Ireland

by Frank Delaney

  Kate, having first recoiled, now advanced.

  “Stop this, stoppit! At once. Now. This minute. You’re not a child. Stop, Ronan!”

  He grew wilder; he kicked the night table, sending everything flying, he swung from the ceiling light, ripping down plaster, then jumped from the bed and began to trample on the clock, smashed a drinking glass with his shoe, danced on the books—some of which he picked up and began to rip open, scattering the pages like a giant’s confetti. Kate jumped at him, grabbed his arm.

  He said, “Don’t touch me—don’t—TOUCH—me. I’ll kill you, I’ll kill anyone who touches me!”

  From the bedroom he raced into Kate’s room, where the lip of a drawer protruded. He grabbed it, yanked it out. Turning it upside down, he danced on the bright sea of colored silks and satins, kicking them here and there, tearing them apart with his shoes. Then he swept everything off her crowded dressing table—and broke two of the actress light-bulbs.

  She stood in the doorway with a changed, icy tactic.

  “Now, let me see: what else can we find you? The kitchen? The bathroom—you could turn on the taps and throw water everywhere.”

  “You bitch—you ALMIGHTY BITCH!”

  Ronan lunged at her, Kate stepped back into the hallway and sidestepped, and he crashed past her and half fell down the stairs.

  “Since you’ve gone that far, why not keep going? The air will cool you.”

  Ronan’s fury would have given an older man a stroke. He raced up the stairs, his eyes fixed on Kate; she ran into her room and locked the door—with difficulty, as debris blocked the path. Ronan kicked the door until it shook, but the Victorian carpenters had built well. He kicked it some more, then raced down the stairs and out into the street and ran for a hundred yards.

  At a garden wall he stopped, breathing steam.

  “The bitch. She’s evicting me, she is, I know it.” He sank back, still enraged, but with his energy fading.

  He stood there for perhaps twenty minutes; people walking past looked at him curiously under the street-lamps. At the far end of the street he could see the light in his room.

  An elderly woman said, “Too cold to be out without a coat, young man.”

  Ronan looked at her savagely. “And I’m staying out.”

  He meant it.

  Ronan walked to the center of the city. Nobody watching would have tried to obstruct him; his head thrust forward, he moved like a force of nature. Once or twice he stopped, to think, to consider a return, but his anger swelled again, and incoherent thought swept in like a wave. At the same time he felt a liberty that elated him, a feeling that anything could happen, that he had no one to whom he must answer. It rose with a glee unlike any previous freedoms of the woods and fields.

  Sudden rain lashed down and would have drenched him had he not found a vacant doorway. In the hour and more he was forced to stand there, his mood darkened further, and feelings of revenge began to fester. By the time he next walked on, he had decided he would thereafter deny them his company—Kate, Alison, everyone. At around nine o’clock, another stinging rainburst held him up yet again. And still he felt no cold, heated by his own rage.

  When the rain died away, he saw what seemed like the promise of a crowd walking with purpose along Dame Street, and he followed. They led him to Christchurch Cathedral, where people had begun to gather; many drank liquor out of bottles.

  “What happens here?” he said to a couple of girls.

  “Ah, lissen to him,” they giggled to each other.

  “The New Year,” said a man with a dog. “They’ll be ringing the bells, you know, ringing in the new.”

  “There’ll be more than the bells ringin’, if you ask me, so there will,” said one of the girls, and they wheezed with laughter, holding on to each other.

  “Her drawers, that’s what’ll be wringin’ like,” said the other by way of explanation, and they could see that Ronan had not the first idea why they were laughing. Which doubled their mirth.

  He fastened on them. Their gaudiness caught him on a spike; as exotic as blowfish and coarser than anything he had met in his life, they became a lightning rod for his high and excitable mood.

  “I’m Carmel, and this is Yvonne. She’s the wild one.”

  “Listen to you. I am not wild!” Their accents fascinated him, and he had a flash of reflection on how deeply sheltered his life had been.

  “She’s a Protestant, and I’m a Catholic—I’m a good girl,” said Carmel.

  “Carmel Dolan, give over, you!”

