My Oedipus Complex

by Frank O'Connor

  ‘I’m very fond of Michael O’Leary,’ he shouted. ‘He is the most sincere man I know.’

  ‘I have no life,’ sighed the sergeant’s wife. ‘No life at all. There isn’t a soul to speak to; nothing to look at all day but bogs and mountains and rain – always rain! And the people! Well, we’ve had a fine sample of them, haven’t we?’

  The sergeant continued to read.

  ‘Just for the few days it’s been like heaven. Such interesting people! Oh, I thought Mr Boyle had a glorious face! And his voice – it went through me.’

  The sergeant lowered his paper, took off his peaked cap, laid it on the seat beside him, and lit his pipe. He lit it in the old-fashioned way, ceremoniously, his eyes blinking pleasurably like a sleepy cat’s in the match-flare. His wife scrutinized each face that passed and it was plain that for her life meant faces and people and things and nothing more.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ she said again. ‘I simply have no existence. I was educated in a convent and play the piano; my father was a literary man, and yet I am compelled to associate with the lowest types of humanity. If it was even a decent town, but a village!’

  ‘Ah,’ said the sergeant, gapping his reply with anxious puffs, ‘maybe with God’s help we’ll get a shift one of these days.’ But he said it without conviction, and it was also plain that he was well-pleased with himself, with the prospect of returning home with his pipe and his paper.

  ‘Here are Magner and the others,’ said his wife as four other policemen passed the barrier. ‘I hope they’ll have sense enough to let us alone.… How do you do? How do you do? Had a nice time, boys?’ she called with sudden animation, and her pale, sullen face became warm and vivacious. The policemen smiled and touched their caps but did not halt.

  ‘They might have stopped to say good evening,’ she added sharply, and her face sank into its old expression of boredom and dissatisfaction. ‘I don’t think I’ll ask Delancey to tea again. The others make an attempt but, really, Delancey is hopeless. When I smile and say: “Guard Delancey, wouldn’t you like to use the butter-knife?” he just scowls at me from under his shaggy brows and says without a moment’s hesitation: “I would not.” ’

  ‘Ah, Delancey is a poor slob,’ the sergeant said affectionately.

  ‘Oh, yes, but that’s not enough, Jonathan. Slob or no slob, he should make an attempt. He’s a young man; he should have a dinner jacket at least. What sort of wife will he get if he won’t even wear a dinner jacket?’

  ‘He’s easy, I’d say. He’s after a farm in Waterford.’

  ‘Oh, a farm! A farm! The wife is only an incidental, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, now, from all I hear she’s a damn nice little incidental.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose many a nice little incidental came from a farm,’ answered his wife, raising her pale brows. But the irony was lost on him.

  ‘Indeed yes, indeed yes,’ he said fervently.

  ‘And here,’ she added in biting tones, ‘come our charming neighbours.’

  Into the pale lamplight stepped a group of peasants. Not such as one sees near a capital but in the mountains and along the coasts. Gnarled, wild, with turbulent faces, their ill-cut clothes full of character, the women in pale brown shawls, the men wearing black sombreros and carrying big sticks, they swept in, ill at ease, laughing and shouting defiantly. And so much part of their natural environment were they that for a moment they seemed to create about themselves rocks and bushes, tarns, turf-ricks, and sea.

  With a prim smile the sergeant’s wife bowed to them through the open window.

  ‘How do you do? How do you do?’ she called. ‘Had a nice time?’

  At the same moment the train gave a jolt and there was a rush in which the excited peasants were carried away. Some minutes passed; the influx of passengers almost ceased, and a porter began to slam the doors. The drunken man’s voice rose in a cry of exultation.

  ‘You can’t possibly beat O’Leary,’ he declared. ‘I’d lay down my life for Michael O’Leary.’

  Then, just as the train was about to start, a young woman in a brown shawl rushed through the barrier. The shawl, which came low enough to hide her eyes, she held firmly across her mouth, leaving visible only a long thin nose with a hint of pale flesh at either side. Beneath the shawl she was carrying a large parcel.

  She looked hastily around; a porter shouted to her and pushed her towards the nearest compartment, which happened to be that occupied by the sergeant and his wife. He had actually seized the handle of the door when the sergeant’s wife sat up and screamed.

