by Lee Dunne
My heart smile when I thought about the child and I swore to myself, that I would be the best father that ever drew breath. And I would treat Jenny like a queen, the way a man should treat the mother of his child. I wanted a son but, if it was a girl, I wouldn’t send her back. Just so long as Jenny came out of it alright, I would love my child and be grateful for the luck of the Irish.
Business picked up some, with a good week followed by a not so good week, but we were managing to stay alive, and with the money we got for Jimmy’s tape recorder we rebuilt the body of the truck so that it was better than it had been for years. And I made up my mind that someday I would have a collection of books to replace the truck full that had been burned. Hardback or paperback, it didn’t matter. The cover was the least important part, as far as I was concerned.
In Kilgroome, we got some decent houses, thanks to one more talent contest, and on the Saturday night we went to the pub afterwards. Jennie was tired, but I needed a few belts to help me forget the troop of bad singers I’d had to listen to for over an hour. We’d had them by the dozen all week and the final had really put the tin hat on it for me.
Everybody else was in good form, and Jenny, heavy now with the baby, had never seemed so beautiful to me. She still wore her stages make-up, and her hair was long, down either side of her face to her shoulders. Her eyes lit up every time I looked at her and I could hardly wait to get back to bed and hold her carefully until she went to sleep.
I was sick with love for her and I didn’t care who knew it. She was the whole thing, the morning and the afternoon, and it was so good, so fine between us, that it took my breath away even after all this time together. It had been hard to believe that anything so wonderful could go on and on but, I felt it could for as long as I lived. She was all I needed and I couldn’t ever see her as becoming any kind of habit.
We were sitting close to the pub fire and she took off her cloak. ‘Here,’ Tom said, winking at me, ‘none of that now, Jemy. Are you trying to drive us mad altogether.’
Jennie laughed, self-conscious, but not really embarrassed about the way her breasts bulged out of the dress she had worn in the play. ‘I was afraid to take it off backstage,’ she said, ‘I was too jaded to try and squeeze into anything else.’
We drank a toast to the baby and Jenny’s eyes shone with joy. From where I sat facing her, I wouldn’t have known she was pregnant, because of the high table. I mimed the words ‘I love you’ and she closed her eyes around them, her breasts rising and falling in unison with the beat of my heart.
‘Well God, yis fiddled that right enough.’
I looked up to my left, resenting the high-pitched tenor voice that had interrupted the silent love making between myself and Jenny.
‘Yis aren’t getting away with it....that five was mine by rights.’
Toomy Darcy was the man’s name, and I remembered it only because Tom Hunter and I had reckoned him to be the worst example of the bad Irish tenor voice.
‘Ah, come on now,’ Jimmy said, ‘can’t you leave us be? We’re tired enough now...’
‘I want paying and I want it now.’
Tom Hunter stood up. ‘Will you go away? We’re just having a quiet drink.’
‘Yill have no quiet drink till I get what’s due to me.’
I sat with my hands bunched together, my temper ripping at my insides. ‘Go away,’ I heard Tom say.
Toomy Darcy hit Tom on the side of the head with a hand the size of a shovel. Tom went down on the floor and Jimmy started to get up. Darcy held him down by the shoulder and I saw his eyes practically drooling over Jennie’s breasts. ‘You come for a walk, sweetheart’ and we’ll forget about the fiver.’
I stood up, aching all over from the way I held myself back. Toomy Darcy looked at me as though I was a pound of sausages in a butcher’s shop window.
‘You the paymaster, are you?’
I nodded: ‘I’ll pay you,’ I said, glad beyond belief that he was such a big bastard.
He grinned and I moved around towards him, putting my left hand into my breast pocket as though like a fella reaching for his wallet. Then I hit him under the buttons of his waist coat, wanting to kill him stone dead with the punch.
