The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  He looked no older now than he had looked then, and was still essentially the same suave, spectacular young man with the long studious face, the thin-lipped mouth and the dark, smouldering eyes. He was as fiery, as quick in speech, as ever. Eric Nolan had called him The Hero of All Dreams (a nickname which was considered to be in bad taste and had not stuck). In real life the Hero of All Dreams had a little plumbing business in a poor quarter of the city, was married, and had fathered seven children of whom three only were alive.

  Michael Redmond, the more urbane and conventional of the two, was genuinely a Don Juan of sorts. He looked rather like an ape with his low, deeply-rounded forehead and retreating chin, his thick lips and short nose. He had small, good-humoured eyes and the most complacent expression Helen had ever seen upon a man. It was a caricature of self-satisfaction. About his forehead and eyes and mouth the skin had contracted into scores of little wrinkles, and each wrinkle seemed to be saying, ‘Look! I am experience.’ His hair was wiry with the alertness of the man’s whole nature; it was cut close and going grey in patches. Clearly, he was no longer young. But he exuded enthusiasms, and talked in sharp, quick spurts that were like the crackling of a machine-gun.

  Helen found herself rather liking him.

  Jordan had been describing their experiences of the day and for Helen’s benefit he went back to the beginning. While she was sleeping in her warm bed (he seemed to grudge her the bed) they were being roused out of a cold and comfortless barn in the mountains between Dunmanway and Gugan by word of a column that was conducting a house-to-house search for them. And as they crept out of the barn in the mist of dawn, their feet numbed with cold, they saw troops gathering in the village below with lorries and an armoured car.

  Michael Redmond snatched at the tale and swept it forward. As they were making off they had been attacked and forced to take cover behind the heaps of turf that were laid out in rows along the side of the hill. It was only the grouping of the soldiers in the village street that had saved them. (He rubbed his hands gleefully as he said it.) Ten minutes of rapid fire into that tightly-packed mass and it had scattered helter-skelter, leaving three casualties behind. Long before it had time to reform in anything like fighting order they had made their escape. And they had been marching all day.

  So being in the neighbourhood, added Jordan slyly, they had called on the Crowleys. Oh, of course, they had called! exclaimed Redmond unaware of any sarcastic intent on his companion’s part. May would never have forgiven them if they hadn’t. And he smiled at her with a carefully prepared, unctuous smile that showed a pair of gold-stopped teeth and spread slowly to the corners of his mouth while his face contracted into a hundred wrinkles.

  ‘Oh, everyone drops in here,’ tinkled the Darling as she flitted about the room. ‘Mother calls our house “No Man’s Land”. Last week we had – let me see – we had seven here, three republicans and four Free Staters.’

  ‘Not all together, I hope?’ asked Jordan with a sneer.

  ‘Well, not altogether. But what do you think of this? Vincent Kelly – you know Vincent, Helen, the commanding officer in M— came in one evening about three weeks ago, and who was sitting by the fire but Tom Keogh, all dressed up in riding-breeches and gaiters, on his way to the column!’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Yes, I tell you. The funniest thing you ever saw!’

  ‘And what happened?’ asked Helen breathlessly.

  ‘Well, I introduced them. “Commandant Kelly, Mr Burke,” and Vincent held out his fist like a little gentleman, and said, “How do you do, Mr Burke?” And after ten minutes Tommy gave in and said with his best Sunday morning smile, “So sorry I must go, Commandant,” and they solemnly shook hands again – just as though they wouldn’t have liked to cut one another’s throats instead!’

  ‘But do you mean to say—?’ Helen was incredulous. ‘Do you really mean to say you don’t bang the door in these people’s faces?’

  ‘Who do you mean?’ asked the Darling with equal consternation. ‘Is it Tommy Keogh and Vincent Kelly?’

  ‘No, no. But Free State soldiers?’

  ‘God, no!’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve known Vincent Kelly since he was that high. Why the devil should I bang the door in his face? I remember when he and Tommy were as thick as thieves, when Vincent wouldn’t go to a dance unless Tommy went too. Tomorrow they’ll be as thick again – unless they shoot one another in the meantime.… And you think I’m going to quarrel with one about the other?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Michael Redmond with dignity. ‘No one expects impossibilities.’

