The Ginger Man

by J. P. Donleavy

  "Isn't that the limit, though, Mr. Dangerfield?"

  "It is rather. And now he's been at the house. Well, I've had no alternative but to ignore him. Lock the doors and things and pull the curtains. But I thought it wise just to tell you. Nothing serious. But I wouldn't want you to have someone tapping on your window. Perfectly harmless type. Wouldn't be let out otherwise. So just ignore him."

  "Couldn't you tell the police, Mr. Dangerfield?"

  "O I'd rather not, Miss Frost Unfair to subject this poor unfortunate to abuse and he'd be kept in after that I think it best to ignore him and I'm sure he'll stop. If you happen to be outside and he starts on about this rent and money just tell him I'm not home and to go away"

  "Yes, I'll do that Thanks for telling me. I imagine I would be a bit frightened by a strange man, Mr, Dangerfield."

  "Quite."

  "I'll do these dishes, Mr. Dangerfield. Now you stay there and finish your tea."

  "O no, Miss Frost"

  "Only take me a minute, Mr. Dangerfield."

  "Very good of you, Miss Frost."

  Sebastian licked his mouth. Miss Frost running the tap. Sebastian pulls up the table doth. A quick wipe of the lips. Marion reading in the bedroom. Nice evening. Think I'll just slip in there and tell Marion the good news.

  "I say. Marion."

  "O what"

  "Everything's all right I told you Miss Frost would understand."

  "All right"

  "Move over."

  "Get in your own bed."

  "It's cold. Don't you want a bit of arse?"

  "Go talk to Miss Frost, foul mouth."

  "Like to get you right here."

  "Take your hands away."

  "Weeeeeee."

  "You're revolting."

  "This is the way to live. The light Bing. Let there be electricity. Let there be gas for continuous hot water and cooking. Let there be a hot bedlam for those needing it We've come a long way, Marion. A long way."

  "And you had nothing to do with it"

  "Bend over."

  "Get away."

  From Miss Frost's room there came the sound of music. And the laurels rubbing outside. The air smelling of green, fresh in from the branches. When I was little, a colored maid pinched my penis. Her name was Matilda, and I watched her through the key hole, powdering her pudenda. She did a lot of things to me. Worried about my physiology. Little colored boys have bigger ones. O they feed you up for the teeth and the weight and clean out the ears and other things and cut the fingernails and brush the hair but there's no organ orgy. I think Marion thinks mine too small.

  But I know

  It's bigger

  Than most

  15

  These days I can sneak away to the bathroom and perform my toilet with dignity.

  Miss Frost has to go by my door. Marion leaves it open in the fuss to feed the kid. I lie looking out at Miss Frost passing in various stages of titillating undress. In her red kimono, gray shanks, shapely with the type of thin ankle I prefer. Indeed, Miss Frost is well put together. And this morning she saw me. I smiled as one does. Her neck went scarlet. It's all right to blush in the face but watch out for those given to the neck blush.

  I went in to get my breakfast. Dear daughter shut your lousy yap. Close it. Or I'll jam it And it won't be the blackcurrant either.

  "Daaaa, da."

  "What is it?"

  "Ahhh, da pooh-pooh."

  "Will you let da-da eat his breakfast Da-da's hungry. Now shut your hole."

  "Stop it. She has a perfect right to make noise."

  "Well lock her in the garage—I can't understand why they don't have chains for children. I'm going to Trinity."

  "Go ahead, I'm not stopping you."

  "Thought you might like to know."

  "Well I don't."

  "Now, now. I'm coming right back. I think perhaps we ought to pay off a pound on the electricity bill. Marion, are you listening?"

  "I heard you."

  "Good idea to clear up part of this little matter."

  Marion pouring milk into a pan.

  "I say, Marion, are you ill? Now for the teeth of Jesus—"

  "Stop using that language in front of the child. And Miss Frost too. And I'm sick of it. Go if you're going."

  "Now, Marion, let's be reasonable. This bill must be paid sooner or later or they'll be out here to cut it off. What will the Miss Smiths think? I say—"

  "O for God's sake, stop whining. Since when have you been concerned with what people will think?"

  "I've always been that way."

  "What rot."

