Under the Rose

by Julia O'Faolain

  ‘No, no and no, I won’t be beaten down!’ Amanda Shand’s voice rose in a flirtatious shriek. ‘The doggies are my bread and butter! Damn it all, Terry, I’m a single girl and …’

  *

  Girl, thought Condon. Forty if she was a day. Selling one of her hounds. That sort lived by myth: distressed lady, morya. Couldn’t take a real job because if she worked from nine to five as a secretary, she would be a secretary. Dabbling in dog-breeding she could live off the smell of an oil rag and be a lady still. He doubted she saw meat more than once a week. Patrick had no patience with the like. Where was Hennessy? Bit of prostatic trouble there. What were we but future worm-food?

  *

  ‘Seriously …’ Terry’s voice now. ‘It’s the youth. I hope I’m no old fogy. I’m thirty-nine and like my bit of fun. I don’t mind long hair or free love or any of that, but I think they’ve lost sight of some jolly important matters, what with all this fraternizing with nigs and …’

  ‘Who’s going out to fight for nig-nogs, Terry? Bet you don’t even know which side you’ll be on!’

  ‘Right! You’re absolutely right. I don’t give a damn which side I’m on. They’re all black to me, haha. No, but I do have a purpose. I think the next great war will be with the coloureds. Don’t laugh! I mean they’ll be attacking us. Look at South Africa, Rhodesia, the US. They’ve got the message. It’s easy for us to sit on our bums in Southern Ireland – the last country where a gentleman is recognized as such, by the way, which is why I like it here – to sit here on our bums and disapprove of the white supremacists. Much too easy. It may be less so in the future. Look at China. Count them up. They want what we’ve got, right? Right. I don’t say I blame the poor buggers but every man’s got to fight his own corner. And there isn’t enough to go round, right? Besides, a lot of decent things would go down the drain if the West went under…. Well, the long and the short of it is I’m going out to fight for the nigs in order to train myself to fight against them.’

  ‘And for the lolly.’

  ‘And for the lolly.’

  ‘Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civ., what?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘… all that we have known and cared for will sink …’

  Someone, not Terry, began to deliver in tones wavering between drunken parody and drunken sentiment, a speech which slipped through Condon’s defences. With astonishment, he realized that he and the rowdies in the bar had something in common. There was that fellow, in his literal, simple way, heeding the call of the times and assuming the military part of the knightly mission at the very moment when Condon himself was shouldering its spiritual side. They complemented each other. Well and why not? Hadn’t Protestant volunteers fought the Turk with Catholic knights at the siege of Malta? Patrick stood up. He was thinking of going into the bar when he heard Amanda say:

  ‘Hey, what about giving Elsie a tinkle?’

  ‘Elsie who?’

  ‘Elsie Condom or Condon or whatever. She’s got a soft spot for old Terry here and she’s sure to produce sandwiches. Her lord and master’s almost certain to be off the premises. Bet she’d like to light your fire, Terry, on your last night.’

  ‘Got her number?’

  ‘In the book. Listen, it’d be doing a good deed in a naughty world to poke old Elsie. Seriously. She doesn’t get much and….’

  ‘What about yourself, Amanda …’

  ‘Oh well, if …’

  Patrick collided with Hennessy who was finally returning and pushed him, for the second time that evening, backwards out the door and into his own car. A yellow Austin Healey with a GB on its rump was drawn up beside it. Patrick resisted an impulse to give it a passing kick. His mind jumbled thoughts, like a washing-machine throwing about soiled linen and, above it, he managed to chat about how time-was-getting-on-sorry-Hennessy-but-better-be-hitting-the-road-slippery-as-well-be-off-betimes. The man must think he was mad.

  Patrick felt a thrust of humiliation knife him. He felt almost tearful. An unskinned part of himself had been reached. He had thought he and Elsie had something, a … union … a solidarity which … In his own head he groped sadly, reaching an unexplored place. Hennessy’s voice came to him but he couldn’t distinguish the words. He felt exposed, mutilated. Hennessy’s Volkswagen funnelled down the hedgy roads. Briars scraped the windows and squeaked.

  ‘There should be a quorum,’ Hennessy was saying. ‘We should hold out for that.’

