He dressed in a hurry, said a few words of encouragement to his wife, talked to the children while swallowing a cup of tea, and got out the old car. He was a sturdy man in his early forties with fair hair and pale grey eyes, nervous and excitable. He had plenty to be excitable about – the house, for instance. It was a fine house, an old shooting lodge, set back at a distance of two fields from the road, with a lawn in front leading to the river and steep gardens climbing the wooded hills behind. It was, in fact, an ideal house, the sort he had always dreamed of, where Kitty could keep a few hens and he could dig the garden and get in a bit of shooting. But scarcely had he settled in when he realized it had all been a mistake. A couple of rooms in town would have been better. The loneliness of the long evenings when dusk had settled on the valley was something he had never even imagined.
He had lamented it to Kitty, who had suggested the old car, but even this had its drawbacks because the car demanded as much attention as a baby. When Ned was alone in it he chatted to it encouragingly; when it stopped because he had forgotten to fill the tank he kicked it viciously, as if it were a wicked dog, and the villagers swore that he had actually been seen stoning it. This, coupled with the fact that he sometimes talked to himself when he hadn’t the car to talk to, had given rise to the legend that he had a slate loose.
He drove down the lane and across the little footbridge to the main road, and then stopped before the public-house at the corner, which his friend Tom Hurley owned.
‘Anything you want in town, Tom?’ he shouted from the car.
‘What’s that, Ned?’ replied a voice from within, and Tom himself, a small, round, russet-faced man, came out with his wrinkled grin.
‘I have to go into town. I wondered, was there anything you wanted?’
‘No, no, Ned, thanks, I don’t think so,’ replied Tom in his nervous way, all the words trying to come out together. ‘All we wanted was fish for the dinner, and the Jordans are bringing that.’
‘That stuff!’ exclaimed Ned, making a face. ‘I’d sooner ’twas them than me.’
‘Och, isn’t it the devil, Ned?’ Tom spluttered with a similar expression of disgust. ‘The damn smell hangs round the shop all day. But what the hell else can you do on a Friday? You going for a spin?’
‘No,’ replied Ned with a sigh. ‘It’s Kitty. I have to call the doctor.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Tom, beginning to beam. His expression exaggerated almost to caricature whatever emotion his interlocutor might be expected to feel. ‘Ah, please God, it’ll go off all right. Come in and have a drink.’
‘No, thanks, Tom,’ Ned said with resignation. ‘I’d better not.’
‘Ah, hell to your soul, you will,’ fussed Tom. ‘It won’t take you two minutes. Hard enough it was for me to keep you off it the time the first fellow arrived.’
‘That’s right, Tom,’ Ned said in surprise as he left the car and followed Tom into the pub. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Who was it was here?’
‘Ah, God!’ moaned Tom, ‘you had half the countryside in here. Jack Martin and Owen Hennessey, and that publican friend of yours from town – Cronin, ay, Cronin. There was a dozen of ye here. The milkman found ye next morning, littering the floor, and ye never even locked the doors after ye! Ye could have had my licence endorsed on me.’
‘Do you know, Tom,’ Ned said with a complacent smile, ‘I’d forgotten about that completely. My memory isn’t what it was. I suppose we’re getting old.’
‘Ah, well,’ Tom said philosophically, pouring out a large drink for Ned and a small one for himself, ‘ ’tis never the same after the first. Isn’t it astonishing, Ned, the first,’ he added in his eager way, bending over the counter, ‘what it does to you? God, you feel as if you were beginning life again. And by the time the second comes, you’re beginning to wonder will the damn thing ever stop.… God forgive me for talking,’ he whispered, beckoning over his shoulder with a boyish smile. ‘Herself wouldn’t like to hear me.’
‘ ’Tis true just the same, Tom,’ Ned said broodingly, relieved at understanding a certain gloom he had felt during the preceding weeks. ‘It’s not the same. And that itself is only an illusion. Like when you fall in love, and think you’re getting the one woman in the world, while all the time it’s just one of Nature’s little tricks for making you believe you’re enjoying yourself when you’re only putting yourself wherever she wants you.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Tom with his infectious laugh, ‘they say it all comes back when you’re a grandfather.’
