The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  Then Nurse O’Mara came back and leaned on the end of the bed, her knees bent and her hands clasped.

  ‘Well,’ she asked, looking from one to the other with a mocking smile, ‘how did ye get on?’

  ‘Oh, grand, nurse,’ said Katty with sudden gaiety. ‘We were only waiting for yourself to advise us.’

  ‘Why?’ asked the nurse. ‘What is there between ye?’

  ‘Only that I don’t want to part with him,’ said Monica steadily.

  ‘Aren’t you tired of him yet?’ asked the nurse ironically.

  ‘Jesus, woman, be a bit human!’ said Monica with exasperation. ‘He’s all I have and I had trouble enough having him.’

  ‘That’s nothing to the trouble you’ll have keeping him,’ said the nurse.

  ‘I know that well enough,’ said Monica in a more reasonable tone, ‘but I want to be able to see him. I want to know that he’s well and happy.’

  ‘Oh, if that’s all that’s troubling you,’ said Katty eagerly, ‘you can see him as much as you like at our place.’

  ‘She could not,’ said the nurse angrily. ‘The less the pair of you see of one another, the better for both.… Listen, Mon,’ she said pleadingly, ‘I don’t care what you do. I’m only speaking for your good.’

  ‘I know that, Peggy,’ said Monica.

  ‘I know you think you’re going to do marvels for that kid, but you’re not. I know the sort of places they’re brought up in and the sort that bring them up – the ones that live. I tell you, after the first time, you wouldn’t be so keen on seeing him again.’

  Monica was staring at the window, which had faded in the pale glare of the electric light. There was silence for a few moments. Katty heard the night wind whistling across the rooftops from the bay. The trees along the canal heard it too and sighed. Something about it impressed her; the wind, and the women’s voices, and the sleeping baby, and the heart contracted inside her as she thought of Ned, waiting at home. She pulled herself together with fictitious brightness.

  ‘Now, nurse,’ she said firmly, ‘it isn’t fair to push the young lady too hard. We’ll give her till tomorrow night, and I’ll say a prayer to Our Lady of Good Counsel to direct her.’

  ‘I’ll give her all the good counsel she wants,’ said the nurse coarsely. If you’re thinking of yourself, Monica, you might as well say no now. We won’t have to look far for someone else. If you’re thinking of the kid and want to give him a fair chance in life after bringing him into it, you’d better say yes while you have the chance.’

  Monica suddenly turned her face away, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘She can have him,’ she said in a dull voice.

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you,’ said Katty eagerly. ‘And I give you my word you’ll never have cause to regret it.’

  ‘But for Christ’s sake don’t leave him in the room with me tonight,’ cried the girl, leaping up in bed and turning her wild eyes on Nurse O’Mara. ‘I’m warning ye now, don’t leave him where I can lay my hands on him. I tell ye I won’t be responsible.’

  Katty bit her lip and her face went white.

  ‘There’s supper waiting for you downstairs,’ said the nurse, beckoning her to go.

  ‘You’re sure I couldn’t be of any assistance?’ whispered Katty.

  ‘Certain,’ said the nurse dryly.

  As Katty turned to look back, the girl threw herself down again, holding her head in her hands. The nurse from the end of the bed looked at her with a half-mocking, half-pitying smile, the smile of a childless woman. The baby was still asleep.

  NEWS FOR THE CHURCH

  WHEN FATHER Cassidy drew back the shutter of the confessional he was a little surprised at the appearance of the girl at the other side of the grille. It was dark in the box but he could see she was young, of medium height and build, with a face that was full of animation and charm. What struck him most was the long pale slightly freckled cheeks, pinned high up behind the grey-blue eyes, giving them a curiously Oriental slant.

  She wasn’t a girl from the town, for he knew most of these by sight and many of them by something more, being notoriously an easy-going confessor. The other priests said that one of these days he’d give up hearing confessions altogether on the ground that there was no such thing as sin and that even if there was it didn’t matter. This was part and parcel of his exceedingly angular character, for though he was kind enough to individual sinners, his mind was full of obscure abstract hatreds. He hated England; he hated the Irish government, and he particularly hated the middle classes, though so far as anyone knew none of them had ever done him the least bit of harm. He was a heavy-built man, slow-moving and slow-thinking with no neck and a Punchinello chin, a sour wine-coloured face, pouting crimson lips, and small blue hot-tempered eyes.