  Sebastian got up from the table and walked into the kitchen and put his arm across Marion's shoulders.

  "Take your hands off me, please."

  "Marion."

  "I thought you were going to Trinity. Well go.0

  "I don't want to waste the trip in."

  "O you are a liar."

  "Little severe, Marion."

  "And you come back drunk."

  "I beg your pardon. I'll give you a shot in the mouth."

  "Why don't you fight a man. I'm not giving you one penny."

  "I have a proposition—"

  "I don't intend to change my mind."

  "All right, Marion. If you wish it that way. Be Protestant and miserable. If you'll excuse me. I'll go."

  Out of the kitchen stony faced. He took a bag from the morning room and went into Miss Frost's room. Two decanters. Into the bag. And bowler placed neatly on his skull. Quickly out the front door, skipping down the steps and whoops. He stumbled headlong into a choice laurel, face in the rotting leaves. Decanters held high for safety. A few foul words of abuse. Tugging at the little green gate. Stuck. A lash with the boot. The gate slumped open. The lower hinge wagging by its spring.

  He arrived in Dublin on the top of the tram. And slid through the fashionable throng of the Grafton Street. He walked under the three gold balls and to the counter. Plunked down the two decanters. A funereal man hunched whispering over them.

  "Well, Mr. Dangerfield."

  "Heirlooms. Fine Waterford."

  "I see, Mr. Dangerfield. Not much of a market these days. Seems people don't set much of a value."

  "Wine's becoming very popular.'1

  "Ah yes, Mr. Dangerfield Ha."

  "Americans are mad for them."

  "Ten shillings."

  "Make it a pound."

  "Fifteen and we won't argue."

  Sebastian turned with his money. He bumped into a man coming in the door. A man with a rotund skull and shoulders streamlined against the weather.

  "Jesus Christ come home to roost. Sebastian"

  "How do you do, Percy."

  "I hose shit off the toilet seats in Iveagh House. Drink anything that's going and hump when I can."

  "Jolly good show."

  "And I'm in to pawn five pounds of steak."

  "Eeeek, you're not"

  "Here it is."

  "Percy, incredible."

  "Will you have a drink. Wait for a second while I flog the meat, and I'll tell you the whole story."

  Sebastian waited under the three balls. Percy, grinning, came out and they set off down the street. Percy Clocklan, a short bull man. So strong he could collapse the walls of a room with a deep breath. But only did this in people's houses he didn't like.

  They sat in the corner of a tiny public house. Few hags beating gums in each other's deaf ears. Saying the dirtiest imaginable things. Absolutely shocking. Percy Clocklan's face was all grin and laughter.

  "Sebastian, I've had everything. My father was a bank manager. My sister's a member of the Purgatorial Society, my brother's a company director and I reside in the Iveagh House over the Bride Street, a hostel for the poor and dying"

  "Better days coming."

  "But let me tell you. Here I am, educated with the best of them at Clongowes. Nine years in the textile trade taking guff from these awful eejits and not even a raise. I told the manager to stuff his k
ip up his hole. Jesus, I shouldn't have done it. Now look at me. Every morning I have to take a hose and go around cleaning after these ould bastards who come in at night full of red biddy and do their business all over the floors. Last night I caught an old bugger pissing into the drinking fountain. But it's only a shilling for a good feed and two and six for a cubicle for a night. I'm a porter there. That's the big cheese. And I get my pay and into the red biddy lounge where I get laggards for eight pence"

  "What would you like out of life, Percy?"

  "Know what I want? I'll tell you. And you can listen to these bloody eejits who sit around talking bull shit for hours and they don't get anywhere. I'll tell you what I want and it's all I want. I want a woman with awful big tits and arse. Biggest tits and arse in whoredom. Get up on her—o the tits, the tits. Whoever thought of them. God knows a good thing. Just tits, a big arse so's I can come home of an evening and lash a sup of steak on the grill and fill me gut and then get up on her. I want some kids. Something to work for. Incentive is what I want. I sit around an oul' bleedy pub wasting me time. I'm coming to forty and maybe I could have been a big fella with cars and maids but I don't give two tuppenny turds. It's over now and no use shouting about. But if I had a woman with an awful big pair of tits you'd see me for the last time in a pub. Be as happy as sin. I'm married once but I'll never make the same mistake again. Wanting to drink every night and terrified of having some kids"

  "Pregnancy first, Percy. Then the drink to recover from the insecurity that's in it."

