Collected Stories (42 page)

“Call him back,” he said, tossing his head.

“Why?”

“I want to ask him to my wedding.”

“Go on!” she said with amusement. “Are you getting married?”

“I can't stand this bloody bachelor life,” Jim said pathetically.

“So I noticed,” she said. “Who's the doll?”

“One moment, please!” he said severely. “We're coming to that. First, I have a crow to pluck with you.”

“Go on!” she said, her smile fading. People always seemed to have crows to pluck with Evelyn, and she was getting tired of it.

“You said you wouldn't marry me if I was the last living thing in the world,” he said, wagging his finger sternly at her. “I'm not a man to bear malice but I'm entitled to remind you of what you said. As well as that, you said I was a worm. I'm not complaining about that either. All I'm doing is asking are you prepared—prepared to withdraw those statements?” he finished up successfully.

“You never know,” she said, her lip beginning to quiver. “You might ask me again some time you're sober.”

“You think I don't know what I'm saying?” he asked triumphantly as he rose to his feet—but he rose unsteadily.

“Do you?” she asked.

“I banked the last of two hundred quid today,” said Jim in the same tone. “Two hundred quid and five for Ring, and if that's not enough for the old bastard I'll soon find someone that will be glad of it. I drank the rest. You can go down the country now, tomorrow if you like, and bring Ownie back, and tell the whole bloody town to kiss your ass. Now, do I know what I'm saying?” he shouted with the laughter bubbling up through his words.

It was a great pity he couldn't remain steady. But Evelyn no longer noticed that. She only noticed the laughter and triumph and realized how much of Jim's life she had wasted along with her own. She gave a low cry and ran upstairs after her father. Jim looked after her dazedly and collapsed with another dislocated gesture. It was useless trying to carry on a discussion with an unstable family like the Reillys who kept running up and down stairs the whole time.

It was her father's turn now. He stumped heavily down the stairs, gripping the banisters with both hands as though he were about to spring, and then stood at the foot. This time it was clear that Jim's hour had come. He didn't mind. He knew he was going to be sick anyway.

“What's wrong with that girl?” Myles asked in a shaking voice.

“I don't know,” Jim said despondently, tossing the limp wet hair back from his forehead. “Waiting, I suppose.”

“Waiting?” Myles asked. “Waiting for what?”

“This,” shouted Jim, waving his arm wildly and letting it collapse by his side. “The money is there now. Two hundred quid, and five for the priest. You start work on that house at eight tomorrow morning. See?”

Myles took a few moments to digest this. Even for a man of expansive nature, from murder to marriage is a bit of a leap. He stroked his chin and looked at Jim, lying there with his head hanging and one arm dead by his side. He chuckled. Such a story! Christ, such a story!

“And not a drop of drink in the house!” he exclaimed. “Evelyn!” he called up the stairs.

There was no reply.

“Evelyn!” he repeated peremptorily, as though he were a man accustomed to instant obedience. “We'll let her alone for a while,” he mumbled, scratching his head. “I suppose it came as a bit of shock to her. She's a good girl, Jim, a fine girl. You're making no mistake. Take it from me.” But even in that state, Jim, he realized, was not the sort to need encouragement, and he beamed and rubbed his hands. For more than anything else in the world Myles loved a man, a
man
. He stood looking fondly down on his semiconscious son-in-law.

“You thundering ruffian!” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Oh, God, if only I might have done it thirty years ago I'd be a made man today.”

The Sentry

F
ATHER
M
AC
E
NERNEY
was finding it hard to keep Sister Margaret quiet. The woman was lonesome, but he was lonesome himself. He liked his little parish outside the big military camp near Salisbury; he liked the country and the people, and he liked his little garden (even if it was raided twice a week by the soldiers), but he suffered from the lack of friends. Apart from his housekeeper and a couple of private soldiers in the camp, the only Irish people he had to talk to were the three nuns in the convent, and that was why he went there so frequently for his supper and to say his office in the convent garden.

