My Oedipus Complex

by Frank O'Connor

  And at last she came; a slim figure in black with starched white facings. He scarcely looked at her, but took her hand, smiling, embarrassed and silent. She too was ill at ease.

  They sat together on a garden seat from which he saw again the town and the bay, even more quite now. He heard nothing of its noise but the desolate screech of a train as it entered the station. Her eyes took it all in dispassionately, and now and again he glanced shyly up at her fine profile. That had not changed, and he wondered whether he had altered as little as she. Perhaps he hadn’t, perhaps for her at least he was still the same as he had always been. Yet – there was a change in her! Her face had lost something; perhaps it was intensity; it no longer suggested the wildness and tenderness that he knew was in her. She looked happier and stronger.

  ‘And Kate?’ she asked after they had talked for a little while. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Oh, Kate is very well. They have a nice house in Passage – you know Tom has a school there. It’s just over the river – the house, I mean; sometimes I go down to them on a Sunday evening for tea.… They have five children now; the eldest is sixteen.’

  ‘Yes, of course – Marie. Why, she was called after me! She’s my godchild.’

  ‘Yes, yes, fancy I’d forgotten! You were always with Kate in those days.’

  ‘I’d love to see Marie. She has written to me for my feastday ever since she was nine.’

  ‘Has she? I didn’t know. They don’t talk to me about it.’

  A faint flush mounted her cheek; for a moment she was silent, and if he had looked at her he would have seen a sudden look of doubt and pain in her eyes. But he did not look up, and she continued.

  ‘Kate writes to me off and on too – but you know Kate! It was from her I heard of your mother’s death. That must have been a terrible blow to you.’

  ‘Yes, it was very sudden. I was the only one with her when it came.’

  ‘We had Mass for her here. How did she die? Was she –?’

  ‘She died hard. She didn’t want to leave me.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Her lips moved silently for a little.

  ‘I’ve never forgotten her. She was so gentle, so – so unobtrusive, and Fair Hill used to be such a happy place then, before Kate married, when there were only the three of ourselves.… Do you remember, I used to go without my dinner to come up after school?…And so the house is gone?’

  ‘Yes, the house is gone.’

  ‘And Jennifer? The parrot?’

  ‘Jennifer died long ago. She choked herself with an apple.’

  ‘And Jasper?’

  ‘Jasper too. An Alsatian killed him. I have another now, a sheepdog, a great lazy fellow. He’s made friends with the Kerry Blue next door and the Kerry Blue comes with us and catches rabbits for him. He’s fond of rabbits, but he’s so big, so big and lazy!’

  ‘You’re in lodgings. Why didn’t you go to live with Kate and Tom? You know they’d have been glad to have you.’

  ‘Why should I? They were married; they had children at the time; they needed the house for themselves.… Besides, you know what I am. I’m a simple fellow, I’m not a bit clever, I don’t read books or papers. At dinner the cattle-jobbers were trying to get me talking politics, and honest, I didn’t know what they were at! What would Tom and his friends from the University have thought of a stupid creature like me?’

  ‘No, you spent all your time in the country. I remember you getting up at five and going out with the dogs, around White’s Cross and back through Ballyvolane. Do you still do that?’

  ‘Yes, every fine morning and most Sundays. But I had to give up the birds when mother died.’

  ‘Ah, the birds! What a pity! I remember them too, and how beautifully they sang.’ She laughed happily, without constraint. ‘The other girls envied me so much because you were always giving me birds’ eggs, and I swapped them for other things, and I came back to you crying, pretending I’d lost them.… I don’t think you ever guessed what a cheat I was.… Ah, well! And you’re still in the factory.’

  ‘Still in the factory!…You were right, you see. Do you remember you said I’d stick there until I grew grey hairs. You used to be angry with me then, and that worried me, and I’d give a spurt or two – No, no, I never had any ambition – not much anyhow – and as well be there as any place else.… And now I’m so used to it that I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to. I live so quietly that even coming here has been too much of an adventure for me. All the time I’ve been saying “Tomorrow I shall be back at work, tomorrow I shall be back at work.” I’ll be glad to get home.’

