Collected Stories (77 page)

“But you said yourself it was hell working in that kitchen,” he protested. “And it's awful to have to eat there. It gives you the creeps if you have to go down there after dark.”

“But the money, Jim, the money!” she protested irritably.

“We have the money, girl,” he said. “That's what you keep on saying yourself. It's lying there in the bank, doing no good to anybody.”

“We might be glad of it one of these days,” said Shiela. “And if we had to sell the house, we'd never get back what we spent. It's too inconvenient.”

“Who the hell said I wanted it back?” he snorted. “I want a place I can have some comfort in. Anyway, why would we sell it?”

This was something she did not like to say, though he knew what was on her mind, for after a moment he gave a wicked little grin and raised a warning forefinger at her.

“We'll make the one job of it,” he whispered. “We'll build the kitchen and buy the grave at the same time.”

“It's no joking matter, Jim.”

He only threw back his head and roared in his childish way.

“And we'll buy the bloody tombstone and have it inscribed. ‘Sacred to the Memory of James Gaffney, beloved husband of Shiela Gaffney Who.' I declare to my God, we'll have people writing books on the Whos. The first family in Cork to take out insurance.”

She tried to get him to compromise on an upstairs kitchen of an inexpensive kind, a shed with a gas oven in it, but he wouldn't even listen to her advice.

“Now, mind what I'm telling you, girl,” he said, lecturing her as he had done on the first night of their marriage, “there's some maggot of meanness in all Irish people. They could halve their work and double their pleasure, but they'd sooner have it in the bank. Christ, they'd put themselves in a safe deposit if only they'd keep. Every winter of their lives shivering with the cold; running out to the haggard the wickedest night God sent; dying in hundreds and leaving the food for the flies in summer—all sooner than put the money into the one business that ever gives you a certain return: living! Look at that bloody city down there, full of perishing old misers!”

“But, Jim,” she cried in dismay, “you're not thinking of putting in heating?”

“And why the hell wouldn't I put in heating? Who keeps on complaining about the cold?”

“And a fridge?”

“Why not, I say? You're the one that likes ice-cream.”

“Ah, Jim, don't go on like that! You know we haven't enough money to pay for the kitchen as it is.”

“Then we'll get it. You just decide what you want, and I'll see about the money.”

By the following summer Jim, who was behaving as though he would never die, was planning to get rid of the old improvised bathroom downstairs and install a new one of the most expensive kind off their bedroom.

“Jim,” she said desperately, “I tell you we cannot afford it.”

“Then we'll borrow it,” he replied placidly. “We can't afford to get pneumonia in that damned old outhouse either. Look at the walls! They're dripping wet. Anyway, now we have security to borrow on.”

But she hated the very thought of getting into debt. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate the fine new kitchen with a corner window that looked over the hill and up the valley of the river, or was not glad of the refrigerator and the heating, and it was certainly not that she wished Jim to die, because she worried herself into a frenzy trying to make sure he looked after himself and took the pills that were supposed to relieve the strain on his heart. No, if only someone could have assured her once for all that Jim would live to be eighty, she could have resigned herself to getting in debt for the sake of the new bathroom. But it was the nagging feeling that he had such a short time to live, and would die leaving everything in a mess of debt and extravagance as it was now, that robbed her of any pleasures she might feel.

She could not help contrasting themselves and the Sheridans. Matt had everything in order. It was true that he did not carry any regular identification card, but this, as she knew, was due more to modesty than irresponsibility. Matt would have felt self-conscious about instructing a totally unknown person as to what to do with his body. But he did have as much insurance as he could afford, and his will was made. Nothing serious was left unprovided for. Shiela could not help feeling that Kitty owed her a lot, and Kitty was inclined to feel the same. For a girl with such a spotty career, it was a joy to be married to someone as normal as Matt.

Not that Shiela found so much to complain of in Jim, apart from the one monstrous fact that he was too set in his ways. She saw that no matter how dearly you loved a man of that age or how good and clever he might be, it was still a mistake, because there was nothing you could do with him, nothing you could even modify. She did not notice that Jim's friends thought he was different, or if she did she never ascribed it to her own influence. A girl who could not get him to do a simple thing like giving up smoking could not realize that she might have changed him in matters of more importance to himself. For we do not change people through the things in them that we would wish to change, but through the things that they themselves wish to change. What she had given Jim, though she did not recognize it, was precisely the thing whose consequences she deplored, the desire to live and be happy.

Then came the tragedy of Kitty's death after the birth of her second child. Matt and the children came to stay with them in Fair Hill until Matt's mother could close up her own home and come to keep house for him. Jim was deeply shocked by the whole business. He had always been exceedingly fond of Kitty, and he went so far as to advise Matt not to make any permanent arrangement with his mother but to marry again as soon as he could. But Matt, as he told Shiela on the side, had no intention of marrying again, and, though he did not say as much, she knew that he would never remarry—at least until she was free herself. And at once she was seized with impatience because everything in life seemed to happen out of sequence, as if a mad projectionist had charge of the film, and young and necessary people like Kitty died while old men like Jim with weak hearts and ailing chests dragged on, drinking and smoking, wheezing and coughing, and defying God and their doctors by planning new homes for themselves.

Sometimes she was even horrified at the thoughts that came into her mind. There were days when she hated Jim, and snapped and mocked at him until she realized that her behavior was becoming monstrous. Then she went to some church and, kneeling in a dark corner, covered her face with her hands and prayed. Even if Jim believed in nothing, she did, and she prayed that she might be enlightened about the cause of her anger and discontent. For, however she tried, she could find in herself no real hostility to Jim. She felt that if she were called upon to do it, she could suffer anything on his behalf. Yet at the same time she was tormented by the spectacle of Matt, patient and uncomplaining, the way he looked and the way he spoke, and his terrible need of her, and had hysterical fits of impatience with Jim, older and rougher but still smiling affectionately at her as if he really understood the torments she was enduring. Perhaps he had some suspicion of them. Once when he came into the bedroom and saw her weeping on the bed, he grabbed her hand and hissed furiously: “Why can't you try to live more in the present?”

