The Temporary Gentleman

by Barry, Sebastian

  This accident more or less saw me through to the end of the war, for I was seven months in hospital in India. In memory of my rescuer, the goatherd, I brought two Pathan dolls home to the girls, along with myself.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Just now and then I seem, in my effort to form some sort of narrative, to touch accidentally on something rawer than a mere wound, it is more like a viciousness, a poisonous compound, that even to touch brings a sudden sense of illness and unhappiness – the opposite of the King’s Touch. And at the very moment of touching there is caused also a sensation of deepest alarm, of approaching disaster, and even horror, no, especially horror, like any of those old, dark dreams of childhood when I was astray in the thickest, blackest woods, and something was creeping, creeping up on me. Waking from those dreams as a child I used to cry, and sometimes now writing in this minute-book I have cried, even when I have no idea why I am crying – and cried all the harder for that. I have invoked the gods of truth, and they will have their way with me.

  The war ended. I was proud, more or less, to have served in the army. But pride in that ‘foreign’ war meant little in Ireland. Hundreds of thousands had traipsed over to England to work in the factories and tens of thousands had joined the various forces, and they certainly knew all about it. But the stay-at-homes, and those not inclined to favour any force allied with the British, remained blank on the subject, or vibrant with contempt. There wasn’t a drop of petrol in Ireland, everything desirable was rationed, there was more turf dug out of the bogs than in all the millennia before it. The war had been just a kind of giant inconvenience.

  But the war ended. I went home to silences, to surprise in people’s faces, as if they had forgotten I was away – ‘Ah, Jack, ah, Jack, how’s it going? Where have you been, man?’ And all the rest of the life-giving guff of bars.

  The army offered me a half-colonelship if I would stay on afterwards. I was immensely pleased to be asked. But Mai couldn’t face it, and I thought she had been through enough.

  ‘I want you here,’ she said. ‘I want you here.’

  There was chaos and confusion everywhere after the war, but at the same time, some mechanisms were freed up. Tom’s marriage annulment came through at last from Rome. Roseanne had been accused of various things and now it was all done and dusted and as if the marriage had never been. I was sent out by Mam to the dreary tin hut with Father Gaunt to tell her this, one uncherishable day, and I was shocked to find she was pregnant, but not, it seemed, with any child of Tom’s. She never did have a child with Tom. When the baby was born, it was put up for adoption in England, through the order of nuns that my sister Teasy belonged to. Roseanne was committed to the Sligo asylum, and I believe she died of TB not too long afterwards. Thus closed a terrible chapter.

  If you had told me, or Tom, or anyone, that lovely bright day when they were married in Dublin, that by war’s end she would be in the mad house, and shortly afterwards die, I would not have believed you. No one could have imagined such a ferocious fate for that beauteous, shining girl.

  A thousand mornings then in Harbour House, waking to find myself strewn somewhere like a length of deep-water seaweed, torn away from the sea-bed by a storm, parched, shaking my head at the world, feeling for bruises and cuts, recovering half-remembered insults and curses, surveying the debris of the night, thrown plates, cutlery, the Arklow teapot, the little Belleek basket, the Dresden shepherdess, pictures knocked down from the walls, cigarette stubs everywhere, my mother’s doilies flung to the four corners of a room, carpets rucked against the walls, savagery ringing in my head, my own and hers, and if I peeped into our bedroom, yes, Mai there in the bed, her greying hair on the dirty pillows, and maybe Maggie tucked in beside her, where I must have put her yet again, Mai crying out for company, for comfort, terrified, so drunk she could not register her terror, only a receptacle of terror.

  Maggie wanted to be an actress and it was decided she could go away to Dublin to the acting school there. Mam arranged for Ursula to go to Liverpool to train as a nurse. So we were left then on our own. More seldom and then not at all sounded the knock on the door, of brother or mother, as if the spinning top of our wretched life was throwing everyone off, try as they might to hang on. The only thing it seems that brings the same people back that were at your marriage ceremony, in such circumstances, is your funeral.

