The Best of Frank O'Connor

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘Good?’ he asked Chris with a slight lift of his brows.

  ‘The beer isn’t up to much, if that’s what you mean,’ replied Chris, who still specialized in not being impressed.

  In the late evening they reached their destination, having cycled through miles of suburb with gardens in flower, and dismounted in the cobbled yard of an inn where Queen Elizabeth was supposed to have stayed and Shakespeare’s company performed; the walls of the narrow, twisting stairs were dark with old prints, and the windows deep embrasures that overlooked the yard. The dining-room had great oak beams and supports. At either end there was an oak dresser full of window-ware, with silver sauceboats hanging from the shelves and brass pitchers on top.

  ‘You’d want to mind your head in this hole,’ Chris said with an aggrieved air.

  ‘But this place is four hundred years old, man,’ protested Mick.

  ‘Begor, in that time you’d think they’d make enough to rebuild it,’ said Chris.

  He was still acting in character, but Mick was just the least bit disappointed in him. He hit it off with Fanny, who had been thrown into such a panic that she was prepared to hit it off with anyone, but he seemed to have lost a lot of his dash. Mick wasn’t quite sure yet but that he would take fright before Fanny. He would certainly do so if he knew what a blessed innocent she was. Whenever Mick looked at her, her dark, sullen face broke into a wistful smile that made him think of a Christian martyr’s first glimpse of the lion. No doubt he would lead her to paradise, but the way was messy and uncomfortable.

  After supper Janet showed them the town and finally led them to a very nice old pub which was on no street at all but was approached by a system of alleyways. The little bar-room was full, and Janet and he were crowded into the yard, where they sat on a bench in the starlight. Beyond the clutter of old tiled roofs a square battlemented tower rose against the sky. Mick was perfectly happy.

  ‘You’re certain Fanny will be all right with Chris?’ Janet asked anxiously.

  ‘Oh, certain,’ replied Mick with a slight feeling of alarm lest his troops had opened negotiations behind his back. ‘Why? Did she say anything?’

  ‘No,’ said Janet in a bustle of motherly solicitude, ‘but she’s in a flat spin. I’ve told her everything, but she’s afraid she’ll get it mixed up, and if anyone could that girl will. He does understand, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, perfectly,’ said Mick with a confidence he did not feel, but his troops were already sufficiently out of hand. If Janet started to give orders they would undoubtedly cut and run.

  When they returned to the hotel and the boys retired to their room, the troops were even more depressed.

  ‘A fellow doesn’t know how well off he is,’ said Chris mournfully.

  He said it by way of a joke, but Mick knew it was something more. Chris was even more out of his element than he had been. All his life he had practised not being impressed by anything, but in this new country there was far too much not to be impressed about.

  ‘Why?’ Mick asked from his own bed. ‘Would you sooner be up the Western Road?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about the Western Road!’ groaned Chris. ‘I think I’ll never see it.’

  He didn’t sound in the least dashing, and Mick only hoped he wouldn’t break down and beg Fanny to let him off. It would be a sad end to the picture he had built up of Chris as the romantic Irishman.

  Then the handle of their door turned softly and Janet tiptoed in in her bathing-wrap, her usual competent self, as though arriving in men’s bedrooms at that hour of night was second nature to her. ‘Ready Chris?’ she whispered. Chris was a lad of great principle and Mick couldn’t help admiring his manliness. With a face like death on him he went out, and Janet closed the door cautiously behind him. Mick listened to make sure he didn’t hide in the toilet. Then Janet switched off the light, drew back the black-out, and, shivering slightly, opened the window on the darkened inn yard. They could hear the Klaxons from the street, while the stuffy room filled with the smells and rustlings of a summer night.

  In the middle of the night Mick woke up and wondered where he was. When he recollected, it was with a feeling of profound satisfaction. It was as if he had laid down a heavy burden he had been carrying all his life, and in the laying down had realized that the burden was quite unnecessary. For the pleasantest part of it was that there was nothing particular about the whole business and that it left him the same man he had always been.

