The Collected Stories

by William Trevor

  ‘A tall order,’ protested the General, pausing in his forward motion, doubtful again.

  ‘When the wrong people do things,’ replied his wife, ‘it sometimes works.’ She pulled him on until they stood before Edward Mackintosh and the girl he’d chosen as his Mark-2 wife. They smiled at Edward Mackintosh and shook hands with him, and then there was a silence before the General said that it was odd, in a way, what they had to request.

  An Evening with John Joe Dempsey

  In Keogh’s one evening Mr Lynch talked about the Piccadilly tarts, and John Joe Dempsey on his fifteenth birthday closed his eyes and travelled into a world he did not know. ‘Big and little,’ said Mr Lynch, ‘winking their eyes at you and enticing you up to them. Wetting their lips,’ said Mr Lynch, ‘with the ends of their tongues.’

  John Joe Dempsey had walked through the small town that darkening autumn evening, from the far end of North Street where he and his mother lived, past the cement building that was the Coliseum cinema, past Kelly’s Atlantic Hotel and a number of shops that were now closed for the day. ‘Go to Keogh’s like a good boy,’ his mother had requested, for as well as refreshments and stimulants Keogh’s public house sold a variety of groceries: it was for a pound of rashers that Mrs Dempsey had sent her son.

  ‘Who is there?’ Mr Lynch had called out from the licensed area of the premises, hearing John Joe rapping with a coin to draw attention to his presence. A wooden partition with panes of glass in the top half of it rose to a height of eight feet between the grocery and the bar. ‘I’m here for rashers,’ John Joe explained through the pebbly glass. ‘Isn’t it a stormy evening, Mr Lynch? I’m fifteen today, Mr Lynch.’

  There was a silence before a door in the partition opened and Mr Lynch appeared. ‘Fifteen?’ he said. ‘Step in here, boy, and have a bottle of stout.’

  John Joe protested that he was too young to drink a bottle of stout and then said that his mother required the rashers immediately. ‘Mrs Keogh’s gone out to Confession,’ Mr Lynch said. ‘I’m in charge till her ladyship returns.’

  John Joe, knowing that Mr Lynch would not be prepared to set the bacon machine in action, stepped into the bar to await the return of Mrs Keogh, and Mr Lynch darted behind the counter for two bottles of stout. Having opened and poured them, he began about the Piccadilly tarts.

  ‘You’ve got to an age,’ Mr Lynch said, ‘when you would have to be advised. Did you ever think in terms of emigration to England?’

  ‘I did not, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘I would say you were right to leave it alone, John Joe. Is that the first bottle of stout you ever had?’

  ‘It is, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘A bottle of stout is an acquired taste. You have to have had a dozen bottles or maybe more before you do get an urge for it. With the other matter it’s different.’

  Mr Lynch, now a large, fresh-faced man of fifty-five who was never seen without a brown hat on his head, had fought for the British Army during the Second World War, which was why one day in 1947 he had found himself, with companions, in Piccadilly Circus. As he listened, John Joe recalled that he’d heard boys at the Christian Brothers’ referring to some special story that Mr Lynch confidentially told to those whom he believed would benefit from it. He had heard boys sniggering over this story, but he had never sought to discover its content, not knowing it had to do with Piccadilly tarts.

  ‘There was a fellow by the name of Baker,’ said Mr Lynch, ‘who’d been telling us that he knew the ropes. Baker was a London man. He knew the places, he was saying, where he could find the glory girls, but when it came to the point of the matter, John Joe, we hardly needed a guide.’

  Because, explained Mr Lynch, the tarts were everywhere. They stood in the doorways of shops showing off the stature of their legs. Some would speak to you, Mr Lynch said, addressing you fondly and stating their availability. Some had their bosoms cocked out so that maybe they’d strike a passing soldier and entice him away from his companions. ‘I’m telling you this, John Joe, on account of your daddy being dead. Are you fancying that stout?’

