‘Ned, do you think that was a proper remark to make to the Dunne girl?’
‘What remark?’ asked Ned, growing crimson – it showed his guilty conscience.
‘Well, Ned, you can hardly pretend you don’t know, considering that the whole town is talking about it.’
‘Are you mad, woman?’ he shouted, his voice brassy with rage.
‘I only asked a simple question, Ned,’ she said with resignation, fixing him with her clear blue eyes. ‘Of course, if you prefer not to answer there’s no more to be said.’
‘You have me driven distracted!’ cried Ned. ‘I can’t be polite to a neighbour’s daughter but you sulk for days on me.’
‘Polite!’ said Katty to the range. ‘However,’ she added, ‘I suppose I have no cause to complain. The man that would do worse to me wouldn’t be put out by a little thing like that.’
‘Do worse to you?’ shouted Ned, going purple as if he was in danger of congestion. ‘What did I ever do to you?’
‘Aren’t you planning to leave me in my old age without a roof over my head?’ she asked suddenly, turning on him.
‘I’m not planning to leave anything to anyone yet,’ roared Ned. ‘With the help of the Almighty God, when I do ’twill be to a child of my own.’
‘Indeed, I hope so,’ said Katty, ‘but after all, if the worst came to the worst —’
‘If the worst came to the worst,’ he interrupted solemnly, ‘we don’t know which of us the Lord – glory and praise to His holy name – might take first.’
‘Amen, O Lord,’ breathed Katty piously, and then went on in her original tone. ‘I’m not saying you’ll be the first to go, and the way I am, Ned,’ she added bitterly, ‘I wouldn’t wish it. But ’tis only common prudence to be prepared for the worst. You know yourself how Julia went.’
‘My God,’ he said mournfully, addressing his remarks out the empty hall, ‘the foolishness of it! We have only a few short years on the earth; we come and go like the leaves of the trees, and instead of enjoying ourselves, we wear our hearts out with planning and contriving.’
‘Ah, Ned,’ she said, goaded to fury, as she always was by his philosophizing and poetry talk, ‘ ’tis easy it comes to you. I only wish the money would come as easy. I didn’t work myself to the bone in the shop to be left a beggar in my old age.’
‘A beggar?’ he cried. ‘Do you think I wouldn’t provide for you?’
‘Provide for me?’ she gibed. ‘Con Lynch in the shop and me in the back room! Fine provisions I’d get!’
‘I never said I’d leave it to Con Lynch,’ said Ned chokingly.
‘Then what is he coming here for?’ she shrieked, suddenly bounding into the middle of the kitchen and spreading out her arms. ‘What is he doing in my home? Can’t you do what any other man would do and let them know you’re leaving the shop to me?’
‘I can’t,’ he shouted back, ‘and you know I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ she said, stamping.
‘Because ’tis an old custom. The property goes with the name.’
‘Not with the people I was brought up with,’ she said proudly.
‘Well, ’twas with those I was brought up with,’ said Ned. ‘Women as good as you were satisfied. Ay, and better than you! Better than you,’ he added with a backward glance as he went out.
She dropped back beaten into her chair. She was afraid to cross him further. He looked like a man that might drop dead at any moment. She was only a stranger, a foreigner, with no link at all between herself and him. Con Lynch was more to him now than she was. It was only then she realized it was time to stop looking after the shop and look after herself instead.
In the autumn she said she was going to Dublin to see a specialist. Ned didn’t say anything to dissuade her, but it was clear he had no faith in it. She didn’t see a specialist. Instead she saw a nurse she had known in Dublin, another old flame of the medico’s. Nurse O’Mara kept a maternity home on the canal. She was a tall, handsome woman with a fine figure and a long face that was growing just the least shade hard. She listened to Katty with screwed-up eyes and a good-natured smile. She was tickled by the situation. After all, if she hadn’t got much out of the medico, Katty hadn’t got much more.
‘And you don’t think that ’tis any use?’ asked Katty doubtfully.
‘I wouldn’t say so,’ said the nurse.
‘And I suppose there’s nothing else I can do?’ asked Katty in a low voice and an almost playful tone, never taking her blue eyes from the nurse’s face.
