by Edna O'Brien
If you have any days off, please go out and light fires in the bedrooms and open windows, as I’m sure A. won’t.
Good night from your devoted
E.
It was written on hotel paper and I read it several times.
On the way to work I could see his face as clearly as if he were walking with me—his long, unyielding face with the well-defined bones and the fine skin that came away from the bone when you pinched it. I could see his body, too, his nakedness; the curious elegance with which he walked across the room. I remembered the funny hang of the pouch between his hairy thighs and how I had been afraid.
“It won’t bite you,” he said, and to the touch it grew miraculously like a flower between the clasp of my fingers.
I wondered if I would be afraid next time.
In the shop I wrote to him and posted it at lunchtime.
As I came in to lunch there was a smell of stew in the hall and a typed letter on the table for me. My heart leaped with pleasure, as I thought it was a second letter from him, but it had a Dublin postmark.
It read:
Are you aware that this man is evil and has lived with numerous women and then walked out on them. If you cease to disregard this information I shall have to secure your parents’ address and inform them.
A friend
I nearly fainted black out when I read it. I reread it, and noticed that two words had been crossed out before the word “evil.” At first “treacherous” had been put down, then “bad,” and finally “evil.” It was a typed letter. I had no idea who could have sent it.
I could not eat any lunch. I knew that something was going to happen.
8
It happened at four o’clock, as I packed an order of groceries into a cardboard box.
It was New Year’s Eve and we were busy with orders. Suddenly the shop door was pushed open with a bang, and two very small men helped my father into the shop. He had been drinking.
“Happy New Year,” he said to me.
“Hello,” I said. My breathing quickened and I began to shake all over. He introduced me to the two men and told them how clever I was, and that later on I would do an examination for the Civil Service.
“No future in this place, no future in it …” His eyes roamed around the dusty shelves and spotted the cartons of Hall’s Wine along the top ledge of a glass case.
“They’re empty,” I said. They were empty. We just put the cartons on display and kept the bottles in a press under the counter.
“Give me a bottle,” he said, his eyes red-rimmed and frantic. I got a half bottle from the press and said that we had no more in stock. He tore the paper seal and uncorked it and drank. He had a new hat. Always when he set out on a binge he bought a new brown hat. Our wardrobes were stacked with brown hats.
His friends were smaller than me—they were jockeys. They asked if they could weigh themselves, but my father was leaning against the porcelain scale and it did not register properly. Soon after, they left.
“Good friends of mine, they gave me a good tip for the Curragh Races,” he said as they walked toward the door, and I knew that the minute they were out of sight he would turn on me.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I said.
“I wasn’t expecting this,” he said, searching in his overcoat pocket. He took a letter out and said, “I want to talk to you, my lady; you living like a heathen …”
“What’s that?” I said, snatching the letter. It was a typed letter and I read it feverishly.
Dear Mr. Brady,
It is high time you knew about your daughter and the company she keeps. For over two months now she’s having to do with a married man, who is not living with his wife. He is well known in this city as a dangerous type. No one knows where he gets his money and he has no religion. He shipped his wife to America, and the house is a blind to get young girls out there and dope them. Your daughter goes there alone. I hope I am not too late in warning you, as I would not like to see a nice Catholic Irish girl ruined by a dirty foreigner.
A friend
I read it again through a mist of tears, not only because my father stood over me bursting with temper, but because someone thought of Eugene as being like that.
“Nice thing for your poor father to get in his old age.” I had forgotten how tall my father stood, and how harsh his voice sounded.
“It’s not true,” I said. “None of it is true. I know this man”—I couldn’t bring myself to say Eugene’s name—”but Baba knows him, too, and my landlady, and everybody.”
“Is he a divorced man?”
“He is, but …”
His thin face was very red. “Where is he? I’ll hammer the life out of him.”
“He’s gone away,” I said.
“He’s having nothing more to do with you,” my father said. “You’ll never set eyes on him again.”
That was too much to hear. “I’m my own boss, I’ll do what I like.” “I’ll have no impertinence!” he shouted.
Mrs. Burns rushed out to see what all the commotion was about. She told my father what a nice girl I was and suggested that I take him over to Joanna’s for a cup of tea. She did not want him in the shop, because he was shouting and he looked wild.
Joanna did not want him either.
“Maybe throw sick on the best carpet and Gustav out,” Joanna said to me in the kitchen, as we made a pot of tea. My father sat in the dining room, drinking the Hall’s Wine and threatening what he would do to Eugene.
I took three pounds from his old overcoat, which was hanging on the hall stand. It had a smell of stale drink and cigarettes. There were pound notes in various pockets, so that I didn’t think he’d miss the few pounds I took. He must have got the money for grazing, because although Jack Holland owned most of our land, my father had kept some fields at the far end of the boundary.
After he’d had the tea, Joanna asked me to take him away, as he was falling asleep on the chair.
I took him up the road, toward the phone booth, so as to ring for a taxi to go to the railway station.
“You’re coming home with me, you know that?” he said.
