My Oedipus Complex

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that, Archie,’ Madge said in an unsteady voice. ‘I know I didn’t tell you the whole truth, but I wasn’t trying to deceive you.’

  ‘No, of course you weren’t trying,’ said Archie. ‘You don’t need to try. What you ought to try some time is to tell the truth.’

  ‘But I am telling the truth,’ she said indignantly. ‘I’m not a liar, Archie, and I won’t have you saying it. I couldn’t help getting engaged to Pat. He asked me, and I couldn’t refuse him.’

  ‘You couldn’t refuse him?’

  ‘No. I told you you should let me explain. It happened before, and I won’t have it happen again.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a long story, Archie. I once refused a boy at home in our own place and – he died.’

  ‘He died?’ Archie said incredulously.

  ‘Well, he committed suicide. It was an awful thing to happen, but it wasn’t my fault. I was young and silly, and I didn’t know how dangerous it was. I thought it was just all a game, and I led him on and made fun of him. How could I know the way a boy would feel about things like that?’

  ‘Hah!’ Archie grunted uncertainly, feeling that as usual she had thought too quickly for him, and that all his beautiful anger accumulated over weeks would be wasted on some pointless argument. ‘And I suppose you felt you couldn’t refuse me either?’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, Archie,’ she said apologetically, ‘that was the way I felt.’

  ‘Good God!’ exploded Archie.

  ‘It’s true, Archie,’ she said in a rush. ‘It wasn’t until weeks after that I got to like you really, the way I do now. I was hoping all that time we were together that you didn’t like me that way at all, and it came as a terrible blow to me, Archie. Because, as you see, I was sort of engaged already, and it’s not a situation you’d like to be in yourself, being engaged to two girls at the one time.’

  ‘And I suppose you thought I’d commit suicide?’ Archie asked incredulously.

  ‘But I didn’t know, Archie. It wasn’t until afterwards that I really got to know you.’

  ‘You didn’t know!’ he said, choking with anger at the suggestion that he was a man of such weak and commonplace stuff. ‘You didn’t know! Good God, the vanity and madness of it! And all this time you couldn’t tell me about the fellow you say committed suicide on account of you.’

  ‘But how could I, Archie?’ she asked despairingly. ‘It’s not the sort a thing a girl likes to think of, much less to talk about.’

  ‘No,’ he said, breathing deeply, ‘and so you’ll go through life, tricking and deceiving every honourable man that comes your way – all out of pure kindness of heart. That be damned for a yarn!’

  ‘It’s not a yarn, Archie,’ she cried hotly. ‘It’s true, and it never happened with anyone, only Pat and you, and one young fellow at home, but the last I heard of him he was walking out with another girl, and I dare say he’s over it by now. And Pat would have got over it the same if only you’d had patience.’

  The picture of yet a third man engaged to his own fiancée was really too much for Archie, and he knew that he could never stand up to this little liar in argument.

  ‘Madge,’ he said broodingly, ‘I do not like to insult any woman to her face, least of all a woman I once respected, but I do not believe you. I can’t believe anything you say. You have behaved to me in a deceitful and dishonourable manner, and I can’t trust you any longer.’

  Then he turned on his heel and walked heavily away, remembering how on this very spot, a few months before, he had turned away with his heart full of hope, and he realized that everything people said about women was true down to the last bitter gibe, and that never again would he trust one of them.

  ‘That was the end of my attempts at getting married,’ he finished grimly. ‘Of course, she wrote and gave me the names of two witnesses I could refer to if I didn’t believe her, but I couldn’t even be bothered replying.’

  ‘Archie,’ I asked in consternation, ‘you don’t mean that you really dropped her?’

  ‘Dropped her?’ he repeated, beginning to scowl. ‘I never spoke to the woman again, only to raise my hat to her whenever I met her on the street. I don’t even know what happened to her after, whether she married or not. I have some pride.’

  ‘But, Archie,’ I said despairingly, ‘suppose she was simply telling the truth?’

  ‘And suppose she was?’ he asked in a murderous tone.