  ‘Yes, I can understand that.’

  ‘Can you? You used to be different.’

  ‘Yes, but things are different here. One works. One doesn’t think. One doesn’t want to think. I used to lie abed until ten at one time, now I’m up at half-past five every morning and I’m not a bit more tired. I’m kept busy all day. I sleep sound. I don’t dream. And I hate anything that comes to disturb the routine.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘No, not like you. I hate being ill, lying in bed listening to the others and not working myself.’

  ‘And you don’t get into panics any longer?’

  ‘No, no more panics.’

  ‘You don’t weep? You’re not ambitious any longer? – that’s so strange!…Yes, it is good to have one’s life settled, to fear nothing and hope for nothing.’

  She cast a quick, puzzled look at him.

  ‘Do you still go to early Mass?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, just as before.’

  They fell into silence again. A little mist was rising from the town; one side of the bay was flanked with a wall of gold; a cool wind from the sea blew up to them, stirring the thick foliage and tossing her light, black veil. A bell rang out suddenly and she rose.

  ‘What are your lodgings like?’ she asked, her cheeks reddening. ‘I hope you look after yourself and that they feed you properly. You used to be so careless.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. They’re very decent. And you – how do you find the place agreeing with you? Better than the city?’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she said wearily, ‘it is milder here.’

  They went silently up the path towards the convent and parted as they had met, awkwardly, almost without looking at one another.

  ‘No,’ he thought, as he passed through the convent gate, ‘that’s over!’ But he knew that for days, perhaps for months, birds and dogs, flowers, his early-morning walks through the country, the trees in summer, all those things that had given him pleasure would give him nothing but pain. The farmers coming from the fair, shouting to one another forward and back from their lumbering carts brought to mind his dreams of yesterday, and he grieved that God had created men without the innocence of natural things, had created them subtle and capricious, with memories in which the past existed like a statue, perfect and unapproachable.

  And as the train carried him back to the city the clangour of its wheels that said ‘ruthutta ruthutta ruthutta’ dissolved into a bright mist of conversation through which he distinctly heard a woman’s voice, but the voice said nothing; it was like memory, perfect and unapproachable; and his mind was weighed down by an infinite melancholy that merged with the melancholy of the dark countryside through which he passed – a countryside of lonely, steelbright pools that were islanded among the silhouettes of hills and trees. Ironically he heard himself say again, ‘Yes, it is good to have one’s life settled, to fear nothing and hope for nothing.’

  And the train took him ever farther and farther away and replied with its petulant metallic voice –

  ‘Ruthutta ruthutta ruthutta!’

  Peasants

  When Michael John Cronin stole the funds of the Carricknabreena Hurling, Football and Temperance Association, commonly called the Club, everyone said: ‘Devil’s cure to him!’ ‘ ’Tis the price of him!’ ‘Kind father for him!’ ‘What did I tell you?’ and the rest of the things people say when an acquaint
ance has got what is coming to him.

  And not only Michael John but the whole Cronin family, seed, breed, and generation, came in for it; there wasn’t one of them for twenty miles round or a hundred years back but his deeds and sayings were remembered and examined by the light of this fresh scandal. Michael John’s father (the heavens be his bed!) was a drunkard who beat his wife, and his father before him a landgrabber. Then there was an uncle or grand-uncle who had been a policeman and taken a hand in the bloody work at Mitchelstown long ago, and an unmarried sister of the same whose good name it would by all accounts have needed a regiment of husbands to restore. It was a grand shaking-up the Cronins got altogether, and anyone who had a grudge in for them, even if it was no more than a thirty-third cousin, had rare sport, dropping a friendly word about it and saying how sorry he was for the poor mother till he had the blood lighting in the Cronin eyes.

  There was only one thing for them to do with Michael John; that was to send him to America and let the thing blow over, and that, no doubt, is what they would have done but for a certain unpleasant and extraordinary incident.

  Father Crowley, the parish priest, was chairman of the committee. He was a remarkable man, even in appearance; tall, powerfully built, but very stooped, with shrewd, loveless eyes that rarely softened to anyone except two or three old people. He was a strange man, well on in years, noted for his strong political views, which never happened to coincide with those of any party, and as obstinate as the devil himself. Now what should Father Crowley do but try to force the committee to prosecute Michael John?

