One wild, splendid evening, after a day of showers, Dermot and Paddy walked past Glenageary along “the metals,” the old discarded track long since used only as a walk. It ran by the backs of fields and hedges, and the two found it far preferable to the road. In front of them, Dalkey Hill stood up in the wet, low sunlight, its cliff scarred with long dark shadows, its wall and castle reared heroically to face the West and give back to the dying day a look as desolate and splendid as its own. A single window in the castle burned with liquid yellow fire, pale but indomitable. Dermot gazed up at it in awe and delight. The castle and wall, visible from so far away—one caught sight of it on the home-bound tram as soon as one was clear of Merrion Gates—had always enchanted him. Even a close view of it, from the road above the station, with its rabble of forlorn little cottages underneath the cliff, failed to harm it in his eyes: a view reducing its proportions, turning it into a stark quarry surmounted by an irregular wall and flat, blank tower. From a distance, from the street of Dalkey itself, it looked so fine, domineering over the little huddled town: and, all the time, it was not even the height of Killiney Hill behind it.
They walked slowly, for there was plenty of time. Clup-clup, clup-clup, sounded Paddy’s feet: he hobbled along, swinging his arms, humming to himself, in high glee: for they were going to see the circus. The circus came once a year to Dalkey, and camped in a field beside the church. Dermot always took Paddy, ostensibly as escort, though he was not needed in that capacity, as they sat in the better seats. Paddy enjoyed the show so wholeheartedly, it was a treat to be with him: but, in any case, Dermot would not have cared to go without him. Circuses and Paddy were right, just as theatres and Con were right.
“I’m coming. … I’m coming.…”(sang Paddy)
“And my headdiz … bending … low.…
I … hear them darkie … voices … calleeng …
Poor … ould Jow.”
The gaps in his song were filled with a variety of extraordinary noises: whistlings, intakes of the breath, snorts, and an occasional expectoration. He varied this—when he was not talking—by a sort of cheerful growling noise, working his arms extra vigorously, and puffing out his moustache like a seal ; executing all the time the remarkably efficient shuffle that served him for a walk. It was tireless, and little handicap in speed. Paddy could maintain an ordinary man’s walking pace, albeit at the expense of much to-do and working of the arms: but his ordinary shuffle was a bit slower. He insisted on his ability to walk any distance. Every summer he and Dermot went for a ceremonial walk, always referred to by Paddy as “the Loughlinstown Walk.” They went past Mona’s door—Mona, no more a trouble to Dermot, though lodged for all time in his prayers, from which nothing, not even her death, could bring erasure: past Mona’s door, up the long white dusty stretch of the Albert Road, on by Ballybrack to the Big Tree of Loughlinstown ; down past the Union (object of great dread to Paddy), looking dubiously into the brook, wondering if it held fish, turning off left, and going home through high hedges near the sea. Dermot met two boys and a master from his preparatory school one day on this walk. The boys coughed derisively at his ragged henchman, but the master shook hands with Paddy, and seemed to notice nothing. Next year Dermot felt an apprehension rise in him as they reached the spot, but the meeting, needless to say, was not repeated. He was not a snob: he had been at first annoyed, then angrily despised the boys. It was the sense of discord which he hated, the intrusion into his Irish life of something from England which did not belong to it ….
He walked slowly, balancing himself on the old metal rail. There were a few clear stretches of them: then they would all be overgrown with low, dense bushes, and he would have to walk round till he could get on again. The pair were perfect company, each absorbed in his own thoughts.
Suddenly Paddy’s song broke off.
“There’s Mike,” he exclaimed.
Dermot looked up, and saw the long, dejected figure slouching along in company with a group of others. A whippet tagged after them.
“I haven’t seen him for ages,” said Dermot. “Where’s he been?”
“He’s been very busy, over th’Army,” said Paddy, sucking his teeth. “There’s a second branch of them now.”
Dermot grinned.
“Poor Mike !”
“They have him very near wore out,” said Paddy. “He won’t be able for them much longer, by the way he’s going.”
Dermot watched the dispirited figure of the fanatic.