He folded slightly towards me, his stinking breath shooting all over my face, while I felt nothing but the desire to kill him, to beat the bastard to death. I gave him no chance to recover, grabbing both his lapels, I head butted him twice in a split second, and I knocked him flying away from our table and away with his stinking eyes from my dear Jenny. And I was after him, as people moved to get out of his stumbling semi -conscious presence, while I punched him once more between the eyes, meeting his face with my foot as he headed for the floor.
Jack Mooney, the publican, and Jimmy, who had sobered up, pulled me back, and I sat down on a chair besides Jennie.
Tom Hunter was facing me, looking a bit glassy-eyed, and I felt that I had to vomit. Pat came and put a glass of brandy into my hand and I drank it down.
‘Are you alright, Jenn?’
She nodded and touched my face with her hand. ‘Me and my big tits,’ she whispered. I drew her face gently to my own, not caring what anybody thought of me. She knew, Jennie knew, and that was all that mattered to me in those moments.
Darcy was carried out of the bar room and Jimmy sat down beside me. ‘I could have killed that bastard, I said quietly.’
He gave me a grin, a nerve jumping over his right eye. ‘You nearly did...’
Tom Hunter drank what was in his glass. I missed most of it, worse luck.’ He grinned: ‘You cut your hand.’
I looked at the gash on my right hand. ‘If I’d broken every finger, it would have been worth it.’
Jenny sighed and when I turned I saw that she was pale, beads of perspiration sitting on her forehead and on her upper lip.
Pat moved to her and I could see Jennie holding down the pain. ‘Get her back to the wagon,’ Pat said. ‘It’s the baby.’
I picked Jenny up and I could feel her arms and her wrists tighten more as I carried her down the street to the Pat’s home.
Jimmy had gone for the doctor and I found myself praying as I put Jenny down on the bed.
‘Leave her with me,’ Pat said. ‘I can manage till the doctor comes.’
I nodded, unable to say anything, my heart pounding with fear at the sight of Jenny’s pain and discomfort.
Her eyes were closed tightly and she was biting down on a cloth Pat had given her.
Going out, I fell down the steps of Pat’s trailer and Tom Hunter lifted me to my feet.
‘What a night,’ he said, as I leaned back against Pat’s home, taking a shot from his half bottle, gasping as the spirit hit my throat, taking deep breaths of the cold night air to help me get my breathing to normal.
‘God let Jenny be alright,’
This was my prayer as we stood there, even as Jimmy came with the doctor, staying there with Tom and me as he shut the door behind the medic.
Jimmy sent Tom to the pub to get a bottle and we stood, me leaning quite heavily against the trailer, feeling some sore reaction here and there, predictable after a fight where you hit somebody hard enough to kill him, and likely to leave you somewhat uncomfortable for a few days, provided you hadn’t broken anything.
In minutes, the doctor opened the door: ‘Mister O’Neill?’
I stood upright and he said, ‘There won’t be anything happening for a while. Why don’t you go and have a drink.’
He looked at the luminous dial of his watch, a smile on his mouth. ‘One thirty is about opening time.’ Giving me a grin he shut the door and Jimmy and I walked up the street to the pub.
Tom was already on his way back with a bottle and he turned around and we moved on.
We sat by the fire after I had apologised after I apologised
to Jack Mooney for the brawl. He told me not to worry, that he’s seen Toomy hit Tom, and for that he deserved what he got.
‘Will you make me one promise though, Tony?’
I nodded: ‘If I can.’
He smiled: ‘Promise me you won’t ever have a fight with me. I smiled back and shook his hand, ‘I promise, Jack.’
‘The hand looks bad,’ Jimmy said.
‘It’s throbbing a bit. I need this drink for the pain.’
‘I thought that was it,’ Jimmy gave me a grin. ‘Sure I know you don’t drink as a rule.’
‘Like the rest of us,’ Tom said, pouring whiskey. ‘He only dips his bread in it.’
