Through Streets Broad and Narrow

by Gabriel Fielding

  He did not try to tell Dymphna about his difficulties. Why should he have done so, when she herself was the principle in which all the others were entailed? He sat smoking his pipe beside her in the roaring bus waiting for the pattern of the afternoon at the baths to repeat itself like the well-known dream it was, and from which there was no awakening since it was not begotten by sleep.

  There would be the walk along the promenade, the towel round his neck and her things under his arm, the breeze from the sea, salt-sweet fluttering her short hair but quite failing to make her white cheeks flush. At the baths, sitting or lying on the cement which had been swathed flat round the brown rocks and their sharp indigo shadows, an hour, two or three, would pass swiftly into the evening chill from the sea. They would have swum together in the baths or in the open sea two or three times, drunk lemonade and eaten chocolates and boiled sweets, dried one another’s backs, dived from the highest boards, exchanged gossip with other people, looked at one another a little and said even less. It would be time to return home to Dublin where they would eat somewhere, conversation flickering into interest over some topic in which they were both sufficiently disinterested, then pay the bill and make for the flat.

  It did not worry them at all that they had said nothing, or if it worried John it did not worry her. He believed that she too must be waiting, though in a different way from himself. He thought, How interesting it would be if she could tell me what is the deciding factor which she awaits in each of us, in herself. But he concluded that this was the one thing which she could not know, and remembered Theresa with satisfaction even though he knew the comparison did not hold, since Theresa had possessed an integrity of some sort.

  At the flat they would kiss to exhaustion in the old familiar fashion and he would be lost there in the darkening room in the readiness of his passion; a “good” certain to be recreated over and over again if only he could bring himself to test it by a single fulfilment. But always his reservation that she must confess she loved him, coupled with her own need for something more forceful than persuasion, arrested them at the brink of committal. She would grow weary as himself, pale in the summer’s light; a compound of stars, some moon, and of the slow sunset showing her lips, eyelids, cheeks, neck and arms all a little fuller. Yet never once did she suggest that he must go, always the decision was his own; and he went reluctantly as ever, leaving her there as enigmatic in this as in everything else.

  No man could believe that she whom he loved, while so young, would have plunged with him without a decisive affection to rule her. No man, at heart, loving as he loved her, would have wanted to admit that such a woman was the measure of his love, one lusting easily as a man and for no particular reason at all; or so it seemed to him.

  He would leave her leaning against the door at the top of the stairs, hesitate, wanting to return, to find some word that would cover all that he had never said so that she in her turn might reply, “Go, don’t ever come back,” or, “I understand you. Wait a little longer,” or, “Of course, it’s simple. I love you, will marry you. It is proved.”

  But she said nothing at any time, or something so trivial that he never wished to remember it. Often she did not even smile. Certainly at this time she betrayed by no hint in tone or gesture that she was irritated by the dull repetitions of their days and evenings. Often, a little gaiety, the insouciance for which amongst other things he most loved and most despaired of her, would be her parting habit. He could find nothing vulgar in her ways, however ordinary they might be. If she started most delicately to put on her lipstick, she did it with such abstraction that the action was in itself mysterious.

  When I have gone, he wondered, for what does she prepare? It is late. Emma will be coming in, there will be the washing-up to do. Does Dymphna read a book or write her diary or does she lie back on the divan and begin to think about tomorrow? Am I just one of several interruptions that make up her present life? And if so which is the interruption which is going to constitute her marriage?

  At such times he would long to see into the future as a ghost might envisage it; for he could not imagine himself seeing into a future of hers in which he had no physical share. She herself had said to him once, “Whatever happens, you must promise that we will never quite lose touch as long as one of us is alive. A postcard, a birthday present.”

  “A message in the Personal Column of The Times,” he had suggested.

  “No, not that, something more intimate.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want it. I don’t ever want to feel I’ve wasted myself.”

  “Myself!” He repeated with fury. “Good God!”

  “Now don’t start analyzing, only promise me.”

  “I promise,” he had said and later had thought of Victoria, who was herself the ghost.

  But on this afternoon at the Kingstown baths it was not the same. She was always quicker to change than he was himself even when, unlike today, he did not run into Groarke in the Men’s Changing Rooms.

  Groarke was swinging along the stone corridor in his blue swimming trunks and they met there with a small window behind them, an imitation arrow-slit looking down on the baths.

  “Hello, Mike, I thought you were on duty.”

  “I got off.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m with Cloate.”

  “Cloate?” John said. “He’s in England.”

  “He’s on leave.”

  “You mean he’s with you now? Here?”

  “Yes,” said Groarke standing back from the narrow embrasure of the window. “There, down there; that’s Cloate.”

  It was too. He was brown. In the brown face there was an eye-pool as though he had something glinting and translucent included in the flesh. He was looking up at the tower where they both were. The surface of the swimming pool, so restless with waves and undulations, heaving there in the sunlight and sending out its green-blue reflections, lighted Cloate’s grey eyes; they flashed green in the brown face. He was thinner, his hair black as the sky is blue; very crisp he was, with his moustache set like a shadow over his mouth. He was wearing khaki shorts and shirt with the pips taken off the epaulettes and the collar open to show shadows on his chest that were not shadows, but bluish hairs like his moustache and scalp.

