by Brian Moore
There, under the great dome of the building, ringed around by forgotten memorials, bordered by the garrison neatness of a Garden of Remembrance, everything that was Belfast came into focus. The newsvendors calling out the great events of the world in flat, uninterested Ulster voices; the drab facades of the buildings grouped around the Square, proclaiming the virtues of trade, hard dealing and Presbyterian righteousness. The order, the neatness, the floodlit cenotaph, a white respectable phallus planted in sinking Irish bog. The Protestant dearth of gaiety, the Protestant surfeit of order, the dour Ulster burghers walking proudly among these monuments to their mediocrity.
Box-like double-decker buses nosed into the Square, picking up patient queues of people, whirling them off quietly to the outer edges of the city. Like trained soldiers, Mr Madden and Miss Hearne marched to a queue and took their places behind a scuffed, furtive man who trailed a dejected greyhound on a leash. The greyhound nosed Miss Hearne’s skirt, then turned away, moving his tiny padded feet in discomfort at the cold.
Standing there in the designated centre of the city, Miss Hearne waited, not to go home on the bus, but to go off, off to something better, something that might lead to something wonderful. She stood waiting for a word, waiting for him to tell that he needed her, that he wanted her.
He did not speak and yes, she knew, who knew better? It was hard to be forward, hard to find the words. She smiled: no matter, he would ask her soon. He was lonely, he had said he was lonely and he wanted her to share his life. It had been said, she felt, although it had not been put into words. That would come later.
And then the bus came rushing up and he helped her aboard. The conductor jangled the bell and they were off, off to the last stop, the pleasant memories of the evening, the night filled with hopes and plans.
But as he opened the door of the house in Camden Street, her pleasant thoughts were stopped by a light which flashed bright in the hall. Mrs Henry Rice stood in her curtained doorway, her hand on the switch, her sleeves rolled up, leaving her great white arms bare.
‘Well, hello!’ she cried. ‘Did you enjoy the pictures?’
Mr Madden mumbled an affirmative. Miss Hearne smiled politely.
‘Well, come on inside,’ Mrs Henry Rice said. ‘I’ve just finished washing Bernie’s hair and I’m going to make a cup of tea.’
Miss Hearne would have preferred to go directly to her room. But Mr Madden waited, leaving the decision up to her. And since Mrs Henry Rice was his sister, it didn’t seem right to refuse. They took off their raincoats and went in.
Night gave a special flavour to Mrs Henry Rice’s nest. The coloured lampshades glowed orange, blue and green and flames yawned noisily up the chimney. Already a state of nightly undress was evident. A pillow had been laid on a sofa and a blanket was folded beside it. In the centre of the room, kneeling on a rug, was Bernard, stripped to his bulging middle, his head immersed in a towel. A big enamel basin of soapy water stood beside him on the floor.
‘Wait, now, Bernie boy,’ Mrs Henry Rice said. She sat down on an armchair beside Bernard and towelled his hidden features and hair. Miss Hearne, her dark eyes fluttering with embarrassment, looked steadfastly at a stag in a forest in a frame on the wall.
The naked mound of Bernard’s back rose up and the towel was lifted. Mrs Henry Rice shook out the blanket and wrapped it around him as he squatted on his hunkers and beamed at the guests.
‘Mama thought you would like a cup of tea, after being out in the cold,’ he said to Mr Madden. ‘But I told her you wouldn’t. I know you’d rather have coffee.’
‘Thanks,’ Mr Madden said. ‘We had coffee downtown.’
‘Did you go to the pictures, Uncle James? What picture did you see?’
‘Bend over, baby. Let your hair dry at the fire.’
‘O, we saw Samson and Delilah, an American film,’ Miss Hearne said. ‘Very good too.’
‘That’s nice. Did you like it, Uncle James?’
Mr Madden seemed amused by Bernard’s politeness. He laughed. ‘You wouldn’t like it. It’s made in America. And you don’t like anything from America, do you, Bernie?’
‘That’s not true,’ Bernard said, but his face got red as he bent towards the fire.
The sight of his naked back had a most unpleasant effect on Miss Hearne, but she just couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off it. So when a singing kettle whistled in the scullery, she started up to ask if there was something she could do.
