The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Kendillon crossly, starting awake after one of his drowsing fits.

  Moll Mor glowered at him.

  ‘Aren’t we home yet?’ he asked again.

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘Nor won’t be. What scour is on you?’

  ‘Me little house,’ moaned Kendillon.

  ‘Me little house,’ mimicked Moll. ‘ ’Twasn’t enough for you to board the windows and put barbed wire on the ould bit of a gate!’

  ‘ ’Tis all dom well for you,’ he snarled, ‘that have someone to mind yours for you.’

  One of the women laughed softly and turned a haggard virginal face within the cowl of her shawl.

  ‘ ’Tis that same have me laughing,’ she explained apologetically. ‘Tim Dwyer this week past at the stirabout pot!’

  ‘And making the beds!’ chimed in the third woman.

  ‘And washing the children’s faces! Glory be to God, he’ll blast creation!’

  ‘Ay,’ snorted Moll, ‘and his chickens running off with Thade Kendillon’s roof.’

  ‘My roof, is it?’

  ‘Ay, your roof.’

  ‘ ’Tis a good roof. ’Tis a better roof than ever was seen over your head since the day you married.’

  ‘Oh, Mary Mother!’ sighed Moll, ‘ ’tis a great pity of me this three hours and I looking at the likes of you instead of me own fine bouncing man.’

  ‘ ’Tis a new thing to hear you praising your man, then,’ said a woman.

  ‘I wronged him,’ said Moll contritely. ‘I did so. I wronged him before the world.’

  At this moment the drunken man pulled back the door of the compartment and looked from face to face with an expression of deepening melancholy.

  ‘She’sh not here,’ he said in disappointment.

  ‘Who’s not here, mister?’ asked Moll with a wink at the others.

  ‘I’m looking for me own carriage, ma’am,’ said the drunk with melancholic dignity, ‘and, whatever the bloody hell they done with it, ’tish losht. The railways in thish counthry are gone to hell.’

  ‘Wisha, if ’tis nothing else is worrying you wouldn’t you sit here with me?’ asked Moll.

  ‘I would with very great pleasure,’ replied the drunk, ‘but ’tishn’t on’y the carriage, ’tish me thravelling companion … I’m a lonely man, I parted me besht friend this very night, I found wan to console me, and then when I turned me back – God took her!’

  And with a dramatic gesture the drunk closed the door and continued on his way. The country folk sat up, blinking. The smoke of the men’s pipes filled the compartment, and the heavy air was laden with the smell of homespun and turf smoke, the sweet pungent odour of which had penetrated every fibre of their garments.

  ‘Listen to the rain, leave ye!’ said one of the women. ‘We’ll have a wet walk home.’

  ‘’Twill be midnight before we’re there,’ said another.

  ‘Ah, sure, the whole country will be up.’

  ‘ ’Twill be like daylight with collogueing.’

  ‘There’ll be no sleep in Farranchreesht tonight.’

  ‘Oh, Farranchreesht! Farranchreesht!’ cried the young woman with the haggard face, the ravished lineaments of which were suddenly transfigured. ‘Farranchreesht and the sky over you, I wouldn’t change places with the Queen of England this night!’

  And suddenly Farranchreesht, the bare bog-lands with the hump-backed mountain behind, the little white houses and the dark fortifications of turf that made it seem the flame-blackened ruin of some mighty city, all was lit up within their minds. An old man sitting in a corner, smoking a broken clay pipe, thumped his stick upon the floor.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Kendillon darkly, ‘wasn’t it great impudence in her to come back?’

  ‘Wasn’t it now?’ answered a woman.

  ‘She won’t be there long,’ he added.

  ‘You’ll give her the hunt, I suppose?’ asked Moll Mor politely, too politely.

  ‘If no one else do, I’ll give her the hunt myself.’

  ‘Oh, the hunt, the hunt,’ agreed a woman. ‘No one could ever darken her door again.’

  ‘And still, Thade Kendillon,’ pursued Moll with her teeth on edge to be at him, ‘you swore black was white to save her neck.’

  ‘I did of course. What else would I do?’

  ‘What else? What else, indeed?’ agreed the others.

  ‘There was never an informer in my family.’

  ‘I’m surprised to hear it,’ replied Moll vindictively, but the old man thumped his stick three or four times on the floor requesting silence.