We made small talk and I wanted to hug them both for the effort they made to keep me from worrying about Jennie. I was so grateful to them that I couldn’t tell them I’d sooner be on my own, that no matter how much they tried to help me relax, make me laugh, I was hardly there in their company, since along with my heart, my head was also there, all of me was in Pat’s home with the woman I loved with all that I was.
They might have understood, but I didn’t think they would. Nobody could have known that hadn’t been loved by Jenny, and Jenny loved me and me alone. Not Jimmy or Tom had been that lucky. Nobody had ever been that fortunate, and I knew that if ever I could say again I believe in God, it would be because of Jenny.
She loved me and she had brought out in me more than I had ever felt myself capable of giving. Robbie Burns had come close to how I felt when he wrote, ’Till all the seas gang dry my dear’ but still, I loved Jenny more. And I couldn’t believe it would end when one or both of us died. It was too big to be cut off even by something as great as death. Or so I believed as I waited for our child to be born.
17
Jack Mooney put a bottle of whiskey on the table. ‘I’m off to my bed but stay as long as you want.’
Jimmy reached for money.
‘No,’ Jack held up his hand. ‘That’s on the house.’ He looked at me: ‘I’ve got ten of them and I still sweat the same as the first time. I tried to find a smile for him but my face felt frozen. ‘Thanks for everything, Jack.’ I said, with feeling.
It was half past seven when Jimmy let Dr. Ryan into the pub. He put his bag and his trilby on the table: ‘Your wife is fine, but I’m sorry to say your baby, sadly, was still-born’.
Jimmy put a drink in my hand, his look telling me that he was pretty devastated too, while Doctor Ryan drank a large neat whiskey as he stood looking down at me.
‘There’s no easy way to tell a man what I’ve had to tell you, Mister O’Neill. It’s got to be said and all the flowery speeches on earth won’t help the man who has to listen.’
I nodded and drank the whiskey, grateful to him for dispensing with the flannel, the bullshit that changes nothing.
‘As long as Jenny is ...’
‘Jenny, your wife, she is fine, I promise you.’
Tom pulled out a chair and the doctor sank onto it looking very tired and seeming greyer in the head then when I saw him earlier.
‘What? Eh. Was it a boy or a girl?’
‘It’s often better not to know,’ he said, looking at his glass.
‘I’d like to know, thank you.’
‘A boy,’ he said, and drank his fresh whiskey down.
‘Can I see Jenny now?’
He nodded: ‘She’ll be asleep for hours...she is sedated, but you can see her.’
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‘What happened to your hand?’ Jenny held my hand so carefully, propped up in Pat’s bed, deep, dark circles under her eyes.
I found a grin for her. ‘Don’t you remember the tenor that wanted to eat you?’
She took my hand carefully, her fingers touching mine below the bandage, calm from the drugs and her hair was brushed, and she had made up her lips.
‘Dr. Ryan said you wanted to come in earlier.’
‘I wanted to tell you what you mean to me, but you were out like a light.’
My mind remained in awe of her giving nature as she sent her concern for me to me, without labouring it.
Oh what a woman you are. My mind was whisper to me all the things I dare not say at this time. The doctor has told you all, you know our child is wherever unborn babies go. And you’re dealing with your loss, and trying to protect me from mine, and you are going to be alright, and I don’t have to say a word.
She touched my wounded hand and she said, ‘That awful man. I wonder if he and my husband might have been related.’
‘I hope not,’ I said. ‘Look at what his face did to my hand.’
She smiled a little and I leaned over to kiss her gently on the mouth: ‘I love you, Missus O’Neill.’
‘The doctor thought we were married...I said to him, my husband wants a son.’
‘I am your husband...’
‘You are, your really are, now.
‘I always was, you fool.’
‘But not so much as now...for all that we found, this is our first loss together, and you love me still.’
‘ You know that.’
She nodded her head in a careful way: ‘I know it, and I’ll never be afraid again.’