  ‘Well, my child,’ he grunted in a slow and mournful voice that sounded for all the world as if he had pebbles in his mouth, ‘how long is it since your last confession?’

  ‘A week, father,’ she replied in a clear firm voice. It surprised him a little, for though she didn’t look like one of the tough shots, neither did she look like the sort of girl who goes to Confession every week. But with women you could never tell. They were all contrary, saints and sinners.

  ‘And what sins did you commit since then?’ he asked encouragingly.

  ‘I told lies, father.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I used bad language, father.’

  ‘I’m surprised at you,’ he said with mock seriousness. ‘An educated girl with the whole of the English language at your disposal! What sort of bad language?’

  ‘I used the Holy Name, father.’

  ‘Ach,’ he said with a frown, ‘you ought to know better than that. There’s no great harm in damning and blasting but blasphemy is a different thing. To tell you the truth,’ he added, being a man of great natural honesty, ‘there isn’t much harm in using the Holy Name either. Most of the time there’s no intentional blasphemy but at the same time it coarsens the character. It’s all the little temptations we don’t indulge in that give us true refinement. Anything else?’

  ‘I was tight, father.’

  ‘Hm,’ he grunted. This was rather more the sort of girl he had imagined her to be; plenty of devilment but no real badness. He liked her bold and candid manner. There was no hedging or false modesty about her as about most of his women penitents. ‘When you say you were “tight” do you mean you were just merry or what?’

  ‘Well, I mean I passed out,’ she replied candidly with a shrug.

  ‘I don’t call that “tight”, you know,’ he said sternly. ‘I call that beastly drunk. Are you often tight?’

  ‘I’m a teacher in a convent school so I don’t get much chance,’ she replied ruefully.

  ‘In a convent school?’ he echoed with new interest. Convent schools and nuns were another of his phobias; he said they were turning the women of the country into imbeciles. ‘Are you on holidays now?’

  ‘Yes. I’m on my way home.’

  ‘You don’t live here then?’

  ‘No, down the country.’

  ‘And is it the convent that drives you to drink?’ he asked with an air of unshakable gravity.

  ‘Well,’ she replied archly, ‘you know what nuns are.’

  ‘I do,’ he agreed in a mournful voice while he smiled at her through the grille. ‘Do you drink with your parents’ knowledge?’ he added anxiously.

  ‘Oh, yes. Mummy is dead but Daddy doesn’t mind. He lets us take a drink with him.’

  ‘Does he do that on principle or because he’s afraid of you?’ the priest asked dryly.

  ‘Ah, I suppose a little of both,’ she answered gaily, responding to his queer dry humour. It wasn’t often that women did, and he began to like this one a lot.

  ‘Is your mother long dead?’ he asked sympathetically.

  ‘Seven years,’ she replied, and he realized that she couldn’t have been much more than a child at the time and had grown up w
ithout a mother’s advice and care. Having worshipped his own mother, he was always sorry for people like that.

  ‘Mind you,’ he said paternally, his hands joined on his fat belly, ‘I don’t want you to think there’s any harm in a drop of drink. I take it myself. But I wouldn’t make a habit of it if I were you. You see, it’s all very well for old jossers like me that have the worst of their temptations behind them, but yours are all ahead and drink is a thing that grows on you. You need never be afraid of going wrong if you remember that your mother may be watching you from Heaven.’

  ‘Thanks, father,’ she said, and he saw at once that his gruff appeal had touched some deep and genuine spring of feeling in her. ‘I’ll cut it out altogether.’

  ‘You know, I think I would,’ he said gravely, letting his eyes rest on her for a moment. ‘You’re an intelligent girl. You can get all the excitement you want out of life without that. What else?’

  ‘I had bad thoughts, father.’

  ‘Ach,’ he said regretfully, ‘we all have them. Did you indulge them?’

