My Oedipus Complex

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘Here’s one of them,’ roared Mike, tearing at the lapels of his coat. ‘Here’s a sailor if you want one. I’m only a feeble old man, but I’m a better man in a boat than either of ye. Will you race me, Flurry? Will you race me now, I say?’

  ‘I’ll race you to hell and back,’ panted Flurry contemptuously.

  Mike excitedly peeled off his coat and tossed it to me. Then he took off his vest and hurled it at the sergeant. Finally he opened his braces, and, grabbing his bowler hat, he made a flying leap into his own boat and tried to seize the oars from Patch.

  ‘ ’Tisn’t fair,’ shouted Patch, wrestling with him. ‘He fouled me twice.’

  ‘Gimme them oars and less of your talk,’ snarled his father.

  ‘I don’t care,’ screamed Patch. ‘I’ll leave no man lower my spirit.’

  ‘Get out of that boat or I’ll have to deal with you officially,’ said the sergeant sternly. ‘Flurry,’ he added, ‘wouldn’t you take a rest?’

  ‘Is it to beat a Caheragh?’ snarled Flurry viciously as he brought Sullivan’s boat round again.

  Again the sergeant gave the word and the two boats set off. This time there were no mistakes. The two old men were rowing magnificently, but it was almost impossible to see what happened them. A party of small boys jumped into another boat and set out after them.

  ‘A pity we can’t see it,’ I said to the sergeant.

  ‘It might be as well,’ he grunted gloomily. ‘The less witnesses the better. The end of it will be a coroner’s inquest, and I’ll lose my bleddy job.’

  Beneath us on the slip, Patch, leaning against the slimy wall, seemed to have fallen asleep. The sergeant looked down at him greedily.

  ‘And ’tis only dawning on me that the whole bleddy lot of them ought to be in the lock-up,’ he muttered.

  ‘Sergeant,’ I said, ‘you ought to be in the diplomatic service.’

  He brought his right hand up to shield his mouth, and with his left elbow he gave me an agonizing dig in the ribs that nearly knocked me.

  ‘Whisht, you divil you! Whisht, whisht, whisht!’ he said.

  The pendulum of firelight, growing a deeper red, swayed with the gentle motion of an old clock, and from the bay we could hear the excited voices of the boatful of boys, cheering on the two old men.

  ‘ ’Tis Mike,’ said someone, staring out into the darkness.

  ‘ ’Tisn’t,’ said a child’s voice. ‘ ’Tis Flurry. I sees his blue smock.’

  It was Flurry. We were all a little disappointed. I will say for our people that whatever quarrel they may have with the Portuguese, in sport they have a really international outlook. When old Mike pulled in a few moments later he got a rousing cheer. The first to congratulate him was Flurry.

  ‘Mike,’ he shouted as he tied up Sullivan’s boat, ‘you’re a better man than your son.’

  ‘You fouled me,’ shouted Patch.

  In response to the cheer Mike rose in the rocking boat. He stood in the bow and then, recollecting his manners, took off his hat. As he removed his hand from his trousers, they fell about his scraggy knees, but he failed to perceive that.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said pantingly, ‘ ’twasn’t a bad race. An old man didn’t wet the blade of an oar these twelve months, ’twasn’t a bad race at all.’

  ‘Begod, Mike,’ said Flurry, holding out his hand from the slip, ‘you were a good man in your day.’

  ‘I was, Flurry,’ said Mike, taking his hand and staring up affectionately at him. ‘I was a powerful man in my day, my old friend, and you were a powerful man yourself.’

  It was obvious that there was going to be no fight. The crowd began to disperse in an outburst of chatter and laughter. Mike turned to us again, but only the sergeant and myself were listening to him. His voice had lost its carrying power.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he cried, ‘for an old man that saw such hard days, ’tis no small thing. If ye knew what me and my like endured ye’d say the same. Ye never knew them, and with the help of the Almighty God ye never will. Cruel times they were, but they’re all forgotten. No one remembers them, no one tells ye, the troubles of the poor man in the days gone by. Many’s the wet day I rowed from dawn to dark, ladies and gentlemen; many’s the bitter winter night I spent, ditching and draining, dragging down the sharp stones for my little cabin by starlight and moonlight. If ye knew it all, ye’d say I was a great man. But ’tis all forgotten, all, all, forgotten!’

