The Bay

by L. A. G. Strong

  “Good afternoon.”

  Guntey looked slightly puzzled, and repeated “Good marnin’.” He acknowledged no other time of day, in greetings at any rate. He grinned suddenly, showing two complete rows of discoloured but powerful teeth, and shuffled out. The smell of him stayed in the kitchen for some minutes. Ann Dunn little knew her temerity in asking him to call in on a Saturday afternoon, for by nightfall on Saturday, it was notorious, Guntey was roaring maniac drunk, and all the inhabitants of Gaggen’s Court lay low, in dread of him. Whether Ann Dunn was aware of this, I don’t know. At any rate, Guntey made good his promise on Monday morning. The most appalling debauches seemed to leave no effect on his vast frame.

  Ann Dunn kept me buoyed up with talk of Kingstown till I had to go, but my heart was heavy. I sat, passive and miserable, at my supper, making no response to Aunt Edith’s sniffs and references to where I had been. I got what satisfaction I could from a dull resolve not to tell her about Ann Dunn’s move, only, at the last, to let myself be stung into forgetting it.

  “It does you no good, going to that place,” my Aunt Edith exclaimed. “You come back always the same, pale and peevish. You can’t even give me a civil answer. I thought it was just temper; but I believe it’s as much the bad air as anything.”

  She waited provocatively, bit her lip, and went on, “The bad air of that underground dungeon of a place. It’s positively unhealthy. I don’t think I shall allow you to go there any more. I’m sure Dr. Murphy would agree.”

  Still I said nothing. She was fingering the tassels on the edge of the green tablecloth, drawing them up into a knot in her shapely white fingers (she had beautiful hands, too long, maybe, but beautiful. An odd, incongruous thing. But she could have been good looking, in an aquiline way, when she was a girl).

  “Do you hear me, Luke?” she burst out. “I shall consult Dr. Murphy. You can’t be allowed to spend your one free afternoon in that place, when you should be out in the fresh air.”

  I raised my head, and looked at her with hatred.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not going there any more. Ann Dunn is moving,” I said, seeing the astonishment in her face. “She’s moving out to Kingstown, to a nice place by the sea. Dr. Murphy said I needed sea air. I shall go to her there.”

  I got up, and went past her to the stairs. She had flushed a dull pink.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” she said weakly, and broke off. I went straight up, and shut my door. Later on, I heard her moving on the landing. She came to my door, stood there, then thought better of it, and went away. I felt a sort of grim triumph through my misery, and fell asleep.

  I hardly like to tell you the shifts that unhappy woman had recourse to, after that, to prevent my going to see Ann Dunn. One time she said I had a cold, another time it was pouring rain, and she said my raincoat had had to be sent to the cleaner: oh, she had all manner of shifts, but she only managed to stop me about one time in three, for Ann Dunn had a powerful supporter in Uncle John. It was jealousy that bit and tormented her, I can see that now, a longing for the affection she had never succeeded in rousing in any human breast. She certainly got none from me. Could a man of understanding have softened her? Could he have melted the hardness and the virus out of her with kindness and tenderness? Not by the time I knew her, I am afraid. In her first youth, her generous impulses might have been caught and given a firm foundation: but she must always have been difficult.

  The visits to Ann Dunn were marvellous. The cottage was small, but it was full of light. I would get there, just before three, or sometimes as late as ten or a quarter past. The two arms of the harbour would be solid in the sunlight—they never had that flat cardboard look that masonry can take in certain lights. The whole expanse of the harbour was full of little gleaming boats and yachts. On the right, in the elbow of the East Pier, lay a small ship of war, and on the left, under the more plebeian shelter of the West Pier, was a huddle of old tramps and coalboats, with a dredger or two and a lightship home on leave. The near water was all dance and sparkle, and the light from it seemed to flow into Ann Dunn’s windows with the breeze from the sea, and fill the room with rippling ecstasy. Lobelias and scarlet geraniums grew in the little beds against the whitewashed walls. She had stocks, too, and wall flowers, and, sure enough, there, piled up in a glistening dark green pyramid on either side of the tiny path from the gate, stood the glass floats she had spoken of, the circular floats from drift nets that get washed ashore after a storm.

