by James Hanley
Mr. Doogle could not keep his eyes off her. He sat leaning on the round mahogany table. Mr. Slye stood against the sideboard, his back to them. Silently he counted the money from the envelope. In the most casual way he dropped the coins into his pocket. What a stroke of luck! Doogle was a miracle.
Mr. Doogle got up. ‘’Scuse me,’ he said, grinning at Maureen. He went up to Slye, began whispering in his ear. Mr. Slye answered by gestures. Doogle went out.
Maureen got up, crossed over to Slye. ‘Dick!’ she said. ‘Oh, Dick?’
He swung round. ‘What, chicks?’ The broad smile seemed to envelop her as she stood in front of him, and seeing the troubled look on her face he smiled, saying: ‘All right, chicks. I know! But I’ve been so busy, you know, and Doogle did a good deal. So glad he came through honest. One thing I like about him, Maury. Not much to look at, but bloody honest.’
‘Dick! Oh, Dick,’ she said.
‘Not now, chick. Not now, there!’ he rocked her about in his arms.
‘I don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I wish Mr. Doogle would go. I don’t like him.’
‘Lumme! He’s all right. What are you frightened of, Maury? He wouldn’t do anything to you. I’d cut his throat if he did. Don’t be worrying, chicks.’
He lifted her from the ground, lifted her high, held her tight, looking up into her face.
‘Aye! You’re bonny, Maury, bonny. And getting fat too!’
It had been amusing to be lifted up in the air by the man you loved. But not to-day. She was unhappy to-day. She wanted to go and sit quiet somewhere. Just Dick and she. She struggled in his arms.
‘Impatient, chicks,’ he said. He put her down. ‘Wonder if Doogle’s got lost up there,’ he said. He pulled her arm. They now stood either side of the table.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘You look as though somebody had hit you.’
‘I wanted to lie down. I’m tired. But I can’t with Doogle here.’
‘’Course you can! Come on now. Get down on the bed. That’s what it’s for. Lie on it when you’re tired. I’ll tell you what. I’ll go upstairs and see what’s happened to Doogle, eh! And we’ll have a little chat up there. You have a lie down, chucks. I’ll give this stuff to the old woman now,’ and picking up the few groceries he went out.
But Maureen did not lie down. Instead she leaned across the table, spread out her arms. Looked round at the room. Here then they were going to live for the next year. She and Dick. And he had promised that when he had made enough money they would get properly married.
‘In this world,’ he said, ‘anything can be done with money.’
She kept muttering: ‘I wish that man would go.’
She loved Dick, even though he had changed. He didn’t love her less, he loved her more than ever. No! It wasn’t that. It was this curious new world he had dragged her into. He didn’t work any more like an ordinary man. He had been fine in the factory. But why had he decided on this? She didn’t know. Mr. Slye was quite uncommunicative. ‘There was money in it,’ seemed about as far as Dick would go. ‘Money in it.’
There he was sitting in front of her at this table, hands clasped, leaning over it, talking to her.
‘You see, chicks, I got to know a chap in Gelton. He worked at the docks. We used to have drinks together. He told me that a pal of his was making good money selling things to youngsters working in the docks. He said his weekly turnover represented at least a whole month’s pay for hard work. So I thought I wouldn’t mind trying this stunt myself. Here’s something has the same attractions as looking through them peep-show telescopes. You know! And d’you know in a month or two I’d made twenty quid.’Course I had to go wary—who hasn’t? Anyhow, I said to myself: Here’s where my future lies. I’ve never gone wrong since. It’s money. Real money. It must have been about the time you left to get switched up to this feller, what’s-his-name, and I haven’t had a day’s bad luck since, save that bit of a stew in Gelton, but that was only that old bitch Sloane splitting.’
She saw him smile, heard him laugh. But he had changed.
She thought of her husband. That had been a mistake. Perhaps if she had married Dick everything would have been different. He would have remained ordinary, and ordinary men to Maureen were those who worked at the docks, and in factories. Who went out in the morning, and came home in the evening, and on Saturdays had a half-day off and the whole of Sunday. Ordinary men, healthy men. Unlike Mr. Slye, who didn’t work like that. She wished he would give up this kind of thing. It was all so different from what she had imagined. And now he was bringing the other man in, and she would have to do the same old things. Canvas from door to door with silly poems, tips for the races, sheets of songs, books of jokes. The Art of Ventriloquism, The Seven Wonders of the World—including Woman. She’d have to watch the papers for accidents, and type out on the second-hand Oliver, Mr. Slye’s expressions of grief, the sad poems about accidents in mines and factories and mills. Appropriate memory cards. She would do these things because she loved Dick, the changed man.
