No Country for Young Men

by Julia O'Faolain

‘You’ll meet Timmy,’ she told James. ‘The one-time caretaker who now owns the place. It’s a funny story. Shall I tell you? Yes? He was the bum-lover, you see, of the old Anglo-Irish owner. Well, he wasn’t old, I mean no older than Timmy, but of the old stock. Demi Devereux. His father had been a general or something, but he did nothing except live with Timmy and go a bit native while Timmy went a bit Anglo. Then, oddly, Timmy – perhaps he wasn’t all that queer? Or perhaps he wanted an heir, having gone Anglo? – anyway, Timmy married and had sons and the old landlord enjoyed Timmy’s sons. There were four of them and they too married and the old man – now he was getting old – moved them and their wives into the house and enjoyed a third generation of boys. It was a sort of stud, you see. Stories were told about house-parties being arranged for English guests with special tastes. Who knows? That was in the Fifties, while the old man was still hale and hearty and before the place began to fall into the clutches of Timmy’s tribe, who kept having children and encroaching on more and more rooms. You may imagine the result. They dug up lawns to plant potatoes, cut trees to sell the wood, bought Woolworth’s ware because the wives wouldn’t clean the silver, and generally adapted the place to suit their taste. It was a bit of do-it-yourself land-reform, a take-over of the sort not foreseen by politicians. Now, they say, old Devereux is afraid to move out. He is ailing and not allowed to drive. He no longer has visitors and, although he has ulcers, the women feed him on tinned beans and fried food so that he is always dyspeptic. They say Timmy and his boys have so much blackmail material on him that he is utterly in their power. He has made the place over to Timmy’s family.’

  ‘What a horrible story,’ said James.

  ‘Is it?’ She was doubtful. ‘I hoped you’d be amused.’

  ‘The poor old man.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Being preyed on by parasites,’ said James.

  ‘Like Volpone, you mean? I suppose you could see it that way. I saw Paul Scofield in it and he made Volpone so sexy that I felt sympathy with the old rascal for the first time. But the old man in my story came of a rapacious breed who had themselves preyed on the natives, stolen the land in their time and so forth. They deserved to have the tables turned.’

  James pretended to shiver. ‘The long, venomous memory of the Celt!’

  ‘Venomous?’ she asked, ‘do I sound venomous?’ She touched her white heather for luck and wondered about Michael who would be awake by now. Cormac had again spent the night at his uncle’s.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said James, and she followed him into the lobby where he was now talking to the clerk.

  She looked at herself in a mirror, checking for venom and lack of generosity, then back at the glass doors which were revolving once more. Two men walked through and up to James.

  ‘Mr Duffy?’

  ‘Yes.’ He had finished with the clerk. He smiled past the men at Grainne.

  ‘Could we have a private word with you, Mr Duffy?’

  ‘Well …’ James hesitated.

  ‘It’s important. I’ll explain why – in private. I’m from the United States Embassy. If we could just …’

  ‘Won’t be a moment,’ said James to Grainne. ‘Why don’t you be warming the car?’ He looked perplexed.

  There was some more talk with the two men, one of whom seemed to be showing James a card or wallet. Something to do with his film, perhaps? She hoped this didn’t mean that they couldn’t get away for their weekend. If you screwed yourself up to burn your boats and then the wind blew the flames out or the wood was damp, it could be all up with your resolution. Picking up her beauty-case – she had bought it specially for this trip and it had an adulterous air about it: too smart and small for anything but impropriety – she smiled at James who was looking anxious and touching. Why should he be anxious, she wondered vaguely. Because of the film? It was raining, which seemed wrong for adultery. She had to put on her headscarf, which made her look like the Queen in a paddock, and push through the revolving door to the porch, then get her umbrella up, which was awkward, as the other hand was holding her beauty-case.

  ‘Let me help.’

  ‘Thanks – Owen Roe?’ She couldn’t believe it. ‘Here?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said, ‘and it’s no coincidence. Come and sit in the car and I’ll explain what’s happening.’

