The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘And how’s yourself, sergeant?’

  ‘Well, now, like the most of us, Dan, neither too good nor too bad. We have our own little worries, but, thanks be to God, we have our compensations.’

  ‘And the wife and family?’

  ‘Good, praise be to God, good. They were away from me for a month, the lot of them, at the mother-in-law’s place in Clare.’

  ‘In Clare, do you tell me?’

  ‘In Clare. I had a fine quiet time.’

  The old man looked about him and then retired to the bedroom, from which he returned a moment later with an old shirt. With this he solemnly wiped the seat and back of the log-chair nearest the fire.

  ‘Sit down now, sergeant. You must be tired after the journey. ’Tis a long old road. How did you come?’

  ‘Teigue Leary gave me the lift. Wisha now, Dan, don’t be putting yourself out. I won’t be stopping. I promised them I’d be back inside an hour.’

  ‘What hurry is on you?’ asked Dan. ‘Look, your foot was only on the path when I made up the fire.’

  ‘Arrah, Dan, you’re not making tea for me?’

  ‘I am not making it for you, indeed; I’m making it for myself, and I’ll take it very bad of you if you won’t have a cup.’

  ‘Dan, Dan, that I mightn’t stir, but ’tisn’t an hour since I had it at the barracks!’

  ‘Ah, whisht, now, whisht! Whisht, will you! I have something here to give you an appetite.’

  The old man swung the heavy kettle on to the chain over the open fire, and the dog sat up, shaking his ears with an expression of the deepest interest. The policeman unbuttoned his tunic, opened his belt, took a pipe and a plug of tobacco from his breast pocket, and crossing his legs in an easy posture, began to cut the tobacco slowly and carefully with his pocket knife. The old man went to the dresser and took down two handsomely decorated cups, the only cups he had, which, though chipped and handle-less, were used at all only on very rare occasions; for himself he preferred his tea from a basin. Happening to glance into them, he noticed that they bore signs of disuse and had collected a lot of the fine white turf-dust that always circulated in the little smoky cottage. Again he thought of the shirt, and, rolling up his sleeves with a stately gesture, he wiped them inside and out till they shone. Then he bent and opened the cupboard. Inside was a quart bottle of pale liquid, obviously untouched. He removed the cork and smelt the contents, pausing for a moment in the act as though to recollect where exactly he had noticed that particular smoky smell before. Then, reassured, he stood up and poured out with a liberal hand.

  ‘Try that now, sergeant,’ he said with quiet pride.

  The sergeant, concealing whatever qualms he might have felt at the idea of drinking illegal whiskey, looked carefully into the cup, sniffed, and glanced up at old Dan.

  ‘It looks good,’ he commented.

  ‘It should be good,’ replied Dan with no mock modesty.

  ‘It tastes good too,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Ah, sha,’ said Dan, not wishing to praise his own hospitality in his own house, ‘ ’tis of no great excellence.’

  ‘You’d be a good judge, I’d say,’ said the sergeant without irony.

  ‘Ever since things became what they are,’ said Dan, carefully guarding himself against a too-direct reference to the peculiarities of the law administered by his guest, ‘liquor isn’t what it used to be.’

  ‘I’ve heard that remark made before now, Dan,’ said the sergeant thoughtfully. ‘I’ve heard it said by men of wide experience that it used to be better in the old days.’

  ‘Liquor,’ said the old man, ‘is a thing that takes time. There was never a good job done in a hurry.’

  ‘ ’Tis an art in itself.’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘And an art takes time.’

  ‘And knowledge,’ added Dan with emphasis. ‘Every art has its secrets, and the secrets of distilling are being lost the way the old songs were lost. When I was a boy there wasn’t a man in the barony but had a hundred songs in his head, but with people running here, there and everywhere, the songs were lost.… Ever since things became what they are,’ he repeated on the same guarded note, ‘there’s so much running about the secrets are lost.’

  ‘There must have been a power of them.’

  ‘There was. Ask any man today that makes whiskey do he know how to make it out of heather.’

  ‘And was it made of heather?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘It was.’

  ‘You never drank it yourself?’

  ‘I didn’t, but I knew old men that did, and they told me that no whiskey that’s made nowadays could compare with it.’

