The Bay

by L. A. G. Strong

  “Very well.”

  It was nearly dark. The lights were winking in the harbour. We walked up the road without speaking. At the top, the Doctor stopped, and gripped my arm.

  “Go to Martin’s,” he said. “I’ll come on later.”

  The sudden change to kindness was too much for me. I turned away, and hurried through the narrow streets, blind with tears.

  We have no right to expect the things we do expect of people. Unconsciously, we mould them in our minds to the pattern of what we would like them to be. Then, in an emergency, when they behave as they really are, and not as we have imagined them, we are unreasonably shocked and hurt. It took me a long time to recover from the Doctor’s outburst. It wasn’t that I blamed him for it. I erred always on the side of humility, and blamed myself. But it did hurt and shock me that a grown man could be as insensitive to anybody’s feelings—not only to mine—as he was that evening: and instead of shaking my faith in him, it shook my faith in the world. For I revered the Doctor. Even though I could see some of his shortcomings, I thought of him as an Olympian. It took me a long time to realise that the Doctor’s whole life was the attempt of a sensitive man, after some mortal hurt, to keep himself detached from all feeling, to isolate himself from all normal life: and that the scene into which I had dragged him threw him into a panic, lest he be sucked back into the morass he had sworn to avoid.

  I reached the barber’s, stumbled up the steps, and pushed open the door. There were a dozen men in the room, and Martin was lathering a late customer. He looked up, and I spoke to him. What I said I don’t know: it was lost in the din of the bell and the canaries. But I saw Martin’s smile of greeting sharpen to a look of concern.

  He took a step towards me. They were all looking at me. I could see the white moons of their faces, but I kept my eyes fixed on Martin, my only hope. My throat hurt worse than ever. I swallowed, and made an effort.

  “She’s dead,” I said loudly.

  There was a murmur of amazement. Martin came over and took my hand. His voice was very quiet.

  “Who’s dead, Luke?”

  I felt my face lengthen miserably.

  “Ann Dunn,” I said, and fell weeping against his shoulder.

  No words can describe the kindness, the sympathy of those men. The memory of it brings tears to my eyes even now. They were gentler than women. Martin ‘led me into the little room where he slept. The stale, stuffy smell of it hit me as I entered. In it was his bed, and another he kept for any stray friend or unfortunate who might happen to need one. He laid me on this second bed, and bade me wait a minute. He went out, closing the door, and I lay alone in the noisome darkness. I heard low-toned, anxious voices on the far side of the door, and soon Martin came back. As he stood against the light in the door, I saw steam rising from a glass in his hand.

  “Drink this, now,” he bade me.

  I sat up limply, as if I had been ill for a week. He put an arm about my shoulders, and held the glass to my lips. It was scalding hot. It stung the back of my throat, and made me cough. He held me, and was inexorable that I should drink it.

  “It’s too hot, Martin,” I said, smiling at him, the tears in my eyes due to coughing this time.

  “Take your time. There’s no hurry.”

  Our faces were close together. I couldn’t see him well, but the light fell sideways on the creases and wrinkles of his face, making of it a gargoyle, a grinning mask of kindliness. So, sip by sip, I took the whiskey and water, and felt its warmth rush to my heart. I forgot my plight and my sorrow, I only knew that here I was at home, safe, welcomed with loving kindness.

  When the glass was empty, Martin laid me down. I sighed with content. Gone was the stink of the room, gone my repugnance for the so-called bed. The whiskey soon took its powerful effect on me. Without surprise, with a sort of amusement even, I felt the bed begin to rock and sway. Before long I was floating on my back upon a gentle swell. Then the bed was a magic carpet. I soared over deserts, above a city whose spires and minarets, of a shape unknown to me, rose through a white and silver mist, over a mountain range up whose slopes crawled pinewoods, breaking off abruptly under pallid ramparts of stone. Then came darkness on which writhed shapes of fire. Once or twice I felt myself draw a deep, lung-filling sigh. Then I felt nothing.