  ‘Yes,’ managed Condon.

  ‘And what’s your position on the other matter?’

  What matter? Which? Had Hennessy heard?

  ‘I … what?’

  ‘Are you feeling all right?’

  ‘No. I had a dizzy spell. I’m afraid I missed …’

  ‘Oh well, it doesn’t matter.’ Hennessy sounded miffed.

  But Condon had to know. ‘No, no tell me.’

  ‘I’ve been telling you! Corcoran wants selection of the ambulance corps to be left up to him and his henchmen. A matter of getting the strings into his own hands and …’

  ‘Ah.’

  Condon’s mind drifted again. Didn’t she care for him at all then, if she … Oh, and that was what she had asked him! He groaned.

  ‘Are you in pain?’

  ‘No, no, slight twinge. My ulcer…. Nothing serious.’

  He must, would, pull himself together. Mind over matter. Yes.

  The Knights’ ceremony was being held in a Dublin hotel. An entire floor had been taken over, but members spilled into corridors and stairs and lobby where, cloaked and armed, they drew the eye, impressing the serf-grey citizenry with their spiritual and temporal pelf. A drunken poet got into the lift with Condon and Hennessy. Pink and pendulous, his nose (Condon reproved himself for thinking) resembled a skinned male organ. The poet fixed the Knights with his tight, urine-yellow goat’s eyes and grinned. A notorious lecher, he was not the sort of man with whom either would choose to associate, but they were, as always in Dublin, on nodding terms with him.

  ‘How are things, Ian?’

  ‘A wet old night.’

  ‘Ha,’ roared the poet in a peasant brogue, assumed, as all Dubliners know, to make them feel effete, urban and far from the loamy roots of things. ‘How are our Knights T-T-Templars? Still as r-r-rand-d-dy and roistering as when they were burnt at the stake by Philipe le Bel? Burnt,’ he hissed, ‘b-b-burrrrntt and their goods confiscated, ha! Not that that’s likely to happen again. There’s a rising tide of p-p-permiss-ssiveness, as they call it now. Still secret, still underground but about to oo-ooz-z-z-ze up and submerge us all in a f-f-f-foam of s-s-sperm! The age of Eros is upon us. I’ve just c-come back from the cu-cu-cunty counthrrry where they’ve been enjoying a spell of warm weather, and yez’d never credit the goings on I witnessed under hedges and d-d-ditches.’

  ‘I’m sure we wouldn’t,’ Hennessy told him. ‘This is our door.’ He stepped out with a gelid nod. ‘Be seeing you.’ But the poet followed them.

  ‘Maids and matrons,’ he roared. ‘Wedded wives f-f-fu-fuck-ck-cking in the f-f-fields. Cuckoo eggs in every nest. Maybe your own spouses are …’

  Condon hit him. Before he knew it his fist had shot out and caught the pink, wettish – he felt it wet on his knuckles – nose. Or was the wetness blood? It was. His knuckles were stained with it. The poet had been put on a couch and his collar loosened.

  ‘He’s OK. Just a nose-bleed.’

  ‘Head back, Ian, hold your head back.’

  ‘No, better not. The blood makes you sick. Indigestible. Spit it out. Get us a glass. Thanks. Mind the carpet now.’

  ‘Hold his nose over the glass. In, man, in. Poke it in.’

  ‘Get him to a bathroom.’

  ‘Good thing it happened on this floor. No scandal. How did he get in?’

  ‘Gate-crasher.’

  A Knight walked up to Condon. ‘Come and wash your hands too. He’s all right, drunk, deserved what he got. Do him a world of good.’

  Other
voices joined in.

  ‘What was it he said about … Condon’s wife?’

  ‘Shush!’ And loudly: ‘Someone should have done it long ago. A foul-mouthed fellow, a gurrier.’

  ‘A fine lesson for him. A low type. You’re a hard man, Condon. A true Knight, haha!’

