The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  THE BABES IN THE WOOD

  WHENEVER Mrs Early made Terry put on his best trousers and gansey he knew his aunt must be coming. She didn’t come half often enough to suit Terry, but when she did it was great gas. Terry’s mother was dead and he lived with Mrs Early and her son, Billy. Mrs Early was a rough, deaf, scolding old woman, doubled up with rheumatics, who’d give you a clout as quick as she’d look at you, but Billy was good gas too.

  This particular Sunday morning Billy was scraping his chin frantically and cursing the bloody old razor while the bell was ringing up the valley for Mass, when Terry’s aunt arrived. She come into the dark little cottage eagerly, her big rosy face toasted with sunshine and her hand out in greeting.

  ‘Hello, Billy,’ she cried in a loud, laughing voice, ‘late for Mass again?’

  ‘Let me alone, Miss Conners,’ stuttered Billy, turning his lathered face to her from the mirror. ‘I think my mother shaves on the sly.’

  ‘And how’s Mrs Early?’ cried Terry’s aunt, kissing the old woman and then fumbling at the strap of her knapsack in her excitable way. Everything about his aunt was excitable and high-powered; the words tumbled out of her so fast that sometimes she became incoherent.

  ‘Look, I brought you a couple of things – no, they’re fags for Billy’ (‘God bless you, Miss Conners,’ from Billy) ‘— this is for you, and here are a few things for the dinner.’

  ‘And what did you bring me, Auntie?’ Terry asked.

  ‘Oh, Terry,’ she cried in consternation, ‘I forgot about you.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘I did, Terry,’ she said tragically. ‘I swear Idid. Or did I? The bird told me something. What was it he said?’

  ‘What sort of bird was it?’ asked Terry. ‘A thrush?’

  ‘A big grey fellow?’

  ‘That’s the old thrush all right. He sings in our back yard.’

  ‘And what was that he told me to bring you?’

  ‘A boat!’ shouted Terry.

  It was a boat.

  After dinner the pair of them went up the wood for a walk. His aunt had a long, swinging stride that made her hard to keep up with, but she was great gas and Terry wished she’d come to see him oftener. When she did he tried his hardest to be grown-up. All the morning he had been reminding himself: ‘Terry, remember you’re not a baby any longer. You’re nine now, you know.’ He wasn’t nine, of course; he was still only five and fat, but nine, the age of his girl friend Florrie, was the one he liked pretending to be. When you were nine you understood everything. There were still things Terry did not understand.

  When they reached the top of the hill his aunt threw herself on her back with her knees in the air and her hands under her head. She liked to toast herself like that. She liked walking; her legs were always bare; she usually wore a tweed skirt and a pullover. Today she wore black glasses, and when Terry looked through them he saw everything dark; the wooded hills at the other side of the valley and the buses and cars crawling between the rocks at their feet, and, still farther down, the railway track and the river. She promised him a pair for himself next time she came, a small pair to fit him, and he could scarcely bear the thought of having to wait so long for them.

  ‘When will you come again, Auntie?’ he asked. ‘Next Sunday?’

  ‘I might,’ she said and rolled on her belly, propped her head on her hands, and sucked a straw as she laughed at him. ‘Why? Do you like it when I come?’

  ‘I love it.’

  ‘Would you like to come and live with me altogether, Terry?’

  ‘Oh, Jay, I would.’

  ‘Are you sure now?’ she said, half-ragging him. ‘You’re sure you wouldn’t be lonely after Mrs Early or Billy or Florrie?’

  ‘I wouldn’t, Auntie, honest,’ he said tensely. ‘When will you bring me?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ she said. ‘It might be sooner than you think.’

  ‘Where would you bring me? Up to town?’

  ‘If I tell you where,’ she whispered, bending closer, ‘will you swear a terrible oath not to tell anybody?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Not even Florrie?’

  ‘Not even Florrie.’

  ‘That you might be killed stone dead?’ she added in a bloodcurdling tone.

  ‘That I might be killed stone dead!’