  Against the brown rocks he was a sand-coloured figure, with egg-brown arms and legs. Above one hand he wore a black wristwatch strap which looked like a badge of rank.

  “Isn’t he swimming?” John asked for something to say.

  “He doesn’t like swimming.”

  “What’s he going to do then?”

  “He’s going to watch me.”

  “Mike, I’ve Dymphna with me.”

  “That’s good,” Groarke said, “we’ll see you.”

  He went running down the steps and John changed very slowly. Something’s going to happen. I could stop it, but I won’t. I’ll see by waiting. I’ll look out through that window again and what I shall see will be Dymphna sitting between Cloate and Mike—on a towel. She will look very much whiter even than usual, they’ll be looking at her legs where they are whitest from the knees up and she’ll be talking very fast; restless with all sorts of movements. She’ll have no pearls on to play with, so she’ll be doing something else.

  But she was not, at first. She was between them, all right, listening. He could not see her face because she was looking at her own knees drawn a little way up with her arms fastened beneath them by the hands. Cloate was looking at her back and Groarke was staring in the water. John could only see the top of her head with the short curls parted by the wind, the parting fluctuating as the wind played with it.

  She looked round to Cloate sideways and asked him something. He stretched out his hand to her and she let it wait there a moment before she took hold of it and then raised it to her ear. She started to undo the strap of the watch and laughed at him when she couldn’t get the buckle undone. She took another hand to it and Cloate turned his
wrist round so that its pale front was exposed. When she had the watch off safely she laid it across the top of her knee and stroked the strap.

  Groarke was watching this too. He looked up at the watch tower and the arrow-slit window as though he could see into it and share the joke with John, whom he could not see. John ran down the steps to them.

  “What a time you were,” she said.

  “Hello, Blaydon,” said Cloate, looking up at him. “Been writing any more papers lately?”

  They waited for him to speak.

  “What about going in?” she said.

  “I hear you’re quite a swimmer,” said Cloate. “Is that right?”

  “He’s half fish,” said Dymphna. “I like him best in the water.”

  “That’s interesting, isn’t it, Mike?” said Cloate. “Now tell me, Dymphna, why do you like him best in the water?”

  “The way he swims.”

  “How so?”

  “He wriggles through the water like a snake,” she said.

  “More and more,” said Cloate to Groarke; and to Dymphna, “Then you like snakes, my girl?”

  “Away with you. I know what you’re at. You two and your dreary old Freud.”

  Cloate ran a finger down her spine. “There’s a snake for you.” She moved. “It wriggles too.”

  Groarke got up. “What about your cap, the white one?”

  “I’m not wearing it today.”

  “Thank God!” said Cloate.

  “You two go ahead,” said John. “I want to warm up a bit first.”

  “In this wind?” she said. “Now come in, I’m not going in till you come.”

  “Loyalty,” said Cloate.

  “The snake charmer,” said John.

  “That’s right,” Dymphna said to him.

  The three of them walked over to the diving boards, leaving Cloate by the rocks.

  Groarke did a jack-knife from the highest board; a beauty.

  “Can’t he dive?” she said to John.

  “D’you want to stay with them all afternoon?”

  “What?”

  He waited, “Do you?”

  “No analyzing, dreary.”

  “If you do, I don’t mind.”

  “Sensible man.”

  “Though I’d rather not.”

  “It’s crack, I like Cloate.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know, not yet; he’s changed.”

  “He’s the same.”

  “Well, I’ve changed.”

  “You’re the same. My God, aren’t you the same? No difference at all. We’re going to have men for tea—one with little black hairs all over him and small wrists and ankles, a strap you can stroke.”

  “Aren’t you very jealous,” she stated.

  “Yes, but you wouldn’t know why.”

  “I could guess.”

  “Never.”

  “Smile away,” she said. “So long as you’re like that, I’m happy.”

  He dived in after Groarke. A rotten dive with his knees bent and his arms out of line. Swim for him? Not likely. He breast-stroked to the side, climbed out and sat by Cloate who said, “Had enough already?”

  “For the moment.”

  “Towel?” said Cloate, handing him one.

  “Thank you.”

  “Cigarette?”

  “Yes.”

  Cloate’s fingers were white and very strong. The nails were manicured and beautiful.

  “Are you getting a bit of surgery in the Army?”

  “Routine stuff.”

  “How much leave have you got?”

  “A fortnight.” Cloate whispered; he was watching her swimming with Groarke and she waved to them. She knows my sitting here has to do with her, but she doesn’t care. It’s enough that she’s certain of it. I’ll talk to him about her.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said to Cloate.

  “Oh! Very.”

  “How long d’you think you’ll be in England?”

  “Ask Churchill.”

  “There’s nowhere much else to go at the moment, is there?”

  “Middle East.”

  “D’you want to?”