  To part Mai from Maggie was not without its station of the cross. That night after Maggie had struggled away with her box and suitcase – it was 1947, the year of the great snow -– across the flagstones of the station platform, tall as a heron, in her blue coat that thinned her even more than the thin person she was, with her stark black hair, Mai poisoned herself with gin in an enormous effort of extinction against herself that was the equal in size of the gigantic tonnage of snow that fell on Sligo, that fell on Ireland, that cast an uncanny stillness on everything, the muddled roofs of the town, the utilitarian roads, the fine houses along the Finisklin road, that froze the river itself.

  It was no bother to her to down the two bottles of gin, she did it with almost a steady hand all through the evening and early night, not in her room as she usually did, but at the kitchen table itself, as if she had nothing to hide now, nothing at all. And when she had the bottles drunk, she must have disrobed herself in the freezing kitchen, she must have taken off every stitch of clothes, a woman in her mid-forties, with all her battle scars, and then walked out through the front door into the maze and haze of snow. And I only knew it because I was standing at the sitting-room window myself, looking out, gobsmacked by the continuing snowfall, and wondering would there ever be a cease to it, and I saw her thin figure about twenty feet from the house, and if she had walked on further I would never have seen her. And I raced through the room and out through the hall, and fairly galloped up the road, the snow treacherous under my slippers, so I might have been a citizen suddenly of Moscow, and I tore along as the snowflakes veritably whipped my face, whipped it and whipped it, and when I reached her, I called out, and asked her where she was going. And she said in her strange drunken voice, with its perfect diction, ‘I am looking for the river,’ and even though she had lost her course for the river because of the snow, she seemed inclined just to persevere on, so I rushed to her and lifted her into my arms, more or less scooped her into my arms, shocked, shocked, even in that queer emergency, by the terrible lightness of the woman, and she a tall person enough, and I carried her back, doing my best not to fall with her, marvelling also at the utter whiteness now in the world, not just covering everything but wiping it out, erasing it, as if all our story might be returned to a blank page, and nothing written on it, only perhaps the very first promise of our love.

  And then, how could I leave her like that, bereft, confused, drinking with an even greater ferocity, like a child rubbing a drawing out with gigantic anger and extravagant impatience?

  Something I nearly forgot, how could I forget it? Perhaps because it brought such strange sorrow after, such confusion. But a few months after Maggie left, she came home on the train one day and said she had managed to ‘book’ her mother – a strange term, as if it were an hotel – into a drying-out hospital in the midlands, a few miles from Mullingar. And whatever Maggie said to her mother, whatever good moment she found her in, asking her to go, Mai agreed, I could hardly credit it. And Pappy, rather than myself, why I am not sure, drove her over in his old jalopy, and he told me later, Mai was somewhat ‘refreshed’ as my father always puts it, but in high good spirits, and he said there really was a general feeling in that dilapidated motorcar that a great thing was afoot. And they put Mai ‘under’ in some fashion for ten days, with drugs of some kind, maybe morphine, I don’t know, and after another ten days she was ferried back to me, as right as rain, as shipshape as a bloody ship.

  ‘Mai,’ I said, ‘Mai,’ not really knowing what to say, and with a few whiskies in me, and I must admit I had found the evenings very long and lonely without her, maybe that is a curi
ous thing to say, ‘you look like a girl – a mere girl!’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean by that, Jack,’ she said, but brightly, ‘I am no girl.’

  The first thing she did was go down to Queenie’s house, Queenie had five children of her own by now, and it had been many years since they had had much to do with one another, the two friends. But they went about that day, and had a lovely time, a lovely time, Mai told me that herself, and the very fact she was telling me something, in that fashion, simple, true and ordinary, gave me hope and joy.

  So it was wretched, it was perhaps even evil and disgusting, that in the general atmosphere of drinking in the house, that is to say, my own drinking, she seemed to slip back into it, just as easy as a pivot into a pivot hole. I suppose that was a terrible and tragic thing. By Christ, it was.

