Through Streets Broad and Narrow

by Gabriel Fielding

  “My degree,” Groarke said. “Being a playboy you’ll find that difficult to grasp. You belong to the sinking English middle class; but I’m up from the Anglo-Irish drain, stranded with a Catholic mother and a Protestant Civil Servant father like the Castle itself in the middle of Dublin.” He put on a whining Dublin brogue. ‘“Faith! did ye see the fine ball up at the Castle last night? Wasn’t the Governor there himself and the carriages rolling up Dame Street till all hours and the flunkeys handing in the gentry at the door and Mickey Flynn and Patrick Groarke and all them other young officials from the Ministry being given drinks in the long bar and allowed to get their right eyes full of the splendid company, the lords and ladies, and the gorgeous uniforms of the Royal Irish Constabulary dancing under the lights?’ And what’s the Castle now?” he went on. “A bloody police station with a handful of guarda playing billiards in the ballroom. D’you wonder my old man drinks and that I’m ambitious? And if you can tell me what flag I belong to or what my religion is or whom I must not betray I’ll place you higher than your friend Horab Greenbloom.”

  John sat silent for a long time. Groarke had a certain authority about him, a wicked dignity. It was difficult to believe that he was no more than the man he had previously seemed and whom John had previously known. He wondered what strange cleansing could have been accomplished in him during his six months in Grangegorman, and for an instant had a sudden mental image of the man whose name had been legion and who had dwelt among the tombs above the Gaderene slope.

  Groarke had evidently been watching him. He said, “You can think about that later. What we’ve got to discuss is this party we’re supposed to be giving. Where do you think we should have it?”

  “I thought of that earlier.”

  “Right in your line, isn’t it? Parties, girls, money?”

  John cut him short. “D’you know Caroline Smythe-Thomas?”

  “No, but I’d like to.”

  “Her parents have just given her a flat in a mews behind Fitzwilliam Square. She shares it with two friends who are both away in Galway at the moment. If you could bear to forget your Anglo-Irish blood for the night and see Palgrave Chamberlyn-Ffynch again I think he could probably arrange for us to have it there.”

  John did not see Greenbloom over the following days; they were both too busy. But in the evenings when he had finished his lectures and clinics and put in an hour or two’s work on his notebooks, he went regularly to the Shelbourne to see Groarke, who had apparently settled there as easily as he had previously accommodated himself to the life of the mental hospital.

  The Irishman was still resting. His days seemed to consist of lying in bed until midday in his room on the third floor of the hotel, lunching with Greenbloom alone or with Father Beste between one and two o’clock, and walking in Stephen’s Green in the afternoon until the music started in the long lounge. In the evenings he passed his time in Greenbloom’s sitting-room either reading books or watching the wallpaper.

  He seemed to have recovered sufficiently from his strange illness to be able to drink what he liked; but though he ordered drinks for John at Greenbloom’s expense seeming, indeed, to enjoy this privilege, he himself drank as abstemiously as his host. In the conversations which John had with him during those few days before the party, in the long silences which they shared, it became apparent that Groarke was becoming steadily more and more obsessed with the fate of Eli.

  He would reduce all other topics of conversation to a stalemate. He would answer no questions about the progress of his negotiations with Christian Luthman, the German press attaché, and refused even to touch upon his personal plans regarding the remainder of the medical course. He would not profess even a polite interest in John’s own situation, and, as always, resolutely refused to mention Dymphna.

  John observed that quite often his gaze would most secretly and quickly take in the photograph of Eli and then return to the wallpaper beside it. This movement of Groarke’s green eyes reminded John of the look a drinker whose glass is full gives to a bottle in another part of the room.

  On one occasion John came in more quietly than usual and found him looking at the photograph. He stayed where he was and then reached out for a book which was lying beside the frame. Standing perfectly still in the middle of the room, he began to talk very fast. Referring to the book only occasionally he quoted long extracts from it, a precise résumé of the conditions in various concentration camps: modes of execution and burial, statistics of age groups, religious denominations and racial characteristics of those killed between 1933 and 1939, the year of the report’s publication. He went on to summarize the new techniques in German surgery developed as a result of punitive research by the Nazis. He concluded by giving John the latest published facts about the camp at Dachau, repeating them as accurately as he would have done had they been working together for an examination.