  Old Mike’s voice had risen into a wail of the utmost poignancy. The excitement and applause had worked him up, and all the past was rising in him as in a dying man. But there was no one to hear him. The crowd drifted away up the road. Patch tossed the old man’s clothes into the boat, and, sober enough now, stepped in and pushed off in silence, but his father still stood in the bow, his bowler hat in his hand, his white shirt flapping about his naked legs.

  We watched him till he was out of sight, but even then I could hear his voice bursting out in sharp cries of self-pity like a voice from the dead. All the loneliness of the world was in it. A flashlight glow outlined a crest of rock at the left-hand side of the bay, and the moonlight, stealing through a barrier of cloud, let a window of brightness into the burnished water. The peace was safe for another week. I handed the sergeant a cigarette and he fell into step beside me.

  ‘He’s in the wrong job altogether,’ he whispered, and again I had to pull myself together to realize the way his mind had gone on, working quietly along its own lines. ‘ ’Tis in Dublin he ought to be. There’s nothing for a fellow like that in our old job. Sure, you can see for yourself.’

  The Long Road to Ummera

  Stay for me there. I will not fail

  To meet thee in that hollow vale.

  Always in the evenings you saw her shuffle up the road to Miss O.’s for her little jug of porter, a shapeless lump of an old woman in a plaid shawl, faded to the colour of snuff, that dragged her head down on to her bosom where she clutched its folds in one hand; a canvas apron and a pair of men’s boots without laces. Her eyes were puffy and screwed up in tight little buds of flesh and her rosy old face that might have been carved out of a turnip was all crumpled with blindness. The old heart was failing her, and several times she would have to rest, put down the jug, lean against the wall, and lift the weight of the shawl off her head. People passed; she stared at them humbly; they saluted her; she turned her head and peered after them for minutes on end. The rhythm of life had slowed down in her till you could scarcely detect its faint and sluggish beat. Sometimes from some queer instinct of shyness she turned to the wall, took a snuffbox from her bosom, and shook out a pinch on the back of her swollen hand. When she sniffed it it smeared her nose and upper lip and spilled all over her old black blouse. She raised the hand to her eyes and looked at it closely and reproachfully, as though astonished that it no longer served her properly. Then she dusted herself, picked up the old jug again, scratched herself against her clothes, and shuffled along close by the wall, groaning aloud.

  When she reached her own house, which was a little cottage in a terrace, she took off her boots, and herself and the old cobbler who lodged with her turned out a pot of potatoes on the table, stripping them with their fingers and dipping them in the little mound of salt while they took turn and turn about with the porter jug. He was a lively and philosophic old man called Johnny Thornton.

  After their supper they sat in the firelight, talking about old times in the country and long-dead neighbours, ghosts, fairies, spells, and charms. It always depressed her son, finding them together like that when he called with her monthly allowance. He was a well-to-do businessman with a little grocery shop in the South Main Street and a little house in Sunday’s Well, and nothing would have pleased him better than that his mother should share all the grandeur with him, the carpets and the china and the chiming clocks. He sat moodily between them, stroking his long jaw, and wondering why they talked so much about death in the old-fashioned way, as if it was someth
ing that made no difference at all.

  ‘Wisha, what pleasure do ye get out of old talk like that?’ he asked one night.

  ‘Like what, Pat?’ his mother asked with her timid smile.

  ‘My goodness,’ he said, ‘ye’re always at it. Corpses and graves and people that are dead and gone.’

  ‘Arrah, why wouldn’t we?’ she replied, looking down stiffly as she tried to button the open-necked blouse that revealed her old breast. ‘Isn’t there more of us there than here?’

  ‘Much difference ’twill make to you when you won’t know them or see them!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Oye, why wouldn’t I know them?’ she cried angrily. ‘Is it the Twomeys of Lackroe and the Driscolls of Ummera?’

  ‘How sure you are we’ll take you to Ummera!’ he said mockingly.

  ‘Och aye, Pat,’ she asked, shaking herself against her clothes with her humble stupid wondering smile, ‘and where else would you take me?’