‘Who the hell wants to be a grandfather?’ asked Ned with a sniff, already feeling sorry for himself with his home upset, that unpleasant female in the house, and more money to be found.
He drove off, but his mood had darkened. It was a beautiful bit of road between his house and the town, with the river below him on the left, and the hills at either side with the first wash of green on them like an unfinished sketch, and, walking or driving, it was usually a delight to him because of the thought of civilization at the other end. It was only a little seaside town, but it had shops and pubs and villas with electric light, and a water supply that did not fold up in May, and there were all sorts of interesting people to be met there, from summer visitors to Government inspectors with the latest news from Dublin. But now his heart didn’t rise. He realized that the rapture of being a father does not repeat itself, and it gave him no pleasure to think of being a grandfather. He was decrepit enough as he was.
At the same time he was haunted by some memory of days when he was not decrepit, but careless and gay. He had been a Volunteer and roamed the hills for months with a column, wondering where he would spend the night. Then it had all seemed uncomfortable and dangerous enough, and, maybe like the illusion of regeneration at finding himself a father, it had been merely an illusion of freedom, but, even so, he felt he had known it and now knew it no more. It was linked in his mind with high hills and wide vistas, but now his life seemed to have descended into a valley like that he was driving along, with the river growing deeper and the hills higher as they neared the sea. He had descended into it by the quiet path of duty: a steady man, a sucker for responsibilities – treasurer of the Hurling Club, treasurer of the Republican Party, secretary for three other organizations. Bad! Bad! He shook his head reprovingly as he looked at the trees, the river, and the birds who darted from the hedges as he approached, and communed with the car.
‘You’ve nothing to complain of, old girl,’ he said encouragingly. ‘It’s all Nature. It gives you an illusion of freedom, but all the time it’s bending you to its own purposes as if you were only cows or trees.’
Being nervous, he didn’t like to drive through a town. He did it when he had to, but it made him flustered and fidgety so that he missed seeing whoever was on the streets, and the principal thing about a town was meeting people. He usually parked his car outside Cronin’s pub on the way in, and then walked the rest of the way. Larry Cronin was an old comrade of revolutionary days who had married into the pub.
He parked the car and went to tell Larry. This was quite unnecessary as Larry knew every car for miles around and was well aware of Ned’s little weakness, but it was a habit, and Ned was a man of more habits than he realized himself.
‘I’m just leaving the old bus for half an hour, Larry,’ he called through the door in a plaintive tone that conveyed regret for the inconvenience he was causing Larry and grief for the burden being put on himself.
‘Come in, man, come in!’ cried Larry, a tall, engaging man with a handsome face and a wide smile that was quite sincere if Larry liked you and damnably hypocritical if he didn’t. His mouth was like a show-case with the array of false teeth in it. ‘What the hell has you out at this hour of morning?’
‘Oh, Nature, Nature,’ said Ned with a laugh, digging his hands in his trouser pockets.
‘How do you mean, Nature?’ asked Larry, who did not understand the allusive ways of intellectuals but appreciated them none the less.
‘Kitty, I mean,’ Ned said. ‘I’m going to get the doctor. I told you she was expecting again.’
‘Ah, the blessings of God on you!’ Larry cried jovially. ‘Is this the third or the fourth? Christ, you lose count, don’t you? You might as well have a drop as you’re here. For the nerves, I mean. ’Tis hard on the nerves. That was a hell of a night we had the time the boy, was born.’
‘Wasn’t it?’ said Ned, beaming at being reminded of something that seemed to have become a legend. ‘I was just talking to Tom Hurley about it.’
‘Ah, what the hell does Hurley know about it?’ asked Larry, filling him out a drink in his lordly way. ‘The bloody man went to bed at two. That fellow is too cautious to be good. But Martin gave a great account of himself. Do you remember? The whole first act of Tosca, orchestra and all. Tell me, you didn’t see Jack since he was home?’
‘Jack?’ Ned exclaimed in surprise, looking up from his drink. (He felt easier in his mind now, being on the doctor’s doorstep.) ‘Was Jack away?’
