We went along up the road, with Roger running in front. I began to whistle, then remembered Eileen said I whistled out of tune since I had my last set of teeth.
At 10.59 precisely, we arrived at Brannigan’s pub and hotel, having stopped to pass the time of day with Mrs. Come-all-ye Gooney, who was leaning over her garden gate, beaming her hundred thousand welcomes to the wide earth. I went on at her till she let one of her screeches of laughter, and hurried away before she could come out of it.
We sat down on the bench outside Brannigan’s, and I stood Bob a bass and a large Player. Bob was silent: then said he had a bit of a headache. I gave him two aspirins in his beer, and in the course of a few minutes he declared himself cured.
I went inside, bought one ounce of powerful Plug, and five newspapers. Then Bob and I parted, and I went off down to Vico with Roger, to bathe. There were only three or four men there. I stripped, and proceeded into the sea with Roger. I swam out a hundred yards or so, turned on my back, and floated. The water was already warm on the surface. It’ll be a bad day when I’m too old to puffle out a few yards into the Bay and lie on my back and feel the sun on my belly—which sticks up more than it did when first I had the sensation.
I was roused from my comfort by a hell of a yapping and snarling and bubbling. Resuming a vertical posture, I saw that a Kerry Blue, already noted on shore by me and Roger as aggressive, had swum out after Roger, and that a terrific battle was in progress. I let a yell at them, but of course it was no good, so I swam over and approached the fighters. It was alarming, having them on a level with my face instead of where I could get a good kick at them: and I felt damn naked. However, action was called for, and I separated them by the simple method of shoving both under water until they let go.
I swam in then, and examined Roger for damage. He was bleeding from the left ear, and I had cut my leg in some unaccountable manner. While I was investigating, a voice addressed me, and I looked up and found myself accosted by a youngish Christian Brother, apologetic owner of the aforesaid Kerry Blue. He congratulated me, and told me that I had acted with great presence of mind. I made light of the matter, and we had a few minutes’ amicable conversation, in the course of which I was introduced to the now contrite and fawning Kerry Blue, with Roger growling away irreconcilably a couple of yards off.
I got into the water again, Roger with me, and swam off strong-mindedly to Sorrento Point. Arrived off the rocks, I was stung by a jellyfish, and saw a whole host of the things floating between me and the shore. This scared me, and I turned and swam away, with all my pleasure in the water gone.
It was about the hour of noon when I got out, draped a towel about my middle, chose a favourite place on the rocks, and basked. I read the papers; they were nothing but balderdash from beginning to end. At about twenty minutes to two, I dressed, judging time from the trains, and went home, where I ate a bloody awful pork chop for my dinner and, on the strength of determination to say nothing and bear my share of inconvenience, lent my bike to Bob, to meet his girl.
Whether as the reward of virtue, or for intrinsic reasons, the chop did me no harm, and I was additionally glad I had said nothing about it. Having thus vindicated my own inertia, and raised it to the level of a virtue, I set out for a walk with Eileen, pushing my grandson in his go-car. On the road by the Hill there were a couple of stalls, which the poor devils who owned them had pushed up from the village with the loss of several pounds’ weight in sweat. I bought ices, cakes, apples, and chocolate off them, ignoring Eileen’s whisper that we should get fresher things in the shops below. Eileen came out quite communicative after tasting the chocolate, but some contrary devil kept me thinking of other things, so that I only half attended and said ‘Um’, ‘Ah’, and ‘Do you tell me that, now’. She stopped talking soon, and an air of restraint ensued, which the child perceived and interpreted by flinging his milk bottle overboard.
Anyway, he made a diversion: and as soon as we got to Dalkey I bought him a new one, together with a trifle for Eileen. She’s always amenable to a gift, and I felt I owed it her; but I couldn’t help despising her for being so easily propitiated, and myself for taking such a cheap way to propitiate her. I went all the way home in a rising irritation, noticing the heat and the dust and the old newspapers blowing about the roads and all the staleness of the dead time of a summer afternoon when you’ve nothing to do and don’t like what you’re doing anyway.
