The Mask and Other Stories

by Nesta Tuomey

  Peg trudged down the hall and pushed her way into the scullery. Mrs Breen, promising to run up to her child as soon as the opportunity presented itself, followed even more slowly. ‘There’s not a lot today, Peg,’ she offered hesitantly, as the woman silently tackled the fastenings on her plastic coat. She stood shoulders stooped, the black beret pulled low over her forehead, the grey hair straggling from under it in greasy wisps. Geronimo or was it Witch of Endor? Mrs Breen took in a deep breath and tried to control, but without much hope, the situation. ‘Why don’t you...’ she began, trying and failing to envisage some job that would not necessitate too much clearing up afterwards. ‘Brush down the stairs ... and when you finish I’ll have some hot soup ready.’ Like hot tea, the panacea for all ills. Even to her own ears the words placated. Peg would not be fooled by the task set her and might not even obey.

  Disconcerted, Mrs Breen watched her rummage in the broom cupboard and come out bearing a tin of Vim and cleaning rags. She started to speak but saw no point. Peg would do what she wanted and always had. She felt a sense of hopelessness as the tattered lisle and split boots creaked away over the polished wood and began slowly to mount the stairs.

  Higney fiddled with the remaining screw and caught the door as it fell. He propped it against the wall and wiped his face on his sleeve. In the gloom of the landing below, Mrs Molloy strained upwards in a listening attitude. ‘Are yeh up there, Miss Dinnegan?’

  Higney quickly slipped the screwdriver out of sight and stepped back into the room. He heard the flapping of Mrs Molloy’s slippers on the bare boards as she came from below.

  ‘Are youse alright?’ Curiously she peered into the room, her expression changing at the sight of him. ‘Oh, it’s you. I heard sounds,’ she said, by way of explanation.

  Higney shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Isn’t it a terrible thing,’ he sighed, ‘no respect for people’s property.’

  At first Mrs. Molloy did not take his meaning; to her the room looked very much as it always had but then her gaze encompassed the doorless hinges and travelled downwards to the orange box with its vandalised contents. ‘My Gawd! Who done it,’ she demanded, stroking her neck repeatedly while all the time staring fixedly at Higney as though he might at any moment surprise her with the answer.

  ‘Who knows?’ With a shrug Higney stepped around her. ‘There’s a lot of it these days.’ He leant towards her insinuatingly. ‘Yeh wouldn’t want to go leaving your door ajar, Missus, not if yeh’ve left your purse lying about.’

  He watched smiling as she scurried back to her landing, a slipper coming loose in her flight, and stood motionless until he heard her door slam shut.

  A tin of Vim stood on the top step of the stairs, a danger to the unwary. Peg sat on the child’s bed and fashioned a rabbit out of a handkerchief taken from Mr Breen’s drawer.

  ‘When will Mammy be back,’ Brian asked fretfully, for how could you make a rabbit out of a hanky.

  ‘She’ll be back any minute... hasn’t she to get the few messages.’ Peg eased herself deeper into the bed, gnarled fingers twisting and poking the piece of cloth.

  Mrs Breen, against her better judgement, had slipped out to the shops. Calling from the front door she had promised to be as quick as she could and to bring with her some books or comics on her return. As Peg made the rabbit, she repeated what Father Burke had said only the day before from the pulpit about the evils of drink. Men were spending their wages in the public houses every Friday and leaving their wives and families to go short. He’d asked them all to make a special effort to cut down on intoxicating liquor during the six weeks of Lent.

  ‘It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is,’ Peg said. ‘They should be puttin’ shoes on their childer and bread on the table. Alcoholics the lot of them.’

  He stared at the seamed puckering of flesh on the underside of her chin and wondered what an alcoholic was. The skin of the old woman’s angular face was of a hard grained texture bringing to mind a walnut or similar piece of wood. She had once told him she never used anything on herself but sunlight soap. It was good for everything, she had confided, even your teeth. All the others were a waste of money.

  ‘Look, he’s jumpin’.’ She jerked the rabbit forward over the curve of her arm and laughed, showing toothless gums, at his alarm. He fingered the handkerchief petulantly.