  ‘Quick! Quick!’ she cried. ‘Look who it is! She’s coming in. Jonathan! Jonathan!’

  The sergeant rose with a look of alarm on his broad red face. The porter threw open the door, with his free hand grasping the woman’s elbow. But when she laid eyes on the sergeant’s startled face she stepped back, tore herself free, and ran crazily up the platform. The engine shrieked; the porter slammed the door with a curse; somewhere another door opened and shut, and the row of watchers, frozen into effigies of farewell, now dark now bright, began to glide gently past the window, and the stale, smoky air was charged with the breath of open fields.

  2

  The four policemen spread themselves out in a separate compartment and lit cigarettes.

  ‘Poor old Delancey!’ Magner said with his reckless laugh. ‘He’s cracked on her all right.’

  ‘Cracked on her,’ agreed Fox. ‘Did ye see the eye he gave her?’

  Delancey smiled sheepishly. He was a tall, handsome, black-haired young man with the thick eyebrows described by the sergeant’s wife. He was new to the force and suffered from a mixture of natural gentleness and country awkwardness.

  ‘I am,’ he said in his husky voice. ‘The devil admire me, I never hated anyone yet, but I think I hate the living sight of her.’

  ‘Oh now, oh now!’ protested Magner.

  ‘I do. I think the Almighty God must have put that one into the world with the one main object of persecuting me.’

  ‘Well indeed,’ said Foley, ‘ ’tis a mystery to me how the sergeant puts up with her. If any woman up and called me by an outlandish name like Jonathan when everyone knew my name was plain John I’d do fourteen days for her – by God, I would, and a calendar month.’

  The four men were now launched on a favourite topic that held them for more than a hour. None of them liked the sergeant’s wife and all had stories to tell against her. From these there emerged the fact that she was an incurable scandalmonger and mischiefmaker who couldn’t keep quiet about her own business, much less about that of her neighbours. And while they talked the train dragged across a dark plain, the heart of Ireland, and in the moonless night tiny cottage-windows blew past like sparks from a fire, and a pale simulacrum of the lighted carriages leaped and frolicked over hedges and fields. Magner shut the window and the compartment began to fill with smoke.

  ‘She’ll never rest till she’s out of Farranchreesht,’ he said.

  ‘That she mightn’t!’ groaned Delancey.

  ‘How would you like the city yourself, Dan?’ asked Magner.

  ‘Man dear,’ exclaimed Delancey with sudden brightness, ‘I’d like it fine. There’s great life in a city.’

  ‘You’re welcome to it,’ said Foley, folding his hands across his paunch.

  ‘Why so? What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘I’m better off where I am.’

  ‘But the life!’

  ‘Life be damned! What sort of life is it when you’re always under someone’s eye? Look at the poor devils in court.’

  ‘True enough, true enough,’ agreed Fox.

  ‘Ah, yes, yes,’ said Delancey, ‘but the adventures they have!’

  ‘What adventures?’

  ‘There was a sergeant in court only yesterday telling me one thing that happened himself. ’Twas an old maid without a soul in the world that died in an old loft on the quays. The sergeant put a new man on duty outside the door while he went back to report, an
d all he had to do was kick the door and frighten off the rats.’

  ‘That’s enough, that’s enough!’ cried Foley.

  ‘Yes, yes, but listen now, listen can’t you?’ cried Delancey. ‘He was there ten minutes with a bit of candle when the door at the foot of the stairs began to open. “Who’s there?” says he, getting a bit nervous. “Who’s there I say?” No answer, and still the door kept opening. Then he gave a laugh. What was it only an old cat? “Puss, puss,” says he, “come on up, puss.” Then he gave another look and the hair stood up on his head. There was another bloody cat coming in. “Get out!” says he to scare them, and then another cat came in and then another, and in his fright he dropped the candle. The cats began to hiss and bawl and that robbed him of the last stitch of sense. He made down the stairs, and if he did he trod on a cat, and went down head over heels, and when he tried to grip something ’twas a cat he gripped, and he felt the claws tearing his face. He was out for three weeks after.’

  ‘That’s a bloody fine adventure,’ said Foley with bitter restraint.