  Those were enchanted Saturdays, but the time sped fast. Up to four o’clock it was sheer heaven. I had only just come, and the hours lay before me. All the time up to tea was good. With tea, marvellous though it was, the first shadows began to fall. From tea till six was sad, the last quarter of an hour spent almost in silence, holding Ann Dunn’s hand. Then came my farewell to Janey the cat, who was languidly unconcerned, and the walk up to George Street for the tram, with many a glance backward at the shining heaven of the harbour. The arrival of the tram, and the careful climb up the stair, holding on tight, and trying to see Ann Dunn at the same time: the start, the wave from the top to the black figure at the edge of the pavement, that so quickly grew small or was hidden by insensitive passers-by. The run beside the far end of the harbour, past the coal yards and the dredgers, with much screwing of the head to look back at the brighter expanse behind. Then sheer loss, through Monkstown to Blackrock, the recovery of the sea beyond, and, between Booterstown and Merrion, more screwing of the head for the last glimpses of the pier, far away now, with the masts and funnels of the mail boat, and Dalkey Hill and Killiney small beyond. Then—Dublin.

  If only I could live with Ann Dunn for ever. That was my dream, my prayer. It was answered.

  One scorching Monday afternoon, tired and sad in reaction from a glorious Saturday at Kingstown, I went out into the field at the back of the school playground. I didn’t play much with the other boys. Indeed, I remember so little of this school that I think I can hardly have noticed them. The master I liked, Mr. Rourke, used to persuade me to join in the games for a little while, and to please him I did. This afternoon it was so hot that most of us didn’t want to play. A few enthusiasts got up a game of rounders by themselves. I went off alone, and climbed up in a big laburnum on the left-hand side of the field. Earlier, the tree had been a blaze of golden flowers. Now the flowers had all but left it. Where they had been, seed pods hung. Idly, I began to explore the pods. I opened them, as you would open pea pods, and began meditatively to eat the seeds. I recall that afternoon as vividly as if it had just passed. There I sat, high up in the throbbing, sun-drenched tree, idly opening pod after pod and chewing the seeds, staring into the distance, hearing the cries and laughter of the boys playing rounders. With half an eye I could see a boy running, and I thought how hot he’d be getting, the fool. But with my real, my inner eye, I was seeing the harbour, exactly as it must be in the splendour of the afternoon, the glitter of the water, the white paint cracking on the sides of the little yachts, the exhausted brightness of the air. Not bitterness but sorrow rose in me. There on the one side was paradise, all that might not be mine, and here was reality. I must have eaten a bellyful of those seeds, for I was a long time in the tree.

  Then my head began to ache, and I came down. I wanted a cool place, where it would be quiet, so I went into the library and took down a bound volume of Black and White. I laid it on the table in front of me, turned the pages slowly, and gazed with a mounting pleasure at Gaton Woodville’s pictures of Lancers making last stands: and, for a while, I forgot my sorrow.

  As I looked, deeply absorbed, I became aware of a powerful uneasiness, a depression more inimical and inhuman than anything I had known. It was as if I saw the harbour, all full of light, and the depression like a dark shrivelling chill was drawn over the waters, raced towards me, blotted out the yachts and little dancing boats, galloped up the jetty and up my body, invading me with a cold, deadly nausea. It was not like ordinary sickness. It was a black fr
ost that descended from outside and rose from inside, a slow terrible coma, a cold that wound like swathes of mist or the icy coils of an anaconda. I heard myself gasping for breath, and suddenly Mr. Rourke ran into the library with tears on his face. Someone said in a shocked voice, “What is wrong?” With a terrible effort I turned my head. Mr. Rourke cried out, “Parnell is dead,” and flung himself down at the table, his head in his hands, sobbing. The agony and the urgency of his cry shocked my mind, sunk even in that extremity. Then I felt myself begin to slip from the chair. I tried to hold up, but my whole body was chill and paralysed.

  After that there was a cab, Dr. Murphy’s face bending over me, sharp with concern, his voice harsh and loud like the backwash snarling on a gravel beach: a stomach-pump—my first and only experience of that devastating instrument—and, in the background, Aunt Edith’s face, cold, tragic, white, with dark rings under the eyes. Then nothing: and, after years, a gradual awakening, a knowledge that slowly, slowly, I should come to the surface and recover. And, with that knowledge, and the first opening of my eyes, Ann Dunn’s dear face.

  That poisoning was a terrible experience. It took me into dark places. Even today, I dislike the sight of a laburnum and its golden hair. Once, at a garden party, when a child ran up to me with an opened seed pod in its hand, I had all the effort in the world not to vomit. And the name of Parnell, or anything about him, brings on me a memory of that dark depression crawling over the bright water, then racing and racing… . I’m shivering now as I write. As for seeing a film about Parnell, or a play——!