  “Do you drink?” said Ronan.

  “We do, and we don’t.”

  “Which? You drink or you don’t drink?”

  In chorus, they mimicked him, broadening their urban vowels to try and match his accent; “You drink or you don’t drink.”

  Carmel said, “I don’t drink much.”

  Yvonne said, “No. She spills most of it.”

  “I do not! Hey, d’ja bring any butter with ya?”

  “Meaning?”

  “All fellas up from the country has butter with them, in their hair and that.”

  And Carmel said, “Yass, up from the country, isn’t that where all the butter comes from. The country?” and to Ronan’s bewilderment they heaved with laughter as though they had invented comedy.

  More people arrived. The man and his dog had not moved; the dog ate a placid sausage from the man’s hand.

  “Hey, Rover,” said Carmel, eyeing Ronan. “Give us a sausage, willya?”

  “Isssn’t him you should be askin’ for a sausage,” said Yvonne, and again they laughed like mad dolls.

  “His name isn’t Rover, and youse two is a pair of trollops,” said the man with the dog.

  “We weren’t talkin’ to youse.”

  “We were talkin’ to him.”

  “And the dog. We were talkin’ to the dog too, weren’t we, Yvonne?”

  “Hey, mister, is it a dog or a bitch, mister?”

  The man said, “Youse are the bitches, a right pair, too.”

  “Look at youse, with the head on ya,” said Carmel.

  “Doncha hate oul’ fellas?” said Yvonne.

  Ronan tried to edge in. “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Wha’ question?”

  “Drinks? I don’t know. A pub?” he said.

  “C’mon, so—and bring the butter with ya,” and the laughing girls trotted off.

  Ronan walked behind them against the tide of the gathering crowds. Under dim streetlights, he followed them to the corner of Francis Street, where they stood for a moment, still giggling. Pied pipers on teetering heels, they led him down the cobblestones. At a lighted door they stopped, looked back at him, then went in. He followed, with mixed feelings of adventure and repulsion; the girls wore seedy clothes and eye makeup black as death; the walls of Ronan’s sheltered life had begun to crack.

  Inside the pub, two men sat like crows at the bar. On a frayed banquette sat an old woman; she wore a hat that had once been a thrill, her face a map of red blotches. Above her head hung a long mirror hailing Power’s Gold Label Whiskey; the silvering on the glass had flecked to gray. A barman, wearing a pea-green suit, edged cream off full pint glasses with a beer mat. His shirt collar curled like heated paper, and his neutral eyes inspected Ronan.

  “The dog after the bone, huh?”

  Ronan said, “Hallo,” looked around, and saw no girls.

  “They’re in there,” said the barman. “Follow your nose.”

  His gesture pointed Ronan through a doorway half draped by a fake Persian curtain. Inside, like a pair of cheap parakeets, sat Carmel and Yvonne.

  “Well indeed an’ youse took your time.”

  “We thought youse had run away.”

  “Would you girls like a drink?”

  “I’ll have a rum-and-shudder,” said Yvonne.

  “That’s right, she’ll have a rum, and I’ll shudder,” said Carmel.

  “Dickie!” yelled Yvonne. “Bring
us your legs!”

  The barman appeared; his suit, when seen in full glory, had been worn to a shine; he wore lopsided shoes of mottled gray suede.

  “My legs is together, not like some I could mention.”

  He turned chattily to Ronan. “Now what are youse? A medical? Or—I’d say law, if I have to guess. And I don’t have to.”

  “Jaysus himself, Dickie, if youse aren’t goin’ to get us a rum—”

  “Listen to her taking the Holy Name in vain, and she a Protestant.” To Ronan he said, “Youse’re well on here. A Protestant’ll give youse a ride any time.”

  The girls whooped. “Dickie, bring him a pint. Anything to knock the starch outta him.”

  “If youse two want service offa him—”

  “We know! Give him a brandy.”

  Dickie confided in Ronan. “It makes the oul’ lad stand up straight, there’s some calls brandy ‘the hanged man’ because of—what you might call ‘the erectile effect,’ know what I mean, like?”