  ‘Musha, Dan, I think sometimes ’twas a great mistake of the law to set its hand against it.’

  Dan shook his head. His eyes answered for him, but it was not in nature for a man to criticize the occupation of a guest in his own home.

  ‘Maybe so, maybe not,’ he said noncommittally.

  ‘But sure, what else have the poor people?’

  ‘Them that makes the laws have their own good reasons.’

  ‘All the same, Dan, all the same, ’tis a hard law.’

  The sergeant would not be outdone in generosity. Politeness required him not to yield to the old man’s defence of his superiors and their mysterious ways.

  ‘It is the secrets I’d be sorry for,’ said Dan, summing up. ‘Men die and men are born, and where one man drained another will plough, but a secret lost is lost forever.’

  ‘True,’ said the sergeant mournfully. ‘Lost forever.’

  Dan took his cup, rinsed it in a bucket of clear water by the door and cleaned it again with the shirt. Then he placed it carefully at the sergeant’s elbow. From the dresser he took a jug of milk and a blue bag containing sugar; this he followed up with a slab of country butter and – a sure sign that he had been expecting a visitor – a round cake of homemade bread, fresh and uncut. The kettle sang and spat and the dog, shaking his ears, barked at it angrily.

  ‘Go away, you brute!’ growled Dan, kicking him out of his way.

  He made the tea and filled the two cups. The sergeant cut himself a large slice of bread and buttered it thickly.

  ‘It is just like medicines,’ said the old man, resuming his theme with the imperturbability of age. ‘Every secret there was is lost. And leave no one tell me that a doctor is as good a man as one that had the secrets of old times.’

  ‘How could he be?’ asked the sergeant with his mouth full.

  ‘The proof of that was seen when there were doctors and wise people there together.’

  ‘It wasn’t to the doctors the people went, I’ll engage?’

  ‘It was not. And why?’ With a sweeping gesture the old man took in the whole world outside his cabin. ‘Out there on the hillsides is the sure cure for every disease. Because it is written’ – he tapped the table with his thumb – ‘it is written by the poets “wherever you find the disease you will find the cure.” But people walk up the hills and down the hills and all they see is flowers. Flowers! As if God Almighty – honour and praise to Him! – had nothing better to do with His time than be making old flowers!’

  ‘Things no doctor could cure the wise people cured,’ agreed the sergeant.

  ‘Ah, musha, ’tis I know it,’ said Dan bitterly. ‘I know it, not in my mind but in my own four bones.’

  ‘Have you the rheumatics at you still?’ the sergeant asked in a shocked tone.

  ‘I have. Ah, if you were alive, Kitty O’Hara, or you, Nora Malley of the Glen, ’tisn’t I’d be dreading the mountain wind or the sea wind; ’tisn’t I’d be creeping down with my misfortunate red ticket for the blue and pink and yellow dribble-drabble of their ignorant dispensary.’

  ‘Why then indeed,’ said the sergeant, ‘I’ll get you a bottle for that.’

  ‘Ah, there’s no bottle ever made will cure it.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Dan. Don’t talk now till you try it. It cured my own
uncle when he was that bad he was shouting for the carpenter to cut the two legs off him with a handsaw.’

  ‘I’d give fifty pounds to get rid of it,’ said Dan magniloquently. ‘I would and five hundred.’

  The sergeant finished his tea in a gulp, blessed himself and struck a match which he then allowed to go out as he answered some question of the old man. He did the same with a second and third, as though titillating his appetite with delay. Finally he succeeded in getting his pipe alight and the two men pulled round their chairs, placed their toes side by side in the ashes, and in deep puffs, lively bursts of conversation, and long, long silences, enjoyed their smoke.

  ‘I hope I’m not keeping you?’ said the sergeant, as though struck by the length of his visit.

  ‘Ah, what would you keep me from?’

  ‘Tell me if I am. The last thing I’d like to do is waste another man’s time.’

  ‘Begor, you wouldn’t waste my time if you stopped all night.’

  ‘I like a little chat myself,’ confessed the policeman.