  The committee were all religious men who up to this had never as much as dared to question the judgements of a man of God: yes, faith, and if the priest had been a bully, which to give him his due he wasn’t, he might have danced a jig on their backs and they wouldn’t have complained. But a man has principles, and the like of this had never been heard of in the parish before. What? Put the police on a boy and he in trouble?

  One by one the committee spoke up and said so. ‘But he did wrong,’ said Father Crowley, thumping the table. ‘He did wrong and he should be punished.’

  ‘Maybe so, father,’ said Con Norton, the vice-chairman, who acted as spokesman. ‘Maybe you’re right, but you wouldn’t say his poor mother should be punished too and she a widow-woman?’

  ‘True for you!’ chorused the others.

  ‘Serve his mother right!’ said the priest shortly. ‘There’s none of you but knows better than I do the way that young man was brought up. He’s a rogue and his mother is a fool. Why didn’t she beat Christian principles into him when she had him on her knee?’

  ‘That might be, too,’ Norton agreed mildly. ‘I wouldn’t say but you’re right, but is that any reason his Uncle Peter should be punished?’

  ‘Or his Uncle Dan?’ asked another.

  ‘Or his Uncle James?’ asked a third.

  ‘Or his cousins, the Dwyers, that keep the little shop in Lissnacarriga, as decent a living family as there is in County Cork?’ asked a fourth.

  ‘No, father,’ said Norton, ‘the argument is against you.’

  ‘Is it indeed?’ exclaimed the priest, growing cross. ‘Is it so? What the devil has it to do with his Uncle Dan or his Uncle James? What are ye talking about? What punishment is it to them, will ye tell me that? Ye’ll be telling me next ’tis a punishment to me and I a child of Adam like himself.’

  ‘Wisha now, father,’ asked Norton incredulously, ‘do you mean ’tis no punishment to them having one of their own blood made a public show? Is it mad you think we are? Maybe ’tis a thing you’d like done to yourself?’

  ‘There was none of my family ever a thief,’ replied Father Crowley shortly.

  ‘Begor, we don’t know whether there was or not,’ snapped a little man called Daly, a hot-tempered character from the hills.

  ‘Easy, now! Easy, Phil!’ said Norton warningly.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Father Crowley, rising and grabbing his hat and stick.

  ‘What I mean,’ said Daly, blazing up, ‘is that I won’t sit here and listen to insinuations about my native place from any foreigner. There are as many rogues and thieves and vagabonds and liars in Cullough as ever there were in Carricknabreena – ay, begod, and more, and bigger! That’s what I mean.’

  ‘No, no, no, no,’ Norton said soothingly. ‘That’s not what he means at all, father. We don’t want any bad blood between Cullough and Carricknabreena. What he means is that the Crowleys may be a fine substantial family in their own country, but that’s fifteen long miles away, and this isn’t their country, and the Cronins are neighbours of ours since the dawn of history and time, and ’twould be a very queer thing if at this hour we handed one of them over to the police.… And now, listen to me, father,’ he went on, forgetting his role of pacificator and hitting the table as hard as the rest, ‘if a cow of mine got sick in the morning, ’tisn’t a Cremin or a Crowley I’d be asking for help, and damn the bit of use ’twould be to me if I did. And everyone knows I’m no enemy of the Church but a respectable farmer that pays his dues and goes to his duties regularly.’

  ‘True for you! True for you!’ agreed the committee.

  ‘I don’t give a snap of my finger what you are,’ retorted the priest. ‘And now listen to me, Con Norton. I bear young Cronin no grudge, which is more than some of you can say, but I know my duty and I’ll do it in spite of the lot of you.’

  He stood at the door and looked back. They were gazing blankly at one another, not knowing what to say to such an impossible man. He shook his fist at them.

  ‘Ye all know me,’ he said. ‘Ye know that all my life I’m fighting the long-tailed families. Now, with the help of God, I’ll shorten the tail of one of them.’

