The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘Yes, of course – Marie. Why, she was called after me! She’s my godchild.’

  ‘Yes, yes, fancy I’d forgotten! You were always with Kate in those days.’

  ‘I’d love to see Marie. She has written to me for my feastday ever since she was nine.’

  ‘Has she? I didn’t know. They don’t talk to me about it.’

  A faint flush mounted her cheek; for a moment she was silent, and if he had looked at her he would have seen a sudden look of doubt and pain in her eyes. But he did not look up, and she continued.

  ‘Kate writes to me off and on too – but you know Kate! It was from her I heard of your mother’s death. That must have been a terrible blow to you.’

  ‘Yes, it was very sudden. I was the only one with her when it came.’

  ‘We had Mass for her here. How did she die? Was she —?’

  ‘She died hard. She didn’t want to leave me.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Her lips moved silently for a little.

  ‘I’ve never forgotten her. She was so gentle, so – so unobtrusive, and Fair Hill used to be such a happy place then, before Kate married, when there were only the three of ourselves.… Do you remember, I used to go without my dinner to come up after school?… And so the house is gone?’

  ‘Yes, the house is gone.’

  ‘And Jennifer? The parrot?’

  ‘Jennifer died long ago. She choked herself with an apple.’

  ‘And Jasper?’

  ‘Jasper too. An Alsatian killed him. I have another now, a sheepdog, a great lazy fellow. He’s made friends with the Kerry Blue next door and the Kerry Blue comes with us and catches rabbits for him. He’s fond of rabbits, but he’s so big, so big and lazy!’

  ‘You’re in lodgings. Why didn’t you go to live with Kate and Tom? You know they’d have been glad to have you.’

  ‘Why should I? They were married; they had children at the time; they needed the house for themselves.… Besides, you know what I am. I’m a simple fellow, I’m not a bit clever, I don’t read books or papers. At dinner the cattle-jobbers were trying to get me talking politics, and honest, I didn’t know what they were at! What would Tom and his friends from the University have thought of a stupid creature like me?’

  ‘No, you spent all your time in the country. I remember you getting up at five and going out with the dogs, around White’s Cross and back through Ballyvolane. Do you still do that?’

  ‘Yes, every fine morning and most Sundays. But I had to give up the birds when mother died.’

  ‘Ah, the birds! What a pity! I remember them too, and how beautifully they sang.’ She laughed happily, without constraint. ‘The other girls envied me so much because you were always giving me birds’ eggs, and I swapped them for other things, and I came back to you crying, pretending I’d lost them.… I don’t think you ever guessed what a cheat I was.… Ah, well! And you’re still in the factory.’

  ‘Still in the factory!… You were right, you see. Do you remember you said I’d stick there until I grew grey hairs. You used to be angry with me then, and that worried me, and I’d give a spurt or two – No, no, I never had any ambition – not much anyhow – and as well be there as any place else.… And now I’m so used to it that I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to. I live so quietly that even coming here has been too much of an adventure for me. All the time I’ve been saying “Tomorrow I shall be back at work, tomorrow I shall be back at work.” I’ll be glad to get home.’

  ‘Yes, I can understand that.’

  ‘Can you? You used to be different.’

  ‘Yes, but things are different here. One works. One doesn’t think. One doesn’t want to think. I used to lie abed until ten at one time, now I’m up at half-past five every morning and I’m not a bit more tired. I’m kept busy all day. I sleep sound. I don’t dream. And I hate anything that comes to disturb the routine.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘No, not like you. I hate being ill, lying in bed listening to the others and not working myself.’

  ‘And you don’t get into panics any longer?’

  ‘No, no more panics.’

  ‘You don’t weep? You’re not ambitious any longer? – that’s so strange!… Yes, it is good to have one’s life settled, to fear nothing and hope for nothing.’

  She cast a quick, puzzled look at him.

  ‘Do you still go to early Mass?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, just as before.’

  They fell into silence again. A little mist was rising from the town; one side of the bay was flanked with a wall of gold; a cool wind from the sea blew up to them, stirring the thick foliage and tossing her light, black veil. A bell rang out suddenly and she rose.

