Right of Succession

By Michael Fogarty

The year is 1921. The Irish War of Independence is drawing to a close. The Hennessys, a successful farming family in the County Tipperary, having been previously untouched by the harsh reality of guerrilla warfare, suddenly have it thrust upon them with savage brutality. Their hitherto peaceful existence is shattered as they are unwittingly immersed in the violent struggle and their efforts to survive are complicated by one family member's hidden agenda.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291928570

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Right of Succession

RIGHT OF SUCCESSION

Michael Fogarty

Published 2014 by Michael Fogarty

Copyright © Michael Fogarty 2013

All Rights Reserved

ISBN 978-1-291-92857-0

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means – graphic electronic or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems – without the prior written permission of the author.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Dedicated to my Family.

One

They were in the kitchen, discussing whether the high field should be ploughed this year for root crops and the middle field let out to pasture.  It wasn’t an easy decision.  Both fields were of equal size and they were the largest the Hennessys farmed.  At nine acres each, it meant that the farm was effectively without eighteen acres of pasture for a time, while one was given over to arable and the other was left to propagate a new crop of grass.  True, the crop of new grass in the middle field could be harvested as hay for winter feeding, but the boss was forever of the opinion that the first crop of grass from a field that has just been ‘let out’ was never of the same quality or quantity as that of the second year.  He made no mention of the fact that they were going to be without the benefit of nine acres and not eighteen, as they always had nine or ten acres of tillage anyway.  Nor was there any mention of the increased yield of root crops for winter feeding as the middle field was ‘tired’ after eight years of continuous production, whereas the high field had been rested for almost thirty years now.  Overall, the only real disadvantage to the farm would be the extra work involved in tilling the high field and seeding the middle field.

None of the real practicalities mattered to the boss.  He was more interested in fuelling the discussion between his grandsons.  Jimmy was against the changeover as he suspected that he would be the one to spend most time behind the plough.  He wasn’t particularly afraid of work, if it had to be done.  But he didn’t consider it worth the extra effort to gain extra root crops at the expense of the hay yield.  He was, of course, deliberately ignoring the fact that the following year they would have a good harvest of crops and a good crop of hay.  So, he was arguing against the changeover.  And as Sean was arguing for the change, it was only natural that Jimmy would argue against. The boss knew this and he liked nothing better to pass the evening than to see his grandsons pit their wits against each other.

But it was fast approaching his bedtime and being a creature of habit he decided to cast his vote in favour of change and retire for the night.  While he enjoyed the arguing between the boys, he wanted the matter settled before he went to bed as he knew that without him as mediator a simple discussion could become an all out row.  Even though his bedroom was immediately adjacent the kitchen, they could be at one another’s throats if he drifted off to sleep, fitful as it may be these days.  He stood and opening his bedroom door he announced that he would take a walk over to O’Casey’s the following morning to see if they would loan him a second plough for the extra work.  That was it, subject closed. But it was also good news for Jimmy as there would be a second plough to cope with the double workload.

Taking a lighted candle, which his daughter, Mary, had placed for him on the kitchen dresser, the boss opened his bedroom door and, telling the boys not to forget their prayers, he was about to step into the room when a quick movement in the dim interior caught his eye.

‘Oh Jaysus Christ, Lads, c’mere quick…Quick!’  It wasn’t the urgency of his tone, but the fact that the boss had taken the Lord’s name that galvanized his grandsons out of their seats and to his side in an instant. He was not a man given to profanities.

‘Sean...Sean, get a few candles from the dresser and light them.’

‘What is it Boss?’

‘Will you get the bloody candles!  There’s a big bloody rat in there.’

‘Are you sure?  How could a rat get in here?  The window is closed.’

‘Jesus Christ, I’m not blind.  I saw him.  Now will you get the candles!’ Again, the profanity.  The boss hated nothing more than rats and to see one in his bedroom, his sanctuary, was an affront to the very core of his being. Even around the farmyard he was always meticulous in his vigilance against the ever present threat of infestation.

