Collected Stories (81 page)

“Jack?” Ned exclaimed in surprise, looking up from his drink. (He felt easier in his mind now, being on the doctor's doorstep.) “Was Jack away?”

“Arrah, Christ, he was,” said Larry, throwing his whole weight on the counter. “In Paris, would you believe it? He's on the batter again, of course. Wait till you hear him on Paris! 'Tis only the mercy of God if the parish priest doesn't get to hear of it. Martin would want to mind himself.”

“That's where you're wrong, Larry,” Ned said with sudden bitterness, not so much against Jack Martin as against Life itself. “Martin doesn't have to mind himself. The parish priest will mind him. If an inspector comes snooping round while Martin is on it, Father Clery will be taking him out to look at antiquities.”

“Ah, 'tis the God's truth for you,” Larry said in mournful disapproval. “But you or I couldn't do it. Christ, man, we'd get slaughtered alive. 'Tisn't worried you are about Kitty?” he asked in a gentler tone.

“Ah, no, Larry,” said Ned. “It's not that. It's just that at times like this a man feels himself of no importance. You know what I mean? A messenger boy would do as well. We're all dragged down to the same level.”

“And damn queer we'd be if we weren't,” said Larry with his good-natured smile. “Unless, that is, you'd want to have the bloody baby yourself.”

“Ah, it's not only that, Larry,” Ned said irritably. “It's not that at all. But a man can't help thinking.”

“Why, then indeed, that's true for you,” said Larry, who, as a result of his own experience in the pub, had developed a gloomy and philosophic view of human existence. After all, a man can't be looking at schizophrenia for ten hours a day without feeling that Life isn't simple. “And 'tis at times like this you notice it—men coming and going, like the leaves on the trees. Isn't it true for me?”

But that wasn't what Ned was thinking about at all. He was thinking of his lost youth and what had happened in it to turn him from a firebrand into a father.

“No, Larry, that's not what I mean,” he said, drawing figures on the counter with the bottom of his glass. “It's just that you can't help wondering what's after happening you. There were so many things you wanted to do that you didn't do, and you wonder if you'd done them would it be different. And here you are, forty-odd, and your life is over and nothing to show for it! It's as if when you married some good went out of you.”

“Small loss, as the fool said when he lost Mass,” retorted Larry, who had found himself a comfortable berth in the pub and lost his thirst for adventure.

“That's the bait, of course,” Ned said with a grim smile. “That's where Nature gets us every time.”

“Arrah, what the hell is wrong with Nature?” asked Larry. “When your first was born you were walking mad around the town, looking for people to celebrate it with. Now you sound as though you were looking for condolences. Christ, man, isn't it a great thing to have someone to share your troubles and give a slap in the ass to, even if she does let the crockery fly once in a while? What the hell about an old bit of china?”

“That's all very well, Larry,” Ned said, scowling, “if—
if
, mind—that's all it costs.”

“And what the hell else does it cost?” asked Larry. “Twenty-one meals a week and a couple of pounds of tea on the side. Sure, 'tis for nothing!”

“But
is
that all?” Ned asked fiercely. “What about the days on the column?”

“Ah, that was different, Ned,” Larry said with a sigh while his eyes took on a faraway look. “But, sure, everything was different then. I don't know what the hell is after coming over the country at all.”

“The same thing that's come over you and me,” said Ned. “Middle age. But we had our good times, even apart from that.”

“Oh, begod, we had, we had,” Larry admitted wistfully.

“We could hop in a car and not come home for a fortnight if the fancy took us.”

“We could, man, we could,” said Larry, showing a great mouthful of teeth. “Like the time we went to the Junction Races and came back by Donegal. Ah, Christ, Ned, youth is a great thing. Isn't it true for me?”

“But it wasn't only youth,” cried Ned. “We had freedom, man. Now our lives are run for us by women the way they were when we were kids. This is Friday, and and what do I find? Hurley waiting for someone to bring home the fish. You're waiting for the fish. I'll go home to a nice plate of fish. One few words in front of an altar, and it's fish for Friday the rest of our lives.”