  Carmel said, “Mr. O’Toole.”

  Yvonne said, “From the Dublin Erection Company.” And they both laughed again.

  Ronan nodded. “I’m a history student, actually.” And it became plain to the others that all the carnal references had passed him by.

  “Dickie! She wants vodka, and you never got me the rum.”

  “History? Aw, Jayz, tough station, history, you don’t know who to believe, know what I mean, like? I’m seventy next March, and sure I don’t believe my own history.”

  Ronan sat down, and Dickie vanished, limping.

  “C’mere,” said Carmel. “She said to me she’d throw someone over for you.”

  “I did not!” said Yvonne.

  “Lissen. Wha’s yer name?”

  “Ronan.”

  “Ronan? Nice ring to it, Ronan, we wouldn’t be able to stomach it if you were called Percy or something, would we?”

  “I want you to stop laughing and talk to me,” said Ronan.

  The girls looked at him and subsided.

  “We’re a bit giddy,” said Carmel.

  “How old are you?” said Ronan.

  Carmel said, “Old enough to have sense.”

  “Youse should never ask a lady her age,” said Yvonne. “Very rude. How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Carmel said, “Oh, he’s yours, Yvonne,” and they laughed again.

  Yvonne wore a white blouse, the ruffled collar stained with makeup. Carmel’s teeth protruded, and she wore a red headband.

  “Are you working girls?” said Ronan.

  “We are notttt!?!” said Carmel. “The cheek of it.”

  Yvonne said to her, “No, he means—” She whispered something, then said to Ronan, “You mean, do we have jobs like, doncha?”

  “What else could I mean?”—at which the girls pealed louder than ever.

  The drinks arrived.

  “Dickie, he wants to know are we working girls?”

  “He’s not far wrong”—but Dickie saw that Ronan had no idea what they meant. He leaned and whispered, “Round here, a working girl is a hoor—a tart, know what I mean?”

  Ronan blushed bright red.

  “It’s all right, drink up,” said Yvonne and patted him on the knee. “Anyone can make a mistake.”

  “If it is a mistake,” said Dickie.

  “Go on, you,” said Yvonne. “Go back to your knittin’.”

  “No, no,” said Carmel. “Tell us a story, Dickie.”

  “Dickie’s always telling stories, aren’t you, Dickie?”

  “Oh?” asked Ronan.

  Dickie effaced himself. “Ah, sure don’t you hear every sort of a story behind a bar?”

  “Real stories—I mean, long stories?”

  “Ah, yeah, I mean some that’d go on all night and be resumed the next night. Like a follower-upper, d’you remember, in the pictures? They’d leave you with yer man on the edge of a cliff till next Saturday.”

  “A serial?” said Ronan.

  “The very word. There used to be an old fella came in here was great at it, he’d tell the whole pub a story, and they’d have to come back the next night to hear how it ended. But he was a professional like, he used to go the roads, north and south, telling stories.”

  Ronan quickened. “Was he very tall, with a long jaw and an old hat?”

  “He wasn’t, you know, he was a small scutty sort of a lad, with breath that’d take the paint offa the walls, like a man was always eating onions. And he had a lazy eye. But he had great yarns on him.”

  The girls cooed.

  “Tell us one, Dickie.”

  “C’mon, Dickie.”

  They sampled the drinks as Dickie searched his memory.

  “Well, the one I like, it all came out near here, across the river in Fishamble Street. That was where Handel put on the Messiah for the first time. And this fella, this old lad with the lazy eye, he used to call it ‘The Story of the Only Man who could Handle Handel.’”

  I FORGET WHAT YEAR IT WAS—SIXTEEN-something or seventeen-something, it doesn’t matter, it was back in them days when tea was tea and water was water, and you had to be careful you didn’t make them in the one pot. Anyway, Handel’s Messiah—first performance thereof as aforementioned—is one of the many things for which Dublin is respectfully famous.

  Dublin, of course, was always a great city for the music. The time I’m talking about, there was a man living here called Kelly who was a wine merchant and had a passable voice himself, but his son became a great singer for Mozart over in Vienna in the Imperial Theater and used to play billiards with the same Mozart, who by all accounts was a small little fellow, thin as a rake and blondy-haired and couldn’t stand noise at all. That’s Mozart for you. But that’s neither here nor there.