We stopped in the village to buy cakes for tea, having suddenly remembered that people were coming, and the guilt of having forgotten it brought us together again, so that we were chuckling conspiratorially by the time we reached the house: but I was dead fagged all the same.
It was the O’Learys we had to tea, and Miss Smith, and young Tomkins. I sat handing them food, and wondering why the hell people won’t stop in their own houses. Mrs. O’Leary kept talking the most insensate tripe, and turning every minute or so to me with ‘Don’t you think so, Mr. Mangan?’ and ‘I’m sure Mr. Mangan will agree with me.’ Mr. Mangan didn’t, and couldn’t but say so. Having disagreed with her four times running, I caught Eileen’s eye, and went back into my shell altogether. The two girls carried on, and after a bit I came out and tried again. I worked hard this time, and finally got them listening to the story of Larry Hogan and the old one outside the church in Drumcondra. But I felt an old man before the end of the evening, and could tell you the exact minute—8.43— when they went and left the house emptier than it had felt for a year.
Eileen had taken the brat home an hour or more earlier, he being by now peevish and past his bed-time. I followed Kate out to the scullery, explaining that, short of deliberate dishonesty, a man couldn’t say he agreed with an opinion when he didn’t, and that if people were such fools they couldn’t stand being differed from, they deserved no consideration. She didn’t answer, so I slipped off with Roger, my bike—Bob having mysteriously left it back—my bathing togs, and a large towel.
A quarter of an hour later, I went to park my bike above Vico. I was going to put it behind a clump of blackberry bushes, but caught sight of a young couple just in time, so put it another place. I went down the path—the evening had clouded over a bit, and you had to watch your step—and passed a man coming up tight. He said Good night to me and I answered, hut he looked after me and grumbled, saying some bloody people had no civility. I came down to the bathing place, left my towel, and went to have a look at the water. There I found a dubious man washing an ulcer on his leg. He looked up at me and said ‘A grand evening,’ and I said it was, and went back. I didn’t fancy the water after that, so I went up the path again, skirting the tight man, who hadn’t got far and was sitting on a little mound by the railway line, recovered my bike, and went off to White Rock.
It was hard on ten o’clock when I got down on the sands. The last of the trippers were packing up and calling to their children and straggling off to the station. I walked up and down, throwing stones for Roger. I watched the 10.10 come in, all fuss and lights. It stayed a long time in the station, and I pictured the droves of trippers streeling up and down the platform, looking for a place to get in, and the train packed already. It got off at last, and in a couple of minutes was passing by me, snorting and clanking and coughing up sparks into the air.
I’d come some way from my towel, so I strolled back, stripped, and got in. It was dark and full tide. The water was warm. I swam well out and lay on my back. Roger came part of the way, then went back, exploring and fussing along the shore on his own concerns. I lay resting. On my right were the lights of Vico and Sorrento, on my left the lights of Bray, winking low down on the water as they always do. In front of me loomed the dark mass of the Hill. I moved my hand, and saw it and my arm outlined in phosphorescence. I lay still, going back into the immemorial experience of the sea. There was hardly a sound. Then a train rushed out of Sorrento Tunnel, and roared down above me, filling the night with clatter and echoes. It fussed into Bally-brack Station, the engine wheels clanking as it s
hut off steam. There was a couple of minutes’ silence, and the sound of the sea on the shore came back. Then chuff! chuff! chuff! the train started off. The noise was muffled in a cutting, and presently I heard its rumble, incredibly loud, all the way down the coast.
A gentle swell heaved me up. I drew a breath, and lay right back, looking up into the soft height of the sky. A few faint stars pierced it. It was deep, secret, far off blue. The train’s rumble swelled out again, and with it the years fell away, and I was back in the one timeless experience of my life, feeling, hearing, and seeing what I have seen and heard and felt since I was a boy and first could swim. If I have floated once this way in this place on a summer night, I have floated hundreds of times; and they are all one. When I am there, every one of them is with me, every one of the old friends. Mary has not died, Uncle John is wearing his thumbstall and eating his dinner, the Doctor is fooling with his lights or lifting the lid of the range to spit, Ann Dunn is getting my supper, I have not met Muriel, Martin is stropping his razor and looking over his shoulder to see is Dennis all right, Captain Callaghan is being hoisted aboard, yet I have my Kathie, and the old priest is smiling at me. I am at the centre of my life, and every good thing in it is around me.