  With a clearness of sight which seemed to be part of it, he realized that all the charm of the old town had only been a put-up job of Janet’s because she had been here already with someone else. He should have known it when she took them to the pub. That, too, was her reason for suggesting this pleasant old inn. She had stayed there with someone else. It was probably the American and possibly the same bed. Women had no interest in scenery or architecture unless they had been made love to in them. And, Mick thought with amusement, that showed very good sense on their part. If he ever returned with another woman, he would also bring her here, because he had been happy here. Happiness, that was the secret the English had and the Irish lacked.

  It was only then that he realized that what had wakened him was Janet’s weeping. She was crying quietly beside him. At first it filled him with alarm. In his innocence he might quite easily have made a mess of it without even knowing. It was monstrous, keeping men in ignorance up to his age. He listened till he could bear it no longer.

  ‘What is it, Jan?’ he asked in concern.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied, dabbing her nose viciously with her handkerchief. ‘Go to sleep.’

  ‘But how can I and you like that?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Was it anything I did?’

  ‘No, of course not, Mick.’

  ‘Because I’m sorry, if it was.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not that, it’s not that,’ she replied, shaking her head miserably. ‘I’m just a fool, that’s all.’

  The wretchedness of her tone made him forget his own doubts and think of her worries. Being a man of the world was all right, but Mick would always be more at home with other people’s troubles. He put his arm about her and she sighed and threw a bare leg over him. It embarrassed him for a moment, but then he remembered that now he was a man of the world.

  ‘Tell me,’ he whispered gently.

  ‘Oh, it’s what you said that night at the Plough,’ she sobbed.

  ‘The Plough?’ he echoed in surprise.

  ‘The Plough at Alton.’

  Mick found it impossible to remember what he had said at the Plough, but he was used to the peculiar way women remembered things which some man had said and forgotten, and which he would have been glad if they had forgotten too.

  ‘Remind me of it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, when you said love was a matter of responsibilities.’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I remember now.’ But he didn’t. What he remembered mostly was that she had told him about the other men, and he had argued with her. ‘But you shouldn’t take that too seriously, Jan.’

  ‘Oh, what else could I do but take it seriously?’ she asked fiercely. ‘I was mad with you, but I knew you were right. I knew that was the way I’d always felt myself, only I blinded myself. Just as you said; taking up love like a casual job you could drop whenever you pleased. I’m well paid for my own bloody folly.’

  She began to sob again. Mick found it very difficult to readjust his mind to the new situation. One arm about her and the other supporting his head, he looked out the window and thought about it.

  ‘Oh, of course, that’s perfectly true, Janet,’ he agreed, ‘but, on the other hand, you can take it to the fair. You have to consider the other side of the question. Take people who’re brought up to look at the physical facts of love as inhuman and disgusting. Think of the damage they do to themselves by living like that in superstitions. It would be better for them to believe in fairies or ghosts if they must believe in some sort of nonsense.’

&n
bsp; ‘Yes, but if I had a daughter, I’d prefer to bring her up like that than in the way I was brought up, Mick. At least she wouldn’t fool with serious things, and that’s what I’ve done. I made fun of Fanny because she didn’t sleep around like the rest of us, but if Fanny falls for Chris, the joke will be on me.’

  Mick was silent again for a while. The conversation was headed in a direction he had not foreseen, and he could not yet see the end of it.

  ‘You don’t mean you didn’t want to come?’ he asked in astonishment.

