‘They’re your juices. I can tell.’
‘They’re mixed.’
‘We’re mingling.’
‘As though dying.’
‘But you,’ he accused, ‘keep holding on to yourself. Reconstituting yourself.’
‘Well, one has to, doesn’t one?’
‘To an extent,’ James admitted, ‘I suppose. Yes.’
‘I mean it’s not much of a basis – this isn’t. For anything?’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Plans.’
‘You mean it’s outside time?’
‘Do I?’
‘What?’
‘Mean that?’
‘Well isn’t it?’ James asked. ‘Like that Irish myth. The one about the timeless land, Tir na n’óg to which the beautiful Niav lured the warrior, Ossian. He never felt time pass while he was with her but when he came away he found he had aged beyond recognition. That could be about sex. I’ll bet it is about sex.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t go on about bloody fairy stories that I knew when I was three.’
‘What’s the matter?’
She jumped out of bed. ‘I have to put myself together,’ she said. ‘I have to go home now and feed the family. I have to function. I don’t just mention them to impress you. They exist. I deal with them. Daily. How do I look?’ she asked, dabbing at her face. ‘I haven’t time to re-make up. I look a right mess, don’t I?’
‘You look great.’
‘What’s that word you used? Deliquescent? I look that? There’s lipstick on my eyelid and mascara on my chin. Oh shit. I can’t walk through the lobby like this. I look like a tart and a whore and a Da Kooning woman. I am a tart and a whore.’
‘We can’t go on meeting like this.’
‘No.’
‘That was a joke. Meant to be laughed at. Jokes are a mode of communication peculiar to humans.’
‘That leaves me out. I’m a prehensile piece of meat.’
‘Grainne, don’t cry. It’ll make you look worse.’
‘I can’t stand it,’ she said, ‘the rushing back and forth. The lies. I haven’t even time to wash. I smell of you. I’m afraid they’ll smell you off me.’
‘I know. I’m sorry.’
‘You can’t know. It’s two realities. Different. Demanding. You just stay here or go talk to Corny Kinlen who wouldn’t notice if you smelled of pure jism. My lot depend on me. I can’t hurt them.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sorry too. I am. I’m spoiling things. I’m unravelling. Like my tights. Which are unravelled. Oh hell. Now how do I look?’
‘Better than you think. It’s more expression than anything else. Think of the price of bacon. Tighten your lips. Great. You look like a Reverend Mother.’
‘Bye.’
‘Bye.’
Outside the hotel the streets were smeared with slime. Blue mist eroded the tyres of parked cars. A parking attendant rushed forward for his tip, breathing tatters and streamers of hot breath into cold air. He smelled of tea and bad teeth and in no way deserved a tip, since the street where the cars were parked was public and his position and peaked cap entirely self-assigned.
‘A wet aul’ evening, Mrs O’Malley,’ he said, terrifying her by his knowledge of her name and conceivably of her activities during the last two hours. ‘I’ll guide you out,’ he promised, agitating his arms as though she had been manoeuvring a jet-plane. ‘Easy does it. Yer stuck in a bit tight. Pull on the left now. Easy. Left, left, I had a good job and I left.’ Could the tea have made him drunk? ‘How’s Mr O’Malley?’ he inquired.
‘Grand,’ she said, unsure whether he had seen her – where? – with Michael or Owen Roe. He had an anonymous working-class face: red, bunched, prematurely old. She got out in spite of him and gave him fifty pence for conscience’ sake. Unemployment in the country was rocketing. She felt herself a parasite.
12
Judith prowled through Kathleen’s bedroom, sniffing at underthings scented by lavender bags. In a drawer, she came on romances about women who lingered in conservatories and were wooed by dark, rakish young men.
Kathleen hadn’t a pick of sense.
A non-swimmer in the flood of life, she would only reach shore in some strong man’s arms. Judith decided to sound out Sparky Driscoll. He had been paying marked attention to her sister which, if he knew what he was up to, was all well and good.
Her chance came one day when he brought some American papers for the Da who was busy in the pub. Judith said she was just off to give the dog a run on the beach and, as she’d known he would, he asked could he come.
Bran, the setter, coiled his spine first one way and then the other at such speed that the movements seemed to merge in a flouncing figure of eight: a double dog. He moaned with expectancy.
‘Why don’t you let him off the leash?’
‘He’d chase sheep,’ she told Sparky. ‘There’s method in our rules,’ she explained, and frowned at his hallooing laugh.
However, when they reached the strand she released the dog.
Sparky twirled a stick and threw it out to sea. Bran jumped in after it. His bronze coat flashed like a needle ruffling lace; arrowy, his head nosed through spume. Sparky had a way with animals. Also with Kathleen. Judith took it upon herself to describe Owen’s courtship of her sister. It had been serious and Sparky ought to be let know.
‘I suppose you heard,’ she told him, ‘that Owen was going on to be a priest? A Jesuit? He was shut in a seminary from the start of the Great War, in the middle of a bog, miles from anywhere, and completely cut off. They were expected to detach their minds from the world. They didn’t even get war news. Then his mother died and he was let out to attend her funeral. He met Kathleen at the wake and it was all up with his being a priest.’