  ‘What are your lodgings like?’ she asked, her cheeks reddening. ‘I hope you look after yourself and that they feed you properly. You used to be so careless.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes. They’re very decent. And you – how do you find the place agreeing with you? Better than the city?’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ she said wearily, ‘it is milder here.’

  They went silently up the path towards the convent and parted as they had met, awkwardly, almost without looking at one another.

  ‘No,’ he thought, as he passed through the convent gate, ‘that’s over!’ But he knew that for days, perhaps for months, birds and dogs, flowers, his early-morning walks through the country, the trees in summer, all those things that had given him pleasure would give him nothing but pain. The farmers coming from the fair, shouting to one another forward and back from their lumbering carts brought to mind his dreams of yesterday, and he grieved that God had created men without the innocence of natural things, had created them subtle and capricious, with memories in which the past existed like a statue, perfect and unapproachable.

  And as the train carried him back to the city the clangour of its wheels that said ‘ruthutta ruthutta ruthutta’ dissolved into a bright mist of conversation through which he distinctly heard a woman’s voice, but the voice said nothing; it was like memory, perfect and unapproachable; and his mind was weighed down by an infinite melancholy that merged with the melancholy of the dark countryside through which he passed – a countryside of lonely, steel-bright pools that were islanded among the silhouettes of hills and trees. Ironically he heard himself say again, ‘Yes, it is good to have one’s life settled, to fear nothing and hope for nothing.’

  And the train took him ever farther and farther away and replied with its petulant metallic voice —

  ‘Ruthutta ruthutta ruthutta!’

  MAY NIGHT

  IT WAS a night in May, warm and dim and full of the syrupy smell of whitethorn. In a black sky a single star, blue and misty, was burning. Two tramps sat by the roadside. One was tall and thin, and in the ash-coloured twilight one might have seen that he had a long face with a drooping moustache. The other was a small man who looked fat; but that was only because he was swathed in coats, one more ragged than the next. He must have been wearing four or five in all. He had a ragged black beard that jutted out all over his face. His black hat was pasted perfectly flat over his scattered black locks that streamed about his shoulders, inside and outside the coats. Even in daylight all you could see of his person would be two beady black eyes, very bright, a stub of a nose no bigger than the butt of a cigar, and, when he moved his hands, the tips of his dirty fingers which were otherwise lost to view.

  ‘Man,’ he was saying in a high sing-song voice, ‘is an animal. An animal must live. Therefore man must live. That’s a syllogism; if you don’t agree with it you must contradict the major or the minor or say the conclusion doesn’t follow. But a man is made in the image of God and he must try and live decent. Only you, Horgan, you son of a bitch, you’re worse than an animal. An animal bites because ’tis his nature to, but you bite because you likes it. Horgan,’ he said, spitting, ‘you’re neither a man nor an animal. Why do you hang around me?’

  ‘I don’t hang around you.’

  ‘You do.
You do hang around me. No one else would leave you do it. But I’m a weak man and I leaves you. You’re a constant source of timptation to me. When I gets angry I hits you and then I do be sorry.’

  ‘Where would you be only for me? Who carries you away when you’re drunk? Only for me the guards would have you now.’

  ‘I admit I gets drunk,’ replied the fat man sternly. ‘Not like you. Nothing makes you drunk, which is another reason I say you’re not a man at all. And you leads me into timptation. When you’re with me I wants to hit you. I wants to hit you now.’

  ‘You try it and see what you’ll get.’

  ‘If I lose me temper I’ll hit you,’ said the fat man, spitting on his stick. ‘I’ll hit you such a crack you won’t get over it.…’ After a moment he sighed. ‘O Lord, behold the timptation I’m put in with this fellow. Some day I’ll do for him.… What did you hang that dog for?’ he cried fiercely. ‘What harm was he doing you? One of God’s creatures! You savage!’

  ‘Don’t you call me a savage!’

  ‘Savage, savage, dirty savage!’ said the fat man thickly.

  ‘By Chrisht, I’ll shtrangle you!’