  ‘We told our story, the lot of us,’ he said, ‘and we told it well.’

  ‘We did, indeed.’

  ‘And no one told it better than Moll Mor. You’d think to hear her she believed it herself.’

  ‘God knows,’ answered Moll with a wild laugh, ‘I nearly did.’

  ‘And still I seen great changes in my time, and maybe the day will come when Moll Mor or her likes will have a different. story.’

  A silence followed his words. There was profound respect in all their eyes. The old man coughed and spat.

  ‘Did any of ye ever think the day would come when a woman in our parish would do the like of that?’

  ‘Never, never, ambasa!’

  ‘But she might do it for land?’

  ‘She might then.’

  ‘Or for money?’

  ‘She might so.’

  ‘She might, indeed. When the hunger is money people kill for money, when the hunger is land people kill for land. There’s a great change coming, a great change. In the ease of the world people are asking more. When I was a growing boy in the barony if you killed a beast you made six pieces of it, one for yourself and the rest for the neighbours. The same if you made a catch of fish, and that’s how it was with us from the beginning of time. And now look at the change! The people aren’t as poor as they were, nor as good as they were, nor as generous as they were, nor as strong as they were.’

  ‘Nor as wild as they were,’ added Moll Mor with a vicious glare at Kendillon. ‘Oh, glory be to You, God, isn’t the world a wonderful place!’

  The door opened and Magner, Delancey and the sergeant entered. Magner was drunk.

  ‘Moll,’ he said, ‘I was lonely without you. You’re the biggest and brazenest and cleverest liar of the lot and you lost me my sergeant’s stripes, but I’ll forgive you everything if you’ll give us one bar of the “Colleen Dhas Roo”.’

  IV

  ‘I’m a lonely man,’ said the drunk. ‘And now I’m going back to my lonely habitation.

  ‘Me besht friend,’ he continued, ‘I left behind me – Michael O’Leary. ’Tis a great pity you don’t know Michael, and a great pity Michael don’t know you. But look now at the misfortunate way a thing will happen. I was looking for someone to console me, and the moment I turned me back you were gone.’

  Solemnly he placed his hand under the woman’s chin and raised her face to the light. Then with the other hand he stroked her cheeks.

  ‘You have a beauful face,’ he said, ‘a beauful face. But whass more important, you have a beauful soul. I look into your eyes and I see the beauty of your nature. Allow me wan favour. Only wan favour before we part.’

  He bent and kissed her. Then he picked up his bowler which had fallen once more, put it on back to front, took his dispatch case and got out.

  The woman sat on alone. Her shawl was thrown open and beneath it she wore a bright blue blouse. The carriage was cold, the night outside black and cheerless, and within her something had begun to contract that threatened to crush the very spark of life. She could no longer fight it off, even when for the hundredth time she went over the scenes of the previous day; the endless hours in the dock; the wearisome speeches and questions she couldn’t understand and the long wait in the cells till the jury returned. She felt it again, the shiver of mortal anguish that went through her when the chief warder beckoned angrily from the stairs, and
the wardress, glancing hastily into a hand-mirror, pushed her forward. She saw the jury with their expressionless faces. She was standing there alone, in nervous twitches jerking back the shawl from her face to give herself air. She was trying to say a prayer, but the words were being drowned within her mind by the thunder of nerves, crashing and bursting. She could feel one that had escaped dancing madly at the side of her mouth but she was powerless to recapture it.

  ‘The verdict of the jury is that Helena Maguire is not guilty.’ Which was it? Death or life? She couldn’t say. ‘Silence! Silence!’ shouted the usher, though no one had tried to say anything. ‘Any other charge?’ asked a weary voice. ‘Release the prisoner.’ ‘Silence!’ shouted the crier again. The chief warder opened the door of the dock and she began to run. When she reached the steps she stopped and looked back to see if she were being followed. A policeman held open a door and she found herself in an ill-lit, draughty, stone corridor. She stood there, the old shawl about her face. The crowd began to emerge. The first was a tall girl with a rapt expression as though she were walking on air. When she saw the woman she halted suddenly, her hands went up in an instinctive gesture, as though she wished to feel her, to caress her. It was that look of hers, that gait as of a sleepwalker that brought the woman to her senses …

  But now the memory had no warmth in her mind, and the something within her continued to contract, smothering her with loneliness and shame and fear. She began to mutter crazily to herself. The train, now almost empty, was stopping at every little wayside station. Now and again a blast of wind from the Atlantic pushed at it as though trying to capsize it.

