Collected Stories

by Bernard Maclaverty

  ‘Hello,’ she greeted him. James stopped and went towards her. Close up he noticed that her midriff was bare, her blouse knotted beneath her breasts.

  ‘Sketching?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, throwing her arm over her drawing just as one of the boys in his class would do. ‘Please don’t look.’

  ‘It’s a lovely morning,’ he said but felt it too banal a thing to say, so he added, ‘. . . for sketching. The light . . . it’s just right.’

  ‘Oh you know about things like that,’ she said, starting up. ‘Are you an artist?’

  James smiled and edged his hip onto a rock. ‘No . . . no I’m not.’

  She was very beautiful, the more he looked at her. Pure skin, little or no make-up, blonde hair tied back, some strands of which had come loose and fallen down the side of her face. She wore a pink blouse and from where he sat above her he could see the slight curvature which began her breast. Her legs had the faintest trace of pale hair against the sunburned skin.

  ‘May I see?’ James asked. She laughed embarrassed, and said that it was absolutely useless. Her accent had class about it, not Northern, but definitely class.

  ‘I’ll show you because I’ve only started,’ she said and opened the book. The page was dark grey for pastel and the line of the outcrop of rock had been sketched in, the line of sea and the far side of the lough.

  ‘It’s good,’ said James looking at her. She bit her bottom lip.

  ‘Then I’d better leave it like that,’ she said laughing. ‘I’d only ruin it.’

  James handed the book back and asked, ‘Are you on holiday?’

  ‘Yes, we’re staying at the hotel up there.’ She pointed. ‘Behind those trees.’

  ‘It looks expensive.’

  ‘Yes but it’s gorgeous. An old Georgian mansion. Just the sort of place you’d like to own.’

  ‘Are you staying long?’

  She pulled a face. ‘We’ll be going on Sunday.’

  ‘Who’s “we”?’

  ‘I’m here with my parents. That’s why I go sketching. There’s nothing else to do.’

  ‘You like sketching then?’

  ‘Yes, I love things,’ she said. She waved her hand in the direction of the sea. ‘. . . Nature . . . I don’t know how to put it. Drawing doesn’t really help. If you could somehow get into it . . .’

  ‘Have you read Hopkins?’ James asked.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head from side to side, thinking.

  ‘It’s all there,’ said James. ‘“There lives the dearest freshness deep down in things.”’

  ‘Oh him,’ she interrupted. ‘Yes I think I have. He’s in The Pageant.’

  ‘Yes,’ said James, left with the rest of the poem inside him.

  ‘Writing poems about it is just a different way of drawing it. It still doesn’t help. I don’t know. When you like things . . . you’re taking in all the time, there’s nothing going out. I suppose it has to get out somehow . . . or you’d burst.’ She put her hand on her bare midriff as if she had indigestion.

  ‘I don’t think it’s giving out,’ said James. ‘It’s more a structuring of what we take in. Frost says that poetry is “a momentary stay against confusion”.’

  ‘Are you a teacher?’

  ‘Yes. Does it show that much?’

  ‘No. No it’s just that you sound so like . . . so clever.’

  They both laughed. ‘What is there to do at nights here?’ James asked.

  ‘Nothing really – sometimes a sing-song in the bar.’ She scraped a handful of sand and let it trickle from one hand to the other, then reversed her hands and poured it back again. A joke from an old Bob Hope film came to him.

  ‘This must be where they empty all the old egg-timers.’ She laughed appreciatively.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

  ‘Rosalind.’

  ‘Mine’s James – James Delargy.’ He felt he should shake hands but didn’t. ‘Are there any nice walks about here?’

  ‘Oh yes. The nicest walk is round the foreshore when the tide is out. You can walk for miles and miles.’ She smiled up at him and with a finger hooked away a strand of hair which had fallen over her face. ‘Would you like me to show you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘Can I see you tonight when the tide is full out again?’

  She nodded, smiling happily.

  James said, ‘It won’t be dark till about ten – and we could go for a drink.’