I walked in front, to separate myself from him. “I can’t leave my job,” I said.
“Don’t think you’re fooling me,” he said. “You’re coming with me, and that’s that.” He pushed his new hat back on his head and scratched the top of his forehead where the hatband had made a red rim.
“Stop shouting on the road,” I said. A lot of customers lived on that road and I did not want to be disgraced.
“You’re coming home,” he said.
I did not want to go home. Even at the best of times the house saddened me. After my mother was drowned, our place was mortgaged and Jack Holland bought it. My father moved to the gate lodge and Jack let our big house to an order of nuns. The nuns left after a year or so, because the house was too damp and too expensive. While it was idle, stories began to circulate about my mother’s ghost being seen there. A bank official who was to have rented the house changed his mind when he heard about the ghost, so in desperation Jack Holland asked my father to go back for a few months, to dispel the foolish rumors about Mama. My father had been there for over a year now, and my Aunt Molly (my mother’s sister) came to look after him when her own father died. She had but the wind and a few bantams to talk to, in her house in the Shannon island, so that she liked caring for my father and seeing the postman and an occasional visitor.
I rang the nearest taxi rank, and asked the driver to collect us outside the phone booth, then waited, stiffly, my face turned away.
“You haven’t a lot to say to your father.”
“Should I have?” I said bitterly.
I was planning something. I decided that just as he got into the taxi I would run away, on the excuse that I had left something important at Joanna’s. But even as I planned it, I saw how fruitless it would be.
We waited. My toes felt cold, and I curled and uncurled them to try t
o keep warm.
“Here it is,” I said, putting up my hand, and the taxi slowed down.
I opened the door and he got in awkwardly. He was too tall for getting in and out of motorcars.
“Oh, I forgot my bag of clothes, I’ll have to run back for it,” I said.
“What run? We’ll drive back for it,” he said, with suspicion.
“No, there’s no need,” I said; “anyhow, the taxi couldn’t turn around in the cul-de-sac, I won’t be a sec.” And I closed the door on his shouting voice and ran back in the direction of Joanna’s house. I knew that it would take the driver a few minutes to turn around on the main road, so I reckoned that if I got to Joanna’s side road in time, I could knock at the first house and hide. I knew the woman there, as I often gave sweets to her two children.
I ran recklessly, bumped into a lame man, and didn’t even wait to apologize. I was nearly at the corner of Joanna’s road when I heard the car close behind me.
“Come back here,” my father called. I ran faster, knowing that he was too drunk to catch up with me. But the car drove on a little, passed me by, and then he jumped out just as I turned to run the other way. He caught me by the belt of my coat.
“I tell you, you won’t do this again.”
“I’m not going home, I’m not going home,” I screamed, hoping that some passing stranger might rescue me.
“Get in that car,” he said. I held on to a railing.
“I’ll tell the police,” I said, and by now the taxi driver had come out of the car, and both of them hustled me toward the door, which was swinging open.
They pulled me across, and I was afraid that my new coat (Eugene’s) would get torn. Children gathered across the road to look at us, and the taxi driver said I ought to have more sense and why would I not go with my father, who wanted to save me from the streets.
I sat as far away from my father as I could, and during the ride he abused me and told the taxi driver what an impossible girl I had been, and how I had driven my mother to an early grave.
“Good beating she wants,” he said as I cried to myself.
At the station he bought two one-way tickets, and we passed through the ticket barrier and down the platform toward the train, which was due to leave in about twenty minutes.
“D’you want a cup of tea?” he asked as the train began to move. It was the first word we had spoken since we got in. I knew that he suggested it so that he could go to the bar; the bar and the restaurant adjoined each other on those trains.
“No, thanks,” I said to spite him. I was wondering how I’d escape; whether I’d get off at the first stop or pull the emergency cord when he wasn’t looking and jump off. In my mind I planned very brave things, but the moment he spoke to me I quavered.
“You go and have a cup of tea,” I said, but he guessed my motives and told me to come with him. I followed him up the open corridor, between the rows of seats, in search of the bar.
He ordered a double whiskey for himself, and tea and a ham sandwich for me. The tea was served in a plastic carton which was so hot that I had to hold it with my handkerchief.
“Well, I declare to Christ if it isn’t Jimmy Brady,” a voice said behind my back.
“Tim,” my father said, standing up to greet an old friend. They grabbed each others coat collar and looked into each others red, drinking face and swore about the coincidences of life.
I simply said, “Oh, God!”—knowing now that everything would be worse and that my father would drink twice as much. The man’s name was Tim Healy and he had played hurley with my father at school.
They went across to the counter and Dada bought drinks for Tim Healy, and for two other friends who had been drinking with Tim before we arrived.
“That’s my youngster, I’m bringing her home.” Dada nodded toward me, and the three strange men clasped my hand, and one man squeezed it until the signet ring on my little finger dug a mark into the next finger. Tim Healy ordered orangeade for me, and came and sat with me.
“Move up there,” he said, and I moved to a new part of the bench where it felt cold. He sat on the space I had nicely warmed.