‘Come on lads. Come in and close the door.  He’s not getting out of here.  Sean, light a couple of those candles and put them on the dresser.’  The ‘dresser’ was a high chest of drawers in the corner of the room with just enough room to get between it and the foot of the single bed to open a drawer.  It held his meager wardrobe.  The room was quite small and there was no room for an actual wardrobe.  He had one suit and that hung in the big press beside the door to the parlour.  The top of the chest of drawers was adorned with a simple wooden crucifix to which was fixed an alabaster cruciform, a statue of Our Lady, a Child of Prague statue whose head was delicately balanced on his shoulders as it had been broken many years previously and still fell off and rolled around the floor if he accidently bumped the dresser, and a candle holder immediately below a wall mounted Sacred Heart picture, even though there was another Sacred Heart picture on proud display in the kitchen. Apart from the bed, the only other item of furniture in the room was a bedside table. The boss’s rosary beads were in permanent residence on the table, ready to hand for his daily rosary.  Sean lit two candles and placed them on the dresser.  Then, carefully rolling up the net curtain and letting it rest on the top of the bottom window sash, out of the way so it wouldn’t catch fire, he placed two more on the deep windowsill.

‘Jimmy, go get a couple of hurley sticks, and if you can get a pitchfork handy, bring it too.  Sean, get over beside the door when he’s going out, I don’t want that yoke of a rat getting out of here.  If he gets into the kitchen God knows where he’ll go. And if Mary gets up and sees a rat in the house, there’ll be no living with her.’  Jimmy slipped out the door and the boss and Sean waited for what seemed like an eternity for his return.  Nothing was said while he was away, the boss didn’t want to disturb the rat unnecessarily until it could be dealt with.

At length, they heard Jimmy cross the kitchen floor, and keeping watch for the rat, they opened the door to allow him in.  Now they were armed, the time had come for action.  But nobody moved.  Nobody wanted to move.  They were not cowardly men but each of them was possessed of an innate horror of rats and the slow lingering death which was more often than not the result of a rat bite.  And while they were not consciously contemplating Weil’s disease they were simply utterly repulsed by the fact that there was such an abhorrent little creature in the house.  After a short, but seemingly long period of total inertness Sean whispered ‘What do we do now?’

‘Shhh…Take your time’ muttered the boss.  ‘Give him a chance to see if he makes a move.  We might hear him and know where he is.’

‘Where did you see him?’ asked Jimmy.

‘He was on the side of the bloody bed and I think he might have gone in under it. Now will ye whisht up ‘til we see what way the cat is jumping.’  Sean snorted out loud as he suppressed a wild guffaw of laughter at the irony of his grandfather’s statement. It was the rat they were waiting for to jump and if they had a cat, they wouldn’t be in this state of anticipation in the first place

‘Jayzus will you shtay quiet’ muttered the boss fiercely.  Sean sobered up immediately.  Another time it might have caused him to descend into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, but the boss’s use of ‘whisht’ and ‘shtay’ instead of ‘whist’ and ‘stay’ and his third profanity in a few minutes was enough to show Sean that his grandfather was extremely upset and that this was absolutely no time for levity.  So, he pulled himself together and stood stock still, listening carefully for any sound that might betray the presence of the offending rodent.

Jimmy too was listening carefully.  But he was more conscious of the pounding of his own heart and the quiet breathing of the others in the deathly quiet.  He couldn’t decide if he was actually afraid or if it was simply the excitement of the ‘hunt’.  While going to the haybarn for a pitchfork he had realized that his senses were heightened and that he was possessed of an urgency that seemed disproportionate to the threat posed by a stupid little rat. But now he was back in the bedroom with his grandfather and cousin, he realized that he definitely didn’t like being in such a confined space with a specimen that was renowned for it’s propensity for fight when cornered. And there was another consideration.  Something that had just occurred to him.  Rats were never cornered as long as there was some dark corner or tunnel to escape to.  And that included trouser legs.  Carefully and as quietly as possible he bent down to tuck his trouser cuffs into his socks.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed the boss.

‘I’m sticking the ends of me britches into me socks.’  Again Sean had an almost uncontained urge to laugh.

‘Jayz, and the rat would be hard up to go running up there’ he said.

‘Mind your language.’ said the boss. ‘And that might not be a bad idea at all.  It wouldn’t be the first time I saw a rat going up the leg of somebody’s britches.  Them dirty little hoores’ll do anything or go anywhere to get away.’

But Sean didn’t tuck in his trousers, he didn’t want to appear as nervous as Jimmy obviously was, even though he made a mental note to be on his guard against the possibility of the rat choosing that avenue of escape.

‘Sean, go up there and get me me beads off the table’ 

Sean did as he was told, and when the rosary beads were safely tucked away in his pocket, the boss decided it was time to flush the rat out.  Holding the pitchfork double handed against his chest, he instructed Sean to hand back the little bedside table out of the way, so they might have room to turn over the bed and still have room to deal with the rat.  Sean easily lifted the table and handed it back to Jimmy, who, in placing it on top of the dresser, bumped it off the Child of Prague whose head promptly fell off and rolled under the bed.  Again, Sean had to stifle a laugh as he imagined the rat being confronted with the head under the bed.