  God forgive me, I pray, God forgive me.

  And she began to imagine that if only Maggie were there she might make another attempt, another effort, but Maggie was not there, was she, she was gone, and would never be living at home again – never, never, never, never, never.

  I couldn’t see her so distraught about Maggie, I just couldn’t. Even though I thought it was good for Maggie to get away. I put Harbour House on the market. There was no work worth taking in Sligo anyhow, after the war there was such a scarcity of everything, but decent work was nonexistent. The tens of thousands of people that had gone to England to do war work didn’t even bother to come home, sure they couldn’t, it would have been an absurdity. So maybe I thought I could do better in Dublin. Or that was what I told myself, as I sold the house for less than I had paid for it all those years before. I had told Mai my plan and she had not demurred, and this was no Malta plan, because when the day came, she got into the motorcar with perfect obedience, even haste, and had put on her best surviving coat as was her way in something she needed to make an effort for, rare as that was, and without looking back up the Finisklin Road, we set off for the new house in Dublin.

  Of course there was nothing to be had of much desirability for the price of a Sligo house, so I had only managed to buy a rather mean little premises in Clontarf, but when we reached Dunseverick Road, Mai didn’t seem to give the matter a first let alone a second thought, and assisted me in carrying in our goods and chattels, which I had dragged up from Sligo on a builder’s trailer lashed to the back of the car. And though we never painted a wall in that house, or hardly changed a stick of furniture from the place we threw it that first afternoon – and indeed my boxes of books never were unpacked, but stood in the little hallway for five ragged years – it had the nomenclature of ‘home’ for Maggie then, after we fished her out of her digs in Westland Row. She had only been planning to come home for the holidays, I suppose, poor soul. The holidays. Not a very apt title for any of the days in that house, I must confess. A measure of ferocity, sickness, shouting, smashing of the last few things carried over from the distant, distant past, sometimes a clement time in between, when Mai’s essential nature shone forth, and we laughed ‘like drains’ as she would say, and everything was sunny for a space – but there was a bend in every time-dulled spoon, and a crack in everything.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Tomelty is his name, I discover, the white inspector as I was calling him, because he was back today, without his constable. I hardly knew who or what he was because he arrived in an enormous gabardine cloak and a pair of failed galoshes, which brought a great deal of muddy water into my living room. As he divested himself of his rain-gear, with a rather exasperated, almost savage movement of his arm, another few pints of rain were spewed across the floorboards. And within his covering he had been sweating copiously. I think I had heard the low grumble of his car arriving and had certainly witnessed it parking in the three inches of water that cover Mr Oko’s property at present. And just as I was expecting more veiled threats and intimations of an unsettling nature, it turned out he was on something of a mercy mission – a friendly visit almost, except nothing could really persuade me that he wants to be on friendly terms with me.

  ‘I understand that Mr Mensah was here to see you,’ he said.

  ‘Who is Mr Mensah?’ I said. I knew it was a common name in Accra, and the name of the famous singer, but I didn’t remember knowing anyone of that name.

  ‘The brother of the woman you may or may not have had dealings with. The man who may or may not have beaten up Kofi Genfi, unless it was you who did or did not beat him up.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, a little reassured that the whole dark affair was still cloaked in multiple ambiguity.

  ‘It isn’t important now,’ said Tomelty, trying to squeeze some further moisture out of the bottom of his trouser legs, ruining the crease of his uniform in the process. ‘It’s a closed matter. But I have heard, the way that one hears things out here, that Mensah was extremely unhappy with his visit to you, I don’t know if you want to throw light on that.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said. It seemed like a thousand years ago. ‘I was in the throes of a little malarial attack. Tom Quaye was looking after things. I believe he sent him on his way.’