But even here his peace was being threatened by Sister Margaret's obstreperousness. The trouble was, of course, that before the war fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers, as well as innumerable aunts and cousins, had looked into the convent or spent a few days at the inn, and, every week, long, juicy letters had arrived from home, telling the nuns by what political intrigue Paddy Dunphy had had himself appointed warble-fly inspector for the Benlicky area, but now it was years since anyone from Ireland had called and the letters from home were censored at both sides of the channel by inquisitive girls with a taste for scandal until a sort of creeping paralysis had descended on every form of intimacy. Sister Margaret was the worst hit, because a girl from her own town was in the Dublin censorship, and, according to Sister Margaret, she was a scandalmonger of the most objectionable kind. He had a job keeping her contented.

“Oh, Father Michael,” she sighed one evening as they were walking round the garden, “I'm afraid I made a great mistake. A terrible mistake! I don't know how it is, but the English seem to me to have no nature.”

“Ah, now, I wouldn't say that,” protested Father Michael in his deep, sombre voice. “They have their little ways, and we have ours, and if we both knew more about one another we'd like one another better.”

Then, to illustrate what he meant, he told her the story of old Father Dan Murphy, a Tipperary priest who had spent his life on the mission, and the Bishop. The Bishop was a decent, honorable little man, but quite unable to understand the ways of his Irish priests. One evening old Father Dan had called on Father Michael to tell him he would have to go home. The old man was terribly shaken. He had just received a letter from the Bishop, a terrible letter, a letter so bad that he couldn't even show it. It wasn't so much what the Bishop had said as the way he put it! And when Father Michael had pressed him the old man had whispered that the Bishop had begun his letter: “Dear Murphy.”

“Oh!” cried Sister Margaret, clapping her hand to her mouth. “He didn't, Father Michael?”

So, seeing that she didn't understand the situation any more than Father Dan had done, Father Michael explained that this was how an Englishman would address anyone except a particular friend. It was a convention; nothing more.

“Oh, I wouldn't say that at all,” Sister Margaret exclaimed indignantly. “‘Dear Murphy'? Oh, I'm surprised at you, Father Michael! What way is that to write to a priest? How can they expect people to have respect for religion when they show no respect for it themselves? Oh, that's the English all out! Listen, I have it every day of my life from them. I don't know how anyone can stand them.”

Sister Margaret was his best friend in the community; he knew the other nuns relied on him to handle her, and it was a genuine worry to him to see her getting into this unreasonable state.

“Oh, come! Come!” he said reproachfully. “How well Sister Teresa and Sister Bonaventura get on with them!”

“I suppose I shouldn't say it,” she replied in a low, brooding voice, “but, God forgive me, I can't help it. I'm afraid Sister Teresa and Sister Bonaventura are not
genuine
.”

“Now, you're not being fair,” he said gravely.

“Oh, now, it's no good you talking,” she cried, waving her hand petulantly. “They're not genuine, and you know they're not genuine. They're lickspittles. They give in to the English nuns in everything. Oh, they have no independence! You wouldn't believe it.”

“We all have to give in to things for the sake of charity,” he said.

“I don't call that charity at all, father,” she replied obstinately. “I call that moral cowardice. Why should the English have it all their own way? Even in religion they go on as if they owned the earth. They tell me I'm disloyal and a pro-German, and I say to them: ‘What did you ever do to make me anything else?' Then they pretend that we were savages, and they came over and civilized us! Did you ever in all your life hear such impudence? People that couldn't even keep their religion when they had it, and now they have to send for us to teach it to them again.”

“Well, of course, that's all true enough,” he said, “but we must remember what they're going through.”

“And what did we have to go through?” she asked shortly. “Oh, now, father, it's all very well to be talking, but I don't see why we should have to make all the sacrifices. Why don't they think of all the terrible things they did to us? And all because we were true to our religion when they weren't! I'm after sending home for an Irish history, father, and, mark my words, the next time one of them begins picking at me, I'll give her her answer. The impudence!”

Suddenly Father Michael stopped and frowned.

“What is it, father?” she asked anxiously.

