The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  In a casual tone he began to ask her questions. They were rather intimate questions, such as a doctor or priest may ask, and, feeling broad-minded and worldly wise in her new experience, she answered courageously and straightforwardly, trying to suppress all signs of her embarrassment. It emerged only once or twice, in a brief pause before she replied. He stole a furtive look at her to see how she was taking it, and once more he couldn’t withhold his admiration. But she couldn’t keep it up. First she grew uncomfortable and then alarmed, frowning and shaking herself in her clothes as if something were biting her. He grew graver and more personal. She didn’t see his purpose; she only saw that he was stripping off veil after veil of romance, leaving her with nothing but a cold, sordid, cynical adventure like a bit of greasy meat on a plate.

  ‘And what did he do next?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah,’ she said in disgust, ‘I didn’t notice.’

  ‘You didn’t notice!’ he repeated ironically.

  ‘But does it make any difference?’ she burst out despairingly, trying to pull the few shreds of illusion she had left more tightly about her.

  ‘I presume you thought so when you came to confess it,’ he replied sternly.

  ‘But you’re making it sound so beastly!’ she wailed.

  ‘And wasn’t it?’ he whispered, bending closer, lips pursed and brows raised. He had her now, he knew.

  ‘Ah, it wasn’t, father,’ she said earnestly. ‘Honest to God it wasn’t. At least at the time I didn’t think it was.’

  ‘No,’ he said grimly, ‘you thought it was a nice little story to run and tell your sister. You won’t be in such a hurry to tell her now. Say an Act of Contrition.’

  She said it.

  ‘And for your penance say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys.’

  He knew that was hitting below the belt, but he couldn’t resist the parting shot of a penance such as he might have given a child. He knew it would rankle in that fanciful little head of hers when all his other warnings were forgotten. Then he drew the shutter and didn’t open the farther one. There was a noisy woman behind, groaning in an excess of contrition. The mere volume of sound told him it was drink. He felt he needed a breath of fresh air.

  He went down the aisle creakily on his heavy policeman’s feet and in the dusk walked up and down the path before the presbytery, head bowed, hands behind his back. He saw the girl come out and descend the steps under the massive fluted columns of the portico, a tiny, limp, dejected figure. As she reached the pavement she pulled herself together with a jaunty twitch of her shoulders and then collapsed again. The city lights went on and made globes of coloured light in the mist. As he returned to the church he suddenly began to chuckle, a fat good-natured chuckle, and as he passed the statue of St Anne, patron of marriageable girls, he almost found himself giving her a wink.

  THE MAD LOMASNEYS

  NED LOWRY and Rita Lomasney had, one might say, been lovers from childhood. The first time they had met was when he was fourteen and she a year or two younger. It was on the North Mall on a Saturday afternoon, and she was sitting on a bench under the trees; a tall, bony string of a girl with a long, obstinate jaw. Ned was a studious young fellow in a blue and white college cap, thin, pale and spectacled. As he passed he looked at her owlishly and she gave him back an impudent stare. This upset him – he had no experience of girls – so he blushed and raised his cap. At that she seemed to relent.

  ‘Hello,’ she said experimentally.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he replied with a pale smile.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, just up the dike for a walk.’

  ‘Sit down,’ she said in a sharp voice, laying her hand on the bench beside her, and he did as he was told. It was a lovely summer evening, and the white quay walls and tall, crazy, claret-coloured tenements under a blue and white sky were reflected in the lazy water, which wrinkled only at the edges and seemed like a painted carpet.

  ‘It’s very pleasant here,’ he said complacently.

  ‘Is it?’ she asked with a truculence that startled him. ‘I don’t see anything very pleasant about it.’

  ‘Oh, it’s very nice and quiet,’ he said in mild surprise as he raised his fair eyebrows and looked up and down the Mall at the old Georgian houses and the nursemaids sitting under the trees. ‘My name is Lowry,’ he added politely.

  ‘Oh, are ye the ones that have the jeweller’s shop on the Parade?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ replied Ned with modest pride.

  ‘We have a clock we got from ye,’ she said. ‘’Tisn’t much good of an old clock either,’ she added with quiet malice.

