by Edna O'Brien
I used to catch fleas for him and keep them in a match box, and my reward was a penny and a glass of raspberry wine. Nothing can, or could, ever quell the thrill of seeing the thick red cordial in the bottom of a tumbler, and then the flurry as he shot out to the yard where the tap was, and then the leisurely joy of watching him dilute it, of watching its redness gradually pale and pale until it was a beautiful light aerated pink, and oh, for its taste, so sweet and so synthetic, that it even surpassed the joyous taste of warm, melting jelly. I don’t know what he did with the fleas, but I know that my mother was incensed when she heard of it and forbade me to catch any more, deeming it a disgrace.
Jack owned a wine shop which he called a “taverna.” It was dark and huge like a barracks, and even in the daytime, when it was devoid of customers, the air reeked with the smell of stale flat porter, just as the high oak counter had the circular marks of thousands of porter glasses laid down in different humors, in rage, in mirth, and quite often in insupportable melancholia. Jack did not do brisk business, but certain men went there when they wanted to drink quietly and purposefully, and at night a particular crowd went, preferring it to the neighboring bars because there was no woman to harangue them, or gossip, or tell the whole country how much they drank, or what they owed. Jack’s sister, Maggie, was an invalid, and lived her days hunched over the kitchen fire, occasionally letting out a moan that sounded like a prayer and alerting him to the fact if a sod fell onto the floor or if she was in need of tea. My mother sometimes took pity on them and sent a gift of a cake, or black puddings, or a pot of marmalade in the spring, when the oranges came from Seville and the women vied with each other as to whose marmalade was the most tempting. Jack would hasten to our house and thank her with extravagant phrases, but suddenly unable to conquer his awkwardness, he would just lift his hat and run away. He loved my mother and used to stroll in our fields to catch sight of her. In the summer mornings on my way to school I would find him, as he said, penning a little ode. One morning, when the horse chestnut tree was in flower and the beautiful cream blooms hung like candles merely waiting to be lit, I came on him reciting excitedly. The brightness and the freshness of the morning, the rustle of the trees, birds scurrying about, and all of nature hell-bent on its bacchanalia must have fired him as greatly as did his secret passion, and all this despite the fact that he was a grown man who had probably never known a handclasp or certainly a kiss.
“Just penning a little poem,” he said.
“What sort of poem?” I asked.
“Ah, you’re too young to know,” he said, and then inquired if my mother ever came down this far.
“Only to follow turkeys,” I said, and he moved off, muttering to himself and smiling in a bemused way. I guessed that the poem was composed in Latin, which no one would be likely to read or translate, not even a clerical student, because Jack’s Latin was a botch, gleaned partly from his missal and richly embellished. I could have told him that the written word did not move my mother, that she never read anything, only the price of eggs in the daily paper and the big, stained Mrs. Beeton cookery book. Moreover, she believed that books were sinful, that poetry was rubbish, and that such things helped to turn people’s minds and deflect them from their true work. I did not tell him, though I do not know why, since it was my habit to blurt.
The following Sunday when I was going in to Mass, Jack grabbed my coat sleeve and whispered that he would call on us that night, as he had a surprise for me. On Sunday evenings my mother always used to soak her feet in hot water and washing soda and then pare her corns with my father’s razor blade. It was a formidable and frightening sight. My father usually went to play cards, though it was something we could not afford, being heavily in debt. But after she had done her feet, she smiled a little and said, “To hell with it,” she felt like dolling up. So seldom did she ever dress up that it was almost akin to a ceremony to follow her upstairs, go into the Blue Room, see her open the wardrobe and touch the few long dresses that despite their age and their musty smell still conjured up pictures of all-night dances, buffet suppers, music, and merriment. She put on her white georgette blouse, which had patches of vivid red flowers embroidered on the bodice, and a drawstring which could either be tied tightly or allowed to go slack. She did not tie the string very tightly and the effect was perfect: her pale neck, the white gauzy material, and the flowers so real that it seemed they might stir like flowers in a garden. Downstairs in the kitchen we lit the lamp, and her hair, which was red-brown, glinted as she proceeded to make sandwiches from the bacon left over from lunch. I thought then that when I grew up if I could be as fetching as my mother I would be certain to find happiness. For some reason I believed that the troubles of her life were an anomaly, and never did it occur to me that some of her fatality had already grafted itself onto me and determined my disposition.
“Is there company coming?” I asked.
“Hardly,” she said, “I expect Jack was only raving.”
Yet she showed no surprise when the familiar knock came on the back door, and she jumped to answer it. Jack came in, looked about, but would not take off his hat; he merely lifted it slightly to salute us. We felt sorry for him because he was ashamed of his bald scalp and people said that not one hair grew on it and that it was the color of putty. He took a tin from his pocket and handed it to me with a flourish. It had a picture of a couple in a jaunting car, and inside there were boiled sweets that had adhered together with dirt and dried sugar. Once one sucked them, they tasted of cloves, as they should. He sat down and gradually started to draw his chair nearer to my mother as he began to expound.