  Next morning I remember little, except the look of the harbour, silver grey. I did not want any breakfast, for my head ached and throbbed, as the price of my night’s amnesia. But Martin, unexpectedly persistent, made me take some coffee. I had no wish to meet sympathisers in the shop, so as soon as I could I staggered out of doors. The air revived me. I found a sheltered place under a wall, and sat, looking at the harbour, silver grey. Silver grey, silver grey, a little white yacht gleaming softly, her paint reflected on the water: a long swathe of mist lying along the Hill of Howth, hiding all but the top, which appeared, isolated and astonished, in the air.

  How long I sat I don’t know. My mind resolutely kept itself from what had happened. I seemed incapable of thought or reflection. I dully saw what lay in front of my eyes, but it awakened no activity of response in my mind. My head was packed with felt, or wool. I was drugged.

  “Here he is, sir.”

  I turned, and saw Martin, wearing a grotesque cap two sizes too small for him. He had taken lately to covering his baldness out of doors: his head felt the cold. Two gentlemen were with him, but I did not notice them. I stared at Martin’s cap.

  Then I was up, and walking away with the gentlemen. They were kind: they asked me questions. I kept my composure till they enquired where I was going to live. I remember stamping my foot, and crying out something in a voice of protest and dismay. My mind goes blank after that, but they brought me to a house, where a doctor felt my pulse, and looked at my eyes, and gave me something bitter to drink.

  Then, almost at once, to my shame, I found myself garrulous and apologetic, like a person who has had a lucky escape in an accident, and is sitting up, shaken but unhurt, talking and laughing with the rescuers.

  The gentlemen got from me Uncle John’s address. I heard a familiar voice, and to my astonishment saw the Doctor. He looked sulky and shamefaced, and spoke in gruff tones.

  “There’s a room empty in the barrack where I live,” he said. “The boy can sleep there and get his meals, till we get hold of his uncle.”

  Something had happened to my understanding, and I realised that he was making an indirect apology to me for the night before. He was embarrassed, but I had a new embarrassment of my own to contend with. I did not want to see him.

  Glances were exchanged, which the Doctor did not see. He was looking doggedly away from us all.

  “The uncle lives in Dublin,” said one of the gentlemen. “We are sending for him immediately.”

  “You may,” the Doctor retorted. “But the man’s an auctioneer. He may be in Nenagh, or Tubbercurry, or any place.”

  The gentlemen once more looked at each other.

  “I see,” said the one who had spoken first. “In that case——”

  “Of course, if you prefer it, you can send him back to the house to camp for himself.”

  They were shocked. Their eyebrows said so.

  “I hardly think that would be suitable.”

  “Of course it wouldn’t,” snorted the Doctor.

  So I went off with him, tongue-tied and unhappy. He kept on snorting, and hitting the pavement with his stick.

  A thought struck me, and I stopped.

  “Doctor. My things. I must get them.”

  “You can spare yourself the trouble. I went in this morning and made a bundle of them. I expect they’re all wrong: but they’ll have to do you. You’ve no nurse now. From now on, you’ll have to look after yourself.”

  “Thank you very much, Doctor.”

  If I had been less miserable, I could have smiled at his ferocious denial of kindly intention, his almost conscientious insistence on my loss. I was able to smile at it afterwards. As things were, I felt that I
had involved him in my trouble, and was being a nuisance to him.

  The room at the Doctor’s house was upstairs, at the back. As soon as we got there, he bellowed for his landlady. Mary Kate appeared, her eyes like saucers, but he pushed her aside and went on bawling until Mrs. Kinahan came shuffling out.

  “Here is Mr. Mangan. Make him as comfortable as you can. God knows, that’s not saying much.”

  Mrs. Kinahan was wrinkled, brown, fat, and graceless. She grinned at me, and jerked her head sideways at the Doctor.

  “Did you put the things I brought into his room?” he asked.

  “I gev them to Mary Kate to put there.”

  “You had no right!” the Doctor roared, banging his stick on the floor. “I told you to put them there yourself.”

  “Me foot was paining me,” replied Mrs. Kinahan with composure. “I gev them to Mary Kate.”

  “That slut,” said the Doctor. “You couldn’t trust her with an empty matchbox.”

  “Go on in to your wires,” said Mrs. Kinahan, “and be switching on your switches. Mr. Mangan and me will see to things all right.”

  The Doctor shook his stick in the air, and disappeared abruptly into his room. Mrs. Kinahan looked after him, her expression softening to admiration.

