Goodbye to the Hill

by Lee Dunne

  I opened the window beside my head and a cool flow of sunshine breeze came through. It was a lovely day, what you might call good- to- be- alive - weather, and I enjoyed seeing the soldiers and their mot’s stepping it out towards the Dodder. A lot of the girls had big legs and good hips, and in their coloured dresses they looked more than alright.

  I wondered if they were as good as Redmond claimed. I couldn’t tell. The one I’d walked with that night to help him out had been so innocent that I didn’t have the heart to try and give her one. Honestly, I felt such a bastard that night, telling her endless lies, and getting her going and all, that in the finish I’d just had a good necking session and tried to convince her that all guys weren’t pigs. I don’t know why I did it. I guess she just touched something in me that I didn’t even know was there. And I was so nice to her, wanting to mean every word of it, that I think she’d fallen for me by the time I left her. It wasn’t a bad thing to do, I suppose, but it didn’t help me like myself.

  Big hips made me think of Breeda, and I knew that with or without Larry I was going to try and see her again. Larry was the greatest and God knows he’d been more than good to me, but I couldn’t help the way I felt. I had to see her again if I got even half a chance.

  I suppose it was thinking about her that gave me a hard on, with some help from the sun shining in on me in the bus. I sat there thinking what a bloody nuisance it was. I didn’t have a coat or a newspaper or anything to hold in front of me as I got off. And you feel such a bloody fool and the more you try and think of something else so that it’ll die, the harder it gets. And I feel sure that some of the females that know more than they should about men look for it when you get up off your seat. You walk down the aisle and when you glance at them they’re not looking at your face, as you might expect, they’re eyeing your crotch to see if you’re bulging a bit. No respect for a guy’s privacy.

  I knew that Breeda’s age had a lot to do with the way she attracted me. Twenty-nine of so, she was, and it seemed a great thing to me that I could possible attract a woman of that age, especially such an attractive one. She was lovely with that big sensuous body and even the fact that she was some kind of masochist didn’t frighten me off. And I knew that if she’d have asked me to go and live with her or go away to England with her, or anything like that, she wouldn’t have got no for an answer. Not Maureen, nor Ma, not anything could have stopped me.

  I knew that it wasn’t a bright way of thinking after sharing her with Larry. When you thought about it, it wasn’t much of a reference for a mot, and yet it didn’t matter a damn to me. With Maureen I’d wanted her to be a virgin. I’d even needed her to be one, but with Breeda, I didn’t seem to care. No matter what she’d done, I still wanted her, and I didn’t even want to know about anything that had happened to her before we met. The way I felt about her was very different to my love for Maureen. It was a wild thing, and odd and strange and ugly, but if I’d had to make a choice, there was no doubt in my mind that it was she I would have run to.

  It was a ten minute walk from the bus stop to Mrs. Kearney’s house and I tried to read a book as I walked along. It’s not an easy thing to do. If you concentrate more on the walking you miss what’s on the page; if you were really stuck into the story you keep stopping before you walk into lamp-posts that aren’t there. And if the book is good, that’s no way to read it anyway.

  The one I was working on was A.J. Cronin’s Keys of the Kingdom. It was a great story, the priest was a marvellous man altogether. So full of humility and tolerance, and so very different from the arrogant white-collar workers that I’d come across, most of the time, that I loved him from the beginning. I felt that there must be men like him somewhere, men who become priests because there was no other life for them. It was a good thing to feel that they weren’t all demigods in dark suits.

  I scribbled a lot into my exercise books about that man. He was real to me and it was about people like him that I wanted to write. People that gave of themselves just because that’s how they were, people who gave without ever expecting anything in return.

  I wanted to use him to help me to write. Just to think about him gave me a glow. To me he was such a great person that I was full of good feeling when he was in my thoughts and when I felt that way I wanted to write all the time. But, like so many other times the feeling went down the drain all too quickly.

