“Lots of the other boys are no bigger than me, Granny. Some are much smaller. Why mayn’t I go?”
Granny looked helplessly round.
“Ah well, ye see, son, it’s—I don’t think it’d be very nice for ye.”
“But it would, it would. Granny, I want to go so much. Other boys are allowed to. Why can’t I be like other boys?”
“You see, darling,” put in his mother, “you’re not very strong. You have to be careful.”
“But the sea air is good for me. You said it was, yourself. Mummy—you did say it was. You know you did.”
By Friday afternoon, the resistance was weakening. Then, in happy time, Uncle Ben called in for tea, and blew away the remnant of it with his gusty scorn. On Saturday morning, therefore, Dermot set out, self-conscious but determined, beside the pram, his thin bare legs tapering into a pair of brand-new canvas sandshoes, and in his hand a brand-new ready-made line, bought from M’Gurk the ironmonger’s, and personally recommended to Granny by the proprietor. There had been talk, at home, of cutting the barb off the hook ; but the practical difficulty of accomplishing this led to the point being waived, until the first accident should have occurred. Yet Dermot, though vague and unpractical, was better able to take care of himself than they supposed. In all his fishing years he never ran a hook into his hand: and he only fell in the water twice—both times on the same day. He had no liking for risks, and never took them. His few deeds of daring were not recognised by him as such: and he had an unfailing instinct for his own safety. He was unadventurous.
The first morning’s fishing was not a success. Dermot broke periwinkles for bait, as he had seen other boys do, but his ready-made line was cumbrous and unsuited to the weedy, rocky bottom. Its wire gears kept catching in things, and the plop of its ring sinker scared the little fish. After a barren hour, Dermot edged away from Annie and the pram towards a group of boys on a big rock who were evidently having much sport. They said nothing, so finally he climbed beside them.
Their apparatus was much more primitive than his. In most cases they had nothing but a hook on the end of a length of thin twine. But they were amazingly successful. The little fish seemed to fight for the privilege of swallowing their baits. Several times Dermot’s hand went towards his own line: but he saw that the ragged boys were all packed closely on the good side of the rock, and that the manipulations of his own elaborate line would probably get in their way. Chagrined, beginning to perspire with mental conflict, he took a place as near them as he could, laboriously broke a winkle, and cast in his line. They looked round quickly at the splash, sniffed, and jeered among themselves. Sure enough, the line got caught. He tugged at it, but it would not come free. Furtively, he looked out of the sides of his eyes at the ragged boys, half afraid that they would see, half longing for their help. Suddenly one of them, a spectator only, caught his eye, and came across.
“Ay, Jack. Is yer line cotcht? ”
A year ago, Dermot would have set the stranger right. His name was not Jack. To-day he gulped, and answered to it gratefully.
“Y-yes. I’m rather afraid it has.”
“Show.”
The stranger took it. He was exceedingly ragged, exceedingly dirty, and in urgent need of a pocket handkerchief. He jagged twice at the line, then sprang down, with an agility incredible to Dermot, to a lower point of rock, at right angles to the direction in which they had been pulling. Crouching, getting a purchase with his bare feet, he grasped the line in both hands, and, after violent tugging, jerked it free.
“There y’are, Jack.”
“Thank you. Thank you very much.”
The deliverer climbed up and stood close behind Dermot, looking over his shoulder at the line, and sniffing. Dermot could not help drawing away, but his action was unnoticed.
“Yer huke is broke,” announced the stranger.
It was.
“Yer gears is jairked.”
Dermot could not corroborate him there, for want of technical knowledge: but the line was manifestly out of action. He saw himself going home empty-handed. A temptation as old as fishing woke in his mind.
Interest over, the ragged boy was moving off. Dermot put a hand in his pocket. He had five pence.
“I say. Do you think those boys would give me any of their fish for five pence? ”
“For wha’? ”
Dermot produced the pence. The rescuer’s eyes goggled.
He turned to the fishers.
“Ay, ay! here’s a young lad wants to buy fish for five pence.”
