A Bed in the Sticks

by Lee Dunne

  ‘Kid, what’s wrong?’

  She didn’t open her eyes but I could see the agony in them. ‘Nothing, love, - nothing,’ She said like someone forcing the words out. Be patient with me, love. I do love you.’

  She drew her head down and her lips pressed mine. She raised her knees and I moved gently against her. Gently, then, using my fingers to help me make my insertion, crooning every word of love I had ever heard, I attempted to consummate our marriage.

  Pauline gasped as she felt me enter, crying out then as I moved forward, finally biting her hand to kill her screams, even though I remained very still inside her.

  I didn’t move until I saw that she had made her hand bleed where she had bitten into it. I drew back then, my heart raw, my erection limp and dejected, my self-pity choking me.

  After the show that night, I walked back to her wagon with Pauline, who registered no surprise when I told her I would not come in. ‘We’ll talk tomorrow, okay.’

  She stood inside the door, looking down at me in the light that sat above her shoulder. ‘All right, love’, was all she could say.

  -----------

  I walked far in the dark night, glued to the numbness in my mind, which, I felt, actually had the power to paralyse me. I had no mind. I couldn’t think and I couldn’t weep, and walking didn’t help at all.

  I felt so alone, blind and numb, unable to think, incapable of weeping. When some bit of light did turn up in my head I didn’t even have a thought about turning to Jenny. Yet, some time later- my walk had lasted four hours - I used my door key to this weeks digs and I went to her room.

  The light was on and I saw her put her book down, and then she was out of the bed and holding me, while I begged her to tell me that she loved me.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she kissed my forehead: ‘Oh, my dear, Tony, till the day I die, I will love you with all that I am.

  ‘I started to undress since my clothes were seriously damp, and I made Jenny get back into bed. Then I towelled myself roughly, and found I wanted to hold her more than I had ever wanted to hold anybody in my life before.

  ‘Hold me, Jenny, and forgive me.’

  In moments she had parted her legs and stroked me into her body and I allowed her take me where she could, doing very little but aim for the gratitude that warmed me in the heart while Jenny set my body on fire.

  When we were resting, smoking cigarettes, and more than content with where we were at, I asked her to tell me what she knew, after such a long time touring together, about Pauline.

  ‘I know her truth, Tony, and I only hope you will want me still when I share it with you. I feel love for her, the way I would for anybody living in pain, so bear with me.’

  ‘Tell me, Jennie, I have to know.’

  ‘About six weeks before you came, what, two and a half, almost three years ago, business was awful, everybody was depressed. Then Tom Hunter won some money on the horses, a fair amount, apparently, and we had a party. When that was over, Pauline invited me back to her wagon for a Night Cap.

  ‘She had a bottle Courvoisier and she wanted, needed to talk, you know. I had no pressing engagement and I was glad of her company. She changed into slacks and a sweater, we drank a little, and we shuffled - no real room to dance - the music was good from Radio Luxembourg - it was comforting and we had a few laughs and we had more drink, and, oh Tony, suddenly it was like she was the guy and I was the girl - the way she held me was a turn-on - it was just a laugh, really, but it really was like dancing with a guy, and the way she held me turned me on. I might have been drunk, I guess I was.’

  ‘Jennie paused and I said, - my throat as dry as a bone- ‘What, what happened?’

  ‘’Pauline was excited in a very sexy way, and when she was pressing against me, I embraced her. The next thing she was drawing my sweater up off my breasts and I didn’t even try to stop her. I was so turned on I wanted to suck her nipples, and then she French kissed me, she was incredibly sexy, giving me her tongue like a man, and before I knew what was happening, really, we were lying down and she was kissing me down below and all I knew was that I wanted everything that could happen between us, to happen all night.’

  ‘And did it? Did it happen all night?’

  ‘Oh God, yes, she was so lovely, so warm, so giving, I was defenceless and wanted all that happened. I slept with her that night and next morning I left before she woke up.

  ‘We both turned up for the Morning Call and were easy enough with each together - it was almost as though she didn’t remember what happened, but, I know one thing, I knew I would never forget it. It was my only experience with a woman, it was wonderful, but that was the beginning, the middle and the end of my bi-sexual experience, with never the slightest suggestion that Pauline wanted it to happen again. At times, I wondered if she even remembered it, which I most certainly did.’

  -------

  I walked back to Pauline’s wagon at dawn. I hadn’t slept. Neither had I had sex with Jennie. She had held me and she had given me the strength to sling my self-pity out the window. It was still quite dark, but the cold didn’t bother me.

  Pauline’s light was on and I went in. She was awake, smoking in bed.

  ‘Hello Kid!’ She smiled and I kissed her face. You OK?’

  She shrugged: ‘Will I ever be?’

  I put the kettle on. ‘I’ll fix some tea. Like some?

  She sat up: ‘I have whiskey to kill the taste of it.’ I gave her a fresh cigarette: ‘I’ve worked it out,’ I said, ‘so don’t bug your self. I pushed you into it.’

  Shaking her head, she said ‘That’s not true. I wouldn’t have let you. My holding out - that was me - not you. I waited until I thought I’d be okay, be a wife to you....’

