‘That sixth class in 1933 was a great class, Master.’ It was Johnny Connor’s voice, the saw mechanic. ‘I was never much good at the Irish, but I was a terror at the maths, especially the Euclid.’
I shivered as I listened under the church wall. Nineteen thirty-three was the year before I was born.
‘You were a topper, Johnny. You were a topper at the maths,’ I heard the Master’s voice. It was full of authority. He seemed to have no sense at all that he was in danger.
‘Tommy Morahan that went to England was the best of us all in that class,’ another voice took up, a voice I wasn’t able to recognize.
‘He wasn’t half as good as he imagined he was. He suffered from a swelled head,’ Johnny Connor said.
‘Ye were toppers, now. Ye were all toppers,’ the Master said diplomatically.
‘One thing sure is that you made a great job of us, Master. You were a powerful teacher. I remember to this day everything you told us about the Orinoco River.’
‘It was no trouble. Ye had the brains. There are people in this part of the country digging ditches who could have been engineers or doctors or judges or philosophers had they been given the opportunity. But the opportunity was lacking. That was all that was lacking.’ The Master spoke again with great authority.
‘The same again all round, Charlie,’ a voice ordered. ‘And a large brandy for the Master.’
‘Still, we kept sailing, didn’t we, Master? That’s the main thing. We kept sailing.’
‘Ye had the brains. The people in this part of the country had powerful brains.’
‘If you had to pick one thing, Master, what would you put those brains down to?’
‘Will you hush now! The Sergeant wouldn’t even have to be passing outside to hear yous. Soon he’ll be hearing yous down in the barracks,’ Charlie hissed.
There was a lull again in the voices in which a coin fell and seemed to roll across the floor.
‘Well, the people with the brains mostly stayed here. They had to. They had no choice. They didn’t go to the cities. So the brains was passed on to the next generation. Then there’s the trees. There’s the water. And we’re very high up here. We’re practically at the source of the Shannon. If I had to pick on one thing more than another, I’d put it down to that. I’d attribute it to the high ground.’
Like All Other Men
He watched her for a long time among the women across the dancefloor in the half-light of the afternoon. She wasn’t tall or beautiful, but he couldn’t take his eyes away. Some of the women winced palpably and fell back as they were passed over. Others stood their ground and stared defiantly back. She seemed quietly indifferent, taking a few steps back into the thinning crowd each time she found herself isolated on the floor. When she was asked to dance, she behaved exactly the same. She flashed no smile, gave no giddy shrug of triumph to betray the tension of the wait, the redeemed vanity.
Nurses, students, actors and actresses, musicians, some prostitutes, people who worked in restaurants and newspapers, nightwatchmen, a medley of the old and very young, came to these afternoon dances. Michael Duggan came every Saturday and Sunday. He was a teacher of Latin and history in a midlands town forty miles from Dublin, and each Friday he came in on the evening bus to spend the whole weekend round the cinemas and restaurants and dancehalls of O’Connell Street. A year before he had been within a couple of months of ordination.
When he did cross to ask her to dance, she followed him with the same unconcern on to the floor as she had showed just standing there. She danced beautifully, with a strong, easy freedom. She was a nurse in the Blanchardstown Chest Hospital. She came from Kerry. Her father was a National Teacher near Killarney. She had been to these afternoon dances before, but not for a couple of years. Her name was Susan Spillane.
‘I suppose everybody asks you these questions,’ he said.
‘The last one did anyhow.’ She smiled. ‘You’d better tell me about yourself as well.’ She had close curly black hair, an intelligent face, and there was something strange about her eyes.
‘Are your eyes two different colours?’
‘One eye is brown, the other grey. I may have got the grey eye by mistake. All the others in the house have brown eyes.’
‘They are lovely.’ The dance had ended. He had let her go. It was not easy to thread a way through these inanities of speech.
A girl could often stand unnoticed a long time, and then it was enough for one man to show an interest to start a rush. When the next two dances were called, though he moved quickly each time, he was beaten to her side. The third dance was a ladies’ choice, and he withdrew back into the crowd of men. She followed him into the crowd, and this time he did not let her slip away when the dance ended. It was a polite convention for women to make a show of surprise when invited for a drink, of having difficulty making up their minds, but she said at once she’d love a drink, and asked for whiskey.
‘I hardly drink at all, but I like the burnt taste,’ and she sipped the small measure neat for the two hours that were left of the dance. ‘My father loves a glass of whiskey late at night. I’ve often sat and had a sip with him.’
They danced again and afterwards came back to the table, sipped the drinks, sat and talked, and danced again. Time raced.
‘Do you have to go on night duty tonight?’ he asked as it moved near the time when the band would stand and play the anthem. He was afraid he would lose her then.
‘No. I’m on tomorrow night.’
‘Maybe you’d eat something with me this evening?’