  ‘Well, there’s a nice man over from England who wants to marry me and bring me back with him. Of course, I said I couldn’t come without you and he said he’d bring you as well.… Wouldn’t that be gorgeous?’ she ended, clapping her hands.

  ‘’Twould,’ said Terry, clapping his hands in imitation. ‘Where’s England?’

  ‘Oh, a long way off,’ she said, pointing up the valley. ‘Beyond where the railway ends. We’d have to get a big boat to take us there.’

  ‘Chrisht!’ said Terry, repeating what Billy said whenever something occurred too great for his imagination to grasp, a fairly common event. He was afraid his aunt, like Mrs Early, would give him a wallop for it, but she only laughed. ‘What sort of a place is England, Auntie?’ he went on.

  “Oh, a grand place,’ said his aunt in her loud, enthusiastic way. ‘The three of us would live in a big house of our own with lights that went off and on, and hot water in the taps, and every morning I’d take you to school on your bike.’

  ‘Would I have a bike of my own?’ Terry asked incredulously.

  ‘You would, Terry, a two-wheeled one. And on a fine day like this we’d sit in the park – you know, a place like the garden of the big house where Billy works, with trees and flowers and a pond in the middle to sail boats in.’

  ‘And would we have a park of our own, too?’

  ‘Not our own; there’d be other people as well; boys and girls you could play with. And you could be sailing your boat and I’d be reading a book, and then we’d go back home to tea and I’d bath you and tell you a story in bed. Wouldn’t it be massive, Terry?’

  ‘What sort of story would you tell me?’ he asked cautiously. ‘Tell us one now.’

  So she took off her black spectacles and, hugging her knees, told him the story of the Three Bears and was so carried away that she acted it, growling and wailing and creeping on all fours with her hair over her eyes till Terry screamed with fright and pleasure. She was really great gas.

  Next day Florrie came to the cottage for him. Florrie lived in the village so she had to come a mile through the woods to see him, but she delighted in seeing him and Mrs Early encouraged her. ‘Your young lady’ she called her and Florrie blushed with pleasure. Florrie lived with Miss Clancy in the Post Office and was very nicely behaved; everyone admitted that. She was tall and thin, with jet-black hair, a long ivory face, and a hook nose.

  ‘Terry!’ bawled Mrs Early. ‘Your young lady is here for you,’ and Terry came rushing from the back of the cottage with his new boat.

  ‘Where did you get that, Terry?’ Florrie asked, opening her eyes wide at the sight of it.

  ‘My auntie,’ said Terry. ‘Isn’t it grand?’

  ‘I suppose ’tis all right,’ said Florrie, showing her teeth in a smile which indicated that she thought him a bit of a baby for making so much of a toy boat.

  Now, that was one great weakness in Florrie, and Terry regretted it because he really was fond of her. She was gentle, she was generous, she always took his part; she told creepy stories so well that she even frightened herself and was scared of going back through the woods alone, but she was jealous. Whenever she had anything, even if it was only a raggy doll, she made it out to be one of the seven wonders of the world, but let anyone else have a thing, no matter how valuable, and she pretended it didn’t even interest her. It was the same now.

  ‘Will you come up to the big house for a pennorth of goosegogs?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll go down the river with this one first,’ insisted Terry, who knew he could always override her wishes when he chose.

  ‘But these are grand goosegogs,’ she said eagerly, and aga
in you’d think no one in the world but herself could even have a gooseberry. ‘They’re that size. Miss Clancy gave me the penny.’

  ‘We’ll go down the river first,’ Terry said cantankerously. ‘Ah, boy, wait till you see this one sail – ssss!’

  She gave in as she always did when Terry showed himself headstrong, and grumbled as she always did when she had given in. She said it would be too late; that Jerry, the under-gardener, who was their friend, would be gone and that Mr Scott, the head gardener, would only give them a handful, and not even ripe ones. She was terrible like that, an awful old worrier.