  ‘That’s not a rabbit. Where’s Mammy... why isn’t she back?’ He shifted restlessly, troubled by a strange unidentifiable and disturbing odour. She sat on, pinching and stroking the cloth, talking quietly about her devotion to this saint or that.

  ‘St Martin’s a good one but the best of them is St Jude. He’s a great man for the bad cases. If yeh’re desperate pray to him... and there’s another... he’s not a saint... not yet but he will be. Mark my words, Matt Talbot will be canonised, you’ll see. I can ask Matt anything and he gets it for me.’

  He wondered at the way she spoke as though the saints were people she met and talked with every day (and weren’t they in a way?). It seemed as though she’d only to mention something to them and they would get it for her as easily as his mother was at that moment getting his comics. His interest aroused, he asked. ‘Would they get me a bike if I asked them?’

  ‘You can try,’ was all she said, before going on to speak of the sales of work she often frequented. ‘There do be great bargains. Do yeh ever get going yourself?’

  ‘No,’ he answered shortly, feeling she’d led him on about the saints. But he wasn’t being strictly truthful for he had on occasion gone to the bazaars run by the nuns at his sisters’ school.

  ‘Yeh should ask your Mammy. Next time I’m going I’ll bring yeh.’

  Appalled at the thought of going anywhere with the ‘witch’ – the Breen sisters name for her – he gladly leapt from the bed at the sound of the front door opening.

  Mrs Breen opened her bag and handed her son a bundle of comics. Within minutes he was back up the stairs and into bed, oblivious even of her his mother’s existence as he avidly read of Wilson of the Wizard and the adventures of Desperate Dan.

  Mrs Breen had hurried back from the shops, unable to rid her mind of a fear that Peg, no longer under supervision, might take it upon herself to hoover the house. As she had waited impatiently at the checkout of the local supermarket she had seen as clearly, as though she were present, the woman pushing the hoover over large, indissoluble objects until, choked with debris, it inevitable gagged and died. So great was her apprehension that she had hurried away without her change and been recalled by a young packer hastily following on her heels. On re-entering the house she was relieved to find the hoover still intact in its shrine, and sagged thankful that Mr Breen’s homecoming need not be marred by any distressing disclosures. She unpacked her shopping bag and, almost happy, placed the chops for the next day’s dinner on a plate in the scullery. Going upstairs, her foot kicked against an object she found to be a tin of Vim. Of Peg there was no sign. Downstairs once more Mrs. Breen was surprised to see the woman coming up the garden. Through the scullery window she observed her bending and scrabbling in a flowerbed. Well, she would get up to less harm out there compared to within, she thought, as she went to put the chops in the meat safe. But she was wrong, she realised, in the disillusioning discovery that the plate was empty.

  Higney dismounted and propped his bicycle at the kerb. In a chemist’s shop he stood at the counter waiting to be served. An assistant in a white coat climbed on to a chair to take a box from off a high shelf, showing an expanse of snowy thigh in the act. Higney wondered if she had anything on under the coat and in his mind unbuttoned it slowly. He saw her standing before him in her underclothes and imagined her taking them swiftly from her body.

  ‘Can I get you something?’ She stood, regarding him expectantly.

  He fingered a bar of fancy soap, still a prey to his thoughts. ‘Outrageous!’ he said on learning the price. ‘Ah, I think I’ll stick to the auld Sunlight. Doesn’t it do the job and at only a quarter the cost.’ H
e laughed, inviting her to share his amusement. She stood stolidly without expression. Stuck up little bitch, he thought, who does she think she is. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘give us a bottle of disinfectant, Miss.’

  She reached behind her and removed a bottle from the shelves. He cleared his throat. ‘A small one,’ he said, and watched her make the exchange. She placed it in a bag marked with the name of the chemist and rang up the amount on the till. Higney took out a handful of silver. He extended his hand, palm upwards, inviting her to take what she needed. As she selected the coins he leaned on the counter and said quietly, ‘You look like you have a fine pair under your jumper. Will we go for a drink later on. What do you say?’

  A red flush spread over her face and neck as Higney took the package and walked smiling towards the door. He threw a leg over the crossbar and glanced back through the plate glass door before pushing off. He saw her standing next to the chemist talking animatedly and was pleased. A good humping was what that one wanted. Wasn’t it what they were all after. He pedalled strongly up the hill and turned into a street at the back of Mountjoy Square. Parking against the side wall of a house he rested his foot on the step and removed his bicycle clips. Then untying a bundle of rods from the crossbar he carried them to the porch and rang the bell.

