The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘Will you? Will you? Will you?’ Kenfick lifted his stick. ‘Leave me see you now. Bah! You haven’t it in you, Horgan. You’re a coward, Horgan!’

  ‘Don’t you call me a coward!’

  ‘You are a coward!’

  ‘I won’t come between ye,’ said the stranger, rising. ‘I’ll go me road. I’ll be no man’s dog any more, waiting for the bite to fill me. There’s no use your telling me about hell no more, mister,’ he added in a husky voice. ‘I was afraid of it once, but I’m afraid of it no longer.’

  ‘Young man, young man,’ cried Kenfick, ‘beware! You don’t know what you’re saying. ’Tis blasphemy, young man. Almighty God, have mercy on us all this night. Almighty God, forgive him and save him!’

  ‘Save!’ snarled Horgan. ‘Look at who talks of saving. He saved you nicely, didn’t He?’

  ‘Yes, He did, He did. I sees what none of ye sees; I sees the world and the people of the world, and I sees the black angels and the white angels fighting always around them. Don’t do it, young man. Stop with me.’

  ‘A grand life you have to offer him,’ sneered Horgan.

  ‘’Tisn’t a grand life, but ’tisn’t a bad life either.’

  ‘’Twould be better for him be dead than tied to the likes of you.’

  ‘Shut up, you!’

  ‘I will not shut up. What’ll he say when he have a month of you, dragging you along the road and you stinking with drink, pulling you out the convent gate and you shouting back dirty words at the nuns?’

  ‘If I do inself, isn’t it their own fault?’ hissed the fat man. ‘Why don’t they give me the few coppers I ask for without whinging and whining? What is it to them what I does with them? What do they think I’m going to buy with them? A house and shop? But women are all alike. A man have sense. A man don’t ask are you going to buy drink with it. Look at the priests! They gives me whiskey because they have sense.’

  ‘Because they’re afraid of your dirty tongue.’

  ‘Because they have sense, they likes whiskey themselves. And they knows I’m not a bad man. They knows I’m only weak. And some day when I’ve a bit of money put by I’ll go and live in a town and have a little house of my own, and every day of my life I’ll answer the Holy Mass. And Almighty God knows it, and He’s not angry with me, and some day He’ll lift me up out of the gutter. I know He will, I know it well. And I know what He’ll do to you, Horgan. Will I tell you?’

  ‘Don’t you say anything bad about me.’

  ‘Ah, you’re afraid! You know damn well what’s coming to you and you’re afraid.’

  ‘I am not afraid.’

  ‘Young man, young man, look at him now!’ Kenfick had Horgan by the neck of the coat, shaking him back and forward. ‘Look at him!’ he shouted triumphantly. ‘The man that was talking about death.’

  And at that instant the tramps saw that the stranger was gone, vanished into the darkness of the spring night, his footsteps unheard on the thick wet grass. Horgan laughed bitterly. The fat man sat back and began to tie up his old bag. Suddenly he broke into a whine.

  ‘O Lord!’ he said, ‘I should have told him. At the hour of death … an aspiration … My Jesus, mercy.… Almighty God, forgive and save him, forgive and save us all.’

  For some time after he could be heard muttering ejaculations and prayers. Then Horgan lit a cigarette and he grew rigid.

  ‘Horgan,’ he said sternly, ‘where did you get that fag?’

  ‘Where do you think?’ asked the other with a snarl.

  ‘Did you steal them from that boy?’

  ‘What do you think I was doing while the pair of ye were gassing?’

  The fat man sighed bitterly. After about three minutes of silence there was the heavy thud of a stick, a scream of pain, and in an instant the two were struggling like madmen in the grass.

  THERE IS A LONE HOUSE

  THE WOMAN stood at the foot of the lane, her right hand resting on the gate, her left fumbling at the neck of her blouse. Her face was lined, particularly about mouth and forehead; it was a face that rarely smiled, but was soft for all that, and plump and warm. She was quite grey. From a distance, this made her seem old; close at hand it had precisely the opposite effect, and tended to emphasize sharply what youthfulness still lingered in her, so that one thought of her as having suffered terribly at some time in the past.