I took her face in my hands. ‘Well, know it. Know it so that you can shout it out and tell the world. I love you, I love you and I can’t imagine my life without you.’
‘Even though, I’m like a big cow.’
‘I’ll kiss them and suck them back to normal. I love your enormous tits, I love them, and that’s that.’
For a moment she looked really serious and then she said: ‘I’m thirty three.’
I grinned: ‘You’re kidding right! I’d have said at least forty four.’
She laughed: ‘Not my breasts...my age.’
‘Are you trying to make me mad?
She shook her head and I said: ‘Right then, shut up. I love you.’
‘When you’re forty, I’ll be fifty two.’
I pulled a face, mocking anger. ‘You’ll cost me a fortune for braziers with all that weight.’
‘I’ll never mention it again because I know it will never matter.’
I kissed her, gently, but drawn to a passionate spot inside myself, ashamed almost, to be thinking of how long it would be before we could make love again.
She kissed me again and held me for another few seconds. ‘I’ll sleep like a top, thanks to you.’
‘We’ll talk about everything sometime. This isn’t the time.’
She nodded. ‘Bless you, Tony...’ As she spoke she was reaching under her pillow. ‘I have something for you.’
I opened the large handkerchief and looked at the wad of five pound notes. ‘I carried it with me ever since you gave it to me.’
I put the money in my pocket and kissed her one more goodbye.
What’s the good of making plans, I thought. I walked to the hall and when I was sure there wasn’t anybody else there, I let the tears come without knowing for sure just why I was weeping like a baby.
We struggled through the plays for the next ten days, using girls from the local dramatic society to fill small parts, this gaining us the families of our young actresses which added a few quid into the kitty, which we took on the grounds that every little helps. Obviously, we had to tamper with scripts to make things work and all in all, we came through this touch time in pretty good shape, but I can assure you that one and all, we sighed in relief when Jenny came back to work.
My hand was still strapped up but it didn’t bother me now that I’d had the tooth pulled out of it. Dr. Ryan had laughed when, having lanced my hand, he found one of Toomy Darcy’s teeth embedded in it. ‘If the local dentist gets to hear about this, I could be in trouble,’ he joked, while I shook my head in sheer bloody amazement.
The ext
raction didn’t hurt me much but I made the mistake of watching the operation, and afterwards I’d been so sick that my stomach was sore for days.
My foot had been tender too, for a week, but that soon mended itself without any help from anybody.
I saw Toomy Darcy by going down to the cottage where he lived with his mother. She told me, in great detail, of the ‘six blackguards’ that had attacked her son, ‘and him blind from drink’, but, when the old girl left us, her big bad-in-drink-son extended his handn and asked me to forget it, that he was sorry for his behaviour. He was drunk anyway, but, he hadn’t known that Jenny was my wife, or that she was expecting a child, and he was so contrite that I couldn’t tell him we had lost our baby.
His right eye was beginning to open up, but his doctor had told him his jaw would be in splints for a bit longer. We said goodbye as I was leaving and I nearly passed out from the pressure on the spot where his tooth had been lodged, He had enough problems without concerning himself with that.
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We moved westward to be nearer Joe Dominick and the booth he was minding for us. About three weeks, Jimmy reckoned, and we could go and pick up our summer theatre. ‘Right on the coast, this year, Tony, slap bang on the beach, or as near as we can get. And the punters can come in their bathing trunks if they like, just as long as the come and part with some of their readies.’
The weather was milder in early May and it really began to look like summer was on the way in. It was a hot month for sure as Jennie finished the course of tablets to dry up her milk, the food that our son never tasted, and I found her doing sit-ups one day in the digs.
‘I want my figure back,’ she answered to my look of what the hell is going on.
She grunted, forcing herself to do one more. ‘How am I ever going to hold onto you if I just let myself go?’
‘We’ll, I’ll tell you,’ I kidded. ‘You see, you open your arms and your legs and when I’m in there, you close around me and that’s how you’ll hold me.’