  Telling yourself that you’re going to do this and that is very easy. You can do it anytime, whether you’re walking or drinking or making love. It takes little effort, but developing a sense of application, forcing yourself to sit down and put words on paper, ignoring the Guinness that was there for the drinking and the females that were so available, that was the rough bit. And that’s what I was up against, although it wasn’t hard for me to write. I had a facility for putting words on paper and I was in love with the idea of being a writer, but I didn’t have the backbone to go without the things that stopped me writing. I’d get down to it one day, I told myself every day. Meantime, there was stout for the drinking and there were girls.

  I put the book away and when Mrs. Kearney opened the door she looked lovely. She had a new pair of glasses on, shaped like cat’s eyes, and a white linen blouse that made me forget how tired I’d been on the bus. A kiss and then the warmth of her body against me and I’d forgotten everything except the fact that I’d been doing the same thing with Maureen only twelve or fourteen hours earlier.

  There was a couple of dozen bottles of Arthur J in the house and we had a good drink and a few beef sandwiches. She didn’t eat much but she was putting the black stuff away as quick as I was myself. Then she told me that her husband was dead.

  Ten days ago, she said, and though she was very quiet, she was so matter-of-fact about it that you could tell she had known, like Ma with little Larry, that the tuberculosis would win in the end.

  I felt very odd when she told me. There I was eating the fella’s roast beef and him getting colder with every bite I was taking. I told her I was very sorry and I took another drink. It wasn’t true. You can’t be sorry someone’s dead when you’ve never even met the man. But I had to say something, lip service. You don’t mean it and the people that you say it to know that you don’t, but they’re grateful you took the trouble to say it.

  Courtesy, it’s called, but I think bullshit would be a better name for it. There’s so much of that kind of toffee in the world that you don’t know what to believe any more.

  ‘It was God’s holy will, ‘she said, and she got up off the sofa and walked to the window.

  ‘It’s good to know that he’s in heaven,’ I said, looking at the shape of her hips in the black skirt and wishing that she’d change the subject.

  It was the Clark Gable voice again, and I put so much feeling into it that she was close to tears when she turned around. It was a liberty to talk to her like that. I mean, I had no more idea of where your man was, than I had of how to pull rabbits out of a hat. But I felt she’d want to hear something like that, so I just said it.

  She came and sat beside me and then she touched my hand. ‘You’re very grown up, Paddy. It’s hard to credit that you could be so sensitive.’

  You’re not kidding, I thought, and then I felt guilty for being such a smug little bastard.

  ‘Did you have enough to eat?’

  ‘Oh yeh, thanks a lot.’

  She smiled a little and then she gave a big sigh as though she was very tired and her breasts moved up and down under her blouse and I wanted to lean over and give them a good kiss They were so lovely that she must have known it. Honestly, they stood up like soldiers and you couldn’t help feeling they’d been made for better things than just having kids suck milk out of them.

  ‘I’ve sold the house and the business, Paddy. I’m going home to Wicklow.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I had an awful feeling my dollar a week
was gone west. ‘Are you further down than Bray?’

  ‘Yes, down beyond Newtown-Mount-Kennedy. It’s peaceful there and really lovely. I’ve never really settled in Dublin.’

  There was something about the way she was saying all this. I couldn’t put a finger on it. There was just something in her voice.

  ‘I wish you could come with me, Paddy,’ she said, and I knew then what had been puzzling me. It had been in her voice even before she said it. She leaned over and kissed me and I could tell, dead husband or no dead husband, she was dying for it. She held onto me and I was glad to be able to comfort her. I only hoped that her husband couldn’t see what was going on. I mean, it was his sofa and his missus.

  Afterwards we went up to the bedroom and we lay together between white sheets and it was great. She talked about Wicklow as though she was trying to get me to buy the whole county. It seemed like a marvellous place and the idea of going down there to live was very attractive to me. I wouldn’t have to work and I’d be able to get down to that book I’d been dreaming about. That was good to think about and she had enough money to make it possible. There wouldn’t be any shortage of food or drink, and living under the same roof with her, I’d get enough of the other to keep even me quiet.

