The Flowering Trees Preparations for the picnic had begun when word came of the Fiddler. On a mild Sunday afternoon in February he came and sat in what had been the garden of a big house long since deserted. With him came the Stutterer, who smoked a pipe. To Josie the other children brought the tale, but at first she paid no heed. She had opened her account book for the year and sat over it, her rosy tongue curling pensively up her cheek. The accounts ran like this:- Kitty Donegan 1/2 Madge Mahoney 1/2 Josie Mangan 1 and a appel Peter Murphy 1/2 Beneath was written at least twenty times over in great, innocent astonished letters ‘Josie Mangan.’ Beneath that again, ‘K. Donegan lovs P. Murphy.’ In the next page, ‘Totell 2 pense and a appel,’ altered on maturer consideration to ‘2 1/2 and a appel.’ Having pondered the matter still farther Josie struck out the appel and ate it. But talk of the fiddler gradually excited her, and she grew envious of those who had found him first. Sunday afternoon they set out, the whole gang, in ragged formation, with all the inevitable squabbles. K. Donegan and P. Murphy headed the procession, Peter on Kitty’s rusty skate. Kitty, the eldest, was a tall red-headed girl with delicate inflamed eyes and a rough face. She walked with an air of intense dignity, her red head in the air. She was in love and held her man in bonds as firm as any marriage contract with her skate, which she never for an instant allowed out of sight. To impress them all, she turned as they came to the big houses by the river’s edge and let out a bawl. ‘Come on aisy, can’t ye? Can’t ye behave yeerselves? The fiddler will be gone, Lord God, I won’t come out any more with you, Josie Mangan!’ ‘Sure, ’tisn’t my fault,’ whined Josie. ‘Look at Jackie.’ ‘Come on, Jackie, come on, love,’ coaxed Kitty. ‘Ah, sha, God love us! Come on now, Jackie boy, and you’ll get a sweet!’ ‘Stop crying or you’ll get a pucking,’ added Josie, sniffing. ‘I wants to go home!’ yelled Jackie, and threw himself flat on the path. Kitty raised him and held him up by main force by the breeches. ‘Almighty God, I’m cursed and damned,’ declared Josie, red and tearful. Suddenly as the vision of the fiddler burst on her imagination anew, her tears changed to blind, unreasoning fury. Her eyes blazed. She smacked Jackie’s hands. She smacked his face. She pummelled his stomach till he doubled up and fell. She pinched his behind. She made faces at him. Jackie screamed. Josie caught one hand and Kitty the other, and between them they dragged him, kicking and squealing, behind them. Kitty’s weight won the day. To save his arms from dislocation, Jackie had to run. By this time he had reached the stage where stupefaction imposes itself, and the screams came only ten seconds or more after his will commanded them. ‘Almighty God, grant the fiddler won’t be gone!’ prayed Josie. Long before they came to the appointed place they stopped. ‘Leave you go first,’ said Kitty to Josie. ‘No, leave you.’ ‘I won’t. Leave Madge go.’ It was Peter who finally planned that they should disperse and approach the field from every side, like Indians. Because of her small brother, Josie was permitted to enter by the gate. The rest came across the overgrown grass fences. Like Josie, most of them pretended to be looking for flowers, though it was too early for primroses. She, with bent head, picked her way carefully as though in fear of overlooking some fugitive blossom, staying here and there between the bare trees and the shrubs. In a few minutes the old garden was alive with hushed and questing children. Suddenly there rose from somewhere a whisper that was repeated till it became a cry. ‘They’re not here!’ Into the clearing in the centre, where the hollow was, the children gathered with long faces. It was only too clear that the strangers were not there. Kitty Donegan pointed out the very spot where they had sat. Gloom fell on them all. Kitty sent out patrols to search the neighbouring fields. When they returned the gloom became blank and utter. As they went homeward, squabbling and dispirited, Josie felt like tears. It was her rotten luck! Now the mysterious fiddler was gone, and would not return. Three weeks later another miracle! A kite, a box-kite, had been seen along the river bank on Sunday, and the gang was off to investigate. ‘Almighty God,’ Josie prayed in her emotional way, ‘grant the kite won’t be gone!’ Jackie was being whipped briskly along behind her. A March day of scurrying clouds, and wind and sunshine, and a May-blue sky shining and darkening behind the baby leaves. ‘I’m threepence ha’penny now,’ declared Josie irrelevantly. ‘Ye’d better hurry up.’ ‘I’m threepence anyway,’ said Kitty, clasping her skate under her arm. ‘The summer’ll be here any day now, so ye’d better hurry up,’ continued Josie. ‘We’re a long way off sixpence yet, let alone a bob. How do ye think I can plot a picnic if ye won’t even save up?’ Suddenly as they passed the field of their disappointment a strain of music rose in the air like a call. ‘Sacred Heart!’ cried Kitty dramatically, clutching her breast, ‘they’re there!’ The gang stopped, aghast, all thought of the kite banished, all stricken equally with irresolution. Finally, for want of a better plan, they agreed to do what they had done before, and soon the field was alive with bobbing heads like chickens. But for very shyness not a peg farther could they stir. A fierce dispute was going on about Kitty Donegan who was trying to bully Madge Mahoney into leading the way. It lost nothing in fierceness for being carried on in whispers. When at last Kitty threatened to go home and take the gang with her, Madge surrendered. Slowly she left her lair, slowly she strode down the field, her hips swinging in the coyest of coy motions, her head on one side and her index finger between her lips. From their ambush the gang, some on all fours, some bent double, tensely watched her progress. She passed within a few yards of the two men, sidled by them with modestly averted eyes, went on another few yards, and then paused to admire the view of sleepy river and low hills. Apparently satisfied she drew up her frock with an old-maidish gesture and sat down, keeping her eyes all the while on the view before her. When three minutes had elapsed and nothing had occurred to her, when she had even plucked a blade of grass and sucked it nonchalantly, the better to show her indifference, Kitty went forth, birdlike, her head in the air, her lips pursed, her eyes nodding hither and thither with remote and circumspect interest. In a few minutes the whole gang was sitting with its backs to the two men. The fiddle struck up again behind. All heads turned together. The fiddler looked up from his instrument and smiled. He was a good-looking man verging on middle-age, with a red-brown beard and blue eyes. The gang rose in mass and performed an encircling movement about him. ‘Which of you can dance?’ he asked, still bowing vigorously. ‘She can, sir,’ said Kitty Donegan treacherously, grabbing Josie by the arm. Josie grew red. ‘Come on then—what’s your name?’ ‘Josie Mangan, sir,’ said the gang in chorus. ‘Can you dance to that, Josie?’ ‘She goes to the Pipers’ Club sir,’ chorussed the gang. ‘Ah, well, maybe that’s too hard. Try a reel.’ He changed the rhythm and broke into _Molly on the Shore_, and at the third bar Josie’s feet began automatically to beat a response to the gay triplets. The girls stood with hands behind their backs, critically watching every step. As the music continued she took fire, the blood mounted her cheeks; she raised her head and stiffened her body till she felt it poised and motionless above her flying toes. It was impossible to make any real show of dancing in the grass where she couldn’t hear as much as a heel-tap, but grass or no grass she was determined to captivate the fiddler. For the first time she found herself deliberately willing someone to admire her. When the bell rang from the hill to call them to Benediction one star was alight, no bigger than the budding leaves among which it hung. Each Sunday the gang went on its headlong way to the field. Sometimes their Fiddler was there, sometimes not. And always the evenings grew warmer and longer; they sat in the grass and told stories; over one night the trees seemed to shoot into leaf and bloom; and the decaying old garden came to life again. The hedges were thick with whitethorn; the fragrance was everywhere. Sometimes the Fiddler and the Stutterer chattered while the children rambled away on their many quests. But they never knew what to make of the Stutterer. When he began to speak they looked at him in excitement, wondering what great things he was about to tell them. He would chuckle and choke and grow crimson, and wave his hands—but it never came to much that they could see. But the Fiddler talked of everything under the sun, about Josie’s father being a soldier and Josie’s mother being dead, and Madge Mahoney being praised by the priest and Peter Murphy’s big brother being dead. He talked a lot about death; it seemed to fascinate him as much as the children; he harped back upon it, now lightly as though it were a great joke; then with gloomy insistence on the horrors of it, and yet again mysteriously, telling them of the Holy Souls in Purgatory or of ghosts. He audited Josie’s accounts which had assumed vast proportions and were very muddled, though this scarcely mattered because no one was likely to forget what was collected. The accounts merely defined Josie’s authority which, in spite of Kitty Donegan, she was quietly but firmly extending. Sooner or later she intended to have her followers known to the world as ‘Josie’s Gang.’ This authority was sometimes challenged, but she skilfully arranged for the Fiddler’s support, and came out stronger than ever. However, one day it came to open conflict. Kitty Donegan, with the aid of the skate and Peter Murphy, was endeavouring to split the gang. Josie lost her temper and called Kitty ‘Sore-Eyes.’ In spite of her age and size, Kitty was romantic and emotional. She broke down. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Josie!’ said the Fiddler sternly. ‘It isn’t her fault if her eyes are red. God made us all as we are, and when you mock anyone you’re mocking the good God who created them.’ Josie, growing red, looked at him in consternation. Was this her Fiddler, holding her up to shame before her own gang? As surely as she had thought the gang hers she had looked on him as her vassal, and now he was taking the side of Kitty Donegan against her. Of the moral sense of what he said she didn’t understand a word. All she knew was that her dream was shattered, herself an outcast and mere hanger-on in the new alliance between the Fiddler and Kitty. Tears flooded her eyes and she walked away. On the road she began to weep, her face buried in the grass of the wall. Jackie joined her. Only Jackie! The others, traitors and lip-servers, had gone over to the enemy. ‘What is it, Josie?’ he asked, beginning to cry, too. ‘Never mind, Jackie!’ she sobbed. “They can have their old gang! They can have their old fiddler! They can have their old picnic too! I’ll give them back their money. And I hope to Almighty God it’ll pour rain on them!’ ‘Oh, Josie,’ he sniffed, ‘won’t there be no picnic?’ ‘And thunder,’ she sobbed louder and louder. ‘Thunder and forked lightning.’ ‘Josie,’ he snivelled, ‘I wants a picnic.’ ‘And the anger of God to strike them all dead!’ hissed Josie bitterly through her tears. She snubbed the gang. She gave them back their money. For a week she carried round a broken heart. On Sunday the pain became almost unendurable. She had sworn to avoid the field, but she couldn’t. From the Cemetery Road where she was walking with Jackie she descended by a steep path to the river. There she heard the fiddle playing and everything came up once more in a flood of tears. She crept along the hedge to a spot from which she could see them, at least in part. All she did see was Madge Mahoney’s dress, but it was enough. ‘Stop crying, Josie!’ said her brother. ‘I can’t,’ she moaned. ‘Me life is over. There’s me thanks for all I done for them, all the trouble I had with the picnic and keeping the money and everything!’ Every step she took away from them seemed a step nearer her grave. She went up the road, partly from an almost unconscious intention to return when they were emerging and scorch them with a look. But when she did return they had gone; the field was deserted; a gold-brown cloudy evening had foundered in a drift of silver among the darkening leaves, and the river shone coldly beneath it. When she reached home she found a letter awaiting her. Her heart leaped. It was from the Fiddler. In it he confessed that he was unhappy without her. He was sorry if he had hurt her; he had never meant to, and he would not have spoken like that to anyone else; it was only that a cross word sounded so nasty from a young girl of her Beautiful and Tranquil Disposition. There were other things, too, which she did not understand about the Purity of his Affection. Nor did they worry her. The great thing was that her ascendancy had been triumphantly re-established, and that Sore-Eyes Donegan had got a smack on the kisser. On the following Sunday when she re-appeared he presented her with a lily. ‘May you be always as pure as you are now!’ he said. Josie took the lily round to show the neighbours, and utilised the occasion to solicit subscriptions for the picnic. The Widow Crowley, who kept the little shop, gave a penny, but warned them against the Fiddler. And being the managing sort she was, she spread the warning, and each and all the children were instructed by their parents to avoid him. At once the Fiddler became a secret, a conspiracy; in Josie’s eyes her secret, her conspiracy; but it was Madge Mahoney, the slyboots, who had the inspiration. ‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘if Josie Mangan asked him, he’d come on the picnic?’ The very thought made Josie crimson with delight. That would set her seal forever on the gang. Further, it would make every other gang hide its head, for never in anyone’s memory had a gang taken a real fiddler with them on their picnic. On the eve of the picnic, Josie and Kitty Donegan went into town to make the purchases. The market was crowded and the two girls pushed and shouldered their way excitedly about. Oranges fivepence a dozen, red apples fourpence ha’penny, russets threepence — they could bring themselves to buy nothing till they had handled the wares on every stall over and over again. Josie measured an orange with her fingers and then pushed her way, perspiring through the crowd, with her hand held in position to try another by. ‘Almighty God,’ she prayed, with closed eyes, ‘grant we get sweet ones! Oh, Almighty God, I’d be disgraced forever if they were sour!’ She scarcely slept that night. Four or five times she rose and looked out at the sky. ‘Almighty God,’ she kept repeating in a fever, ‘grant ’twill be fine! Oh, Almighty God, wouldn’t it be awful if it rained?’ But it didn’t rain. The morning broke cloudless and sunny and all the bells of the city were ringing joyfully. And there at the foot of the bed were the oranges and apples, russet and gold, a battered-tin kettle, rescued from an ashbin, a teapot without a handle and two tin mugs. She sprang out of bed, dressed and ran downstairs, hot and sick with sleeplessness. Going into the kitchen she had a sudden feeling of giddiness, her head spun and she staggered. Mrs. Geney who cooked the meals for them looked round in surprise. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘Nothing,’ replied Josie sulkily. Her father looked up from his newspaper. ‘Now, mind ye,’ he said sternly, ‘look after yourself and Jackie. Don’t sit in the sun. Don’t go running under cars. Don’t go too near the water. Don’t eat too much of them apples or you’ll be sick.’ ‘’m going to go swimming,’ said Jackie. Josie kicked him viciously under the table. ‘You are not going to go swimming,’ said his father. ‘I’ll flake the flaring divil out of you if I find you go swimming. And don’t go sliding and tearing the seat out of your pants. And don’t go near any stream or running water. And don’t play hurley. Sit down quietly in the shade and enjoy yourself.’ Mrs. Geney laid a boiled egg before Josie. Then she put a rough palm under her chin. ‘Look up at me,’ she said. Josie obeyed. ‘I thought so.’ ‘What is it?’ asked Mr. Mangan. ‘Do you see anything?’ ‘N-n-o.’ He looked at Josie critically through his spectacles. ‘I see spots,’ said Mrs. Geney. ‘Lord God,’ said Josie, beginning to sniff, ‘ ’twould be like you to see something.’ She had always disliked Mrs. Geney. “You go back to bed till the nurse sees you, my lady.’ ‘I wo’not,’ said Josie. ‘They’ll be up for me in a minute. She can see me as I am.’ ‘Do what you’re told now!’ replied Mrs. Geney. Josie began to weep. ‘Lord God, ever since you came into the house there’s some misfortune down atop of me,’ she moaned, climbing the stairs again. ‘I wish to God I was dead and buried some place I’d be far away from you...Will you tell that old Crowley one to come quick, so?’ she cried with a sudden change of tone. ‘I’ll be late for the train with you.’ She was scarcely undressed before the first of the gang was in her room. Sobbing, Josie recounted what had happened. A few minutes more and the whole mob were assembled about their fallen chief. All declared they could see no spots whatever. Josie had a mirror and kept glancing at herself in it. Then the Widow Crowley arrived, big-boned and cheerful and bossy. ‘I’ll give her something to make the spots come out,’ she declared. ‘But I’m all right, Mrs. Crowley,’ cried Josie angrily. ‘Of course you’re all right, child.’ ‘But I’ll be late for the train with you.’ ‘You can go by another.’ ‘What’s the next?’ ‘Twelve,’ said Kitty Donegan. ‘Lord God,’ said Josie, ‘I’m cursed!’ ‘We’ll wait for you, Josie,’ said Kitty with sudden magnanimity. ‘Will ye?’ ‘We will,’ said the gang in resigned and melancholy tones. ‘I’ll come back in an hour or so and then we’ll know,’ said the Widow. Camped on and about the bed, the gang discussed the many miseries caused them by the Widow. But Josie shook her head. ‘’Tisn’t her at all I blame,’ she declared. ‘’Tisn’t her at all, but the bloody one downstairs.’ She shook her fist in the direction of the door. ‘Kitty,’ she called in a feeble voice a moment later. ‘Well?’ ‘Is there any spots now?’ ‘Naw,’ replied Kitty with broad contempt. ‘’Tis all a plot of that one downstairs,’ said Josie. ‘Lord God, don’t I know it? She’s plotting this for months to spite me. No one knows what I suffered with her since me ma died. Oh, I wonder me ma’s ghost don’t haunt her!’ ‘It might yet,’ said Madge Mahoney hopefully. ‘That it might! That it might haunt her till she dies, raving mad! That’s my prayer....Madge, do you see spots?’ ‘Erra, no!’ ‘’Tis a plot!’ ‘The train is gone,’ said Peter Murphy with a sigh. And this reduced them all to silence. When the Widow returned Josie was vomiting and declaring frantically that she would be grand now. Sorrowfully the gang took over the funds from her. Sorrowfully they shared out her portion of oranges and apples and sweets and buns. She lay there, sobbing, too miserable even to dispute. All day she thought of them, of the beach, of the Fiddler, her fiddler, who now, careless of her fate, was playing to them. All day she sobbed without ceasing. And at night she was lying in a long hospital ward that went up and down before her incredulous eyes like the deck of a ship. She thought hospitals at least should be kept still. It was months before she was released. Summer was over, the days were drawing in. Of the Fiddler there was no further news; the gang had been remiss and for weeks had deserted their fortress. Maybe he had tired of waiting. Josie visited the field when the leaves were falling; she visited it three times before she realised that all was over. The Fiddler was gone. (1936)