“He’s taking a holiday to-night, anyway,” he said.
They were approaching the field in which the circus people had their caravans. The church field was not large enough to hold more than the tent and the wild beast cages. All the rest was spaced out comfortably a quarter of a mile away. Dermot stared at the clean, gaudily painted vans. The back doors of several were open, and the last of the sun illumined weakly the spick and span interiors, with their polish, their brass-work, their incredible, small neatness. On the steps of one a fat, dark woman sat sewing. She looked up from time to time at the setting sun, pursed her lips, and went on with her work. They passed on to another van. A girl came down the steps, swilling some liquid round in a blue enamel basin. When she reached the grass, she jerked the liquid out with an expert twist of her two hands. She stood up, sniffed, and rubbed her shapely brown nose with the back of her forefinger. She was good-looking, and rather dirty to come out of so bright a van. Catching sight of Dermot, she returned his stare, and smiled. The suddenness of the dark, soft smile made Dermot jump with a sense of physical shock. He had been looking at her as a part of the scene, and she had startled him by coming to life and being aware of him. Paddy, seeing the smile out of the tail of his eye, quickened his step and crossed himself. But Paddy was over-zealous. It was not that sort of a smile.
The sun disappeared as they were reaching the church. It flung a last random shaft on the winding street of the queer little town, and fixed upon the castle in its last despair. There it would hold a few minutes longer: but Dermot and Paddy were now one of a crowd, treading the uneven cobbles, pressing forward to the field where the great tent rose like some pale growth sprung up uneasily in the dusk, hoping that the tall stiff church would not turn round and order it to be off. The pay-booth stood at the entrance to the field: a loud man with great red moustaches was lighting the naphtha flares which illumined garishly the giving and taking of money. Hissing, leaping, exploding perpetually in a series of tiny spits at the air around them, they transformed the crowd into monsters, throwing their shape out of all proportion, distorting their countenance with unnatural shadows, pulling their features uncouthly into prominence: turning the mysterious dusk into cheerful, bellowing night.
The two were in their places early, long before the show began. For a while they sat isolated, the cheaper seats filling rapidly with a happy, cat-calling crowd. Then, some ten minutes before the show was due to start, “the quality” began filing in: and, not more than five minutes late, the circus band climbed unsteadily into their bedizened waggon and filled the tent with sounds to match its lighting and its decoration: sounds which, somehow, were the last touch required to release in the expectant crowd the magic which only a circus can excite.
The circus was like all other circuses. It was even exactly like itself of the year before, and the year before that: but who cared? The same characters, the same feats, the same favourites—these were precisely what they had all come to see. They would not miss a single item of it. There was Captain Foster, the black who put his curly poll right into the lion’s mouth. There was Little May, who did a number of incredible (and some quite credible) exercises on the rings and trapeze. Dermot thought her very beautiful, invested her with a character of great queenliness and reserve, and enacted in his mind many romantic scenes between her and himself, for days afterwards. There was Pansy, the world’s most wonderful performing horse: Bimbo, the World’s Wisest Elephant: Mademoiselle Fazzetti, the lovely equestrienne: and, greatest of all, thos
e two favourites, whom Paddy, striking his knee, averred to be the best he ever seen: Young Hannaford, the bareback rider, and Johnny Quinn, Ireland’s Own Singing Clown. Young Hannaford does not now visit Dalkey: he has risen to the peaks of the circus world, and metropolitan audiences have rewarded him with that firm, insistent, yet reserved applause which ripples from tier to tier, till the whole house is alight: the steady, well-bred tribute of a cosmopolitan enthusiasm. Yet even that, the summit of his ambitions, could not kindle him to greater pleasure than he felt, in the little tent at Dalkey, as he leaped down sweating from his horse, to a raucous storm of joy. “More power to you, boy! More power! More power! “It took no urban skill to see the difference between the work of the brown, stocky, smiling figure and that of his colleagues. Light as a gull, swift and merry as a blackbird—failing at one terrific feat, smiling, putting the horse back—try again—Holy Mary !—seven hundred hearts slipping a beat—he’s done it! A great roar of joy, a roar of love, for the lad who has shown them victory. Victory ; that was what the circus stood for. Victory over difficult things, over aching muscles, over creaky thews: over ugliness, over despair: over the stubbornness of tame beasts, the ferocity of lions: victory over fear, over rags and dirt, over every human limitation. Try, try, the smiles of Young Hannaford and Little May seemed to encourage them: look, it is easy: try, and you will do it. Look, drawled Captain Foster of the flashing teeth and eyes, I only a big buck niggah, I go into de lion’s den, put my head in his mouf, you see, pah! Other lion he snarl, reach out paw, no get me. Ha ha! Human peoples bettah than lions, aftah all. You see! Oh, yes, sure, everything was easy, if ye only went at it the right way, with your heart up. “More power, Young Hannaford! More power to ye! More power.”