  When they reached the river bank they tied up their clothes and went in. The river was deep enough, and under the trees it ran beautifully clear over a complete pavement of small, brown, smoothly rounded stones. The current was swift, and the little sailing-boat was tossed on its side and spun dizzily round and round before it stuck in the bank. Florrie tired of this sport sooner than Terry did. She sat on the bank with her hands under her bottom, trailing her toes in the river, and looked at the boat with growing disillusionment.

  ‘God knows, ’tisn’t much of a thing to lose a pennorth of goosegogs over,’ she said bitterly.

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Terry asked indignantly. ‘ ’Tis a fine boat.’

  ‘A wonder it wouldn’t sail properly so,’ she said with an accusing, schoolmarmish air.

  ‘How could it when the water is too fast for it?’ shouted Terry.

  ‘That’s a good one,’ she retorted in pretended grown-up amusement. ‘ ’Tis the first time we ever heard of water being too fast for a boat.’ That was another very aggravating thing about her – her calm assumption that only what she knew was knowledge. ‘ ’Tis only a cheap old boat.’

  ‘’Tisn’t a cheap old boat,’ Terry cried indignantly. ‘My aunt gave it to me.’

  ‘She never gives anyone anything only cheap old things,’ Florrie replied with the coolness that always maddened other children. ‘She gets them cost price in the shop where she works. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Because you’re jealous,’ he cried, throwing at her the taunt the village children threw whenever she enraged them with her supercilious airs.

  ‘That’s a good one too,’ she said in a quiet voice, while her long thin face maintained its air of amusement. ‘I suppose you’ll tell us now what we’re jealous of?’

  ‘Because Auntie brings me things and no one ever brings you anything.’

  ‘She’s mad about you,’ Florrie said ironically.

  ‘She is mad about me.’

  ‘A wonder she wouldn’t bring you to live with her so.’

  ‘She’s going to,’ said Terry, forgetting his promise in his rage and triumph.

  ‘She is, I hear!’ Florrie said mockingly. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘She did; Auntie.’

  ‘Dont mind her at all, little boy,’ Florrie said severely. ‘She lives with her mother, and her mother wouldn’t let you live with her.’

  ‘Well, she’s not going to live with her any more,’ Terry said, knowing he had the better of her at last. ‘She’s going to get married.’

  ‘Who is she going to get married to?’ Florrie asked casually, but Terry could see she was impressed.

  ‘A man in England, and I’m going to live with them. So there!’

  ‘In England?’ Florrie repeated, and Terry saw he had really knocked the stuffing out of her this time. Florrie had no one to bring her to England, and the jealousy was driving her mad. ‘And I suppose you’re going?’ she asked bitterly.

  ‘I am going,’ Terry said, wild with excitement to see her overthrown; the grand lady who for all her airs had no one to bring her to England with them. ‘And I’m getting a bike of my own. So now!’

  ‘Is that what she told you?’ Florrie asked with a hatred and contempt that made him more furious still.

  ‘She’s going to, she’s going to,’ he shouted furiously.

  ‘Ah, she’s only codding you, little boy,’ Florrie said contemptuously, splashing her long legs in the water while she continued to fix him with the same dark, evil, round-eyed look, exactly like a witch in a storybook. ‘Why did she send you down here at all so?’

  ‘She didn’t send me,’ Terry said, stooping to fling a handful of water in her face.

  ‘But sure, I thought everyone knew that,’ she said idly, merely averting her face slightly to avoid the splashes. ‘She lets on to be your aunt but we all know she’s your mother.’

  ‘She isn’t,’ shrieked Terry. ‘My mother is dead.’

  ‘Ah, that’s only what they always tell you,’ Florrie replied quietly. ‘That’s what they told me too, but I knew it was lies. Your mother isn’t dead at all, little boy. She got into trouble with a man and her mother made her send you down here to get rid of you. The whole village knows that.’

