Collected Stories (41 page)

“Have a kid, I said,” shouted Evelyn savagely.

“Is it Jim Piper?”

“Never mind!”

“He'll have to marry you.”

“He won't. I asked him and he told me to go to hell.”

“We'll soon see about that.”

“You won't. I did the same thing with another fellow in London and he found out.”

“You—so that's what you were up to in London.”

“That's what I was up to,” sneered Evelyn. “Anyway, I wouldn't marry that fellow now if he came to me on his knees.”

Then she went to bed and Joan, for once a little awed, brought her up tea. Myles first wept and then went out and got drunk. He said if it was anyone else he'd go out at once and kill him with his own two hands, but a fellow who had had his savings stolen on him! That was the real tragedy of being poor, that it destroyed a man's self-respect and made it impossible for him to wipe out his humiliations in blood.
Blood
, that was what he wanted. But Brigid didn't want anyone's blood. She wanted to marry Considine, the draper, and though Considine was broadminded enough as drapers go, she didn't want to give him anything more to be broadminded about. She stormed out to interview Jim's mother.

With all her responsibilities, Brigid was still something of a child. Standing with one hand on the table and the other on her hip, Mrs. Piper dominated the scene from the first moment. She asked in the most ingenuous way in the world how such a thing could happen in a well-conducted house, and when Brigid assured her that it hadn't happened there Mrs. Piper said wasn't it lucky that Evelyn didn't get pneumonia as well. Brigid had as much chance against her as an innocent naked savage against a machine-gun post.

While they were arguing Jim came in and hung up his cap.

“You know what I came about, Jim,” Brigid said challengingly.

“If I don't I can guess, Brigid,” he replied with a tight smile.

“The girl has no mother.”

“She has something as good, Brigid,” Jim replied simply, and Brigid suddenly realized that his respect for her was something he did not put off and on as it suited him. It gave her new dignity and confidence.

“You'll marry her for my sake, Jim?” she asked.

“I'll marry her the minute I'm able, Brigid,” he said stubbornly, putting his hands in his trouser pockets, a trick he had to give him the feeling of stability. “I may be able to marry her in a year's time, but I can't do it now.”

“A year's time will be too late, Jim,” Brigid cried. “A girl in her position can afford to do without a house but she can't do without a husband.”

“And start off in furnished rooms with a kid?” Jim replied scornfully. “I saw too many do that, and I never saw one that came to any good.”

Brigid looked at him doubtfully. She didn't believe him; she felt he was holding out on her only because of his bitterness about Evelyn's betrayal. It caused her to make a false move.

“I know she behaved like a bitch about that fellow in London,” she said. “I only heard it today for the first time. But surely seeing the state she's in, you're big enough to forgive her.”

The look on Jim's face convinced her that she was right. His expression showed pain, humiliation, and bewilderment, but his voice remained firm.

“If I didn't forgive her I wouldn't be in the fix I'm in now,” he said.

“What's that?” his mother cried. “What's that about a fellow in London? So that's what she was up to, the vagabond! And now she's trying to put the blame on my innocent boy!”

“She's not trying to put the blame on anybody,” Jim said with the first sign of real anger he had shown. “I'm responsible, and I'm not denying it, but I can't marry her now. She'll have to go to London.”

“But we haven't the money to send her to London,” Brigid cried in exasperation. “Don't you know well the way we're situated?”

“I'll pay my share,” Jim said. “And I'll pay for the kid, but I won't do any more.”

“Leave her pay for it out of what she stole!” hissed his mother. “Oh, my, that many a fine family was reared on less!”

“I'm going straight up to Father Ring,” Brigid said desperately.

“You can spare yourself the trouble,” said Jim flatly. “Ring isn't going to make me marry Evelyn, nor anyone else either.”

This was strong language from a young fellow of Jim's age, but it was no more than Father Ring himself expected.

“Brigid,” he said, squeezing the girl's arm sympathetically, “I'll do what I can but I wouldn't have much hope. To tell you the truth I never expected better. The best thing I can do is to see Lane.”