  *

  Sparky came and sat beside her, talking about Kathleen and people’s right to happiness and to live their lives. His fingers began to play on the base of her neck, curling and uncurling her short, escaping hair. She shook him off once or twice and even pointedly picked up and removed the marauding hand, but he seemed hardly to notice, intent on his speech, which that wilful hand punctuated and illustrated with its insinuating, curling gestures. Owen, he said, was an idealist. He could see that Judith, a convent girl, still tautly bent on perfections – ‘which don’t exist in life,’ said Sparky, ‘or are too expensive in terms of human unhappiness; we just have to settle for the possible’ – Judith would, in the nature of things, be impressed by a man like Owen.

  ‘He’s a Savonarola,’ said Sparky, ‘blazing eye, curling lip, contempt for the little accommodations we all make in order to live. It’s admirable. It’s destructive. It leads a man to die at the stake for what he thinks is right. When that happens we applaud. When he wants a whole country to flame at the stake with him, we are appalled. Or to take a girl like Kathleen with him. At any rate, corrupt, sensible guys like myself feel that way,’ said Sparky, still teasing the back of Judith’s neck with maddeningly mesmeric fingers.

  She jumped up, shaking her head to disperse the languor he had been inducing in her. The neck was a nerve centre. That was all it meant, she told herself, but felt spell-bound. She began walking around the room. The walls were hung with weapons and photographs of Devereux ancestors reviewing troops or embracing animals. One had his arm around the neck of a leopard. Another, bent on dentistry perhaps, was oozing back the lips of a horse. A palm cradled the ball of the snout; fingers slid along the damp, blackish gums.

  ‘I know you resent me, an outsider, saying these things,’ said Sparky, ‘and I can’t even say that I aspire to become a family member. I can’t help noticing that your sister likes me but, really, I see my sponsoring her as a rescue operation. I don’t want to marry her myself. She’ll find someone …’

  ‘How can you be so sure you’re right? Aren’t you worse than Owen?’ Judith planted herself accusingly in front of him. ‘You try to make people’s minds up for them. In what way are you different?’

  ‘Judith, I don’t. I didn’t court her. She …’

  ‘And what about politics?’

  The rain had begun to lash down angrily now, beating the windows like whips. The room was darkening and only occasionally lit up by lightning flashes which came immediately before the rolls of thunder. The storm must be right over their heads.

  The only justification for a revolution, said Sparky, was to get rid of an unjust government and bring about a better way of life for the people of a country. Now that an Irish government had been achieved, a new revolution would lack all justification. It would cause suffering and would not bring happiness or economic stability since England, Ireland’s natural market … She walked agitatedly away from him. Why wasn’t Owen here? This man could convince anyone. He was convincing her. What hope had Owen’s party with a man like this going back to America tonight to cut off their only source of arms? Owen had said that he reasoned like a grocer and maybe he did. Measuring. Weighing, calculating equivalents. Yes, yes. It was mean, insidious. It could convince.

  There was something else, said Sparky, something confidential which he couldn’t actually divulge but it was why he felt that Kathleen must be saved from marrying Owen. He happened to be privy to a secret which – well, it had to do with the reason for his going to Dublin this evening and then home, but, really, he could say no more. Only that Owen would shortly be in trouble with his own comrades. A nasty business. Better for Ka
thleen to be well clear of it.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Judith felt relief at having a reason to shout at him. How dare he smear an honourable man’s name by hints? Oh, she cried, she had known he was envious and mean, but how could he hide behind such lame excuses. ‘You’ve said too much to stop now,’ she challenged.

  ‘I’m not at liberty to say more.’

  ‘Have you to Kathleen?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that either.’

  But maybe Kathleen was his source?

  ‘It’s about money, isn’t it? American dollars?’ She saw at once that she was right. He stared in such surprise that for a split second she felt triumph – until she remembered how grave it was that he should know and how little it could avail matters that she did.

  He began talking again, pleading with Judith to see that he, Sparky, had no choice but to do what he must. Excessively patriotic men could act, he said, from noble motives, yet, objectively, be as harmful as the basest traitors. Owen must be stopped. He, Sparky, had no choice but to denounce him. His words ran together, blurring in her ears as the garden outside the wet window dissolved in an ocean of green waves. Who must be stopped? How? It was dangerous to stand by a window in a storm, she remembered, and stepped aside. Her mind seemed to slow strangely.

