Collected Stories (102 page)

“I'll be responsible, Darcy,” Healy said shortly. “Go on, John, and do whatever you want to do, but do it quick—and for God's sake don't let them out on us! Come on outside, boys, and we'll shut the gate.”

And there they had to stand outside the cage, powerlessly, watching the performance within. Cloone opened the gate of the inner cage and stood there for a moment, overcome with emotion. The lions seemed to be overcome as well. After a moment Jumbo sadly raised his big head and joined Cloone. Cloone bent and kissed him on the snout. As he did so Bess came up to him and licked his hand. He kissed her as well. Then, before he closed the door behind him, he drew himself up and gave them a military salute. The soldiers in the audience were delighted with this. “Company, present arms!” yelled one of them. As Healy said, “There was never the like of it seen as show business. If you could have put it on as an act, you'd be turning them away.”

But for Cloone, it was anything but show business. As he came out of the big cage he strode up to Darcy.

“You big, bloody bully!” he said. “You had to take a red-hot bar to frighten those poor innocent creatures! Like every other bully, you're a coward.”

He gave Darcy a punch, and the strong man was so astonished that he went down flat on the grass. There were fresh roars from the audience; the soliders were getting restive. Darcy rose with a dazed expression as the two policemen seized Cloone from behind. To give them their due, they were less afraid of what Cloone would do to Darcy than of what Darcy would do to Cloone. He was one of those sad powerful men whose tragedy is that they can't have a little disagreement in a pub without running the risk of manslaughter. Cloone pulled himself away, leaving his tunic in the policemen's hands, and dashed for the side of the tent. He disappeared under it with two guards close behind, and a score of soldiers after the guards, to see that their comrade got fair play. As they were pulling off their belts while they ran, two officers got up as well and ran through the main entrance after them to protect the guards. It was all very confusing, and the show was as good as over for the night.

T
HEY RAN
Cloone to earth at last in the kitchen of a cottage down a lane from which there was no escape. By this time he had had the opportunity of considering his behavior, and all the fight had gone out of him. He apologized to the woman of the house for the fright he had given her, and she moaned over him like a Greek chorus, blaming it all on the bad whiskey. He apologized to the guards for the trouble he had given them and begged them to go back to the circus while he surrendered himself at the barrack. He apologized all over again to the two young lieutenants who appeared soon after; by this time he was trembling like an aspen leaf.

“It's my lions!” he said in a broken voice. “I'd never shame the uniform only for them.”

At his court-martial he appeared on a charge of “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline, in that he, Corporal John Cloone, on the eighteenth day of September, of the current year, had allowed himself to be seen in a public place with his tunic in disorder and minus certain articles of equipment: viz. one pair of gloves and one walking stick (regulation).” The charge of assault was dropped at the instance of the president, who suggested to the prosecution that there might have been provocation. The prosecutor agreed that, considering the prisoner's occupation in civil life, this might be so. But armies are alike the whole world over, and, whatever their disregard for civilian rights, they all have the same old-maidish preoccupation with their own dignity, and Cloone was lucky to get off with nothing worse than the loss of his stripes. Healy asked him what better he could expect from soldiers, people who tried to turn decent artists into people like themselves. As if anybody had ever succeeded in turning a soldier into anything that was the least use to God or man!

But Healy, as Cloone knew, was lacking in idealism.

Public Opinion

N
OW
I
KNOW
what you're thinking. You're thinking how nice 'twould be to live in a little town. You could have a king's life in a house like this, with a fine garden and a car so that you could slip up to town whenever you felt in need of company. Living in Dublin, next door to the mail boat and writing things for the American papers, you imagine you could live here and write whatever you liked about MacDunphy of the County Council. Mind, I'm not saying you couldn't say a hell of a lot about him! I said a few things myself from time to time. All I mean is that you wouldn't say it for long. This town broke better men. It broke me and, believe me, I'm no chicken.