  ‘Come on! Come on! Do it!’ cried the fat man, springing to his feet with extraordinary agility and brandishing his stick. As the other began clumsily to rise there was a sound of footsteps on the road. The fat man lowered his stick with an oath and resumed his seat, back to back with his companion. The tall man lit his pipe. There they sat, looking in opposite directions and muttering the most fiendish maledictions at one another under their breath; the fat man in particular showed a decided ability to manufacture curses. Some minutes later the footsteps drew level with them, and the figure of a man emerged from the darkness. The flame in the bowl of the tall man’s pipe attracted his attention. He stopped.

  ‘Good-night, men,’ he said with a soft, country accent. ‘Would ye have a light?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said the tall man in a whining and obsequious tone. ‘You’re welcome to a light from the pipe, the little that’s in it, God help us.’

  The stranger bent over him. In the light which the tramp sucked from his pipe he saw with his small, shrewd eyes the pale face of a young man. What he saw there caused him suddenly to drop his obsequiousness, and when he spoke again it was in a blustering tone.

  ‘Where are you going to?’ he asked.

  ‘The city,’ replied the young man after a barely perceptible pause.

  ‘Looking for work?’

  ‘Ay.’ Again there was the same slight pause.

  ‘And you’ll get it I suppose.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You’ll get it, you’ll get it,’ repeated the tall tramp, and into his voice had crept a perceptible snarl. ‘The foxy country boy. Ye’d live where honest men would starve.’

  ‘I dunno would we.’

  ‘Oh, don’t you? Well, I know. I know men that can’t get a living in their own city on account of the country johnnies.’

  ‘Never mind him,’ broke in the fat man. ‘He’s not from the city at all. No one knows where he comes from.’

  ‘Don’t they? Don’t they now? If they don’t they know damn well where you come from. With your bag under your arm!’

  ‘Be quiet, you, Horgan! Be quiet now!’

  ‘I will not be quiet,’ hissed Horgan. ‘Look at him now, young fellow! Look at him now! The man that was to be a priest. And when they were turning him out they cursed him to have the bag on his back the longest day he’d live, and he thinks when he’s carrying it under his oxter that he’s cheating them!’

  ‘Ay,’ said the fat man slowly in a deep voice, ‘I was, I was to be a priest. And I know curses, curses that’ll bring the big, blind boils out on you so that you’ll stink for ever – and you going the roads.’

  ‘Don’t you curse me!’ exclaimed Horgan, not quite sure of himself.

  ‘Ah,’ said the fat man with satisfaction, shaking his head so that his long locks wagged about him, ‘I’ll give you a hot little maledico vobis that’ll make you wish you never seen the light, Horgan. You mind what I say.’

  ‘How far more have I to go?’ asked the stranger.

  ‘Fourteen mile,’ replied the fat tramp.

  ‘ ’Tis a long road.’

  ‘ ’Tis so. Set down, can’t you?’

  ‘I will for a minute.’

  ‘There’s a lot looking for work.’

  ‘There is.’

  ‘ ’Tis to England you should go,’ said the fat man decisively. ‘They give them money for nothing there. If I could put by a few ha’pence I’d go to England. I’d rent a little house of my own and drop the drink and go to Mass regular.’

  ‘England!’ said the young man bitterly. ‘I tramped every mile of it.’

  ‘And no work?’

  ‘No work.’

  He turned and lay on his stomach, biting a blade of grass.

  ‘And didn’t they give you the money?’

  ‘God’s curse on the ha’penny.’

  ‘Lord, O Lord! The liars there are!’ The tramp fumbled in his bag. ‘A biteen of bread?… The liars!’ he added indignantly under his breath.

  The young man took the crust and began to gnaw it moodily. A car whizzed by, its lights picking them out like pieces of scenery against the theatrical green of the hedges and the dead white of the hawthorn. Screwing up their eyes, the two tramps looked at their companion.

  ‘You could have asked for a lift,’ said the man with the beard.

  ‘I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘ ’Tis hard enough to get work in the city, I hear tell.’

