My Oedipus Complex

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said insincerely, and he smiled and touched his cap again. Then with a polite and almost deferential air he went up to Foster. ‘Did you say something?’ he asked.

  Foster looked as astonished as though a kitten had suddenly got up on his hind legs and challenged him to fight.

  ‘I did not,’ he said, and backed away.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Ned said, almost purring. ‘I was afraid you might be looking for trouble.’

  It astonished Rita. ‘There’s a queer one for you!’ she said when Ned had gone. But she was curiously pleased to see that he was no sissy. She didn’t like sissies.

  2

  The Lomasneys lived on Sunday’s Well in a small house with a long sloping garden and a fine view of the river and the city. Harry Lomasney, the builder, was a small man who wore grey tweed suits and soft collars several sizes too big for him. He had a ravaged brick-red face with keen blue eyes, and a sandy straggling moustache with one side going up and the other down, and the workmen said you could tell what humour he was in by the side he pulled. He was nicknamed ‘Hasty Harry’. ‘Great God!’ he fumed when his wife was having her first baby. ‘Nine months over a little job like that! I’d do it in three weeks if I could get started.’

  His wife was tall and matronly and very pious, but her piety never got much in her way. A woman who had survived Hasty would have survived anything. Their eldest daughter, Kitty, was loud-voiced and gay, and had been expelled from school for writing indecent letters to a boy. She had failed to tell the nuns that she had copied the letters out of a French novel and didn’t know what they meant. Nellie was placider than her sister and took more after her mother; besides, she didn’t read French novels.

  Rita was the exception among the girls. She seemed to have no softness, never had a favourite saint or a favourite nun, and said it was soppy. For the same reason she never had flirtations. Her friendship with Ned Lowry was the nearest she got to that, and though Ned came regularly to the house and took her to the pictures every week, her sisters would have found it hard to say if she ever did anything with him she wouldn’t do with a girl. There was something tongue-tied, twisted and unhappy in her. She had a curious raw, almost timid smile as though she thought people only intended to hurt her. At home she was reserved, watchful, mocking. She could listen for hours to her mother and sisters without opening her mouth, and then suddenly mystify them by dropping a well-aimed jaw-breaker – about classical music, for instance – before relapsing into sulky silence, as though she had merely drawn back the veil for a moment on depths in herself she would not permit them to explore. This annoyed her sisters, because they knew there weren’t any depths; it was all swank.

  After taking her degree, she got a job in a convent school in a provincial town in the west of Ireland. She and Ned corresponded, and he even went to see her there. At home he reported that she seemed quite happy.

  But it didn’t last. A few months later, the Lomasneys were at supper when they heard a car stop; the gate squeaked, and steps came up the long path to the front door. Then came the bell and a cheerful voice from the hall.

  ‘Hallo, Paschal, I suppose ye weren’t expecting me?’

  ‘ ’Tis never Rita!’ said her mother, meaning that it was but shouldn’t be.

  ‘As true as God, that one is after getting into trouble,’ said Kitty prophetically.

  The door opened and Rita slouched in; a long, stringy girl with a dark, glowing face. She kissed her father and mother lightly.

  ‘What happened you at all, child?’ her mother asked placidly.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Rita, an octave up the scale. ‘I just got the sack.’

  ‘The sack?’ said her father, beginning to pull the wrong side of his moustache. ‘What did you get the sack for?’ Hasty would sack a man three times in a day, but nobody paid any attention.

  ‘Give us a chance to get something to eat first, can’t you?’ Rita said laughingly. She took off her hat and smiled at herself in the mirror above the mantelpiece. It was a curious smile as though she were amused by what she saw. Then she smoothed back her thick black hair. ‘I told Paschal to bring in whatever was going. I’m on the train since ten. The heating was off as usual. I’m frizzled.’

  ‘A wonder you wouldn’t send us a wire,’ said Mrs Lomasney as Rita sat down and grabbed some bread and butter.

  ‘Hadn’t the cash,’ said Rita.

  ‘But what happened, Rita?’ Kitty asked brightly.

  ‘You’ll hear it all in due course. Reverend Mother is bound to write and tell ye how I lost my character.’