And Johnny Quinn—king of his troupe of clowns—what could you say to him? His retinue did not seem to Dermot as funny as the rest of the house knew beforehand they were going to be. At the very sight of them, Paddy went off into screams of laughter. “Errah, the Handy-Andies! Will ye look at the Handy-Andies !” he cried, and began to jeer at them delightedly. “Yeee-ow !” he yelled. “Yeee-ow !” as they ran about, tripping over large objects, endeavouring to assist in the movement of properties, and getting explosively slapped for their pains. When they had nothing better to do, they joined hands and gambolled ungracefully round in a ring. “Yee-ow! Yee-ow !” screamed the crowd. The clowns became greatly excited. They exaggerated all their antics, they howled and wailed, they guffawed with the vacant, loutish laughter of idiot boys. Paddy writhed in an ecstasy of delight.
No one noticed just when Johnny Quinn came in. He was suddenly there ; wandering about in the ring, paying no attention to the audience or anything else. No sooner had the crowd noticed him, than the rest of the clowns tumbled out of the arena, with a last baa-haaing and volley of slaps on the buttocks, leaving Johnny all alone. A sudden hush fell over the tent. Johnny did not appear to notice that either. He took off his pointed hat with an ungainly circular gesture of his arm, and held it in his two hands about the level of his chest. There was a sudden laborious burst of melody from the band, their music sounding crude and garish in the stillness, as they tried their best to hush it, to make it comely for the occasion. Then, with an unexpectedness which sent a cold shiver down Dermot’s spine, a voice was singing in the tent—a clear tenor, worn, but soft and true.
“Ha-as sorrow thy you-ung days shaded…”
The melancholy, graceful song rose like a flower against the incongruous background, the smoky, flare-lit tent, the rows and rows of faces: faces astonished, spellbound, empty of expression, their mood abruptly changed by a will and authority not their own. From the uncomprehending street boys squatted on the grass nearest the ring, staring up at him with open mouths and goggle eyes: from the arrested faces of the louts and larrikins, the bewildered faces of such as Paddy, to the vaguely uncomfortably, down-my-nose faces of “the quality”: all acknowledged and obeyed the power of the man who stood there alone, taking no notice of them, shutting his eyes, holding his pointed hat tight against his chest, singing in the voice that did not seem to come from him. After the stupefaction of the first verse, the audience stirred. They were warming to him. Has sorra thy young days shaded. Aye. That was a good tune.
“Has hope, like the bird in the story
That flitted from tree to tree. . .”
Oh, bedam, that was true. Who hadn’t the wish for something was just out of his reach? Is there ere a man satisfied?” Has hope been that bird to thee?” Line after line, the song bade them all bring their sorrows to a pool, and make common lamentation. Bring their sorrows to Johnny Quinn. Everyone had a sorrow of some kind. Here, bring them all, everything that ever went wrong on ye in your life. Come on, the whole lot of ye. The melancholy, impersonal feeling in the voice caught at their souls. Tears smarted in their eyes. They could barely keep still. They wanted to howl, like dogs.
“O child of misfortune, come hither,
I’ll weep with thee tear for tear.”