  ‘Of course not,’ echoed Jordan, his voice tinged with the same elaborate irony. Obviously he was enjoying Helen’s discomfiture.

  ‘But what a ridiculous idea!’ gasped the Darling as she poured out tea.

  ‘Well, I don’t understand it,’ Helen added weakly.

  Whatever explanation she might have received was anticipated by a startling incident. They had noticed no previous sound before the front gate clanged open with a scream of hinges, and they heard the chug-chug of a car turning in from the road. The two men started up. Jordan’s hand flew to his hip-pocket.

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ said the Darling. ‘As for you,’ she added resentfully to Jordan, ‘you seem to have a passion for showing that you pack a gun.’

  His hand fell back to his side.

  ‘Nobody’s going to raid us. Besides, if they were, do you really think they’d drive up to the door like that?’

  The car stopped running and she went out into the hall. Her reasoning seemed sound, and the two men sat down again, Jordan on the edge of his chair with his hands between his knees. They looked abashed, but did not take their eyes from the door.

  There was a murmur of voices in the hall; the door opened and again Jordan as if instinctively drew back his arm. In the doorway stood a tall young man in the uniform of the Regular Army.

  ‘Don’t be afraid, children,’ sang the Darling’s voice from behind him. ‘You all know one another. You know Doctor Considine, Helen? – Doctor Considine, Miss Helen Joyce.… Rebels all, Bill! Have a cup of tea.’

  The newcomer bowed stiffly, sat down close to the door and accepted in silence the cup of tea which May Crowley handed him. He had a narrow head with blond hair, cropped very close, and an incipient fair moustache. He was restless, almost irritable, and coughed and crossed and recrossed his legs without ceasing, as though he wished himself anywhere but in their company. The other two men showed hardly less constraint, and in the conversation, such as it was, there was a suggestion that everybody had forgotten everybody else’s name. The Darling prattled on, but her prattling had no effect and scarcely raised a smile. Even turning on the gramophone did not help to dissipate the general gloom. Considine looked positively penitential.

  Suddenly, putting his cup on the table and pushing it decisively away from him, he said without looking round:

  ‘I suppose neither of you fellows would care to come into town with me?’

  A mystified silence followed his question.

  ‘I’d be glad of somebody’s company,’ he added with a sigh.

  ‘But Helen is going back to town, Bill,’ said the Darling with astonishment.

  ‘I doubt if she’d care to come back with me,’ Considine muttered with rapidly increasing gloom.

  ‘Why shouldn’t she? I thought you’d never met before tonight?’

  The doctor ignored the insinuation, and turning to Redmond he went on almost appealingly.

  ‘I’d take it as a personal favour.’

  ‘Very sorry,’ replied Redmond from behind a suspicious smile. ‘I’m afraid it’s impossible.’

  ‘What about you?’ This to Jordan.

  Jordan shook his head.

  ‘Nothing to be afraid of, of course. I’d guarantee to bring you there and back safely.’

  Jordan looked at Redmond, who avoided the silent question, and once again, but wi
th less decision, he made a gesture of refusal.

  ‘But what in Heaven’s name do you want him for?’ asked the Darling. ‘It will take you three-quarters of an hour at most to get home. Less if you cross the blown-up bridge. At your age you’re not afraid of travelling alone, surely?’

  ‘I’m not alone,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Not alone?’ three voices asked in unison.

  ‘No. There’s a stiff in the car.’

  Fully aware of the dramatic quality of his announcement he rose in gloomy meditation, crossed to the window and spun up the blind, as though to assure himself that the ‘stiff’ was still there. The others looked at one another in stupefaction.

  ‘And how did you come by the stiff?’ asked the Darling at last.

  ‘A fight outside Dunmanway this morning. He got it through the chest.’

  His audience looked at one another again. There was a faint gleam of satisfaction in Michael Redmond’s eyes that seemed to say, ‘There! What did I tell you?’ The doctor sat down and lit a cigarette before he resumed.