  ‘Wisha, what did you do to her, child?’ asked her mother with amusement. She had been through all this before, with Hasty and Kitty, and she knew that God was very good and nothing much ever happened.

  ‘Fellow that wanted to marry me,’ said Rita. ‘He was in his last year at college, and his mother didn’t like me, so she got Reverend Mother to give me the push.’

  ‘But what business is it of hers?’ asked Nellie.

  ‘None whatever, girl,’ said Rita.

  But Kitty looked suspiciously at her. Rita wasn’t natural: there was something about her that was not in control. After all, this was her first real love affair, and Kitty could not believe that she had gone about it like anyone else.

  ‘Still, you worked pretty fast,’ she said.

  ‘You’d have to work fast in that place,’ said Rita. ‘There was only one possible man in the whole place – the bank clerk. We used to call him “The One”. I wasn’t there a week when a nun ticked me off for riding on the pillion of his motor-bike.’

  ‘And did you?’ Kitty asked innocently.

  ‘Fat chance I got!’ said Rita. ‘They did that to every teacher to give her the idea that she was well-watched. The unfortunates were scared out of their wits. I only met Tony Donoghue a fortnight ago. He was home with a breakdown.’

  ‘Well, well, well!’ said her mother without rancour. ‘No wonder his poor mother was upset. A boy that’s not left college yet! Couldn’t ye wait till he was qualified anyway?’

  ‘Not very well,’ said Rita. ‘He’s going to be a priest.’

  Kitty sat back with a superior grin. She had known it all the time. Of course, Rita couldn’t do anything like other people. If it hadn’t been a priest it would have been a married man or a negro, and Rita would have shown off about it just the same.

  ‘What’s that you say?’ her father asked, springing to his feet.

  ‘All right, don’t blame me!’ Rita said hastily, beaming at him. ‘It wasn’t my fault. He said he didn’t want to be a priest. His mother was driving him into it. That’s why he had the breakdown.’

  ‘Let me out of this before I have a breakdown myself,’ said Hasty. ‘I’m the one that should be the priest. If I was I wouldn’t be saddled with a mad, distracted family the way I am.’

  He stamped out of the room, and the girls laughed. The idea of their father as a priest appealed to them almost as much as the idea of him as a mother. But Mrs Lomasney did not laugh.

  ‘Reverend Mother was perfectly right,’ she said severely. ‘As if it wasn’t hard enough on the poor boys without girls like you throwing temptation in their way. I think you behaved very badly, Rita.’

  ‘All right, if you say so,’ Rita said shortly with a boyish shrug, and refused to talk any more about it.

  After supper, she said she was tired and went to bed, and her mother and sisters sat on in the front room, discussing the scandal. Someone rang and Nellie opened the door.

  ‘Hallo, Ned,’ she said, ‘I suppose you came up to congratulate us.’

  ‘Hallo,’ Ned said, smiling primly with closed lips. With a sort of automatic movement he took off his overcoat and hat and hung them on the rack. Then he emptied the pockets with the same thoroughness. He had not changed much. He was thin and pale, spectacled and clever, with the same precise and tranquil manner – ‘like an old Persian cat’, as Nellie said. He read too many books. In t
he last year or two something seemed to have happened him. He did not go to Mass any longer. Not going to Mass struck all the Lomasneys as too damn clever. ‘On what?’ he added, having avoided any unnecessary precipitation.

  ‘You didn’t know who was here?’

  ‘No,’ he said, raising his brows mildly.

  ‘Rita!’

  ‘Oh!’ The same tone. It was part of his cleverness not to be surprised at anything. It was as though he regarded any attempt to surprise him as an invasion of his privacy.

  ‘She’s after getting the sack for trying to run off with a priest,’ said Nellie.

  If she thought that would shake him she was badly mistaken. He tossed his head with a silent chuckle and went into the room, adjusting his pinc-nez. For a fellow who was supposed to be in love with her, this was very peculiar behaviour, Nellie thought. He put his hands in his trousers pockets and stood on the hearth with his legs well apart.

  ‘Isn’t it awful, Ned?’ Mrs Lomasney asked in her deep voice.

  ‘Is it?’ Ned purred, smiling.

  ‘With a priest!’ cried Nellie.

  ‘Now, he wasn’t a priest, Nellie,’ Mrs Lomasney said severely. ‘Don’t be trying to make it worse.’