  The man came down the road, whistling a reel, the crisp, sprinkled notes of which were like the dripping of water in a cistern. She could hear his footsteps from a long way off, keeping irregular time to the elfin music, and drew aside a whitehorn bush by the gateway to watch him from cover. Apparently satisfied by her inspection, she kicked away the stone that held the gate in place, and, as he drew level with her, stepped out into the roadway. When he saw her he stopped, bringing down his ash plant with a twirl, but she did not look up.

  ‘Morrow, ma’am,’ he cried jovially.

  Then she did look up, and a helpless blush that completely and utterly belied the apparent calculation of her previous behaviour flowed over her features, giving them a sudden, startling freshness. ‘Good morrow and good luck,’ she answered in a low voice.

  ‘Is it far to Ballysheery, ma’am?’

  ‘ ’Tis seven miles.’

  ‘Seven Irish, ma’am?’

  ‘Seven English.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  She drew her tongue across her lips to moisten them. The man was young. He was decently dressed, but flaunted a rough, devil-may-care expression. He wore no hat, and his dark hair was all a tangle. You were struck by the length of his face, darkened by hot June suns; the high-boned nose jutting out rather too far, the irregular, discoloured teeth, the thick cracked lips, the blue eyes so far apart under his narrow, bony forehead that they seemed to sink back into the temples. A craggy face with high cheekbones, all hills and hollows, it was rendered extraordinarily mobile by the unexpected shadows that caught it here and there as the pale eyes drew it restlessly about. She judged him to be about twenty-six or -seven.

  ‘You seemed to be belting it out fine enough.’

  ‘How’s that, ma’am?’

  ‘I heard you whistling.’

  ‘That’s to encourage the feet, ma’am.… You’ll pardon my asking, is there any place around a man would get a cup of tea, ma’am?’

  ‘There’s no one would grudge you that, surely.’

  Another would have detected the almost girlish timidity of the answer, but not he. He appeared both puzzled and disappointed.

  ‘I’ll go a bit farther so,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘What hurry is on you?’

  ‘ ’Tis my feet gets cramped.’

  ‘If you come with me you can rest them a while.’

  ‘God increase you, ma’am,’ he replied.

  They went up the boreen together. The house was on top of a hill, and behind it rose the mountainside, studded with rocks. There were trees about it, and in front a long garden with a hedge of fuchsia, at one side of which ran a stream. There were four or five apple trees, and beside the kitchen garden were a few flower-beds with a profusion of tall snapdragon, yellow, red and white.

  She put on the kettle and turned the wheel of the bellows. The kitchen filled with blue turf smoke, and the man sat beside the door, almost invisible behind a brilliant column of dust motes, whirling spirally in the evening sunlight. But his hands lay on his knees in a pool of light, great brown hands with knuckles like polished stones. Fascinated, she watched them, and as she laid the table she almost touched them for sheer pleasure. His wild eyes, blue as the turf smoke, took in everything about the kitchen with its deal table, chairs and dresser, all scrubbed white; its delft arranged with a sort of pedantic neatness that suggests the old maid.

  ‘This is a fine, fancy place, ma’am,’ he said.

  ‘ ’Tis a quiet place.’

  ‘ ’Tis so. The men are all away?’

  ‘There are no men.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘O
nly a boy that does turns for me.’

  ‘Oh!’

  That was all he said before he turned to his meal. He was half-starved, she decided, as she watched him wolf the warm, crumbling bread. He saw her grey eyes fixed on him and laughed brightly.

  ‘I has a great stroke, ma’am.’

  ‘You have, God bless you. I might have boiled you another egg.’

  When tea was over he sighed, stretching himself in his chair, and lit his pipe.

  ‘Would you mind if I took off my boots, ma’am?’ he asked shyly.

  ‘Why would I? Take them off and welcome.’

  ‘My feet is crucified.’

  She bent and took up the boot he removed.

  ‘No wonder. Your boots are in need of mending.’

  He laughed at her expressive politeness.

  ‘Mending, ma’am? Did you say mending? They’re long past praying for.’

  ‘They are, that’s true. I wonder.… There’s an old pair inside these years and years. They’d be better than the ones you have if they’d fit you.’

  She brought them in, good substantial boots but stiff, and a trifle large for him. Not that he was in a state to mind.