  John Joe nodded his head. Thirteen years ago his father had fallen to his death from a scaffold, having been by trade a builder. John Joe could not remember him, although he knew what he had looked like from a photograph that was always on view on the kitchen dresser. He had often wondered what it would be like to have that bulky man about the house, and more often still he listened to his mother talking about him. But John Joe didn’t think about his father now, in spite of Mr Lynch’s reference to him: keen to hear more about the women of Piccadilly, he asked what had happened when Mr Lynch and his companions finished examining them in the doorways.

  ‘I saw terrible things in Belgium,’ replied Mr Lynch meditatively. ‘I saw a Belgian woman held down on the floor while four men satisfied themselves on her. No woman could be the same after that. Combat brings out the brute in a man.’

  ‘Isn’t it shocking what they’d do, Mr Lynch? Wouldn’t it make you sick?’

  ‘If your daddy was alive today, he would be telling you a thing or two in order to prepare you for your manhood and the temptations in another country. Your mother wouldn’t know how to tackle a matter like that, nor would Father Ryan, nor the Christian Brothers. Your daddy might have sat you down in this bar and given you your first bottle of stout. He might have told you about the facts of life.’

  ‘Did one of the glory girls entice yourself, Mr Lynch?’

  ‘Listen to me, John Joe.’ Mr Lynch regarded his companion through small blue eyes, both of which were slightly bloodshot. He lit a cigarette and drew on it before continuing. Then he said: ‘Baker had the soldiers worked up with his talk of the glory girls taking off their togs. He used to describe the motion of their haunches. He used to lie there at night in the dug-out describing the private areas of the women’s bodies. When the time came we went out with Baker and Baker went up to the third one he saw and said could the six of us make arrangements with her? He was keen to strike a bargain because we had only limited means on account of having remained in a public house for four hours. Myself included, we were in an intoxicated condition.’

  ‘What happened, Mr Lynch?’

  ‘I would not have agreed to an arrangement like that if it hadn’t been for drink. I was a virgin boy, John Joe. Like yourself.’

  ‘I’m that way, certainly, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘We marched in behind the glory girl, down a side street. “Bedad, you’re fine men,” she said. We had bottles of beer in our pockets. “We’ll drink that first,” she said, “before we get down to business.” ’

  John Joe laughed. He lifted the glass of stout to his lips and took a mouthful in a nonchalant manner, as though he’d been drinking stout for half a lifetime and couldn’t do without it.

  ‘Aren’t you the hard man, Mr Lynch!’ he said.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ replied Mr Lynch sharply. ‘What happened was, I had a vision on the street. Amn’t I saying to you those girls are no good to any man? I had a vision of the Virgin when we were walking along.’

  ‘How d’you mean, Mr Lynch?’

  ‘There was a little statue of the Holy Mother in my bedroom at home, a little special one my mother gave me at the occasion of my First Communion. It came into my mind, John Joe, when the six of us were with the glory girl. As soon as the glory girl said we’d drink the beer before we got down to business I saw the statue of the Holy Mother, as clear as if it was in front of me.’

  John Joe, who had been anticipating an account of the soldiers’ pleasuring, displayed disappointment. Mr Lynch shook his head at him.

  ‘I was telling you a moral story,’ he said reprovingly. ‘The facts of life is one thing, John Joe, but keep away from dirty women.’

  John Joe was a slight youth, pale of visage, as his father had been, and with large, awkward hands that bulged in his trouser pockets. He had no friends at the Christian Brothers’ School he attended, being regarded there, because of h
is private nature and lack of interest in either scholastic or sporting matters, as something of an oddity – an opinion that was strengthened by his association with an old, simple-minded dwarf called Quigley, with whom he was regularly to be seen collecting minnows in a jam jar or walking along the country roads. In class at the Christian Brothers’ John Joe would drift into a meditative state and could not easily be reached. ‘Where’ve you gone, boy?’ Brother Leahy would whisper, standing above him. His fingers would reach out for a twist of John Joe’s scalp, and John Joe would rise from the ground with the Brother’s thumb and forefinger tightening the short hairs of his neck, yet seeming not to feel the pain. It was only when the other hand of Brother Leahy gripped one of his ears that he would return to the classroom with a cry of anguish, and the boys and Brother Leahy would laugh. ‘What’ll we make of you?’ Brother Leahy would murmur, returning to the blackboard while John Joe rubbed his head and his ear.