“Strange to say, Mrs. O., I was looking forward to my little expedition here, and unfortunately I was detained, a very irksome thing when one prides oneself on one’s punctuality.”
“It’s early, Jack,” my mother said flatly.
“The maternity nurse, Mrs. O….”
On hearing this my mother made a fece that conveyed her disgust. She had an idea that all nurses were crude, but the maternity nurse was the limit altogether, as she insisted on describing women’s labors and the different ways their water broke.
“Trying to get yours truly into her clutches, Mrs. O.,” he said, drawing his chair dangerously near. Their bodies were getting closer to each other, and I thought that if he moved again they would have to touch.
“Makes no secret of her intentions,” he said, and then he whispered something which must have been wanton, because my mother writhed and put on her injured face.
“I like a woman to be a lady,” he said, and he smiled at her in the most bashful but apparent way, and at that instant she jumped up and said she was dying for an apple. The tiled floor of the vestibule was covered with small wrinkled wine-colored apples and these gave a delicious smell to the whole house, and even the rotting ones made one long for stewed apple or a pie. She returned with a dishful of apples, and taking a small knife from the kitchen drawer, she peeled one and gave it to Jack, then she peeled another, and then she sat on the far side of the fire, a distance away from him.
“By the way, Mrs. O.”—he paused as he munched—“there’s a little gift awaiting you in my taverna. Drop in at your convenience.”
“Oh, Jack, you’re too good!” she said, and she beamed at him, and I was sure that now she was sorry for having rebuffed him earlier. As she stood up to make the tea, Jack got up too, dropped three apple pips down inside her low-cut blouse, and fled from the kitchen, muttering something about his sister’s swooning fits.
“Can’t you stay, Jack, and have a cup,” she said, but he had already lifted the heavy latch and was gone. She sent me after him with the flashlamp. I saw his figure going down the field, but I didn’t call after him, because I hated him using our cups and being so personal with my mother. It was dark and hushed outside, and I could hear the cows and the horses cropping the grass, and from the village came the strains of a piano accordion playing “Danny Boy.” I was unsettled for some reason
and went inside, followed by the three sheepdogs, who whined for bread and who would not leave the kitchen until they received a crust each.
“He’s gone,” I said.
“Creature,” she said, “gone home to nothing, only tea and loaf bread and poor Maggie rambling.”
“I wonder what’s the present,” I said.
“That’s what I was wondering,” she said, and I could see that she was intrigued.
“Would you prefer him to Dada?” I asked, and at that very moment my father came in. To my surprise Mama told him that he shouldn’t have been so long and that she was bored to tears with Jack, who insisted on telling her smutty stories.
“Bloody clown, who asked him here anyhow,” my father said, then shouted and stamped the floor with his boot, a thing he always did to give impetus to his bad temper. He was jealous. I saw it in his wild, unsatiated, protruding eyes, but I did not know what to call it then.
“I’ll have that cold meat, I’m hungry,” he said, peremptorily.
“I made sandwiches,” she said placatingly.
“Damn your sandwiches, a man gets no satisfaction in this house,” and suddenly he banged the table with his fist and sent the dish of apples flying.
“Get me my light shoes,” he said to me, and I fetched them from the shoe closet and threw them on the ground near where he stood. I thought I smelled whiskey and then put the thought aside as being just fear, imaginary fear, but Mama thought it too, and that night in bed we both prayed and cried, hoping that he would not go on a batter.
The next evening when I got home from school there was a note propped against the tea caddy to say that I was to keep a kettle boiling as she had gone down to Jack’s to collect her gift I sat by the window and watched for her, and when I saw the gleam of her bicycle coming in at the gate, I ran down the fields eager to know what she had been given, envisaging a georgette scarf or a beaded hag.
“You’ll catch cold without a coat,” she shouted from halfway up the field.
“What did you get?” I called.
When she was close to me I saw the disappointment. It was a packet of coffee beans and utterly useless, as we never drank coffee, and moreover, we had nothing to grind the beans with.
“You were ages,” I said.
“I was looking at jewelry, gorgeous brooches belonging to Maggie, upstairs in a box.”
“Were you upstairs?” I said. There was something untoward about that.
“Yes, and you should see the bedroom.” She raised her eyes pitifully toward the sky, to emphasize the squalor.
“Bare boards and not a thing in his room, only an iron bed with his rosary beads hanging at the head of it and his good suit on a chair.”
She seemed to be very disgruntled, and when we went in she threw the coffee beans into a holdall where we kept useless things, bottle tops, bits of used string, and a rusted can opener.
Two days later when I came home from school, there was a car outside our front door, and I quickened, thinking it was visitors. But as I approached the house I heard shouting and knew once again that we were in trouble.
“You poor child, you,” my mother said, hugging me, and then she told me that the bailiff was inside with my father and that unless we could find money we could be out on the roadside with the tinkers. At that moment the bailiff came into the kitchen and said he wanted a drink of water. He had a bad stomach and was obliged to take tablets every few hours. She offered him tea, which he declined, and he just stood there, frowning, as if he could not comprehend why people like us, with a nice house and furniture, had come to such desperately unhappy straits. She offered tea a second time, and I think he was annoyed that she should mix up hospitality with the odious business on hand. It was then he realized that I was there, and perhaps feeling sorry for me, he asked suddenly, “Who’s the best at school?”