  And again they became lost in conversation. The light grew thick and coloured and, wheeling about the kitchen before it disappeared, became tinged with gold; the kitchen itself sank into cool greyness with cold light on the cups and basins and plates of the dresser. From the ash tree a thrush began to sing. The open hearth gathered brightness till its light was a warm, even splash of crimson in the twilight.

  Twilight was also descending outside when the sergeant rose to go. He fastened his belt and tunic and carefully brushed his clothes. Then he put on his cap, tilted a little to side and back.

  ‘Well, that was a great talk,’ he said.

  ‘ ’Tis a pleasure,’ said Dan, ‘a real pleasure.’

  ‘And I won’t forget the bottle for you.’

  ‘Heavy handling from God to you!’

  ‘Good-bye now, Dan.’

  ‘Good-bye, sergeant, and good luck.’

  Dan didn’t offer to accompany the sergeant beyond the door. He sat in his old place by the fire, took out his pipe once more, blew through it thoughtfully, and just as he leaned forward for a twig to kindle it, heard the steps returning. It was the sergeant. He put his head a little way over the half-door.

  ‘Oh, Dan!’ he called softly.

  ‘Ay, sergeant?’ replied Dan, looking round, but with one hand still reaching for the twig. He couldn’t see the sergeant’s face, only hear his voice.

  ‘I suppose you’re not thinking of paying that little fine, Dan?’

  There was a brief silence. Dan pulled out the lighted twig, rose slowly and shambled towards the door, stuffing it down in the almost empty bowl of the pipe. He leaned over the half-door while the sergeant with hands in the pockets of his trousers gazed rather in the direction of the laneway, yet taking in a considerable portion of the sea line.

  ‘The way it is with me, sergeant,’ replied Dan unemotionally, ‘I am not.’

  ‘I was thinking that, Dan; I was thinking you wouldn’t.’

  There was a long silence during which the voice of the thrush grew shriller and merrier. The sunken sun lit up rafts of purple cloud moored high above the wind.

  ‘In a way,’ said the sergeant, ‘that was what brought me.’

  ‘I was just thinking so, sergeant, it only struck me and you going out the door.’

  ‘If ’twas only the money, Dan, I’m sure there’s many would be glad to oblige you.’

  ‘I know that, sergeant. No, ’tisn’t the money so much as giving that fellow the satisfaction of paying. Because he angered me, sergeant.’

  The sergeant made no comment on this and another long silence ensued.

  ‘They gave me the warrant,’ the sergeant said at last, in a tone which dissociated him from all connection with such an unneighbourly document.

  ‘Did they so?’ exclaimed Dan, as if he was shocked by the thoughtlessness of the authorities.

  ‘So whenever ’twould be convenient for you –’

  ‘Well, now you mention it,’ said Dan, by way of throwing out a suggestion for debate, ‘I could go with you now.’

  ‘Ah, sha, what do you want going at this hour for?’ protested the sergeant with a wave of his hand, dismissing the notion as the tone required.

  ‘Or I could go tomorrow,’ added Dan, warming to the issue.

  ‘Would it be suitable for you now?’ asked the sergeant, scaling up his voice accordingly.

  ‘But, as a matter of fact,’ said the old man emphatically, ‘the day that would be most convenient to me would be Friday after dinner, because I have some messages to do in town, and I wouldn’t have the journey for nothing.’

  ‘Friday will do grand,’ said the sergeant with relief that this delicate matter was now practically disposed of. ‘If it doesn’t they can damn well wait. You could walk in there yourself when it suits you and tell them I sent you.’

  ‘I’d rather have yourself there, sergeant, if it would be no inconvenience. As it is, I’d feel a bit shy.’

  ‘Why then, you needn’t feel shy at all. There’s a man from my own parish there, a warder; one Whelan. Ask for him; I’ll tell him you’re coming, and I’ll guarantee when he knows you’re a friend of mine he’ll make you as comfortable as if you were at home.’

  ‘I’d like that fine,’ Dan said with profound satisfaction. ‘I’d like to be with friends, sergeant.’

  ‘You will be, never fear. Good-bye again now, Dan. I’ll have to hurry.’

  ‘Wait now, wait till I see you to the road.’