  ‘Yes, father.’

  ‘Have you a boy?’

  ‘Not a regular: just a couple of fellows hanging round.’

  ‘Ah, that’s worse than none at all,’ he said crossly. ‘You ought to have a boy of your own. I know there’s old cranks that will tell you different, but sure, that’s plain foolishness. Those things are only fancies, and the best cure for them is something real. Anything else?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation before she replied but it was enough to prepare him for what was coming.

  ‘I had carnal intercourse with a man, father,’ she said quietly and deliberately.

  ‘You what?’ he cried, turning on her incredulously. ‘You had carnal intercourse with a man? At your age?’

  ‘I know,’ she said with a look of distress. ‘It’s awful.’

  ‘It is awful,’ he replied slowly and solemnly. ‘And how often did it take place?’

  ‘Once, father – I mean twice, but on the same occasion.’

  ‘Was it a married man?’ he asked, frowning.

  ‘No, father, single. At least I think he was single,’ she added with sudden doubt.

  ‘You had carnal intercourse with a man,’ he said accusingly, ‘and you don’t know if he was married or single!’

  ‘I assumed he was single,’ she said with real distress. ‘He was the last time I met him but, of course, that was five years ago.’

  ‘Five years ago? But you must have been only a child then.’

  ‘That’s all, of course,’ she admitted. ‘He was courting my sister, Kate, but she wouldn’t have him. She was running round with her present husband at the time and she only kept him on a string for amusement. I knew that and I hated her because he was always so nice to me. He was the only one that came to the house who treated me like a grown-up. But I was only fourteen and I suppose he thought I was too young for him.’

  ‘And were you?’ Father Cassidy asked ironically. For some reason he had the idea that this young lady had no proper idea of the enormity of her sin and he didn’t like it.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she replied modestly. ‘But I used to feel awful, being sent up to bed and leaving him downstairs with Kate when I knew she didn’t care for him. And then when I met him again the whole thing came back. I sort of went all soft inside. It’s never the same with another fellow as it is with the first fellow you fall for. It’s exactly as if he had some sort of hold over you.’

  ‘If you were fourteen at the time,’ said Father Cassidy, setting aside the obvious invitation to discuss the power of first love, ‘you’re only nineteen now.’

  ‘That’s all.’

  ‘And do you know,’ he went on broodingly, ‘that unless you can break yourself of this terrible vice once and for all it’ll go on like that till you’re fifty?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said doubtfully, but he saw that she didn’t suppose anything of the kind.

  ‘You suppose so!’ he snorted angrily. ‘I’m telling you so. And what’s more,’ he went on, speaking with all the earnestness at his command, ‘it won’t be just one man but dozens of men, and it won’t be decent men but whatever low-class pups you can find who’ll take advantage of you – the same horrible, mortal sin, week in week out till you’re an old woman.’

  ‘Ah, still, I don’t know,’ she said eagerly, hunching her shoulders ingratiatingly, ‘I think people do it as much from curiosity as anything else.’

  ‘Curiosity?’ he repeated in bewilderment.

  ‘Ah, you know what I mean,’ she said with a touch of impatience. ‘People make such a mystery of it!’

  ‘And what do you think they should do?’ he asked ironically. ‘Publish it in the papers?’

  ‘Well, God knows, ’twould be better than the way some of them go on,’ she said in a rush. ‘Take my sister, Kate, for instance. I admit she’s a couple of years older than me and she brought me up and all the rest of it, but in spite of that we were always good friends. She showed me her love letters and I showed her mine. I mean, we discussed things as equals, but ever since that girl got married you’d hardly recognize her. She talks to no one only other married women, and they get in a huddle in a corner and whisper, whisper, whisper, and the moment you come into the room they begin to talk about the weather, exactly as if you were a blooming kid! I mean you can’t help feeling ’tis something extraordinary.’

  ‘Don’t you try and tell me anything about immorality,’ said Father Cassidy angrily. ‘I know all about it already. It may begin as curiosity but it ends as debauchery. There’s no vice you could think of that gets a grip on you quicker and degrades you worse, and don’t you make any mistake about it, young woman! Did this man say anything about marrying you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she replied thoughtfully, ‘but of course that doesn’t mean anything. He’s an airy, lighthearted sort of fellow and it mightn’t occur to him.’