  ‘I’m not . . . I don’t drink,’ said Rosalind.

  ‘That’s OK by me,’ said James. ‘You can take something.’ Again she nodded and clutched her sketch pad to her chest.

  ‘Shall I call up for you at your hotel?’

  ‘No . . . no. I’ll come down to you. Where are you staying?’ He told her.

  ‘At about eight?’

  ‘Yes.’ She put her sketch pad onto her knees. Some of the brown pastel had come off on her blouse. ‘Oh look what I’ve done.’ She made a face and tried to dust it off. Her breasts jigged to the touch of her own fingers but the stain remained.

  There seemed nothing left to say so James took his leave of her. On his way back to the hotel he lifted a handful of gravelly sand and hurled it at the sea and saw the scatter of small splashes on the water beyond the first wave.

  After tea James shaved meticulously and washed his feet in the wash-basin because it had been hot and he had neglected to bring sandals with him. He also looked with concern at his bald patch and saw that it was red. His mother had always said that she didn’t know who would look after him when she was gone. He tried to think of Rosalind and how he was going to conduct the evening. She was young and didn’t seem to have read very much. He could introduce her to lots of really good stuff. He pulled out the plug and the dirty water sucked away, echoing in all the other rooms of the hotel. He put on cream trousers, a polo necked sweater and slipped the Hemingway into the pocket of his linen jacket. He asked in the kitchen for brown polish and brushed his shoes. The white line of salt where the sea had washed over them disappeared, then he went into the bar to wait. It was a quarter to eight. He wondered if he should wait outside the hotel in case she would be embarrassed about coming into a bar on her own – but on holiday bars were not the same things. At the moment there were children playing around, crawling under tables, squealing and laughing. In a room off the bar a child monotonously played single notes on a piano, while others slid in sock-soles on the small maple dance floor. To pass the time James tried to read a few pages of Hemingway but found he couldn’t concentrate.

  At eight o’clock the girl from the reception desk came into the bar and looked around. She came over to James and said, ‘Mr Delargy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is a gentleman at reception to see you.’ He followed the girl out. The man waiting there was tall and distinguished looking, grey hair with a small toothbrush moustache.

  ‘Mr Delargy?’ James nodded, half gestured to shake hands but seeing no response on the other’s part, he stopped. ‘May I buy you a drink?’

  He was very abrupt. James was confused and followed him without a murmur. In the bar the elder man asked what he drank, then set up a beer and a small whiskey for himself.

  ‘There seems to have been some misunderstanding,’ he began. ‘I don’t want to be nasty about this but I want to be firm. My name is Somerville. I believe you met my daughter Rosalind on the beach this morning.’ James nodded. ‘I must inform you that my daughter is not yet fifteen and that I do not allow her to go out with boys whom I haven’t vetted. I certainly do not permit her to go out unchaperoned with a man of your age. I apologise if I seem offensive but you must see my point of view.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I didn’t realise she was so young,’ James stammered.

  ‘I admit she’s a big girl for her age. Also it is mostly her fault for not telling you – but she’s so naive. She let it slip at tea where she was going and I felt it my duty to come and see you. I hope you don’t mind.’
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  ‘I . . . I . . . had no idea,’ said James. ‘She seemed so confident. I knew she was young but not that young. I can assure you anyway that she would have been in no danger with me.’

  Somerville smiled and relaxed a bit. He drank off half his whiskey.

  ‘She’s a very beautiful girl,’ said James.

  Somerville accepted the remark as a compliment to himself. He drank off the rest of his glass and was about to rise to go saying, ‘Thank you Mr Delargy for being so understanding . . .’

  ‘Just a moment,’ said James. He was at the bar before Somerville could refuse. He came back with the drinks and they both sat silent for a moment. They both raised their drinks at the same time for something to do.

  ‘I see you’re reading Hemingway,’ said Somerville.

  ‘Yes,’ said James. ‘I’d forgotten how good he was.’

  ‘Like an ox talking,’ said Somerville laughing.