  ‘Suppose you tell me what happened,’ suggested Ned.

  ‘But sure, when we don’t know, Ned,’ cried Mrs Lomasney. ‘You know what that one is like in one of her sulky fits. Maybe she’ll tell you. She’s up in bed.’

  ‘I may as well try,’ said Ned.

  Still with his hands in his pockets, he rolled after Mrs Lomasney up the thickly carpeted stairs to Rita’s little bedroom at the top of the house. While Mrs Lomasney went in to see that her daughter was decent he paused to look out over the river and the lighted city behind it. Rita, wearing a pink dressing jacket, was lying with one arm under her head. By the bed was a table with a packet of cigarettes she had been using as an ashtray. He smiled and shook his head reprovingly.

  ‘Hallo, Ned,’ she said, reaching him a bare arm. ‘Give us a kiss. I’m quite kissable now.’

  He didn’t need to be told that. He was astonished at the change in her. Her whole bony, boyish face seemed to have gone soft and mawkish and to be lit up from inside. He sat on an armchair by the bed, carefully pulling up the bottoms of his trousers, then put his hands in the pockets again and sat back with crossed legs.

  ‘I suppose they’re hopping downstairs,’ said Rita.

  ‘They seem a little excited,’ Ned replied, with bowed head cocked sideways, looking like some wise old bird.

  ‘Wait till they hear the details!’ Rita said grimly.

  ‘Are there details?’ he asked mildly.

  ‘Masses of them,’ said Rita. ‘Honest to God, Ned, I used to laugh at the glamour girls in the convent. I never knew you could get like that about a fellow. It’s like something busting inside you. Cripes, I’m as soppy as a kid!’

  ‘And what’s the fellow like?’ Ned asked curiously.

  ‘Tony? How the hell do I know? He’s decent enough, I suppose. His mother has a shop in the Main Street. He kissed me one night coming home and I was so furious I cut the socks off him. Next evening, he came round to apologize, and I never got up or asked him to sit down or anything. I suppose I was still mad with him. He said he never slept a wink. “Didn’t you?” said I. “It didn’t trouble me much.” Bloody lies, of course; I was twisting and turning the whole night. “I only did it because I was so fond of you,” says he. “Is that what you told the last one, too?” said I. That got him into a wax as well, and he said I was calling him a liar. “And aren’t you?” said I. Then I waited for him to hit me, but instead he began to cry, and then I began to cry – imagine me crying, Ned! – and next thing I was sitting on his knee. Talk about the Babes in the Wood. First time he ever had a girl on his knee, he said, and you know how much of it I did.’

  There was a discreet knock and Mrs Lomasney smiled benevolently at them round the door.

  ‘I suppose ’tis tea Ned is having?’ she asked in her deep voice.

  ‘No, I’m having the tea,’ Rita said lightly, throwing him a cigarette. ‘Ned says he’d sooner a drop of the hard tack.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t that a great change, Ned?’ cried Mrs Lomasney.

  ‘ ’Tis the shock,’ said Rita. ‘He didn’t think I was that sort of girl.’

  ‘He mustn’t know much about girls,’ said Mrs Lomasney.

  ‘He’s learning now,’ said Rita.

  When Paschal brought up the tray, Rita poured out tea for Ned and whiskey for herself. He made no comment; things like that were a commonplace in the Lomasney household.

  ‘Anyway,’ she went on, pulling at her cigarette, ‘he told his old one he wanted to chuck the Church and marry me. There was ructions. The people in the shop at the other side of the street had a son a priest, and she wanted to be as good as them. Away with her up to Reverend Mother, and Reverend Mother sends for me. Did I want to destroy the young man and he on the threshold of a great calling? I told her ’twas his mother wanted to destroy him, and I asked her what sort of a priest did she think Tony would make. Oh, he’d be twice the man, after a sacrifice like that. Honest to God, Ned, the way that woman went on, you’d think she was talking of doctoring an old tom-cat. I think this damn country must be full of female vets. After that, she dropped the Holy Willie stuff and told me his mother was after getting into debt to put him in for the priesthood, and if he chucked it now, she’d never be able to pay it back. Wouldn’t they kill you with style?’

