“Caldwell. Go back to your desk this instant.”
The boy from Wexford’s reply was one which I dare swear no master of that school received before or since. He sprang at the Spectre, and delivered a terrific right upper-cut which took him fairly on the chin. Livid, gasping with surprise, the Spectre took a step backward, rocking on his heels. Caldwell sprang after him, kicked his feet brutally from under him, and snatched the cane from his hand. The Spectre clutched his ankle, and rolled over, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a snarl of agony. Caldwell stooped, ripped the soutane off him as if it were a cobweb, and began to slash him with the most incisive and deadly accuracy. He slashed his body, his legs, his arms, his face, he cut him across the eyes, and we saw blood. The Spectre made no outcry, never a word was said, there was no sound but the panting and hissing of breath, and the different sounds of the cane as it slashed different parts of its victim. Frankie lay on the floor, huddled in a heap. Only once did Caldwell pause, when the writhing Spectre rolled over Frankie. He waited for a moment, kicked him clear, and began again. He went on until the cane split and broke. Then he gave the Spectre a final terrific kick in the ribs, took a hop-step and a leap down the hall, let out a piercing war-whoop, jumped into the air, pulled down the lamp over my head, slung it blazing at St. Sebastian, unlocked the door, and departed.
Silence fell on us all. The room might have been a tomb. The shattered lamp lay with a sickly blue flame flickering round it, and running on the floor. A thick smoke swirled up around my desk, but all of us were looking steadfastly at the platform, waiting we knew not for what.
Suddenly there came a loud knocking at the door. Caldwell had wisely locked it after him. The noise released us. We jumped to our feet and yelled incoherent explanations, without troubling to conceal our joy. A few stalwart monks were fetched, and shattered the door off its hinges. It fell in with a terrific crash, hitting one boy’s desk and completely wrecking it. In the litter I remember catching sight of an illicit pack of cards.
After the briefest of enquiries, a selected dozen of us were taken to the monks’ quarters, and then to the President’s room.
We were all sat down in a row on high stiff-backed chairs. The room seemed to us austere and splendid. It was lit by a remarkable double-barrelled colza oil lamp on a tall standard, with a huge green shade, much like what you would see in a billiard saloon.
The President was a tall, handsome, dignified old man. He looked us over with sad and watery blue eyes. After half a minute of silence he began to speak, and his first words put us at ease. Here was someone to whom we could talk.
Gently, slowly, with infinite kindness, he interrogated each one of us in turn, and each of us, strangely happy and unembarrassed, answered him. My story was extracted, and many worse ones. When he came to the searing horror of Frankie’s, told haltingly between sobs, the old President broke down. He kept dabbing his rheumy eyes with a preposterous red handkerchief, saying over to himself again and again, “God bless my soul. My poor boys. My poor boys.”
When all had finished, he rang a bell. Small glasses of wine were given to us, and biscuits, as a restorative, and finally the old man dismissed us with a grave benediction.
Caldwell we never saw again, but he became a prize fighter, and rumours reached us later of his successes on the Californian coast. We held his memory in deep reverence. I wish I had known more about him, and that I did not only see him as the heroic and noble figure of a single episode.
The Spectre disappeared too: and from that evening my school days were happy, tranquil, and without incident.
Chapter IV
I have never had a head for dates. My memory works by association, not by the calendar, so that I can’t be sure how many years I lived with Ann Dunn, or when exactly the events I am about to tell you took place. The night on the pier head, when Bill and his Da tried to catch the conger—that must have been early on, for it was autumn, October at the earliest, and I should not have been there in term time once I had gone to school. That’s the only way I can work things out, when I can work them out at all. Luckily, what happened to me doesn’t need accurate dating. As I said when I began, I am giving you only those things which I can remember as having happened to me, as being part of the growth of the man I am today.
I had no real predilection for company of my own age, school notwithstanding, and so it was a relief in my holidays to turn to the characters who at that time adorned the Kingstown waterfront. I call it Kingstown to be historically accurate, for there were many years to go before it regained its ancient title of Dun Laoghaire. The day that introduced me to waterfront society I would mark with gold upon the calendar, if I could remember which it was. I remember everything else about it.