  ‘God, but they’re grand, ma’am, they’re grand! One little patch now, and they’d be as good as new. Better than new, for they’re a better boot than I could ever buy in a shop. Wait now! Wait!’ With boyish excitement he foraged in his pockets, and from the lining of his coat produced a piece of leather. He held it up with the air of a professional conjurer. ‘Watch me now. Are you watching?’ The leather fitted over the slight hole and he gave a whoop of joy. She found him last and hammer; he provided tacks from a paper bag in a vest pocket, and set to mending the damage with something like a tradesman’s neatness.

  ‘Is that your trade?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘One of my trades, ma’am. Cobbler, carpenter, plumber, gardener, thatcher, painter, poet; everything under the sun and moon, and nothing for long. But a cobbler is what I do be most times.’

  He walked the kitchen in his new boots with all a child’s inconsequent pleasure. There was something childlike about him, she decided, and she liked it. He peered at the battered alarm clock on the smoky heights of the mantelpiece and sighed.

  ‘I’d like to stop here always,’ he said wistfully, ‘but I suppose I’d better be going.’

  ‘What hurry is on you?’

  ‘Seven miles, ma’am. Two hours. Maybe more. And I have to be in the old doss early if I want to get a place to sleep.’

  But he sat down once more and put a match to his pipe.

  ‘Not, mind you, ma’am, that there’s many could put me out of a warm corner if I’d a mind to stay in it. No indeed, but unless I had a drop in me I’d never fight for a place. Never. I’m apt to be cross when I’m drunk, but I never hit a man sober yet only once. That was a foxy tinker out of the Ranties, and the Ranties are notorious cross men, ma’am. You see, there was a little blind man, ma’am, trying to sleep, and this Ranty I’m talking about, whenever he saw the blind man dozing, he’d give his beard a tug. So I got that mad I rose up, and without saying as much as by your leave, I hit him such a terrible blow under the chin the blood hopped out on me in the dark. Yes, ma’am, hopped clean out on me. That was a frightful hard blow.’ He looked at her for approval and awe, and saw her, womanlike, draw up her shoulders and shiver. His dramatic sense was satisfied.

  It was quite dark when he rose to go. The moon was rising over the hills to the left, far away, and the little stream beside the house sounded very loud in the stillness.

  ‘If there was e’er an old barn or an outhouse,’ he said as if to himself.

  ‘There’s a bed inside,’ she answered. He looked round at her in surprise.

  ‘Ah, I wouldn’t ask to stop within,’ he exclaimed.

  Suddenly her whole manner changed. All the brightness, if brightness it could be called, seemed to drop away from her, leaving her listless, cold and melancholy.

  ‘Oh, please yourself,’ she said shortly, as if banishing him from her thoughts. But still he did not go. Instead, he sat down again, and they faced one another across the fireplace, not speaking, for he too had lost his chatter. The kitchen was in darkness except for the dwindling glow of the turf inside its cocoon of grey dust, and the wan nightlight above the half-door. Then he laughed, rubbing his palms between his knees.

  ‘And still you know, I’d ask nothing better,’ he added shyly.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I’d ask nothing better than to stop.’

  ‘Go or stop as you like.’

  ‘You see,’ he went on, ignoring her gathering surprise, ‘I’m an honest fellow. I am, on my oath, though maybe you wouldn’t think it, with the rough talk I have, and the life I lead. You could leave me alone with a bag of sovereigns, not counting them, and I’d keep them safe for you. And I’m just the same other ways. I’m not a bit forward. They say a dumb priest loses his benefit, and I’m just like that. I’m apt to lose me benefit for want of a bit of daring.’

  Then (and this time it was he who was surprised) she laughed, more with relief, he thought, than at anything he had said. She rose and closed the door, lit the lamp and hung up the heavy kettle. He leaned back in his chair with a fresh sigh of pleasure, stretching out his feet to the fire, and in that gesture she caught something of his nostalgia. He settled down gratefully to one of those unexpected benefits which are the bait with which life leads us onward.

  When she rose next morning, she was surprised to find him about before her, the fire lit, and the kettle boiling. She saw how much he needed a shave, and filled out a pan of water for him. Then when he began to scrub his face with the soap, she produced a razor, strop and brush. He was enchanted with these, and praised the razor with true lyric fire.