‘Unless you’d borrow one,’ said the nurse mockingly.
‘That’s what I mean,’ said Katty slyly.
‘You’re not serious?’ said the nurse, her smile withering.
‘Haven’t I reason?’ asked Katty, her smile growing broader.
‘You’d never get away with it.’
‘Why not, girl?’ asked Katty almost inaudibly. ‘Who’s to know? If there was someone that was willing.’’
‘Oh, hundreds of them,’ said the nurse, with the bitterness of the childless woman.
‘You’d know where to find one I could ask,’ murmured Katty, still with her eyes steadily fixed.
‘I suppose so,’ said the nurse doubtfully. ‘There’s nothing illegal about it. I’m not supposed to know what you’re up to.’
‘And to have my letters addressed to your place,’ continued Katty.
‘Why not?’ asked Nurse O’Mara with a shrug. ‘For that matter, you can come and stay any time you like.’
‘That’s all I want,’ said Katty with blazing eyes. ‘I have a hundred or so put on one side. I’ll give it to you, and you can make whatever arrangements you like.’
She returned to town triumphant with two new hats, wider and more girlish than those she usually wore. Then she set about a reorganization of the house, running up and down stairs and chattering with the maid.
‘Well?’ said Ned lazily, interpreting her behaviour with a touch of anxiety. ‘He gave you some hope?’
‘I don’t know if you’d call it hope,’ said Katty, furrowing her brow. ‘He thought I mightn’t come out of it. Of course, I’ll have to go back to him if anything happens.’
‘But he thought it might?’ asked Ned.
‘Wisha,’ said Katty, ‘like the rest of them he wouldn’t like to give an opinion.’
That, she saw, impressed Ned more than any more favourable verdict could have done. Almost from that on, he looked at her every morning with a solicitous, questioning air. Katty kept her mouth shut and went on with the housework. One night she said with her nunlike air: ‘I think I’ll sleep in the spare room for the present.’ Even then she could see he only half believed her, but as the weeks passed, he started coming up to her in the evenings, settling the fire, and retailing whatever gobbets of gossip he had picked up in the bar. He started to tell her about his own boyhood, a thing he had never done before.
Jerry called once with Con and was brought upstairs with appropriate solemnity. She knew he had only come to see for himself, and she watched while the electric-blue eyes roved distractedly about the room till they alighted like a bluebottle on her stomach. That settled it so far as Jerry was concerned. He was crafty but not long-sighted. When the game looked like going against him he threw in his hand. He didn’t come back, nor did Tom, though Con dropped in once or twice out of pure good nature. To Katty’s surprise, Ned noticed and resented it.
‘Ah,’ she said charitably, ‘I wouldn’t mind that. They’re probably busy on the farm this weather.’
‘They weren’t so busy they couldn’t go to Hartnett’s,’ said Ned, who made it his business to know all they did.
‘Ah, well, Hartnett’s is near enough to them,’ said Katty, protesting against his unreasonableness.
‘This place was near enough to them too when they thought they had a chance of the money,’ said Ned resentfully.
She looked at him archly from under her brows. She felt the time was ripe to say what she had
to say.
‘They didn’t send you any more anonymous letters?’ she asked lightly.
‘They can say what they like now,’ said Ned, growing red.
Her smile faded as she watched him go out of the room. She knew now she had made herself secure against any suspicions the Lynches might have of her, but the change in Ned himself was something she hadn’t allowed for and it upset her.
It even frightened her the day she was setting out for Dublin. She saw him in the bedroom packing a little case.
‘What do you want that for?’ she asked, going cold.
‘You don’t think I’m going to let you go to Dublin alone?’ he replied.
‘But I may be there for weeks,’ she said despairingly.
‘Ah, well,’ he said as he continued to pack, ‘I’m due a little holiday. I have it fixed up with Bridie.’
Katty sat on the bed and bit her lip. Somehow or other the Lynches had succeeded in instilling their suspicions into him and he was coming to see for himself. What could she do? Nothing. She knew O’Mara wouldn’t be a party to any deception; it would be too much of a risk. ‘Mother of God, direct me!’ she prayed, joining her hands in her lap.