Up till now, Ann Dunn had always cut my hair when I was at home, and at school it was chopped and mutilated by a couple of rakish-looking villains who came from the town’s one establishment and surreptitiously carried bets for us, and, I suspect, for certain of the monks as well. There seems to be a natural connection between barbers and betting. But one holiday, perhaps in despair at the havoc wrought by these villains, Ann Dunn professed herself unable to function further, and sent me off with sixpence to Martin Taafe the barber.
Martin Taafe lived half way down Noggin Street, at the slum end of the town, directly above the quay where the tramp steamers put in. His shop was small and unprepossessing. It looked so dirty that I hesitated, thinking I must have come to the wrong place. But though the paint of the letters was cracked and blistered, the name was clear enough, and the ramshackle chirurgeon’s pole, set loosely at an angle, clinched the matter. I went up three stone steps, well worn down in the middle, put my hand upon the latch, and pressed gently. The latch was stiff: nothing happened. Perhaps the place was shut, I told myself, and felt relief. At once vague sounds came out to contradict me, the chirp of a canary, the unmistakable sound of a razor strop, and then of someone pursing up his lips and making that dry sucking noise one makes to birds. I waited, and heard quite a number of chirrups in reply. Evidently there were several canaries. Then someone called, “Come in”.
I felt myself flush scarlet. There was frosted glass in the door, and, yellow with dirt though it was, someone must have seen my shadow. Saying no to an impulse to run away, I pressed hard upon the door. It yielded a half inch, stiffly. I leaned my whole weight on it, it gave, and I shot in, to the accompaniment of a mad jangling that startled the wits out of me, and a frantic burst of enthusiasm from the canaries.
Recovering myself, I looked above the door, and saw a cracked bell on a spring, leaping to and fro in an ecstasy of disturbance. The noise was such that I turned in terror to apologise for it. The barber, standing beside a customer, gave me the gentlest and most understanding of smiles. He cocked an eyebrow humorously at the bell, shrugged one shoulder an inch, and motioned me to take a seat.
There were several other people in the shop, sitting on a bench by the wall. I glanced at them nervously, in case they should be less tolerant, but none so much as looked at me. With the exception of one, who was calmly reading a paper and never raised his head, they seemed all deeply preoccupied, either fidgeting, biting their nails, or staring in front of them in grim expectancy, like people waiting their turn for the dentist. The thought flashed into my mind that I should have to wait a long time, but I was so glad to escape notice that I crept unobtrusively to a corner and settled myself down, taking off my cap and holding it on my knees. The barber gave me another smile of encouragement, and began to shave his client. The bell’s clamour sank to a tinkle, and died, though it still jigged convulsively on its spring, and the canaries’ chirps dwindled with it.
Coming back to myself by degrees, I began to look about me. Of the five people waiting, four had nothing to hold my interest. They were all shabby, more or less dirty, and two showed signs of drink. One, a dejected-looking man of fifty with bulbous eyes, who sat staring in front of him in a kind of trance, realised presently that the canar
ies had fallen silent, raised his head, and made the sucking noise I had heard. They responded feebly,, and the man with the newspaper made a slight movement of distaste. I had noticed him from the first, and now, twisting a little on my chair, I gave him all my attention.
Thickset, bearded, wearing two pairs of pince-nez, he was obviously a man of very different background from the others. One got an immediate impression of distinction from him, which every detail of his dress denied: yet, when all was noted, the impression remained. On his head, at a gallant angle, was a Panama hat, the brim worn and frayed and discoloured. His beard and moustache were reddish, the beard trimmed forward to a point, the moustaches turned up at the ends. Each pair of pince-nez on the short, thick nose was further attached to his person by a string so thick it was almost a cable, both strings disappearing from sight through a torn and enlarged buttonhole, half way down a bulging white waistcoat filthy with grease and thumb marks. He wore a shiny alpaca coat, the pockets stuffed with papers; greyish-green tweed trousers, black socks, and boots cut in several places to accommodate corns or bunions. His fingers were stained to the second joint with nicotine: a cigarette drooped from his mouth, its neglected ash falling every now and then to increase the scatterings on his waistcoat. He read gravely but lightly, without absorption, as one who was not unduly interested but whom no amount of waiting could put out.