  ‘You can have it,’ she said. ‘Have them all if they’re any use to you.’

  ‘By God, aren’t they though,’ he exclaimed reverently.

  After breakfast he lit his pipe and sat back, enjoying to the full the last moments which politeness would impose upon hospitality.

  ‘I suppose you’re anxious to be on your road?’ she asked awkwardly. Immediately he reddened.

  ‘I suppose I’m better to,’ he replied. He rose and looked out. It was a grey morning and still. The green stretched no farther than the hedge; beyond that lay a silver mist, flushed here and there with rose. ‘Though ’tis no anxiety is on me – no anxiety at all,’ he added with a touch of bitterness.

  ‘Don’t take me up wrong,’ she said hastily. ‘I’m not trying to hunt you. Stop and have your dinner. You’ll be welcome.’

  ‘I chopped a bit of kindling for you,’ he replied, looking shyly at her from under lowered lids. ‘If there was something else I could be doing, I’d be glad enough to stop, mind you.’

  There was. Plenty else to be doing. For instance, there was an outhouse that needed whitewashing, and blithely enough he set about his task, whistling. She came and watched him; went, and came again, standing silently beside him, a strange stiff figure in the bright sunlight, but he had no feeling of supervision. Because he had not finished when dinner was ready he stayed to tea, and even then displayed no hurry to be gone. He sang her some of his poems. There was one about Mallow Races, another about a girl he had been in love with as a boy, ‘the most beautiful girl that was ever seen in Kerry since the first day,’ so he naively told her. It began:

  I praise no princesses or queens or great ladies

  Or figures historical noted for style,

  Or beauties of Asia or Mesopotamia,

  But sweet Annie Bradie, the rose of Dunmoyle.

  A sort of confidence had established itself between them. The evening passed quickly in talk and singing – in whistling too, for he was a good whistler, and sometimes performed for dancing: to judge by his own statements he was a great favourite at wakes and weddings and she could understand that.

  It was quite dark when they stopped the conversation. Again
he made as if to go, and again in her shy, cold way she offered him the chance of staying. He stayed.

  For days afterward there seemed to be some spell upon them both. A week passed in excuses and delays, each morning finding him about long before she appeared with some new suggestion, the garden to be weeded, potatoes to be dug, the kitchen to be whitewashed. Neither suggested anything but as it were from hour to hour, yet it did not occur to the man that for her as for him their companionship might be an unexpected benefit.

  He did her messages to the village whenever Dan, the ‘boy’, a sullen, rather stupid, one-eyed old man, was absent, and though she gave no sign that she did not like this, he was always surprised afresh by the faint excitement with which she greeted his return; had it been anyone else one might have called her excitement gaiety, but gay was hardly a word one could apply to her, and the emotion quickly died and gave place to a sullen apathy.

  She knew the end must come soon, and it did. One evening he returned from an errand, and told her someone had died in the village. He was slightly shocked by her indifference. She would not go with him to the wake, but she bade himself go if he pleased. He did please. She could see there was an itch for company on him; he was made that way. As he polished his boots he confessed to her that among his other vocations he had tried being a Trappist monk, but stuck it only for a few months. It wasn’t bad in summer, but it was the divil and all in winter, and the monks told him there were certain souls like himself the Lord called only for six months of the year (the irony of this completely escaped him).

  He promised to be back before midnight, and went off very gay. By this time he had formed his own opinion of the woman. It was not for nothing she lived there alone, not for nothing a visitor never crossed the threshold. He knew she did not go to Mass, yet on Sunday when he came back unexpectedly for his stick, he had seen her, in the bedroom, saying her Rosary. Something was wrong, but he could not guess what.

  Her mood was anything but gay and the evening seemed to respond to it. It was very silent after the long drought; she could hear the thrush’s beak go tip-tap among the stones like a fairy’s hammer. It was making for rain. To the north-west the wind had piled up massive archways of purple cloud like a ruined cloister, and through them one’s eyes passed on to vistas of feathery cloudlets, violet and gold, packed thick upon one another. A cold wind had sprung up: the trees creaked, and the birds flew by, their wings blown up in a gesture of horror. She stood for a long while looking at the sky, until it faded, chilled by the cold wind. There was something mournful and sinister about it all.