  Mr Breen came home at lunch hour each day. It was a time he liked especially. He looked forward to it as an oasis in a turbulent time-stretch in which he had to deal efficiently with the problems of inoperative street lighting or striking binmen. As soon as he put his key in the door he detected signs of the char’s presence and knew it would not be the most tranquil of midday breaks. Frowning, he took out his handkerchief and, spitting discreetly into it, rubbed at the cream-coloured smears beside the letterbox. As he hung his raincoat on the hallstand his eye fell upon an open polish tin, on the surface of which sprouted like a fungus a dark matting of fluff. Another hallmark of that woman. Quickly he strode to the broom cupboard and looked in. The hoover appeared untouched, the flex looped in even coils the way he had ordained it should be. He closed the door and thought, not for the first time, how he must put a lock on it. While he sat beside the fire, listening with half an ear to the lunch-time serial, he wondered what his wife would put before him. He fancied a bit of brown stew or maybe a tasty chop with a rasher or two.

  ‘What’s this?’ He pulled back from the table and stared down at his plate. ‘Where’s my dinner?’

  Mrs Breen turned from adding a shovelful of coal to the fire. ‘That’s it,’ she said, ‘a nice bit of cod.’

  ‘Have you no meat? I fancied a bit somehow.’

  Mrs Breen stared at him, the shovel hanging loosely from her hand. ‘Meat!’ Her tone was scandalised. ‘On Ash Wednesday!’

  Mr Breen was unaware or had forgotten the day it was. The smudge on his wife’s pale skin had passed unnoticed, his wife too if the truth were known. Feeling hard done by, he tackled without enthusiasm the white mess before him. Mrs Breen, used to his ways, took a seat opposite and in a lowered voice told him he’d be lucky if he got meat the following day since the chops she’d purchased for his dinner had mysteriously found their way into the dustbin.

  His hunger in no way assuaged Mr Breen irritably poked a wad of bread into his mouth and spoke over it, ‘Is there any pudding?’

  Momentarily deflected, Mrs Breen fetched a dish of prunes and custard from the kitchen and would have left him to get on with it had he not stayed her with his hand.

  ‘Who did it?’ he enquired, spitting prune stones into his cupped hand and dropping them on the bread plate.

  Eagerly Mrs Breen resumed her seat. ‘That’s what I have been telling you. It was her... Peg... all along.’

  ‘Is the woman mad?’ Mr Breen dropped his spoon into the dish with a clatter. ‘I always held it she was touched.’

  His wife cast a glance towards the door in case of an eavesdropper and went on to relay how Peg, incensed at the sight of meat blatantly displayed in the house on the firs day of Lent, had taken it upon herself to remove the impediments to the Breens’ salvation.

  Mr Breen stood up abruptly. ‘The woman’s a menace.’

  He had not forgotten the time his magazines for men had suffered a similar fate. He wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and grimaced at the taste of Brasso. ‘Don’t have her here again.’

  Mrs Breen, aware that she had confided too much or perhaps seeing her chance of sanctification receding, wavered. ‘At, now, Paddy, don’t let us be hasty. God help her... the poor creature... she’s really a bit of a saint, if one was to know.’

  Of his own mind Mr Breen smoothed his hair before the scullery mirror. He had little to do with saints but knew enough to know they were uncomfortable people to have truck with. ‘Give her some money and tell her not to come again,’ he advised.

  Sorry she had let herself be betrayed into an unequivocal position with regard to the saintly one, Mrs Breen helped him on with his coat and watched him walk away. A glint of silver caught her eye and she bent to lift from the step a milk foil cap, so missing his farewell wave had he made it.

  ‘Five pounds to clear the drain!’ At the woman’s incredulous tone Higney paused half-way in the door. He laid his rods against the wall and put his hands on the backs of his hips.

  ‘A terrible price,’ he agreed.

  She stared at him suspiciously. ‘The last fellah charged thirty bob.’

