Through Streets Broad and Narrow

by Gabriel Fielding

  “Twins, oh, no.” She smiled. “Not yet, sir.” She did not wink again; but she lay back all the more comfortably and closed her eyes.

  He said, “Thank you very much. Until the examiner comes I’ve finished now,” and he covered her with the red hospital blanket.

  “Good luck, sir,” she said.

  The minor cases were easy, and when he got out into the street again with the others he didn’t even trouble to compare notes with them. Having lost a year already he was not on very familiar terms with any of them, and he was exam bored. The spate of accounts, of ready listening you had to give before you could tell your own story were not for him any longer. Nor were the frothing pints in Davy Byrnes’ or the Wicklow Bar. He lunched by himself in the college Buffet and went back to his rooms to do two or three hours’ revision of the gynaecology in preparation for the final viva the next morning.

  At teatime he went up to the Shelbourne to see Groarke and found him sitting alone in Greenbloom’s bedroom.

  “How did you get on?” Groarke asked.

  “So far, I’m through. I nearly came down in the clinical, but by the mercy of God, as Father Beste would say, I struck a darling of a woman who dropped me the hint just in time.”

  Groarke was chewing his teeth, stretched out on Greenbloom’s sofa. “Viva, tomorrow?”

  “Yes, ten A.M.”

  “And after that you’re going back to Anglesey?”

  “On Saturday; by the morning boat.”

  The photograph of Eli had been removed, the triptych was folded up and locked with a minute archaic-looking key.

  “Mike, what are your plans?”

  “I’m starting again next term. Medicine and surgery in the summer, a house job in London during the winter. After that, the Navy.”

  Groarke threw him a cigarette. “We missed you.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, Mike. It was a question of first things first. After the party I only had two days in which to finish my revision. I just had to pretend that none of it had happened. I wanted to come and see you and Greenbloom, of course. I wanted to see if there wasn’t something we could do, but—oh God, Greenbloom would understand, even if you don’t.”

  “He did.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He flew to London yesterday, he’s coming back tomorrow.”

  “To London? Why?”

  “To see his mother. Beste brought him the news of his brother’s death yesterday morning. The German priest was not allowed to visit the hospital. He was told by the superintendent that the prisoner had died in diabetic coma six weeks ago—and was ‘cremated in the camp crematorium.’”

  “Six weeks ago? He was dead all the time?”

  “That was the message.”

  “But he didn’t have diabetes.”

  “No.”

  “They put him out with insulin, then?”

  “He’s dead.” Groarke said.

  John went round the room looking at things. Greenbloom had removed most of his possessions, even the ashtrays were empty of his particular cigarette ends.

  Groarke said, “What are you looking for?”

  “I was looking at things.”

  “Been a death in the room,” Groarke said. “D’you know what that fellow’s done?”

  “What fellow?”

  “Himself, Greenbloom.”

  “No, what?” John picked up a letter from the top of the bureau. It was addressed to him in Greenbloom’s heavy hand and had already been opened.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

  “He’s squared all my debts,” Groarke said. “The whole seven hundred pounds. He’ll see me through until I qualify; and this after I’d told him Luthmann had lent me some of the money.”

  But John was reading Greenbloom’s letter.

  My Dear John,

  I understand the reasons for your absence and Groarke will have explained to you the reasons for mine.

  We were too late for Eli and I shall not mourn him. Those German romantics are already in flight. When this war is over we shall find them marching into peace and democracy as enthusiastically as they have recently plunged into war. Since they believe only in what they might become they will have no memory of what they were. There is no point of rest in the philosophies they have espoused—and no centre for their guilt unless it be in the breast of the Europe which we ourselves are. We each contain within us the old barbarities of the new Germany. With my brother, I begin to see that the Crucifixion also is today.

  Pray breakfast with me here tomorrow at 10.

  Thank you for your help which I hope to have repaid to your friend Groarke.