In an instant Dermot was surrounded. Hot acrid bodies crowded on top of him: dirty eager faces bawled into his: slimy hands thrust fish upon him. He was suffocated, bewildered, stunned by the clamour.
“That’s all I have,” he kept repeating, his voice loud in his own ears. “That’s all I have. Share it out between you.”
Quickly, as if they feared he would repent of his bargain, as if they feared the police would be after them, the ragged boys took up their lines and scuttled off, leaving him in sole possession. The pudder of their bare feet sounded on the rocks, and they were gone, rushing off as fast as they could in the direction of the town. Dermot looked down at the little pile of fish. They were useless to eat: even he knew that much. “Stingoes,” the boys called them. They had big heads, and silly blunt faces: the biggest of them was about six inches long. He looked around him. There was no way of carrying them. There were too many for his bare hands: besides, one or two of them were still alive. In the end, he took off his shoes, filled them with the fish, and made his perilous way back to Annie. She regarded him blandly.
“That was a much better place, over there, Annie.”
“Did you catch any? ”
“Look.” Even now that he was committed to it, the lie stuck in his throat.
“Oo my. Did you catch all those? ”
“My line’s broken, so I had to stop and come back.”
“Or did those little boys give them to you? ”
“Of course not.” That could be answered indignantly, and with perfect truth. They had not given them. They had sold them.
Annie looked into the shoes, wrinkling her nose. She had large nostrils, which Dermot disliked.
“Oo my. What will you do with them? You can’t eat little fish like that.”
“It isn’t the size, Annie. It’s the species. This species of fish is not good to eat.”
“I should think not, indeed. Ugly, horrid little things.”
Dermot was offended, without precise reason.
“What will you do with them? ” harped the ingenuous Annie. “You’re never going to take them home with you! ”
“Of course I shall take them home.”
“What’s the good of them, if you can’t eat them? ”
“They-I——” Dermot groped for words which would not come. “I shall show them to Granny,” he concluded lamely.
“She won’t want to see them,” said Annie relentlessly. “Dirty, ugly little things.”
Dermot decided that there were moments when he hated Annie. He usually felt obliged to put on a patronising air in dealing with her, but the good natured Devon girl seemed quite unaware of it. Sometimes, when he was extra superior, she would laugh, as if he were being amusing especially for her benefit.
“Well.” She began to gather up her belongings. “It’s time we were off.”
Dermot went round to the side of the pram.
“Look, Eithne,” he said ingratiatingly. “Look at the pretty little fish.”
Eithne looked at them, and gave a mechanical smile. Her mind was busy with other concerns.
“Master Dermot. There’s your Daddy, on the wall, beckoning to you.”
There, sure enough, stood the tall figure, clad in grey, aloof from the activities of the Sea Wall. Something, a sort of graceful stiffness, proclaimed that he had not come there for his own pleasure, but to encourage or retrieve his son.
There was an interval of care, loud
breathing, of bare feet on wet, slippery weed, and hard, warm rock: then Dermot climbed up beside his father. At just the right distance short of him, he looked up, with a smile of eager, modest triumph.
“Look, Daddy.”
Mr. Gray looked.
“H’m,” he said. “Several.”
“Yes.”
Dermot stood beside him, a shoe in each hand, waiting to start for home.
“You don’t propose to bring them home, do you?” asked his father.
Dermot looked up blankly.
“Yes,” he said.
“What for? ”
“T——to show Granny. You see, she bought me the line,” he added, with sudden cunning.
“How will you carry them? ”
“Like this—in my shoes.”
“That you won’t,” said Mr. Gray, with decision. “I’m not going to walk home with you padding along in your bare feet, like one of those street boys. Throw them away,” he went on, as Dermot hesitated. “I’ll tell your Granny how well the line worked.”
