I learned long afterwards that, when my parents died, these people made an offer to take charge of me, but so injuriously and highhandedly that it was rejected. Then they washed their hands of me. Uncle John would never have consulted them now, but the Doctor overruled him.
“Don’t be a fool, man,” he said. “If these people have any pull, take advantage of it. It’s for the boy’s sake, not for yours.”
So they were consulted, and they used their pull, to procure me the “position in the city” about which it is my firm intention to say nothing.
It may seem strange, or, even worse, a deliberate affectation not to speak in detail of the job which earned me my daily bread from the day when I first went into it to the beginning of this year, when by the mercy of God I was able to retire from it. But I have a good reason: two good reasons: three good reasons. The first, and the best, is that, like the relatives that secured it for me, except at one point it played no part in my life beyond enabling me to feed and house and clothe myself, and, presently, my family. I took no interest in it. No one but a bloody fool could take an interest in it. It never touched the real me at all. It was, for every purpose except the material purpose aforesaid, a damned and a dreary and a God-forsaken waste of time—in which respect it differed little if at all from ninety-five per cent of the jobs whereby civilised man is compelled to earn his bread. From his point of view, that is: for a small percentage of the jobs may be of some dim use to other people. But, to me, a man’s work should be a craft, a thing he loves, the pursuit of which fulfils him in soul and body. A thing into which he can grow, which enables him to grow, and keeps pace with him till old age forces him, a lover still at heart, to relinquish his beloved to younger and steadier hands. That’s what a man’s work should be. Mine was a piddling drudgery. It had no influence upon my real life, except, as I say, at one point, when it pinned me down and damned me.
And that’s my second reason for saying nothing about it: for, even at this distance, when I think what it did to me, and how, at the moment when I tried to reach to another life that need never have threatened it or conflicted with it, it stamped on my reaching fingers, I am filled with such a passion and gall of bitterness that, if I once let it spill out, it would be uncontrollable. I am not a bitter man; I don’t want to throw stones at anyone, dead or living.
The third reason is not so good, but it has another sort of cogency. It is a rule that civil servants write nothing about the conditions of their job. And as my job was, God save the mark, in one of the lowest and least regarded branches of the civil service, I shall not say a word about it, good or bad, except to record briefly the one occasion when it interfered in my private life: and the reader who is disappointed must bear his privation as best he can.
I did not stay long at the Doctor’s. At first, when I heard I was not to live in Kingstown, I was glad. Then the thought of leaving Martin and all my friends at the barber’s made me feer desperate, and I pleaded hard that lodgings should be found for me somewhere near. But the Doctor, with reason on his side, had a down on the barber’s as the main place of recreation for a growing boy, and he infected Uncle John with his views, just as Ann Dunn used to do. I knew it was no good, the moment I broached the subject to Uncle John, and saw his face take on that look of reverential importance which meant that he was about to support some respectable view for which, privately and unprompted, he would not give a damn. He gave, as the reason for my lodging in town, the length of the journey in and out, and its severity in the bad winter weather. Anyway, he concluded, it was too late now: the rooms were taken, and there was an end of it.
So I was put to lodge in Donnybrook in the house of a Mr. and Mrs. Duigan. They had been recommended to Uncle John by some professional acquaintance as fulfilling the highest requirements of respectability. What the acquaintance thought of Uncle John’s sudden demand for respectability, I don’t know. Mr. and Mrs. Duigan were respectable enough, severe, plain folk, saddled for some reason with an enormous high stone house which they were obliged to let out as lodgings but could never fill. I had a room up at the top, the coldest, barest, least inviting room I ever was in. The window didn’t fit and rattled, the winds of Ireland met and fought over the bare acreage near my narrow iron bed, the text on the wall flapped like a duck’s foot, the bit of crinkly paper in the fireplace made such a row being sucked half way up the chimney and vomited down again that I took it out each night, and usually forgot to put it back again.
The Duigans resembled their tall blank dwelling. Mr. Duigan was tall and thin and bony, with a narrow moustache, a sharp ridge of brow, and eyes that could take a fanatic glint but as a rule were dull. His clothes were worn at elbows and knees. Mrs. Duigan was like him. She might ‘have been his sister instead of his wife. They were lifeless folk. I had no real contact with either of them.
But if my host and hostess were respectable, their maid of all work was not. Her name was Nora. She was a dark, tousled red-faced country lassie of eighteen, with a full bosom and a flash in her eye. She made a dead set at me the moment I got into the house. I turned my eyes the other way: I was scared of her, I didn’t want anything to do with her. The first few days, she confined herself to smiling and brushing against me in the passage and on the stairs. Then one evening she appeared in my room.
“The missis was leppin’ mad with yez this morning,” she said.
I was genuinely startled, so much so that I hardly noticed the inappropriateness of the phrase for a creature, so colourless as Mrs. Duigan.
“With me? Why?”
“Leppin’ mad, she was. By dint of your taking away the ornamental paper out of the grate, and screwing it in a ball.”
“I didn’t screw it in a ball. I only——”
“But it’s all right. I med it all right with her.”