  ‘I’ve come to love this country,’ said Sparky.

  Lightning leaped along a wall and flashed on a pair of crossed bayonets with green ribbons on them: the insignia of some Irish regiment. She pointed at these.

  ‘That’s all you can do for us,’ she said. ‘Send us arms. Not advice. We’ve got too much of that right here. Words. Chat …’

  The American walked past her and unhooked one of the weapons from the wall.

  ‘Judith,’ he said. ‘Look at this thing. Just look at it. Do you know what you’re really asking for? Have you thought about it, really forcing yourself to imagine what blood is like, death, mangled bodies? Kathleen has seen dead men. She had to help smuggle your brother’s corpse out of the police morgue. That’s why she’s disgusted with war. You haven’t seen anything of the war. It’s all in your head. Abstract. I don’t believe you would kill a rabbit.’ He handed her the weapon. ‘Here, feel it. Weigh it. Imagine you’re driving it into the guts of a real man. You wouldn’t do it. Your nerve would fail you. I know.’

  She took it from him, balancing it in her hands. It was heavier, of course, than the broom handles and hurling sticks with which Seamus had taught her, but the motion would be the same. She made a lunge at a cushion, impaled it on the end of the blade.

  Sparky laughed. ‘Well, we’ll have to hide that from Timmy,’ he told her and bent down to draw the cushion off the weapon. ‘Ruined, I’m afraid. It doesn’t quite measure up to a rabbit. But I’ll grant you have a stylish thrust.’ He pulled the thing off and examined the holes she had made in it. ‘Real goose-down,’ he said. ‘These people knew how to live. Now it’s your turn. To be happy. Just let the doves settle, Judith, learn to roll with the bumps. That’s the best thing I can wish you and Kathleen and the country, an ordinary, imperfect happiness and forget heroism. It …’

  Sparky’s next sound was like a cushion’s when someone sits on it hard: a sudden, soft, gurgling puff of a sound. He folded on to the divan, impaled by Judith’s overbalancing driving movement. She almost fell on top of him, but the handle of the bayonet steadied her. She had driven the blade up under his rib cage, through the pit of his stomach and into the woodwork on the back of the divan.

  She tried to remove the thing but it was stuck in too deeply. Putting a foot between Sparky’s knees, she pushed the divan and pulled at the handle but to no avail.

  ‘Like a specimen,’ she thought. ‘He’s pinned to green silk like a butterfly specimen.’ She felt calm and exhilarated. Something, though, had happened to her apprehension of time, for the lightning which had signalled to her to drive the bayonet into Sparky was only now being followed by its roll of thunder and the storm had not, she knew, moved from its epicentre right above this house. She wriggled the weapon gently and now it did come out so she could hang it back on its place on the wall. Right after it came a gush of blood, bubbling up in frothy curling gushes which surged down Sparky’s smart tweed front, carrying goosedown feathers from the wounded pillow.

  She sat on the divan opposite the one on which Sparky lay, watching his body slowly nudge its way sideways. His head flopped. The blood poured and trickled and formed a little waterfall on to the polished hardwood floor. Every now and again, lightning flashed and was followed by the growl of thunder. As the day grew darker, she found she could only see Sparky when the lightning came and, of course, she could not predict its coming. She fixed her eyes on the point where the floor would be if she could see it and, the next time the light came, saw that a rivulet had formed and run round the side of the couch, carrying feathers. The floor must be uneven, she thought. She felt tired, released as though from some appalling burden, and was ready to wait as long as necessary for Timmy’s return. After some time, she fell asleep.

  16

  James was on a plane. ‘No drinks,’ the hostess told him. ‘Not yet. Sorry. In a little while.’

  ‘I can see you’re as nervous as myself!’

  The woman in the next seat was set to chat. Her grin trembled at him and he remembered that during take-off she had blessed herself a dozen or so times: crisscross, crisscross, her hand jolting like a mechanical toy.

  Christ, he thought, oh my God!