  ‘And what did you do then?’

  ‘I went to see his mother, of course.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘I told you I was off my head. I thought I might work it with the personal touch.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have been successful.’

  ‘I’d as soon try the personal touch on a traction engine, Ned,’ Rita said ruefully. ‘That woman was twice my weight. I told her I wanted to marry Tony. “I’m sorry, you can’t,” she said. “What’s to stop me?” says I. “He’s gone too far,” says she. “If he was gone farther it wouldn’t stop me,” says I. I told her then what Reverend Mother said about the three hundred pounds and offered to pay it back for her if she let me marry him.’

  ‘And had you the three hundred?’ Ned asked in surprise.

  ‘Ah, where would I get three hundred? And she knew it, the old jade! She didn’t believe a word I said. I saw Tony afterwards, and he was crying. He said he didn’t want to break her heart. I declare to God, Ned, that woman has as much heart as a traction engine.’

  ‘Well, you seem to have done it in style,’ said Ned as he put away his teacup.

  ‘That wasn’t the half of it. When I heard the difficulties his mother was making, I offered to live with him instead.’

  ‘Live with him!’ said Ned. That startled even him.

  ‘Well, go away on holidays with him. Lots of girls do it. I know they do. And, God Almighty, isn’t it only natural?’

  ‘And what did he say to that?’ Ned asked curiously.

  ‘He was scared stiff.’

  ‘He would be,’ said Ned, giving his superior little sniff as he took out a packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Oh, it’s all very well for you,’ cried Rita, bridling up. ‘You may think you’re a great fellow, all because you read Tolstoy and don’t go to Mass, but you’d be just as scared if a doll offered to go to bed with you.’

  ‘Try me,’ he said sedately as he lit her cigarette, but somehow the idea of suggesting such a thing to Ned only made her laugh.

  He stayed till quite late, and when he went downstairs Mrs Lomasney and the girls fell on him and dragged him into the sitting-room.

  ‘Well, doctor, how’s the patient?’ asked Mrs Lomasney.

  ‘Oh, I think the patient is coming round nicely,’ said Ned with a smile.

  ‘But would you ever believe it, Ned?’ she cried. ‘A girl that wouldn’t look at the side of the road a fellow was on, unless ’twas to go robbing orchards wi
th him. You’ll have another drop of whiskey?’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘And is that all you’re going to tell us?’

  ‘You’ll hear it all from herself.’

  ‘We won’t.’

  ‘I dare say not,’ he said with a hearty chuckle, and went for his coat.

  ‘Wisha, Ned, what will your mother say when she hears it?’ asked Mrs Lomasney, and Ned put his nose in the air and gave an exaggerated version of what Mrs Lomasney called ‘his Hayfield sniff’.

  ‘ “All quite mad,” ’ he said.

  ‘The dear knows, she might be right,’ she said with resignation, helping him on with his coat. ‘I hope your mother doesn’t notice the smell of whiskey from your breath,’ she added dryly just to show him that she missed nothing, and then stood at the door, looking up and down, while she waited for him to wave from the gate.

  ‘Ah, with the help of God it might be all for the best,’ she said as she closed the door behind him.

  ‘If you think he’s going to marry her, you’re mistaken,’ said Kitty. ‘Merciful God, I’d like to see myself telling Bill O’Donnell a thing like that. He’d have my sacred life. That fellow positively enjoys it.’

  ‘Ah, God is good,’ her mother said cheerfully, kicking a mat into place. ‘Some men might like that.’

  3

  Ned apparently did, but he was the only one. Within a week, Kitty and Nellie were sick to death of Rita round the house. She was bad enough at the best of times – or so they said – but now she brooded and mooned and quarrelled. Most afternoons she strolled down the Dyke to Ned’s little shop, where she sat on the counter, swinging her legs and smoking, while Ned leaned against the window, tinkering with some delicate instrument at the insides of a watch. Nothing seemed to rattle Ned, not even Rita doing what no customer would dare to do. When he finished work he changed his coat and they went out to tea. He sat in a corner at the back of the teashop, pulled up the bottoms of his trousers, and took out a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches, which he placed on the table before him with a look that commanded them to stay there and not get lost. His face was pale and clear and bright, like an evening sky when the last light has drained from it.