When I came here first, ten years ago, I felt exactly the way you do, the way everybody does. At that time, and the same is nearly true today, there wasn't a professional man in this town with a housekeeper under sixty, for fear of what people might say about them. In fact, you might still notice that there isn't one of them who is what you might call “happily” married. They went at it in too much of a hurry.

Oh, of course, I wasn't going to make that mistake! When I went to choose a housekeeper I chose a girl called Bridie Casey, a handsome little girl of seventeen from a village up the coast. At the same time I took my precautions. I drove out there one day when she was at home, and I had a look at the cottage and a talk with her mother and a cup of tea, and after that I didn't need anyone to recommend her. I knew that anything Bridie fell short in her mother would not be long in correcting. After that, there was only one inquiry I wanted to make.

“Have you a boy, Bridie?” said I.

“No, doctor, I have not,” said she with an innocent air that didn't take me in a bit. As a doctor you soon get used to innocent airs.

“Well, you'd better hurry up and get one,” said I, “or I'm not going to keep you.”

With that she laughed as if she thought I was only joking. I was not joking at all. A housekeeper or maid without a fellow of her own is as bad as a hen with an egg.

“It's no laughing matter,” I said. “And when you do get a fellow, if you haven't one already, you can tell him I said he could make free with my beer, but if ever I catch you diluting my whiskey I'll sack you on the spot.”

Mind, I made no mistake in Bridie or her mother either. She mightn't be any good in the Shelbourne Hotel, but what that girl could cook she cooked well and anything she cleaned looked as if it was clean. What's more, she could size a patient up better than I could myself. Make no mistake about it, as housekeepers or maids Irish girls are usually not worth a damn, but a girl from a good Irish home can turn her hand to anything. Of course, she was so good-looking that people who came to the house used to pass remarks about us, but that was only jealousy. They hadn't the nerve to employ a good-looking girl themselves for fear of what people would say. But I knew that as long as a girl had a man of her own to look after she'd be no bother to me.

No, what broke up my happy home was something different entirely. You mightn't understand it, but in a place like this 'tis the devil entirely to get ready money out of them. They'll give you anything else in the world only money. Here, everything is what they call “friendship.” I suppose the shops give them the habit because a regular customer is always supposed to be in debt and if ever the debt is paid off it's war to the knife. Of course they think a solicitor or a doctor should live the same way, and instead of money what you get is presents: poultry, butter, eggs, and meat that a large family could not eat, let alone a single man. Friendship is all very well, but between you and me it's a poor thing for a man to be relying on at the beginning of his career.

I had one patient in particular called Willie Joe Corcoran of Clashanaddig—I buried him last year, poor man, and my mind is easier already—and Willie Joe seemed to think I was always on the verge of starvation. One Sunday I got in from twelve-o'clock Mass and went to the whiskey cupboard to get myself a drink when I noticed the most extraordinary smell. Doctors are sensitive to smells, of course— we have to be—and I couldn't rest easy till I located that one. I searched the room and I searched the hall and I even poked my head upstairs into the bedrooms before I tried the kitchen. Knowing Bridie, I never even associated the smell with her. When I went in, there she was in a clean white uniform, cooking the dinner, and she looked round at me.

“What the hell is that smell, Bridie?” said I.

She folded her arms and leaned against the wall, as good-looking a little girl as you'd find in five counties.

“I told you before,” says she in her thin, high voice, “'tis that side of beef Willie Joe Corcoran left on Thursday. It have the whole house ruined on me.”

“But didn't I tell you to throw that out?” I said.

“You did,” says she as if I was the most unreasonable man in the world, “but you didn't tell me where I was going to throw it.”

“What's wrong with the ash can?” said I.

“What's wrong with the ash can?” says she. “There's nothing wrong with it, only the ashmen won't be here till Tuesday.”

“Then for God's sake, girl, can't you throw it over the wall into the field?”

“Into the field,” says she, pitching her voice up an octave till she sounded like a sparrow in decline. “And what would people say?”

“Begor, I don't know, Bridie,” I said, humoring her. “What do
you
think they'd say?”

“They're bad enough to say anything,” says she.