With disappointment, yet with a sort of secret relief, Dermot tipped out the clammy load into a pool. He sat down on the wall, and dutifully pulled on his shoes. His growing sense of guilt was somehow lessened by the loss of the fish. The corpses were no longer on his hands. He trotted along beside his father, perfect image of the disappointed yet docile little son. This picture, with the faintest suspicion of injury, perceptible to the women and winning its full meed of unspoken sympathy, he kept up till about three that afternoon: when it was effectually shattered.
Grandpapa, when at home, spent a good deal of his time looking out of the parlour window. If a caller excited his disapproval, as not infrequently happened, he would bustle out to the door himself. The habit was a source of much concern to Granny, since the old gentleman did not mince his words, and often sent people off with a flea in their ear. Dermot loved to listen on these occasions: and so, hearing Grandpapa muttering and storming his way to the door, he put his head outside the nursery where he was supposed to be resting, and cocked his ear.
The latch clicked, and the heavy door creaked back.
“What do ye mean,” cried the angry voice, “coming up this way to me door, ye little ragamuffins, ye? ”
“I’ ye plaze, sir,” murmured a low voice, punctuated by sniffs, which Dermot in horror recognised. “We cem to see would the young lad buy the big fish.”
“Buy the fish! ‘ The young lad’! ” Grandpapa almost choked. “And for what, do ye think, would a person want——”
But Dermot waited for no more. Burning with shame, he fled to the furthest part of the garden, and there remained till he was called for tea.
Chapter XIV
On the Monday Dermot was down at the Sea Wall again, with two new hooks. He doubted his ability ever to catch a fish, but a sort of obstinate bitterness drove him on. Separating himself as soon as possible from the pram, he chose a place all alone, on the edge of the wall. There, laboriously, he baited both his hooks, and dropped in his line. The ragged boys were far away. He could hear their brawling. He prayed they might not see him. It was in case of fresh offers of fish that he had gone well away from Annie.
He sat for a long time, forlornly holding his line, the object of amused glances from passers-by. Even at high tide, the wall was an unusual place for fishing. The rocks below it were only covered for a bare two hours, and he was fishing in three feet of water.
At some time unnoticed by him, a figure sat down some distance on his left: and Dermot presently began to realise that he was being watched. He went hot, and pretended to be absorbed in the important technique of his line. Stealing a glance round, he saw that the result of his efforts was to produce a wide, friendly smile.
The stranger was a young man of about twenty-eight. He had a broad, honest face, and blue eyes. He had a straggly little moustache, was decently though poorly dressed, and his legs hung rather queerly over the edge of the wall.
Dermot took several glances at him, and, meeting each time the same wide smile, at last smiled back.
“Are you Mrs. Conroy’s young lad? ” asked the stranger.
“I——She’s my Granny.”
“A grand lady, Mrs. Conroy. Terrible kind. Glasthule’d be the worse without her.”
“Oh yes. She’s very kind, I know.”
“She does be looking after a lot of the poor, and finding work for them. Many’s the job she gev me, where others wouldn’t.”
He glanced down expressively at his legs, and swung them in humorous contempt. Dermot followed the glance with interest.
“Why wouldn’t they? ” he asked.
“It’s the way I’m crippled,” replied the stranger cheerfully.
Dermot shrank back at once, afraid he had asked a painful question.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
“Oh, faith,” said the stranger, “it’s no matter. I do get about grand. First Monda’ in August, I do often win a prize in the sports. I’m terrible strong. And I play football, too. Wing-man Kennedy, they call me.”
“Wing-man! What a funny name! Is it your Christian name? ”
“Ah no. It means, d’ye see, I do play on the wing.”
“I see,” said Dermot blankly.
“On the wing of the field, d’ye see.” The stranger was anxious that his point should be correctly taken. “On the wing. The side. Way out be the line.”
“I think I see.”
“That’s right.” He paused, and spat into the sea. “Ah, no. Sure you couldn’t be called Wing-man for yer Christian name. Me Christian name is Patrick. Born on St. Patrick’s Day.”
“Patrick. Oh, I know. You’re Paddy Kennedy, that used to help Mr. Caggen in the garden, when Jem Neill was ill.”
Paddy nodded in delight.