  ‘I’m not going there to get work.’

  ‘Take my advice,’ said the fat man with animation, ‘don’t go on the roads! Don’t go on the roads, young man! ’Tis a cur-dog’s life.’

  ‘I’m not going on the roads.’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’ It was the truculent voice of Horgan, breaking a sudden silence.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Are you going to try for the army?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For the guards?’

  ‘They wouldn’t take me.’

  ‘Then what is it? Jasus, you’re making a great secret of it.’

  ‘ ’Tis no secret. I’m going to say good-bye to misfortune.’

  There was another silence, deeper, longer. The fat tramp caught his breath and grabbed the young man’s arm.

  ‘Don’t do it!’ he cried. ‘No, don’t do it!’

  ‘And why not?’ The young man sat bolt upright and the tramp felt a pair of wild eyes piercing him in the darkness. ‘Why not, I say?’

  ‘Because ’tis a sin, a terrible sin. Life comes from God. God is good. So life is a good thing – that’s a syllogism. And if you kill yourself you’ll be damned.’

  ‘I’m damned as it is.’

  ‘No, no, no! You don’t know what it is. I know, I know, but I can’t tell you. There’s no one can tell you, no one! But you feel it in here’ – he beat his breast frantically – ‘the fire, the blackness, the loneliness, the fear. Don’t do it young man, don’t do it!’ His voice rose to an angry impotent cry.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Kenfick,’ said Horgan; and there was the same rancour and jealousy and malice in his voice. ‘He’s telling lies. What’s he going there for? Why can’t he do it anywhere else? He’s telling lies.’

  ‘Jasus!’ The stranger suddenly bent across the fat man and gripped Horgan by the throat. ‘Are ’oo contradicting me, are ’oo?’

  ‘Never mind him!’ said Kenfick.

  ‘Are ’oo contradicting me?’

  ‘I’m not, I’m not,’ screamed Horgan, frightened out of his wits and brazening it out with spleen, ‘I’m asking a civil question.’

  The young man’s grip relaxed. He resumed his former position, lying on his stomach.

  ‘Tell us,’ said the fat man, stretching out a conciliatory hand. ‘Never mind that black devil. Young man, I like you. Tell us what happened.
’

  ‘You know it all now,’ replied the young man after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I was in England looking for work. I tramped every bit of it. I came home at the latter end. My mother said: “Go out and look for work. I can’t keep you here.” So I went out and I looked. I tramped Munster looking for it, begging my way. Then I came back to her. “Did you get work?” says she. “No,” says I, “I didn’t.” “Then you must go away again,” says she, “I can’t keep you.” I took up a bit of rope that was lying in the back room and I went out to the shed. I tied it to a rafter. Then I put a box underneath it and I tied the rope around my neck. The door opened and in she walked. “Is it hanging yourself you are?” says she. “It is,” says I. “You can’t do it here,” says she. “Is it to be putting me to the expense of burying you?” “What’ll I do then?” says I. “My feet are bleeding, and I can’t tramp no more.” “You can go down to the city,” says she, “where the tide will wash your body away and there’ll be no call for me to bury you.” ’

  As the stranger concluded his story the fat tramp sighed angrily. He pulled his old hat farther over his eyes.

  ‘She’s no mother,’ he muttered thickly. ‘She’s a wolf. Never mind her. Spit on her! Faugh!… Oh!’ he cried, his voice rising to a wail, ‘my mother; why didn’t I mind her when I had her? And all the times she cried over me, and all the prayers she said for me, and all in the hope that one day she’d kneel for my blessing! Oh, God, what blinds us, what blinds us, O God, that we don’t see our own destruction?’ Bawling his lament with hoarse sobs, he began hitting the grass about him with great sweeps of his stick. ‘Listen, boy,’ he continued eagerly. ‘Come with me. I makes it out well; all the priests knows me; they’re good to me. Sometimes I makes one and six a day.’

  ‘Are you going to drop me then?’ asked Horgan angrily.

  ‘I am. I’m sick of you.’

  ‘I’ll lay you out,’ cried Horgan, drawing back his fist.