I declare to God I had to look at her to see was she serious. There she was, a girl of seventeen with the face of a nun, suggesting things that I could barely imagine.

“Why, Bridie?” I said, treating it as a joke. “You don't think they'd say I was bringing corpses home from the hospital to cut up?”

“They said worse,” she said in a squeak, and I saw that she took a very poor view of my powers of imagination. Because you write books, you think you know a few things, but you should listen to the conversation of pious girls in this town.

“About me, Bridie?” said I in astonishment.

“About you and others,” said she. And then, by cripes, I lost my temper with her.

“And is it any wonder they would,” said I, “with bloody fools like you paying attention to them?”

I have a very wicked temper when I'm roused and for the time being it scared her more than what people might say of her.

“I'll get Kenefick's boy in the morning and let him take it away,” said she. “Will I give him a shilling?”

“Put it in the poor box,” said I in a rage. “I'll be going out to Dr. MacMahon's for supper and I'll take it away myself. Any damage that's going to be done to anyone's character can be done to mine. It should be able to stand it. And let me tell you, Bridie Casey, if I was the sort to mind what anyone said about me, you wouldn't be where you are this minute.”

I was very vicious to her, but of course I was mad. After all, I had to take my drink and eat my dinner with that smell round the house, and Bridie in a panic, hopping about me like a hen with hydrophobia. When I went out to the pantry to get the side of beef, she gave a yelp as if I'd trodden on her foot. “Mother of God!” says she. “Your new suit!” “Never mind my new suit,” said I, and I wrapped the beef in a couple of newspapers and heaved it into the back of the car. I declare, it wasn't wishing to me. I had all the windows open, but even then the smell was high, and I went through town like a coursing match with the people on the footpaths lifting their heads like beagles to sniff after me.

I wouldn't have minded that so much only that Sunday is the one day I have. In those days before I was married I nearly always drove out to Jerry MacMahon's for supper and a game of cards. I knew poor Jerry looked forward to it because the wife was very severe with him in the matter of liquor.

I stopped the car on top of the cliffs to throw out the meat, and just as I was looking for a clear drop I saw a long galoot of a country man coming up the road towards me. He had a long, melancholy sort of face and mad eyes. Whatever it was about his appearance I didn't want him to see what I was up to. You might think it funny in a professional man but that is the way I am.

“Nice evening,” says he.

“Grand evening, thank God,” says I, and not to give him an excuse for being too curious I said: “That's a powerful view.”

“Well,” says he sourly, just giving it a glance, “the view is all right but 'tis no good to the people that has to live in it. There is no earning in that view,” says he, and then he cocked his head and began to size me up, and I knew I'd made a great mistake, opening my mouth to him at all. “I suppose now you'd be an artist?” says he.

You might notice about me that I'm very sensitive to inquisitiveness. It is a thing I cannot stand. Even to sign my name to a telegram is a thing I never like to do, and I hate a direct question.

“How did you guess?” said I.

“And I suppose,” said he, turning to inspect the view again, “if you painted that, you'd find people to buy it?”

“That's what I was hoping,” said I.

So he turned to the scenery again, and this time he gave it a studied appraisal as if it was a cow at a fair.

“I dare say for a large view like that you'd nearly get five pounds?” said he.

“You would and more,” said I.

“Ten?” said he with his eyes beginning to pop.

“More,” said I.

“That beats all,” he said, shaking his head in resignation. “Sure, the whole thing isn't worth that. No wonder the country is the way it is. Good luck!”

“Good luck,” said I, and I watched him disappear among the rocks over the road. I waited, and then I saw him peering out at me from behind a rock like some wild mountain animal, and I knew if I stayed there till nightfall I wouldn't shake him off. He was beside himself at the thought of a picture that would be worth as much as a cow, and he probably thought if he stayed long enough he might learn the knack and paint the equivalent of a whole herd of them. The man's mind didn't rise above cows. And, whatever the devil ailed me, I could not give him the satisfaction of seeing what I was really up to. You might think it shortsighted of me, but that is the sort I am.