“Well,” he said. “I don’t know. Ye see——”
“Let him go, Martin,” said the bearded man, from behind his paper. “He wants to earn his twopence.”
I turned on him, really hurt. No such thought had crossed my mind.
“Not at all,” said Martin. “He just wants to do Dennis a kindness.”
“No—No.” Dennis was nodding frantically. He seemed to think it an aspersion on his powers. “I’m all set. I’m going.”
I stood, confused, looking from him to Martin, my clear resolve fading. Martin put a hand on my shoulder.
“Dennis will go,” he said. “And you’ll go along with him, and wait outside till he tells you the result. Then maybe you’ll save him the hurry, and run back and tell us.”
I beamed on Martin, and set off at once with the scarecrow. He smiled at me from time to time, and made a series of remarks, but his speech was so jerky that I missed half their purport. To my shame, I was embarrassed in his company. I thought everyone must be looking at us.
Rounding a corner, we ran into a fat police sergeant. I shrank back, but he grinned on us goodnaturedly.
“Well, Dennis. How’s the fortune coming along?”
He pronounced it “farchin”. I stared, but the word galvanised Dennis into eager volubility.
“I’ve no n-news yet, Sergeant. But it’s all right. I’ll be hearing from the b-bankers soon. Any day now.” His face lit up and became almost beautiful. “Then M-martin will be rich.”
The sergeant nodded, and gave me a wink.
“That’s good,” he said. “More power to ye.”
“M-more power, Sergeant.”
And we went on, Dennis now so excited that he broke into a shambling run, talking to himself and snapping his bony fingers. I followed a pace or two behind, beginning to wish that I could give him the slip and get away to Ann Dunn’s.
He paused at a solid-looking house, outside which six or seven men stood, smoking and leaning against the wall.
“W-wait here,” he said, gave me an incredible flashing smile, and went in.
I waited, then, conscious that one or two of the men were looking at me with dull curiosity, I went over to the far side of the road, and kicked at a loose stone. Tiring of this, I looked at the harbour.
A sound made me turn. The crowd was pressing round the door: and soon I saw Dennis, struggling ineffectually to get through, his hands and arms tossing wildly above the heads and shoulders, like sticks in a torrent.
I got to him, and he gasped out the result—of which I can now remember nothing. There’s a trick of memory, to remember the first result which I didn’t bring, and not be able to recall a letter of this one! But I ran back with it, was warmly thanked, and was given to understand that I was always welcome.
That was my introduction to the best and the most remarkable club I ever was in. For Martin did more for us than snip our locks and lather our chins. His customers were his friends, his friends his customers. Like the fellow in the opera, he was the factotum of our small city, and his shop was a club, a meeting place, a home from home, a nucleus of chat and knowledge. The customers were of great variety, but the humbler sort of seagoing man predominated, with a fair leavening of carmen, bookmaker’s assistants, and casual inebriates. By an easy system of barter and exchange, one obtained a shave, a haircut, or the price of a pint if such was in the till. You could get reliable information about horses, you could reach the inside of many a local mystery, you could follow, with startled understanding, the real reason for the Mail Boat’s late arrival, and know at last exactly how it was that Mr. Neligan’s horse and cab fell into Dunleary Old Harbour.
A man of intelligence, Martin wrote the great part of his customers’ letters for them. These were usually letters of excuse for non-attendance at various occupations, affectionate letters to women in distant ports, begging letters, and reminders to successful sons and daughters who had forgotten their parents, heartbreaking, these, often, in their plain simplicity.
You could get a can of lug bait at the barber’s. You could wangle a free if nervous passage to Holyhead at the barber’s. You, could find out where your dog was, even if it had been a month missing. You could scrounge admission gratis to most of the town shows, from concerts to cockfights. We started subscriptions for consumptive sailors at the barber’s. We arranged for the transfer of an unpopular policeman. We looked after, and looked after uncommon well, the three young children of York Street Maggie, when that local Thais lay in St. Michael’s Hospital, expecting a fourth by some father unknown, unwept, unsung, and quite unhonoured.