‘If you’d just wet the tea, there’s a dear, while I tidy up this mess,’ Mrs Henry Rice said. ‘The tea is in the canister beside the teapot and the cups are all set out in here.’
Miss Hearne fled into the outer darkness of the scullery. The idea, she said to herself, a big grown man, half-naked like that in the middle of the room, I didn’t know where to look.
She found the tea, poured, measured, and filled the pot. Then, wrapping a pot-holder around it, she went to the scullery door and knocked for permission to come back into the nest, saying to herself she hoped that fatty would have his shirt on by now.
But they did not hear her. The sound of angry, quarrelsome voices rose from the room.
‘It is my business, Jim. You’d think it was your house, not mine, the way you talk.’
And the sound of Bernard’s voice, shushing. Then Mr Madden: ‘What I do’s my business, May. If I want to take somebody out, that’s no skin off your teeth. I’m sick of this. I’m going to bed.’
What could that be? She heard a door slam. She came timidly out of the scullery. ‘It’s only me,’ she called. ‘Tea’s ready.’
‘Yes, dear. Come on in,’ Mrs Henry Rice said.
Bernard had not put on his shirt. He sat wrapped loosely in the blanket. And Mr Madden had gone.
‘Yes, he went to bed,’ Bernard said, watching her with amusement. ‘He didn’t want any tea. He said to say good night.’
‘O?’
‘And who was in the picture?’ Mrs Henry Rice asked, taking the teapot out of her hands and putting it on a little hob beside the fire.
‘Victor Mature, I think his name is,’ Miss Hearne said. He might at least have waited until she came back.
‘I like him, Victor Mature. A fine big man. Now, come here, Bernie, and let me feel if your hair is dry. The tea will be wet in a minute.’
Bernard let the blanket fall completely, revealing obese, almost feminine breasts. ‘Uncle James likes the movies. He goes three or four times a week.’
‘Well, Jim hasn’t much to do with himself these days,’ Mrs Henry Rice commented. ‘It’s a terrible thing for an active man to stop work like that. I think he’d have been far better off to have stayed in the States and not come back here where there’s nothing for him.’
Nice loyalty between a brother and sister, Miss Hearne decided. Discussing him in that disparaging way in front of a stranger. For, after all, I am a stranger. To her, at least.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘I understand Mr Madden is considering going into business over here.’
‘Business?’ Mrs Henry Rice said. ‘It’s the first I heard of it.’
But Bernard said: ‘Well, he might at that. There’s lots of things he could do.’
‘What, for instance?’ Mrs Henry Rice wanted to know.
‘Well, he has some money, Mama. He could start a small business.’
‘Is it the pub, you mean? And wouldn’t he be his own best customer, if he did? You know, Miss Hearne, he’d be far better off, Jim, if he was to put his money into a house. A guest house, for instance. I’ve told him many a time I might run it for him. Ah, poor Jim, never had a head for business.’
‘O, is that so?’ Miss Hearne said, with an edge to her voice. ‘I should have thought quite differently. Indeed, he impresses me as having a very good financial sense, your brother.’
‘Jim, is it? Opening the doors of taxis, that’s more in his line.’
‘What’s that?’ Miss Hearne said, and her heart gave a jump.
‘O, excuse
me,’ Mrs Henry Rice said. ‘I shouldn’t be boring you with family troubles. It’s just that Jim annoys me, really he does, the way he wastes his time.’
‘Now, mother,’ Bernard whispered. ‘Miss Hearne wouldn’t be interested.’
‘O, but indeed, I am,’ Miss Hearne assured him, and felt she could have bitten her tongue out as she said it. ‘What did you mean, opening the doors of taxis?’
‘I meant he—’
‘Now, mother,’ Bernard spoke hurriedly. ‘Uncle James wasn’t always a commissionaire. He had lots of jobs over there. And he did very well considering everything. Had his own car and gave his daughter a good education. It’s not every man can say as much.’
‘A lot of good that does me,’ Mrs Henry Rice said. ‘I don’t see much of it. Never as much as offered me a day’s rent all the time he’s here.’
‘Mother!’ Bernard looked upset, more credit to him, Miss Hearne thought. But what was that, opening the doors of taxis? A commissionaire, did he say? A doorman? O, no!