  ‘His characters may be but he has some very intelligent things to say about literature.’

  ‘I’m joking really,’ said Somerville but James went on.

  ‘He says somewhere that what you read becomes part of your experience, if it is good, that is. Good writing must actually seemed to have happened to you. I think that is very perceptive.’

  The other nodded. ‘Hemingway is not my period. I read him when I was younger but remained unimpressed.’

  ‘What do you do, Mr Somerville?’

  ‘I teach English.’

  ‘Oh so do I.’

  ‘I lecture at Trinity.’

  James edged forward on his seat. ‘And what is your period?’

  ‘Early seventeenth century.’

  ‘Oh Donne and Herbert and Crawshaw? I love them,’ said James excitedly.

  ‘The prose is more my field. That’s what I did my Doctorate in. Launcelot Andrewes, Bacon, Browne. Those chaps,’ said Somerville. Gradually the parents came in and the children were rounded up from the bar room floor. The single notes on the piano stopped and the rest of the conversation proceeded in an air of good humoured and quiet concentration.

  It was after twelve when Dr Somerville left to go back to his hotel. James had drunk much more than he had intended and, when he fell into bed, happy to have had such a good night, he did not need to take a sleeping pill. The picture hook seemed somehow bigger, repulsively static on the wall, triangular like a black fly. He closed his eyes and the bed seemed to race backwards. He opened them to stop the sensation. The picture hook throbbed in the shaft of light, annoying him intensely. James got up from bed and stood on the chair, nearly overbalancing, and pulled the curtains so that they met flush and the room was in complete darkness.

  The next day he met Mrs Somerville with her husband for coffee, as arranged.

  ‘My dear,’ said Mrs Somerville. ‘When he hadn’t come home by twelve I could have sworn that you’d shot him,’ and they all laughed. James thought how sad it was that his mother would never meet these lovely people. He was sure she would have approved.

  THE DEEP END

  ON THE WAY home in the empty bus the two boys were silent. They sat as usual in separate seats but made no attempt to avoid paying their fare. Paul sat, his damp towel clenched in the crook of his arm, looking down into the street at each stop. At Manor Street Olly knelt up and looked back at him.

  ‘Say nothing to your Ma, for God’s sake, Paul. We’d never get going again.’

  ‘I’m not mad about going again – not for a while,’ said Paul.

  Olly unfurled his bundle and took out his togs and wrung them out, the droplets splashing onto the battened floor.

  ‘Where are you for this afternoon?’

  ‘Any dough?’

  ‘Naw.’ Olly got up and ran down the bus. ‘See ya.’ Halfway down the stairs he stopped and pulled a cigarette out of his top pocket.

  ‘I’ll smoke your half for you, Paul.’

  ‘I hope it chokes you.’

  Paul went home and couldn’t eat his dinner. He went up to the bedroom and lay for a long time looking at the ceiling. His mother came up and put her head round the door.

  ‘That’s the last time you’ll go to the baths – your guts full of oul’ lime water – and God knows what else. I’m sure they do more than swim in the water.’

  Paul suddenly felt his eyes fill with tears. Then he cried hard. His mother came over and put her arms round him, asking incredulously, ‘What’s wrong, what’s wrong with my big man?’

  They queued in the hallway and heard the distant echoing cease. Above them, on the wall, was an Artificial Respiration poster, its reds gone brown in the sun. Dotted lines and arrows showed the right motions. Somebody had drawn tits on the victim’s back and added genitals to the man bending over him. Olly stood, one foot flat against the cream tiled wall, the other slanted like a prop.

  ‘Away and ask her how long they’ll be,’ he said. Paul crushed his way up to the porthole and came back.

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  ‘Time for a feg.’ With two fingers Olly dipped into his breast pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He straightened it out and tapped the loose tobacco into place on his thumb nail. ‘Smoke one now and the other one after.’

  Paul struck the match between the tiles. Olly cupped the flame in his hands, took two quick puffs then closed his fingers round the cigarette. He leaned back against the wall.