  “Him and his allegations,” she said lovingly. “Mary Kate— take the young gentleman up.”

  Mary Kate grinned, and ran up the stairs. I followed, and was shown into a large cold high room which looked empty until one counted, and realised that it held every object one might naturally expect to find in a bedroom. On the bed lay my clothes, sponge, hairbrush, etc., in a heap.

  I looked at them, then became aware of Mary Kate, standing and staring at me with a ghoulish light in her eyes, a mixture of sympathy and glee. Her lips hung apart. She wanted to hear all about it, and did not know how to ask. She liked me, and she was sorry, but avidity came first, the eager hungry look of women clustering round a street accident. I didn’t know what to do. I stared back at her.

  She passed her tongue over her lip, tried to say something, gave a sort of ineffective croak, grinned, and went out, leaving the door open. I shut it after her.

  We were luckier in the matter of Uncle John than the Doctor expected. He was not at Nenagh or Tubbercurry, but at Mullingar only, and he came back that same evening. So, the next day, took place the meeting for which I had so long hoped and schemed.

  Uncle John came out by train. I met him at the station. I expected him to be late, but he arrived duly, carrying an umbrella and a very shiny black Gladstone bag. He greeted me with a sort of mournful importance, and eyed me anxiously and shrewdly when he thought I wasn’t looking.

  “This is a sad business, son. A very sad business. Poor Ann Dunn. Poor Ann Dunn. And there was I, thinking she was good for a century. Ah well, son—we all come to it. We all come to it.”

  He looked up at the Town Hall clock, squared his shoulders at it, and blew out his moustaches.

  He had first of all to go and see to things, he said. Sure I wouldn’t want to be there? I agreed thankfully that I would not. He bade me meet him for tea, at an eating house in the town, and went off, the picture of a man of affairs come to deal with an emergency.

  He was late at the eating house, nearly an hour later than he said, and he breathed an aroma of whiskey: but to my relief he was not in the least fuddled. He would say nothing till he had given his order, chops, mashed potatoes, gravy, porter, and tea. On the selection of this he lavished an air and a care which should have impressed the youth who took the order, but only encouraged him to yawn and fidget and to keep looking at something out of the window. Uncle John glanced up, and caught him yawning, and stared at him severely. He grasped the youth’s arm, and repeated the order loudly, giving the arm a shake with each item. People raised their heads to watch us. The youth sulkily disengaged his arm, and shuffled off.

  “Did you see that?” asked Uncle John. “No life. No interest. Gawking there. If the food’s no better than the service, we’ll be poisoned. And this used to be a good place. Ah, I don’t know what the world’s coming to, I don’t indeed. And Ann Dunn gone. Poor Ann Dunn.”

  He shook his head from side to side.

  “There’ll be no inquest, thank God. The doctor is certifying her death was from natural causes. We had to work hard for that.”

  He pursed up his moustache, and I knew he wished me to understand that this happy result was due to his manoeuvres and sagacity. I knew quite well he had had nothing to do with it, and felt again that protective impulse of love for him I had felt so often since I was a little child. I sank into a reverie.

  “Do you want to see her, Luke?”

  I gaped for a moment, taken unawares. Then I flushed to my ears.

  “Oh no, Uncle John. Please.”

  He looked at me queerly.

  “I thought you might have a fancy to see her laid out on the bed. She was very good to you.”

  Horror flooded me.

  “Oh, Uncle John—do you think I ought? I mean, would she—ought I to?”

  “There’s no ought about it, son. Only it’s a customary thing, to pay one’s last respects to the dead. And, you see, I thought— well—a person after they are laid out looks better than when you see them die.”

  I saw again Ann Dunn’s face on the sofa, a shadow where the mouth had fallen open. I shuddered.

  “She looks beautiful,” said Uncle John. “I was in there just now. There are a number of people anxious to pay their respects to her. A very well thought of woman; even here, where she wasn’t well known.”

  His eye was still upon me. My mind worked quickly. Dare I tell him what I really felt? I risked it.

  “I’d rather not see her, Uncle John, if you don’t think it very bad of me. You see, when she died—she—we were alone. Just she and I. Since then, there have been people with her. No one used to come in. We had the cottage to ourselves. And, somehow, it’s given me a feeling …I’d rather not, now.”