‘Just like that?’
‘No. He went back in but, when it came to the point, he knew he didn’t want to be ordained. His father was heartbroken; it was to have been a great feather in his cap to have a son a Jesuit. Owen is brilliant,’ Judith informed deliberately. ‘His father blamed Kathleen, as you may imagine. But it was politics too that got him out. He began to envy the lads who were doing the fighting. He wanted to do his bit and be part of what was going on.’
‘Why did he go into the seminary in the first place?’
‘It was just before the Great War,’ she told him. ‘There was a great strike here which became a lock-out and the people were starving. A lot of people started singing the “Red Flag” and Owen turned his thoughts to heaven.’
‘Is he good-looking? Handsome?’
‘I couldn’t say. I don’t notice that sort of thing.’
‘But your sister does?’
Judith shrugged with annoyance. ‘She could be misled,’ she conceded. ‘People here,’ she told the Yank, ‘can judge a girl harshly for things you mightn’t pay attention to. Kathleen’s engaged to a prisoner.’ She looked at him hard. ‘It’s a small place. They have nothing to do but talk.’
The sun had gone down. The dog, loping behind them, was reduced by half because of the way his damp coat clung to his body.
Sparky looked at her thoughtfully. ‘What a severe creature you can be!’ He didn’t sound angry, perhaps a bit awed? She hoped she had made him see where his duty lay. ‘You’re well named. Do you know the story of your namesake, the sacrificial Judith of the Bible?’
‘We don’t read the Old Testament much,’ she told him. ‘It’s not encouraged.’
‘Well, read that bit,’ he advised. ‘It’s in the Book of Kings.’
‘I’m going back,’ she said. ‘It will be dark in no time.’
Sparky turned when she did. ‘Why did you tell me all this?’ he wanted to know. ‘Do you think I’m in love with your sister?’
She had decided by now that he wasn’t. She couldn’t give Kathleen away though, by admitting that she seemed soft on him.
‘Oh law,’ she said in a jeering voice. ‘In love, is it? I was only
telling you that she was known as his girl from the minute he was back wearing a collar and tie. There’s nothing here for a girl like Kathleen but marriage,’ she added anxiously, fearing that she might have failed to make her point or perhaps made it too well. She blushed with vexation but reflected that it was too dark by now for him to see this.
‘Do you think I should try and take her away from him?’
‘Is it me?’
‘So you say things for no reason?’
‘Look, you asked to come for a walk. Owen’s name came up. So I …’
‘Warned me off?’
She could hear the humour in his voice, could imagine curls of laughter round his lips. ‘Listen,’ she appealed, ‘I think you don’t know the effect you have on people here. Life has been hard: narrow, and then you come in flourishing a feeling of–I don’t know how to describe it, really: easiness, perhaps, and the comforts of America.’
‘You make me sound like the devil.’
‘It is like the devil tempting people. Look,’ again her voice was weak with appeal. She felt ashamed of having been too harsh with him who, after all, knew not what he did. ‘Let’s talk about something else.’
Sparky laughed. ‘What?’ he teased.
‘I don’t know. I’m all muddled now.’
‘The fighting?’
‘Oh,’ she shrugged it off. ‘It’s over now. What’s the use?’
‘Is that how people feel? That they’d as soon forget it?’
‘You tell me. It’s what you’re here to find out, isn’t it?’
Sparky picked up a piece of seaweed shaped like a cat o’ nine tails, whirled and threw it for the dog. Setter and seaweed were the same colour in the dimming light and the long droop of weed looked as though Bran were carrying a second tail in his mouth. Sparky took it back from him and threw it into the dark.
‘So Kathleen’s feelings could swing the other way too?’ he asked. ‘My way.’
‘Oh the conceit!’
‘Don’t you think she’d be better off with a man who had some conceit than with one who bolted for a seminary because the world looked hopeless?’
‘Have you no faith in spiritual values?’ Judith asked seriously. ‘What sort of Catholics are you in America?’
Sparky ran a finger down her spine. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’m not after your sister.’
‘Well, so long as you don’t compromise her.’
‘Oh grandmother, what big words you use!’ He was laughing out of the darkness. Then she felt his arm around her neck, her chin was tilted and he was rubbing his rough, male face against hers, comfortingly, as though he had been some harmless animal creature, the red setter perhaps or a horse whose furry long nose was nuzzling hers.
Judith was numbed: astounded into submission by the tongue sliding dementedly between her lips. Was he mad? She wanted to laugh and push him away and instead she felt her lips parting. She felt as though a warm current of water or some unknown, insidious element had taken hold of her. Her body was behaving wildly. Were they both mad? Was this concupiscence? The absurdity of what they were doing was foremost in her mind but her mind seemed to have become detached from her body, like a kite whose string snaps on a windy day. It was he who drew away.
‘Never been kissed before, have you?’ said his casual voice. ‘Well, that’s what it’s like. You ought to know, you know, before you become a marriage broker.’