“I am,” I said, not knowing that I was boasting.
Then the sergeant arrived and my mother begged him to go in and get the revolver from my father. All three of them went in. I looked through the jamb of the door and saw my father standing near the mantelpiece, the revolver in his hand, his hat thrown back on his head and his mouth frothing. It was like a man in a picture, depicting danger. They were trying to reason with him, and the more they tried, the more he foamed. Suddenly my mother left the room and said she would be back in a matter of minutes. She cycled down the drive at wizard speed and presently she was back, accompanied by Jack. She handed the bailiff a brown envelope containing a wad of money. Then the sergeant linked my father and helped him upstairs; though my father fell a few times, he never lost hold of the bottle of whiskey, which had a label with two shades of gold on it. After the sergeant left, Jack stayed with us and spoke about the vale of tears and life’s tribulations. Then when my father was asleep, Jack took off his boots and stole upstairs to get the revolver from under the pillow. Also, he emptied most of the whiskey into a jug and filled the whiskey bottle with water. Mama put the retrieved whiskey into a lemonade bottle, saying she would keep it for the Christmas cake. The kitchen was foul with the smell.
“Well, Mrs. O., you know who your friends are, you can rely on Jack,” and then he tied his boots and took his leave. Mama stood on the step with him and he said something her reply to which baffled me.
“How could I, Jack,” she said pityingly, and then she came back into the kitchen and asked God Almighty what would become of us. She talked of my sisters and brother, who were at boarding school, and said with no money for fees they would no doubt be expelled and have to come home to rough it. I said that when I grew up I would be rich and that I would install us all in a big house where there would be no wrangling and no debt.
“You’ll be lucky if you have any education,” she said dolefully, and then conjectured about the impossibility of refunding Jack.
“He won’t mind,” I said, but she was not so sure about that. She said paupers were paupers and people soon wearied of them. The word “pauper” sounded so beautiful, like some kind of Indian flower or fruit. Later when we heard my father shout we ran out of the house and hid in a hollow behind some trees until he had gone. We well knew the pattern, which was that he would be missing for days, and eventually he would be taken to hospital and then he would come home and apologize for everything.
He came home about two weeks later and asked me to come and count his horses with him. I hated going. It had rained a lot and the fields had pools of water in which the clouds were reflected and kept appearing and disappearing. There were three horses and a young foal. I feared them as much as I feared him, because they too stood for unpredictability and massive jerky strength. As we went to the field they came toward us whinnying, and I kept lurking behind for shelter.
“They won’t touch you, they won’t touch you,” he said as the horse kicked the ground with her hoof as if in a temper. First they galloped wildly, but after a bit they quieted down and nuzzled to see if he had brought any oats.
“I’m a good father, good to you and your mother.”
You’re not, I thought, but did not speak.
“Answer me,” he said.
“Yes,” I said grudgingly, and he went on to say that the reason for his recent little mishap was that he did not like the way Jack Holland was making free with my mother. He said it was a disgrace and that it would have to end. I said nothing. By now the horses on a whim had all decided to lie down in the pools of water and roll around, so that they became covered in mud, their haunches smeared. They hadn’t seen a soul for two weeks and were probably complaining about this, by resorting to antics. Next day Mama wrote Jack a letter and marked it personal. She put SAG (St. Anthony Guide) on the back of the envelope and dispatched me with it. It was my first time in Jack’s kitchen. It was a large kitchen with a stone floor and a great hearth fire. There was a smell of fried onions, wet turf, and old ashes. Maggie was dozing in a rocking chair by the fire and Jack was having a mug of tea at the kitchen table.
“Have a l
ittle repast,” he said as I went in. To read the letter he had to borrow his sister’s glasses, so he pulled them off her face and put them on his own. They were rimless glasses and made him look penurious. A few hens had come in from the yard and were picking at a colander in which there had been cold cabbage but was now almost picked clean. They were very intent on this. A sprig of faded palm was stuck beside the globe of the Sacred Heart lamp and I reckoned that it had been there since Palm Sunday. The willow-patterned plates that were wedged into the dresser badly needed a wash. I tried to find a disappointed look on his face as he read the letter, but there was none.
“Tell your mam that Jack understands all, and that Jack will wait for time’s eventualities,” and I said I would and ran out of the kitchen, because I had some idea that he was going to kiss me. After that he visited us rarely, and when he did he talked mostly to Dada. But often when I was on the way from school he called me by rapping the windows with his knuckles.
“How’s your mam?”
“She’s well.”
Even when she wasn’t, I said it out of deference. Then he’d put two bars of chocolate in an envelope and send them to her.
I was twelve when Maggie died; we all sat in the parlor, and the ladies drank port wine and nibbled marietta biscuits. Jack looked sad, a drip on his nose and a black diamond of cloth on the sleeve of his brown jacket. The maternity nurse had sewed it on for him.