‘For God sake will ye take it easy.  Ye’ll let him get away with yer eejiting’ said the boss.  ‘Now, nice and easy, turn the mattress off the bed…go on, I’m ready with the pitchfork’

‘One minute Boss’ Sean reached forward and taking hold of the bedclothes, he pulled them slowly and deliberately towards him, rolling them in his arms until he had them all gathered and the mattress was left bare on the single bedstead. Turning, he handed them to Jimmy with instructions to put them outside the door, out of the way.

‘Be careful he doesn’t get out.’  The boss was still worried that the rat should escape into the house.  With the bedclothes safely out of the way, Sean stepped up beside the bed.  Consulting with his grandfather, they decided that it was best that he should pull the mattress off the frame as quickly as possible while the other two were poised with their improvised weapons.  Having decided on this course of action, Sean was once again acutely aware of his open trouser legs.  He considered it too late now to tuck them in, so bending forward over the bed, he caught hold of the mattress on the side farthest away from him and with a lot more effort than was necessary, he quickly pulled it towards him so that the leading edge automatically dropped to the floor between himself and the bedframe, forming a barrier between him and the rat.

But the rat wasn’t there.  The boss had jumped forward with the pitchfork poised to strike immediately the opportunity presented itself.  Jimmy was standing back by the door with his hurly stick held tightly across his chest.  All three stood stock still for a few moments as their eyes searched the shadows where a dark furred creature might lurk in full view but not immediately apparent in the relatively weak light of the candles.  But he was nowhere to be seen. 

‘He’s not in the mattress?’ 

The boss’s question caused Sean to push the mattress away from his body quickly in case the rat should be too close to him for comfort. His reaction brought a snort of derision from Jimmy, who was safely ensconced in the corner.  A quick inspection, however, confirmed that the mattress was rat free.

Quietly, the boss spoke. ‘Try the dresser.’  At this, Jimmy started and jumped out of the way to allow Sean access to the chest of drawers.  But the Boss had other ideas.

‘Where are you going?  You’re the one beside it.  Here, give me that hurley, I won’t be able to use the pitchfork if he’s in one of the drawers.’

‘And what am I going to use if he is in one the drawers?’ 

The tone of Jimmy’s voice betrayed his disbelief that he was expected to open a drawer where a rat might be lurking, ready to jump out at him.

‘Sure, won’t you have your hands full with the drawer? If that little divil is in there I’ll get him with the hurley before he can do anything.  Start with the top. Pull the drawer out quick, we don’t want to give him time to run….Go on, I’m ready’.  And indeed he was ready, with the hurley raised to strike.

Jimmy steeled himself, took a deep breath and pulled as hard as he could; too hard.  The drawer came free of the cabinet and dropped to the floor, depositing the contents at his feet.  Jimmy tried to jump back in case the rat was among the contents, but his back was to the end of the bedstead and he almost fell over backwards.  He tried to scramble out from between the bedstead and the chest of drawers, but his feet got caught in the jumble of clothes and the drawer that lay at his feet.  And his grandfather was between him and any hope of escape.

‘Jayzus, will you shtand yer ground’ whispered the boss fiercely who liked the possible close proximity of the rat no more than Jimmy did, but he was determined that they were going to catch it. 

‘Go on now.  Get ready the next one.  If you lean into it a little bit, you can pull it out quick but your body will stop it coming the whole way out.’

In the meantime, Sean had been standing with his hurley at the ready, but without any real conviction that he was going to have to use it.  He was really much too busy trying not to succumb to the fits of laughter that threatened to overwhelm him as he watched Jimmy’s obvious discomfort.

Sean turned and something caught his eye in the shadows by the leg of the bed.  Carefully he leaned over and looked at it more closely.  Then he moved closer to Jimmy, who, like the boss, was too engrossed in the second drawer to notice what Sean was doing.  Slowly, he extended the hurley until it was only about three inches from the small of Jimmy’s back.  As Jimmy jerked the drawer open, Sean prodded him in the back and shouted ’boo!’  Jimmy yelled in surprise and instinctively pulled the drawer free of the chest just as his grandfather brought his hurley crashing down on a pair of black socks in the middle of the drawer.  The drawer and it’s few contents joined it’s companion on the floor as Jimmy struggled to escape from the jumble between the bed and the chest of drawers.