*
Patsy wouldn’t believe it. Not of his boys. The cops were down on him. Lazy. He had their number and number was what they worked by: so many arrests to the working hour: so many chats with solid citizens: ‘Thought I’d draw your attention, sir, to the side door’s being weak, a temptation to the hooligan element. Better be sure than sorry.’ – ‘Oh indeed, officer!’ – ‘The youngsters that’s going nowadays …’ – ‘Need a bit of the old discipline!’ – ‘Aye.’
Give Patsy a tune and he’d sing it. What were cops but running dogs for the boorjwa element which, God help us, was on the up and up.
‘I’ve warned you before now, Flynn,’ says the pink peeler, ‘some of the lads you have here are next door to delinquents, and the super doesn’t think you’re a good influence on them. The Christian Brothers beyond in Blackrock have you down for the trick was played on them last Christmas.’
‘Is it me?’ Patsy had gone on doing what he’d been doing when the cop had knocked at the door: cleaning his boots. He held a boot between himself and the cop’s face and spat on it with a thick, plopping gobbet of spit. Then rubbed this into the leather.
‘That’s what they say, anyway.’ The cop stared past Patsy.
‘Libel, calumny and detraction. Where’s your proof?’
‘If we had any we’d a had you summonsed.’
‘So you haven’t.’
‘You know we haven’t.’
The Christian Bros were in the process of educating half the boys in the Youth Club – if educating was what you chose to call what they did. Patsy had been to school to them himself and had their measure. But they’d got their come-uppance last Christmas and Patsy wasn’t letting on even in the privacy of his mind whether he’d been in on the joke or not. In gaol, years ago, they’d tried to get him to tell on his mates and he still dreamed that he’d done it without realizing. He’d wake up in a sweat. You got so you tried to lock your thoughts up in a box inside a box inside your head. To get back to the sorting out that was done on the CBs, ha ha, didn’t one of the swank restaurants in town ring them up on the twenty-fourth of December last to say the banquet for the graduating pupils was all laid on as directed by Brother Superior with roast chicken, two veg., lashings of drink, and taxis to collect the guests, all set but for a detail or two that the manager would like to discuss with Brother Superior. Well, the old monk who took the call nearly swallowed his tongue. Banquet, says he, spitting like fat in a fire. Graduating what? Taxis? Chicken? Brother Superior was as tight as the skin on your elbow and it was no part of the Brothers’ policy to spoil their pupils, past, present or to come. The only lashings they gave out were from leather straps. Could Brother Superior be losing his grip?
‘Mistake, mistake,’ the old Brother Porter had barked into the phone, mad with anxiety lest he somehow get blamed.
‘There’s no mistake,’ says the manager, beginning to think maybe there was and that the price of perishables could be docked from his Christmas bonus. ‘Brother Superior in person ordered the whole thing by phone. I spoke to him myself. “Nothing but the best, Mr Doherty,” he told me. “It’s our centenary, you know.”’
‘Who told you, Mr Doherty?’ says Brother Porter, ‘a voice on the phone? I’d say you’d be responsible for any mistakes, impersonations or the like.’ The old fellow was sharpening up under the pressure of fear that the Order might have to fork out.
Patsy’s stomach pained with the laughing when he thought of the story. He’d had it from all sides. One of the boys’ fathers was in the taxi-business and hadn’t seen a red penny for his wasted time. Oh, you could back the monks any day against a businessman: two predators up against each other, snake and scorpion, fox v. crane.
‘Responsibility,’ says the policeman who’d been watching Patsy grin into the leather of his boot, ‘that’s what anyone who’s given charge of the young should have. The Brothers are a fine body of men.’
‘Ach,’ said Patsy, polishing hard, ‘what was it but a joke? Good clean fun?’
‘Not this time,’ said the cop. ‘This time it’s no joke.’ He looked around him. ‘We could have this place closed down,’ he remarked.
Patsy didn’t believe him. The Captain had more power than the cop and the cop knew it. He let his eye slide past Patsy’s. Fox v. crane, thought Patsy and picked up the second boot. He could feel the copper’s dislike. He was sensitive to that. Had been feeling it all his life, hardening himself against it. It was something about him, something he blamed on his childhood. He’d always been slow physically, no good on the sports field, a
nd then there was that something – what? – about him that made people snigger behind his back and pick him last when they were making up teams.
When they were boys, Patsy’s brother would complain to their Ma about having to drag Patsy around with him like a tin can tied to a dog’s tail and their Ma would tell him to watch his lip and that it was God’s will if poor Patsy shwishwishwish, whispering and making faces behind Patsy’s back: ‘Sh!’
Even when he joined the IRA, which he did when it was at a low ebb and recruiting had fallen off, there had been some of that. He’d developed a sixth sense for it, so that he was sharper than the whisperers and knew what was in their minds before they did themselves. He’d known they’d give him a dangerous job because they considered him expendable. He hadn’t cared. He’d been glad to show the stuff he had in him. Maybe in another era he’d have been a hero and a leader? He’d read a lot in his life and had a big vocabulary. Even the Captain remarked on it. ‘Patsy’s fond of jaw-breakers,’ he’d say. That was his joke.
The cop read aloud the titles of books on Patsy’s shelf, biding his time or pretending to bide it so as to panic Patsy.
No Country for Young Men Page 28