  Father Crowley’s threat frightened them. They knew he was an obstinate man and had spent his time attacking what he called the ‘corruption’ of councils and committees, which was all very well as long as it happened outside your own parish. They dared not oppose him openly because he knew too much about all of them and, in public at least, had a lacerating tongue. The solution they favoured was a tactful one. They formed themselves into a Michael John Cronin Fund Committee and canvassed the parishioners for subscriptions to pay off what Michael John had stolen. Regretfully they decided that Father Crowley would hardly countenance a football match for the purpose.

  Then with the defaulting treasurer, who wore a suitably contrite air, they marched up to the presbytery. Father Crowley was at his dinner but he told the housekeeper to show them in. He looked up in astonishment as his dining-room filled with the seven committeemen, pushing before them the cowed Michael John.

  ‘Who the blazes are ye?’ he asked, glaring at them over the lamp.

  ‘We’re the Club Committee, father,’ replied Norton.

  ‘Oh, are ye?’

  ‘And this is the treasurer – the ex-treasurer, I should say.’

  ‘I won’t pretend I’m glad to see him,’ said Father Crowley grimly.

  ‘He came to say he’s sorry, father,’ went on Norton. ‘He is sorry, and that’s as true as God, and I’ll tell you no lie.…’ Norton made two steps forward and in a dramatic silence laid a heap of notes and silver on the table.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Father Crowley.

  ‘The money, father. ’Tis all paid back now and there’s nothing more between us. Any little crossness there was, we’ll say no more about it, in the name of God.’

  The priest looked at the money and then at Norton.

  ‘Con,’ he said, ‘you’d better keep the soft word for the judge. Maybe he’ll think more of it than I do.’

  ‘The judge, father?’

  ‘Ay, Con, the judge.’

  There was a long silence. The committee stood with open mouths, unable to believe it.

  ‘And is that what you’re doing to us, father?’ asked Norton in a trembling voice. ‘After all the years, and all we done for you, is it you’re going to show us up before the whole c
ountry as a lot of robbers?’

  ‘Ah, ye idiots, I’m not showing ye up.’

  ‘You are then, father, and you’re showing up every man, woman, and child in the parish,’ said Norton. ‘And mark my words, ’twon’t be forgotten for you.’

  The following Sunday Father Crowley spoke of the matter from the altar. He spoke for a full half-hour without a trace of emotion on his grim old face, but his sermon was one long, venomous denunciation of the ‘long-tailed families’ who, according to him, were the ruination of the country and made a mockery of truth, justice, and charity. He was, as his congregation agreed, a shockingly obstinate old man who never knew when he was in the wrong.

  After Mass he was visited in his sacristy by the committee. He gave Norton a terrible look from under his shaggy eyebrows, which made that respectable farmer flinch.

  ‘Father,’ Norton said appealingly, ‘we only want one word with you. One word and then we’ll go. You’re a hard character, and you said some bitter things to us this morning; things we never deserved from you. But we’re quiet, peaceable poor men and we don’t want to cross you.’

  Father Crowley made a sound like a snort.

  ‘We came to make a bargain with you, father,’ said Norton, beginning to smile.

  ‘A bargain?’

  ‘We’ll say no more about the whole business if you’ll do one little thing – just one little thing – to oblige us.’

  ‘The bargain!’ the priest said impatiently. ‘What’s the bargain?’

  ‘We’ll leave the matter drop for good and all if you’ll give the boy a character.’

  ‘Yes, father,’ cried the committee in chorus. ‘Give him a character! Give him a character!’

  ‘Give him a what?’ cried the priest.

  ‘Give him a character, father, for the love of God,’ said Norton emotionally. ‘If you speak up for him, the judge will leave him off and there’ll be no stain on the parish.’

  ‘Is it out of your minds you are, you halfwitted angashores?’ asked Father Crowley, his face suffused with blood, his head trembling. ‘Here am I all these years preaching to ye about decency and justice and truth and ye no more understand me than that wall there. Is it the way ye want me to perjure myself? Is it the way ye want me to tell a damned lie with the name of Almighty God on my lips? Answer me, is it?’