  "I know, I know. I was an awful eejit But she wouldn't hear of it Said she was too young to be slaving after children. I know better now. She wouldn't give up her job. Didn't have any power over her. I don't care now, any old whore will do now and lots of biddy to forget about food and rent"

  "And where did you get that meat?"

  "Sebastian, don't breathe a word of this. Now I'm telling you, it's confidential I had this bird who worked in the butchers. She'd get me as much as eight pounds of the finest steak of an evening. I'd flog three or four pounds and have enough to see me crawling from biddy and lash the rest raw into me gut. See me right for days. I'd give old Tony Malarkey a few pounds now and again for his kids. I was living with him for a while but he's like an oul' hen, clucking around and jealous when I'd come in of an evening laggards. Can't stand to see anyone else enjoying themselves. I bloody well moved out But my woman got caught"

  "Where did you get the meat today?"

  "Wait till I tell you. They caught her stealing the bloody stuff and she was fired on the spot And she wanted me to get up on her of an evening for nothing, and I told her did she think I was a stud bull wasting me energy humping her ould carcass. Imagine that, expecting me to act the bloody bull for nothing and her ould flat tits without a sup of meat behind them. There's no decency in some of these people. You're the only decent person I know, Sebastian. You buy a man a drink when you have the money and you don't do all this yelling about it I should have been a priest and have Morgan's van calling every week with lashings of drink and a housekeeper with boobs like pyramids. Then you'd hear some sermons. I'd lash some bloody decency into these people. But when I got no more meat from this ould whore, I looked up another bird in a butchers. Went in every day buying bones for a week and it wasn't long before she was sneaking the meat out to me."

  "You're an awful man."

  "And I've got an ould maid in the Iveagh House who's taken a shine to me. She says a pair of decent balls in the hand is worth a cock in the bush."

  "You'd make a fine husband, Percy."

  "Don't come the hound,"

  "You would"

  "Look at me. Losing me hair. Sleeping next to a bunch of newsboys at night and the bunch of them saying hello to me on Grafton Street. Me from Clongowes Wood College."

  "Look at me, Percy."

  "Look at you. More money than the president with that G. I. Grant."

  "The expense, Percy, is dreadful. And must keep my dignity."

  "Ould whore's dignity. Do you want to come to a party?"

  "Not tonight."

  "Have you gone mad, Sebastian? It's in Tony's house, the Catacombs. Tony wants to see you. I hear O'Keefe's gone to Paris and went queer as well."

  "True. He's in a little town after anything that moves."

  "Jesus, come to the party."

  "Can't."

  "Have a drink then."

  "Percy, I've been put down a great deal since I saw you last. A Mr. Skully, a former landlord, is after me for money. Then there are a few business houses."

  "You ought to go in for betting, Sebastian. That's what your trouble is. A bet changes my whole day. Jesus, let's go for some red biddy."

  Red biddy is sweet and thick, dried dead blood. All running through the streets. I can only imagine that I would like to be between thighs. I knew a girl who wore an orange sweater. I put my hands on her naked waist of slim belly. She was a milkmaid. I was a gentleman. We stood in an erotic embrace.

  They were gone down the street through the kids and granite gutters talking about the money made in raising sheep.

  "Sebastian, did you ever get up on one?"

  "I say, realty, Percy."

  In

  Algeria

  There is a town.

  Called

  Tit.

  16

  Sebastian sat hunched over his belly, transfused with joy. A night of a party. They were sitting in the Scotch House between two big barrels. Outside the Guinness boats going chug chug. Clocklan bellowing laughter.

  I think I will see a great night of it All manner of men invited. Sick and infirm, the bogus and bitchy. Those unclean and disgraced. Daily communicants and members in good standing of the Legion of Mary. The failed and about to fail. Dublin is great for minor clerks and officials. Nine in the office till six o'clock at home. The wracked and choked bodies. The wife will not put her hand on it or have a painful pump. A party of the anguished and underling. Mr. Danger-field, alias Danger, Bullion, Balfe, Boom and Beast, will tell you how to get out of it. But well to remember it's hard but it's fair. These little buggerings showed people you could take it The pain as well as the pleasure.