  ‘Is that a fact, and when might that have been?’ He waited, noting her sudden look of uncertainty. She was a well made woman he thought, wide hips and good strong-looking legs. She’d be good on a bicycle. He saw her in a pair of black shorts, her calves bulging as her legs strongly turned the pedals.

  She shrugged. ‘What does it matter... some time ago... he was a lot cheaper, that I do remember.’

  ‘And now it’s blocked again?’ Higney said, intimating that in certain circumstances he might be prepared to settle for a lot less. ‘You look like a woman of the world,’ he suggested. ‘You know how it is.’

  The woman stared at him in disbelief. ‘I’m a married woman,’ she said.

  Higney kept his eyes steadily upon her. He believed these things went on, he said, and no one was any the wiser. So long as the woman was willing. ‘No one misses a slice or two off a cut loaf. D’ye get my meaning?’

  To his surprise the woman became suddenly violent and threatened to call the police. Before he could stop her she had caught up his rods and thrown them out of the door with such force that several broke on striking the pavement.

  ‘You get outa here and don’t come back,’ she shouted, lifting a plaster statue off a table and holding it up high.

  Higney stared at her, alarmed. He moved quickly over the threshold. The woman was mad, demented, he told himself. He was lucky to get away unharmed.

  At the door, Mrs Breen, her conscience troubling, changed the coins for a note. It would make it up to Peg, she thought, or rather hoped, as she put her on the long finger. ‘Won’t be needing any work done in the house for a while... maybe going away... better leave it till after Easter.’

  Had she heard? The rainhat quivered. Was it in reproach? At the gate Peg stumbled and would have fallen but for her outflung hand. Behind the front room curtain Mrs Breen doubtfully stood. Was it a sign? She felt the shadow of Fr Lynch and trembled.

  Along Dorset Street children straggled from school. Close to the Palace wall Peg moved, shoulders hunched, the bag heavier now with Mrs Breen’s sop to conscience: ageing seed cake and yesterday’s tea scones. Her plastic mac and tie-on rain hat, donned like an additional skin, tempted the elements but perversely no rain fell. Towards Gardiner Street like a homing pigeon her feet strayed, hungry for the odours of incense and candlewax and the corridor confessionals of the Jesuit Fathers.

  Higney went into the Big Tree and sat near the counter, nursing a whisky. Despite various setbacks he was pleased with his day. Coming away from the house of the woman who had taken exception to his proposal, his rods once more fi
rmly tied to crossbar of his bicycle, he had been called to another house requiring the unblocking of drains. This time he’d been careful to keep any mention of cash out of the conversation until the job was done. Before closing the mantrap he’d requested a bucket of water to which he’d added a few drops of disinfectant before slopping it ceremoniously about the area. This was the difference, he’d explained to the mystified housewife, between chancers you’d get willing to do the job for a quid or two and someone like himself trained in the profession. He’d likened his work to that of a doctor, describing at length how the maze of underground pipes, invisible to laypersons like herself, could be compared with the human body. ‘Have you heard of cholesterol, Missus,’ he’d interrupted himself to ask. When the woman started to speak he’d hurried on, keeping a wary eye for plaster statues or other objects of defence. ‘It’s a terrible thing. Clogs the arteries and builds up a fatty wall about the heart. Now your drains are not dissimilar... abuse you drains, Missus, and they’ll act up in the selfsame way. You wouldn’t object to paying a doctor if yeh were stretched, amn’t I right now?’ In the end he’d settled for half and was glad he hadn’t wasted more than a few drops of the Dettol.

  ‘Bedad, yeh drive a hard bargain, Missus,’ he’d said as he wheeled his bike away.

  Now, in the light from the bar he examined a small object taken from his pocket.

  ‘Would yeh say it’s valuable,’ he asked the barman as the man was removing a pile of bottles and glasses from a nearby table, holding it up for his inspection.

  The barman glanced at it briefly. ‘Couldn’t rightly say. What is it... brass?’

  Higney polished it on his sleeve and held it out for a closer look. ‘Paid ten quid for it,’ he said, staring hard at the barman, ‘this afternoon.’

  The barman ran a wet rag over the table and turned to go. ‘You were robbed.’

  Higney caught hold of his sleeve. ‘Wait... take another look. It’s an antique. D’ye know what it is, if I was to sell it now I’d double my money.’