“I just got a queer feeling,” he muttered. “I was wondering was there someone at my onions.”

The sudden sensation was quite genuine, though it might have happened in a normal way, for his onions were the greatest anxiety of Father Michael's life. He could grow them when the convent gardener failed, but, unlike the convent gardener, he grew them where they were a constant temptation to the soldiers at the other side of his wall.

“They only wait till they get me out of their sight,” he said, and then got on one knee and laid his ear to the earth. As a country boy he knew what a conductor of sound the earth is.

“I was right,” he shouted triumphantly as he sprang to his feet and made for his bicycle. “If I catch them at it they'll leave me alone for the future. I'll give you a ring, sister.”

A moment later, doubled over the handlebars, he was pedalling down the hill towards his house. As he passed the camp gate he noticed that there was no sentry on duty, and it didn't take him long to see why. With a whoop of rage he threw his bicycle down by the gate and rushed across the garden. The sentry, a small man with fair hair, blue eyes, and a worried expression, dropped the handful of onions he was holding. His rifle was standing beside the wall.

“Aha!” shouted Father Michael. “So you're the man I was waiting for! You're the fellow that was stealing my onions!” He caught the sentry by the arm and twisted it viciously behind his back. “Now you can come up to the camp with me and explain yourself.”

“I'm going, I'm going,” the sentry cried in alarm, trying to wrench himself free.

“Oh, yes, you're going all right,” Father Michael said grimly, urging him forward with his knee.

“Here!” the sentry cried in alarm. “You let me go! I haven't done anything, have I?”

“You haven't done anything?” echoed the priest, giving his wrist another spin. “You weren't stealing my onions!”

“Don't twist my wrist!” screamed the sentry, swinging round on him. “Try to behave like a civilized human being. I didn't take your onions. I don't even know what you're talking about.”

“You dirty little English liar!” shouted Father Michael, beside himself with rage. He dropped the man's wrist and pointed at the onions. “Hadn't you them there, in your hand, when I came in? Didn't I see them with you, God blast you!”

“Oh, those things?” exclaimed the sentry, as though he had suddenly seen a great light. “Some kids dropped them and I picked them up.”

“You picked them up,” echoed Father Michael savagely, drawing back his fist and making the sentry duck. “You didn't even know they were onions!”

“I didn't have much time to look, did I?” the sentry asked hysterically. “I seen some kids in your bleeding garden, pulling the bleeding things. I told them get out and they defied me. Then I chased them and they dropped these. What do you mean, twisting my bleeding wrist like that? I was only trying to do you a good turn. I've a good mind to give you in charge.”

The impudence of the fellow was too much for the priest, who couldn't have thought up a yarn like that to save his life. He never had liked liars.

“You what?” he shouted incredulously, tearing off his coat. “You'd give me in charge? I'd take ten little sprats like you and break you across my knee. Bloody little English thief! Take off your tunic!”

“I can't,” the sentry said in alarm.

“Why not?”

“I'm on duty.”

“On duty! You're afraid.”

“I'm not afraid.”

“Then take off your tunic and fight like a man.” He gave the sentry a punch that sent him staggering against the wall. “Now will you fight, you dirty little English coward?”

“You know I can't fight you,” panted the sentry, putting up his hands to protect himself. “If I wasn't on duty I'd soon show you whether I'm a coward or not. You're the coward, not me, you Irish bully! You know I'm on duty. You know I'm not allowed to protect myself. You're mighty cocky, just because you're in a privileged position, you mean, bullying bastard!”

Something in the sentry's tone halted the priest. He was almost hysterical. Father Michael couldn't hit him in that state.

“Get out of this so, God blast you!” he said furiously.

The sentry gave him a murderous look, then took up his rifle and walked back up the road to the camp gate. Father Michael stood and stared after him. He was furious. He wanted a fight, and if only the sentry had hit back he would certainly have smashed him up. All the MacEnerneys were like that. His father was the quietest man in County Clare, but if you gave him occasion he'd fight in a bag, tied up.