A thin man put his head around the door, and gave a quick glance round.
“Not in yet?” he enquired hoarsely.
“Not yet, Dick,” Martin replied, without looking up.
The man nodded, and withdrew, slamming the door, and setting the bell a-jangle. The noise was so electrifying that I jumped inches, and looked hastily at the barber, in terror lest he cut his client. But evidently he was used to it, as were the others. No one appeared to hear it, except the canaries. They always reacted: indeed, I learned afterwards, even at night, when they were covered up, they would reply to it with a faint twitter.
I continued to study the man with the newspaper, until he looked up and caught my eye. His glance was cold and uninterested, but I was sure he knew I had been staring at him. I looked away in confusion, and began to inspect the shop. There were but two barber’s chairs, and the floor was covered with a mixture of cigarette ends, hairs of various colours, torn betting dockets, and a thin subsoil of tea leaves and sawdust. The walls were decorated with oleographs of Bob Fitzsimmons, Peter Jackson, James J. Corbett, and John L. Sullivan, representing the Noble Art, and with ancient newspaper portraits of Gladstone, Parnell, and the Phoenix Park murderers, representative of a dead political faith. Only one picture had a frame, and this showed Robert Emmet, with attendant headsman and a foggy amorphous crowd, in the foreground of St. Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street, Dublin. Over the fireplace was a flyblown mirror, its edges all stuck around with visiting cards, too dim for scrutiny, and come there God knows how.
The barber stood back from his chair. The customer got up, rubbed his chin, and expressed himself satisfied. He paid the barber twopence, which the barber put in a tin. I looked along the row, to see who was going next, but no one made a move. Then I saw the barber beckoning to me.
“But,” I stammered, “these gentlemen——”
At the sound of my voice, the man with the newspaper looked up, and I felt him examine me briefly from head to foot. The barber smiled.
“That’s all right,” he said. “Your turn.”
I could not understand it. I hesitated a second longer, then stepped shyly to the chair. I sat down, and the barber gave his sheet a sweeping flourish, and tucked it in tightly under my chin.
“A haircut, please,” I said.
“Not a shave this time.”
It was the sort of pleasantry that as a rule enraged me, but in his voice and with his smile I liked it. I smiled back, and, feeling suddenly light and happy, looked in the cracked mirror in front of me, to see the man with the newspaper studying me. I looked away, for fear I had annoyed him, or might embarrass him, and saw him make some sort of sign to Martin.
“Are you here long?” the barber asked me, as he snipped away.
“I’m here for my holidays. From school.”
“Ye live above with Miss Dunn?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised and gratified that he should know.
“A very nice lady, is Miss Dunn.”
My heart went out to him. I had loved him from the moment he smiled at me and set me at my ease, and now I realised it. I forgot all the others, and in a minute or two we were talking away as if we had known each other for years.
In appearance Martin was inconspicuous, but his personality shone like a star. He was a smallish, thin, wiry, indeterminate sort of a man: you couldn’t put an age to him. His head was an odd shape, narrow below the brows and wide above. His eyes were puckered, he was bald on top, and he had one or two strange knobs on his head. What hair he had was never tended, he never seemed to shave or to wash, and he was never completely dressed. Yet the picture he left in my mind had no hint of squalor in it. Maybe it was his character and the pure light of kindness in his eyes—or maybe I don’t notice dirt on a man. Certainly it soon ceased to disconcert me.
Martin snipped away at my back hair, blowing every now and then to keep the cut ends from going down my neck. I was unused to this manoeuvre, and jumped the first time or two. Silence had fallen on the shop again, except for an occasional uneasy movement from the sitters, and an odd spit. I could see two of them in the glass, besides the bearded man, who was once more studying his paper, running his eye down the columns with the air of a connoisseur.