So off he went to interview Jim's employer, Mick Lane, at his own home.

“You could warn him he'd get the sack if he didn't marry her,” he suggested.

“Oh, begod, father, I could not,” replied Lane in alarm. “I wouldn't mind anyone else, but Jim is the sort of fellow would walk out the door on me if he thought I was threatening him, and I'd be a hell of a long time getting as good a man. I might talk to him myself in a friendly way.”

“Mick,” said Father Ring in a disappointment, “you'd only be wasting your time. Is it a fellow that wouldn't sing at a parish concert without a fee? It might be the best thing for the poor girl in the long run.”

N
EXT TIME
Evelyn came back from London without any finery; the baby was put out to nurse up the country and not referred to again. It caused a lot of talk. There were plenty to say that Jim was in the wrong, that, even allowing that the girl was damaged goods, a fellow might swallow his pride. Better men had had to do it. But Jim in his quiet, stubborn way went on as though he didn't even know there was talk.

Ultimately, it did the Reillys no great harm, because Joan became engaged to the gorgeous passionate fellow at the bank and Brigid married Considine. Evelyn set her teeth and stuck it out. She went twice to see Owen, her baby, but gave it up when she realized that you can't retain a child's affection by visiting him two or three times a year.

For months she didn't see Jim. Then one evening when she went for a walk in the country, she came on him about a mile out of town, studying the wreck of a car which he was trying to make something of. It was one of those occasions when anyone is at a disadvantage; when it depends on the weather or your digestion—or, going further back, what sort your parents were—what you do. Evelyn was her father's daughter and, having no true feminine pride to direct her, she naturally did the wrong thing.

“Hello,” she said.

“Oh, hello, Evelyn,” Jim said, raising his cap. “How are you getting on?”

“All right,” she replied curtly, with the sinking of the heart she would have felt anyhow, knowing that the decision of a lifetime had been taken, and that, as usual, it was the wrong one.

“Can I give you a lift?”

“I wasn't going anywhere in particular,” she said, realizing the enormous effort of will it would take to restore the situation to what it had been a moment before.

That night, crazy with rage, she wrote him a blistering letter, asking how he had dared to speak to her and warning him that if he did it again she would slap his face. Then, remembering the lonesome evening she would spend if she posted it, she put it in her bag and went off to meet him. While they were sitting on a gate up a country lane she realized that now she would never send the letter, and the thought of it in her bag irritated her. It was as though she saw the two women in her fighting for mastery. She took it out and tore it up.

“What's that?” asked Jim.

“A letter to you.”

“Can't I see it?”

“You'd hate it.”

That extraordinary man threw back his head and laughed like a kid. There was no doubt about it, he was a worm, but at any rate he was her worm; he didn't divide his attentions, and even if she didn't think much of him, there was no one else she thought more of. She couldn't merely sit at home, waiting for someone who'd overlook her past. Fellows in Ireland were death on girls' pasts.

But now the sense of guilt was ingrained: when she met Jim in town she merely saluted him, and if she had anyone with her she tried to avoid doing even that. It was funny, but she felt if she stopped to speak to him she would suddenly be overcome by the popular feeling and tear his eyes out. It was again that feeling that she was really two women and didn't know which of them she wanted to be.

As a result it was months before people knew they were walking out again. This time there was a thundering row and the Reillys were the most scandalized of all. Even Joan deserted her. It was all very well for Brigid, who had her draper where he couldn't escape, but Joan's bank clerk was still a toss-up and everyone knew the unmannerly way the banks had of prying into their officials' business.

“Honest to God,” Joan said contemptuously, “you haven't a spark of pride or decency.”

“Well, neither has he, so we're well matched,” Evelyn said despondently.

“God knows, 'tis a pity to spoil two houses with ye.”

“It's all very well for you, Joan,” said Evelyn, “but I have the kid's future to think of.”