You could sleep all night at the barber’s. He let you cook a meal in his little filthy kitchen. He let you wash—if you should want to. He would lend or give you a collar, a tie, a pair of boots (of sorts), and, in desperate cases, a pair of breeches. Martin was more than liked; he was loved. As poor as his customers, he had more of the Nazarene in him than many a parish priest. He was an institution, and his shop a sanctuary. It was not considered the thing for the local police to enter in their official capacity. Indeed, they would often wait outside, in full view of the customers, to allow some embarrassed fireman or insolvent jarvey to escape over the back wall.
To Martin’s, then, I went more and more, and was accepted by the habitués. At first some of them were inclined to look askance at my youth, but they got used to me. I didn’t at first understand the reason for their reluctance, thinking, as a boy will, that they simply looked down on me as a kid and an outsider. Actually it was because they felt they could not speak freely in front of me, and feared they must check their oaths and friendly obscenities. This for a while they did: but I knew how to lie low and look as if I had not heard, so they soon relaxed, and my imagination was enriched for ever. It was an odd place for a boy, but it was for me school, college, and university, and I doubt if I could have found a better. I learned reality there, and poverty, and truth, and sympathy, and the immeasurable kindness of the poor: and how many come from Oxford or Cambridge or Trinity or the Sorbonne or Heidelberg with better knowledge?
The one person who found it hard to stomach as a university was my loved Ann Dunn. She became worried at my frequent and lengthening sojourns there. I pleaded and reasoned, but she shook her head.
“It’s not healthy, Luke,” she said. “It’s not a natural place for a boy, among all those rough men smoking and spitting.”
That was incontrovertible. Still, she did not forbid me to go, and at last she became reconciled, in the queerest way.
The most distinguished member of the club was the bearded man who had caught my eye on my first visit. His name was Doctor Marcus Geoghegan. He did not come often, and there was never any clear reason for his visit when he did. As often as not he sat and read his paper, apart rather than aloof, so that his presence made no chill. Everyone respected him as a man of learning, and it was generally supposed that he was wealthy—at least, by our standards: but Martin one day confided to me, as I was helping him to wash up in the kitchen after we had given supper to four coloured sailors who had to be aboard by nine o’clock, that the Doctor was no better off than most of his clients. He would sometimes join in the general conversation, when his knowledge and long words won much deference, and now and then he would be consulted for some letter or matter of business beyond Martin’s powers. For one alarmed recipient of a solicitor’s letter, he indited a reply so formidable and so overpowering that the solicitor not only let the question drop, but offered an apology. This set the seal upon his fame. Thereafter, he might do as he liked.
Doctor Geoghegan ignored me for the first three weeks or so. Then, one evening, I looked in early and found him seated alone. I made to back out.
“Come in,” he said. “Come in and sit down. I have been wanting a talk with you.”
He made me sit down opposite him, and proceeded to question me about my personal history. Finally, he asked where I lived. I told him. He shot out a frayed and dirty cuff, and wrote the
address down.
“I shall call upon your aunt,” he announced, “and ask her if you may visit me at my home.”
Much startled, I began to stammer. He tilted up his beard, and eyed me.
“But of course,” he said. “It is only the decent thing to do.”
“She’s not my aunt,” I said feebly.
He made a stately motion with his hand. “Let us be correct, Mangan, in our procedure. Very important, where women are concerned.”
“My aunt,” I said, “lives in Dublin. She hasn’t anything to do with it. I live with——”
“Say no more. My mind is made up. I shall call on your aunt at my earliest convenience. She is entitled to expect that.”
I gave it up, and was much relieved when Dennis emerged from the back premises, and made his usual pretence of cleaning the floor with a wet mop. The Doctor at once transferred his attention to him, and began to lecture him about his cough, and to point out the places he was missing with the mop. I edged away, and spent the rest of the evening wondering whether to tell Ann Dunn of the impending visit. In the end I decided to keep quiet, afraid that she would think it was my idea.
I went out early after breakfast the next morning, to fish off the Carlisle Pier, and stayed there till two, the latest hour at which I was allowed to come home for my dinner. When I got back, I found the dinner not quite ready, and Ann Dunn composed, but very bright of eye. It appeared that Dr. Geoghegan had descended upon her in the full splendour of his best clothes, had introduced himself, begged her leave to enter, and had talked to her of me and my affairs with great good sense, quite winning her heart: so that when he finally asked her leave to invite me to his house, she gave it most readily.