  ‘Isn’t it thought?’ Delancey said eagerly. ‘You’d be a long time in Farranchreesht before anything like that would happen you.’

  ‘That’s the thing about Farranchreesht, lad,’ said Magner. ‘ ’Tis a great ease to be able to put on your cap and go for a drink any hour of the day or night.’

  ‘Yes,’ added Foley, ‘and to know the worst case you’re likely to have in ten years is a bit of a scrap about politics.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Delancey sighed dreamily. ‘Chrisht, there’s great charm about the Criminal Courts.’

  ‘Damn the much they had for you when you were in the box,’ growled Foley.

  ‘I know, sure, I know,’ admitted Delancey crestfallen. ‘I was sweating.’

  ‘Shutting your eyes you were,’ said Magner, ‘like a kid afraid he was going to get a box on the ear.’

  ‘Still,’ said Delancey, ‘this sergeant I’m talking about, he said after a while you wouldn’t mind that no more than if ’twas a card party. He said you’d talk back to the judge as man to man.’

  ‘I dare say that’s true,’ agreed Magner.

  There was silence in the smoky compartment that jolted and rocked on its way across Ireland, and the four occupants, each touched with that morning wit which afflicts no one so much as state witnesses, thought of how they’d speak to the judge now if only they had him before them as man to man. They looked up to see a fat red face behind the door, and a moment later it was dragged back.

  ‘Is this my carriage, gentlemen?’ asked a meek and boozy voice.

  ‘No, ’tisn’t. Go on with you!’ snapped Magner.

  ‘I had as nice a carriage as ever was put on a railway train,’ said the drunk, leaning in, ‘a handsome carriage, and ’tis lost.’

  ‘Try farther on,’ suggested Delancey.

  ‘Ye’ll excuse me interrupting yeer conversation, gentlemen.’

  ‘That’s all right, that’s all right.’

  ‘I’m very melancholic. My best friend, I parted him this very night, and ’tis unknown to anyone, only the Almighty and Merciful God [here the drunk reverently raised his bowler hat and let it slide down the back of his neck to the floor] if I’ll ever lay eyes on him again in this world. Good-night, gentlemen, and thanks, thanks for all yeer kindness.’

  As the drunk slithered away up the corridor Delancey laughed. Fox, who had remained thoughtful, resumed the conversation where it had left off.

  ‘Delancey wasn’t the only one that was sweating,’ he said.

  ‘He was not,’ agreed Foley. ‘Even the sergeant was a bit shook.’

  ‘He was very shook. When he caught up the poison mug to identify it he was shaking, and before he could put it down it danced a jig on the table.’

  ‘Ah, dear God, dear God,’ sighed Delancey, ‘what killed me most entirely was the bloody old model of the house. I didn’t mind anything else only the house. There it was, a living likeness, with the bit of grass in front and the shutter hanging loose, and every time I looked at it I was in the back lane in Farranchreesht, and then I’d look up and see the lean fellow in the wig pointing his finger at me.’

  ‘Well, thank God,’ said Foley with simple devotion, ‘this time tomorrow I’ll be in Ned Ivers’s back with a pint in my fist.’

  Delancey shook his head, a dreamy smile playing upon his dark face.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘ ’Tis a small place, Farranchreesht; a small, mangy old place with no interest or advancement in it.’ His face lit up as the sergeant appeared in the corridor.

  ‘Here’s the sergeant now,’ he said.

  ‘He wasn’t long getting tired of Julietta,’ whispered Magner maliciously.

  The door was pushed back and the sergeant entered, loosening the collar of his tunic. He fell into a corner seat, crossed his legs, and accepted the cigarette which Delancey proffered.

  ‘Well, lads,’ he exclaimed. ‘What about a jorum?’

  ‘Isn’t it remarkable?’ said Foley. ‘I was only just talking about it.’

  ‘I have noted before now, Peter,’ said the sergeant, ‘that you and me have what might be called a simultaneous thirst.’

  3

  The country folk were silent and exhausted. Kendillon drowsed now and then, but he suffered from blood-pressure, and after a while his breathing grew thicker and stronger till at last it exploded in a snort and he started up, broad awake and angry. In the silence rain spluttered and tapped along the roof and the dark window-panes streamed with shining runnels of water that trickled to the floor. Moll Mhor scowled, her lower lip thrust out. She was a great flop of a woman with a big, coarse, powerful face. The other two women whose eyes were closed had their brown shawls drawn tight about their heads, but Moll’s was round her shoulders and the gap above her breasts was filled with a blaze of scarlet.