‘I’d like that.’
There was still some daylight left when they came from the dancehall, and they turned away from it into a bar. They both had coffee. An hour later, when he knew it was dark outside, he asked awkwardly, ‘I suppose it’s a bit outrageous to suggest a walk before we look for a place to eat,’ his guilty smile apologizing for such a poor and plain admission of the sexual.
‘I don’t see why not.’ She smiled. ‘I’d like a walk.’
‘What if it’s raining?’ He gave them both the excuse to draw back.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ she said.
It was raining very lightly, the street black and shining under the lamps, but she didn’t seem to mind the rain, nor that the walk led towards the dark shabby streets west of O’Connell Street. There they found a dark doorway and embraced. She returned his kisses with the same directness and freedom with which she had danced, but people kept continually passing in the early evening dark, until they seemed to break off together to say, ‘This is useless,’ and arm in arm to head back towards the light.
‘It’s a pity we haven’t some room or place of our own,’ he said.
‘Where did you spend last night?’ she asked.
‘Where I stay every weekend, a rooming house in North Earl Street, four beds to the room.’
It was no place to go. A dumb man in the next bed to his had been very nearly beaten up the night before. The men who took the last two beds had been drinking. They woke the dumb man while they fumbled for the light, and he sat up in his bed and gestured towards the partly open window as soon as the light came on. Twice he made the same upward movement with his thumb: he wanted them to try to close the window because of the cold wind blowing in. The smaller of the two men misinterpreted the gesture and with a shout fell on the man. They realized that he was dumb when he started to squeal. She didn’t laugh at the story.
‘It’s not hard to give the wrong signals in this world.’
‘We could go to a hotel,’ she said. He was stopped dead in his tracks. ‘That’s if you want to, and only – only – if I can pay half.’
‘Which hotel?’
‘Are you certain you’d want that? It doesn’t matter to me.’ She was looking into his face.
‘There’s nothing I want more in the world, but where?’ He stood between desire and fear.
‘The Clarence across the river is comfortable and fairly in
expensive.’
‘Will we see if we can get a room before we eat or afterwards?’ He was clumsy with diffidence in the face of what she had proposed.
‘We might as well look now, but are you certain?’
‘I’m certain. And you?’
‘As long as you agree that I can pay half,’ she said.
‘I agree.’
They sealed one another’s lips and crossed the river by the Halfpenny Bridge.
‘Do you think we will have any trouble?’ he asked as they drew close to the hotel.
‘We’ll soon find out. I think we both look respectable enough,’ and for the first time he thought he felt some nervousness in her handclasp, and it made him feel a little easier.
There was no trouble. They were given a room with a bath on the second floor.
‘I liked very much that you gave your real name,’ she said when they were alone.
‘Why?’
‘It seemed more honest …’
‘It was the only name I could think of at the time,’ and their nervousness found release in laughter.
The bathroom was just inside the door. The bed and bedside lamp and table were by the window, a chair and writing table in the opposite corner, two armchairs in the middle of the room. The window looked down on the night city and the river. He drew the curtains and took her in his arms.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘We’ve plenty of time before going out to eat.’
While she was in the bathroom he turned off the light, slipped from his clothes, and got into the bed to wait for her.
‘Why did you turn out the light?’ she asked sharply when she came from the bathroom.
‘I thought you’d want it out.’
‘I want to see.’
It was not clear whether she wanted the light for the practical acts of undressing or if she wanted these preliminaries to what is called the act of darkness to be free of all furtiveness, that they should be noted with care like the names of places passed on an important journey.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and turned on the bedside lamp. He watched her slow, sure movements as she stepped from her clothes, how strong and confident and beautiful she was. ‘Do you still want the light on?’ he asked as she came towards him.
‘No.’
‘You are beautiful.’ He wanted to say that her naked beauty took his breath away, was almost hurtful.
What he had wanted so much that it had become frightening she made easy, but it was almost impossible to believe that he now rested in the still centre of what had long been a dream. After long deprivation the plain pleasures of bed and table grow sadly mystical.
‘Have you slept with anyone before?’ he asked.
‘Yes, with one person.’
‘Were you in love with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you still in love with him?’
‘No. Not at all.’
‘I never have.’
‘I know.’
They came again into one another’s arms. There was such peace afterwards that the harsh shrieking of the gulls outside, the even swish of the traffic along the quays, was more part of that peace.
Is this all? Common greed and restlessness rose easily to despise what was so hard come by as soon as it was gained, so luckily, so openly given. Before it had any time to grow there was the grace of dressing, of going out to eat together in the surety that they were coming back to this closed room. He felt like a young husband as he waited for her to finish dressing.
The light drizzle of the early evening had turned into a downpour by the time they came down, the hotel lobby crowded with people in raincoats, many carrying umbrellas.