  ‘He was all right when we left B—. At least I was certain he’d be all right if only we could operate at once. There was no ambulance – there never is in this bloody army – so I dumped him into the car and drove off for Cork. We had to go slow. The roads were bad, and I was afraid the jolting might be too much for him. I swear to God I couldn’t have driven more carefully!’

  He took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face.

  ‘We talked a bit at first. He spoke very intelligently. He was a nice boy, about nineteen. Then I noticed he was sleepy as I thought, nodding and only answering now and again, but I paid no heed to that. It was only to be expected. It was getting dark, too, at the time, and I had to keep my eyes on the road. Then, as I was passing the cross a half-mile back, I got nervous. I can’t describe it – it was a sort of eerie feeling. It may have been the trees; trees affect me like that. Or the mist – I don’t know. I called back to him and he didn’t answer, so I stopped the car and switched on a torch I have (here he fumbled in his pockets, produced the lamp, and switched it on in evidence). Then I saw his tunic was saturated with blood. The poor devil was stone dead.

  ‘So I’m in a bit of a hole,’ he added irrelevantly.

  They sat still, and for the first time Helen heard the pock-pock of the rain against the window like the faint creak of a loose board.

  ‘I thought there might be someone here who’d come into town with me. I don’t like facing in alone. I’m not ashamed to admit that.’

  He was watching Jordan out of the corner of his eye. So were the others, for at the same moment all seemed to become aware of his presence. He seemed to project an aura of emotional disturbance.

  ‘Well,’ he began hesitantly, seeing their eyes on him, ‘what can I do?’ He gave a shrug that said the very opposite of what his face was saying. ‘I’ll admit I’d like to help you. I don’t want to see another man in a hole but – when the thing’s impossible?’

  ‘I’d bring you back tomorrow night.’

  ‘Of course.…’ Jordan hovered upon the brink of an avowal. ‘There’s another reason. The wife and kiddies. I haven’t seen them now for close on three months.’

  ‘You’ll be absolutely safe,’ said the doctor with growing emphasis. ‘Absolutely. I can guarantee that. If necessary I can even speak for the Commanding Officer. Isn’t that enough for you?’

  Jordan looked at Redmond and Redmond looked back with a shrug that seemed to say, ‘Do as you please.’ Jordan was alone, and knew it, and his face grew redder and redder as he looked from one to another. A helpless silence fell upon them all, so complete that Helen was positively startled by the doctor’s voice saying, almost with satisfaction:

  ‘Plenty of time, you know. It’s only seven o’clock.’

  She looked at her watch and rose with a little gasp of dismay. At the same moment Jordan too sprang up.

  ‘I may as well chance it,’ he said with brazen nonchalance, his hands locked behind his head and a faint smile playing about the corners of his mouth. ‘A married man needs a little relaxation now and then.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Michael Redmond.

  Though there was no sarcasm in the voice Jordan looked up as though he had been struck.

  ‘You people know nothing about it,’ he said sharply, and wounded vanity triumphed over his assumed nonchalance. ‘Wait until you’re married! Perhaps you’ll see things differently then. Wait until you’ve children of your own.’

  He glanced angrily at the girls.

  Considine waved a vague, disparaging hand.

  ‘Why, it’s the most natural thing in the world,’ he said, imparting a sort of general scientific absolution to the sentiment implied. ‘The most natural thing in the world.’

  The others said nothing. The two girls went upstairs, and while Helen changed back into her shoes and gaiters May Crowley sat on the bed beside her, and a look of utter disgust settled upon her vapid mouth.

  ‘Honest to God,’ she said petulantly, ‘wouldn’t he give you the sick, himself and his wife? Why doesn’t he stay at home with her altogether? It’s revolting! He should be kept with a column for five years at a time. He’s been carrying on for years like that, skipping back like a kid to a jampot, and his poor drag of a wife suffering for him. There she is every twelve months trotting out in that old fur coat of hers – the same old fur coat she got when they were married – and she has to face police and soldiers night after night in that condition! If they raid his house at all they raid it twice a week to keep her company. Because he’s such a great soldier! Soldier my eye! If they only knew! But it is revolting, isn’t it, Helen?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ replied Helen weakly.