“Yis, yis, that’s right. Did you hear me name, then? Did your Grandmother——”
“Mr. Caggen told me. And Granny, I think. Yes. I’m sure I heard Granny say it.”
“Ah, yer Grandmother is a fine lady. A grand lady. We’d all be the worse off without her. Sure everybody says that.”
There was a pause. Paddy transferred his attention to the line.
“Did you catch any thin’? ” he enquired.
“Not yet.”
“That’s not a good place for your line.”
“N—no. Perhaps it isn’t.”
Paddy put down his great hands on the wall, and with astounding agility levered himself along to where Dermot was sitting.
“Show,” he said, holding out a hand.
Dermot willingly transferred the line, noticing as he did so that Paddy’s hands were deformed, the fingers and thumb all bent in upon themselves. Paddy grasped the line, and felt it. His eyebrows rose comically.
“Be the holies !” he cried: and pulled up two little fish, one on each hook.
Several passers-by stopped to look at the scene, Dermot dancing with excitement and joy, then squatting down over the captives, and Paddy rolling about, bellowing with laughter.
“Two on the line—and you holdin’ on to them all the time,” he cried. “Did yez ever hear the like o’ that. Two on the line, and you holdin’ on to them all the time. Oh, Janey, that’s a quare one. Two on the line——”
He was too much amused to unhook the exhausted fish: while Dermot kept exclaiming, between his hops,
“I caught them myself, Paddy, didn’t I? I caught them myself! ”
“Oh, faith, ye did.” Paddy sat up, and wiped his eyes with a dirty brown handkerchief. “Faith, ye did, and no one else at all.”
The two were now on the most intimate terms. At last Paddy unhooked the fish. To point the coincidence still further, they were of different kinds.
“That one’s a stingo,” he said, “but this is a young rock brame. It’s this sort you should be fishing for—the big ones—not stingoes.”
He put such scorn into the word that Dermot was abashed.
“Why don’t you fish for the bi
g brame?” pursued Paddy.
“I don’t know how to.”
Paddy considered the downcast figure, and his own eyes lit.
“Will I learn ye? ” he enquired. “Will I come down every day, and learn ye how to catch every sort of fish? ”
Dermot looked up, and clasped his hands in rapture.
“Oh, Paddy, do! ”
Paddy nodded solemnly several times.
“I will so. But ye must ask your Granny.”
Dermot asked his Granny—and she jumped at the chance. Here was the solution to all the family’s difficulty. She knew Paddy well, a trustworthy, honest fellow, unable to get regular work. It would be a godsend to him, and a godsend for Dermot. So Paddy was summoned, and took on the not too arduous duties of gilly and guide for the sum of sixpence a day. He added, of his own goodwill, those of philosopher and friend: and so began for Dermot a friendship which taught him more perhaps than any other in his life.
The new interest came in good time, to take the place of an old: for the accession of Paddy the Second was swiftly followed by the deposition of Paddy the First. Not that Dermot was fickle, or to blame. The deposition was literal. Granny took the step she had so often threatened, and got rid of Paddy-monkey.
The return of a playmate had humanised him, but Dermot could not help seeing, again and again, that he had not really improved with age. He was wilful, and sudden in his moods: one had to go carefully with him. When he flung his tin mug at Mr. Caggen and Jem Neill, dancing up and down to see them hurry and cross themselves, there was a note of real savagery in his noise. If he were free, he would have bitten them. He was at open war with Pucker, too, though there was an armistice now and then, if she had a kitten. He sat on the roof of his kennel, facing the way she must come when the kitchen door was shut, feigning to be asleep, watching her through a wicked, gleaming slit of his yellow eyes. The cat crept up the path, looking balefully up at him, wondering if she dare risk the run past his kennel. A pause—then, crouching low, she ran. With a leap, perfectly timed, the monkey landed on the path beside her, gave her tail a vicious tug, and in the same movement bounded back again to his roof, the fraction of a second clear of her avenging claw. He learned also, whether by chance or bad example, to throw water over her from his mug.
The Garden Page 11