  She looked up as the door was slammed open and Moll Mor came in, swinging her shawl behind her.

  ‘They’re all up the train. Wouldn’t you come?’

  ‘No, no, no, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you? Who are you minding? Is it Thade Kendillon?’

  ‘No, no, I’ll stop as I am.’

  ‘Here! Take a sup of this and ’twill put new heart in you.’ Moll fumbled in her shawl and produced a bottle of liquor as pale as water. ‘Wait till I tell you what Magner said! That fellow’s a limb of the divil. “Have you e’er a drop, Moll?” says he. “Maybe I have then,” says I. “What is it?” says he. “What do you think?” says I. “For God’s sake,” says he, “baptize it quick and call it whiskey.” ’

  The woman took the bottle and put it to her lips. She shivered as she drank.

  ‘ ’Tis powerful stuff entirely,’ said Moll with respect.

  Next moment there were loud voices in the corridor. Moll grabbed the bottle and hid it under her shawl. The door opened and in strode Magner, and behind him the sergeant and Delancey, looking rather foolish. After them again came the two country women, giggling. Magner held out his hand.

  ‘Helena,’ he said, ‘accept my congratulations.’

  The woman took his hand, smiling awkwardly.

  ‘We’ll get you the next time, though,’ he added.

  ‘Musha, what are you saying, mister?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a word, not a word. You’re a clever woman, a remarkable woman, and I give you full credit for it. You threw dust in all our eyes.’

  ‘Poison,’ said the sergeant by way of no harm, ‘is hard to come by and easy to trace, but it beat me to trace it.’

  ‘Well, well, there’s things they’re saying about me!’

  The woman laughed nervously, looking first at Moll Mor and then at the sergeant.

  ‘Oh, you’re safe now,’ said Magner, ‘as safe as the judge on the bench. Last night when the jury came out with the verdict you could have stood there in the dock and said “Ye’re wrong, ye’re wrong, I did it. I got the stuff in such and such a place. I gave it to him because he was old and dirty and cantankerous and a miser. I did it and I’m proud of it!” You could have said every word of that and no one would have dared to lay a finger on you.’

  ‘Indeed! What a thing I’d say!’

  ‘Well, you could.’

  ‘The law is truly a remarkable phenomenon,’ said the sergeant, who was also rather squiffy. ‘Here you are, sitting at your ease at the expense of the State, and for one word, one simple word of a couple of letters, you could be lying in the body of the gaol, waiting for the rope and the morning jaunt.’

  The woman shuddered. The young woman with the ravished face looked up.

  ‘ ’Twas the holy will of God,’ she said simply.

  ‘ ’Twas all the bloody lies Moll Mor told,’ replied Magner.

  ‘ ’Twas the will of God,’ she repeated.

  ‘There was many hanged in the wrong,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Even so, even so! ’Twas God’s will.’

  ‘You have a new blouse,’ said the other woman in an envious tone.

  ‘I seen it last night in a shop on the quay,’ replied the woman with sudden brightness. ‘A shop on the way down from the court. Is it nice?’

  ‘How much did it cost you?’

  ‘Honour of God!’ exclaimed Magner, looking at them in stupefaction. ‘Is that all you were thinking of? You should have been on your bended knees before the altar.’

  ‘I was too,’ she answered indignantly.

  ‘Women!’ exclaimed Magner with a gesture of despair. He winked at Moll Mor and the pair of them retired to the next compartment. But the interior was reflected clearly in the corridor window and they could see the pale, quivering image of the policeman lift Moll Mor’s bottle to his lips and blow a long silent blast on it as on a trumpet. Delancey laughed.

  ‘There’ll be one good day’s work done on the head of the trial,’ said the young woman, laughing.

  ‘How so?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘Dan Canty will make a great brew of poteen while he have yeer backs turned.’

  ‘I’ll get Dan Canty yet,’ replied the sergeant stiffly.

  ‘You will, as you got Helena.’

  ‘I’ll get him yet.’

  He consulted his watch.

  ‘We’ll be in in another quarter of an hour,’ he said. ‘ ’Tis time we were all getting back to our respective compartments.’