  I was kidding myself and I knew it. I hadn’t a chance of getting away with it. If Ma ever found out I was poncing on a woman more than twice my age, she’d curl up with shame and die. And anyway, I wouldn’t be able to stick Mrs. Kearney for more than a week. She was okay and she was kind but I didn’t love her. At the same time I knew that if Breeda had made me the same offer I’d have gone with her like a shot, even at the risk of destroying Ma.

  When I’d had a bath I looked at myself full-length in the mirror and I was about as well-built as a sixpenny candle. I couldn’t imagine what Mrs. Kearney saw in me. Even when I posed and tried to look romantic I was a skinny string of nothing. I shook my head at myself in the mirror. I’d have to do a Charles Atlas course or something. I couldn’t go on as I was or I’d slip down a bloody drain.

  When I was leaving she started to cry and it got on my nerves so much that I felt like hitting her. I just didn’t know how to cope with women crying. She held onto me and I kissed her, promising to go down to Wicklow just as soon as I could. As I opened the door she put two pound notes in my hand and somehow I managed not to shout for joy. It was no time to look happy and she so upset, so I hugged her to me and she wept into my skinny shoulder and I didn’t mind at all. And I thought to myself that I was getting really good at being a louse.

  She promised to ring me at the office during the week and I kissed her then for the last time and I walked down the path and out along the road. When I got to the corner I turned and she was standing by the gate. I waved to her and she put her hand up to her mouth. Then I was around the corner and running and jumping along the footpath. And I’ll tell you one thing - those two greenbacks were burning a hole in my pocket.

  That night in the pub I flashed a ten-bob note under Redmond’s nose. He looked at it with green eyes and when I told him that the mot with the cane had given it to me he was double-choked. He didn’t want to believe it but he knew that I didn’t earn enough to be carrying that kind of dough on a Sunday night. I bought the Guinness and we talked and I built everything up so much that he was livid with jealousy before I was half finished.

  I didn’t do it to hurt him, it was just practice. To be able to tell bare-faced lies and not blink an eye, was an art, and I wanted to be as good at it as Redmond was.

  By about half nine, Redmond was keen to go to the Mansion House. So much so that I felt he’d made a date to see the widow there, but when I stood up I knew I was too tired to go. Even after the drink my legs were aching and for once in my life I decided to use a bit of common sense and go home to bed.

  Harry wasn’t too pleased at me. If I didn’t go that meant he couldn’t go either. He hadn’t any money, so he was depending on me to carry him. He tried to talk me into it but I was too tired even to listen. And he wouldn’t ask me for money to go on his own. Redmond would ask you for drink with no qualms whatsoever. It was said of him that he’d drink porter out of a whore’s boot, but he wouldn’t tap you for cash and I wasn’t offering it, knowing that I would never get it back. So he walked around to the flats with me and though I thought the touch was sure to come he didn’t ask me for a penny. Even Redmond has his pride.

  Next morning in the office I gave Larry Deegan a twenty packet of fags and he looked so much at a loss that I wished I hadn’t done it. It was as if he’d never been given a present before in his life. ‘Ah, you shouldn’t have done that, Paddy.’

  I walked down the office not knowing what to say. Later he whispered that he’d meet me for a coffee - if I could get away long enough - and I said I’d see him in Grafton Street.

  That was far enough away from the office on Dame Street and at the same time handy enough for both of us.

  I finished the hand delivery as fast as I could and he was waiting for me in a horse-box seat. The smell of the freshly roasted coffee was like a drug to me and I sat down filling my lungs with it. I liked the place so much that I’d have gone there every morning if I’d had the money regular. I ate four cream cakes and drank three coffees, and when the waitress brought the bill I grabbed it before Larry could get his hands on it. He shrugged and gave me a cigarette.

  ‘You rob a bank or something over the weekend?’