“Well, Caithleen? Caithleen, isn’t it? How are you? You’re a fine girl, and so well you ought to be, you have a decent father and a lovely mother. How’s your mother?”
“She’s dead,” I said. “She got drowned.”
Sudden tragedy filled his bull-like face and he looked as if he was going to cry. He caught my elbow and said that he wouldn’t have wished it for twenty thousand pounds.
“The best go first,” he said, sniffling to control his tears.
“Yes.” Stupid Christmas streamers were hanging from the windows and a tinseled PEACE ON EARTH TO MEN OF GOOD WILL was on the wall underneath a caption to drink more porter.
Tim Healy wanted to go over and sympathize with Dada, but I asked him not to. I knew that they would drink very much more if Dada was reminded at that moment of my mother’s death.
“You know me,” Tim Healy said, “I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Later on he told me that he inspected sausage factories and was on his way to Nenagh, to do a job there the next morning.
“If you saw a sausage made!” he said, opening his mouth wide and drawing his head back to indicate some unmentionable scandals in sausage factories. He bored me, but I put up with it because I saw in him a fresh chance to escape. I decided that when he and my father started reminiscing about hurling matches, and goals scored, I’d slip away, hide in a lavatory, and get off at the next stop.
My father spoke out bravely about the blackguard who had tried to ruin me. They shook their heads, saying that I was only a child and had no sense. Four glasses of orangeade were lined up for me.
“Givvus an aul song there,” Tim said to my father.
“I can’t,” my father said, “I’m getting old—we’ll all sing something,” and they sang “Kevin Barry.” Some were a few words ahead of others, but that did not matter. The young barboy looked uneasy, as if he should stop them, but Dada shook a friendly fist at him and asked him to sing up.
“The bloody English,” Tim said when they had finished. A sigh of agreement went around the bar.
Without warning, my father started to sing, “I sigh for Jeannie with the nut-brown hair,” and all the time he kept raising his chin and pulling his shirt collar away from his Adam’s apple, as if it was choking him. His eyes filled with tears and I supposed that he thought of Mama, because he used to sing that song at Christmas when we had a card party and Mama gave two geese as a prize.
I looked out the window and saw the dark, formless fields slipping past me as we sped farther and farther from Dublin, toward the central plain of Ireland.
I could go now, I thought, so I stood up, ready to slip toward the exit.
“Where are you off to?” my father called.
“To the cloakroom,” I said. I didn’t like to say lavatory.
“Oh, a natural requirement, a natural requirement,” Tim said, and then winking at my father, he said, “I’ll show the lady,” and he linked me up the corridor. My father must have told him to keep an eye on me.
“Don’t worry,” he said as we stumbled along over the jolting floor, “you’ll meet a nice boy yet, one of your own kind.”
I did not tell him this but I now knew that I would never marry one of my own kind.
Passing through the restaurant car, I saw with longing people eating rashers and eggs, tucking clean napkins under their chins, saying ordinary, pleasant things to one another. The calm of their lives made me furious with my own fate.
“We’ll be ‘bona-fide’ if we walk much farther,” Tim Healy said as we went through the eating car and past a row of first-class carriages where people lolled their heads against linen headrests and three priests played cards.
“I’ll wait for you,” he said. I did not manage to escape that time.
At Nenagh, Tim Healy and his two friends got out. There were big, maudlin farewell
s and large whiskies all round.
Then I was alone with my father again.
He was quite drunk now, swaying on the high stool. He took a box of squashed cigarettes from his pocket. “Here, have one, have one of mine,” he said to the barboy, who linked him up the corridor, back to the enclosed carriage, where I had left my gloves and an evening paper. Some carriages were open, but ours was an enclosed one.
“I can walk on my own two feet,” he kept saying.
“Of course you can,” the barboy replied, but still linked him.
Dada sat in a corner seat and closed his eyes instantly.
Roscrea was the next stop, but I knew that it was not for thirty minutes or more, by which time he might have waked up. Still seated, I edged up near the window, above which was the emergency cord and the red sign saying FIVE POUND PENALTY FOR IMPROPER USE. I was going to pull it. As I prayed for courage I tried to think of the fun of it, of him being woken up suddenly by a guard and asked for five pounds. By then I would be gone, vanished into the dark fields. It looked very dark outside and I hoped that there would be a house somewhere near. Then I thought of savage dogs guarding a farmhouse gate, but I still decided to go.
I stood up quietly and took one last look to make sure he was asleep. A quenched cigarette was hanging slackly from his lower lip and he slept with his head tilted backward. I felt a little sorry for him—so weak and broken, and unlovely.
Don’t be an ass, stop pitying him, that’s what ruined your mother’s life, I told myself as I raised my hand to the black emergency cord. I was shaking like a leaf.
“Pull it, pull it quickly,” I whispered to myself.
Either my anxious whisper woke him, or else he had not been asleep at all, because suddenly he sat up and said, “Where are we, where are we?”
I took my hand down and collapsed onto the seat, almost pleased that I had been saved the ordeal of pulling the cord.