The sound of the little cart on the lane came first and then the sight of the pony clip-clopping towards our gate.
An old woman, as old as the hills, was sitting atop the cart jiggling the reins as she jogged the pony expertly down the road.
An old woman, as old as the hills, was sitting atop the cart jiggling the reins as she jogged the pony down the road
We waved her down to say hello, because we are always so delighted to see people with horses that we often run out to talk to them. On this occasion, as the weather-beaten old woman in scruffy clothes pulled the pony to a stop, we could also see an old man sitting, or rather lying beside her, all wrapped up.
He was stretched out oddly, with one arm stuck out at an angle, and appeared to be strapped in with baling twine. His eyes were closed. He was clearly asleep. Bless them, we thought.
The builder boyfriend had spoken to this old woman before, and he chatted to her about how well her pony was going, and how nice a day it was for a jog, and she said ‘It is, boy!’ in her thick west Cork accent. The man, meanwhile, lay completely inert. He did not stir.
A small dog was yapping from its place in a makeshift crate behind the old couple and to us, newcomers to this Irish landscape where everything is frozen in another time, the whole scene was a rural idyll.
Added to which, to meet horse people is a treat because we are in cattle farming country. Many times I have run out of the gates to greet people driving pony and traps, or riders, because there aren’t that many. Mainly people have trotters, and there are cart races on the roads sometimes.
Recently, a man and his wife rode past on two fairly smart bay horses and I hurled myself at the gate and shouted to the woman as she disappeared into the distance: ‘If you ever want anyone else to hack out with…’
She turned her horse around, came back and swapped phone numbers, and she and her husband did call for me on my thoroughbred and take me out hacking with them, although my thoroughbred did bolt alongside a herd of stampeding cows and galloped down the lane with me screaming, but apart from that it went fine. I’m hoping I have some new riding friends. I don’t think they really cared about the bolting and screaming, because nothing much fazes the Irish.
This old woman in her cart was just about as tough a specimen of a human as you could come across. We knew she lived up a windswept mountain not far away where there is no power, no mains anything, and where the only inhabitants are her and her old man, and a load of hippies, mainly Dutch and English. The hippies are blow-ins, pretending to live as nature intended. They come and go, running back to civilisation and plumbing when it all gets too much for them, but the old woman and her husband have lived there a lifetime. Tough as old boots they are. Hewn from the very rock of that mountain, is what they look like.
After a brief chat with the old woman, the builder b said: ‘Next time you’re passing, you must come in for a cup of tea…’
Then he looked at the man, lying inert beside her, eyes shut, one arm stuck out at an angle, and he added, out of politeness: ‘And of course your husband…’ And he gestured at the man: ‘You must both come in for tea.’
And the old woman smiled and said: ‘I’ll come in for tea, boy. But don’t worry about him.’
She waved and geed the pony up and they trotted off, and it never occurred to us to wonder about this any further until our neighbour told us of a rumpus down at the village supermarket.
The woman had pulled in there in the cart, her husband beside her, and after she went into the shop leaving him strapped in there, a crowd had gathered and come to the conclusion… the man was dead.
They must have been on their way to the funeral home. Whether he had died while out in the cart and she simply carried on, popped into the supermarket for a pint of milk, as planned, then dropped him off at the funeral home after, or whether she was always on her way to the funeral home, because that was their only mode of transport, I don’t know. But that was the old mountain couple’s one last jog in the cart together.
As for her stoicism, that’s the best of the West Cork spirit. As for her carefree attitude, that’s the best of Irish faith. Don’t worry about him, he’s on his way somewhere better for his tea.
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