  Yours affectionately,

  Horab.

  John said, “Did you read it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think of it?”

  “I prefer: ‘The unpurged images of day recede …’”

  “Say it.”

  Groarke rolled himself off the sofa and onto the carpet. He crawled across it on all fours like a dog or a man playing bears and reached up for the bell push. He pressed it.

  “Do you ever feel that the only possible answer is an action of some sort?”

  “I do, as a matter of fact. It’s what children do.”

  “Well get down on your knees alongside me,” Groarke said, “and when this flunkey arrives we’ll give him something to think about.”

  They took up their positions on either side of the door and waited. When it opened the Shelbourne room-servant did not see them at first. He was an elderly Englishman with a compressed face, the expression glazed into place by years of politeness and tip-taking. He stood there in the doorway with John and Groarke at the level of his knees, looking for the occupant of the room.

  Groarke spoke, “Two large brandies and soda, please.”

  The man jumped perceptibly; they saw his knees jerk back within the trousers legs.

  “What, sir?”

  Groarke stared up at him complacently, “Two large brandies and sodas.” He turned to John, “Or would you prefer whiskey?”

  “No,” John said, looking up at the waiter, “but would you please be sure that it’s Schweppes’ ginger ale? I don’t like Mumford’s; it’s too gingery.”

  The waiter went on standing there as though he were afraid to move until Groarke said to John, “That’ll be all, won’t it?”

  “Some biscuits,” John said.

  Groarke instructed the waiter, “Some biscuits.” He asked John, “With butter?”

  “No, thank you, just biscuits.”

  The man withdrew slowly. Groarke all-foured across the carpet, reached up to the handle of the bedroom door and disappeared inside it. John heard him grunting and padding round the room looking for something. In a few minutes he came back carrying one of Greenbloom’s books in his mouth, a volume of Yeats’ poetry, and at this moment the door opened and the waiter reappeared with a jug on which stood the drinks and a plate of biscuits.

  “Put it on the floor, please,” Groarke instructed through the book.

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  From his position in front of the electric fire John said, “He, Mr. Groarke, wants you to put the tray on the floor.”

  The waiter kneeled down between them and carefully deposited the tray in front of them, so that momentarly they were all three on all fours.

  Groarke took the book out of his mouth and said, “That proves something. The question is, what?”

  “Unities,” John said.

  The waiter asked Groarke whether there would be anything else.

  “Yes, have a drink with us.”

  “I’m on duty, sir,” he said, making for the door. When it had closed behind him, Groarke said, “That was helpful.”

  “Splendid,” John said, getting on to the sofa. “I feel better already, now let’s have the poem.”

  “Drink first,” Groarke said and drained his double brandy. Then he stood up and in the Gaelic monotone, the slow precise
chant of the poet himself, read the first verse of “Byzantium.”

  “The unpurged images of day recede;

  The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;

  Night resonance recedes, night-walkers’ song

  After great cathedral gong;

  A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains

  All that man is,

  All mere complexities,

  The fury and the mire of human veins.”

  “More,” John requested, emptying his glass.

  “Before me floats an image, man or shade,

  Shade more than man, more image than a shade;

  For Hades’ bobbin bound in mummy-cloth

  May unwind the winding path;

  A mouth that has no moisture and no breath

  Breathless mouths may summon!

  I hail the superhuman!

  I call it death-in-life and life-in-death.

  The words and brandy teased them in the silence. Groarke was springing to life with the old, long-absent brilliance in his face. The poem rang across the room, the death and fret; the mystery slowly resolving into the fulfilment of a just imaginable promise.

  Groarke said, “We’ll celebrate this man. We’ll bury him and raise him.”

  “We’ll do it with food and wine.”

  “A wake,” Groarke said.

  “Only the best.”

  “A royal tomb.”

  “A palace, a mausoleum.”

  “In the Ranelagh Club,” John said.

  “No Jews admitted,” Groarke said.