  Surrounded by his fellows, Condon felt his agitation abate into a lapping tide of excitement. Someone must have given him a brandy because, as the ceremony began, a manservant in cotton gloves, tapped him on the arm to recover the empty glass. He gave it to the man and himself to rituals he had been studying for some weeks. This was to be a brief and worldly affair because of the hour and place. Mass would be celebrated in the Order’s chapel next morning. Would he stay? He had intended to but now was not so sure. The panoply of the differing ranks of Knights and monks confused him. All wore crosses recalling the crusades on which knights had gone leaving wives locked in chastity belts. Or was that myth? Had the first Knights been celibate? And had such contraptions been widely used? Very unsanitary, if so. He had seen one once in a museum. Was it the Cluny museum in Paris? He wasn’t sure, reproached himself for not achieving a prayerful mood. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee, and I detest my sins above every other evil … Did he? He did not! He was glad he had pucked that obscene fellow on the gob. Watch what’s happening. You’ll miss your cue. The oath of conjugal chastity brought back figures crouching in a corner of his brain: Terry-the-nig-killer and Elsie. Niggers for that sort began at Liverpool. No holds barred with wives of nigs or Papists. No holds barred with any wives in profligate England. Adultery winked at. Since Henry the Eighth. Ruin seize thee, ruthless king, Confusion on thy banners wait … That was some other … Would she? NO. Ah no, she was forty-four – still dirty-minded, though, had violated his privacy in talk with Amanda Shand. Don’t trust, you can’t trust her. Ah God, his knightly honour was a joke, besmirched in advance. Maybe, at this very …

  He made to leap up but a hand pulled him back, recalling him to the time and place. ‘Not yet,’ whispered Hennessy, thinking Condon had mistaken the cues printed on the slips of paper which had been handed out. ‘Not till after the hymn.’

  Nigs. Knicks. Patrick sank back on his knees. To think she should spoil a moment of such spiritual significance, dragging his soul down to the level of her own. A stain on one Knight’s honour must affect the Order as a whole. Every man responsible for his woman. He had read in the National Geographic about adulteresses somewhere in Africa being impaled per vaginam. Punished whereby they had – but the idea was repugnant. Better punish the lover like in The Cask of Amontillado. Brick him up. By God if he came home this night and found them at it! Jesus, let them not, because if they … Please, Jesus. He’d have no choice. But. Universally recognized. Crime passionnel. Juries let off the husband. And the heavenly jury? Veni creator spiritus … The hymn ended and the Knights rose creakily. Not one was under fifty. Patrick’s head reeled and and whirled. Pounded.

  ‘Well now, let’s toast our new Knight of Honour and Devotion.’ Hennessy led him off.

  There was no slipping away. They drank fast and garrulously. At one point Condon was sick. He threw up with decorum, in the lavatory, unknown to any. He ate a peppermint to sweeten his breath. Coming back, he brought the conversation round to Parnell and Kitty O’Shea.

  ‘The woman was an adulteress.’

  ‘But was it fair to punish her lover and the millions who depended on him? The course of Irish history might …’

  ‘You’re forgetting the scandal! The scandal to the souls of those same millions! How could the Church …’

  Rounds of drinks waited, marshalled like skittles. Four brandies had been bought for Patrick. The bar was closing but every man wanted to stand his round. Honour obliged.

  Suddenly, Condon said he needed to get home. Urgently. His wife was unwell, subject to giddy spells, and might not hear the phone.

  ‘Can I borrow your car?’ he asked Hennessy. ‘I’ll get it back to you tomorrow.’

  Hennessy gave him the keys.

  Patrick took them and rushed out of the hotel, started the car without warming the engine and raced hell-for-leather out of Dublin and into the hedgy embrace of country roads. Here he was forced by an attack of nausea to pull in and found himself, out of the car, weeping in a ditch and embracing a thorn tree. ‘Elsie,’ he groaned, to his own astonishment, ‘Elsie!’ He began to roar and bellow like a bull, filling and emptying his lungs with desolate twanging air. After some minutes he got back into the car, feeling wet and so paralytic with cold he could hardly touch his fingers around the stick-shift. He put on the heater and drove in shivering sobriety back across the mountains, concentrating on the road and reciting prayers to calm his nerves. ‘… disease of desire,’ he whispered mechanically, ‘to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour, not in the disease of desire as do the Gentiles who know not God …’