  ‘Don’t suck the guts out of it.’ Olly turned his head away from Paul’s reaching hand, taking the last ounce out of it.

  ‘Come on, it’ll be red hot,’ said Paul grabbing the cigarette from him. He couldn’t inhale as deeply as Olly so he blew the smoke down his nose and passed it back.

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Parkies,’ said Olly.

  ‘They’re OK.’ Then after a moment Paul asked, ‘Do you believe this cancer thing?’

  ‘Naw, sure my Ma and Da both smoke like trains and look at the age they are.’

  ‘Oul’ Hennesy smoked and he’s dead – fifty a day,’ said Paul.

  ‘You’ve gotta go sometime – where the hell did oul’ Hennesy get the money. Fifty a day. Jesis.’

  ‘All the doctors say it,’ said Paul.

  ‘Doctors are stupid. My Da was walking around for two weeks with a broken finger and they didn’t even know. They had to send him to the hospital before they found out.’ Olly tucked in the loose strands of tobacco at the soggy end with his finger.

  ‘Does your Ma still not allow you?’

  ‘Naw.’

  ‘Mine gave me one yesterday – she said as long as nobody was in it was OK. She says it’s better than smoking behind her back.’

  ‘My Ma would do her nut if she knew.’

  A small boy nudged Olly and, looking up at him, said, ‘Give us your butt.’

  ‘Fuck off, son,’ said Olly dropping the remains of the cigarette on the ground and pressing it with a twist of his toe.

  ‘What about clubbing up for currant squares when we get out?’ Paul asked.

  ‘From Lizzie’s?’

  ‘Yeah, they’re dead on.’

  ‘OK,’ said Olly. ‘How much have we?’

  They took out their money and calculated. If bus fares weren’t collected that was so much profit, but a keen conductor had to be allowed for. They had enough. Paul licked his lips and growled.

  By now the first crowd had begun to come out in ones and twos. White faced, red eyed, some with their togs on their heads, others their hair wet and spiky, they tumbled out, shouting at each other at the tops of their voices. One boy in raggy jeans, both elbows out of his sweater climbed to the top of the turnstile gate, almost to the ceiling and slopped his wet togs down onto the back of his friend’s neck.

  ‘Get to hell out of it,’ roared the attendant who had just come out. He stood threatening, his fingers hooked in the loops of his belt, brown muscled in a singlet and jeans. He wore black wellingtons with the white canvas rims turned down. He had a tattoo, blue and red on each arm. The boy scuttled down
off the gate and crashed out the door. The attendant said something to the girl behind the pay box and the line began to jostle and fight to get through.

  Paul shoved his way up to the arched hole in the perspex and pushed his money to the girl. She gave him a ticket, a towel and a pair of trunks. The towel was a freshly laundered dishcloth, still warm with a clean smell, the trunks a double red triangle held together with string. Paul used the Corporation towel for standing on and dried himself with his own soft towel. The gym teacher had told them the worst thing you could get out of the baths was athlete’s foot and he himself stood on a towel. Paul’s mother always harped on about polio.

  ‘If you had to spend the rest of your days in a wheel-chair it would be a dear swim. The ones that swim over there, you never know what homes they’ve come out of. It’s a bad area.’

  ‘But the water’s full of chlorine, Ma.’

  ‘Chlorine, chlorine – what’s the use of chlorine if you’re going to get polio. Eh? Tell me that. Your father’s too soft, allowing you. He says the swimming’ll make a man out of you but he’ll change his tune if it makes a polio victim out of you.’

  Both boys ran down the corridor, their heels hollow yet pinging from the ceiling. They raced through the swing doors looking beneath each half door for a box without a pair of feet. They each got a box to themselves at the deep end. Paul climbed up onto the seat so that he could see out as he got stripped. The pool still moved from the previous session. It looked still enough on the surface but the black lane lines snaked too and fro continuously. He hauled off his pullover, shirt and vest as one unit and hung them on the peg. The same with his trousers and drawers. The whole lot hung like somebody deformed, humped with dangling arms.