  John was made uneasy by this and reminded him that he used to joke about these things and told him that it would be healthier for him if he could learn to do so again. But he made the suggestion with a lack of conviction which Groarke quickly discerned.

  Evidently quoting from some other source, he went on, “ ‘The Reichsführer SS is assured that at this camp prisoners are spared the pain of knowing they are about to die. They are invited to take a shower in the delousing unit attached to the camp hospital. Having stripped naked they hand over their clothes to an attendant who shows them into a centrally heated room and provides each of them with a piece of soap and a towel. The atmosphere is cultured and restrained; classical music, recordings of the native birdsong of the Fatherland or opera by sympathetic composers is relayed to them while they await their turn. It has proved impracticable to cater for the religious beliefs of the prisoners where such beliefs are held. At considerable expense extreme care had been taken to prevent prisoners realizing, when entering the shower, that the shower nozzles are imperforate and the plumbing with which they are connected, waterless. Death by Cyclon B gas rising through the drainage vents in the floor is nearly instantaneous, with the minimum psychological premonition of asphyxiation, jactitation or vomiting. Ultimate destruction of corpses is by means of incineration in the crematorium, recently enlarged, which adjoins the gas chamber. The crematorium is staffed by non-Aryans who are not expected to work longer than six weeks prior to their own executions by shooting in the camp garden.’ ”

  “Mike, where did you get that stuff?”

  “It’s a translation from a photostat of Nazi official records relating to one of their extermination camps. It’s Greenbloom’s.”

  “I don’t think you should be reading it.”

  “You prefer the Old Testament?”

  “There are other things.”

  “I find it a good deal more immediate than the crossing of the Red Sea, don’t you?”

  “Perhaps the Jews do, too.”

  Groarke dropped the book; he said, “Unities.”

  John gave Caroline and Palgrave dinner in Jammet’s restaurant a day or two later. When, towards the end of the evening he suggested the idea of a Neutrality party to celebrate the arrival in Dublin of his American friend August Graeme, they were so enthusiastic that they neither of them demurred at sending an invitation to the German press attaché as well.

  Caroline said, “Oh, that man! I keep on seeing him. He’s got an enormous car and a real goose-stepping chauffeur. And Luthmann himself’s so handsome and virile that I always imagine he’s got little spurs on his heels.”

  Palgrave said, “I’ve heard he’s very musical.” Caroline gave one of her little laughs, “Palgrave thinks he’s going to be erotically sacrificed on top of his guitar; but Luthmann’s not that sort of a Nazi. I know a girl from the Abbey who’s been out with him several times.”

  Caroline, had become very arty since she had persuaded her parents to let her share a mews flat with two of her ex-school-friends from Galway. She had been given a small part in Michael MacLiammoir’s production of Yahoo an
d was busy rehearsing for it at the Gate Theatre. Her acquaintance had extended fast: painters, singers, actors, actresses and the back-stage detritus of the theatre filled her days and nights. She seemed to find time and affection for everything and everyone from Palgrave up to the more penurious members of the Irish aristocracy and downwards to the flyboys and poets from Chelsea and Kensington, who, at the advent of the war had flooded into Dublin in order to avoid military service in England.

  In the few days’ grace she was given to make her arrangements she made full use of her talent for entertainment and friendship, inviting a rich assortment of her friends and borrowing all manner of amusing props from the theatre.

  As it happened, John saw neither her nor Palgrave again until the night of the party itself. He had started on his final revision of the Midwifery syllabus for the exam which was due to start on the Tuesday of the following week. So great was his determination to pass it this time, so sure his intuition that if he did not he would never qualify in Ireland, that he ceased even his visits to the Shelbourne to talk and drink with Groarke. But when the night finally arrived he called for him early in fulfilment of his promise to Caroline that they would both give her a hand with the final arrangements.