  But out of evil came good. One morning I heard a terrible racket going on downstairs, from which I presently distinguished the tones of Uncle John, the shrill tortured voice of my Aunt Edith, and a dark, incisive note which I recognised as coming from Dr. Murphy. To judge by the sounds, it was a regular free-for-all. The altercation lasted some time, till a door slammed and I heard hurrying feet on the stairs, an unrestrained sobbing, and the slamming of another door—the door of Aunt Edith’s bedroom.

  After a couple of minutes, my door was opened, and in came Ann Dunn, her eyes unusually bright. She was followed by Uncle John, rather redder than usual, and wearing the sheepish expression of an easy-going man who has had his hand forced into being severe, and is half pleased and half ashamed.

  The news they brought flabbergasted me. I thought I was ill still, and that it was all a dream. I was to get up, pack my things, and go to live with Ann Dunn at Kingstown.

  They said it to me twice, and, unable to bear so cruel a deception, I bitterly reproached the dream and burst into tears. Uncle John was horrified.

  “What!” he muttered. “Doesn’t he want to go after all?”

  But Ann Dunn understood. She put her arms round me for a few seconds, and whispered to me that it was all right, that I was to get up and sit in the chair while she packed my things, and not to worry. Then, as if ashamed of showing so much feeling, she stood back, blinking defensively.

  “He’ll be all right now, sir,” she said.

  I smiled through my tears, and Uncle John blew his nose very loudly, and showed obvious relief.

  “Well, little son,” he said, “I’ll be off. You’re all right?”

  “Yes, thank you, Uncle John.”

  “You’re sure, now?”

  “Yes, Uncle John. Quite sure.”

  “That’s good. Game ball. Well——”

  He looked at Ann Dunn, with the expression of a schoolboy in a conspiracy, and made for the door. He opened it, stopped dead, plunged his hand into his pocket, and charged over to me in the bed.

  “There, little son.” He thrust something into my hand, and I felt for an instant the touch of the thumbstall. Then he turned away his head, and made a choking, blubbering sound. I felt a spasm of horror, but I wouldn’t allow myself to feel anything more. I just stared at him as he made a buffalo rush for the door. I looked at Ann Dunn; then I opened my hand, and saw a golden sovereign lying in it.

  Ann Dunn took me off an hour later, in a cab, and we drove all the way out to Kingstown. I did not see my aunt to say good-bye. As we left the house, the corner of the lace curtain in her room was pulled aside about an inch. That was all. And that night I lay between clean linen sheets in Ann Dunn’s cottage, saying to myself over and over again that I had come there to stay, yet hardly needing to think beyond the fact that I was there.

  I could not understand how I was there, and it was some time before I found out. Apparently in my delirium I had cried out all my fear and hatred of Aunt Edith, and had revealed such sorrow and such sickness of the spirit that they all thought I had known the laburnum pods were poisonous, and had tried to kill myself.

  I did not undeceive them.

  Chapter III

  You see what I mean, sir,” said Ann Dunn. “It’s not right.”

  We sat, a conference of three, in Ann Dunn’s parlour. The little room swam in sunlight. Janey sat on the window-sill, blinking regally. My Uncle John sat opposite the window, legs apart, a hand on each mighty knee, the picture of a counsellor. The dignity of his aspect was lessened by the fact that the shadow of the lace curtain fell half across his face, giving it a curiously mottled appearance. Ann Dunn faced him, sitting very upright in a tall horsehair chair, her hands in her lap. I sat by the table.

  As Ann Dunn spoke, my Uncle John nodded, then gave his big head a shake from side to side, to show how he appreciated the seriousness of the problem.

  “It’s not natural,” Ann Dunn went on, “for a growing boy to be all his time with an old woman. I——”

  “Tcha,” said Uncle John gallantly, “not old, Ann Dunn. Not old. Sure, you’re in your flower.”

  The compliment seemed so improper—a sort of sacrilege— that I blushed. Uncle John realised it too. He coughed and took out his handkerchief. Ann Dunn made a tiny inclination of her head.

  “It’s not right he should be living all the time with a woman,” she said. “I think, sir, that was part of the trouble before.”

  “Maybe.” Uncle John nodded profoundly. “Maybe.”