  ‘God will kill you stone dead for a dirty liar, Florrie Clancy,’ he said and then threw himself on her and began to pummel her with his little fat fists. But he hadn’t the strength, and she merely pushed him off lightly and got up on the grassy bank, flushed and triumphant, pretending to smooth down the front of her dress.

  ‘Don’t be codding yourself that you’re going to England at all, little boy,’ she said reprovingly. ‘Sure, who’d want you? Jesus knows I’m sorry for you,’ she added with mock pity, ‘and I’d like to do what I could for you, but you have no sense.’

  Then she went off in the direction of the wood, turning once or twice to give him her strange stare. He glared after her and danced and shrieked with hysterical rage. He had no idea what she meant, but he felt that she had got the better of him after all. ‘A big, bloody brute of nine,’ he said, and then began to run through the woods to the cottage, sobbing. He knew that God would kill her for the lies she had told, but if God didn’t, Mrs Early would. Mrs Early was pegging up clothes on the line and peered down at him sourly.

  ‘What ails you now didn’t ail you before?’ she asked.

  ‘Florrie Clancy was telling lies,’ he shrieked, his fat face black with fury. ‘Big bloody brute!’

  ‘Botheration to you and Florrie Clancy!’ said Mrs Early. ‘Look at the cut of you! Come here till I wipe your nose.’

  ‘She said my aunt wasn’t my aunt at all,’ he cried.

  ‘She what?’ Mrs Early asked incredulously.

  ‘She said she was my mother – Auntie that gave me the boat,’ he said through his tears.

  ‘Aha,’ Mrs Early said grimly, ‘let me catch her round here again and I’ll toast her backside for her, and that’s what she wants, the little vagabond! Whatever your mother might do, she was a decent woman, but the dear knows who that one is or where she came from.’

  All the same it was a bad business for Terry. A very bad business! It is all very well having fights, but not when you’re only five and live a mile away from the village, and there is nowhere for you to go but across the footbridge to the little railway station and the main road where you wouldn’t see another kid once in a week. He’d have been very glad to make it up with Florrie, but she knew she had done wrong and that Mrs Early was only lying in wait for her to ask her what she meant.

  And to make it worse, his aunt didn’t come for months. When she did, she came unexpectedly and Terry had to change his clothes in a hurry because there was a car waiting for them at the station. The car made up to Terry for the disappointment (he had never been in a car before), and to crown it, they were going to the seaside, and his aunt had brought him a brand-new bucket and spade.

  They crossed the river by the little wooden bridge and there in the yard of the station was a posh grey car and a tall man beside it whom Terry hadn’t seen before. He was a posh-looking fellow too, with a grey hat and a nice manner, but Terry didn’t pay him much attention at first. He was too interested in the car.

  ‘This is Mr Walker, Terry,’ his aunt said in her loud way. ‘Shake hands with him nicely.’

  ‘How’re ye, mister?’ said Terry.

&n
bsp; ‘But this fellow is a blooming boxer,’ Mr Walker cried, letting on to be frightened of him. ‘Do you box, young Samson?’ he asked.

  ‘I do not,’ said Terry, scrambling into the back of the car and climbing up on the seat. ‘Hey, mister, will we go through the village?’ he added.

  ‘What do you want to go through the village for?’ asked Mr Walker.

  ‘He wants to show off,’ said his aunt with a chuckle. ‘Don’t you, Terry?’

  ‘I do,’ said Terry.

  ‘Sound judge!’ said Mr Walker, and they drove along the main road and up through the village street just as Mass was ending, and Terry, hurling himself from side to side, shouted to all the people he knew. First they gaped, then they laughed, finally they waved back. Terry kept shouting messages but they were lost in the noise and rush of the car. ‘Billy! Billy!’ he screamed when he saw Billy Early outside the church. ‘This is my aunt’s car. We’re going for a spin. I have a bucket and spade.’ Florrie was standing outside the Post Office with her hands behind her back. Full of magnanimity and self-importance, Terry gave her a special shout and his aunt leaned out and waved, but though Florrie looked up she let on not to recognize them. That was Florrie all out, jealous even of the car!