by Edna O'Brien
“What curse?” he kept saying, as if I were a witch or something.
“It must be the food,” he said. He’d pushed the twin beds together and everything.
“Don’t you know about women?” I said. He just looked at me with his big, stupid, wide-open mouth. He didn’t know. What sort of mother had he? He said to leave his mother out of it, that she was a good woman and baked the best bread in Ireland. I said there was more to life than baking good bread. He got vicious then. And went down to the bar. The upshot was that we didn’t sleep together that night, and when we did a few nights later it was pretty uneventful. For me, that is. He said what was wrong with me? I said it wasn’t as simple as he thought, that for women hand manipulation, coaxing, et cetera had to come into it. He said it made us sound like a bleeding motor engine. But as I saw it he was the one who treated us as an engine. If things go wrong at the start they often stay wrong. He knew no other way and neither did I. Birds of a feather … As time went on, he minded that I wasn’t getting preg—interceding to the Holy Spirit, we were—and he’d say to me in front of people, “Baba, you’ll have to go to a doctor and have yourself seen to.” And then, in a drunker state he’d look at some little man who was the father of five and say, “I’m not half the man you are.” I don’t know what was up with him. I could never figure out whether it was his mother, or indoctrination from one of those flogging Christian brothers, or had he been with sheep and chickens as a kid and got all his associations, as Kate would put it, mixed up. It changed him, though. He got very rough in his ways and would say “Cut it out” if I said he ought to see a doctor and discuss not being preg. He took a great interest in crime and murder and filed the really juicy ones. I could see that bullfighting would be tops on the agenda.
“I’ll ask thee a riddle,” said Cash, looking into my face. He says “thee” to get attention. I must have been miles away.
“Long legs, crooked thighs, small head, and no eyes?” he said. I’m supposed to be as surprised as hell. He’s a pure slob really, because I taught him that riddle, and he expected me to be dope enough not to know it. I answered wrong. I suppose I liked him. I could see that his father would go mad to lose him. Anyone would. His mother came in just as he was telling me the answer.
“A tongs,” he was saying, his front teeth square and very white, but one chipped at the edge.
“No one is sincere.” She was wringing her hands.
“He’s coming on a white horse,” I said, knowing the worst. She shook her head and repeated the conversation to me, verbatim. It went more or less like this:
“Did he ring you?” she said to her Duncan.
“No, should he?”
“I’ve just left him; it was awful.”
“That’s terrible, Kate.”
“He’ll be ringing you, Duncan. He found your letters and everything.”
“Good God, I wouldn’t have wished that.”
“Well, it’s happened now. He’s furious.”
“I wouldn’t wish him an hour’s, nay, a second’s unhappiness.” “Duncan, will you help me? I’m desperate.”
“But of course. You must think first of him, after all it is between him and you. Go back, talk it over, iron it out.”
That more or less concluded it. He begged her to ring him next morning, but we knew that he’d have some hatchet-voiced secretary laid on to tell Kate some boring and familiar lie, like that he was in conference.
“Time is running out,” she said, looking straight at the grandfather clock. Talk about being worried. I was a wreck myself, with Frank due any minute.
“Premises,” I said. “We’ll have to get you some.” I knew of a sanitary shop on the King’s Road where they leave the baths out all night, and I said she could rip up there, sleep in a bath, and put a sign up: KEEP OUT. GONORRHEA. She’d be safe, like a titless woman. Do you think she’d laugh? Not a glimmer.
“I could book you in a hotel,” I said. I hated to say, “You can’t stay here.”
“I’m in your way. I’m a nuisance,” she said. Damn right, she was. I’m a pure phony—I heard myself say, “No, but eventually you’d like a place of your own.”
“Yes,” she said, “I’d like a studio with white walls and pictures, and a garden smothered in hedge.”
I thought, If she goes on like that I won’t have to worry, there’ll be a team of doctors in here to certify her.
“But for tonight,” I said, “I’ll get you both a hotel.”