  ‘I never supposed it would,’ said Father Cassidy grimly. ‘Is he in a position to marry?’

  ‘I suppose he must be since he wanted to marry Kate,’ she replied with fading interest.

  ‘And is your father the sort of man that can be trusted to talk to him?’

  ‘Daddy?’ she exclaimed aghast. ‘But I don’t want Daddy brought into it.’

  ‘What you want, young woman,’ said Father Cassidy with sudden exasperation, ‘is beside the point. Are you prepared to talk to this man yourself?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ she said with a wondering smile. ‘But about what?’

  ‘About what?’ repeated the priest angrily. ‘About the little matter he so conveniently overlooked, of course.’

  ‘You mean ask him to marry me?’ she cried incredulously. ‘But I don’t want to marry him.’

  Father Cassidy paused for a moment and looked at her anxiously through the grille. It was growing dark inside the church, and for one horrible moment he had the feeling that somebody was playing an elaborate and most tasteless joke on him.

  ‘Do you mind telling me,’ he inquired politely, ‘am I mad or are you?’

  ‘But I mean it, father,’ she said eagerly. ‘It’s all over and done with now. It’s something I used to dream about, and it was grand, but you can’t do a thing like that a second time.’

  ‘You can’t what?’ he asked sternly.

  ‘I mean, I suppose you can, really,’ she said, waving her piously joined hands at him as if she were handcuffed, ‘but you can’t get back the magic of it. Terry is lighthearted and good-natured, but I couldn’t live with him. He’s completely irresponsible.’

  ‘And what do you think you are?’ cried Father Cassidy, at the end of his patience. ‘Have you thought of all the dangers you’re running, girl? If you have a child who’ll give you work? If you have to leave this country to earn a living what’s going to become of you? I tell you it’s your bounden duty to marry this man if he can be got to marry you – which, let me tell you,’ he added with a toss of hi
s great head, ‘I very much doubt.’

  ‘To tell you the truth I doubt it myself,’ she replied with a shrug that fully expressed her feelings about Terry and nearly drove Father Cassidy insane. He looked at her for a moment or two and then an incredible idea began to dawn on his bothered old brain. He sighed and covered his face with his hand.

  ‘Tell me,’ he asked in a faraway voice, ‘when did this take place?’

  ‘Last night, father,’ she said gently, almost as if she were glad to see him come to his senses again.

  ‘My God,’ he thought despairingly, ‘I was right!’

  ‘In town, was it?’ he went on.

  ‘Yes, father. We met on the train coming down.’

  ‘And where is he now?’

  ‘He went home this morning, father.’

  ‘Why didn’t you do the same?’

  ‘I don’t know, father,’ she replied doubtfully as though the question had now only struck herself for the first time.

  ‘Why didn’t you go home this morning?’ he repeated angrily. ‘What were you doing round town all day?’

  ‘I suppose I was walking,’ she replied uncertainly.

  ‘And of course you didn’t tell anyone?’

  ‘I hadn’t anyone to tell,’ she said plaintively. ‘Anyway,’ she added with a shrug, ‘it’s not the sort of thing you can tell people.’

  ‘No, of course,’ said Father Cassidy. ‘Only a priest,’ he added grimly to himself. He saw now how he had been taken in. This little trollop, wandering about town in a daze of bliss, had to tell someone her secret, and he, a good-natured old fool of sixty, had allowed her to use him as a confidant. A philosopher of sixty letting Eve, aged nineteen, tell him all about the apple! He could never live it down.

  Then the fighting blood of the Cassidys began to warm in him. Oh, couldn’t he, though? He had never tasted the apple himself, but he knew a few things about apples in general and that apple in particular that little Miss Eve wouldn’t learn in a whole lifetime of apple-eating. Theory might have its drawbacks but there were times when it was better than practice. ‘All right, my lass,’ he thought grimly, ‘we’ll see which of us knows most!’