“Still, Ned, there's nothing nicer than a good bit of fish,” Larry said dreamily. “If 'tis well done, mind you.
If
'tis well done. And 'tisn't often you get it well done. I grant you that. God, I had some fried plaice in Kilkenny last week that had me turned inside out. I declare to God, if I stopped that car once I stopped it six times, and by the time I got home I was shaking like an aspen.”

“And yet I can remember you in Tramore, letting on to be a Protestant just to get bacon and eggs,” Ned said accusingly.

“Oh, that's the God's truth,” Larry said with a wondering grin. “I was a devil for meat, God forgive me. It used to make me mad, seeing the Protestants lowering it. And the waitress, Ned—do you remember the waitress that wouldn't believe I was a Protestant till I said the Our Father the wrong way for her? She said I had too open a face for a Protestant. How well she'd know a thing like that about the Our Father, Ned?”

“A woman would know anything she had to know to make a man eat fish,” Ned said, rising with gloomy dignity. “And you may be reconciled to it, Larry, but I'm not. I'll eat it because I'm damned with a sense of duty, and I don't want to get Kitty into trouble with the neighbors, but with God's help I'll see one more revolution before I die if I have to swing for it.”

“Ah, well,” sighed Larry, “youth is a great thing, sure enough.… Coming, Hanna, coming!” he replied as a woman's voice yelled from the bedroom above them. He gave Ned a smug wink to suggest that he enjoyed it, but Ned knew that that scared little rabbit of a wife of his would be wanting to know what all the talk was about his being a Protestant, and would then go to Confession and tell the priest that her husband had said heretical prayers and ask him was it a reserved sin and should Larry go to the Bishop. It was no life, no life, Ned thought as he sauntered down the hill past the church. And it was a great mistake taking a drink whenever he felt badly about the country, because it always made the country seem worse.

Suddenly someone clapped him on the shoulder. It was Jack Martin, the vocational-school teacher, a small, plump, nervous man, with a baby complexion, a neat graying mustache, and big blue innocent eyes. Ned's grim face lit up. Of all his friends, Martin was the one he warmed to most. He was a talented man and a good baritone. His wife had died a few years before and left him with two children, but he had never married again and had been a devoted, if overanxious, father. Yet always two or three times a year, particularly approaching his wife's anniversary, he went on a tearing drunk that left some legend behind. There was the time he had tried to teach Italian music to the tramp who played the penny whistle in the street, and the time his housekeeper had hidden his trousers and he had shinned down the drainpipe and appeared in the middle of town in pajamas, bowing in the politest way possible to the ladies who passed.

“MacCarthy, you scoundrel!” he said delightedly in his shrill nasal voice, “you were hoping to give me the slip. Come in here one minute till I tell you something. God, you'll die!”

“If you'll just wait there ten minutes, Jack, I'll be along to you,” Ned said eagerly. “There's just one job, one little job I have to do, and then I'll be able to give you my full attention.”

“Yes, but you'll have one drink before you go,” Martin said cantankerously. “You're not a messenger boy yet. One drink and I'll release you on your own recognizances to appear when required. You'll never guess where I was, Ned. I woke up there—as true as God!”

Ned, deciding good-humoredly that five minutes' explanation in the bar was easier than ten minutes' argument in the street, allowed himself to be steered to a table by the door. It was quite clear that Martin was “on it.” He was full of clockwork vitality, rushing to the counter for fresh drinks, fumbling for money, trying to carry glasses without spilling, and talking, talking, all the time. Ned beamed at him. Drunk or sober, he liked the man.

“Ned,” Martin burst out ecstatically, “I'll give you three guesses where I was.”

“Let me see,” said Ned in mock meditation. “I suppose 'twould never be Paris?” and then laughed outright at Martin's injured air.

“You can't do anything in this town,” Martin said bitterly. “I suppose next you'll be telling me about the women I met there.”

“No,” said Ned gravely, “it's Father Clery who'll be telling you about them—from the pulpit.”

“To hell with Clery!” snapped Martin. “No, Ned, this is se-e-e-rious. It only came to me in the past week. You and I are wasting our bloody time in this bloody country.”

“Yes, Jack,” said Ned, settling himself in his seat with sudden gravity, “but what else can you do with Time?”