  ‘This is my first time up in a plane,’ the voice went on. ‘I’m off to Buffalo to see my married daughter. Queer names they have over there, haven’t they? Buffalo? I suppose it’s called after the animal?’

  Her teeth might have been oystershell chippings: blackish, bashed, belonging to some persistent, earthy form of life.

  ‘We’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

  Her hand landed on his which had, he realized, been gripping and tightening on the arm-rest.

  ‘The hostess is a girl from Dunmanway. She told me they’ll be bringing round the tea trolley any minute now.’

  Tea, think of tea: brisk whisk of perished fingers clasping the pot or cup for warmth. Beleek, Royal Worcester or Kilkenny cups raised to Grainne’s lips: white against the off-white of her teeth. After the Shelbourne Rooms became tricky, they had met in rural hotels or tacky Dublin ones where one had to ring repeatedly for service. Drink was sold only in licensing hours but you could always get a cuppa.

  ‘That’ll settle the butterflies in your stomach. I seen your hands tremble. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’

  James was being deported or had, anyway, been asked to leave. Told. There was no choice involved.

  ‘We try,’ the man from the embassy had said, ‘to cooperate with local authorities when one of our citizens,’ pursing his lips over the next bit, ‘engages in illegal activity on foreign soil.’

  The man’s name was Berg or something. Burg? The man with him was from the Special Branch. He had held out his ID and James, leaning forward, read the name Detective-Inspector Seamus Horan.

  Grainne, at the same moment, had waved and walked out of the flashing, revolving door.

  ‘… somewhere more private?’ the American was saying as James turned back to him. The man’s face was not smiling and that was obviously not like him. He had cheeks which might have looked comfortable blowing a trumpet.

  James’s mind moved as though he were spaced out: slowly, repetitively, in retakes. It was the shock, he supposed. The shock.

  ‘Private?’ urged the man, and James found that he had led them into a lounge which might have been kept in readiness for just such a colloquy. Copies of the Irish Tatler and Sketch and the National Geographic were stacked on tables. Shadows hung like draperies and still all James seemed to feel was astonishment at not being astonished. Berg or Burg spoke with a robot-like diction which went badly with his cheerful face. They were having trouble, he told James, with Banned Aid. Pause for this to register.

 
; ‘Yes?’ said James.

  ‘There are indications, Mr Duffy, that undercover of providing relief for the needy, the organization is smuggling in guns. It’s hard to catch up with them,’ said Berg or Burg, ‘because they set up phony charities, phantom foundations and … film companies, Mr Duffy.’ The embassy man raised reproachful eyebrows. ‘Some of the people involved,’ his shoulder jigged irritably, ‘may be well-intentioned and unable to see that small-scale terrorism is going to bring neither peace nor freedom to this country. Perhaps they don’t care?’ The round face might have belonged to a distressed Santa Claus and James understood that the emotion which the man was keeping in check was acute dislike for himself. ‘They don’t have to go on living here, after all,’ said the embassy man, ‘and the gift of a few guns probably affords them emotional satisfaction.’ The man’s jaw was set. He himself was taking emotional satisfaction from this little sermon, James thought, and shrugged mentally. Impotence numbed him. The man was trying to look him in the eye. ‘It also prolongs an impasse, Mr Duffy, by arming people who have no popular mandate.’

  Now what? James wondered, and wondered how much he cared. It would hit him later, he decided. People always said that, didn’t they? Where was Grainne? Would she come back to the lobby when he delayed joining her?

  The Special Branch man was looking tired. At all events, said the American, James had overstepped the law. Rash meddling in other people’s lives was a thing to which some of our citizens were unfortunately prone. It gave our embassies a lot of trouble.

  ‘In your case,’ he told James, ‘the Irish police have agreed not to press charges if you leave at once. Our advice is that you let Detective-Inspector Horan see you aboard a plane. This will save embarrassment all round.’

  James’s protests sounded untrustworthy. His indignation was larded with awareness that his innocence was of the foolish, rather than the sinless, variety. Larry had clearly involved him, intentionally or not, in a less legal side of his endeavours. ‘Are you sure,’ he wound up pro forma, ‘that you haven’t got the wrong end of the stick?’