“No,” she said, clinging to me, “we can’t go out; he’ll take Cash. We must stay here, we must.”
“Me like it here,” the kid was saying, like a skilled blackmailer. He was flicking through our leather-bound encyclopedia—nothing, Frank says, like a self-educated man—having demolished a tin of cocktail snacks.
“Now don’t worry. Leave it to me,” I said, calming her down. Madman, I am.
The bloody phone rang again.
“Hello, Eug,” I said to stop him in his tracks. Lucky it wasn’t him, because of course I gave us away rightly. It was Frank to say he’d met a bunch of very interesting people, and I was to get my Dior on and come on, because he was taking us all to a new restaurant.
“Super, darling,” I said. That must have shook him, because since the argument over my navel I haven’t associated with his mates.
“When and where?” I said. At least ‘twould keep him out of the house till late, and Brady could hide until morning. I wrote down the details and told him to take care, which was strange coming from me. Normally I’m praying he’ll fall off a scaffold.
She made me go around the house with a crowbar closing all the windows. She said she didn’t think she’d live the night, and even the kid was beginning to fret.
“Listen, listen,” she’d say every time a board creaked or the boiler let out some sort of noise. It was like being at a suspense picture, only worse. Plenty of human interest! Was I glad to go out! We made an arrangement that I’d telephone once, put the telephone down, and then dial again immediately. Otherwise she was to answer nothing. I conducted her to a room at the top of the house where Frank kept easels and things since the time he had the urge to be a painter.
“I wouldn’t wish you an hour’s, nay, a second’s unhappiness,” I said, trying to be funny, as I put a pile of blankets, sheets, and pillows into her arms. She looked about eighty, and the kid had his face to the wall, sniffling. Had she landed us in a mess!
“I’m meeting men—I’ll get you fixed up with one,” I said. She put on the droopy, look-upon-me-with-pity face. But boy, did she destine our future!
I got there in my gold shoes and the Dior dress with the enormous rosette on the back. It transpired that he’d met an actor that day—nearly ran over him in the street—and they got chatting and the actor introduced him to a poet, and the poet to a drummer, and the drummer to a Jew, and they had all forgathered for grub. The locals in the pub nudged themselves when I took off my coat. Because of the place the rose was positioned.
“Meet my wife, my wife,” Frank kept saying.
There were two other women in the party: a blonde with the roots badly done and a very quiet-spoken American girl. The actor had just come from work and Frank was fussing over him and buying quadruple brandies. It was the first actor he’d ever met, for God’s sake.
“He’s a good actor, keep him happy, keep him entertained,” Frank kept saying to me.
In my experience actors have a hernia if anyone else does the entertaining. I sang dumb except to say “Chin-chin” at each round.
“I must congratulate you on your taste,” he said to Frank, meaning that I was dishy. I thought it a bit of a neck, but I let it go, because I was trying to edge my way across to talk to some real men. The Jew looked interesting and sort of wronged, so did a small pale boy—you couldn’t call him a man even though he was about twenty-five or -six—with a girlish face. Dead wrong for a man, of course, but still … His complexion was blue, as if he’d been left out nig
hts when he was young, and his lips had no color, and his hands were about as big as a child’s. I never got near him because Frank said the actor was hungry and the muses must be fed. You know that sort of faker-than-fake talk. Before leaving he stuffed pound notes into a couple of collection boxes that were on the counter.
“Poor hungry devils,” he said, meaning neglected dogs or kids or whatever he was financing. Charity! He and his brother sack men on Christmas Eve and rehire them on St. Stephen’s Day to escape holiday pay. He dropped about ten quid in all.
The restaurant was so new that there was no one else there except us. That sort of shook Frank, but the poet said we’d make it swing, so we began to troop around and pretend we were about two hundred people. The pale boy drummed on the tablecloth. I reckoned he was the drummer.
“Sit, lads, sit,” Frank said, the old accent getting bog-thick with drink and excitement.