  ‘Isn’t our own plot good enough for you?’ he asked. ‘Your own son and your grandchildren?’

  ‘Musha, indeed, is it in the town you want to bury me?’ She shrugged herself and blinked into the fire, her face growing sour and obstinate. ‘I’ll go back to Ummera, the place I came from.’

  ‘Back to the hunger and misery we came from,’ Pat said scornfully.

  ‘Back to your father, boy.’

  ‘Ay, to be sure, where else? But my father or grandfather never did for you what I did. Often and often I scoured the streets of Cork for a few ha-pence for you.’

  ‘You did, amossa, you did, you did,’ she admitted, looking into the fire and shaking herself. ‘You were a good son to me.’

  ‘And often I did it and the belly falling out of me with hunger,’ Pat went on, full of self-pity.

  ‘ ’Tis true for you,’ she mumbled, ‘ ’tis, ’tis, ’tis true. ’Twas often and often you had to go without it. What else could you do and the way we were left?’

  ‘And now our grave isn’t good enough for you,’ he complained. There was real bitterness in his tone. He was an insignificant little man and jealous of the power the dead had over her.

  She looked at him with the same abject, half-imbecile smile, the wrinkled old eyes almost shut above the Mongolian cheekbones, while with a swollen old hand, like a pot-stick, it had so little life in it, she smoothed a few locks of yellow-white hair across her temples – a trick she had when troubled.

  ‘Musha, take me back to Ummera, Pat,’ she whined. ‘Take me back to my own. I’d never rest among strangers. I’d be rising and drifting.’

  ‘Ah, foolishness, woman!’ he said with an indignant look. ‘That sort of thing is gone out of fashion.’

  ‘I won’t stop here for you,’ she shouted hoarsely in sudden, impotent fury, and she rose and grasped the mantelpiece for support.

  ‘You won’t be asked,’ he said shortly.

  ‘I’ll haunt you,’ she whispered tensely, holding on to the mantelpiece and bending down over him with a horrible grin.

  ‘And that’s only more of the foolishness,’ he said with a nod of contempt. ‘Haunts and fairies and spells.’

  She took one step towards him and stood, plastering down the two little locks of yellowing hair, the half-dead eyes twitching and blinking in the candlelight, and the swollen crumpled face with the cheeks like cracked enamel.

  ‘Pat,’ she said, ‘the day we left Ummera you promised to bring me back. You were only a little gorsoon that time. The neighbours gathered round me and the last word I said to them and I going down the road was: “Neighbours, my son Pat is after giving me his word and he’ll bring me back to ye when my time comes.”…That’s as true as the Almighty God is over me this night. I have everything ready.’ She went to the shelf under the stairs and took out two parcels. She seemed to be speaking to herself as she opened them gloatingly, bending down her head in the feeble light of the candle. ‘There’s the two brass candlesticks and the blessed candles alongside them. And there’s my shroud aired regular on the line.’

  ‘Ah, you’re mad, woman,’ he said angrily. ‘Forty miles! Forty miles into the heart of the mountains!’

  She suddenly shuffled towards him on her bare feet, her hand raised clawing the air, her body like her face blind with age. Her harsh croaking old voice rose to a shout.

  ‘I brought you from it, boy, and you must bring me back. If ’twas the last shilling you had and you and your children to go to the poorhouse after, you must bring me back to Ummera. And not by the short road either! Mind what I say now! The long road! The long road to Ummera round the lake, the way I brought you from it. I lay a heavy curse on you this night if you bring me the short road over the hill. And ye must stop by the ash tree at the foot of the boreen where ye can see my little house and say a prayer for all that were ever old in it and all that played on the floor. And then – Pat! Pat Driscoll! Are you listening? Are you listening to me, I say?’

  She shook him by the shoulder, peering down into his long miserable face to see how was he taking it.

  ‘I’m listening,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘Then’ – her voice dropped to a whisper – ‘you must stand up overright the neighbours and say – remember now what I’m telling you! – “Neighbours, this is Abby, Batty Heige’s daughter, that kept her promise to ye at the end of all.” ’

  She said it lovingly, smiling to herself, as if it were a bit of an old song, something she went over and over in the long night. All West Cork was in it: the bleak road over the moors to Ummera, the smooth grey pelts of the hills with the long spider’s-web of the fences ridging them, drawing the scarecrow fields awry, and the whitewashed cottages, poker-faced between their little scraps of holly bushes, looking this way and that out of the wind.