‘You’re not afraid I’ll run off with a soldier?’ she asked lightly.
‘That’s the very thing I am afraid of,’ said Ned, turning round on her. Suddenly his eyes clouded with emotion. ‘It won’t be wishing to anyone that tries to get you,’ he added, with a feeble attempt to keep up the joke.
‘Wisha, Ned,’ she cried, rushing across the room to him, her heart suddenly lightened of a load, ‘’tisn’t the way you think anything will happen to me?’
‘No, little girl,’ he said, putting his arm about her. ‘Nor I wouldn’t wish it for a thousand pounds.’
‘Ah, is it a fine strong woman like me?’ she cried skittishly, almost insane with relief. ‘What fear there is of me! Maybe I’ll let you come up when the next one is arriving.’
III
From Kingsbridge she took a taxi to the maternity home and got rid of some of her padding on the way. O’Mara opened the door for her herself. Katty sat on the edge of a sofa by the window, her hands joined in her lap, and looked expectantly up at the nurse.
‘Well,’ she asked in a low voice, ‘any luck?’
‘You’d better not try this game on too often,’ said O’Mara with amusement. ‘You’d never get past me with that complexion.’
‘I’m not likely to try, am I?’ asked Katty complacently. ‘That girl you wrote about,’ she added in the same conspiratorial tone, ‘is she still here?’
‘She is. You can see her now.’
‘I suppose you don’t know anything about her?’ Katty asked wistfully.
‘She’s a school-teacher,’ replied the nurse cautiously.
‘Oh, Law!’ said Katty in surprise. She hadn’t expected anyone of her own class; it sounded too good to be true; and as plain as if it were written there, her pinched little face registered the doubt whether there wasn’t a catch in it somewhere. ‘I don’t know her by any chance, do I ?’ she added innocently.
‘I hope not,’ replied the nurse smoothly. ‘What you don’t know won’t harm you.’
‘Oh, I’m not asking for information,’ protested Katty a shade too eagerly. ‘But you think she’ll agree?’ she said, dropping her voice again.
‘She’ll be a fool if she doesn’t.’
‘Of course, I’ll pay herwell,’ said Katty. ‘I wouldn’t ask anyone to do a thing like that for nothing.’
‘I wouldn’t mention that, if I was you,’ said O’Mara dryly. ‘She’s not trying to make a profit on it.’
‘Oh,’ said Katty, suddenly beginning to shiver all over, ‘I’d give all I ever had in the world to be out of it.’
‘But why?’ asked O’Mara in surprise. ‘You’re over the worst of it now.’
‘It’s Ned,’ said Katty with a haggard look. ‘He’d murder me.’
‘Ah, well,’ said O’Mara with gruff kindness, ‘it’s a bit late in the day to be thinking of that,’ and she led Katty up the stairs past a big Venetian window that lit the well and overlooked the canal bank. The lights were already lit outside. Through the trees she saw brown-red houses with flights of steps leading to hall doors, and a hump-backed limestone bridge.
There was a girl in bed in the room they entered; a young woman of twenty-eight or thirty with a plump pale face and a helmet of limp brown hair. Her face at any rate was innocent enough.
‘This is the lady I was speaking about, Monica,’ said the nurse with a crooked smile. (Obviously she took a certain malicious pleasure in the whole business.) ‘I’ll leave ye to discuss it for a while.’
She went out, switching on the electric light as she did. Katty shook hands with the girl and then glanced shyly at the cot.
‘Oh, isn’t he lovely?’ she cried with genuine admiration.
‘He’s sweet,’ said the girl called Monica, in a curiously common voice, and then reached out for a cigarette.
‘I never smoke, thanks,’ said Katty, and then hastily drew a chair over to the bed, resting her hands on her lap and smiling under her big hat in a guilty, schoolgirl way that was curiously attractive.
‘I suppose,’ she said, throwing back her head, ‘you must think I’m simply terrible?’
It wasn’t intended to be a good opening but it turned out that way. The girl smiled, and her broad face crinkled.
‘And what about me?’ she asked, putting them both at once on a common level. ‘Will you get away with it though?’
‘Oh, I’ll have to get away with it, girl,’ said Katty flatly. ‘My livelihood depends on it. Did nurse tell you?’