The place itself was very posh, with built-in sand dunes and cacti and water sprays. Like a bloody jungle, if you want to know. I could see Frank taking stock of it all. For our interior decor. We were in our rented-flower era. A firm sent a man around every Monday morning to take away a big, vulgar display of plastic flowers and replace it with another. Identical. I suppose they swapped them around from house to house. He was planning to hire a dance floor, too, since the day he saw a van go by which said HIRE YOUR OWN DANCE FLOOR AND BE SMART.
“Are they lilies?” he said, looking at some chrysanthemums.
“Quite,” said the actor. An ignoramus, too.
“Give me wax roses any old time,” I said. I was dead drunk, mainly from nerves.
“Do you like gardening?” the actor said to me. God Almighty, what grouping! I was beside him again.
“When I was in the convent,” said I—when tight I get reminiscent—”we had to till a patch of garden—life is a garden, old chap—and I used to steal flowers from other girls’ plots and stick them in my own. I didn’t even plant them properly!”
Damn actor didn’t wait to hear the end of the story.
“Let’s have some of the old Mateus, amigo,” he was saying to Frank, coming on all Continental. You know, greengrocer’s son from Wakeley with his eye on a knighthood.
“What play are you in?” said I. I knew if ‘twas posh we’d have heard.
“Is it Shakespeare?” said Frank. He knows about nothing else.
“Actually,” said the actor, and then started up a fit of coughing and stammering and took five minutes to tell us he was in a thing called “Something, Something, Rubbish.” At that minute the poet cocked his ear. “Oh,” said the poet, who’d timed it beautifully, the way spiteful people do, “he is the hind legs of a good old British horse.”
‘I’m the front legs,” said the actor, going all blubbery. “You are a very naughty blond Christopher.” I knew by the way the one smirked, and the other sulked, that they lived together and that the American girl was wasting her bosoms raving away to the poet about iambic pentameter, when she’d be better off at home in Minnesota having dull old fun. They were ill-matched: the actor was long and thin with a sort of “hold my hand, Mammy” expression, and the poet was wiry, with a hard, hungry, jaundiced face. For some reason I thought of Kate wringing her boring hands out, and it occurred to me that they might have her as a lodger. I knew that queers like to have a woman around for status so long as they don’t have to lay a finger on her, and boy, was she straight out of some chastity unit.
“What are we all having?” the actor said. He stuttered ever so nicely. I expect he went to that school where you are thought sensitive if you stutter.
“I don’t know,” I said. The menu was like the Magna Carta.
“We’ll have soup, lads,” Frank said. I tried to catch his eye to get him off the soup jazz. He thinks it’s the poshest thing out. He knows it isn’t, but he thinks it is, because they only had it once or twice when he was a kid. I made a face at him.
“Stop worrying how much it’s going to cost,” said he to me, real loud. That’s what I mean about him getting treacherous.
In the end we ordered oysters and snails and swank stuff. While the food was coming someone said that someone ought to tell a joke.
“Yes, sport,” said the Australian. I forgot to say there was an Australian among us, and every time he opened his mouth it was to tell some dirty story, and the actor would intervene and say, “Ladies present.” Pure routine jokes about bishops and dirty postcards.
“You should see your face,” said the drummer, leaning across the table to me. I knew I looked bored. He said he liked my story about the flower garden. He said it was anarchy and he liked anarchy.
“Plenty more where that came from,” I said. He was giving me the eye all right. It was ages since I’d had a fling.
“Don’t look so furious,” he said. It was then I missed the Jew. He’d quietly left us.
“You don’t know anybody who has a studio to let?” I said, leaning, too, to meet the drummer halfway across the table. We both had our elbows up, shutting out the others. I didn’t go on about the white walls and privet hedge bit in case he thought I was nuts.
“I may do,” he said. He had a low conniving voice. Dead sexy.