I lay a long time, stirring an arm or leg now and then for the pleasure of seeing the phosphorescence. Slowly I became less and less aware of incident and sank deeper into dream. The sea I floated on was the deepest sea of all. I still saw the phosphorescence: then, lured by some special gleam, I turned my head, and there, floating level with me on either side, small but clear, insubstantial as thistledown, like the phosphoresence only paler, were the ghosts of my old companions. They floated on their backs: then, as, in a happy amazement, I stood upright in the water to see them better, they stood upright too. I moved an arm: they moved an arm. I lay back: they lay back. I saw them all distinctly, bloodless, colourless, small, no bigger than jellyfish, recognisable, clear, and pale. I began slowly to swim in to shore, and they swam level with me, keeping each his place, swimming in character: Uncle John with a shamefaced look, as if I had caught him off his guard; the Doctor using a methodical breast stroke, shooting out his hands, puffing, his beard clear of the water; Martin absent-minded, Captain o’Callaghan floating like a buoy on tow, Ann Dunn precise and neat, Uncle George swimming a bold athletic stroke, and with him, young and in his first freshness, the Hero; Mary drifting; and, far out on the edge, unhappy and lost, Aunt Edith. All the way to the shore they kept me company, and then were lost in the phosphorescence where the slow swell broke on the shore, faded into the soft confusion of phosphorescence and foam. I stood up, and turned, and blessed them, and walked up on the firm sand.
Once I was there, the world of incident came back. I heard Roger waffling away somewhere, and found he had dug up the remains of a box of Swiss rolls and was just finishing off the last of them, sand and all. I took him a run along the edge of the shore, made him swim a bit, and then went back and dressed.
As I was dressing, an odd sort of bloke came up, addressed me by name, and bummed a light and a fill of tobacco off me. He said he was a clerk in the Board of Works, and lived in Rath-mines. I didn’t know him from Adam, but he asked after Molly, and, from the way he spoke, he might well have been courting her one time. He asked me if I remembered the Monkses, and I said I did. Next he mentioned Johnny Hartley. I said I believed he’d gone abroad. Did you not hear, said he, mooning at me with a long face. Hear what, said I. He’s dead, said he. Dear dear, said I, do you tell me that: but I couldn’t remember Hartley, nor him either.
Then he started asking me about Hilda, and I said she was fine. How’s Tim, said he, and I said he was fine. I don’t suppose, now, you remember Jerry, he said. Oh indeed I do, said I: Jerry must be getting a big man now. Then the fool said he meant Jerry, the kennel terrier, but by that time, thank God, I’d done dressing, and was able to bid him good night.
There was a grand smell as I climbed the slope, a mixture of the hot grassy smell of the day and the evening dew on top of it. I picked up my bike, wiped it down with my handkerchief, and rode home slowly, with Roger trotting along beside the back wheel.
It was five minutes after twelve, and I had just got into my bed and was settling down for a read, when I heard hell’s own yapping outside the front door. I recognised it as Eileen’s little Pom. The fool of a small animal is often getting lost between her house and this, and isn’t particular which one it comes back to.
I let a curse, got out, went down, and opened the door. The fussy little beast was delighted to see me. Roger isn’t too fond of it, especially in his own demesne and at night-time, so I put it to bed in the spare box in the cellar. I couldn’t properly see what I was doing, and, every time I stooped down, I felt its warm little tongue licking me.
When I got back into bed again, I was too sleepy to read, so I blew out the candle. I wondered ought I to have stopped and talked to the man with the ulcer, and where the young lovers lived, and whether they were home by now, and if the girl’s parents would skelp her.
I remembered my ghosts, and blessed them, even Aunt Edith, poor soul. Then, in a last warmth of sleepy happiness, I thanked God, and fell asleep.
For
HELEN
YThis electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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