That she was put in a flutter by the visit I learned, not from her, but from a neighbour who, astounded by the apparition of the Doctor, had waited to watch Ann Dunn see him off the doorstep, and rushed in the moment he had gone. To me she was reserved. She had noted the defects in the Doctor’s make up and apparel, but it was obvious that she approved of his behaviour.
“He knows how to conduct himself,” she said. “He is a gentleman.”
It appeared, too, that he had reassured her about my being so much at Martin’s. Whether it was his words or the fact that he went there himself, I don’t know: but she raised no more objections.
A day or so later, I received an invitation to visit him. The hour he chose was an odd one, half past six. It raised a number of doubts in Ann Dunn’s mind, the greatest being whether I was asked to a meal or not. If I were, and arrived full of tea, Dr. Geoghegan would be slighted. If I were not, I should endure agonies of emptiness: perhaps, worse, I should be questioned, admit I was unfed, and put the Doctor to the embarrassment consequent on such an admission, and the difficulty of trying to feed me. In the end she decided on compromise. She gave me sufficient tea to last the time, but not so much that I could not partake of any food the Doctor might offer me. So, with much washing and sprucing of me into my Sunday best— despite my impassioned protest that no such formality was called for—she sent me off to pay the first state call of my life, the first call I ever paid in my own capacity, as myself, not as someone’s child or nephew. I remember a feeling of mingled awe and pride, as I stood upon a worn wire doormat at the top of a flight of broken stone steps, and pulled the doorbell. The Doctor lived on a level which was neither the first floor nor the ground floor, but sat poised above the basement of a tall gaunt house in a terrace running from that part of the front known as Newtown Smith. Once decent and prosperous, it had fallen in the world, and its ugly but stately houses were let out in floors to families whose numerous children squabbled on the steps and in the little bald patches that were once front gardens of grass and decorous veronica.
A very dirty and very young girl opened the door to me. The hall was high, dark, and stale-smelling. The girl snuffled an enquiry, but atoned with a brilliant grin when I stated my errand. Before she could say anything, a startling roar sounded.
“Is that you, Mangan? Mary Kate—show Mr. Mangan in at once, and don’t stand there gawking like an egg-bound pullet.”
I looked apologetically at Mary Kate, who rubbed her nose with her finger and grinned wider than ever. From a recess of the house came a hoarse and appreciative female chuckle. Evidently the other inmates were not only well used to the Doctor’s ways but proud of them.
The room I was bidden to enter was one of the most extraordinary I have ever seen. It was some seconds before I did see it, for it was dazzlingly lit with seven or eight naked electric light globes, all dangling far too low. Once my eyes had recovered from this assault, I saw that the room was large and high, but so full of odd pieces of furniture as to leave but little space. A kitchen range stood against one wall, and beside it, heaped on the floor, lay half a hundredweight of coal, besides what was in the coalbox. Drawn up close to the fire were a large ottoman and an armchair. Beside the ottoman, from which Doctor Marcus with difficulty rose to greet me, was a large switchboard: and from this wires ran in every direction, drooping loosely from point to point, so that, as we approached each other and endeavoured to shake hands, we had to duck and dodge like women under a clothesline.
The greeting over, Doctor Geoghegan waved his hand.
“A few little contrivances, Mangan. A hobby of mine. But I fear they inconvenience you?”
“Not at all,” I gasped.
“No? They do me.” He looked at me severely. “But I put up with it.”
He led me to the fire, and pulled out a chair for me, tipping a number of screws off it to the floor. I sat down, and was immediately much too hot: a state in which I remained for the rest of the visit.
He said little at first, giving me time to get used to my surroundings. Seen in this pitiless light—Martin’s was anything but brightly lit—the Doctor looked older. One eyelid twitched, and his hands shook as he changed the pince-nez on his nose for another pair. I don’t know what his age was: a boy is a bad judge: but, shutting my eyes now and seeing him as he sat there among his shining globes, I should say he was about sixty-five.