It was so different from Price Street, from that old-fashioned living. Scrubbing the house down, and looking after Dermod and sleeping in a flock bed with Mr. Kilkey. He was so old-fashioned, fifty-one, bald, ugly, horrible skin. No ideas, no ambition, an easy-going, contented man. Confessions on Fridays and Holy Communion on Sundays, and nothing else. And on and on and on.
She wasn’t bad-looking either. Hadn’t she seen herself in the looking-glass in Price Street, mornings after her husband had gone to work? Admiring her figure, and her good complexion and her lovely hair. And remembering she was only twenty-seven, and he was fifty. He’d be fifty-three now, and what she liked about herself was wasted. And she knew it was wasted. Her lovely hair and her beautiful white body and her youth—wasted. How silly she had been, marrying! But she had done it because she wanted to be free of Hatfields. And they laughed at her, Peter and Desmond.
Dad liked Kilkey. He would. But now that was all over. Thank heaven for that. She didn’t know what it was about Dick that attracted. But she loved him, and loving him was living. Living was everything. Dermod came. She thought of Dermod. This made her cry. Mr. Slye and Mr. Doogle returned then.
‘Hello! What’s the matter, Maury? Crying again.’ He looked at Doogle, then he bent down and kissed Maureen. ‘Mustn’t cry, ducky. Just going to have something nice to eat. Stewed tripe, cold sliced black puddings and tea.’
‘I’m not crying,’ she said, getting up from the table.
‘You’re not bloody well laughing then, Long Legs!’ Mr. Doogle said, diligently poking at green teeth with a dead match. ‘Is she, Slye Esquire?’
She went to the sideboard, took cloth and knives and forks, began laying the table. The two men comfortably seated opposite each other in the landlady’s best plush chairs, talked shop. And as they talked shop they watched Maureen.
Was it calling her Long Legs? Was it the easy, impudent familiarity of this old man—he certainly was far from young—was it these things she hated Doogle for? She laid the table in a series of wild movements. The cloth ballooned in the air, the knives and forks crashed to their places. She wished this man would get off as soon as supper was over.
‘Easy there, chicks,’ Mr. Slye said. ‘Easy there, Maury! Cheerio, Doogle?’
‘Not for me, thanks,’ said Mr. Doogle. ‘A bit too strong for me, them cheroots.’
The landlady came in. She had a blown, almost breathless appearance. Her hair seemed to have been lifted by a gale of wind, somehow she seemed to live in the neighbourhood of winds, violent winds.
‘Your supper,’ she said, drenching Mr. Doogle with a look, and there was a depth of understanding in this look, incomprehensible to Mr. Doogle’s intelligence which remained static. It never roamed, moved this way or that. Mr. Doogle’s mind was a stagnant lake, not a rushing river like Mr. Slye’s.
‘Thank you,’ cried Mr. Slye. ‘Thank you, Mrs.,’ he said.
One more glance at Mr. Do
ogle, and the landlady went out. Maureen and Mr. Slye had arrived together. That was natural. Mr. Doogle wasn’t. She gave the door a terrific bang, and Mr. Doogle called her: ‘A violent old bitch.’
‘I don’t, Maury and me don’t mind the old cow, do we, Maury? When you come to think of it, really, she done us well. Just look what we get for twelve and a tanner a week. Two easy chairs, a nice table, decent carpet. That sideboard, some linen and a bed. Not bad! Only thing is me and Maury can’t stand that bed, can we, Maury? Now come on, chicks, the bloody world isn’t falling to bits, even though you can hear the ocean roaring at Blacksea through the windows! Let’s all enjoy supper, anyhow.’
Mr. Doogle looked hard at Maureen. Long Legs was a fine tart. Wished he had married a tart like that. But no. He hadn’t married at all, though its profound mysteries, its ebb and flow were not lost on him. He knew all about that. It was like simple addition, or decimals. He’d studied it in the books, and what ‘them books’ didn’t know! He knew it. Slye was a lucky sod getting her. Made for kids. He could see it at a glance. Lucky swine, Slye. Wished he had a tart, sometimes—but it was too late now to be having such.