  As he turned into his own winding drive, darkly flanked by rhododendrons, he got a glimpse of Elsie’s lighted window and her silhouette, heavier than he had remembered it, closing the curtains. He rounded the last curve and came on the battered yellow Austin Healey which had been parked earlier in the public-house yard. Standing by its nose – he must have been looking at the motor, for the bonnet was raised – like a moth in the glare of Patrick’s headlights, was a man in a check sports coat: Terry. Patrick drove straight for him, as though following a traffic signal in the man’s gullet. He could see into the pulsing throat and even the flap on the uvula glistening against the dark interior. There was a thump. Patrick’s head hit the headrest behind him. The man fell forward on to the Volkswagen then, on the rebound, into the unbonneted engine of his own car. Heels up, arms flopping, he was carried backwards as the two cars pursued their course into a tree. The Austin Healey buckled, the man’s limbs crunched within the integument of his clothes. Patrick – although he was to prove to be suffering from minor concussion – felt nothing.

  Moments later, Elsie found his cloaked figure, bending over the wreckage, howling in the elated, almost musical accents of dogs on a moonlit night. ‘I did it. Jesus, I did it.’

  *

  That version never got out.

  Connections rallied. Witnesses testified that the Englishman had been drinking heavily in the pub. They surmised he must have lost his way and strayed up Condon’s driveway in search of the cross-roads. In all likelihood, he would have neglected to turn on his lights. That Condon should round the bend of his own driveway at an incautious speed was understandable at so late an hour in a gentleman tired after a long drive and eager to get home to his bed. A regrettable accident.

  *

  Terry’s friends waked him jovially, pleased with the excuse for a little extra drinking. ‘After all’, said Amanda Shand, ‘he was only a bird of passage.’ The Condons, she has heard, were getting on together as never before. He had taken her for a change of scene to Malta and she had sent Amanda a card saying she was ‘having a whale of a time’.

  The Religious Wars of 1944

  At dusk, Mr Lacy, the keeper, eager for his tea, rang a bell to chase dawdlers home. They were hard to flush out, because the park was dotted with gazebos – ‘follies’ built in the Famine days to provide work – and if you hid in one you could always get out later by climbing the tall iron gates. There were places too, where footholes had been gouged in the perimeter wall.

  ‘I’ll have yez summonsed!’ Mr Lacy’s peaked cap sliced through the dimness. Authority shone from his brass-buttons. ‘I’ll tell yeer Mammies.’ There was a by-law – but what was a by-law? – forbidding anyone to linger in the locked, possibly perilous park.

  Mysterious goings-on had been reported. A girl from Teresa Dunne’s school had fainted when a man did some momentous thing, appearing to her out of a bush. The gardai had come, but then the matter was hushed up and the girl cowed into discretion.

  ‘I’ll tell you what she saw,’ Mrs Malahide offered Teresa. ‘If you like.’ They we
re in the Malahides’ drawing room, and Teresa, whose mother had sent her over with a cake, was waiting to be given back the plate. You couldn’t trust Mrs Malahide to return it later. She was a bit scatty, a Protestant, and, according to some, ‘a gentlewoman, though no lady’. She would say anything and was, intermittently and dangerously, Teresa’s mother’s friend.

  ‘Well?’

  Teresa was torn. She was reluctant to learn secrets from Mrs Malahide, who would rob them of their versatile glee. Not knowing kept open a shiver of possibilities – but Mrs Malahide was a belittler. She could shrink the Wars of Troy. ‘Men fighting over a bitch,’ was how she once described those.

  ‘Don’t mind her,’ people advised. ‘She’s that way because of her lip.’

  She had a harelip, without which she would have been a beauty – would have stayed in England and married her own sort rather than poor, decent Jack Malahide. Instead, here she was in an Irish village, cut off by the war and living, said gossips, on ‘the smell of an oil rag’. Teresa herself had seen the grey, scummy broth of sheep’s lung which Mrs Malahide left on the stove for her children’s meal when she and her husband took off for the pub. He, a parson’s son, had served in the colonial service and now made simple toys which people bought because the Emergency had cut off supplies of better ones. Bright and two-dimensional, his hobbyhorses bounded up the village street between the legs of four- and five-year-olds whose sisters held skipping ropes by the snug, beechwood handles he had painstakingly turned on his lathe. He had a marvelling smile and worshipped Mrs Malahide.