Collected Stories (23 page)

I used to meet her in the evening up the river road, as if I was walking there by accident and very surprised to see her. “Fancy meeting you!” I'd say, or “Well, well, isn't this a great surprise!” Mind you, it usually was, for, no matter how much I was expecting her, I was never prepared for the shock of her presence. Then we'd stand talking for half an hour and I'd see her home. Several times she asked me in, but I was too nervous. I knew I'd lose my head, break the china, use some dirty word, and then go home and cut my throat. Of course, I never asked her to come to the pictures or anything of the sort. She was above that. My only hope was that if I waited long enough I might be able to save her from drowning or the white slavers or something else dramatic, which would show in a modest and dignified way how I felt about her. At the same time I had a bad conscience because I knew I should stay at home more with the mother, but the very thought that I might be missing an opportunity of fishing Kitty out of the river would spoil a whole evening on me.

That night in particular I was nearly distracted. It was three weeks since I'd seen Kitty. I was sure that, at the very least, she was dying and asking for me, and that no one knew my address. A week before, I had felt I simply couldn't bear it any longer, so I had made an excuse and gone down to the post office. I rang up the hospital and asked for Kitty. I fully expected them to say in gloomy tones that Kitty had died half an hour before, and got the shock of my life when the girl at the other end asked my name. I lost my head. “I'm afraid I'm a stranger to Miss Doherty,” I said with an embarrassed laugh, “but I have a message for her from a friend.”

Then I grew completely panic-stricken. What could a girl like Kitty make of a damned, deliberate lie like that? What else was it but a trap laid by an old and cunning hand? I held the receiver out and looked at it as if it was someone whose neck I was going to wring. “Moynihan,” I said to it, “you're mad. An asylum, Moynihan, is the only place for you.”

I heard Kitty's voice not in my ear at all, but in the telephone booth as though she were standing before me, and nearly dropped the receiver in terror. Then I raised it and asked in what I thought of as a French accent: “Who is dat speaking, please?” “This is Kitty Doherty,” she replied impatiently. “Who are you?”

That was exactly what I was wondering myself. “I am Monsieur Bertrand,” I went on cautiously. “I am afraid I have the wrong number. I am so sorry.” Then I put down the receiver carefully and thought how nice it would be if only I had a penknife handy to cut my throat with. It's funny, but from the moment I met Kitty I was always coveting sharp things like razors and penknives.

After that an awful idea dawned on me. Of course, I should have thought of it before, but, as you can see, I wasn't exactly knowledgeable where girls were concerned. I began to see that I wasn't meeting Kitty for the very good reason that Kitty didn't want to meet me. What her reason was, I could only imagine, but imagination was my strong point. I examined my conscience to see what I might have said to her. I remembered every remark I had made. The reason was only too clear. Every single remark I had made was either brutal, indecent or disgusting. I had talked of Paddy Kinnane as a fellow who “went with dolls.” What could a pure-minded girl think of a chap who naturally used such a phrase except—what unfortunately was quite true—that he had a mind like a cesspit.

But this evening I felt more confident. It was a lovely summer evening with views of hillsides and fields between the gaps in the houses, and it raised my spirits. Perhaps I was wrong; perhaps she hadn't noticed or understood my filthy conversation, perhaps we might meet and walk home together. I walked the full length of the river road and back, and then started to walk it again. The crowds were thinning out as fellows and girls slipped off up the lanes or down to the riverbank, courting. As the streets went out like lamps about me, my hopes sank lower and lower. I saw clearly that she was avoiding me; that she knew I was not the quiet, good-natured fellow I let on to be but a volcano of brutality and lust. “Lust, lust, lust!” I hissed to myself, clenching my fists. I could have forgiven myself anything but the lust.

Then I glanced up and saw her on a tram. I instantly forgot about the lust and smiled and waved my cap to her, but she was looking ahead and didn't see me. I raced after the car, intending to jump onto it, to sit in one of the back seats on top where she would not see me, and then say in astonishment as she got off “Fancy meeting you here!” But as if the driver knew what was in my mind, he put on speed, and the old tram went tossing and screeching down the one straight bit of road in the town, and I stood panting in the roadway, smiling as though missing a tram were the best joke in the world, and wishing all the time that I had a penknife and the courage to use it. My position was hopeless!