It astonished her so much that she ceased weeping and even tried to get him to explain himself. But on matters that concerned himself and her, Jim was rarely lucid or even coherent, and she was left to think the matter out for herself. It was an idea she could not grasp. It was the present she was living in, and it was the present she hated. It was he who lived in the future, a future he would never enjoy. He tried to curb himself because he now realized how upset she became at his plans, but they proved too much for him, and because he thought the front room was too dark and depressing with its one tall window, he had a big picture window put in so that they could enjoy the wonderful view of the city, and a little terrace built outside where they could sit and have their coffee on fine summer evenings. She watched it all listlessly because she knew it was only for a year or two, and meanwhile Matt was eating his heart out in a little house by the river in Tivoli, waiting for Jim to die so that he could realize his life's dream.

Then, to her astonishment, she fell ill and began to suspect that it might be serious. It even became clear to her that she might not be going to live. She was not really afraid of something for which she had prepared herself for years by trying to live in the presence of God, but she was both bewildered and terrified at the way in which it threatened to make a mockery of her life and Matt's. It was the mad projectionist again, and again he seemed to have got the reels mixed up till the story became meaningless. Who was this white-faced brave little woman who cracked jokes with the doctors when they tried to encourage her about the future? Surely, she had no part in the scenario.

She went to hospital in the College Road, and each day Jim came and sat with her, talking about trifles till the nuns drove him away. He had shut up the house on Fair Hill and taken a room near the hospital so as to be close to her. She had never seen a human being so anxious and unhappy, and it diverted her in her own pain to make fun of him. She even flirted with him as she had not done since the days of their courtship, affecting to believe that she had trapped him into accepting her. But when Matt came to see her the very sight of him filled her with nausea. How on earth could she ever have thought of marrying that gentle, devoted, intelligent man! All she now wanted health for was to return to Fair Hill and all the little improvements that Jim had effected for their happiness. She could be so contented, sitting on the terrace or behind the picture window looking down at the city with its spires and towers and bridges that sent up to them such a strange, dissociated medley of sound. But as the days went by she realized with her clear penetrating intelligence that this was a happiness she had rejected, and which now she would never be permitted to know. All that her experience could teach her was its value.

“Jim,” she said the day before she died, as she laid her hand in his, “I'd like you to know that there never was anybody only you.”

“Why?” he asked, trying to keep the anguish out of his face. “Did you think I believed it?”

“I gave you cause enough,” she said regretfully. “I could never make up my mind, only once, and then I couldn't stick by it. I want you to promise me if I don't come back that you'll marry again. You're the sort who can't be happy without someone to plan for.”

“Won't you ever give up living in the future?” he asked with a reproachful smile, and then raised her hand and kissed it.

It was their last conversation. He did not marry again, even for her sake, though in public at least he did not give the impression of a man broken down by grief. On the contrary, he remained cheerful and thriving for the rest of his days. Matt, who was made of different stuff, did not easily forgive him his callousness.

The Ugly Duckling

M
ICK
C
OURTNEY
had known Nan Ryan from the time he was fourteen or fifteen. She was the sister of his best friend, and youngest of a family of four in which she was the only girl. He came to be almost as fond of her as her father and brothers were; she had practically lost her mother's regard by inheriting her father's looks. Her ugliness indeed was quite endearing. She had a stocky, sturdy figure and masculine features all crammed into a feminine container till it bulged. None of her features was really bad, and her big, brown, twinkling eyes were delightful, but they made a group that was almost comic.

Her brothers liked her spirit; they let her play with them while any of them were of an age for play, and, though she suffered from night panics and Dinny broke the maternal rule by letting her into his bed, they never told. He, poor kid, would be wakened in the middle of the night by Nan's pulling and shaking. “Dinny, Dinny,” she would hiss fiercely, “I have 'em again!” “What are they this time?” Dinny would ask drowsily. “Li-i-ons!” she would reply in a bloodcurdling tone, and then lie for half an hour in his arms, contracting her toes and kicking spasmodically while he patted and soothed her.

She grew up a tomboy, fierce, tough, and tearless, fighting in Dinny's gang, which contested the old quarry on the road with the hill-tribes from the slum area above it; and this was how Mick was to remember her best—an ugly, stocky little Amazon, leaping from rock to rock, hurling stones in an awkward but effective way, and screaming deadly insults at the enemy and encouragement to her own side.

He could not have said when she gave up fighting, but between twelve and fourteen she became the pious one in a family not remarkable for piety, always out at Mass or diving into church on her way from school to light candles and make novenas. Afterwards it struck Mick that it might have been an alternative to getting in Dinny's bed, for she still suffered from night fears, only now when they came on she grabbed her rosary beads instead.

It amused him to discover that she had developed something of a crush on himself. Mick had lost his faith, which in Cork is rather similar to a girl's loss of her virtue and starts the same sort of flutterings among the quiet ones of the opposite sex. Nan would be waiting for him at the door in the evening, and when she saw him would begin to jump down the steps one by one with her feet together, her hands stiff at her sides, and her pigtail tossing.

“How are the novenas coming on, Nan?” he would ask with amusement.

“Fine!” she would reply in a shrill, expressionless voice. “You're on your way.”

“I'll come quietly.”

“You think you won't, but I know better. I'm a fierce pray-er.”