  ‘Oh, it’s not that,’ she cried, beating her forehead with her fist. ‘Don’t you see that I wanted to prove to myself that I could be a decent girl for you, and that I wasn’t just one of the factory janes who’ll sleep with anything? I wanted to give you something worth while, and I have nothing to give you.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Mick said in embarrassment. He was feeling terribly uncomfortable. Life was like that. At one moment you were on top of the world, and the next you were on the point of tears. At the same time it was hard to sacrifice his new-found freedom from inhibitions, all in a moment, as you might say. Here he had lain, rejoicing at being at last a man of the world, and now he was being asked to sacrifice it all and be an ordinary decent fellow again. That was the worst of dealing with the English, for the Irish, who had to be serious whether they liked it or not, only wanted to be frivolous, while the one thing in the world that the English seemed to demand was the chance of showing themselves serious. But the man of the world was too new a development in Mick to stand up to a crisis.

  ‘Because you don’t have to do it unless you like,’ he added gently. ‘We could always be married.’

  That threw her into positive convulsions, because if she agreed to this, she would never have the opportunity of showing him what she was really like, and it took him a long time to persuade her that he had never really thought her anything but a serious-minded girl – at least, for most of the time. Then she gave a deep sigh and fell asleep in the most awkward manner on his chest. Outside, the dawn was painting the old roofs and walls in the stiff artless colours of a child’s paint-box. He felt a little lonely. He would have liked to remain a man of the world for just a little longer, to have had just one more such awakening to assure him that he had got rid of his inhibitions, but clearly it was not to be. He fell asleep soon after, and was only wakened by Chris, who seemed to have got over his ordeal well.

  Chris was furious when Mick told him, and Mick himself realized that as a man of the world he had been a complete washout. Besides, Chris felt that now Fanny would expect him to marry her as well. She had already given indications of it.

  Later, he became more reconciled to the idea, and when last heard of was looking for a house. Which seems to show that marriage comes more natural to us.

  THE AMERICAN WIFE

  ELSIE COLLEARY, who was on a visit to her cousins in Cork, was a mystery even to them. Her father, Jack Colleary’s brother, had emigrated when he was a kid and done well for himself; he had made his money in the liquor business, and left it to go into wholesale produce when Elsie was growing up, because he didn’t think it was the right background for a girl. He had given her the best of educations, and all he had got out of it was to have Elsie telling him that Irishmen were more manly, and that even Irish-Americans let their wives boss them too much. What she meant was that he let her mother boss him, and she had learned from other Irish people that this was not the custom at home. Maybe Mike Colleary, like a lot of other Americans, did give the impression of yielding too much to his wife, but that was because she thought she knew more about things than he did, and he was too soft-hearted to disillusion her. No doubt the Americans, experienced in nostalgia, took Elsie’s glorification of Irishmen good-humouredly, but it did not go down too well in Cork, where the men stood in perpetual contemplation of the dangers of marriage, like cranes standing on one leg at the edge of the windy water.

  She stood out at the Collearys’ quiet little parties, with her high waist and wide skirts, taking the men out to sit on the stairs while she argued with them about religion and politics. Women having occasion to go upstairs thought this very forward, but some of the men found it a pleasant relief. Besides, like all Americans, she was probably a millionaire, and the most unworldly of men can get a kick out of flirting with a real millionaire.

  The man she finally fell in love with did not sit on the stairs with her at all, though, like her, he was interested in religion and politics. This was a chap called Tom Barry. Tom was thirty-five, tall and thin and good-looking, and he lived with his mother and two good-looking sisters in a tiny house near the Barrack, and he couldn’t even go for a walk in the evening without the three of them lining up in the hallway to present him with his hat, his gloves, and his clean handkerchief. He had a small job in the courthouse, and was not without ambition; he had engaged in several small business enterprises with his friend Jerry Coakley, but all they had ever got out of these was some good stories. Jerry was forty, and he had an old mother who insisted on putting his socks on for him.

  Elsie’s cousins warned her against setting her cap at Tom, but this only seemed to make her worse. ‘I guess I’ll have to seduce him,’ she replied airily, and her cousins, who had never known a well-bred Catholic girl to talk like that, were shocked. She shocked them even more before she was done. She called at his house when she knew he wasn’t there and deluded his innocent mother and sisters into believing that she didn’t have designs on him; she badgered Tom to death at the office, gave him presents, and even hired a car to take him for drives.