  “But he was rich.”

  “And he’s dead.”

  “He’s alive.”

  “And we are too.”

  They went through into Greenbloom’s bedroom and borrowed a magnificent suit each; John’s was a little too full a fit, but Groarke’s might have been tailored for him.

  Groarke left a note for Greenbloom on top of the bureau explaining that in view of his viva John would be unable to meet him for breakfast and that he himself might be late as they intended to celebrate fittingly his brother Eli’s martyrdom.

  They entered the Club with a flourish and John ordered another double brandy and ginger ale each from Bartlett. They drank these on one of the black leather settees at the foot of the Club staircase facing the steady fire before which old Harrison and Lord Tyrrelstown were discussing life in Monte Carlo before the Great War.

  The stone balustrade of the massive staircase rose behind them, flowing up three sides of the great hall to the colonnaded gallery above. The old men on the fender, black and white in their dinner dress, their faces infant-pink in the firelight, rambled on; a member or two came in or went out while John and Groarke drank as they had so often done in the past awaiting the critical moments of ideas which were bound to come. At six o’clock they heard faintly the B.B.C. time pips from the club wireless, the muffled tones of the announcer reading the headlines of the war bulletin and watched the two old men heading across the hall for the reading room. They heard the clock ticking in the porter’s office, the sound of servants in the coffee room laying the tables for dinner, the angry distant hum of the traffic in Ranelagh Street and College Road.

  Suddenly the main doors swung open and Geoffrey Galpin, Palgrave Chamberlyn-Ffynch and another man clattered into the hall talking hard. Colonel Galpin’s red little face was wet with rain, his shoes spattered with country mud. He was wearing his green billycock hat and carrying the swordstick given him by his father in 1914. His good eye swivelled instantly across at John, his glass one followed it a moment later and less completely. He came racing up as he always did.

  “Blaydon, by God, and who’s it with you? What are you having to drink? Wait now while I have a Jimmy Riddle. Here, young Ffynch, you’ve the bladder of a mare; tell Bartlett I’m in and that we’ll all be dining in an hour and get some drinks in for these young devils. By God, with this mud and wet they’ll all be running themselves into the ground. Thank God for the town but thank God I don’t have to live in it.”

  He disappeared in the direction of the cloakroom still talking hard and Palgrave introduced the stranger, a square-jawed middle-aged Pole of about fifty named Jedrez Giertych. He turned out to be a pilot who had ferried a plane over from Prestwick to Londonderry the previous day and had crossed the border in his mufti to see Galpin, whom he had apparently first met in some Services club in London.

  Palgrave said, “We had a most fascinating time at Geoffrey’s stables, didn’t we, Giertych?”

  “It was good,” said the Pole.

  “I really think I could become quite attached to horses, after all,” went on Palgrave. “Geoffrey’s are quite fantastic. We watched them in the school, he can make them do absolutely anything.”

  “Of course I can. I know what a horse is,” said the Colonel, hurrying back to join them. “I know how big it is. You’ll never do anything with a horse unless you can make it put on a hand and a half just by looking at it.”

  “Good!” said the Pole. “That is very good. In my country, too, we understand horses. The man on the horse is a very small part of it. He must master the animal by humility.”

  “You’re right, Jedrez, they never really had the touch in England, that’s why they can’t train for the sticks. Not any fool can set ’em up, even for the flat; but for the furze and the fences, the gates and water, you need to let the horse train you to his own capacity.”

  “In my country that also is true, Geoffrey. This afternoon I was reminded of my uncle’s stable outside Lublin. He was almost as fine a trainer as you are. He did not love his horses either, he respected them only.”

  “Damned stinking sentiment. Love ’em indeed! Think they’d thank you for it? Leave that to unmarried girls. By God, if ever you hear me say I love my horses just get out the gun.” The Colonel drank. “Your uncle, you say? Where is he now?”