‘All set now?’ questioned Mr. Slye.
He sat down to the table. Maureen and Doogle sat down. They commenced supper. They talked of Blacksea, the coming season, the new field to exploit. They talked of the mugs who wore straw hats. Talked of the war, of Gelton, and their easy slide out of the trap that had been set for them. Mr. Doogle was still aggrieved at the departure from Gelton. It was lamentable. Somebody else would lift the money. Just consider. Boat-loads and boat-loads of troops, young and fresh from Canada, Africa, etc. etc. Yes. It was a pity.
‘Can’t be helped; you know I could tell you a thing or two about Gelton, Doogle, that would surprise you. Though there was a keenness, you could always feel it so to speak, I could never make any headway with those Aristotle books. The other things—specially the translated Frenchies—went well. De Kock never sold much. They weren’t interested in the classics, and you know what classics the French classics are.’Course I don’t know a bloody thing about literature or anything like that. But now and again you pick up a thing or two about it. Comes in handy, specially with the pernikity ones. You know. And another thing, Doogle, the pictures always sold well. They liked the different positions and all that. You know.’ He stopped dead.
‘Come on, chicks; not eating anything,’ said Slye Esquire. ‘You must eat now, you know.’
His face, greasy and shining, could not conceal his anxiety.
‘Maury not eating,’ and he bestowed upon her a sudden gracious smile, and continued: ‘Maury, chick, if you don’t eat you die. Now tuck into that tripe. Watch Doogle eat. He can give anybody an appetite, just watching him. Come on now, or shall I have to feed you as though you were a kid. A finger here and a finger there. Dig in like us, Maury. Not fretting about your ma, I hope.’
He dug, sucked, gulped; Mr. Doogle did likewise.
But Maureen wasn’t feeling hungry now. Just a little disappointed, a little dispirited by reflecting upon things gone by. And somehow Mr. Doogle sitting opposite seemed to give them their hard, clean edge. Mr. Doogle made you think of those things. Joe and her mother, Price Street. Even Aunt Brigid. The paralytic grandfather. You made a quick circle of those things and came back to the starting-point. She loved Richard Slye. Richard Slye was the world to her.
Slye Esquire knew this. It made him happy. He knew when he was loved, and by a woman. She would follow him everywhere, upstairs and downstairs, round corners, up and down gutters, through streets and docks. Yes, Maury would follow him everywhere. He had loved a lot in his time, girls mostly, who generally giggled. But here was a real woman. He knew, Mr. Slye did. Yet though he did not know it Mr. Slye was something else besides a very passionate lover, and a dealer in Holy Pictures, erotic works, memory cards, the in-between in abortion cases, etc.
He was not flesh and blood. Simply a breath—an emanation. To have told Slye Esquire that he was an emanation would have intrigued him, no less than that other emanation Mr. Doogle. Mr. Slye was just that. He was flung up by the city. Nothing but a city could have flung him up.
He was the breath, the wind, the feel of its hard outer edge. The shadow round the corner, the sly glimpse, the taint in streets. He was that skin round its holes and corners, its dark alleys, its maladorous rooms and entries and byways. He was the third leg for those who often stumbled in queer patches of darkness. He was the step towards tawdriness and the step towards horror. He was the very pulse and beat of a city. He was its lurk. But at this moment he could sit there eating tripe and sliced black puddings. ‘Fresh made in Blacksea to-day,’ and occasionally laugh and once, a playful slap on the leg for Maury under the table. Poor kid.
It was the change. The leaving Gelton. The break with the old things. Mr. Slye supposed that Cats—all Catholics were Cats—suffered more than Protestants, and Maureen must sometimes reflect upon what she had been. ‘Perhaps,’ he thought, ‘in those moments when she looks so sad, she must be thinking of Penance,’ and when he thought of this, he believed it. Of course Doogle and he didn’t believe in anything, at least not in what Maury did. Not likely! Yes, he knew why Maury was sad to-day.
‘Now Doogle here’s going back to Gelton,’ he announced. ‘He’ll go an’ enquire about your ma, if that’s what you’re worrying about, chick. Come on now. Drink that tea. I can’t be crying at you all the time as though you were a little baby. Drink up, and before I leave this table you got to eat them black pudding slices. See! Let me see. It’s just turned half-seven. I tell you what, chick. We’ll all three get off and have a drink. Besides, I meant to drink Doogle’s health anyhow, to-night. Think of it, Maury. He got rid of all that dead stock.’