  Then I began to laugh. I couldn’t help it, though I saw it was making him mad. It was raining outside on the canal bank, and I wasn’t laughing at Archie so much as at myself. Because, for the first time, I found myself falling in love with a woman from the mere description of her, as they do in the old romances, and it was an extraordinary feeling, as though there existed somewhere some pure essence of womanhood that one could savour outside the body.

  ‘But damn it, Archie,’ I cried, ‘you said yourself she was a serious girl. All you’re telling me now is that she was a sweet one as well. It must have been hell for her, being engaged to two men in the same town and trying to keep both of them happy till the other fellow got tired of her and left her free to marry you.’

  ‘Or free for a third man to come along and put her in the same position again,’ said Archie with a sneer.

  I must say I had not expected that one, and for a moment it stopped me dead. But there is no stopping a man who is in love with a shadow as I was then, and I was determined on finding justification for myself.

  ‘But after all, Archie,’ I said, ‘isn’t that precisely why you marry a woman like that? Can you imagine marrying one of them if the danger wasn’t there? Come, Archie, don’t you see that the whole business of the suicide is irrelevant? Every nice girl behaves exactly as though she had a real suicide in her past. That’s what makes her a nice girl. It’s not easy to defend it rationally, but that’s the way it is. Archie, I think you made a fool of yourself.’

  ‘It’s not possible to defend it rationally or any other way,’ Archie said with finality. ‘A woman like that is a woman without character. You might as well stick your head in a gas-oven and be done with it as marry a girl like that.’

  And from that evening on, Archie dropped me. He even told his friends that I had no moral sense and would be bound to end up bad. Perhaps he was right, perhaps I shall end up as badly as he believed; but, on the other hand, perhaps I was only saying to him all the things he had been saying to himself for years in the bad hours coming on to morning, and he only wanted reassurance from me, not his own sentence on himself pronounced by another man’s lips. But, as I say, I was very young and didn’t understand. Nowadays I should sympathize and congratulate him on his narrow escape, and leave it to him to proclaim what an imbecile he was.

  Fish for Friday

  Ned McCarthy, the teacher in a village called Abbeyduff, was wakened one morning by his sister-in-law. She was standing over him with a cynical smile and saying in a harsh voice:

  ‘Wake up! ’Tis started.’

  ‘What’s started, Sue?’ Ned asked wildly, jumping up in bed with an anguished air.

  ‘Why?’ she asked dryly. ‘Are you after forgetting already? There’s no immediate hurry, but you’d better get the doctor.’

  ‘Oh, the doctor!’ sighed Ned, remembering all at once why he was sleeping alone in the little back room and why that unpleasant female was in the house. She only came when Kitty was having a baby, and she went round like a Redemptorist missioner on an annual retreat.

  He dressed in a hurry, said a few words of encouragement to Kitty, talked to the kids while swallowing a cup of tea, and got out the car. He was a well-built man in his early forties with fair hair and pale grey eyes, nervous and excitable under his placid manner. He had plenty to be excited about. The house, for instance. It was a fine house, an old shooting lodge, set back at a distance of two fields from the main road, with a lawn leading to the river and steep gardens
climbing the wooded hill behind. It was an ideal house, in fact, the sort he had always dreamed of, where Kitty could keep a few hens and he could garden and get in a bit of shooting. But scarcely had he settled in than he realized it was a mistake. The loneliness of the long evenings when dusk settled on the valley was something he had never even imagined.

  He had lamented it to Kitty, and it was she who had suggested the car, but even this had drawbacks because it needed as much attention as a baby. When Ned was alone in it he chatted to it encouragingly; when it stopped he kicked it viciously, and the villagers swore he had actually been seen stoning it. This and the fact that he sometimes talked to himself when he hadn’t the car to talk to had given rise to the legend that he had a slate loose.

  He drove down the lane and across the footbridge to the main road. Then he stopped before the public-house at the corner which his friend, Tom Hurley, owned.

  ‘Anything you want in town, Tom?’ he shouted.

  ‘What’s that, Ned?’ said a voice from within, and Tom himself, a small, round, russet-faced man, came out with his wrinkled grin.

  ‘I have to go to town. Is there anything you want?’