  ‘Aren’t we home yet?’ Kendillon asked crossly, starting awake after one of his drowsing fits.

  Moll glowered at him.

  ‘No, nor won’t be. What scour is on you?’

  ‘My little house,’ moaned Kendillon.

  ‘My little house,’ mimicked Moll. ‘ ’Twasn’t enough for you to board the windows and put barbed wire on the gate.’

  ‘ ’Tis all very well for you that have someone to mind yours for you,’ he snarled.

  One of the women laughed softly and turned a haggard virginal face within the cowl of her shawl.

  ‘ ’Tis that have me laughing,’ she explained apologetically. ‘Tim Dwyer this week past at the stirabout pot.’

  ‘And making the beds,’ chimed in the third woman.

  ‘And washing the children’s faces! Glory be to God, he’ll be mad.’

  ‘Ay,’ said Moll, ‘and his chickens running off with Thade Kendillon’s roof.’

  ‘My roof is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘ ’Tis a good roof,’ he said roughly. ‘ ’Tis a better roof than ever was seen over your head since the day you married.’

  ‘Oh, Mary my mother!’ sighed Moll, ‘ ’tis a great pity of me this three hours and I looking at the likes of you instead of my own fine bouncing man.’

  ‘ ’Tis a new thing to hear you praising Sean then,’ said a woman.

  ‘I wronged him,’ Moll said contritely. ‘I did so. I wronged him before God and the world.’

  At this moment the drunken man pulled back the door of the compartment and looked from face to face with an expression of deepening melancholy.

  ‘She’s not here,’ he said in disappointment.

  ‘Who’s not here, mister?’ asked Moll with a wink at the others.

  ‘I’m looking for my own carriage, ma’am,’ said the drunk with melancholy dignity, ‘and whatever the bloody hell they done with it, ’tis lost. The railways in this country are gone to hell.’

  ‘Wisha, if that’s all that’s worrying you, wouldn’t you sit here with me?’ asked Moll. ‘I’m here so long I’m forgetting what a re
al man looks like.’

  ‘I would with great pleasure,’ replied the drunk politely, ‘but ’tisn’t only the carriage. ’Tis my travelling-companion. I’m a lonely man; I parted my best friend this very night; I found one to console me, and then when I turned my back – God took her!’

  And with a dramatic gesture he closed the door and continued on his way. The country folk sat up, blinking. The smoke of the men’s pipes filled the compartment and the heavy air was laden with the smell of homespun and turf-smoke, the sweet pungent odour of which had penetrated every fibre of their clothes.

  ‘Listen to the rain!’ said one of the women. ‘We’ll have a wet walk home.’

  ‘ ’Twill be midnight before we’re in,’ said another.

  ‘Ah, what matter sure when the whole country will be up? There’ll be a lot of talking done in Farranchreesht tonight.’

  ‘A lot of talking and no sleep.’

  ‘Oh, Farranchreesht! Farranchreesht!’ cried the young woman with the haggard face, the ravaged lineaments of which were suddenly transfigured. ‘Farranchreesht and the sky over you, I wouldn’t change places with the Queen of England tonight!’

  And suddenly Farranchreesht, the bare bogland with the hump-backed mountain behind, the little white houses and the dark fortifications of turf that made it seem like the flame-blackened ruin of some mighty city, all was lit up in their minds. An old man sitting in a corner, smoking a broken clay pipe, thumped his stick on the floor.

  ‘Well now,’ said Kendillon darkly, ‘wasn’t it great impudence in her to come back?’

  ‘Wasn’t it indeed?’ echoed one of the women.

  ‘I’d say she won’t be there long,’ he went on knowingly.

  ‘You’ll give her the hunt, I suppose?’ asked Moll politely, too politely.

  ‘If no one else do, I’ll give her the hunt myself. What right have she in a decent place?’

  ‘Oh, the hunt, the hunt,’ agreed a woman. ‘Sure, no one could ever darken her door again.’