  “I think it should be a boarding school, sir,” Ann Dunn went on, after a pause. Her manner was entirely respectful. “At the school in Dublin, he didn’t mix with the other boys as he should. It would come easier to him at a boarding school.”

  Uncle John nodded again. “Very important,” he said. “Very important indeed.”

  “The only question then, sir, is what school to send him to. I wondered perhaps if you had any ideas?”

  “Don’t send him where I was. That’s all I’d ask ye. Don’t send him there.”

  Ann Dunn waited, then said, “I was asking Father O’Donnell, last Sunday …”

  “He’d know,” said Uncle John. “He’d know, if anyone did.”

  Ann Dunn blinked. “I think, sir, as there is the business side of it to be talked over, it would be as well …” She looked at him, then turned to me. “Run out for a few minutes, Luke.”

  I got up gladly. Uncle John gave me a consolatory wink as I left.

  And so it was settled. As we were half way through a term, and as Dr. Murphy thought I would be the better of two or three months more “running wild” to recover from my recent experiences, I was not sent off at once. I don’t remember quite when I went—there are blurs in my memory where I’d least expect them: but as my first recollections of the school have a light about them that suggests early spring, I think it must have been the Easter term when I was packed off to yet another life. I did not want to go, but the assurance of having Ann Dunn to come back to in my holidays was such paradise after life in Dublin that I would have gone to Timbuctoo without misgiving.

  I have said little enough about school so far, as you must have noticed. I remember very little of that first school. I don’t know why. There must be some sound reason, but if there is, it has escaped me. Mind you, I think that school days can be very much overdone in a man’s reminiscences. They are not usually the most interesting time of his
life, or, if they are, then the rest of his life cannot be very entertaining. But about this second school I must say something, for that I do remember. Indeed, one or two of the things that happened to me there I remember as vividly as anything in my life. They helped to shape that life and make me what I am.

  The school was a branch of a monastery in a country town. I’m not going to particularise where the town was, or give the name of any of those who taught me, for, odd though some of my experiences were, and in one instance horrible, I have only gratitude for that school, and I would not even after this gap of years risk giving pain or anxiety to a soul of all those that laboured in our behalf. The names of my school mates I shall change too: not that they would mind, that is, the two or three who are still living, but in case a name should help anyone to identify the school. It might be argued that, if I owe it nothing but gratitude, I should name it. But a school that is doing well needs no advertisement: the less that is written about it the better.

  The town was small, much decayed, and unworthy of the river that ran through it. There must have been a hundred other such towns in Ireland. It had a single street, which contained the small bank, a large and handsome church, a dismal post office, a police barrack built of grey stone, and ninety public houses. That figure may sound incredible for a provincial town of no great size, but at that time drink was cheap, and every shop sold it along with whatever else it dealt in. If a farmer gave an order for seeds, if a man bought a hayrake or a can of paint, if you bespoke a pair of boots or a coffin, the transaction was sealed with several glasses of whiskey at threepence halfpenny the glass. Every shop was a general emporium dealing in almost all the necessaries of life. In the police barrack lived two inspectors, three fat sergeants, and about fifteen stalwart constables. The Lord only knows how these men spent their time. They were as popular as rattlesnakes. Most of the petty sessions cases concerned people found drinking five minutes after closing time, having no dog licences, poaching salmon, or singing ballads too provocative to please the police. When I was at the school, there was a ballad that had to do with a Mr. Harley Codd. I forget who he was, but anyone who sang that song in the vicinity of a policeman could be sure of a sojourn in the county gaol. These misdemeanours, with a few cases of illicit card playing and games of pitch and toss in back alleys, made up what crime there was. The town was the centre of a large agricultural district, and the townspeople depended almost entirely on the farmers, for whose convenience a weekly fair was held. There was a town band, which seldom played, as the greater part of their music was of so flagrantly patriotic a nature as to offend the resident gentry. There was an ever-increasing number of corner boys, whose ultimate fate was emigration to the U.S.A. Most if not all the shops dealt in emigration tickets, and for every ticket sold the steamship companies allowed the seller a shilling. Seldom a week passed but some half dozen of these lads went away to America, followed to the station by keening women and the riff-raff of the back lanes and alleys, gay or lachrymose, but invariably drunk. It was the great ambition of these lads to return to their native place on a visit as full-blooded American citizens, and on that account beyond reach of the local police. I remember seeing two or three of these heroes swagger past the barrack on the first night they were back, singing the most offensive versions of “The Peeler and the Goat”, and the police grinning with fury but pretending to be amused.