  ‘No, no, Ned, I think not, thanks,’ Tom said in his hasty way, all the words trying to come out together. ‘All we wanted was fish for the dinner, and the Jordans are bringing that.’

  ‘I’d sooner them than me,’ Ned said, making a face.

  ‘Och, isn’t it the devil, Ned?’ Tom said with a look of real anguish. ‘The damn smell hangs round the shop the whole day. But what the hell else can you do on a Friday? Is it a spin you’re going for?’

  ‘No, for the doctor,’ said Ned.

  ‘Och, I see,’ said Tom, beginning to beam. His expression exaggerated almost to caricature whatever emotion his interlocutor might be expected to feel. ‘Ah, please God, it’ll go off all right. There’s no hurry, is there? Come in and have a drop.’

  ‘No, thanks, Tom,’ Ned said with resignation. ‘I’d better not start so early.’

  ‘Ah, hell to your soul, you will,’ fussed Tom. ‘It won’t take you two minutes. Hard enough it was for me to keep you sober the time the first fellow arrived.’

  Ned got out of the car and followed Tom inside.

  ‘That’s right, Tom,’ he said in surprise. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Who was it was here?’

  ‘Och, God, you had half the countryside in,’ Tom said, shaking his head. ‘It was a terrible night, a terrible night. You had Jack Martin, the teacher, and Owen Hennessey, and that publican friend of yours from town – what’s that his name is? – Cronin. That’s right, Larry Cronin. Ye must have dropped just where ye stood, glasses and all. The milkman found ye next morning littering the floor, and ye never even locked the doors after ye. Ye could have had my licence taken from me.’

  ‘Do you know, I’d forgotten about that completely,’ said Ned with a pleased smile. ‘My memory isn’t what it was. I suppose we’re getting old.’

  ‘Och, well, ’tis never the same after the first,’ said Tom, and he poured a large drink for Ned and a few spoonfuls for himself. ‘God, isn’t it astonishing what the first one does for you, Ned?’ he added in his eager way, bending across the counter. ‘You feel you’re getting a new lease of life. And by the time the second comes you’re beginning to wonder will the damn thing ever stop. God forgive me for talking,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘Herself would have my life if she heard me.’

  ‘Still, there’s a lot of truth in it, Tom,’ said Ned, relieved to feel that the gloom in his mind was nothing unusual. ‘It’s not the same thing at all. And I suppose that even that is only an illusion. Like when you fall in love and think you’re getting first prize in the lottery, while all the time it’s only Nature’s little way of putting you on the spot.’

  ‘Ah, well, they say it all comes back when you’re a grandfather,’ said Tom with a chuckle.

  ‘But who wants to be a grandfather?’ asked Ned, already feeling sorry for himself with his home upset, that unpleasant woman bossing the house and more money to be found somewhere.

  He drove off but his mood had darkened. It was a grand bit of road between his house and the town, with the river below him on the left, and the hills at either side with the first faint wash of green on them like an unfinished water-colour. Walking or driving, it was a real pleasure to him because of the prospect of civilization at the other end. The town was only a little rundown port, but it had shops and pubs and villas with electric light, and a water supply that did not give out in May, and there were all sorts of interesting people to be met there. But the prospect didn’t cheer him now. He realized that the rapture of being a father doesn’t go on repeating itself and it gave him no pleasure at all to look forward to being a grandfather. He felt decrepit enough the way he was.

  At the same time he was haunted by some memory of days when he was not decrepit but careless and gay. He had been a Volunteer and roamed the hills for months with a column, wondering where he would spend the night. Then it had all seemed uncomfortable and dangerous enough, but at least he had felt free. Maybe, like an illusion of re-birth at finding himself a father, it was only an illusion of freedom, but it was terrible to think he wouldn’t be able to feel it any more. It was associated in his mind with high hills and wide views, but now his life had descended into a valley like the one he was driving along. He had descended into it by the quiet path of duty – a steady man, a sucker for responsibilities, treasurer of the Hurling Club, treasurer of the Republican Party, secretary of three other organizations. He talked to the car as he did whenever something was too much on his mind.