The waiter was putting down plates of snails and various consignments of cutlery, and Frank was telling everyone not to give a minute’s thought to the cost, while we all decided on steak au poivre. You know how it is in a big restaurant, one person says steak and they all say steak. The blind leading the blind. The headwaiter was pressing us to have the plate of the day, but we were wise to that. No chicken gizzards for us. He looked mummified. Before that Frank had to bribe him with a fiver to admit the poet, in a boiler suit. As far as I’m concerned it’s much more ridiculous to be bribing waiters than to own a presentable suit, but you know the length some people will go to, to be thought rebellious.
“A studio for yourself?” the drummer said to me, real interested. I suppose I looked rich, with my Dior and my rings and gear.
“For a friend,” said I, hoping Frank wouldn’t hear. I knew I should ring Kate but kept postponing it.
“We’ll talk about it,” said the drummer, while Frank lifted the wine out of the ice bucket and drenched the hands of the two who were next to him.
“How marvelous,” said the American girl. We were getting the actor’s account of how he lived on kippers for three years when he toured the provinces. I know that story backward. If it was true of even five percent of the people who tell it, there wouldn’t be one kipper left in the world. The poet rounded it off with some corny verse, and Frank started to clap.
“How did you get to be a poet?” said he, real awed. “Did you enter for a competition?”
Well, of course, everyone began to laugh and Frank didn’t know why.
“I would have thought it started that way,” said he, making a bigger fool of himself.
“Your approach, if I may say so, is distinctly amateur,” said the poet, and Frank knew there was an insult there. He got flushed the way he does before he starts a fight. God, I thought, the lilies and furniture and stuff are in for a bit of reorientation now when he wrecks the joint. I didn’t care because the drummer and I were playing what the actor would call “footsie” under the table, and having a rare time. He began it. I felt this thing on my leg and I thought it was a mouse and nearly screamed, but he stopped me with a look. I have this daft thing about mice. See them out of the corner of my eye when they’re not there. Pure lunacy, but I do. It was his toe. I wouldn’t let him go too far, of course. I knew that tune about being hard to get, et cetera. We were both chewing away like fiends and didn’t as much as look at each other. The old chairs were creaking under us, but no one heard because the actor was trying to get Frank and the poet to shake on it and be friends. Boy, was he a coward.
“Yes,” the American girl was saying to my drummer, “I’m all right now, I’ve got the world by the short hairs.” He was smiling away and she thought it was for her, but I co
uld see the little flush in his cheeks.
“That’s why I can never ignore it,” the actor said to me, all of a sudden.
“What?” said I, thinking he had gauged the proceedings.
“The telephone,” said he. “My dear old mother is alive, she lives on solvents now, she is likely to die any minute.”
That sort of brought me back to life, that and his asking me what pudding I would like. There are people in the world and you know they are going to say pudding and tell you about their mothers living on solvents.
“No pudding,” said I, sort of flat and lonesome now, because I’d dismissed the old toe before things got too runny.
“I’m altering,” said the actor, and I thought, Why does he have to get confidential with me over dinner? But in fact he was telling the waiter that he’d have a choc ice instead of vanilla.
“I’m serious about this studio,” I said to the drummer. He looked sort of huffed now, as if he mightn’t go on with it.
The rest of the evening was uneventful, except that Frank fell asleep before the coffee came and they all nearly died of shock in case they’d have to pay. They got him awake with shaking him, and boy, did the poet hand out a lot of baloney about the best way to make friends with a good man was to have a row with him.
It worked out easy for me to give the drummer a lift in my Jag because Frank was taking the others in his. That American girl came, too. She kept calling the drummer Harvey all the time. We dropped her and then went on to his place.
“Do you want to see the studio?” he said when we got there. We’d been talking real cool in the car.
We went up some flights of stairs—me holding on to the shaky railing—and the linoleum gave out after the third flight. I thought of Brady making a big song and dance about this, saying how environment affects the mind and so forth.
“It’s your studio,” I said as we went in, and he switched on a lamp, showing the big room, a tossed bed, a chest of drawers with no handles, two drums, and colored pictures of nudes pinned to the wall.