‘Arrah, Christ, he was,’ said Larry, throwing his whole weight on the counter. ‘In Paris, would you believe it? He’s on the batter again, of course. Wait till you hear him on Paris! ’Tis only the mercy of God if the parish priest doesn’t get to hear of it. Martin would want to mind himself.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Larry,’ Ned said with sudden bitterness, not so much against Jack Martin as against Life itself. ‘Martin doesn’t have to mind himself. The parish priest will mind him. If an inspector comes snooping round while Martin is on it, Father Clery will be taking him out to look at antiquities.’
‘Ah, ’tis the God’s truth for you,’ Larry said in mournful disapproval. ‘But you or I couldn’t do it. Christ, man, we’d get slaughtered alive. ’Tisn’t worried you are about Kitty?’ he asked in a gentler tone.
‘Ah, no, Larry,’ said Ned. ‘It’s not that. It’s just that at times like this a man feels himself of no importance. You know what I mean? A messenger boy would do as well. We’re all dragged down to the same level.’
‘And damn queer we’d be if we weren’t,’ said Larry with his good-natured smile. ‘Unless, that is, you’d want to have the bloody baby yourself.’
‘Ah, it’s not only that, Larry,’ Ned said irritably. ‘It’s not that at all. But a man can’t help thinking.’
‘Why, then indeed, that’s true for you,’ said Larry, who, as a result of his own experience in the pub, had developed a gloomy and philosophic view of human existence. After all, a man can’t be looking at schizophrenia for ten hours a day without feeling that Life isn’t simple. ‘And ’tis at times like this you notice it – men coming and going, like the leaves on the trees. Isn’t it true for me?’
But that wasn’t what Ned was thinking about at all. He was thinking of his lost youth and what had happened in it to turn him from a firebrand into a father.
‘No, Larry, that’s not what I mean,’ he said, drawing figures on the counter with the bottom of his glass. ‘It’s just that you can’t help wondering what’s after happening you. There were so many things you wanted to do that you didn’t do, and you wonder if you’d done them would it be different. And here you are, forty-odd, and your life is over and nothing to show for it! It’s as if when you married some good went out of you.’
‘Small loss, as the fool said when he lost Mass,’ retorted Larry, who had found himself a comfortable berth in the pub and lost his thirst for adventure.
‘That’s the bait, of course,’ Ned said with a grim smile. ‘That’s where Nature gets us every time.’
‘Arrah, what the hell is wrong with Nature?’ asked Larry. ‘When your first was born you were walking mad around the town, looking for people to celebrate it with. Now you sound as though you were looking for condolences. Christ, man, isn’t it a great thing to have someone to share your troubles and give a slap in the ass to, even if she does let the crockery fly once in a while? What the hell about an old bit of china?’
‘That’s all very well, Larry,’ Ned said, scowling, ‘if – if, mind – that’s all it costs.’
‘And what the hell else does it cost?’ asked Larry. ‘Twenty-one meals a week and a couple of pounds of tea on the side. Sure, ’tis for nothing!’
‘But is that all?’ Ned asked fiercely. ‘What about the days on the column?’
‘Ah, that was different, Ned,’ Larry said with a sigh while his eyes took on a faraway look. ‘But, sure, everything was different then. I don’t know what the hell is after coming over the country at all.’
‘The same thing that’s come over you and me,’ said Ned. ‘Middle age. But we had our good times, even apart from that.’
‘Oh, begod, we had, we had,’ Larry admitted wistfully.
‘We could hop in a car and not come home for a fortnight if the fancy took us.’
‘We could, man, we could,’ said Larry, showing a great mouthful of teeth. ‘Like the time we went to the Junction Races and came back by Donegal. Ah, Christ, Ned, youth is a great thing. Isn’t it true for me?’
‘But it wasn’t only youth,’ cried Ned. ‘We had freedom, man. Now our lives are run for us by women the way they were when we were kids. This is Friday, and what do I find? Hurley waiting for someone to bring home the fish. You’re waiting for the fish. I’ll go home to a nice plate offish. One few words in front of an altar, and it’s fish for Friday the rest of our lives.’
‘Still, Ned, there’s nothing nicer than a good bit offish,’ Larry said dreamily. ‘If ’tis well done, mind you. If ’tis well done. And ’tisn’t often you get it well done. I grant you that. God, I had some fried plaice in Kilkenny last week that had me turned inside out. I declare to God, if I stopped that car once I stopped it six times, and by the time I got home I was shaking like an aspen.’
