The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics)

by J.F. Powers

  Mama said severely, “It’s something we’ll have to watch.”

  And Daddy resented this—that she’d not only taken his point and given it back to him as her own, which was one of her conversational tricks, but that she had turned it against him in the process. He was touchy on this subject, the subject of thrift. He had been profligate in the past, yes, though badly handicapped by lack of wherewithal to be profligate with. But he had learned plenty from Mama in the years since their marriage, and while he still had plenty to learn about thrift, he did think it was time she forgot the past and saw him, if not as her equal, as he was today. He hadn’t used shaving cream or lotion in years, and he hardly ever changed a blade. He always bought, if he bought, the economy size, and didn’t take the manufacturer’s word for it—had learned from Mama to weigh price against ounces. He saved string, wrapping paper, claret corks, and the parts of broken things that might come in handy, though many never did—pipestems, for instance. He kept the family in combs he found in the street and washed—how many fathers, not professional scavengers, did that? He had paid for only three deck chairs on the ship coming over. In Ireland, he always smoked pensioners’ plug. In short, he was probably America’s thriftiest living author. Yes, but—this was where he pooped out as a paterfamilias—he could not provide his loved ones with a lasting home. He had subjected them to too many moves, some presented as trips abroad, but still moves. And this one, at the other end, before they left, had been the worst to date.

  The big old house they’d occupied as tenants had been sold, and the new owners, Mr and Mrs Stout, who planned to turn it into a barracks with bunk beds for college students, as they’d done with other big old houses in the neighborhood, had been underfoot constantly in the last thirty days—asking if it would be all right to have a few trees cut down; the front sidewalk taken up; the yard paved for parking; a notice posted at the college inviting students, possible occupants of the bunk beds, to drop around; and more, much more. It had been hard not to go along with all these requests, even though Mama and Daddy were free, legally, to reject them and were up to their ears in packing, for the Stouts were very pleasant people and were motivated, it seemed, by charity in their dirty work. “Golly, where will those poor kids park their cars?” Mama and Daddy had felt guilty about rejecting the paving project, even when the trees came crashing down. The Stouts had been too much.

  Fifteen years earlier, when Mama and Daddy had begun their career as tenants and travelers, when they’d surrendered their house in the woods, the first and last place they’d owned, to the faceless men of the highway department for a service road, and a few years later, when they’d surrendered the beautiful old place, the oldest house in town, to the faceless men of the department of education for a parking lot (now occupied by a faceless building), there had been acrimony, arguments about the nature of progress, between usurpers and usurpees. This time, no. The Stouts, such pleasant people, had been too much. Mama and Daddy were still talking and, in the case of Mama, still dreaming about this move.

  That night, at the Westward Ho, she suddenly said, “You know who they are?”

  “Who who are?”

  “The Maroons.”

  “How d’ya mean? Who are they?”

  “The Stouts.”

  “Oh, now, I wouldn’t say that.”

  The hotel closed for the winter on schedule, but for some reason the Maroons were still there a week later. Mama and Daddy then heard from the youngest child, to whom Mrs Maroon had confided, that London might not agree with Happy. (This was the genius loci of the Smoking Room and Library, a hairy terrier that looked like Ireland on the map when in motion, a very mixed-up dog, to judge by the way—ways, rather—it relieved itself.) So Mama and Daddy spoke up, and two days later the proprietors checked out.

  Life in the hotel was then homier for the tenants in one respect than it had been in any house to date, in that they had a pet, but otherwise was much the same for them there as anywhere else they’d settled for a time. The children—the teenagers attending school in Dublin, the younger ones in Ballydoo—had their new friends (the older boy often entertaining his at billiards: it had occurred to Daddy but evidently not to Major Maroon that it would be a good idea to leave the tenants with the key to the little coin-operated table). Mama, of course, had her shopping, cooking (in a kitchen caked with grease), and her house- or hotel-keeping. Daddy had his “office,” a small room in the uninhabited part of the hotel, where he read the Irish Times and the Daily Telegraph, listened to the BBC, and did his writing.