Silence—then, to release their emotions, they burst into frantic cheering, more as an excuse for themselves than a tribute to the singer. Again, again, again! they could not have enough of this, they cried to one another. But Johnny knew them. He was not fool enough to repeat himself. So the band struck up one of Paddy’s songs, “Down in Donegal,” and the great roar of relief that went up told Johnny how well he knew his people. After this, they could look at each other again. Wholeheartedly they joined in the chorus, leaving nothing for Johnny to do but watch them, grinning on one side of his face.
“So—p-lay up the music
And I will show yez all
The way we used to sing and dance
Down in Donegal.…”
“Oh boys, oh boys, that was grand,” said Paddy, as they swung out into gusts of cold night air. “That was great valya. That was grand.”
They headed for the metals, putting their heads down into the quick onsets of the wind. There were lights in the caravans. Dermot peered up for the one where the girl lived who had smiled at him. Yes, that was it. A dim light in the tiny window, like the others.
Paddy huddled down into his jacket, and drew a whistling breath through his teeth.
“It’ll rain to-morra,” he observed.
Chapter XXIX
There has been little about Eithne so far, for the good reason that in Dermot’s summer life she played no part at all. After the first years at home, when she had been fascinating as Baby, the two grew apart. There were four years between them, and, though it was Eithne’s one desire to accompany and resemble her brother, he had only occasional use for her society. It was the time when brothers really tended to despise their smaller sisters ; but, apart from questions of fashion, Dermot played by himself when he was at home, and was most of the day away at school. They fought, inevitably, since Eithne’s desire to resemble her brother led her to appropriate his toys when he was out of the way. As, in the resultant quarrels, grown-ups invariably took her part, he speedily learned a technique for quieting her before they arrived. Immediately the first piercing scream announced her defeat, Dermot would hold out his hand. The furious little girl hit it with all her might, whereupon Dermot feigned to be doubled up in the last extremities of pain. This sight afforded Eithne such rapture that she forgot her own sufferings: and by the time the avenger dashed breathless into the room, with the formula, “Whatever have you been doing to your poor little sister now?” the little sister was beaming in manifest delight.
Their friendly hours occurred usually on a Sunday after tea. Dermot’s talent for story-telling, exercised upon her without restraint—although, fearing fresh charges of “lying,” he swore her to secrecy—found a most appreciative listener. He persuaded Eithne that the spirits of a whole hagiology of wizards, witches, and elves could in succession inhabit his body: and the gift of mimicry helped him out. Their procedure was always the same.
“Well” ; he stood importantly in front of the nursery fire. “Who w
ould you like to see to-night?”
“I’d like to see Nikoota.”
Nikoota was a witch, old, brusque, but kind-hearted: one of the “bless me, child” school. Eithne liked her.
“D’you think you can get Nikoota?” she pleaded, anxiously.
“I think so,” Dermot replied, in the tone of a bank manager royally conceding an overdraft. “But I expect it’ll mean seeing Miboosha too.”
“Yes. I’m ’fraid so.”
“You see, you didn’t ask for him last time. And we don’t want to hurt his feelings, do we?”
“No.”
“Besides, Nikoota will notice, if you get out of seeing him twice running. She’s a bit sensitive about people not wanting to see him.”
Eithne sighed.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “I suppose he’d better come.”
Miboosha was the oafish and loutish husband of Nikoota. His manners were deplorable, his tongue was too big for his mouth, and he was exceedingly greedy. The pair had numerous children, but managed somehow to achieve greater reality and consistency than their family. Nikoota was said to inhabit occasionally a quarry hole a mile from the house. Eithne used to leave ginger biscuits there, which duly disappeared, and would find under her pillow charred acknowledgments. The fact that these were scribbled on torn pieces of paper with burnt edges was accepted as final and indubitable proof of their authenticity.
“Very well, then,” said Dermot. He drew himself up to his full height, and stuck out his chest. “You go out of the room and count a hundred, to give me time to get to the Pyramids.”
His real self, he explained, went to Egypt and stayed inside a Pyramid, in order that the wizard folk might make use of his body to appear to her.
The Garden Page 24