‘I’m sorry,’ Mrs Henry Rice said. ‘I suppose Jim has his good points after all. But I must say he doesn’t spread himself, not on his family, anyway. Only on outsiders.’
‘Are you referring to me?’ Miss Hearne said, her dark shifting eyes suddenly lit with anger.
‘Of course not.’
‘O, yes, you are. Did you ask me in here to insult me, I’d like to know?’
‘Now, now, don’t get all excited,’ Mrs Henry Rice said, holding out fat white arms in supplication. ‘I didn’t mean anything of the sort. In fact, it never even occurred to me. Outsiders, no, I meant some of those fellows he spends his time with, buying them drinks, the bunch of good-for-nothings. Like that Major Mahaffey-Hyde that he’s taken up with, a worthless streel of a fellow and not even a Catholic.’
‘I see. Well now, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs Rice, I’m going to bed.’
‘Won’t you have a cup of tea? It’s ready now and I’d be mortified if you took offence where none was intended. Really I would.’
‘That’s quite all right,’ Miss Hearne said, standing up. ‘We’ll just say nothing more about it. Good night.’
She gave the door a tiny bit of a slam when she went out. The immortal cheek of some people! You’d think I’d asked him to take me out and spend money on me. O, the nerve of her. The vulgar lump, with her precious Bernie sitting up there half-naked and him a grown man. O, I’ll give her notice, really I will. The cheek of her!
But the anger had brought on that awful shaking so that she could hardly get her key out of her bag to open the door of the bed-sitting-room. A commissionaire, Bernard had said. A doorman.
As she fumbled with the key, a female voice whispered from the stairs above:
‘Is that you, Bernie?’
Miss Hearne looked up and there was Mary, the maid, tearful and nervous, standing at the head of the stairs. Bernie, indeed, the child was pretty familiar with him, wasn’t she?
‘Mary, I wonder if you would help me with this lock? I can’t see it in the dark here.’
‘O, yes, ’m.’ And Mary came down, took the key and opened the door. She drew Miss Hearne’s curtains, lit the gas stove and asked if there was anything else.
‘No, no, good night. And thank you,’ Miss Hearne said, closing the door on her. Funny, her being up and waiting for Bernard like that. But goodness knows, she had troubles enough of her own without worrying about servant girls.
She sat down on the bed to unpin her hat. Her eyes went to the mantelpiece and there was her dear aunt, looking down at her, stern, reminding her of her behaviour.
A nice thing, Judy, her aunt said. I don’t know what’s come over you. You’ll be no better than a serving girl yourself if you get mixed up with that man. A doorman. Imagine! Common as dirt. And that awful sister of his, vulgar woman, insulting you to your face.
‘She didn’t,’ Miss Hearne told the picture. ‘She didn’t insult me. And how do you know if she’s telling the truth? He might not have been a doorman anyway. That might just have been talk. He’s nice and he’s polite. He is.’
She looked away from her aunt’s accusing stare, remembering that her aunt was hard to please, and a little selfish too, if the truth were known. You wanted me all to yourself, she told the picture. Just as long as I was there to read you Sir Walter Scott every evening and make your Bengers’ Milk at bedtime, you didn’t care what happened. You never let me meet anyone and you tried to put everyone off me. And Manus McKeown, the only young man who did come calling, do you remember what you said about him? O, yes, he wasn’t good enough because his people owned a pub and sold drink after hours and had been prosecuted for it. And Manus that afterwards bought one of the biggest golf hotels in the country with the money he came into. O, he wasn’t good enough for you, nobody’s good enough for you, nobody ever was and nobody ever will be. And it’s all your fault that I am where I am today, being insulted by some fat old landlady and living in furnished rooms.
She got up then and went to the mantelpiece. She turned the photograph towards the wall. Then she looked at the black passe-partout back of the photograph. There, she said, I’ll do what I want without your interfering.
Judy, he had called her. Judy, and tonight he had said that he needed someone to do things for. Tonight he had come as close as anything to telling her he wanted her for his wife. Only it had been on such a short notice. If they had known each other longer he would surely have spoken. Judy, the way he said it, with his American drawl. Judy.