  He was between books, preparing to strike out in a genre new to him. What he had in mind was a light-hearted play, later to be a musical and a movie, about a family of campers, possibly Germans, who, on arriving in Ireland and wishing to do it right, would hire one of those colorful horse-drawn caravans but make the mistake of pulling into a bivouac of tinkers for the night. There would be singing, dancing, drinking, and fighting around the campfire, a nice clash of lifestyles (these, in the end, would be exchanged!) with plenty of love interest along the way—German boy, tinker girl, or vice versa, maybe several of each for more love interest. He couldn’t overdo it, since he was writing for the theatre, but there were problems. He knew nothing about tinkers or Germans or, they might be, French, and if he got them acting and talking right, would they, particularly the tinkers, be intelligible to an American audience? Would this audience—as it must—immediately grasp what the Germans, French, or, they might be, Japanese would not; namely, that the tinkers were not proper campers like themselves? He was afraid he’d have to do the whole damn thing in basic American first, then do a vivid translation, thoughts of which, since he was still in several minds as to the campers’ nationality (Wunderbar! C’est magnifique! Banzai!) turned his stomach slightly. He had once read that nobody ever wrote a best seller, however bad, without believing in it, but he doubted this, and even if it was true, he doubted that it was true of a smash-hit play, however bad. And what had struck him as a good idea for one (“This one will run and run”) continued to do so.

  But he wasn’t getting on with it. Hoping to see or hear something he could use, perhaps another line of tinkerese to go with those he had (“A few coppers, sor,” and, “I’ll pray for you, m’lord”), he would take the train into Dublin, visit the junky auction rooms on the Quays, the secondhand bookshops, just wander around—too bad, what was happening to Dublin’s fair city—and come home tired, with a few small purchases, always pastry from Bewley’s, cherry buns, shortbread, barmbrack (at Halloween), or fruitcake (as Christmas approached).

  This they’d have that evening in the lounge, some with tea, some with cocoa and wearing their pajamas—a nice family scene, yes, but one of those present was an impostor, Daddy would think, considering his responsibilities and how he’d shot the day. On some evenings, while Mama was reading aloud from Captain Marryat, one of the few clothbound authors in the Library, Daddy would have a new chapter from Beebee’s family history to read, which was then in the writing and remarkable in one respect: the Beebee of the period (eighteenth century) had had a wife, children, and business associates with names like Kitty, Pussy, Toydy, Lion, Bear, Dragon, and Owl, whose present-day descendants were in precisely the same relationship to the present-day Beebee!

  Stability, Daddy would think.

  On some evenings, when the younger children were in bed and he was saying good night to them (another nice family scene) he would hear something to his credit, that the little girl liked living so close to the sea, the boys so close to the trains—sea and trains thanks to him, he’d think then, though the railway was now owned by Beebee, he understood. He was wary of Beebee. The millionaire had such a poor opinion of the Westward Ho that he wouldn’t buy it, he said—when Beebee spoke, it was through the older boy, dryly, rather like Mama’s father—but Beebee wasn’t in such good shape himself. He was worn smooth in places, and had a new nose (thanks to Mama) of different material, which he was sensitive about, withdrawin
g from the conversation if it was mentioned, as he did when frivolous remarks were made about his extreme wealth. “Well, good night, Millions,” Daddy would say—and might be told that Beebee (though present) was somewhere in the Indian Ocean, aboard Butterscotch, his yacht, on a trip around the world, and on his return would be buying new motorbikes for Lion and Bear, who, being teenagers, had crashed theirs. “On the yacht?” “They’re not with Beebee now. They radioed him about it.” “What’d Beebee say?” “‘Crazy kids. Just have to buy ’em new ones.’” The older boy would gurgle, and Daddy would shake his head in wonder at Beebee’s magnanimity. “Lion and Bear—they’re back at the ranch?” “Um.” “That’s the one in Colorado?” “Partly.” “It’s a big ranch.” “Um.”