  ‘You should bring it back to the shop,’ he said in considerable concern. ‘It probably needs overhauling.’

  ‘I’m going down the river in a boat with a couple of chaps,’ she said, going off at a tangent. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Couldn’t,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m only left go up the dike for a walk,’ he said complacently. ‘On Saturdays I go to Confession at St Peter and Paul’s, then I go up the dike and back the Western Road. Sometimes you see very good cricket matches. Do you like cricket?’

  ‘A lot of old sissies pucking a ball!’ she said shortly. ‘I do not.’

  ‘I like it,’ he said firmly. ‘I go up there every Saturday. Of course, I’m not supposed to talk to anyone,’ he added with mild amusement at his own audacity.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My mother doesn’t want me to.’

  ‘Why doesn’t she?’

  ‘She comes of an awfully good family,’ he answered mildly, and but for his gentle smile she might have thought he was deliberately insulting her. ‘You see,’ he went on gravely in his thin, pleasant voice, ticking things off on his fingers and then glancing at each finger individually as he ticked it off – a tidy sort of boy – ‘there are three main branches of the Hourigan family: the Neddy Neds, the Neddy Jerrys and the Neddy Thomases. The Neddy Neds are the Hayfield Hourigans. They are the oldest branch. My mother is a Hayfield Hourigan, and she’d have been a rich woman only for her father backing a bill for a Neddy Jerry. He defaulted and ran away to Australia,’ he concluded with a contemptuous sniff.

  ‘Cripes!’ said the girl. ‘And had she to pay?’

  ‘She had. But, of course,’ he went on with as close as he ever seemed likely to get to a burst of real enthusiasm, ‘my grandfather was a well-behaved man. When he was eating his dinner the boys from the National School in Bantry used to be brought up to watch him, he had such beautiful table manners. Once he caught my uncle eating cabbage with a knife and he struck him with a poker. They had to put four stitches in him after,’ he added with a joyous chuckle.

  ‘Cripes!’ the girl said again. ‘What did he do that for?’

  ‘To teach him manners,’ Ned said earnestly.

  ‘He must have been dotty.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say, so,’ Ned exclaimed in mild surprise.

  Everything this girl said came as a shock to him. ‘But that’s why my mother won’t let me mix with other children. On the other hand, we read a good deal. Are you fond of reading, Miss – I didn’t catch the name.’

  ‘You weren’t told it,’ she said, showing her claws. ‘But if you want to know, it’s Rita Lomasney.’

  ‘Do you read much, Miss Lomasney?’

  ‘I couldn’t be bothered.’

  ‘I read all sorts of books,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘And as well as that, I’m learning the violin from Miss Maude on the Parade. Of course, it’s very difficult, because it’s all classical music.’

  ‘What’s classical music?’ she asked with sudden interest.

  ‘Maritana is classical music,’ he replied eagerly. He was a bit of a puzzle to Rita. She had never before met anyone with such a passion for handing out instruction. ‘Were you at Maritana in the opera house, Miss Lomasney?’

  ‘I was never there at all,’ she s
aid curtly.

  ‘And Alice Where Art Thou is classical music,’ he added. ‘It’s harder than plain music. You see,’ he went on, composing signs in the air, ‘it has signs on it like this, and when you see the signs, you know it’s after turning into a different tune, though it has the same name. Irish music is all the same tune and that’s why my mother won’t let us learn it.’

  ‘Were you ever at the opera in Paris?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘No,’ said Ned. ‘I was never in Paris. Why?’

  ‘That’s where you should go,’ she said with airy enthusiasm. ‘You couldn’t hear any operas here. The staircase alone is bigger than the whole opera house here.’

  It seemed as if they were in for a really informative conversation when two fellows came down Wyse’s Hill. Rita got up to meet them. Lowry looked up at them and then rose too, lifting his cap politely.

  ‘Well, good afternoon,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I enjoyed the talk. I hope we meet again.’

  ‘Some other Saturday,’ said Rita.

  ‘Oh, good evening, old man,’ one of the two fellows said in an affected drawl, pretending to raise a top hat. ‘Do come and see us soon again.’