But then before her, making the shaking start in her hands, came the faces of Bernard and his mother. Bernard, with his fat white tummy, his face uneasy, trying to talk nicely about his uncle, and his mother, sitting on her chair like a huge cream puff, her manner contemptuous, insinuating things about her own brother. ‘All he was fit for was opening the doors of taxis.’ James Madden, dressed up in the ridiculous uniform of the doorman at the cinema, bowing as he helped a lady and gentleman in evening clothes into a long black limousine. James Madden in revolving doors, with half a dozen suitcases tucked under his arms, James Madden saluting, as a taxi full of guests drew up outside the great hotel. A doorman, a lackey, a servant. Common, common as mud.
Contrite, she looked at the mantelpiece, at the photograph turned to the wall. You’re right, she told her dear aunt, right, you could never introduce him to a man like Owen O’Neill. Or to Dan Breen, who had his own firm of solicitors and was a Master of the Hunt once. No, he might do all right for America but he wouldn’t do for here. I’ll just have to drop him, or drop out of things if I ever get mixed up with him. But drop out of what things? she said, nobody cares any more. And Dan Breen, since he moved to Dublin, never a word out of him or his family. Not a line. And that little Una O’Neill making mock of me every Sunday. Who cares what I do any more? Drop out of what, indeed? James Madden may be common, but he’s a man, a good Catholic and he has enough money to live decently now with all those common jobs behind him.
Yes, and what’s wrong with that? she asked the hidden face behind the photograph. What in the world is wrong marrying a decent man like that? And if we went to America who would know the difference what he is? One man’s the same as another over there, rags to riches, the whole lot of them. There’s not a single thing wrong with James Madden that a good woman couldn’t change. And he’s no fool, he can be taught to change his ways.
She lay back on the bed and the tears were in her eyes and her whole body was shaking. She mustn’t think of it, because if she started wanting it, she’d have to have it and feel awful afterwards and be sick for days. No, no, she told herself, and looked up to the Sacred Heart for strength. He looked down, wise and stern and kindly, His fingers raised in warning. No, He said, you must not do it. It would be a mortal sin.
‘O, You’re right, You’re right, I mustn’t,’ she said aloud, burying her face in the bedclothes, crushing and twisting up her best rose pastel dress. ‘No, no, and besides, he isn’t worth it.’ James Madde
n, with a horrid white cap like the soft drink advertisement, and a white apron, tossing pancakes at the ceiling and she on her knees in a charwoman’s apron washing the floor. Over the counter the sign said, ‘Jim’s Café’. No, no, no, no, she cried, pushing her face deep in the pillow and then she began to cough and the cough tore at her. I must have something to stop it, something to stop it, to cut the phlegm. I must. Just a little one, it won’t be more, I promise Thee, O Sacred Heart.
She slithered off the bed, twisting her stocking, putting a ladder all the way up to the knee. She scrabbled in the bureau drawer for the keys to the trunk and took them out with a hand that shook so the keys rattled. She unlocked it and found one bottle, wrapped in cheap brown paper. Then, apologetically, she clambered up on the bed and turned the Sacred Heart towards the wall. He looked at her, stern now, warning that this might be her last chance ever and that He might become the Stern Judge before morning came, summoning her to that terrible final accounting. No awakening to see James Madden, to walk ever in the city, to ever see him again. Tonight I may cast you down, He said. My Patience will not last for ever.
But the rage had started inside her, the pleasant urgency to open it, to fill a glass and sip it slowly, to feel it do its own wonderful work. So she turned the Sacred Heart to the wall, scarcely hearing the terrible warning He gave her.
Then she scrambled off the bed, shaking, took a glass from the trunk and scrabbled with her long fingers at the seal, breaking a fingernail, pulling nervously until the seal crumbled on the floor and the cork lay upended on top of the bedside table. She took off her clothes quickly, wise in the habits of it, because sometimes you forgot, later. She pulled on her nightdress and dressing-gown, sat quietly by the fire, shaking a little still, but with the rage, the desire of it. Then, while the bottle of cheap whiskey beat a clattering dribbling tattoo on the edge of the tumbler, she poured two long fingers and leaned back. The yellow liquid rolled slowly in the glass, opulent, oily, the key to contentment. She swallowed it, feeling it warm the pit of her stomach, slowly spreading through her body, steadying her hands, filling her with its secret power. Warmed, relaxed, her own and only mistress, she reached for and poured a tumbler full of drink.