  ‘There is many a time in the years afterwards,’ said Mr Lynch ponderously, ‘when I have gone through in my mind that moment in my life. I was tempted in bad company: I was two minutes off damnation.’

  ‘I see what you mean, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘When I came back to West Cork my mother asked me was I all right. Well, I was, I said. “I had a bad dream about you,” my mother said. “I had a dream one night your legs were on fire.” She looked at my legs, John Joe, and to tell you the truth of it she made me slip down my britches. “There’s no harm there,” she said. ‘Twas only afterwards I worked it out: she had that dream in the very minute I was standing on the street seeing the vision in my brain. What my mother dreamed, John Joe, was that I was licked by the flames of Hell. She was warned that time, and from her dream she sent out a message that I was to receive a visit from the little statue. I’m an older man now, John Joe, but that’s an account I tell to every boy in this town that hasn’t got a father. That little story is an introduction to life and manhood. Did you enjoy the stout?’

  ‘The stout’s great stuff, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘No drink you can take, John Joe, will injure you the way a dirty woman would. You might go to twenty million Confessions and you wouldn’t relieve your heart and soul of a dirty woman. I didn’t marry myself, out of shame for the memory of listening to Baker making that bargain. Will we have another bottle?’

  John Joe, wishing to hear in further detail the bargain that Baker had made, said he could do with another drop. Mr Lynch directed him to a crate behind the counter. ‘You’re acquiring the taste,’ he said.

  John Joe opened and poured the bottles. Mr Lynch offered him a cigarette, which he accepted. In the Coliseum cinema he had seen Piccadilly Circus, and in one particular film there had been Piccadilly tarts, just as Mr Lynch described, loitering in doorways provocatively. As always, coming out of the Coliseum, it had been a little strange to find himself again among small shops that sold clothes and hardware and meat, among vegetable shops and tiny confectioners’ and tobacconists’ and public houses. For a few minutes after the Coliseum’s programme was over the three streets of the town were busy with people going home, walking or riding on bicycles, or driving cars to distant farms, or going towards the chip-shop. When he was alone, John Joe usually leaned against the window of a shop to watch the activity before returning home himself; when his mother accompanied him to the pictures they naturally went home at once, his mother chatting on about the film they’d seen.

  ‘The simple thing is, John Joe, keep a certain type of thought out of your mind.’

  ‘Thought, Mr Lynch?’

  ‘Of a certain order.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Ah, definitely, Mr Lynch. A young fellow has no time for that class of thing.’

  ‘Live a healthy life.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘If I hadn’t had a certain type of thought I wouldn’t have found myself on the street that night. It was Baker who called them the glory girls. It’s a peculiar way of referring to the sort they are.’

  ‘Excuse me, Mr Lynch, but what kind of an age would they be?’

  ‘They were all ages, boy. There were nippers and a few more of them had wrinkles on the flesh of their faces. There were some who must have weighed fourteen stone and others you could put in your pocket.’

  ‘And was the one Baker made the bargain with a big one or a little one?’

  ‘She was medium-sized, boy.’

  ‘And had she black hair, Mr Lynch?’

  ‘As black as your boot. She had a hat on her head that was a disgrace to the nation, and black gloves on her hands. She was carrying a little umbrella.’

  ‘And, Mr Lynch, when your comrades met up with you again, did they tell you a thing at all?’

  Mr Lynch lifted the glass to his lips. He filled his mouth with stout and savoured the liquid before allowing it to pass into his stomach. He turned his small eyes on the youth and regarded him in silence.

  ‘You have pimples on your chin,’ said Mr Lynch in the end. ‘I hope you’re living a clean life, now.’

  ‘A healthy life, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘It is a question your daddy would ask you. You know what I mean? There’s some lads can’t leave it alone.’

  ‘They go mad in the end, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘There was fellows in the British Army that couldn’t leave it alone.’

  ‘They’re a heathen crowd, Mr Lynch. Isn’t there terrible reports in the British papers?’

  ‘The body is God-given. There’s no need to abuse it.’

  ‘I’ve never done that thing, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘I couldn’t repeat,’ said Mr Lynch, ‘what the glory girl said when I walked away.’