  ‘Well, he has been going about the various drinking places he frequents, saying hard things about you, very hard things, and I don’t know, the reason I’m telling you is, this Mensah character is quite a respectable man in some ways, despite his criminal record, and when I was questioning him I got the impression of quite a straight sort of character, you know, no double talk, no evasion, really rather raw in his honesty. So when a man like that is threatening to kill someone, I pay it more heed than when I hear a gangster do so, if you follow me.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘So I would just keep a weather eye out for him, if I were you,’ said Tomelty, not without a certain enjoyment I thought. He was warning me but he was also content to be alarming me at the same time.

  ‘I’m sure he won’t come out here again,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, he probably won’t. But he is very vexed. He has had to pay out quite a bit of money to his friend, and he was expecting you to underwrite his losses, if you follow me. A floater, you know.’

  ‘I’m sure he was,’ I said, laughing, in my man-of-the-world guise that sometimes I find myself assuming.

  ‘Well,’ said Tomelty, giving himself a last shake before having to set out again and undoing all his good work, ‘I am glad you are not too bothered. These chaps have long memories. Not unlike those wild boys in Ireland in the twenties. You won’t catch me going home any time soon. No, sir.’

  ‘That’s sad,’ I said.

  He looked at me. Maybe he thought it was sad too, or maybe it annoyed him that I had commented on it. Maybe a real man of the world would just have let the comment pass. So many things said by Irish people can very profitably be just let pass, I suppose. But did I also see a little window of vulnerability open up for a moment? A shadow of doubt and pain across the eyes? A moment of darkness? Is this how my brother Eneas looks now when someone mentions the Tan war? Somewhere, even far away like this, catching him off guard, unawares? Eneas, who can’t come home again either, but has crept back a couple of times and hidden in the Mam’s house, not daring to go out in daylight, and my Mam wringing her hands in the kitchen, and weeping her private tears over him. Tomelty hadn’t said before he was involved in the South, he had only mentioned his presence north of the border, if I wasn’t mistaken in my recollection. Perhaps being near me again, the brother of an old Royal Irish Constabulary man, had betrayed him into the shadow of a confession. What strange men were about the earth, after this half century of wars. Men who once were true, and their very trueness turned into betrayal, as the pages of history turn in the wind. Men who were vicious oftentimes and ruthless, turned into heroes and patriots. And a hundred shades and mixtures of both. Perhaps he also took some strange comfort from my war service. Yes, just for a moment, I saw the casement of a tiny window of entry into Tomelty. There was something stricken and lost about him, just for a moment, just for a moment, and the
n it was as if he banged the casement shut again.

  I didn’t know what he was going to say, and maybe he didn’t either. He certainly wasn’t a sentimentalist though. He was back all shipshape in a thrice, his hatches all battened.

  ‘How’s the diary going?’ he said, nodding towards this table.

  ‘Oh, Jaysus, it’s . . .’ I said, and was stuck somehow for the rest of the sentence.

  ‘I’ll get on,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget, McNulty.’ It struck me that when a policeman says your name it always sounds ironical. And he made a gesture with his right hand across his eyes, as if to say, keep a look-out. ‘Mensah’s a taxi driver. He can move about. He’s angry. I tell you, half the time I’m out here, it’s like I never left Ireland. Take away the heat and the fucking palm trees and the black skins and it’s all just Ballymena in the rain, I tell you.’

  And then he flung the cape over his head again and plunged back out into the deluge, like one enormous elephant ear.

  It was only when he was gone that I thought maybe I should have thanked him, but it was too late, his car was creating two great vees of water as it surged away.

  *

  Ursula. She had been going fine at the nursing, and she sent me a photo of herself in the nursing gear, at her graduation, and very impressive it was, and a great relief. I sent her a five-pound note and apologised for not being there, as I thought I ought to have been.

  In the midwinter of ’52 I got a letter from her with such an amount of distress in it, urgently requesting funds. She said she had been dismissed from her nursing job, and was living in some hardship in Toxteth. Some ten days later I got another letter from her, saying things were better, which for some reason worried me even more than the first letter.