She came close to me. I backed away, and in a moment she had me pinned against the wall. She leaned her soft bosom against me, and shut her eyes.
“Ye’re a terrible nice lad, aren’t ye.”
Her breath was on my face. I felt her moist lips searching for mine. In a panic of repulsion, I twisted my face away. How I got loose I don’t know, but I did, and stood breathing quickly, staring at her in horror.
She wasn’t offended. She smiled at me, a lazy, warm smile.
“Aren’t ye terrible shy,” she exclaimed, in a breathy whisper: and stood looking me up and down with almost motherly approval.
“I—I have to go out,” I said, and I ran down the stairs and walked the streets without hat or coat for forty minutes, till it became so cold I had to go back. I was a young fool, but I had no experience at all of girls: I didn’t know how to deal with the situation. It filled me with deep misgiving. I saw the gawky overtures of Mary Kate in a new light, and grew hot all over at the thought of the dangers that had lain so near me. It was perhaps typical that, though I was a solemn enough young divil, and as moral as you’d wish, the advances of Nora didn’t strike me on the moral level at all. I was just plain scared.
She didn’t molest me for a while after that, but every time we met she’d give me that secret, warm smile that set my heart thumping against my ribs and filled me with the direst fears.
I was in this state of uncertainty when Uncle John called in one evening. He was going to pay his respects to the Duigans, and take me out to supper. He came late, as usual. I was waiting in my room, half in and half out on the landing, to listen for his arrival. I heard the bell and the knocker involved in what seemed a major disaster, and the startled progress of Nora to the door. She opened it, and Uncle John’s voice, full and authoritative, rose to me, booming up the stone shaft of the house like a bullfrog in a well.
“Good evening, my gerrl. Are Mr. and Mrs. Duigan within?”
I couldn’t hear Nora’s reply, but there seemed to be some sort of pause. I heard Uncle John’s voice say something in a quite different tone, a soft, syrupy, crooning tone. I heard a rustle, a gasp, a breathless giggle, and a vague scuffling
sound. Then Uncle John’s voice boomed up again, jovial and arrogant.
“Go in and tell them, like a good girl, I am here.”
This was followed by a sound there was no mistaking, and I knew as well as if I had seen him that Uncle John had given her a slap on her behind. Again came that satisfied giggle: and she ran ahead to announce him. I expect he pinched her as she stood aside in the doorway to show him in.
I stood quite still on the landing for a couple of minutes. I was shocked, but there was something about the shock that was not unexpected, not wholly unpleasant: a sort of rueful, base stirring of curiosity. So the world was like that, was it. Mind you, I wasn’t wholly ignorant of the world. You couldn’t be, at Martin’s. But a boy will see and hear all manner of things and yet protect his innocence. Above all things, he does not like to think that his parents, or, as in my case, the grown ups for whom he has most regard, are liable to the pangs and attractions of sex.
And I had meant to confide in Uncle John about Nora, and ask his advice. The whole world was getting slippery and untrustworthy. It gave me a hollow feeling inside.
We had a good supper together, Uncle John and I. He was in splendid form, and spoke so well of the Duigans, and of the care they were going to give me, that I began to wonder if the scene in the hall was an hallucination. This big rubicund man ordering his food with such authority, devouring it with such gusto, laughing so infectiously that other people turned their heads and smiled in sympathy—I could not connect him with amorous scuffles in a doorway with a slut he had only that instant met. Or had he only just met her? He must have been there before, to make arrangements. I remembered, too, that sly, skilled hand that had reached for poor Mary Kate.
“That’s a fine girl at the Duigans,” said Uncle John. “Don’t get up to any of your games with her, now.”
He leaned over and prodded my hand with his fork, and gave me a huge wink. I flushed guiltily at his apparent reading of my thoughts, and was happily able to pass it off as confusion at his rallying me.
“Oh, don’t look so modest. You’re a likely enough looking young lad. I daresay, poor old Ann Dunn now, she kept you in pretty strict. She wouldn’t favour you running around after the girls.”
I protested that I had no desire to run round after the girls, but Uncle John only laughed at me.
“You’ve a nice mouth on you,” he proclaimed. “Wait now till the girls get a hold of it.”
I diverted him to talking of his dog and the cats, and that held him for a while. Then he observed that I had not eaten all that was on my plate. His eyes at once grew round with concern.
“What is it, son? Don’t you like what you have? Is it not good? Here——”
He turned to shout for the waiter. I stopped him just in time.
“It’s all right, Uncle John. It’s very good. Only there’s more than I want.”
He laid down his knife and fork, and read me a lecture on the need of good food for a growing lad. His voice soared in real eloquence as he objurgated the folly of those young people who, beginning their working life at a small wage, sought to economise on their meals. All sorts of horrible consequences arose from such folly, according to Uncle John consumption and cancer were the least of them. Finally, he summoned the head waiter.
“Alfred,” he said, “listen here to me now. This young fellow is my nephew, and my only nephew, so I set a high value on him.”
Alfred bowed.