‘And yet I can remember you in Tramore, letting on to be a Protestant just to get bacon and eggs,’ Ned said accusingly.
‘Oh, that’s the God’s truth,’ Larry said with a wondering grin. ‘I was a devil for meat, God forgive me. It used to make me mad, seeing the Protestants lowering it. And the waitress, Ned – do you remember the waitress that wouldn’t believe I was a Protestant till I said the Our Father the wrong way for her? She said I had too open a face for a Protestant. How well she’d know a thing like that about the Our Father, Ned?’
‘A woman would know anything she had to know to make a man eat fish,’ Ned said, rising with gloomy dignity. ‘And you may be reconciled to it, Larry, but I’m not. I’ll eat it because I’m damned with a sense of duty, and I don’t want to get Kitty into trouble with the neighbours, but with God’s help I’ll see one more revolution before I die if I have to swing for it.’
‘Ah, well,’ sighed Larry, ‘youth is a great thing, sure enough.… Coming, Hanna, coming!’ he replied as a woman’s voice yelled from the bedroom above them. He gave Ned a smug wink to suggest that he enjoyed it, but Ned knew that that scared little rabbit of a wife of his would be wanting to know what all the talk was about his being a Protestant, and would then go to Confession and tell the priest that her husband had said heretical prayers and ask him was it a reserved sin and should Larry go to the Bishop. It was no life, no life, Ned thought as he sauntered down the hill past the church. And it was a great mistake taking a drink whenever he felt badly about the country, because it always made the country seem worse.
Suddenly someone clapped him on the shoulder. It was Jack Martin, the vocational-school teacher, a small, plump, nervous man, with a baby complexion, a neat greying moustache, and big blue innocent eyes. Ned’s grim face lit up. Of all his friends, Martin was the one he warmed to most. He was a talented man and a good baritone. His wife had died a few years before and left him with two children, but he had never married again and had been a devoted, if over-anxious, father. Yet always two or three times a year, particularly approaching his wife’s anniversary, he went on a tearing drunk that left some legend behind. There was the time he had tried to teach Italian music to
the tramp who played the penny whistle in the street, and the time his housekeeper had hidden his trousers and he had shinned down the drainpipe and appeared in the middle of town in pyjamas, bowing in the politest way possible to the ladies who passed.
‘MacCarthy, you scoundrel!’ he said delightedly in his shrill nasal voice, ‘you were hoping to give me the slip. Come in here one minute till I tell you something. God, you’ll die!’
‘If you’ll just wait there ten minutes, Jack, I’ll be along to you,’ Ned said eagerly. ‘There’s just one job, one little job I have to do, and then I’ll be able to give you my full attention.’
‘Yes, but you’ll have one drink before you go,’ Martin said cantankerously. ‘You’re not a messenger boy yet. One drink and I’ll release you on your own recognizances to appear when required. You’ll never guess where I was, Ned. I woke up there – as true as God!’
Ned, deciding good-humouredly that five minutes’ explanation in the bar was easier than ten minutes’ argument in the street, allowed himself to be steered to a table by the door. It was quite clear that Martin was ‘on it’. He was full of clockwork vitality, rushing to the counter for fresh drinks, fumbling for money, trying to carry glasses without spilling, and talking, talking, all the time. Ned beamed at him. Drunk or sober, he liked the man.
‘Ned,’ Martin burst out ecstatically, ‘I’ll give you three guesses where I was.’
‘Let me see,’ said Ned in mock meditation. ‘I suppose ’twould never be Paris?’ and then laughed outright at Martin’s injured air.
‘You can’t do anything in this town,’ Martin said bitterly. ‘I suppose next you’ll be telling me about the women I met there.’
‘No,’ said Ned gravely, ‘it’s Father Clery who’ll be telling you about them – from the pulpit.’
‘To hell with Clery!’ snapped Martin. ‘No, Ned, this is se-e-e-rious. It only came to me in the past week. You and I are wasting our bloody time in this bloody country.’
The Best of Frank O'Connor Page 46