  They walked along through the winter’s dust of Fitzwilliam Square and, on reaching the Mews, found the cobbled yard outside the flat islanded with cases of wine, pot flowers, boxes of borrowed glassware and cutlery, deluxe greengrocery and empty pastryman’s trays. In addition there was a bunch of green, orange and white balloons, the Irish colours, and a full-sized white stallion made of plaster of paris and labelled, Neutrality: Property of the Gate Theatre, (Yahoo.) Standing askew across the doorway this beast bestrode the other things with an arched neck from which flowed an ivory mane of real horsehair to match its long tail.

  Two of the flyboys, a poet named Jan Benjamin and a painter named Emlyn Warlock were admiring it when John and Groarke arrived. Benjamin was saying, “And if anyone says anything about Troy or Godiva, my dear, I shall perish.”

  And his friend was stroking its nose and saying, “Amusing, most amusing; but hack, don’t you think?”

  Inside the main room, the large converted stable itself, there were more early arrivals. It was difficult in the twilight to see exactly how many because of Caroline’s mirrors. It was even more difficult to know how many mirrors there were because they filled entire walls and were so placed that their reflections of each other and of the trompe l’oeil décor were meticulously accurate. But certainly there were three or four people in there, all of them young, and double as many slightly older reflected persons.

  Palgrave Chamberlyn-Ffynch was round a corner playing Caroline’s piano with his back to his reflection, someone else was sitting on a divan drinking from a thick goblet, and two girls and another young man were decorating a bar against one of the side walls with the Nazi flag, the Irish Tricoleur, the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes.

  Caroline herself was in the bathroom having a bath. At intervals her head appeared through the internal window of the bathroom looking down on them from the wall which led up to the skylight. Although she appeared so frail and gay, she had, like some others of her kind, a very sharp eye and a sense of possession all the more acute for the apparent prodigality of her nature.

  “Palgrave, don’t please put flowers on the piano, somebody will only knock them over and then I’ll have to have it all taken to pieces and oiled. Hello! John and Michael Groarke, isn’t it? I’m just coming down. Do have a drink, but only a little one because I want you to help with the furniture.”

  Over the bar someone had pinned a notice which read:

  NEUTRALITY: ABSINTHE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER.

  Nobody was doing very much else at all to begin with. Palgrave went on sitting at the piano with a drink beside him and a Melachrino wasting between his lips. He wasn’t cool to John or Groarke, he was simply absent as he always was when he had achieved what he liked. What he liked was to be drinking expensive drinks and playing the piano with plenty of socially fairly irreproachable young men about the place. Under these circumstances he lost all petulance and arrogance and was as good-natured as a fed child.

  The Chelsea poet, Jan Benjamin, was vaguely laying the table with knives, forks and spoons for a buffet supper, but he was much more interested in Palgrave than in his task.

  John said to Groarke, “Let’s get things organized. At least we could get the stuff in from the yard or give a hand with the food.”

  In the small kitchen they helped Mrs. Mahoney, lent for the occasion by Caroline’s mother, with the cleaning of celery, the heating of tinned asparagus, the buttering of bread and filling of vols-au-vent cases with chicken and mushrooms. All the food which was to be served hot was put on trays in a large electrically heated dumbwaiter, also lent by Caroline’s parents. The remainder—petits fours, fruits, cheese and biscuits, nuts and raisins—was laid out on the table spanning half one of the long sides of the main room.

  By the time Caroline came down wearing a narrow golden belt and sandals with a black dress and attached black hood over her shining hair, there was some sign of organization, though not nearly enough. She was angry; she lighted a cigarette, helped herself to a drink and stood by the piano, tapping its top with the heel of her hand.