  Daddy would then retire to the same room he and Mama had occupied on the first night, where they now had two relatively easy chairs and special lighting—they now sat by two brass table lamps that he’d picked up at an auction, instead of under the traditional bulb suspended from the ceiling—and there, with the radio and the electric fire playing between them, with their reading matter and drinks, they’d spend the long evening.

  By the middle of December, they were talking more about their problem. They had looked at a couple of houses that were too small, and one just not what they’d come to Ireland to live in (a thirties-period “villa” of poured concrete spattered with gravel—the agent had called it “pebbledash”), and one very nice place, “small Georgian,” with a saint’s well on the grounds, but unfurnished and rather remote and, it then came out, not for rent, the agent having presumed that they, as Americans, might buy it. That was all they’d done about their problem by the middle of December.

  They weren’t worried yet. They had the hotel, if need be, through January, and felt secure there, so secure that on some evenings they were inclined—at least Daddy was—to feel sorry for their homeowning friends in America. He wouldn’t, he’d tell Mama, want to be Joe out there in the country, with the highway, perhaps, to be rerouted through his living room; or Fred by the river, with the threat of floods every spring (the American Forces Network, Europe, reporting six-foot drifts in the Midwest); or Dick in town, with that big frame house to paint every five years and those big old trees that, probably now heavy with snow and ice, might not fall away from the house if they fell.

  One evening, after doing a spot of plumbing—Ireland, the land of welcomes, is also the land of running toilets—he told Mama that hard though it was to go through life making repairs in other people’s houses and hotels, knowing that whatever you did you’d probably be doing again somewhere else, it was better than making repairs in your own home, knowing that THIS IS IT, that the repairs might well outlast you, or the dissolution of your household. This was one of the consolations of vagrancy that he hadn’t heard about until he heard it from his own lips, and he liked it very much. Mama took exception to it.

  One evening he told her that he’d heard a man on the BBC, on Woman’s Hour, say that mobile families were superior families—and she took exception to it. He hadn’t been listening carefully until it was too late, so couldn’t give her the details, only remembered that mobile families were more . . . couldn’t remember exactly what, only that they were superior, that the man, who was the spokesman for some association or group that had carried out a survey and issued a report, had said that mobile families were more . . .

  “More mobile?”

  One of her conversational tricks.

  One morning, about a week before Christmas, they had a letter from Mrs Maroon. She thanked them for sending on the mail, said that cabbages were very dear in London, and asked to be remembered, as her husband did, to the children and Happy. In a postscript, she said not to send on the mail for the time being, as she and her husband would be at the hotel shortly.

  Mama and Daddy then had a lengthy discussion about “shortly,” about whether it only meant soon or could conceivably mean briefly.

  That evening, the Maroons returned.

  Happy was glad to see them, and others were, too. “How long you staying?” the older boy asked them right away—a good question, but lost in the excitement. “Daddy calls Happy Slap!” the youngest child informed them, and Mama quickly offered them tea.

  With the proprietors in residence again, the hotel wasn’t what it had been for the tenants—their relationship to the dog, for instance, wasn’t the same. No, even though proprietors and tenants went their own way, ate at opposite ends of the dining room, and in the evening at different times (like first and second sittings at sea, parents with small children at the first), it wasn’t the same. And again, as before the proprietors left for London, there was a certain amount of overlap and flap in the kitchen. (Mama had once expected to have her very own.) Daddy was in trouble, too. After two days, he moved from the part of the hotel now occupied by the proprietors—lest his typing disturb them, his playing the radio during working hours scandalize them—to the part occupied by the tenants.