‘Jesus Christ! Ye pair of pups!  What the hell are ye doing?’ shouted the boss.  But Sean was doubled up laughing and couldn’t even defend himself when Jimmy pounced on him screaming that he was going to kill him.  He was still laughing as Jimmy pushed him back into the corner, trying to land punches on him.  There was pandemonium as Sean roared laughter, Jimmy was shouting that he was going to kill him and the boss was shouting at the two of them to cut it out.  In the din, none of them heard the urgent knocking on the door as Mary, who had been awakened by the racket, was trying to find out what was going on, but she couldn’t open the door as one of the drawers had been kicked behind the door and lodged between it and the side of the chest of drawers. 

Realizing that she was trying to get in, the boss called to Mary to take her time as he cleared the obstacle from behind the door and at the same time told Jimmy to stop acting like a ten year old.

‘What in the name of God is going on?’ asked Mary.  ‘Even the neighbours must have heard the racket ye were making.’

‘Ah, it’s nothing’ said the Boss.  He was reluctant to tell her about the rat, as he knew she would be horrified at the thoughts of a rat in the house.  Then he turned his attention to the two boys again.  Pulling them apart, he asked what the hell Sean thought he was doing, it wasn’t funny frightening the life out of Jimmy like that.

‘Ah, it’s alright Boss’ said Sean.  ‘That little rat is well gone.  Look over there by the leg of the bed.  There’s a hole in the floor.  He’s well gone now.’

Two

As they ate their breakfast the following morning, they discussed the happenings of the previous night.  When Sean had pointed out the hole in the floor, the boss had agreed that the rat had indeed escaped.   Nevertheless, Sean had been dispatched to find something heavy and flat to place over the hole and so stop the rat returning during the night.  The room had to be returned to some semblance of order for the boss to get a night’s sleep.  Mary was enlisted to make his bed, but she wouldn’t stay in the room on her own, in spite of assurances from all three that the rat was long gone, if indeed he had ever been there in the first place.  The boss had totally forgotten his planned trip to O’Casey’s for the loan of a plough.  Finding the rat had taken priority over everything else.

Having had their own breakfasts, the animals in the farmyard had to be looked after.  Milking the cows was not a very big chore as it was still early in the year and most of the cows had not yet calved.  But they all had to be foddered.  As did the horses and the pigs.  Letting out the chickens and feeding them was a job that was always left to Mary.  When that was done, she would always gather any eggs that had been laid in the chicken shed during the night. It was always in the evening that she checked around the farmyard in secluded little spots where some of the chickens preferred to lay.

When Sean returned to the kitchen after finishing his chores, he found that the boss and Jimmy were already there before him and had started stripping the bedroom of its furniture.  Once again the bed had been stripped bare and the bedclothes deposited in a chair by the kitchen range.  The chest of drawers was in the kitchen also, looking none the worse for wear after its treatment the previous evening.  When Sean arrived, Jimmy and his grandfather were carrying the mattress through to the hall where it would be out of their way.  The iron bedstead was dismantled and the pieces stacked against the side wall. This done, the room looked remarkably bare and large, even though it was quite small.  The small bedside floormat had also been removed, so most of the concrete floor was visible for the first time in many years.

Sean was surveying the floor when his grandfather returned, followed closely by Jimmy.

‘Boss’ said Sean ‘the concrete in that floor is very patchy looking.’

‘Aye, ‘tis.  And with good reason.  Ye know that rotten tree stump out back of the house?  I meant to cut it out of it years ago.  Well, that was a big auld poplar tree that me father cut down one time.  He didn’t want to cut it down but the roots were coming up through the floors in the house.  Them poplars are dangerous for sending up roots everywhere.  At that time, the new parlour and Mary’s room hadn’t been built.  There was just these two rooms here, the kitchen and the old parlour was where Jimmy’s room and the hall is now.  The floors were destroyed with the roots.  Me father cut down the tree.  He put a new floor in the kitchen, but in Jimmy’s room and in here, he just patched the floors where the roots had cracked the concrete and pushed it up. And I’d say what’s under them patches is slack enough.  That hole where the rat got out is in one of them.’

Jimmy spoke up:  ‘But where would he go when he got into the hole?’

‘I’d say now that the old roots are all rotted away leaving the rats a way in under the house. If we go out and cut the stump out of it, we’ll find the rats nested in it or under it.  And now they’ve found a way into the house.’

