Richard had insisted he ought to read. He sat to the stove while Richard made the tea.
‘Thanks for the book.’
‘Well what did you think of it?’
‘Richard, there’s something I have to tell you, that in the whole world only my wife and children know.’ He hesitated, and Richard waited. Looking into the stove Paddy said: ‘I’m illiterate. I’m not able to read or write.’
There was a pause while Richard took it in, and to mitigate Paddy’s obvious embarrassment he said;
‘Well I can’t imagine what you’d have achieved if you could.’
This embarrassing revelation made no difference to their friendship that continued as before. In fact it heightened Richard’s admiration for Paddy, an admiration that was tinged with sadness at what in other circumstances might have been.