Then I must have gone a bit mad—really mad, I mean—for I started to race the tram. There were still lots of people out walking, and they stared after me in an incredulous way, so I lifted my fists to my chest in the attitude of a professional runner and dropped into what I fondly hoped would look like a comfortable stride and delude them into the belief that I was in training for a big race. By the time I was finished, I
was
a runner, and full of indignation against the people who still continued to stare at me.

Between my running and the tram's halts I just managed to keep it in view as far as the other side of town. When I saw Kitty get off and go up a hilly street, I collapsed and was only just able to drag myself after her. When she went into a house on a terrace, I sat on the high curb with my head between my knees until the panting stopped. At any rate I felt safe. I could afford to rest, could walk up and down before the house until she came out, and accost her with an innocent smile and say “Fancy meeting you!”

But my luck was dead out that night. As I was walking up and down, close enough to the house to keep it in view but not close enough to be observed from the windows, I saw a tall man strolling up at the opposite side of the road and my heart sank. It was Paddy Kinnane.

“Hallo, Jerry,” he chuckled with that knowing grin he put on whenever he wanted to compliment you on being discovered in a compromising situation. “What are you doing here?”

“Just waiting for a chap I had a date with, Paddy,” I said, trying to sound casual.

“Looks more as if you were waiting for an old doll, to me,” Paddy said flatteringly. “Still waters run deep. When are you supposed to be meeting him?”

Cripes, I didn't even know what the time was!

“Half eight,” I said at random.

“Half eight?” said Paddy. “'Tis nearly nine now.”

“Ah, he's a most unpunctual fellow,” I said. “He's always the same. He'll turn up all right.”

“I may as well wait with you,” said Paddy, leaning against the wall and taking out a packet of cigarettes. “You might find yourself stuck by the end of the evening. There's people in this town that have no consideration for anyone.”

That was Paddy all out: a heart of gold; no trouble too much for him if he could do you a good turn—I'd have loved to strangle him.

“Ah, to hell with him!” I said impatiently. “I won't bother waiting. It only struck me this minute that I have another appointment up the Western Road. You'll excuse me now, Paddy. I'll tell you all about it another time.”

And away I went hell-for-leather to the tram. I mounted it and went on to the other terminus, near Kitty's house. There, at least, Paddy Kinnane could not get at me. I sat on the river wall in the dusk. The moon was rising, and every quarter of an hour a tram came grunting and squeaking over the old bridge and went black-out while the conductor switched his trolley. Each time I got off the wall and stood on the curb in the moonlight, searching for Kitty among the passengers. Then a policeman came along, and, as he seemed to be watching me, I slunk slowly off up the hill and stood against a wall in shadow. There was a high wall at the other side of the road as well, and behind it the roof of a house was cut out of the sky in moonlight. Every now and then a tram came in and people passed, and the snatches of conversation I caught were like the warmth from an open door to the heart of a homeless man. It was quite clear now that my position was hopeless. If Kitty had walked or been driven she could have reached home from the opposite direction. She could be at home in bed by now. The last tram came and went, and still there was no Kitty, and still I hung on despairingly. While one glimmer of a chance remained I could not go home.

Then I heard a woman's step. I couldn't even pretend to myself that it might be Kitty until she suddenly shuffled past me with that hasty little walk of hers. I started and called her name. She glanced quickly over her shoulder and, seeing a man emerge from the shadow, took fright and ran. I ran too, but she put on speed and began to outdistance me. At that I despaired. I stood on the pavement and shouted after her at the top of my voice.

“Kitty! Kitty, for God's sake wait!”

She ran a few steps further and then halted incredulously. She looked back, and then turned and slowly retraced her steps.

“Jerry Moynihan!” she whispered in astonishment. “What are you doing here?”