‘She did, but I still don’t understand what you did to your husband to make him do that to you.’
‘Oh, that’s an old custom,’ said Katty eagerly, seeing at once the doubt in the girl’s mind. ‘Now, I know what you’re thinking,’ she added with a smile, raising her finger in warning, ‘but ’tisn’t that at all. Ned isn’t a bit like that. I won’t wrong him. He is a country boy, and he hasn’t the education, but apart from that he’s the best poor slob that ever lived.’ She was surprised herself at the warmth that crept into her voice when she spoke of him. ‘So you see,’ she added, dropping her voice and smiling discreetly, ‘you needn’t be a bit afraid of us. We’d both be mad about him.’
‘Strange as it may seem,’ said Monica, her voice growing sullen and resentful, ‘I’m a bit mad about him myself.’
‘Oh, you are, to be sure,’ said Katty warmly. ‘What other way would you be?’ At the same time she was bitterly disappointed. She began to realize that it wasn’t going to be so easy after all. Worse than that, she had taken a real fancy to the baby. The mother, whatever her faults, was beautiful; she was an educated woman; you could see she wasn’t common. ‘Of course,’ she added, shaking her head, ‘the idea would never have crossed my mind only that nurse thought you might be willing. And then, I felt it was like God’s doing.… You are one of us, I suppose?’ she asked, raising her brows discreetly.
‘God alone knows what I am,’ said the girl, taking a deep pull of the cigarette. ‘A bloody atheist or something.’
‘Oh, how could you?’ asked Katty in a shocked tone. ‘You’re convent-educated, aren’t you?’
‘Mm.’
‘I’d know a convent girl anywhere,’ said Katty, shaking her head with an admiring smile. ‘You can always tell. I went to the Ursulines myself. But you see what I mean? There was I looking for a child to adopt, and you looking for a home for yours, and Nurse O’Mara bringing us together. It seemed like God’s doing.’
‘I don’t know what you want bringing God into it for,’ said Monica impatiently. ‘The devil would do as well.’
‘Ah,’ said Katty with a knowing smile, ‘that’s only because you’re feeling weak.… But tell me,’ she added, still wondering whether there wasn’t a catch in it, ‘I’m not being curious or anything – but isn’t it a wonder the priest
wouldn’t make him marry you?’
‘Who told you he wouldn’t marry me?’ asked Monica quietly.
‘Oh, Law!’ cried Katty, feeling that this was probably the catch. ‘Was it the way he was beneath you?’ she asked with the least shade of disappointment.
‘Not that I know of,’ said Monica brassily. Then she turned her eyes to the ceiling and blew out another cloud of smoke. ‘He asked me was I sure he was the father,’ she added lightly, almost as if it amused her.
‘Fancy that!’ said Katty in bewilderment. ‘But what made him say that, I wonder.’
‘It seems,’ said Monica in the same tone, ‘he thought I was going with another fellow at the same time.’
‘And you weren’t?’ said Katty knowingly.
‘Not exactly,’ said Monica dryly, giving Katty a queer look that she didn’t quite understand.
‘And you wouldn’t marry him?’ said Katty, knowing perfectly well that the girl was only trying to take advantage of her simplicity. Katty wasn’t as big a fool as that though. ‘Hadn’t you great courage?’ she added.
‘Oh, great,’ said Monica in the same ironic tone.
‘The dear knows,’ said Katty regretfully, thinking of her own troubles with the medico, ‘they’re a handful, the best of them! But are you sure you’re not being hasty?’ she added with girlish coyness, cocking her little head. ‘Don’t you think when you meet him again and he sees the baby, ye might make it up?’
‘If I thought that,’ said the girl deliberately, ‘I’d walk out of this into the canal, and the kid along with me.’
‘Oh, Law!’ said Katty, feeling rather out of her depth and the least bit frightened. At the same time she now wanted the baby with something like passion. It was the same sort of thing she sometimes felt at auctions for little gewgaws from women’s dressing-tables or bits of old china; as if she couldn’t live without it. No other child would ever satisfy her. She’d bid up to the last farthing for it – if only she knew what to bid.
The Best of Frank O'Connor Page 49