  They weren’t the only ones who were shocked. Tom was shocked himself when she asked him point-blank how much he earned. However, he put that down to unworldliness and told her.

  ‘But that’s not even a street cleaner’s wages at home,’ she said indignantly.

  ‘I’m sure, Elsie,’ he said sadly. ‘But then, of course, money isn’t everything.’

  ‘No, and Ireland isn’t everything,’ she replied. It was peculiar, but from their first evening together she had never ceased talking about America to him – the summer heat, and the crickets chattering, and the leaves alive with fireflies. During her discussions on the stairs, she had apparently discovered a great many things wrong with Ireland, and Tom, with a sort of mournful pleasure, kept adding to them.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know,’ he said regretfully.

  ‘Then if you know, why don’t you do something about it?’

  ‘Ah, well, I suppose it’s habit, Elsie,’ he said, as though he weren’t quite sure. ‘I suppose I’m too old to learn new tricks.’

  But Elsie doubted if it was really habit, and it perplexed her that a man so clever and conscientious could at the same time be so lacking in initiative. She explained it finally to herself in terms of an attachment to his mother that was neither natural nor healthy. Elsie was a girl who loved explanations.

  On their third outing she had proposed to him, and he was so astonished that he burst out laughing, and continued to laugh whenever he thought of it again. Elsie herself couldn’t see anything to laugh at in it. Having been proposed to by men who were younger and better-looking and better off than he was, she felt she had been conferring an honour on him. But he was a curious man, for when she repeated the proposal, he said, with a cold fury that hurt her, ‘Sometimes I wish you’d think before you talk, Elsie. You know what I earn, and you know it isn’t enough to keep a family on. Besides, in case you haven’t noticed it, I have a mother and two sisters to support.’

  ‘You could earn enough to support them in America,’ she protested.

  ‘And I told you already that I had no intention of going to America.’

  ‘I have some money of my own,’ she said. ‘It’s not much, but it would mean I’d be no burden to you.’

  ‘Listen, Elsie,’ he said, ‘a man who can’t support a wife and children has no business marrying at all. I have no business marrying anyway. I’m not a very cheerfu
l man, and I have a rotten temper.’

  Elsie went home in tears, and told her astonished uncle that all Irishmen were pansies, and, as he had no notion what pansies were, he shook his head and admitted that it was a terrible country. Then she wrote to Tom and told him that what he needed was not a wife but a psychiatrist. The writing of this gave her great satisfaction, but next morning she realized that her mother would only say she had been silly. Her mother believed that men needed careful handling. The day after, she waited for Tom outside the courthouse, and when he came out she summoned him with two angry blasts on the horn. A rainy sunset was flooding the Western Road with yellow light that made her look old and grim.

  ‘Well,’ she said bitterly, ‘I’d hoped I’d never see your miserable face again.’

  But that extraordinary man only smiled gently and rested his elbows on the window of the car.

  ‘I’m delighted you came,’ he said. ‘I was all last night trying to write to you, but I’m not very good at it.’

  ‘Oh, so you got my letter?’

  ‘I did, and I’m ashamed to have upset you so much. All I wanted to say was that if you’re serious – I mean really serious – about this, I’d be honoured.’

  At first she thought he was mocking her. Then she realized that he wasn’t, and she was in such an evil humour that she was tempted to tell him she had changed her mind. Then common sense told her the man would be fool enough to believe her, and after that his pride wouldn’t let him propose to her again. It was the price you had to pay for dealing with men who had such a high notion of their own dignity.

  ‘I suppose it depends on whether you love me or not,’ she replied. ‘It’s a little matter you forgot to mention.’

  He raised himself from the car window, and in the evening light she saw a look of positive pain on his lean, sad, gentle face. ‘Ah, I do, but —’ he was beginning when she cut him off and told him to get in the car. Whatever he was about to say, she didn’t want to hear it.