  “As you please, son. As you please.”

  “Uncle John,” I said earnestly. “It isn’t that I don’t love her and don’t respect her. It’s because I—I don’t want to share it with other people.”

  Uncle John nodded.

  “I had a dog once,” he said, “that wouldn’t eat any food if I wasn’t there to give it her. She all but starved herself to death, half a dozen times. I couldn’t help it: I had to be away. But there was no reasoning with her. In the end, she did die.” He stared ruminatively at the wall. “Well—I’ll tell them in the morning they may nail her down.”

  He pushed his chair back from the table, as if to dismiss the subject, leaving me with a sense of guilt I did not lose for years. Are middle-aged folk inevitably heavy-handed in dealing with the young, or are the young hypersensitive? It’s a point I’ve never been able to decide. I’ve often wondered, when one of my children has been worried or unhappy about something that seemed to me nonsense, whether I was being heavy-handed in my turn, and bruising their feelings as mine were bruised. I suppose one’s skin thickens with the years, and that maybe it is those very bruises that thicken it.

  We said nothing for a bit after that, and the waiter brought the chops. Uncle John, with a loud sigh of relief, fell to. He ate with all his old gusto. I looked at him, wondering what the change in him was, and thinking it must be in myself. Despite his vigour, he had not the magnificence of old. I sat there, casting my mind back, seeing him as he used to be, but with my mind of now: and I decided in the end that there was a change in him, that he had in some degree shrunk, that he was bleared, that he was older, not the man he used to be. His mind did not seem the same either. It was—I could not get the word—not more furtive exactly, but less constant. He was like a house that people leave for periods at a time.

  So deep was I in contemplation of him that I blushed when he began to speak to me.

  “You know my dog Jeremy,” he said, “and the way he is with cats?”

  “I don�
�t know him,” I said.

  His blue eyes opened wide. “You don’t know him? Glory be to God, son—when were you with me last?”

  “I can’t remember exactly. But it’s some time.”

  “I’ve had Jeremy close on a year.” He looked at me accusingly. “Do you mean to tell me you haven’t been along for a year?”

  “I suppose it must be that long.”

  “Well, well.” He sat back, staring at me. “That’s odd. What are we to do about that?”

  “The time goes by very fast,” I said weakly. He shook his head, looking at me so mournfully that, in my raw state of nerves, I felt I should break down.

  “You were telling me about Jeremy and the cats,” I reminded him.

  “Oh yes. Well—Jeremy—you must see him. A grand ruffian of a dog. One of those ever-smiling Welsh sheep-dogs with a fine coat, and no morals, and the speed of an express train. Well, the cat’s last lot of kittens were reared with him, and part of his morning is taken up washing these blessed kittens. They come to be washed, and he’s so big and so clumsy he shoots them all over the place with his big tongue, and it’s all the same to him what way he rubs their hair, and begod, it seems all the same to them. But wait till I tell you. One of the kittens lately got caught in a trap down in the fields; anyway, we think so. Its leg was apparently broken, and it was pitifu to see the poor little divil limping around. I didn’t know what to do about it, and Mrs. Kerrigan didn’t know what to do about it, but, begod, Jeremy took the matter in hand. I noticed him each evening, and he sat sort of chewing the little leg and licking it, and, do you know, inside ten days, the leg was well. And now, of course, the kitten won’t leave him. It follows him every place. The other day it was down in the village, miles away, trotting along obediently by the side of the big dog, and he growling at every other dog that would look at it. Then the kitten gets tired, and Jeremy brings it home in his mouth. Now what do you think of that?“

  I had the struggle of my life not to burst into tears. I sat, smiling back at Uncle John, his round face swimming in my sight like some fine harvest moon, or a Dutch cheese. He had laboured, he had cast back in his mind for something to console me, and, remembering how as a child I played with his dog and his cats, he had dug up this bit of news to comfort me. At least, that is what I thought then. Now I am not so sure. Maybe I read too much into the movements of that big, childlike man. Quite possibly, the matter rose naturally to his mind, and he came out with it because it interested him. That is one of the puzzles of life. We don’t know about other people’s minds and motives. If I were a real writer, I’d give a lifetime to the understanding of a single human character.