  ‘Well, I’ll make a fair bargain with you,’ said Pat as he rose. Without seeming to listen she screwed up her eyes and studied his weak melancholy face. ‘This house is a great expense to me. Do what I’m always asking you. Live with me and I’ll promise I’ll take you back to Ummera.’

  ‘Oye, I will not,’ she replied sullenly, shrugging her shoulders helplessly, an old sack of a woman with all the life gone out of her.

  ‘All right,’ said Pat. ‘ ’Tis your own choice. That’s my last word; take it or leave it. Live with me and Ummera for your grave, or stop here and a plot in the Botanics.’

  She watched him out the door with shoulders hunched about her ears. Then she shrugged herself, took out her snuffbox and took a pinch.

  ‘Arrah, I wouldn’t mind what he’d say,’ said Johnny. ‘A fellow like that would change his mind tomorrow.’

  ‘He might and he mightn’t,’ she said heavily, and opened the back door to go out to the yard. It was a starry night and they could hear the noise of the city below them in the valley. She raised her eyes to the bright sky over the back wall and suddenly broke into a cry of loneliness and helplessness.

  ‘Oh, oh, oh, ’tis far away from me Ummera is tonight above any other night, and I’ll die and be buried here, far from all I ever knew and the long roads between us.’

  Of course old Johnny should have known damn well what she was up to the night she made her way down to the cross, creeping along beside the railings. By the blank wall opposite the lighted pub Dan Regan, the jarvey, was standing by his old box of a covered car with his pipe in his gob. He was the jarvey all the old neighbours went to. Abby beckoned to him and he followed her into the shadow of a gateway overhung with ivy. He listened gravely to what she had to say, sniffing and nodding, wiping his nose in his sleeve, or crossing the pavement to hawk his nose and spit in the channel, while his face with its drooping moustaches never relaxed its discreet and doleful expression.

  Johnny should have known what that meant and why old Abby, who had always been so open-handed, sat before an empty grate sooner than light a fire, and came after him on Fridays for the rent, whether he had it or not, and even begrudged him the little drop of porter which had always been give and take betwe
en them. He knew himself it was a change before death and that it all went into the wallet in her bosom. At night in her attic she counted it by the light of her candle and when the coins dropped from her lifeless fingers he heard her roaring like an old cow as she crawled along the naked boards, sweeping them blindly with her palms. Then he heard the bed creak as she tossed about in it, and the rosary being taken from the bedhead, and the old voice rising and falling in prayer; and sometimes when a high wind blowing up the river roused him before dawn he could hear her muttering: a mutter and then a yawn; the scrape of a match as she peered at the alarm clock – the endless nights of the old – and then the mutter of prayer again.

  But Johnny in some ways was very dense, and he guessed nothing till the night she called him and, going to the foot of the stairs with a candle in his hand, he saw her on the landing in her flour-bag shift, one hand clutching the jamb of the door while the other clawed wildly at her few straggly hairs.

  ‘Johnny!’ she screeched down at him, beside herself with excitement.‘He was here.’

  ‘Who was there?’ he snarled back, still cross with sleep.

  ‘Michael Driscoll, Pat’s father.’

  ‘Ah, you were dreaming, woman,’ he said in disgust. ‘Go back to your bed in God’s holy name.’

  ‘I was not dreaming,’ she cried. ‘I was lying broad awake, saying my beads, when he come in the door, beckoning me. Go down to Dan Regan’s for me, Johnny.’

  ‘I will not indeed, go down to Dan Regan’s for you. Do you know what hour of night it is?’

  ‘ ’Tis morning.’

  ‘ ’Tis. Four o’clock! What a thing I’d do!…Is it the way you’re feeling bad?’ he added with more consideration as he mounted the stairs. ‘Do you want him to take you to hospital?’

  ‘Oye, I’m going to no hospital,’ she replied sullenly, turning her back on him and thumping into the room again. She opened an old chest of drawers and began fumbling in it for her best clothes, her bonnet and cloak.