She looked at Mr. Doogle, looked at Dick.
‘You go,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Now, Long Legs,’ began Mr. Doogle, but she flashed such a look at him that he lowered his eyes at once. He now left the table, stood studying an oil painting of Queen Victoria, surrounded by people in kilts.
Mr. Slye got up. He carried his chair after him. Sat by Maureen. Put an arm round her neck, the other on her knee. ‘Listen, Maury, if you love me like you say, you ought to remember that I expect you to show some, sometimes. Understand! You just offended my friend, see? That wasn’t nice. I’m sure your ma’s worrying you. Well, I’m sorry about your ma, chicks, but as I said before she’ll get well all right. Just you see now. Don’t worry. Now tell me what’s wrong,’ he said, pleading, coaxing.
He hated her being like this. Wasn’t like her. Bent over her, though with one eye still fixed upon Mr. Doogle’s back, Mr. Slye ran his mouth up and down Maureen’s neck. ‘Is it the—you—know, chicks?’
No! It wasn’t the you-know. She shook her head. Whispered in his ear. ‘It’s him.’
Mr. Slye’s other eye now fell on Doogle. He still stood before Queen Victoria, silent, admiring. So that was it. She hated Doogle. Blast it! That was going to be awkward, because this very week he and Doogle were going into partnership. Laughing, he exclaimed loudly. ‘You’re just moody, chicks.’
Mr. Doogle looked round now. Being a gentleman who could sum up these little situations, he said blandly: ‘If you like I’ll go ahead, Slye Esquire.’ Yes, he could see those two wanted to talk private. Well, he would be off. ‘I’ll go ahead then. I’ll be in the parlour of “The Mare,” Slye Esquire.’
Mr. Doogle never failed to add the Esquire. Smiling he went out, and the door closed silently behind him, almost symbolical of Mr. Doogle’s passage through life, soundless, practically invisible. As soon as he was gone, Mr. Slye got up.
‘What’s all this bloody nonsense, Maury? One time you liked Doogle. He’s a human being as much as you and me. I tell you, chick, you’ve got lots to learn. You got to like humanity. Now Doogle’s all right. Is it because he calls you names—you know, well, Long Legs? Lumme! That’s a joke. But you have long legs, Maury, nice long leg
s, and Mr. Doogle likes them. No harm in that. I tell you he’s a good man at his job. Got me out of that Gelton mess like that,’ and he flicked finger and thumb in the air. ‘But you wouldn’t eat your supper. No, you just sat there like somebody’d hit you or something. Come, Maury, we got to live together now, until we’re dead, and we might as well live happy. Now you get on your nice new skirt I bought you, and that coat—course it’s what they call false fur,’ he hugged her suddenly. ‘Never mind, one day I’ll clean up on something good and then you’ll have a real fur one. See! Now come on! Doogle’s waiting for us out there.’
She stood up, gripped his arms. Was he going to go on doing this sort of thing for ever? Wasn’t he ever going to do an honest day’s work again? Be like all the other men in the world. Instead of having to go about from place to place, always rushing, and suspecting, and hoping, and feeling that you no longer belonged to anything or anybody, not even to that world where you—but here he put a hand over her mouth.
‘Little fool!’ he said. ‘What does one work for? Only for money. Well, I work—and bloody hard too. I take as much risk as gamblers and bankers and stockbrokers. Why, I even had a regular customer who was a stockbroker. Used to buy hundreds of French tarts a month. I tell you there’s money in it. Just like there is in gold. See? You have to plunge your hands into muck even to get that. Well, I plunge into another kind. It’s just muck, simply muck. But large sections of humanity love it and because they love it, Maury, me chick, we’re getting a living; and the only difference between that and being a foreman in a jute factory is that I sweat less at this kind of work. I even agree my old lady and my old man would be shocked to death. Anyhow they’re dead. So what does it matter? Take it from me, me chucks, emotions count, and they mean money. Doogle will tell you the same. Sometimes I think you Cats have the funniest ideas of the world. Ah well! No bloody use just standing here talking, is there? D’you want me to be masterful. I can, you know. Get dressed and come out with me to “The Mare”!’