  ‘And you can’t?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t talk about it now...I’ve had my weep but I need to think things out, now that I’ve had my big weep.’

  ‘Me too...

  ‘If I can’t make it with you, I’ll never make it, Tony. And I don’t think there’s any point in trying again. If there was I’d have you on top of me right now, your lovely cocked doing what it was made for. I love you, you know that, and I have never said that to anybody before because I never loved anybody before, but, I mean it to you.’

  I nodded my head, genuinely moved by her honesty.

  ‘Whatever else you may think of me. Tony, please believe that.’

  I nodded my head, feeling that my insides had been badly hurt and she had a cigarette going again, and looked right at me as she said: ‘So what chance have I got when I can’t make love to the one guy I’ve ever wanted in my life. If that doesn’t make me queer, what does?’

  ‘Are you a lesbian? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘I must be. A few years ago I made love with a woman when I was fairly jarred. We tried the odd grope at boarding school. That’s all there was - a kiss here and there. It happens..

  Boarding schools can get like that. That’s all I’ve done, like, I don’t go around ogling beautiful bosoms and well shaped bums.

  ‘I said: ‘What’re we going to do?’

  ‘Give it a couple of months. I’ll move to somewhere else. You’ll get an annulment or something. She stopped. ‘Can I tell you something?’

  I looked at her. ‘After this, you can tell me anything.’ I smiled though I was far from happy and she nodded in understanding.

  ‘The way I am, it’s my tough luck. It’s not your fault in any way. You’re the most beautiful human being I’ve ever known...believe that...’

  ‘Yknow, I really dreamed of marrying you from the first early days when you were running me through a song.’

  She smiled: ‘I thought you were the most beautiful guy I was ever likely to see, that first time, you were a knock out.’

  I chuckled to cover my n
eed to weep and she said, ‘Get that whiskey bottle out. I’m going to tie on a little one!’

  I poured the drinks and raised my glass. ‘Thank Christ for alcohol.’

  Pauline held up her glass: ‘Amen to that,’ she said.

  -----------

  Jimmy was the only one, Jennie apart, who knew about Pauline. I had to tell him because he and I, we as co owners, had enough problems with him having to wonder what the hell were she and I playing at.

  For several seconds he seemed genuinely shocked and he sounded upset when he spoke: ‘The poor cow. Jesus! Who would have thought it?

  I stayed in my digs and nobody commented and more than they said a thing about Jennie and me. Pauline did her work, never missed a note or a beat, or a line in a sketch, and for the rest of the time she drank enough to insulate her for whatever kind of blues attacked her.

  Day after day it was the same thing, and more than once I had to help her to her trailer and put her to be after the show. I tried to get her to eat; she had lost pounds in weight; but she had no interest in food, and she began to get angry when I tried to tell her she was killing herself, reminding me that it was her life and nobody else’s, and she didn’t care. And so it went on.

  We took Gaytime all over the south of Ireland, through another season in the booth. Business was up and down - we were feeling the result of more and more people watching more and more television - and although we did tick over, we never really made any money.

  I wasn’t all that bothered about money, and I had stopped thinking about the future. With the way Pauline was, I had parked any thoughts of ambition. I had no hope, so without feeling sorry for myself, I got on with the job and tried, in every way I could, to help Jimmy keep the show alive.

  In the August of our third booth, Maria Maria Maguire died. Just like that. She went home after acting in a play one night and next morning, her daughter Pat found her dead.

  ‘She was older than she let on’ Pat said. ‘She was seventy three.’

  I was amazed and even Jimmy, who had always said she knocked off a few years, every year, was surprised. The old girl, rather like Gary, had not left too many broken hearts behind her, and even Pat seemed to regard it as a happy release, both of them.

  Two months afterwards, she moved in with Jimmy and it was generally accepted that they would be married sometime. But, nobody talked much about it because that’s the way things happened. On the Road you took life, including the tough Irish weather- as it came, trying to steer a middle course at all times. This was a good idea since so much of the time you had a ditch on either side of you, so if you didn’t mess with either extreme, like was generally easier for you.

  Pat was a good looking woman who could have passed for mid thirties without a problem. I hoped it would go on good for them because Jimmy was a decent man, rough and ready at times but, overall a good human being.

  Yes he was capable of manipulating people to his own ends, but that was just part of the way he was. And he was usually so right in what he wanted to do that the people he manipulated invariably ended up better off for having been puppets in his hands for a minute, an hour, or a year.

  The truth about Jimmy was that he was wasted out there in the sticks. He could have been somebody of great success if the need to go on the board hadn’t consumed him. He had a flair for talking; he could use words in such a way that they sounded brand new; and I thought he would have made the greatest agent that any actor could wish to have. And his built-in eye for an angle would have made him a natural front man, a publicity agent of such colour that people would have fought to get him on their side. But, he had been born into the world of the travelling show; his father had been a comedian and knew not other way to live. Even after he realised that he could never emulate his father; this emerged during a boozy night of whiskey and reminiscence, he could not leave the stage.