Suddenly the man with the bulbous eyes sat up, and cocked his head to listen. A queer slip-slopping noise was heard outside, and I felt the whole row stiffen into attention. The slip-slopping came up the steps, accompanied by gasping, wheezy breathing, the door burst open, the bell leaped, the canaries shrilled, and all the men behind me began to shout at once.
“What won?”
“Is Cabinteely in?”
“Did Larkspur get a place?”
“Be quick, man.”
I slewed round in my chair—I could not have helped it, even if it earned me a dig of the scissors—and beheld the most extraordinary scarecrow of a figure coughing and gasping in the doorway. Tall, thin, with wasted pale face, long matted hair, and weak blue eyes, he seemed as if he could hardly stand. Every atom of him was a-twitch. His knee and elbow joints shot away from him, his head poked spasmodically forward, his thin hands snatched and fluttered, as if centrifugal force were at work within, disintegrating and scattering the man before our eyes. His clothes were in tatters, and I saw with a shock that there were no stockings on the grey ankles that stuck, as bare as bean sticks, into the broken boots.
This apparition continued to stand in the doorway, looking from one to another of his questioners, panting like a driven ewe, a nervous smile coming and going on his face as he strove to get his breath back and respond.
Then Martin’s voice came, soft and coaxing.
“Take your time, Dennis. Take your time. Ye shouldn’t hurry that way. Sure we can all wait a minute or two longer.”
“And get the news the quicker for it.”
The bearded man’s voice was a surprise. It was and deep cultured. Yet, when I thought, I wasn’t surprised by it. He was so obviously different from the others.
But the others could not wait.
“Ah, come on, Dennis, for God’s sake. What won?”
The herald gave a gulp, his Adam’s apple shooting up and down like one of those balls on a jet of water in a rifle alley. Then I thought I must be going mad, for, in place of the gutter snuffle I expected, his voice, too, told of education.
“The two-thirty,” he gasped. “Moderator. Larkspur. The Knight.”
The man who had asked about Cabinteely swore and spat.
“I’ll be —— if I back that—that catastrophe again.”
“What did I tell ye?” sympathised his friend. “S
ure, ye might as well put yeer money on a hat-stand.”
“What price was Larkspur?” asked the bulbous-eyed man.
“Th-thirteen to five.”
“That’s bloody queer odds,” interjected the one who had disparaged Cabinteely: but the bulbous-eyed man was busy calculating his winnings on the back of an envelope.
“It doesn’t give a man much,” he said at last: and his air of dejection, which had lightened a little, sank again.
A brief conversation followed, all on the performance of horses and their quality. Martin went on cutting my hair, and the company settled down to await the result of the next race. Meantime the messenger had collapsed exhausted on a bench in the corner, and sat panting and twitching. He leaned forward, and tried to rest his elbows on his knees, but time after time they jerked off.
It was his duty, or one of his duties, to run errands to the betting shop two streets off, both to place commissions and to report results. The men in the shop did not require Martin’s professional attention. They simply congregated there to await the issue of their speculations.
Apparently another result became due just as Martin finished me. I got out of the chair, and put Ann Dunn’s sixpence in his hand. He handed me back twopence. I flushed.
“Those are for you,” I murmured awkwardly.
He smiled. “Ah no,” he said. “Keep them you, and get yourself some bulls’-eyes.”
Again, I would have been insulted if another man had said this to me: but Martin could not go wrong.
“Well,” I said. “Thank you … but I’d rather …”
“That’s all right.”
He looked past me to Dennis, as the poor creature, coughing, staggered weakly to his feet. Pity and indignation rose in me, so that I forgot my embarrassment.
“He’s tired,” I exclaimed. “Let me go. Where is it? And what am I to do?”
There was a dead silence. Everyone stared at me, even Martin. Then he smiled again, and rubbed his chin with his finger.
The Bay Page 10