  John Joe, whose classroom meditations led him towards the naked bodies of women whom he had seen only clothed and whose conversations with the town’s idiot, Quigley, were of an obscene nature, said it was understandable that Mr Lynch could not repeat what the girl had said to him. A girl like that, he added, wasn’t fit to be encountered by a decent man.

  ‘Go behind the counter,’ said Mr Lynch, ‘and lift out two more bottles.’

  John Joe walked to the crate of stout bottles. ‘I looked in at a window one time,’ Quigley had said to him, ‘and I saw Mrs Nugent resisting her husband. Nugent took no notice of her at all; he had the clothes from her body like you’d shell a pod of peas.’

  ‘I don’t think Baker lived,’ said Mr Lynch. ‘He’d be dead of disease.’

  ‘I feel sick to think of Baker, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘He was like an animal.’

  All the women of the town – and most especially Mrs Taggart, the wife of a postman – John Joe had kept company with in his imagination. Mrs Taggart was a well-built woman, a foot taller than himself, a woman with whom he had seen himself walking in the fields on the Ballydehob road. She had found him alone and had said that she was crossing the fields to where her husband had fallen into a bog-hole, and would he be able to come with her? She had a heavy, chunky face and a wide neck on which the fat lay in encircling folds, like a fleshy necklace. Her hair was grey and black, done up in hairpins. ‘I was only codding you,’ she said when they reached the side of a secluded hillock. ‘You’re a good-looking fellow, Dempsey.’ On the side of the hillock, beneath a tree, Mrs Taggart commenced to rid herself of her outer garments, remarking that it was hot. ‘Slip out of that little jersey,’ she urged. ‘Wouldn’t it bake you today?’ Sitting beside him in her underclothes, Mrs Taggart asked him if he liked sunbathing. She drew her petticoat up so that the sun might reach the tops of her legs. She asked him to put his hand on one of her legs so that he could feel the muscles; she was a strong woman, she said, and added that the strongest muscles she possessed were the muscles of her stomach. ‘Wait till I show you,’ said Mrs Taggart.

  On other occasions he found himself placed differently with Mrs Taggart: once, his mother had sent him round to her house to inquire if she had any eggs for sale and after she had put a dozen eggs in a basket Mrs Taggart asked h
im if he’d take a look at a thorn in the back of her leg. Another time he was passing her house and he heard her crying out for help. When he went inside he discovered that she had jammed the door of the bathroom and couldn’t get out. He managed to release the door and when he entered the bathroom he discovered that Mrs Taggart was standing up in the bath, seeming to have forgotten that she hadn’t her clothes on.

  Mrs Keefe, the wife of a railway official, another statuesque woman, featured as regularly in John Joe’s imagination, as did a Mrs O’Brien, a Mrs Summers, and a Mrs Power. Mrs Power kept a bread-shop, and a very pleasant way of passing the time when Brother Leahy was talking was to walk into Mrs Power’s shop and hear her saying that she’d have to slip into the bakery for a small pan loaf and would he like to accompany her? Mrs Power wore a green overall with a belt that was tied in a knot at the front. In the bakery, while they were chatting, she would attempt to untie the belt but always found it difficult. ‘Can you aid me?’ Mrs Power would ask and John Joe would endeavour to loose the knot that lay tight against Mrs Power’s stout stomach. ‘Where’ve you gone, boy?’ Brother Leahy’s voice would whisper over and over again like a familiar incantation and John Joe would suddenly shout, realizing he was in pain.

  ‘It was the end of the war,’ said Mr Lynch. ‘The following morning myself and a gang of the other lads got a train up to Liverpool, and then we crossed back to Dublin. There was a priest on the train and I spoke to him about the whole thing. Every man was made like that, he said to me, only I was lucky to be rescued in the nick of time. If I’d have taken his name I’d have sent him the information about my mother’s dream. I think that would have interested him, John Joe. Wouldn’t you think so?’

  ‘Ah, it would of course.’

  ‘Isn’t it a great story, John Joe?’

  ‘It is, Mr Lynch.’

  ‘Don’t forget it ever, boy. No man is clear of temptations. You don’t have to go to Britain to get temptations.’