“Well”—Uncle John went on—“he’s earning his bread here in this wicked city of Dublin, and his wages are not large. Therefore, Alfred—in case he should be tempted, in case, young fellows having a good deal to spend their money on, especially young fellows that have an eye for the girls”—he looked expectantly at Alfred, who managed an expression which should neither lack response nor offend me by excess of it—“such young fellows being often tempted to go short on their meals, Alfred, I hereby declare, and authorise you, that my nephew here is to eat his dinner or his supper, whichever he pleases, in this place, three times a week, at my expense. Chalk it up to me, Alfred, and I’ll acknowledge it and pay for it.”
“Very good, sir.”
Alfred gave me a paternal smile, and withdrew. I turned to Uncle John, hot with gratitude, but he would hear of no thanks. He waved his hand in lordly beneficence.
“Blood is thicker than water, son,” he proclaimed. “Blood is thicker than water.”
And he sat back, immense, expanded, enjoying and pretending to be unconscious of the glances and the murmurs of admiration which rewarded this testimonial to the ties of consanguinity.
So, for a long while, I availed myself of Uncle John’s hospitality, eating three good meals a week in that warm and low-beamed chop house, under the kindly eyes of Alfred the head waiter: and well those meals stood to me. I dare swear that the strength of my constitution, and the way I got through those winters of rather weedy growth, with the long hours of work in an office that was neither cold nor warm nor well-lit but stale and stuffy and unhealthy, I owe to Uncle John andt the fine plain food provided by that chop house. That, after three or four years, Uncle John should default, leaving me with not only my own bills to pay but a good round lump of his, seven pounds six in all, a staggering sum to a poor fifth grade clerk in the never mind what, was in character maybe, but did not at all detract from the good heartedness that made him offer it nor the benefit it gave me.
But I am running on too fast, for in a great and dreadful crisis that was soon to befall me Uncle John was a tower of refuge. The crisis concerned Nora. After making allowance for my natural bashfulness, and doing her best to dissipate it, she decided on bolder measures. One night, as I was going to bed, I was roused by a soft tap on the door. It was so soft that it had to be repeated before I was sure I had heard.
I jumped over to the chair, and put on my coat.
“Who is it?” I asked loudly.
The door opened a crack, and a voice said “Ssh “. Nora stood there, blinking at me queerly, one finger to her lips. She wasn’t a particularly seductive figure, as I see her now, for she was clad from neck to ankle in a shapeless white nightshirt like a young marquee. But I had never seen a girl in her night attire, and I was staggered as by the most alluring of Parisian houris.
“What is it?” I said. “What do you want?”
“Sssh,” she said again, “they’ll hear you”: and came a step forward. Her eyes were half shut.
I backed away, clutching my overcoat round me.
“But what is it?” I asked her again.
She looked at me sleepily. “There’s a rat in my room. I hear the trampling of it. I’m in dread. I don’t like rats.”
“Well,” I said, “I can’t help it. What do you expect me to do?”
“I wondered would you let me come in along with you for a bit. Ah, Luke, come on. Be a sport.”
She stepped across to me before I could guess what was in her mind. With a jerk—she was a big strong girl—she pulled my overcoat open, and pressed herself against me. I was in my underclothes only: I could feel the warm shape of her body through the thick calico nightgown.
I began to whisper, a dry whisper of terror and repulsion.
“Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.”
I struggled too, but weakly. What really terrified me was not Nora but a thing growing in myself, a wild unknown urge that rose up in spite of me, that seemed to understand and to take sides with Nora and grin at my despairing struggles. She was pressing me towards the bed. I twisted, and we hit the chair, knocking it over.
Nora let me go, and sprang back, her face contorted.
“Ye bloody little fool ye!” she hissed at me. “Do you want them to come up?”
It was just what I did want, and yet, in the grip of this new urge, I did not. How things would have gone I won’t guess. I daresay she’d have had her way with me, and enslaved me into the ugliest servility man or boy can suffer, the exploitation of his instincts without love or liking. But there was a
quick step outside, the door was flung open, and there confronted us the lean and frantic form of Mr. Duigan.
Nora at once began to blubber, and ran towards him.
“Oh, Mr. Duigan, save me, save me!”
She caught hold of his coat, and buried her face in him. He recoiled a step, and stood glaring, rigid as an obelisk.
“What is the meaning of this?”
“Oh, Mr. Duigan, thank God ye came. Thank God.”
He looked down at her, drawing his thin neck away in distaste. I saw his Adam’s apple working in the candlelight.
“What are ye doing in the young man’s room?”
“I didn’t, Mr. Duigan, sir, I wasn’t, I swear to ye. I was crossing the landing, going somewhere, when he leps out on me like a murderer. He claps a hand over me mouth, and drags me in here before I could so much as let a gasp out of me. I start to fight him then, and managed to knock over the chair, for he had such a grip on me throat I wasn’t able to speak a word. Oh, thank God ye heard me. Oh, thank God ye came.”
Mr. Duigan stood for a moment. Then he took her shoulders, as if she were a chair, and pushed her away.
The Bay Page 17