  “Although he was over-age he was with the cavalry at Hitler’s invasion by the tanks. He was killed in the first week.”

  “Jerries! Killed your uncle, a trainer, did they? Tanks against horses. That’s the cost of living over here, blast it! What can I do except bring on a bit of bloodstock for the ‘chasing when we’ve knocked the bastards down again. Bloody glass eye from the last affair; lost one of my balls too. Tried to get the doctors here to pad me out a bit before I went across to London for the medical. Even dyed my hair; all of it! but what happens? The board only laughs at me! Old O’Driscoll at the Millbank depot, only two years younger than myself and with swords up now in the R.A.M.C. tells me, ‘Geoffrey, old man, you get back to the Curragh and keep your horses on the move so that we’ll have something worth watching in the National when we’ve licked the bastards a second time!’”

  They drank several more rounds and became slowly more excited. Giertych, though initially somewhat morose, told them stories about his successive captures and of his ultimately successful attempt to escape from Colditz. He seemed to have been in half a dozen different political prisons. He explained to Galpin that his idea of the Germans as bitter but honourable enemies was now out of date and recounted bestial stories of the Nazi extermination policy in Warsaw. Groarke began to rattle off his concentration camp statistics and Palgrave thought he would go back to bed as he felt too sick to eat any dinner.

  Galpin rounded on him at this. “Sick! By God, if William were here, he’d bring-up, my boy, to hear his son talking like that. What the devil are you wearing your colours for if blood and beastliness doesn’t fetch your manhood out?”

  Palgrave fingered the blue and black of his Old Harrovian tie and said, “Well, actually, Geoffrey, it isn’t that I’d mind fighting or anything, it’s only that I don’t like talking about it.”

  “Well, why the hell aren’t you? Been meaning to ask you that a long time but gave you the benefit of the doubt. Young Stafford’s gone, Freddie Tyrrelstown’s boy’s in the Navy. Even that little wet Sebastian de Savigny’s got himself a soft job as a war correspondent which seems to consist in
time-serving at White’s Club with the page-boys and politicians. I’d like to know what William is thinking of, letting you frig around like a love-sick jennet in Ffynchfort with your model trains and your jazz band.”

  Palgrave said, “That’s damned insulting.”

  And Giertych, glaring at everyone, said, “He is of the decadence, yes? We had such in my country too. When we had time and ammunition to spare we shot them—in the back.”

  But the Colonel was brooding as was his custom after a few drinks on an empty stomach. John remembered previous evenings on which he had invited him to dine and as suddenly leaped from the fender as though he had been burned, saying, “Sorry, my boy, can’t wait after all. Haven’t seen what you’d call a woman for weeks. Just tell Bartlett to put your meal on the I.O.U., will you?” But on this occasion he sat quite silent, only putting a detaining hand on Palgrave’s elbow and forcing him to sit down again. Groarke and Giertych were enraging one another about Nazi methods of torture; and John, addressing nobody in particular, but hoping to be taken up by somebody, was giving an account of Caroline Smythe-Thomas’ party and Luthmann’s introduction of the Wehrmacht song. Eventually Giertych, breaking off in the middle of a sentence, asked increduously, “Excuse me! I hear you say that you have been drinking with a Nazi?”

  “And singing,” John said.

  “Singing?” Giertych bit down hard on his false teeth.

  “Palgrave played the piano and we sang ‘Wir Fahren gegen Englandt’ and ‘The Horst Wessel’ song. That was so, wasn’t it, Mike?”

  “It was a party in aid of neutrality,” Groarke explained carefully. “Luthmann, the German press attaché, was invited.”

  “Invited? Drinking and singing with a Nazi?” The Pole ran a broad hand over his grey hair. “Where is this man who goes about singing his gutter songs in the middle of the city in which I am a guest? What are we making here talking when tomorrow I must return to Londonderry to ferry one plane to England for my squadron to fly against twenty of Goering’s Messerschmitts?”