  And I think there ought to be a table in the middle of the floor for a demonstration of the animal. Penny notebooks for notes, please. Tell you anything you want to know. I might not look like much now, but in five years. Wow. And don't forget that I'm at Trinity either. No end to where I am. To dose the evening I'll do a Spanish dance and catch olives in the mouth and a few other things as well. And songs of course, led by Mr. Dangerfield and the tea and cakes served by genuine North of Dublin whores for those of you who are repressed.

  "Clocklan, I'm suffering from a woeful case of blackdog."

  "Get the bloody stout and never mind the blackdog. This is going to be a great party."

  "I ought to go home, Percy."

  "Go on out of that Can't miss this bash."

  They were walking up Grafton Street carrying gray parcels of stout Dangerfield singing:

  My heart is like

  A squeezed grape

  Only the pip

  Is left

  Only the pip.

  "I'll be thrown out of the house"

  "Jesus, what kind of a house do you keep. Give your woman a good boot in the hole. Throw you out? Nonsense. This is Ireland"

  They pushed through an iron gate and down the black, steep steps. Tony Malarkey, host, grinning, a pleased bull smelling the hot rump of a cow in heat, counting the parcels of stout Eyes on the corks. Through a scullery there was a huge kitchen. Drink was put on the table. Clocklan brought his to a corner of the room, hiding the bottles under some rags. Malarkey watching him.

  "Where are you going with that drink, Clocklan, you stingy ould whore ? "

  "Not wasting it on your ould guts"

  The air filled with the popping of corks. A smell of damp walls and cavities. A feeling of long corridors and hidden rooms, tunnels in the earth, black pits and win
e cellars filled with mouldy mattresses. A bulb burning in the center of the kitchen. The floor, stained, red tiles. Whitewashed walls and scabby buttresses crossing the ceiling. And more people bursting in the door laden with bags of stout

  Sebastian putting bottles in his pockets. Arming. He crossed over the room. A short, stocky girl standing alone. Smoldering green eyes and long black hair. Perhaps her father is a casket maker. Or she is a servant.

  Sebastian next to her. She raised an eyebrow. Wow, this is no servant or serf either. What green, animal eyes. He took the bottle. holding it between his knees, a quick spin of the corkscrew. Then straighten the body. Bop. The brown foam dripped over the sides of his mouth. He smiled at the girl.

  "What's your name?"

  "That's a funny question to be asking me right off."

  "What would you like me to ask you?"

  "I don't know. It's just funny asking my name right away"

  "My name is Sebastian."

  "My name is Mary."

  "You look Italian, Mary."

  "Are you being fresh ?"

  "Boooobebo. Danggigigeegi. That's African for, certainly not beautiful maiden."

  "You're making fun of me. I don't like it. You're queer."

  "Have a bottle of stout, Mary. I want to tell you a few things. First a little bit about sin."

  "What do you know about sin ? "

  "I can forgive sin."

  "That's a sin you're saying. I won't talk to you if you say things like that"

  Assuming the role of gentleman, Sebastian gave Mary a glass of stout. He brought her to where they could sit on a bench and talk. She said she minded the house. Her father had not been able to move his bowels for three weeks and they had to call the doctor and the doctor couldn't do anything for him and they thought he would die of the poison. She said he would just lie in bed and wouldn't go out to look for a day's work. Been there for months and the smell was too much and she had to take care of the house and her two small brothers.

  Clocklan across the room, paying court to a smooth skinned blonde. The party distilling overtones of boredom and discontent. Suddenly a stout bottle whistled across the room, smashing an effeminate man's head. There was a quavering word of admonition and a chorus of encouragement. A chair broke, a girl twisting and yelling that she would not be handled Sebastian retreating down his bench with Mary, giving her an account of what was going on. Something brewing across the room. Clocklan had turned from his blonde woman and was talking to a tiny man who someone said was a jeweler by trade and disposition. Suddenly, Clock-Ian raised his fist and drove it into the little man's face. He fell on the floor, crawling desperately towards safety under a bench and away from the bellow of Clocklan, to receive a kick in the face from a girl who thought he was trying to look up her dress.