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Liam Dooley heading to be a schoolmaster, trained at a big college in London. Writing a book too, I believe. And Clifford Hamilton here, already doctoring at the university and going to be a great specialist some day. Remarkable that a village the size of Corrymore could produce not one but two such brilliant young men. Then there’s Michael here. He will own the biggest and best farm for miles around and maybe a fleet of fishing boats as well. Clifford already owns most of the land east of the Shannagh. Are you going to sell it, Clifford, now that your father has passed on?”
“No, Finn,” Clifford replied. “I’ll continue to rent it out. Too many farmers and their families depend on it.”
“A noble and generous sentiment, young Clifford,” Finn said.
Finn himself, once a fisherman, a traveller, an adventurer, became what the locals regarded as a gentleman farmer, when he, like Clifford Hamilton, inherited his father’s farm at the age of forty-two. His land then stretched from the mountains to the shore, a lot bigger than the average Drumard farm. He kept the two labourers who had worked twenty years and more for his father and for his brothers after his father’s death. The farm workers lived with their wives and several children in two cottages, owned by the MacLir family, and situated higher on the heathery mountainsides with unimpeded views of the sea and the green patchwork of stone-fenced fields that spread away to the east like a rumpled patchwork quilt. When Finn sold the eastern half of his land he kept one house, the cottage up the rough, stony loaney where Bill Neely and his family lived. Michael, his new farmhand, now lived alone in the same house.
“And last but not least, our Padraig is a priest already. Traded a flock of sheep for a flock of people—which may be the same thing in the end. Now he’s destined to be a great archbishop, maybe even a pope, and sit on the right hand of God.”
“That’s where Jesus sits, Finn,” Seamus pointed out.
“Well, Jesus will just have to move over then, won’t he?”
“Meanwhile, Finn, we grow old and step off stage.”
“You can grow old, Sweeney, and step off stage if you like.” Finn spread his thick, brown arms in a theatrical gesture. “I’ve decided to stay where I am. I like this stage. And the play is fun. Much better to take part in than to watch. Clifford. Back to you, my boy. How long before you’re able to rip out people’s guts and saw off arms and legs and heads and things?”
Libros Libertad 