‘And what will we do if they go before us when we start chopping out the stump?  They’ll be in here and through the house before we know where they are.’

‘Isn’t the hole still covered with that big lump of a rock?  How are they going to get out from under that?’

‘But there might be other holes that we haven’t seen’ said Jimmy. ‘And there could be holes in my bedroom floor, or they could be nearly through under one of the old patches.’

‘We’ll bring in the dogs and lock one of them into each of the bedrooms when we’re outside digging’ suggested Sean.

‘Begod and that’s not a bad idea at all.’ said the boss.  ‘But we’d be better off with a couple of Jack Russells instead of sheepdogs.  Them lads wouldn’t be long seeing to any rats that stick their noses out.’

‘Dan Hennessy!’ exclaimed Jimmy.  ‘Dan Hennessy has three Jack Russells.  And he’d only love the bit of sport after the rats as much as the terriers.’ 

Dan Hennessy was a distant relation who lived alone about three quarters of a mile away.  He was a tradesman of good reputation, but these days arthritis had caught up with him and he wasn’t able for heavy work.  He kept himself alive by doing small odd jobs here and there.  He lived in constant fear of the day when he wouldn’t be able to do any work at all and he would end up in the county home, or the workhouse, as he himself called it.  At sixty nine years old, Dan was still twelve months short of qualifying for the meager old age pension of five shillings a week. The boss agreed that Dan would be only too glad of the diversion for the day and Jimmy was sent to fetch him and his dogs. 

‘And tell him’ added the boss, ‘that there will be a couple of days work for him floating off the new concrete floors in the bedrooms.  We’ll mix the concrete for him’

‘Are we putting down new floors Boss?’ asked Sean as Jimmy was leaving the house.

‘Sure, we might as well now that we have this room nearly emptied.  I’d rather dig out that old concrete and put in a decent floor in each of the rooms, like should have been done when the kitchen was’

‘That’ll be a big job, digging out the old floor.’

‘Yerra not at all.  I’d say there’s not more than a couple of inches of bad concrete anywhere in the room.  You’d dig it out of there in a few minutes.  And what’s under it is only a bit of clay.  We’ll have to dig that down a bit too, and put in a good depth of new concrete in case them hoores o’rats get in under again.’

‘Will I take a look in Jimmy’s room and see if there are any holes in his floor?’

‘After what happened last night, I’d say he has already looked, but I suppose it would be no harm.  Take a light with you and have a good look under the bed’ Jimmy’s room, while much bigger than his grandfather’s, was similarly furnished, with the addition of the open fireplace that shared a chimney with the kitchen range.  It had started life as the parlour, and after the new slate roofed parlour had been built, the old one had been divided to provide a bedroom and an access hall to the extension. The new bedroom in the old parlour had originally been the boss’s, who had moved to a small bedroom off the kitchen to allow Sean’s father into the larger one when he vacated the new one in the extension for Mary after she came to live with them.  At that time, Sean and Jimmy had shared the loft above the two small rooms off the kitchen.  After the death of his father, Sean had been told by the boss that he could move into the old parlour bedroom.  But Sean had been unable to bring himself to invade what he considered to be his father’s private domain.  Jimmy, however had no such qualms, and on seeing Sean’s hesitation, he had promptly installed himself.  Sean really had no problem with that, as it meant that he now had the loft to himself.  And it suited Mary to have her own son near her at night.

As Sean passed through the kitchen, he picked up a box of matches to light the candle in the room to check under the bed.  Lighting a candle might be easier than trying to lift the bed out of the way.  He had been in that room only once since his father had died, and he was unprepared for the sense of loss when he stepped over the threshold.  In his mind’s eye, he once more saw his father kneeling at that same bedside, saying his prayers and instructing his son in talking to God.  A more unwelcome memory was that of his father laid out in that same bed, the mark of the horseshoe across his forehead, that left by the fatal blow, livid on the deathly pallor of his skin.  Sean shook himself and looked quickly round the floor.  He immediately noticed patches in the old concrete, similar to those in his grandfather’s room.  It was funny, he thought, that he had never noticed them before, even though they were quite obvious to him now.  But then, he had never had reason to notice them before.  Also, it was very rarely that he was in either this room or the small bedroom.  Almost his entire existence in the house was confined to the kitchen, the loft and the other small room off the kitchen which doubled as a store and a place to wash themselves in privacy.  He realized that they would have to check the floor in there too, though it