  “The question,” said Cloate, “is how you’re getting on. You played a bad one with that paper.”

  “You can tell me now,” John said. “What did they say about it?”

  “It’s what they said about you that mattered.”

  The wind from the sea was getting colder. He didn’t think he’d be able to stick much more of it, he’d have either to get dressed or go back into the water.

  “What about now?” he asked. “Haven’t I lived it down by this time?”

  “How do you feel about that yourself?” Cloate was still watching Dymphna who was sitting up with Groarke on the high board swinging her legs as though it were a very warm day.

  “I can’t tell”

  “Blaydon, you’re an awkward fellow. You don’t need to make so much noise, you’re always seen without it.”

  “They’re giving me a pretty difficult time at Mungo’s.”

  “So Groarke tells me.”

  “Could you find out anything for me, d’you think?”

  “What, for instance?”

  “Whether I’m wasting my time. How far they’ll take it, I mean. I don’t want to waste months going up for Finals if—”

  “I could try,” Cloate said. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does she?”

  “She does what I do.”

  “Convenient?” suggested Cloate. “Or is it?”

  He took his eyes off Dymphna for a moment and they looked at each other. Cloate smiled out of his much older sea-bright eyes; John smiled back. He said, “No.”

  “That’s what I thought. How about joining us for a meal at the Dolphin tonight?”

  “You and Groarke?”

  “You and the girl.”

  “All right.”

  “I should get dressed now,” Cloate said, “you’re going blue at the edges.”

  At about eleven o’clock in the Dolphin when the party had become shapeless because they had met so many people whom Dymphna and Cloate knew, John said to her, “I think we’d better be going now.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “It’s pretty late.”

  Cloate put an arm round John’s shoulders. He didn’t think Cloate had overheard the exchange, there was so very much noise, but he had; and with sudden intuition John knew that however much the noise and the shouting of the bulk of them drinking, Cloate had given an insistent attention to the least of their remarks.

  Dymphna had swallowed many drinks, mostly short ones, not hurriedly; she was too gay and excited by herself to drink so much as would blatantly show to most others. He wondered what the devil she was listening for in the baggy conversation that had swept over them from the moment the party began to increase in numbers.

  People shoved arms round her waist and hugged her to them briefly; the rugger doctors, the Boat Club men, friends of Cloate’s and Groarke’s. A few of them kissed her exuberantly. She would get up by a pillar with someone, wave a hand at them as she talked and lean forward into them while they said things to her. She was “a great girl for an argument,” they said; and she laughed and shook her head as she argued. If it had been possible to stand time still and compress the circling of her journey from one person or group of persons to another, it would be seen that in an hour and a half she had danced two and a half crooked circles in the Dolphin Bar. She was passed along, perhaps, turning on her own axis so that sometimes you saw her back, at others her profile; and always restless inside herself.

  Cloate followed round after her, not obviously; and, even less obviously, so did John; but Groarke ignored her. He was very drunk.

  At some time in the evening John decided he would give her another ten minutes and then ask her for the last time if she was coming. He certainly would not make love to her in the flat. That was “
out” and who would, anyway? But he would leave with her if he could.

  He had a drink or two more with Groarke and allowed the time to run on. Before he started to look round for her he knew that she had already gone; and so, since he did not want to be seen searching for her, he did not look very persistently.

  Groarke started to laugh. They bought three bottles of Guinness each and put two of them in their pockets, the third ones they drank from on their way back to the hospital, intending when they were empty to throw them into the Liffey.

  They sat on the parapet and Groarke produced his bottle-opener but could not make it work. John tried, but it repeatedly slipped off the top. Groarke held the bottle steady while John tried again; then John held Groarke’s bottle for him. Groarke lost his temper and smashed the neck off the bottle on the parapet. He cut his lip trying to drink from it and when he found that it was the empty bottle he’d been trying to open, he smashed the neck off a full one and drank from that. John threw his own empty one away and opened a full one himself with the bottle-opener.

  They drank the last bottle in the resident’s sitting-room and just as John was going to bed, Groarke, who had been silent most of the time, suddenly said, “I understood you, all right. Every word you said to Cloate about me, by inference.”

  “What on earth d’you mean?”

  “Not only Cloate, but your little friend, Chamberlyn-Ffynch, the Chete, Fitzgerald and Collins.”

  “Don’t be damn silly, they weren’t there.”

  “Years ago; all down the years with your sneering.” Groarke began to mimic John’s imagined remarks. “ ‘Amusing Irish friend!’ ‘I give him a handout; we’re friendly rivals.’ ‘I ask him out to the right places, the odd dance, the odd dinner.’ ‘He’s clever but uncouth.’ And tonight, the whole discovery.”

  “You’re drunk, Mike. Come up to bed.”

  “Up to bed!” Groarke threw the bottle and John ducked. The bottle shattered against one of the old photographs of the Park’s Hospital Rugger Team.

  John made for the door when Groarke got at the case of “empties” which was stored beneath the table; but Groarke was too quick for him and a volley of bottles caught him in the back or hurtled out into the corridor to smash against the opposite wall.