  Magner entered and the other policemen rose. The sergeant fastened his collar and buckled his belt. Magner swayed, holding the door frame, a mawkish smile on his thin, handsome, dissipated face.

  ‘Well, good night to you now, ma’am,’ said the sergeant primly. ‘I’m as glad for all our sakes things ended up as they did.’

  ‘Goodnight, Helena,’ said Magner, bowing low and promptly tottering. ‘There’ll be one happy man in Farranchreesht tonight.’

  ‘Come! Come, Joe!’ protested the sergeant.

  ‘One happy man,’ repeated Magner obstinately. ‘ ’Tis his turn now.’

  ‘Come on back, man,’ said Delancey. ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘You wanted him,’ said Magner heavily. ‘Your people wouldn’t let you have him, but you have him at last in spite of them all!’

  ‘Do you mean Cady Driscoll?’ hissed the woman with sudden anger, leaning towards Magner, the shawl drawn tight about her head.

  ‘Never mind who I mean. You have him.’

  ‘He’s no more to me now than the salt sea!’

  The policeman went out first, the women followed, Moll Morlaughing boisterously. The woman was left alone. Through the window she could see little cottages stepping down through wet and naked rocks to the water’s edge. The flame of life had narrowed in her to a pin-point, and she could only wonder at the force that had caught her up, mastered her and thrown her aside.

  ‘No more to me,’ she repeated dully to her own image in the window, ‘no more to me than the salt sea!’

  7 ABROAD

  PREFACE

  A READER uninterested in biography might conclude, from a lengthy survey of O’Connor’s fiction, that he never left Ireland in his life. On learning that he loved France, knew England well, and had lived in the United States for many years, the same reader might conclude that it was native caution wh
ich restricted his topographical range. The truth is more complicated. ‘I prefer to write about Ireland and Irish people,’ he explained in the New York Herald Tribune in 1952, ‘merely because I know to a syllable how everything in Ireland can be said; but that doesn’t mean that the stories themselves were inspired by events in Ireland. Many of them should really have English backgrounds; a few should even have American ones.’

  Some writers seek universality by ranging the world, by depicting the different cultures they claim or hope to have assimilated. O’Connor went in for a kind of reverse universality: the importation into Ireland of stories picked up elsewhere. Thus in early 1955 he was living in Annapolis with his wife Harriet, who later recalled how Annapolitans had provided him with themes for three of his stories: ‘ “The Man of the World” from my cousin, “Music When Soft Voices Die” from the memories of my first job, and “The Impossible Marriage” from a friend of my mother’s.’ The universality of a story lies in its truth, not in its language or circumstances. O’Connor liked to quote the story of Lord Edward Fitzgerald meeting an aged Native American woman who told him that, as far as she was concerned, humanity was ‘all one Indian’.

  But Abroad wasn’t merely a source of Irishable stories. The Ireland O’Connor knew and wrote about, though cut off from the rest of the world, was also marked by generations of exile. Poverty, famine and repression had meant parochialism and enclosure, but also emigration. The Irish went to England to work, and to America to start life again. To write about Ireland therefore also meant to write about the longing for departure, the pain or pleasure of absence, and the mixed blessing of return. ‘Michael’s Wife’, O’Connor’s great story of return, is here followed by the author’s account of its origin: not in order to ‘explain’ it (though to some extent it does), but as an example of how the writer sees what others – even those centrally involved – may miss in their own story.

  Abroad was also where O’Connor earned money – had he been obliged to exist on his Irish earnings he would have been impoverished – and a renown which confirms that fiction travels because of its art and truth rather than its location. In the late 1950s he was flying home from Paris when the Commissioner of Police at Le Bourget recognized him, proudly identified himself as a reader, and personally escorted the writer and his wife through the airport controls. The part which pleased him the most was being addressed as ‘maître’. Even more flatteringly, when John F. Kennedy opened the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Airforce Base on 21 November 1963, he found a metaphor for the space race in An Only Child: ‘Frank O’Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their caps and tossed them over the wall – and then they had no choice but to follow them.’ Three days later, O’Connor wrote in the Irish Independent: ‘On Thursday night I was called to the telephone to hear: “President Kennedy is quoting you in San Antonio, Texas”; on Friday night I was called to the telephone to hear: “President Kennedy is dead”.’