  The next morning, in his new office, listening to Music While You Work on the BBC and reading the Irish Times before getting to grips with the light-hearted play (in which the campers were now Americans), he came upon an item of professional interest to him: “County councils and urban district councils throughout Ireland are awaiting the publication of a report prepared by the Government Commission on Itineracy.” Shouldn’t that be Itinerancy? “It is expected that the report will contain several broad proposals for integrating itinerants into the normal life of the community. Their presence has often caused friction, particularly in Limerick and Dublin suburbs, where residents claim that they indulge in fighting and leave a large amount of litter.” Yes, he’d seen some of it, and while the women, babes in arms, begged in the streets, the men, as somebody had said in a letter to the Irish Times, drank and played cards in a ditch. “During the winter, the tinkers usually camp at sites in these suburbs, or at sites in provincial towns, but some caravans stay on the road all the year round.” Nothing new here, nothing for him. “There are six main tinker tribes.” Oh? “The Stokeses, Joyces, MacDonaghs, Wards” . . . now, wait a minute . . . “and Redmonds.”

  So the odds against him were greater than he’d thought.

  He took the next train into Dublin, left the Irish Times on it, and gave the first tinker woman he met a coin, wanting and not wanting to know her name.

  On the Quays, he found some secondhand paperbacks for the younger children, and was tempted by a copper-and-brass ship’s lamp, not a reproduction and not too big, to be auctioned that afternoon (“about half-four,” he was told). He bought a French paring knife for Mama in a restaurant-supply place—he liked doing business in such places.

  He then had a pot of tea and two cherry buns at the nearest Bewley’s, selected a fruitcake, and, to pass the time until half-four, just wandered around, window-shopping and making a few small purchases: a couple of ornaments for their Christmas tree, which was now up in the lounge and rather bare; a tool, with a cloven end and an attractive hardwood handle, to remove carpet tacks and also suitable for upholstery work, should the need arise for him to do either; some brass screws that might come in handy and were, in any case, nice to have; a hardcover notebook (they did these very well in the British Isles) such as he already had several of, with inviting cream paper that he couldn’t bring himself to violate; more soft-lead (3B) pencils.

  For some time, he stood looking in a seedsman’s window. Quite an idea, he thought, having a section of a real tree there so one could see the various kinds of branches, the various kinds of saws required to get at them, saws shown cutting into them, and one, an ordinary carpenter’s saw, shown cutting into a sign, just a plank, that asked the question “WHY NOT HAVE THE SAW FOR THE JOB?” Since on the property one might own someday there would be many trees, wood being the fuel of the future, and one would spend so much time up on an extension ladder (shown) doing surgery, and might otherwise fall and kill oneself, and with no insurance and six dependents, why n
ot—except for the expense—have the saw for the job? (Beebee would.)

  On the way back to the Quays, he booked two seats to a coming play, and because the tickets hadn’t been printed yet, and would be posted to him, he was asked to give his name and address (was suddenly sensitive about the former), and was told when he asked for a receipt, “Ah, that’s all right.” This he accepted, after a moment, remembering where he was (Ireland) and an attendant at this same theatre one night not undertaking to tap him on the shoulder when the time would come to leave (early, to catch the last train) but giving him his watch to hold. And also remembering the fruit huckster at the Curragh on Derby Day, short of change so early in the afternoon and on whose wares they’d lunched to economize, telling him to come back and pay later. And the bellboy at the old hotel in Dublin on their first visit to Ireland who, after making several trips up to their room to call them to the phone in the lobby (they were running an ad for a house), had politely declined to be tipped further for such service, which had continued. “Ah, that’s all right.” That was the beauty of, and the trouble with, Ireland.

  He was early for the ship’s lamp, and thought the prices made by the lots before it rather low, but saw right away that this was not going to be the case with the lot he wanted—a familiar feeling at auctions. He came into the bidding at the first pause, and after the figure he’d had in mind had been passed, the maximum figure, which was subject to revision in the event, he was still in it. And money talks! He arranged to take the ship’s lamp with him, rather than come back for it the next day, saying he lived “down the country” and had to catch a train.

  He returned to Ballydoo tired, took the short cut from the station, and entered the hotel by the rear, expecting to find Mama in the kitchen, but didn’t. He assumed that something was taking too long in the oven. He went upstairs, expecting to find her in their room having a glass of stout by the electric fire, and perhaps reading the Daily Telegraph, but found her lying on the bed, face down, in the cold and dark.