  Together the two men strolled down the laneway while Dan explained how it was that he, a respectable old man, had had the grave misfortune to open the head of another old man in such a way as to require his removal to hospital, and why it was that he couldn’t give the old man in question the satisfaction of paying in cash for an injury brought about through the victim’s own unmannerly method of argument.

  ‘You see, sergeant,’ Dan said, looking at another little cottage up the hill, ‘the way it is, he’s there now, and he’s looking at us as sure as there’s a glimmer of sight in his weak, wandering, watery eyes, and nothing would give him more gratification than for me to pay. But I’ll punish him. I’ll lie on bare boards for him. I’ll suffer for him, sergeant, so that neither he nor any of his children after him will be able to raise their heads for the shame of it.’

  On the following Friday he made ready his donkey and butt and set out. On his way he collected a number of neighbours who wished to bid him farewell. At the top of the hill he stopped to send them back. An old man, sitting in the sunlight, hastily made his way indoors, and a moment later the door of his cottage was quietly closed.

  Having shaken all his friends by the hand, Dan lashed the old donkey, shouted: ‘Hup there!’ and set out alone along the road to prison.

  AFTER FOURTEEN YEARS

  NICHOLAS COLEMAN arrived in B— on a fair day. The narrow streets were crowded with cattle that lurched and lounged dangerously as the drovers goaded them out of the way of passing cars. The air was charged with smells and dust and noise. Jobbers swung their sticks and shouted at one another across the street; shopkeepers displayed their wares and haggled with customers on the high pavements; shrill-voiced women sold apples, cigarettes and lemonade about the statue of the Maid of Erin in the market-place, and jovial burly farmers with shrewd ascetic faces under their Spanish hats jostled him as they passed.

  He was glad when he succeeded in getting his business done and could leave the town for a while. It unnerved him. Above the roofs one could see always the clear grey-green of a hill that rose sharply above them and seemed as if at any moment it might fall and crush them. The sea road was better. There were carts on that too, and creels passed full of squealing animals; but at least one had the great bay with its many islands and its zone of violet hills through which sunlight and shadow circulated ceaselessly, without effort, like the flowing of water. The surface of the bay was very calm, and it seemed as if a rain of sunlight were peltin
g upon a bright flagstone and being tossed back again in a faint glittering spray, so that when one looked at it for long it dazzled the eye. Three or four fishing smacks and a little railway steamer with a bright red funnel were all that the bay held.

  He had his dinner over an old shop in the market-place, but he was so nervous that he ate little. The farmers and jobbers tried to press him into conversation, but he had nothing to say; they talked of prices and crops, the Government and the County Council, about all of which he knew next to nothing. Eventually they let him be, much to his relief.

  After dinner he climbed the hill that led out of town. The traffic had grown less: he climbed, and as the town sank back against the growing circle of the bay it seemed a quiet place enough, too quiet perhaps. He felt something like awe as he went up the trim gravel path to the convent. ‘At seven,’ he thought, ‘the train will take me back to the city. At ten I shall be walking through Patrick Street on my way home. Tomorrow I shall be back at my old stool in the office. I shall never see this place again, never!’

  But in spite of this, and partly because of it, his heartbeat faster when the lay sister showed him into the bare parlour, with its crucifix, its polished floor, its wide-open windows that let in a current of cool air.

  And at last she came; a slim figure in black with starched white facings. He scarcely looked at her, but took her hand, smiling, embarrassed and silent. She too was ill at ease.

  They sat together on a garden seat from which he saw again the town and the bay, even more quiet now. He heard nothing of its noise but the desolate screech of a train as it entered the station. Her eyes took it all in dispassionately, and now and again he glanced shyly up at her fine profile. That had not changed, and he wondered whether he had altered as little as she. Perhaps he hadn’t, perhaps for her at least he was still the same as he had always been. Yet – there was a change in her! Her face had lost something; perhaps it was intensity; it no longer suggested the wildness and tenderness that he knew was in her. She looked happier and stronger.

  ‘And Kate?’ she asked after they had talked for a little while. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Oh, Kate is very well. They have a nice house in Passage – you know Tom has a school there. It’s just over the river – the house, I mean; sometimes I go down to them on a Sunday evening for tea.… They have five children now; the eldest is sixteen.’