  That was one of the things I liked about him. He asked a question like that and if I’d said yes he wouldn’t have been the least bit bothered. I shook my head and told him about Claire Kearney. As I went through the story he kept shaking his head in disbelief, and at times he was laughing so much that I had to let him finish before I could go on.

  A lot of people sitting around were looking at him as though he was a head case but it didn’t bother him, not in the slightest.

  ‘You’re a terrible man,’ he said, his tone complimentary, ‘I don’t know where you’ll end up at all.’

  ‘What about Wicklow though?’ I said.

  ‘I’d be gone by Tuesday, but that’s just my way. You’re so young, you see. You could get her into serious trouble if it was found out.’

  He was right there, of course. A thing like that in Ireland and you’d have every craw-thumper in the country down on your neck. What was taboo for them, you weren’t going to enjoy, not if they could help it. So Larry thought it best to leave the offer on hold, to just go down for the weekend whenever I could manage it. Also, he was so against getting involved that he was double-wary of anything like that. ‘Share yourself around,’ was his motto, ‘give them all a break!’

  He asked me what I thought of Breeda, and if I’d enjoyed myself on Saturday.

  ‘The best time I ever had in my life. She’s lovely, isn’t she?’

  ‘She thought you were okay, too,’ he grinned. ‘She didn’t stop talking about you all evening.’

  I liked him too much to try and see her behind his back, so I asked him straight out if it would be alright.

  ‘Sure you can. She and I are just good friends,’ he laughed, ‘You know, screwing acquaintances.’

  ‘She’s great - I know that much.’

  ‘You keep on with the older ones,’ he said, ‘and if you’re still alive by the time you’re twenty, you’ll be the greatest lover in town.’

  He smoked, shaking his head in mild amusement. ‘You can always learn something for older ones, and anyway, kids are no good. You fight them to get it and after they’ve had it and probably enjoyed it, they cry their eyes out and expect you to marry them. I’ve no time for them myself.’

  ‘Well, straight Larry, I never thought I’d find it as easy as I’ve been doing. The way fellas talk you’d think it was impossible to get a bit unless you went with a brasser.’

  ‘This town’s the same as anywhe
re else.’

  ‘Is Breeda really a masochist?’ I asked.

  He was shaking his head again, not in answer but in sheer surprise. ‘What do you know about things like that?’

  ‘Ah, I read a book about people like that, y’know.’

  ‘You’re getting up on my back now,’ he said. ‘You never read a book like that, not in this country. The clergy and the rest of them see to that. After they’ve had a good read they decide it’s not fit for us.’

  I should have known better than to kid Larry. He was too sharp. ‘Ah, it’s this friend I have. He knows all about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well, she is, as it happens. She gets a kick out of being hurt. Thing is, not to worry about it, try and look at it from her angle. It’s the same to her as if you were stroking her headlamps. You enjoy that. She enjoys being hurt.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not against it.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would be,’ he grinned as we got up to go. ‘She wants it,’ he said. ‘And if it’s not you or me giving it to her, it’ll be somebody else.’

  ‘I’ll do the best I can’ I said.’

  ‘One thing,’ Larry said, ‘if you do shoot off to the Garden of Ireland, let me know where you are.’

  ‘Ah, no, I won’t go now. As you say, it’s too risky.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he nodded in agreement, ‘just thought I’d mention it. You’re so full of surprises.’

  We went out into Grafton Street and with a wink he was gone and I was on my way back to the office.

  Cahill wasn’t there when I got in and I was grateful for that. I made a quick phone call to Maureen because I hadn’t seen her in her office when I’d been in with the morning delivery. I asked her if she was alright.

  ‘Of course, I’m alright. It’s my monthly, that’s all. I’m always a bit rough for the first few days.’

  After that I worked for an hour filing and copying proposal forms. I wanted things to be clear when Cahill came back, because it only needed the least thing for him to have a go at me, and as the weeks went by I was getting closer and closer to punching him in the teeth.