Cutting the Ties

Write about someone who decides it’s time to cut ties with a family member.

Cutting the Ties 

Jim and Brian were brought up on a farm in County Antrim in the 1950s. The ‘Troubles’ had not started officially but beneath the calm exterior, there was trouble brewing.  Their parents, Angela and James Quinn were a hardworking couple who owned a small farm. They had ten cows, a few sheep and some chickens. The brothers enjoyed helping out on the farm after school and they soon learned how to rig up the milking machines in the byre. After milking time, they would help their father clean the milking machines and tidy the byre. 

They loved harvest time when the baler would arrive and fling out the perfectly made rectangular bales which were used for winter fodder for the cattle. His father would say at the end of the day, when the bales were stacked into neat piles, ‘well done boys. That was a great days work you did. I’m proud of you’. Sometimes their father would regale them with stories of haymaking when he was growing up. ‘You know boys’ he said, ‘in my day, we stooked the hay and then built haystacks’.

‘What does stooked mean? ‘ Jim asked.

‘After the hay was cut with a scythe, we made the sheaves and then built a stook which consisted of about eight sheaves.Then we piled the stooks into a haystack.It looked like a Claude Monet painting by the time we were finished’.

The boys never imagined doing any kind of work other than farming and they looked forward to the day that they would become farmers themselves. Jim was two years older that Brian and he assumed he would inherit the farm because this was the custom in rural Ireland and was known as primogeniture, where the firstborn son inherits the family estate.  

Jim had no reason to doubt that someday he would take over the reins of the home farm and he had plans to buy a few more acres. His brother Brian had decided to become a joiner, and he seemed happy with his career choice. However, things on the farm took a downward spiral after Angela, their mother was killed in a road traffic accident. James literally went to pieces and began to drink heavily. And on top of that, he seemed to confide less in Jim and more in Brian. Jim tried to make allowances for his poor father, who had suffered a terrible loss. However, he noticed that his father didn’t share his plans with him anymore. But he noticed that when he came into the farmhouse in the evening, his father and Brian seemed to be having a conversation and when he joined them at the fire, they would clam up. Jim felt hurt by his father’s behaviour and could not understand why he was excluding him. And there was worse to come. 

Unfortunately, James Quinn took a heart attack and died a few years after his wife’s tragic death. At the reading of the will, Jim was shocked to learn that his father had bequeathed the farm to Brian and he was only left a few thousand pounds. 

Jim was shocked at this revelation. His aunt Pauline told him that his father had become bitter and twisted after his wife died. She felt that Jim had been robbed of his inheritance and she said, ‘You know, you could contest the will. You put so much work into the farm. It’s a spite that you did not inherit it.’ 

‘The thought crossed my mind’ replied Jim. ‘But’ he added, ‘I have heard of bitter wrangles over land and I don’t want to lose my peace of mind for a piece of land’.

‘Do you think you might be able to discuss the matter with Brian? He may agree to a compromise.’

‘We have never really seen eye-to eye. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wheedled the farm out of my father. They seemed to discussing something important over the past few months but I could never hear what it was’.

‘Sibling rivalry is nothing new. Remember the story from The Book of Genesis where Jacob stole Esau’s birth right in order to obtain his father’s blessing. And Cain killed Abel. However, I don’t want to go down that road. So I have decided to emigrate—just pack my bags and go’. 

‘That’s a big decision. You love this land—I could not imagine you living in any other country’.

‘I thought that too. But after finding out that I was disinherited, I didn’t see myself as belonging here anymore’.

Jim decided it was time to cut off ties with his brother, his relatives, and his country. A friend of his, John McCabe had told him of the £10 assisted passage scheme to Australia and he applied for it and was successful. He looked forward to starting his new life in Australia for he had heard it was a place where if you worked hard you could have a good life. He had slaved on his father’s farm for the last twenty years and in one fell swoop, it had been taken from him. In Australia, no one would trick you out of your birth right. He remembered seeing a play called Philadelphia Here I Come where the main character Gar is emigrating to America. He commented:

All this blood yap about father and son and all this sentimental rubbish about ‘homeland’ and ‘birthplace’-yap! Bloody yap! Impermanence-anonymity-that’s what I’m looking for; a vast restless place that doesn’t give a damn about the past. 

His friend John McCabe had told him that his older brother Brian had gone out on the £10 scheme and was making great money in a copper mine at Mount Isa, Queensland, Australia. He was determined to make a fresh start in a land of equal opportunity where no one cared about your past and no one judged you by your social status. And best of all there would be no sibling rivalry.