I was summoning strength to tell her that I had happened to be taking a stoll in that direction and was astonished to see her when I realized the improbability of it and began to cry instead. Then I laughed. It was hysteria, I suppose. But Kitty had had a bad fright and, now she was getting over it, she was as cross as two sticks.

“What's wrong with you, I say?” she snapped. “Are you out of your mind or what?”

“But I didn't see you for weeks,” I burst out.

“I know,” she replied. “I wasn't out. What about it?”

“I thought it might be something I said to you,” I said desperately.

“What did you say?” she asked in bewilderment, but I couldn't repeat the hideous things I had already said. Perhaps, after all, she hadn't noticed them!

“How do I know?”

“Oh, it's not that,” she said impatiently. “It's just Mother.”

“Why?” I asked almost joyously. “Is there something wrong with her?”

“Ah, no, but she made such a fuss about it. I felt it wasn't worth it.”

“A fuss? What did she make a fuss about?”

“About you, of course,” Kitty said in exasperation.

“But what did I do?” I asked, clutching my head. This was worse than anything I had ever imagined. This was terrible!

“You didn't do anything, but people were talking about us. And you wouldn't come in and be introduced like anyone else. I know she's a bit of a fool, and her head is stuffed with old nonsense about her family. I could never see that they were different to anyone else, and anyway she married a commercial traveller herself, so she has nothing to talk about. Still, you needn't be so superior.”

I felt cold shivers run through me. I had thought of Kitty as a secret between God, herself, and me and assumed that she only knew the half of it. Now it seemed I didn't even know the half. People were talking about us! I was superior! What next?

“But what has she against me?” I asked despairingly.

“She thinks we're doing a tangle, of course,” snapped Kitty as if she was astonished at my stupidity, “and I suppose she imagines you're not grand enough for a great-great-grandniece of Daniel O'Connell. I told her you were above that sort of thing, but she wouldn't believe me. She said I was a deep, callous, crafty little intriguer and I hadn't a drop of Daniel O'Connell's blood in my veins.” Kitty giggled at the thought of herself as an intriguer, and no wonder.

“That's all she knows,” I said despairingly.

“I know,” Kitty agreed. “She has no sense. And anyway she has no reason to think I'm telling lies. Cissy and I always had fellows, and we spooned with them all over the shop under her very nose, so I don't see why she thinks I'm trying to conceal anything.”

At this I began to laugh like an idiot. This was worse than appalling. This was a nightmare. Kitty, whom I had thought so angelic, talking in cold blood about “spooning” with fellows all over the house. Even the bad women in the books I had read didn't talk about love-making in that cold-blooded way. Madame Bovary herself had at least the decency to pretend that she didn't like it. It was another door opening on the outside world, but Kitty thought I was laughing at her and started to apologize.

“Of course, I had no sense at the time,” she said. “You were the first fellow I met that treated me properly. The others only wanted to fool around, and now, because I don't like it, Mother thinks I'm into something ghastly. I told her I liked you better than any fellow I knew, but that I'd grown out of all that sort of thing.”

“And what did she say to that?” I asked fiercely. I was beginning to see that imagination wasn't enough; that all round me there was an objective reality that was a thousand times more nightmarish than any fantasy of my own. I couldn't hear enough about it, though at the same time it turned my stomach.

“Ah, I told you she was silly,” Kitty said in embarrassment.

“Go on!” I shouted. “I want to know.”

“Well,” said Kitty with a demure grin, “she said you were a deep, designing guttersnipe who knew exactly how to get round feather-pated little idiots like me.… You see, it's quite hopeless. The woman is common. She doesn't understand.”

“Oh, God!” I said almost in tears. “I only wish she was right.”

“Why do you wish she was right?” Kitty asked with real curiosity.

“Because then I'd have some chance of you,” I said.

“Oh!” said Kitty, as if this was news to her. “To tell you the truth,” she added after a moment, “I thought you were a bit keen at first, but then I wasn't sure. When you didn't kiss me or anything, I mean.”