“Ah, this isn't philosophy, man,” Martin said testily. “This is—is se-e-e-rious, I tell you.”

“I know how serious it is, all right,” Ned said complacently, “because I was only saying it to Larry Cronin ten minutes ago. Where the hell is our youth gone?”

“But that's only a waste of time, too, man,” Martin said impatiently. “You couldn't call that youth. Drinking bad porter in pubs after closing time and listening to somebody singing ‘The Rose of Tralee.' That's not life, man.”

“No,” said Ned, nodding, “but what is life?”

“How the hell would I know?” asked Martin. “I suppose you have to go out and look for it the way I did. You're not going to find the bloody thing here. You have to go south, where they have sunlight and wine and good cookery and women with a bit of go in them.”

“And don't you think it would be the same thing there?” Ned asked relentlessly while Martin raised his eyes to the ceiling and moaned.

“Oh, God, dust and ashes! Dust and ashes! Don't we get enough of that every Sunday from Clery? And Clery knows no more about it than we do.”

Now, Ned was very fond of Martin, and admired the vitality with which in his forties he still pursued a fancy, but all the same he could not let him get away with the simpleminded notion that life was merely a matter of topography.

“That is a way life has,” he pronounced oracularly. “You think you're seeing it, and it turns out it was somewhere else at the time. It's like women—the girl you lose is the one that could have made you happy. I suppose there are people in the south wishing they could be in some wild place like this—I admit it's not likely, but I suppose it could happen. No, Jack, we might as well resign ourselves to the fact that, wherever the hell life was, it wasn't where we were looking for it.”

“For God's sake, man!” Martin exclaimed irritably. “You talk like a man of ninety-five.”

“I'm forty-two,” Ned said with quiet emphasis, “and I have no illusions left. You still have a few. Mind,” he went on with genuine warmth, “I admire you for it. You were never a fighting man like Cronin or myself, but you put up a better fight than either of us. But Nature has her claws in you as well. You're light and airy now, but what way will you be this time next week? And even now,” he added threateningly, “even at this minute, you're only that way because you've escaped from the guilt for a little while. You've got down the drainpipe and you're walking the town in your night clothes, but sooner or later they'll bring you back and make you put your trousers on.”

“But it isn't guilt, Ned,” Martin interrupted. “It's my stomach. I can't keep it up.”

“It isn't only your stomach, Jack,” Ned said triumphantly, having at last steered himself into the open sea of argument. “It's not your stomach that makes you avoid me in the Main Street.”

“Avoid you?” Martin echoed, growing red. “When did I avoid you?”

“You did avoid me, Jack,” said Ned with a radiant smile of forgiveness. “I saw you, and, what's more, you said it to Cronin. Mind,” he added generously, “I'm not blaming you. It's not your fault. It's the guilt. You're pursued by guilt the way I'm pursued by a sense of duty, and they'll bring the pair of us to our graves. I can even tell you the way you'll die. You'll be up and down to the chapel ten times a day for fear once wasn't enough, with your head bowed for fear you'd catch a friend's eye and be led astray, beating your breast, lighting candles, and counting indulgences, and every time you see a priest your face will light up as if he was a pretty girl, and you'll raise your hat and say ‘Yes, father,' and ‘No, father,' and ‘Father, whatever you please.' And it won't be your fault. That's the real tragedy of life, Jack—we reap what we sow.”

“I don't know what the hell is after coming over you,” Martin said in bewilderment. “You—you're being positively personal, MacCarthy. I never tried to avoid anybody. I resent that statement. And the priests know well enough the sort I am. I never tried to conceal it.”

“I know, Jack, I know,” Ned said gently, swept away by the flood of his own melancholy rhetoric, “and I never accused you of it. I'm not being personal, because it's not a personal matter. It's Nature working through you. It works through me as well, only it gets me in a different way. I turn every damn thing into a duty, and in the end I'm fit for nothing. And I know the way I'll die too. I'll disintegrate into a husband, a father, a schoolmaster, a local librarian, and fifteen different sort of committee officials, and none of them with justification enough to remain alive—unless I die on a barricade.”