  ‘It’s all Nature, old girl,’ he said despondently. ‘It gives you a set of illusions, but all the time it’s only bending you to its own purposes as if you were a cow or a tree. You’d be better off with no illusions at all. No illusions about anything! That way, Nature wouldn’t get you quite so soon.’

  Being nervous, he did not like to drive through the town. He did it when he had to, but it made him flustered and fidgety so that he missed seeing who was on the streets, and a town was nothing without people. He usually parked his car outside Cronin’s pub on the way in and walked the rest of the way. Larry Cronin was an old comrade of revolutionary days who had married into the pub.

  He went in to tell Larry. This was quite unnecessary as Larry knew every car for miles around and was well aware of Ned’s little weakness, but it was a habit and Ned was a man of more habits than he realized himself.

  ‘I’m leaving the old bus for half an hour, Larry,’ he called through the door in a plaintive tone that expressed regret for the inconvenience he was causing Larry and grief for the burden that was being put on himself.

  ‘Ah, come in, man, come in!’ cried Larry, a tall, engaging man with a handsome face and a sunny smile that was quite sincere if Larry liked you and damnably hypocritical if he didn’t. His mouth was like a showcase with the array of false teeth in it. ‘What has you out at this hour of the morning?’

  ‘Oh, Nature, Nature,’ Ned said with a laugh, digging his hands into his trouser pockets.

  ‘How do you mean, Nature?’ asked Larry, who did not understand the allusive ways of intellectuals but admired them none the less.

  ‘Kitty, I mean. I’m going for the doctor.’

  ‘Ah, the blessings of God on you!’ Larry said jovially. ‘Is this the third or the fourth? You lose count after a while, don’t you? You might as well have a resiner as you’re in. Ah, you will, you will, God blast you! ’Tis hard on the nerves. That was a great night we had the time the boy was born.’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’ said Ned, beaming at the way people remembered it. ‘I was only talking to Tom Hurley about it.’

  ‘Ah, what the hell does Hurley know about it?’ Larry asked contemptuously, pouring out a half tumbler of whiskey with the air of a lord. ‘The bloody man went to bed at two. That fellow is too cautious to be good. But Jack Martin gave a great account of himself. Do you remember? The whole f
irst act of Tosca, orchestra and all. “The southern sunlight” he called it. You didn’t see Jack since he came back?’

  ‘Was Jack away?’ Ned asked in surprise. He felt easier now, being on the doctor’s doorstep, and anyhow he knew the doctor would only be waiting.

  ‘Ah, God he was,’ said Larry, throwing his whole weight on the counter. ‘In Paris, would you believe it? He’s on the batter again, of course. Wait till you hear him on Paris! ’Tis only the mercy of God if Father Clery doesn’t get to hear of it.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Larry,’ Ned said with a smile. ‘Martin doesn’t have to mind himself at all. Father Clery will do all that for him. If an inspector comes round while Martin is on it, Father Clery will take him out to look at the antiquities.’

  ‘Begod, you might be right, Ned,’ said Larry. ‘But you or I couldn’t do it. God Almighty, man, we’d be slaughtered alive. ’Tisn’t worried you are about Kitty?’ he asked gently.

  ‘Ah, no, Larry,’ said Ned. ‘It’s only that at times like this a man feels himself of no importance. A messenger boy would do as well. We’re all dragged down to the same level.’

  ‘And damn queer we’d be if we weren’t,’ said Larry with his lazy, sunny smile, the smile Ned remembered from the day Larry threw a Mills bomb into a lorry of soldiers. ‘Unless you’d want to have the bloody baby yourself.’

  ‘Ah, it’s not only that, Larry,’ Ned said gloomily. ‘It’s not that at all. But you can’t help wondering what it’s all about.’

  ‘Why, then indeed, that’s true for you,’ said Larry, who, as a result of his own experience in the pub had developed a gloomy and philosophic view of human existence. After all, a man can’t be looking at schizophrenia for ten hours a day without wondering if it’s all strictly necessary. ‘And ’tis at times like this you notice it – men coming and going like the leaves on the trees. Ah, God, ’tis a great mystery.’

  But that wasn’t what Ned was thinking about either. He was thinking of his own lost youth and what had happened to him.