  ‘Shut up, Foster!’ Rita said sharply. ‘I’ll give you a puck in the gob.’

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Ned said, coming back to hand her a number of the Gem which he took from his coat pocket, ‘you might like to look at this. It’s not bad.’

  ‘Thanks, I’d love to,’ she said insincerely, and he smiled and touched his cap again. Then with a polite and almost deferential air he went up to Foster. ‘Did you say something?’ he asked.

  Foster looked as astonished as if a kitten had suddenly got on its hind legs and challenged him to fight.

  ‘I did not,’ he said, and backed away.

  ‘I’m glad,’ Ned said, almost purring. ‘I was afraid you might be looking for trouble.’

  It came as a surprise to Rita as well. Whatever opinion she might have formed of Ned Lowry, fighting was about the last thing she would have associated him with.

  The Lomasneys lived in a house on Sunday’s Well, a small house with a long, sloping garden and a fine view of the river and city. Harry Lomasney, the builder, was a small man who wore grey tweed suits and soft collars several sizes too big for him. He had a ravaged brick-red face with keen blue eyes, and a sandy, straggling moustache with one side going up and the other down, and his workmen said you could tell his humour by the side he pulled. He was nicknamed ‘Hasty Harry’. ‘Great God!’ he fumed when his wife was having her first baby. ‘Nine months over a little job like that! I’d do it in three weeks if I could only get started.’ His wife was tall and matronly and very pious, but her piety never got much in her way. A woman who had survived Hasty would have survived anything. Their eldest daughter, Kitty, was loud-voiced and gay and had been expelled from school for writing indecent letters to a boy. She had copied the letters out of a French novel but she failed to tell the nuns that. Nellie was placider and took more after her mother; besides, she didn’t read French novels.

  Rita was the exception among the girls. There seemed to be no softness in her. She never had a favourite saint or a favourite nun; she said it was soppy. For the same reason she never had flirtations. Her friendship with Ned Lowry was the closest she ever got to that, and though Ned came regularly to the house, and the pair of them went to the pictures together, her sisters would have found it hard to say whether she cared any more for him than she did for any of her girl acquaintances. There was something in her they didn’t understand, something tongue-tied, twisted and unhappy. She had a curious raw, almost timid smile as though she felt people desired no better sport than hurting her. At home she was reserved, watchful, almost mocking. She could listen for hours to her mother and sisters without once opening her mouth, and then suddenly mystify them by dropping a well-aimed jaw-breaker – about classical music, for instance – before relapsing into a sulky silence; as though she had merely drawn back the veil for a moment on depths in herself which she would not permit them to explore.

  After taking her degree, she got a job in a convent school in a provincial town in the west of Ireland. She and Ned corresponded and he even went to see her there. He reported at home that she seemed quite happy.

  But this didn’t last. A few months later the Lomasney family were at supper one evening when they heard a car stop, the gate squeaked, and steps came up the long path to the front door. Then came the sound of a bell and a cheerful voice from the hall.

  ‘Hullo, Paschal, I suppose ye weren’t expecting me?’

  ‘ ’Tis never Rita!’ said her mother, meaning that it was but that it shouldn’t be.

  ‘As true as God, that one is after getting into trouble,’ Kitty said prophetically.

  The door opened and Rita slouched in, a long, stringy girl with a dark, glowing face. She kissed her father and mother lightly.

  ‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘What happened you?’ her mother asked, rising.

  ‘Nothing,’ replied Rita, an octave up the scale. ‘I just got the sack.’

  ‘The sack?’ said her father, beginning to pull the wrong side of his moustache. ‘What did you get the sack for?’

  ‘Give me a chance to get something to eat first, can’t you?’ Rita said laughingly. She took off her hat and smiled at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece. It was a curious smile as though she were amused by the spectacle of what she saw. Then she smoothed back her thick black hair. ‘I told Paschal to bring in whatever was going. I’m on the train since ten. The heating was off as usual. I’m frizzled.’

  ‘A wonder you wouldn’t send us a wire,’ said Mrs Lomasney as Rita sat down and grabbed some bread and butter.