“Make yourself at home, now, and look about you. It’s right and proper. The good God gave us eyes, and we ought to use them.”
I glanced at him nervously, in case he was being sarcastic, and was rebuking my curiosity, but a smile reassured me, and I did as I was bid. From the table at my side, which even my eye, thanks to Uncle John’s teaching, recognised as ancient and valuable, the breakfast things had not yet been cleared away. There were the remains of a fried egg, a chop bone, close on half a pound of creamy butter, still in its wrapper, a mangled section of sausage, a dishevelled rasher congealed in its fat, several half-eaten pieces of toast, and a pot of marmalade with a fork standing upright in it. In the midst of all this débris stood a tantalus, with four shapely decanters of cut glass.
As my glance rested on this, the Doctor leaned forward, raising his brows.
“Will you take a ball of malt?”
I realised he was offering me the whiskey, and backed away in horror at such misunderstanding.
“No—no. I didn’t——”
“I think you’re wise. It’s early yet.”
It was my turn to misunderstand.
“I don’t ever have any,” I said.
“You’re too young. Keep off it as long as you can.”
Another silence followed. The Doctor did not seem to find it awkward, but sat staring fixedly at nothing: so, nervously conscious of him, I resumed my inspection of the room. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him grimace, get off his chair, and heave himself upon the ottoman. He lay back, grunted, sat up again, thumped the snuffy old cushions, one of which was already exuding dubious-looking wads of wool, and lay back, clasping his hands behind his neck. For perhaps five minutes he smoked, his eyes cocked at the ceiling. He drew hard on his cigarette. Even in that glare, I saw the end of it glow, and the ash fall twice on his chest. I wondered if next time it would lodge in his beard. It di
d. Should I tell him? As all this time I was only watching him furtively, and was extremely hot from proximity to the range, I began to sweat with mingled embarrassment and discomfort.
The Doctor cleared his throat loudly, making me jump. He pulled a string which ran over a small pulley, and was attached to a wire which, in turn, was fastened to the top of the range. The top of the range lifted, and he spat on the glowing coals.
“Always cultivate cleanly habits,” he said. “Promiscuous spitting—very bad. One of the curses of this country. I’m always telling Martin that, but I might be dumb for all the notice he takes. Dangerous.” He looked at me fiercely. “That fellow Dennis, hanging about there all the time. Phthisic.”
He uttered this last word with some difficulty. As if aware of this, he repeated it with such care and energy that it shot out, completely disintegrating the last of his cigarette.
“Phthisic. Did you know that?”
Not having the least idea what he was talking about, I shook my head.
“Watch him. Keep clear of him. You’ll see.”
There was another silence, during which I sat wishing heartily that I had not come, and wondering how soon I could go without giving offence. Forlornly, I looked round the room again. On the wall to my left hung a large picture, but I could not see it for one of the dangling naked lights.
“Here.”
The Doctor pulled a string, and the light shied away on a little railway of flex. He pulled again, and two other lights withdrew. A third pull sent a light high up to a point above the picture, shedding upon it its full radiance.
“Now, Mangan. Feast your eyes.”
I stared at the picture. Except that there was nothing modern in its execution, it would have warmed the heart of those modern French fellows who paint dead donkeys on pianos and make a still life of a hot water bottle, a handbell, a pound of tripe, and the first bars of the Kreutzer Sonata.
On a divan, which appeared to be made of marble at one end and mahogany at the other, reclined a lady in Florentine apparel, squinting slightly, and playing an instrument like a cricket bat crowned with an onion. In the foreground lay a large fish and a melon, and beside the lady was an extraordinary object, shaped like a bucket, but made of crimson plush. All this part of the picture seemed to be an interior, but the top half changed to out of doors, where against a green sky appeared in flight a number of large unaccountable birds, suggesting inebriated ravens who had lost their sense of direction. In the top right hand corner stood a pillar, with an empty pedestal on top, and at the back of all, producing no effect whatever on the rest of the composition, shone the setting sun. The canvas had the smoky bloom and blandness of execution of a picture at least a hundred years old, the paint was cracking at the bottom left hand corner, the frame was ancient and battered, and the whole thing stood in need of cleaning.
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