  So, knowing, he had, like my old mentor, Gary, settled for a bed in the sticks. He never moaned about this; he didn’t know how to feel sorry for himself’ life had given him something with which to operate, and he did the best he could do with the limitations of that ability. And he had no complex whatever about being a showman, because being a showman was his life.

  It was tough on the road, travelling all over the country, fitting up here and there and everywhere, hoping that people would respond to your advertising and all the other effort that went into Please Come and See Our Great Show!

  You had no guarantee of anything but hard times, and while for me, because I was so fresh to it all, every new obstacle was a challenge, I began to notice in Jimmy, the beginnings of a sort of philosophical acceptance, that the odds were so against you that, finally you were going to be screwed by the whole scene.

  Jimmy hinted at this a few times but my enthusiasm shook him out of his apathy and he was back to his old resilient self for a while more. I use the word enthusiasm because it illustrates how innocent I was. Had I been on the road one sixth of the time Jimmy had, I would have realised he was right, and I would have had more respect for the enemy. But you can’t learn all in a day - just as well, because my innocence, my enthusiasm, was, at times, all I had going for me.

  We died the death for the opening fortnight of the New Year in, of all the places on earth, West Cork. I moan because this is one of the most beautiful places on earth, even in winter, but the Atlantic was merciless that year, and the weather so rough, so pernicious, that it would have taken a hero or a masochist, to leave the fireside out of anything other than severe necessity.

  When Jimmy mentioned heading for Waterford or Killkenny, I said it seemed like an awful long haul. He agreed but thought that it might be just what we needed to push our luck around the right way.

  ‘Maybe we’ve been too long in these parts.’

  ‘It’ll be at least a two day trip.’

  He nodded: ‘I’m not bothered about that. The way things have been, we could have stayed in bed that last week, so I think it’s worth a look-see.’

  We decided to go and check things out and I told Jenny not to fret if we were away overnight. She kissed me and I held onto her.

  ‘I’d like to take you with us, but you know I can’t.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be here when you come back.

  Jimmy suggested we go and tell Pauline what we were going to do but I knew he was just checking to make sure she was alright. She had been drinking heavier than ever since Christmas, and the previous night she had been so paralysed tjat the pair of us had to carry her back to her trailer.

  15

  Pauline was lying in a drying pool of her own blood when we opened the trailer door. We lifted her onto the bed and I saw Jimmy crossing himself as my legs buckled under me. O, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee...

  Her hands were cold, so cold that she might have been dead for days, but, somehow, the blood from her wrists hadn’t covered her beautiful fingers.

  The broken whiskey bottle lay in a corner of the trailer. I sat looking at her and Jimmy put a lighted cigarette between my lips.

  ‘She was playing ‘Come Back to Sorrento’ - that was in Butlers Town.’

  He said something but I knew he didn’t remember. Why should he? He hadn’t fallen in love with her. How good it had been to find her sitting at the piano, the edge of bitterness to almost everything she said, the Canadian flavour to her Dublin accent, like the music she played. I sat remembering her like that... unable to believe that the cold pale slip of a girl on the bed was my favourite pianist of all time.

  The deceased took her own life was her mind was unbalanced. She had been drinking heavily for a long time. The failure of her marriage contributed, the court feels, to her manic depression.

  It was all jumbled up, stilted formality, cold as the corpse when we found her, God rest her soul. The Coroners verdict was something we worked
out for ourselves weeks earlier. So what! None of it changed any thing. No help there for either Pauline or me.

  Whiskey helped because it was insulation, and Jennie carried me through the weeks that followed the death of my amazing young wife who, in her offhand way, was too good for this world.

  Ma used to say that it was an ill wind that didn’t blow some good, and I thought of this as we worked to packed houses night after night until we left Milltown.

  Jimmy and I, we had used the microphone on town and country, hiring locals to help us do chores, generally getting ordinary people on our side, since they can be your best source of getting to the ordinary people which generally formed ninety per cent of our audiences.

  Mind you, we got lucky that Jimmy rang a pal of his on The Herald, which is what the Dub calls ‘my own paper.’ This guy got a headline story out of the tragedy, which earned it time on radio news, while he sent it to every contact he had in the southern half of the country - which earned us business that was just unbelievably good. So good, that it had me deciding that there was a Heaven, and that Pauline was there, cigarette in hand, wearing a huge grin that her story had been such a hit to start out ball rolling into a hugely successful tour that made our Spring a true gift from a loving God.

  We made national and local press all over the country with pictures of the company in situ and on our moving days, photos of our small crocodile of trucks and trailers, and three halfway decent motor cars. Imagine us earning captions such as

  Hero’s of The Road

  And

  ‘Only the Valiant

  And to top all plugs

  We received the accolade

  There’s No People like Show People:

  ---------------

  Like all halfway decent stories, Pauline’s passing was milked for all it was worth, so I shouldn’t have been all that surprised that a priest from another town, one we had played many times down the years, turned up at her funeral. But seeing the guy with his Mass Card face on, caused me to remember how he had absolutely refused to allow Pauline’s corpse be buried in his local graveyard, since she has, his words ‘taken her own life.’