  ‘Of course it is.… Michael Redmond is more in my line,’ she went on as she stood before the mirror and added a dab of powder to her nose. ‘He’s a man of the world if you understand me, the sort of man who can talk to a woman. I think I prefer him to any of them, with the exception of Vincent Kelly.… Now Vincent is a gentleman if you like. I’m sure you’d love him if only you knew him better.… But Jordan! Ugh! Thanks be to God, Bill Considine is taking him out of this. When he looks at you it’s as though he was guessing how many children you’d have. He’s a breeder, my dear, that’s what he is, a breeder!’

  Helen did not reply. She was thinking of the dead boy outside in the car.

  ‘Helen, child,’ the Darling went on inconsequentially, ‘you’d better stop the night.’

  ‘No, really,’ said Helen, ‘I must get home.’

  ‘I suppose you must.’ The Darling looked at her out of indifferent, half-shut eyes. ‘Michael is a sweet man!… It’s the way they hold you, isn’t it, dear? I mean, don’t you know immediately a man puts his arm round you what his character is like?’

  When they came downstairs the others were waiting in a group under the hall-lamp; Considine in his uniform cap and great coat; Jordan looking more than ever like a hero of romance in trench coat and soft hat, his muddy gaiters showing beneath the ragged edges of his coat.

  Michael Redmond opened the door, and they felt the breath of the cold, wet night outside, without a star, and saw the great balloon-like laurel bush in the centre of the avenue, catching the golden beams from doorway and window, and reflecting them from its wet leaves. The car was standing beside it out of range of the light. Helen stood behind for a moment while the others approached it, then fascinated, she followed them. Considine produced his electric torch, and a beam from it shot through the light rain into the darkness of the car. There was nothing to be seen.

  Startled, the Darling and Jordan stepped back, and the little group remained for a few seconds looking where the grey light played upon the car’s dark hood. Then the doctor laughed, a slight, nervous laugh, and his hand went to the catch of the door. It shot open with a click and something slid out, and hung suspended a few inches above the footboard. It was a man’s head, the face upturned, the long, da
rk hair brushing the footboard of the car, the eyes staring back at them, bright but cold. The face was the face of a boy, but the open mouth, streaked with blood, made it seem like the face of an old man. There was a brown stain across the right cheek, as though the boy had drawn his sleeve across it when the haemorrhage began.

  No one said anything; all were too fascinated to speak. Then Michael Redmond’s hand went out and, catching the doctor’s wrist, forced the light quietly away. It went out, and Redmond lifted the body and thrust it back on the seat.

  ‘Now,’ he said, and the pompousness seemed to have gone from his voice. ‘You’d better start, doctor.’

  ‘What about you, Miss Joyce?’ asked Considine.

  ‘I’m cycling in,’ she said.

  ‘We can pace you, of course. The roads are bad, and we shouldn’t be able to go fast anyhow.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Redmond roughly. ‘It won’t take her long to get home.’

  Helen liked him more than ever.

  He lit her bicycle lamp, and, with a hurried good-bye, she cycled down the avenue. She had gone the best part of half her way before the car caught up on her. Mentally she thanked Michael Redmond for the delay – ‘man of the world, man of the world,’ she thought. The car slowed down, and Jordan shouted something which she did not catch and did not reply to. It went on again, and his voice lingered in her ears, faintly repulsive.

  The tail-light of the car (the red glass had gone and there was only a white blob leaping along the road) disappeared round a corner, and left her to the wet waste night and the gloom of the trees. Already the rain was beginning to clear; soon there would be a fine spell, with stars perhaps, but the road was full of pot-holes, and she could almost feel the mud that rose in the lamplight on each side of her front wheel, and spattered her gaiters and coat. And still the voice of Jordan lingered in her ears, and from the depths of her memory rose a bit of a poem that she had heard old Turner quote in college. Had he said that it was one of the finest in the English language? It would be like old Turner to say that. Fat lot he knew about it anyway! But it haunted her mind.