This wasn't true; it was a long time since Evelyn had thought of Owen's future because it was only too plain that he had none, but it was the best excuse she could think of.

“You'd hate him to be an only child,” snapped Joan.

“I'm not such a fool,” said Evelyn, deeply hurt.

“Fool is the word,” retorted Joan.

Her father ignored her presence in the house. The latest scandal was the final touch. He was disappointed in Evelyn but he was far more disappointed in Jim, who had once shown signs of character. Up to this he had felt it was only daughters who threatened a man's peace of mind; now he began to think a son might be as bad.

When Joan married it made things easier for him, though not for Evelyn. It is always a lonesome thing for a girl when the last of her sisters has gone and the prams have begun to come back. It was worse on her because she had never pushed her own pram, and the babies she fussed over were getting something her own would never get. It fixed and confirmed her feeling of inferiority to Brigid and Joan, almost as though she had done it deliberately. She sometimes wondered whether she hadn't.

But it gradually dawned on her father that if God had tried to reward him for a well-spent life with a secure old age, He couldn't well have planned anything more satisfactory than a more or less unmarriageable daughter who could never take a high moral line. If he came in drunk every night of the week and cut her down on the housekeeping, her sins would still outnumber his. A man like Myles in such an unassailable position of moral superiority could not help being kind. “God's truth,” he muttered to his cronies, “I can't blame the girl. I'm as bad myself. It's a thing you can't talk about, but since the missis died I had my own temptations.” Sometimes when he saw her getting ready to go out and see Jim Piper he patted her on the shoulder, mumbled a few words of encouragement, and went out with his eyes wet. Myles was like that, a man of no character!

O
NE EVENING
while he and Evelyn were having their tea the latch was lifted and Jim Piper himself walked in. It was his first visit since the faraway night when he had called to console Myles for his daughter's crime.

“God save all here,” he said and beamed at them with unusual magnanimity.

Myles looked up, drew a deep breath through his nose and looked away. It was all damn well condoning his daughter's misbehavior, but he refused to condone Jim's. Even Evelyn was embarrassed and cross. It wasn't like Jim.

“Hello,” she replied with no great warmth. “What do you want?”

“Oh, just a few words with you,” Jim replied cheerfully, placing a chair for himself in the middle of the kitchen. “Nothing important. Don't interrupt yourself. Finish your supper. If you have a paper I could look at it.”

“There you are,” she said, mystified, but no newspaper was capable of halting Jim's unusual flow of garrulity.

“Good evening, Mr. Reilly,” he said to her father, and then as Myles ignored him he threw back his head and laughed. “I don't know what's coming over Irish hospitality,” he added with a touch of indignation. “You pass the time of day to a man and he won't even answer. Begod,” he added with growing scorn, “they won't even ask you to sit down. Go on with their tea overright you, and not ask have you a mouth on you! ‘What do you want?'” he echoed Evelyn.

She realized in a flash what was the matter with him. He was drunk. She had never seen him so bad before, and he was not the type which gets drunk gracefully. He was too angular for that. He threw his limbs about in a dislocated way like a rag doll. All the same it put her at her ease. She was always more comfortable with men like that.

“Far from tea you were today, wherever you were,” she said, fetching a cup and saucer. “Do you want tea?”

“Oh, no,” said Jim bitterly with another dislocated motion of his arm. “I'm only making conversation. I didn't have a bit to eat since morning and then I'm asked if I want tea!”

“You'd better have something to eat so,” she said. “Will you have sausages?”

“Isn't it about time you asked me?” Jim asked with grave reproach, looking at her owlishly.

It was only with the greatest difficulty that she kept from laughing outright. But her father, who had recognized Jim's condition from the start, had the toper's sensitiveness. He drew a deep breath through his nose, banged his fist on the table, and exploded in a “Christ! In my own house!” Then he got up, went upstairs and slammed the bedroom door behind him. No doubt he was resisting the temptation to kill Jim with his own hands. Jim laughed. Apparently he had no notion of his peril.