  ‘Hadn’t the tin,’ replied Rita.

  ‘Can’t you tell us what happened?’ Kitty asked brightly.

  ‘I told you. You’ll hear more in due course. Reverend Mother is bound to write and tell ye how I lost my character.’

  ‘But what did you do, child?’ her mother asked placidly. Her mother had been through all this before, with Hasty and Kitty, and she knew God was very good and nothing much ever happened.

  ‘Fellow that wanted to marry me,’ said Rita. ‘He was in his last year at college, and his mother didn’t like me, so she got Reverend Mother to give me the push.’

  ‘And what has it to do with Reverend Mother?’ Nellie asked indignantly. ‘What business is it of hers?’

  ‘That’s what I say,’ said Rita.

  But Kitty looked suspiciously at her. Rita wasn’t natural; there was something wild about her, and this was her first real love affair. Kitty just couldn’t believe that Rita had gone about it the same as anyone else.

  ‘Still, I must say you worked pretty fast,’ she said.

  ‘You’d have to in that place,’ said Rita. ‘There was only one possible man in the whole village and he was the bank clerk. We called him “The One”. I wasn’t there a week when the nuns ticked me off for riding on the pillion of his motorbike.’

  ‘And did you?’ asked Kitty.

  ‘I never got the chance, girl. They did it to every teacher on principle to give her the idea that she was well watched. I only met Tony Donoghue a fortnight ago – home after a breakdown.’

  ‘Well, well, well!’ her mother exclaimed without rancour. ‘No wonder his poor mother was upset. A boy that’s not left college yet! Couldn’t ye wait till he was qualified anyway?’

  ‘Not very well,’ said Rita. ‘He’s going to be a priest.’

  Kitty sat back with a superior grin. Of course, Rita could do nothing like anyone else. If it wasn’t a priest it would have been a Negro, and Rita would have made theatre of it in precisely the same deliberate way.

  ‘A what?’ asked her father, springing to his feet.

  ‘All right, don’t blame me!’ Rita said hastily. ‘It wasn’t my fault. He told me he didn’t want to be a priest. It was his mother was driving him into it. That’s
why he had the breakdown.’

  ‘Let me out of this,’ said her father, ‘before I —’

  ‘Go on!’ Rita said with tender mockery (she was very fond of her father). ‘Before you what?’

  ‘Before I wish I was a priest myself,’ he snarled. ‘I wouldn’t be saddled with a family like I am.’

  He stumped out of the room, and the girls laughed. The idea of their father as a priest appealed to them almost as much as the idea of him as a mother. Hasty had a knack of stating his grievances in such a way that they inevitably produced laughter. But Mrs Lomasney did not laugh.

  ‘Reverend Mother was perfectly right,’ she said severely. ‘As if it wasn’t hard enough on the poor boys without girls like you throwing temptation in their way. I think you behaved very badly, Rita.’

  ‘All right, if you say so,’ Rita said shortly with a boyish shrug of her shoulders, and refused to answer any more questions.

  After her supper she went to bed, and her mother and sisters sat on in the front room discussing the scandal. Someone rang and Nellie opened the door.

  ‘Hullo, Ned,’ she said. ‘I suppose you came up to congratulate us on the good news?’

  ‘Hullo,’ Ned said, smiling with his mouth primly shut. With a sort of automatic movement he took off his coat and hat and hung them on the rack. Then he emptied the pockets with the same thoroughness. He hadn’t changed much. He was thin and pale, spectacled and clever, with the same precise and tranquil manner, ‘like an old Persian cat,’ as Nellie said. He read too many books. In the last year or two something seemed to have happened him. He didn’t go to Mass any longer. Not going to Mass struck all the Lomasneys as too damn clever. ‘What good news?’ he added, having avoided any unnecessary precipitation.

  ‘You didn’t know who was here?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, raising his brows mildly.

  ‘Rita!’

  ‘Oh!’ The same tone. It was part of his cleverness not to be surprised at anything.

  ‘She’s after getting the sack for trying to run off with a priest,’ said Nellie.