‘We’re guaranteed a drowning if we head out in that.’
‘We don’t need to. We can eat here. The grill is open.’
It was a large, very pleasant room with light wood panelling and an open fire at its end. She picked the lamb cutlets, he the charcoaled steak, and they each had a glass of red wine.
‘This has to be split evenly as well,’ she said.
‘I don’t see why. I’d like to take you.’
‘That was the bargain. It must be kept.’ She smiled. ‘How long have you been teaching?’
‘Less than a year. I was in Maynooth for a long time.’
‘Were you studying for the priesthood?’
‘That’s what people mostly do there,’ he said drily. ‘I left with only a couple of months to go. It must sound quite bad.’
‘It’s better than leaving afterwards. Why did you leave?’ she asked with formidable seriousness. It could not be turned aside with sarcasm or irony.
‘Because I no longer believed. I could hardly lead others to a life that I didn’t believe in myself. When I entered Maynooth at eighteen I thought the whole course of my life was settled. It wasn’t.’
‘There must be something,’ she insisted.
‘There may well be, but I don’t know what it is.’
‘Was it because you needed … to be married?’
‘No, not sex,’ he said. ‘Though that’s what many people think. If anything, the giving up of sex – renunciation was the word we used – gave the vocation far more force. We weren’t doing anything easy. That has its own pride. We were giving up an idea of pleasure for a far greater good. That is … until belief started to go … and then all went.’
‘You don’t believe in anything at all, then?’ she said with a gravity that both charmed and nettled.
‘I have no talent for profundity.’ He had spoken more than he had intended and was beginning to be irritated by the turn of the conversation.
‘You must believe in something?’ she insisted.
‘’Tis most certain. Have not the schoolmen said it?’ he quoted to tease gently, but saw she disliked the tone. ‘I believe in honour, decency, affection, in pleasure. This, for instance, is a very good steak.’
‘You don’t seem bitter.’ This faint praise was harder to take than blame.
‘That would be stupid. That would be worst of all. How is the lamb?’
‘It’s good, but I don’t like to be fobbed off like that.’
‘I wouldn’t do that. I still find it painful, that’s all. I’m far too grateful to you. I think you were very brave to come here.’ He started to fumble again, gently, diffidently.
‘I wasn’t brave. It was what I wanted.’
‘Not many women would have the courage to propose an hotel.’
‘They might be the wise ones.’
It was her turn to want to change the direction of the conversation. A silence fell that wasn’t silence. They were unsure, their minds working furiously behind the silence to find some safe way to turn.
‘That man you were in love with,’ he suggested.
‘He was married. He had a son. He travelled in pharmaceuticals.’
‘That doesn’t sound too good for you.’
‘It wasn’t. It was a mess.’
They had taken another wrong turning.
It was still raining heavily when they came from the grill. They had one very slow drink in the hotel bar, watching the people drink and come and go before the room and night drew them.
In the morning he asked, ‘What are you doing today?’
‘I’ll go back to the hospital, probably try to get some sleep. I’m on night duty at eight.’
‘We didn’t get much sleep last night.’
‘No, we didn’t,’ she answered gently enough, but making it plain that she had no interest in the reference. ‘What are you doing?’ she changed the subject.
‘There are three buses back. I’ll have to get one of them.’
‘Which one?’
‘Probably the twelve o’clock, since you’re going back to the hospital. When will we meet again?’ he asked in a tone that already took the meeting for granted.
She was half dressed. The vague shape of her thighs shone through the pale slip as she turned towards him. ‘We can’t meet again.’
> ‘Why not?’ The casualness changed. ‘Is there something wrong?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. The very opposite.’
‘What’s the matter, then? Why can’t we meet?’
‘I was going to tell you last night and didn’t. I thought it might spoil everything. After all, you were in Maynooth once. I’m joining an Order.’
‘You must be joking.’
‘I was never more serious in my life. I’m joining next Thursday … the Medical Missionaries.’ She had about her that presence that had attracted him in the dancehall; she stood free of everything around her, secure in her own light.
‘I can’t believe you.’
‘It’s true,’ she said.
‘But the whole thing is a lie, a waste, a fabrication.’
‘It’s not for me and it wasn’t once for you.’
‘But I believed then.’
‘Don’t you think I do?’ she said sharply.
‘To mouth Hail Marys and Our Fathers all of your life.’
‘You know that’s cheap. It’ll be mostly work. I’ll nurse as I nurse now. In two years’ time I’ll probably be sent to medical school. The Order has a great need of its own doctors.’
‘Wasn’t last night a strange preparation for your new life?’
‘I don’t see much wrong with it.’
‘From your point of view, wasn’t it a sin?’ He was angry now.
‘Not much of a one, if it was. I’ve known women who spent the night before their marriage with another man. It was an end to their free or single life.’
Creatures of the Earth Page 21