  The Only Man Who Could Handle Handel was a man called Jimmy Hanly—although after this story got out, he said he wanted to be known as James, more respectable, like. And that’s part of the story, the fact that his name was Hanly—because when he met Handel, the great composer was carried away with how like his own name Jimmy’s was: Handel and Hanly. That’s how they got off to a flying start, and if they hadn’t, there might never be a Messiah at all.

  Anyway, Handel was a German gentleman, and he came over here from England, where there was a German king at the time who liked Handel’s music. So, because people always wanted to be in the fashion, and the fashion in them days was always what the king liked, anyone who liked Handel was likely to be liked by the king. People can be very foolish.

  So: the English people who lived in Dublin and who governed the country from Dublin Castle invited Handel here, hoping to gain the king’s approval thereby. To be fair to them, they had a good reason; they wanted Mr. Handel to give concerts for the aid of the prisoners in the jails. That’s where Jimmy Hanly comes into the picture—he had a young brother in jail, as had a lot of people in Dublin, because they were very poor and always stealing things, hoping to make a bit of money.

  Handel came here of a Thursday, and Jimmy Hanly decides he’ll go and see him and ask him to say something about the prisoners before he starts conducting, like. He wanted him to say, “Look here, ladies and gentlemen, this concert is for the aid of the prisoners, but between you and me there’s a lot of people in jail that shouldn’t be.”

  Which is what Jimmy thought about his brother, who found an orange in the street that fell off a cart, and was caught with the orange in his possession and thrown into jail without any trial.

  There was no chance on this earth of Jimmy Hanly getting to meet Mr. George Handel; it was nearly like him trying to get in and see the other George, the king, in his palace over in London. He tried three or four times to get into the house on one excuse or another—delivering milk or with a message from the tailor or a gift of a special bottle of wine, which he came by lightly of course; he wasn’t a man could afford to buy wine. But no go—they always sent him to the trades-man’s entrance, where a butler or some lack
ey took whatever he was carrying and sent him away again.

  Then he hung around the street for a while, in the hopes of seeing Mr. Handel walk out for a constitutional stroll, as a great many gentlemen were accustomed to doing. But he never saw him. All he saw was the Dublin streets, all mud and everything like that. You must remember now that times was desperate hard on the plain people of Dublin, that only a handful had any money at all, and they were all English—judges and earls and men who owned land. He’d see the ladies walk out in their wigs and the gentlemen in their brocade coats, and they wore wigs too, all enjoying their stroll. But no Mr. Handel. And Jimmy nearly gave up.

  The day he said to himself that he’d abandon his plan—which was breaking his heart, because he loved his little brother and had been responsible for him since their father had a stroke—that was the day things changed. Bad weather came in, huge gales blowing up and down the east coast and wrecking all the ships. Jimmy knew that nobody would be sailing back to England in them kind of conditions, and he says to himself, “I won’t give up yet.”

  Now, inside in the house he was staying in, Mr. Handel was raging over the weather. He didn’t want to be stuck in Dublin just because there wasn’t a ship on the Irish Sea that’d take him with waves like that. He walked up and he walked down and he walked up again, and he muttered and he spluttered and he muttered again.

  “There’sn’t a thing I can do, is there?” he said to himself and to everybody who heard him—by all accounts, he had a very loud voice.

  Outside in the street, Jimmy Hanly had made friends with one of the maids in the house, a little girl from Stoneybatter called Rose Barry.

  “How’s Mr. Handel, Rose?”

  “He’s beside himself. We’re all mad from him.”

  “Mad? Why so because?”

  And Rose said, “He’s like a bear, so he is, he’s walking up and down ’cause he wants to get back to England, and the weather’s too bad. And he’s in an awful bad temper, and that has everyone real worried.”

  Jimmy didn’t want anyone to say a derogatory word against his friend Handel, whom he hadn’t met yet, like, but he already thought of him as a friend—Dublin people are like that.