  She said, “Everybody’s quite useless. Everybody! If we’re going to have a party let’s have one and not a soup kitchen. If many more people come before we’re due to start, there just won’t be room to do anything. So please all go outside until we’ve moved the furniture. No, Palgrave, not on the sofa! We’re just going to move it. We simply must have some clear space for people to eat and drink in. I don’t really think we’ll be able to manage any dancing, it’s a question of breathing only at this stage.”

  But gallant and imperative though she was she could accomplish little. In ones and twos, then in groups, more and more people arrived laughing their way past the boxes and cases, stooping beneath the plaster stallion as they pressed in from the winter’s cold to the warmth and light of the long, L-shaped room.

  Palgrave, dislodged twice from the piano in the rectangular annexe off the main room, had settled back there with the poet and the painter, all three sadly but tenderly calling each other by their Christian names. It was quite distinct, this party within the party, with the names being enunciated at intervals, affectionately, chidingly, with mock astonishment or appeal and always with the underlying tristesse.

  “But Palgrave—”

  “No, Jan, that was at Jocelyn’s.”

  “Emlyn, you couldn’t possibly!”

  It persisted throughout the evening, symbolically cut off from all that happened in the large remainder of the room; yet not isolated since the real party infiltrated in there, not only by persons but by the reflections from the many mirrors.

  Palgrave’s corner reminded John of those birdcages in which invaginated fish bowls are incorporated on the tops so that the occupants may sit preening and billing on perches surrounded by swimming fish; a conceit at first shocking, then bewildering, finally amusing; even though, as a situation, it is never easily accepted, since the viewer has always to remind himself that the birds are not wet nor the fish dry. And from Palgrave’s cage came the notes of the piano continually pausing on the muted cries: the “Jans,” “Oh, Palgraves,” and the “Emlyns”; while beyond the triumvirate, around them, swung the reflections of the other guests: the girls in their night paint, the young men, the transient groups, breaking up and re-forming, restlessly.

  The party was never organized; it never really began at any particular moment and who was to say when it ended? Certainly not Caroline, who, with Palgrave, since he had helped Greenbloom to pay for it, was joint hostess. For she was as unaware of its real purpose as was he, though she had never Palgrave’s intention of isolating herself from it. Quite soon, when she had overseen the moving of the furniture and casually welcomed some of the guests, she abandoned her attempts to achieve
any sort of order.

  She told John, “I’m ‘moithered’ with it. I don’t know what any of us are supposed to be doing at all. After your idea I did get someone to label my Yahoo stallion “Neutrality” as a sort of gesture to Ireland, the Germans and this American man you’re bringing. But Palgrave’s being so witless with all those Englishmen that I think it’s best just to let it be nobody’s party in particular.”

  “Yes, that’s probably best.”

  “I’m only hoping the press don’t get ear of it. It’ll be the end of my flat if Daddy sees any photographs or reports in the paper.”

  “It’s just a party,” John said. “Great fun!”

  “Well, I hope so, but somehow I don’t know that it is going to be such crack at all. Somehow I don’t like the atmosphere. I know there are more people to come and that it hasn’t really got going, but don’t you feel a sort of tension?”

  “Good heavens, no! Do you, Mike?”

  “What?”

  “Tension,” John repeated. “There’s no tension, is there? Caroline thinks it’s not going well.”

  “It hasn’t started,” Groarke said.

  “Isn’t he ominous? Whenever do you think Christian Luthmann will arrive? And your American friend? I do wish we could persuade Palgrave to abandon his piano session. It helps in one way but in another it’s somehow rather—segregating. If your main guests don’t arrive soon we’ll just have to hand round the vols-au-vent, otherwise people will drink too much on empty stomachs and that’s fatal.”

  “Give them another five minutes,” John said; and Groarke, with uncharacteristic sympathy, suggested that he would take over the bar and see that nobody anticipated events.

  “How sweet of you! You’re just the man to do it. I don’t mind a bit if people get drunk later, I just don’t want them to get drunk now—before it starts.”

  John said, “I’ve been thinking; is this your first party in the flat?”

  “It’s the first real one of any sort. I’ve been so busy with everything—”