Collected Stories (84 page)

He said nothing for a while, then he asked in a low voice, “And who was my daddy?”

“How would I know who he was? Whoever he was, he wasn't much.”

“When I find out I'm going to kill him.”

“Indeed you'll do nothing of the sort,” she said sharply. “Whatever he did, he is your father and you wouldn't be here without him. He's there inside you, and the thing you will slight in yourself will be the rock you will perish on.”

“And why did Aunt Nance like him if he was what you said?”

“Because she had no sense,” said Kate. “What sense have any young girl? 'Tis unknown what they expect. If they had more sense they would be said by their fathers and mothers, that know what life is like, but they won't be said nor led by anyone. And the better they are the more they expect. That was all that was wrong with your mother, child. She was too innocent and too hopeful.”

The dawn came in the window, and still she rambled on, half dead with sleep. Later, when she reported it to Hanna, she said that it was nothing but lies from beginning to end, and what other way could it be when she hadn't a notion how a girl like that would feel, but at the time it did not seem to be lies. It seemed rather as though she were reporting a complete truth that was known only to herself and God. And in a queer way it steadied Jimmy and brought out the little man in him.

“Mammy, does this mean that there's something wrong with James and me?” he asked at last, and she knew that this was the question that preoccupied him above all others.

“Indeed, it means nothing of the sort,” she cried, and for the first time it seemed to herself that she was answering in her own person. “It is nothing. Only bad, jealous people would say the likes of that. Oh, you'll meet them, never fear,” she said, joining her hands, “the scum of the earth with their marriage lines and their baptismal lines, looking down on their betters. But mark what I say, child, don't let any of them try and persuade you that you're not as good as them. And better! A thousand times better.”

Strange notions from a respectable old woman who had never even believed in love!

W
HAT
it all meant was brought home to her when Jimmy was fourteen and James between eight and nine. Jimmy's mother married a commercial traveller from Dublin who accepted Jimmy as a normal event that might happen to any decent girl, and he had persuaded her they should have Jimmy to live with them. It came as a great shock to Kate, though why it should have done so she couldn't say, because for years it was she who had argued with Hanna Dinan that the time had come for Jimmy to get a proper education and mix with what she called his equals. Now she realized that she was as jealous and possessive as if she were his real mother. She had never slighted Jimmy's mother, or allowed anyone else to do so, but she did it now. “She neglected him when it suited her, and now when it suits her she wants him back,” she said to Hanna, and when Hanna replied that Kate wasn't being fair, she snapped, “Let them that have it be fair. Them that haven't are entitled to their say.”

Besides, Jimmy provoked her. He had no power of concealing his emotions, and she could see that he had thoughts only for the marvellous new world that was opening up before him. He returned in high spirits from an evening with his mother and his new stepfather, and told Kate and James all about his stepfather's car, and his house outside Rathfarnham, at the foot of the Dublin Mountains. He told Kate blithely that he would always come back for the holidays, and comforted James by saying that his turn would come next. When Kate burst out suddenly, “Yourself is all you think about—no thought for me or the child,” he got frantic and shouted, “All right, I won't go if you don't want me to!”

“Who said I didn't want you to go?” she shouted. “How could I keep you and me with nothing? Go to the well-heeled ones! Go to the ones that can look after you!”

By the time he left, she had regained control of herself, and she and James went with him to the station. They were stopped several times by old neighbors, who congratulated Jimmy. At the station he broke down, but she suspected that his grief wouldn't last long. And she had the impression that James felt the parting more deeply, though he was a child who didn't show much what he felt. He seemed to have come into the world expecting this sort of thing.

And yet, curiously, next day, when she woke and remembered Jimmy was gone, she had a feeling of relief. She realized that she wasn't the one to look after him. He was too big and noisy and exacting; he needed a man to keep him in his place. And besides, now that she had become old and stiff and half blind, the housekeeping was more of a trial. She would decide to give the boys a treat, and go to town to get the stewing beef, and suddenly realize when she got back to the kitchen that she didn't remember how to make stew. Then she would close her eyes and pray that God would direct her how to make stew as she made it when she was a young married woman—“delicious” poor Jack used to say it was. James was an easier proposition altogether, a boy who would live forever on tea and sweet cakes, so long as he got the penny exercise books for his writings and drawings.

The loss of Jimmy showed her how precarious was her hold on James, and in the evenings, when they were alone, she sat with him before the kitchen fire and let him hold forth to her on what he was going to be when he grew up. It seemed, according to himself, he was going to be a statue, and sometimes Kate suspected that the child wouldn't notice much difference, because he was a bit that way already. Jimmy had been a great boy to raise a laugh, particularly against himself, and James seemed to think it was his duty to do the same, but if she was to be killed for it she couldn't laugh at James's jokes. And yet she knew that James was gentler, steadier, and more considerate. When you asked him to do anything you had to explain to him why, but you never had to explain it twice. “Jimmy have the fire, but James have the character” was how she put it to Hanna.

And yet she fretted over Jimmy as she wouldn't have fretted over James. From Dublin he had sent her one postcard, that was all, and he hadn't replied to either of the letters James wrote to him. “As true as God, that fellow is in trouble,” she said.

“It's not that, Mammy,” said James, “it's just that he doesn't like writing.”

“Who wants him to write? All I want is to know how he is. If he was dying that vagabond wouldn't tell me!”

It was a queer way for a woman to feel who had been congratulating herself on having got rid of him.

Then, one morning, she heard a hammering at the front door and knew that the thing she had been dreading had happened. Without even asking who it was, she stumbled down the stairs in the darkness. When she opened the door and saw Jimmy, she threw her arms about his neck. “Oh, child, child!” she whimpered. “Sure, I thought you'd never come home! How did you get here?”

“I came on the bike,” he said with a swagger.

“You did, you did, you divil you, you did,” she muttered, seeing the bicycle against the wall. And then, her voice rising to a squeal of anguish. “Are them your good trousers?”

“Who is it, Mammy?” James shouted from upstairs.

“Come down yourself,” she said, and went to lay the fire. James came down the stairs sedately in his nightshirt. Jimmy went up to him with a grin, and it startled her to see how big and solid he looked beside the frail, spectacled boy.

“Hallo, James,” Jimmy said, shaking hands. “I suppose you're sorry I'm back?”

“No, Jimmy,” James said in a small voice, “I'm glad you're back. The house isn't the same without you.”

“Put on your topcoat, you little divil!” cried Kate. “How often have I to be telling you not to go round like that? That fellow,” she said to Jimmy, “he have the heart scalded in me. I'd want ten eyes and hands, picking things up after him.… Go on, you little gligeen!”

It was a joyous reunion in the little kitchen when the sun was just beginning to pick out the high ground behind the house. Kate marvelled how she had managed to listen to James all that time and the way Jimmy could tell a story. Whatever James told you, the point of it always seemed to be how clever he was. Jimmy's stories always showed him up as a fool, and somehow it never crossed your mind that he was a fool at all. And yet there was something about him this morning that didn't seem right.

“Never mind about that!” Kate cried at last. “Tell us what your mother said.”

“How do you mean?” asked Jimmy, turning red.

“What did she say when you told her you were coming back?”

“She didn't say anything,” Jimmy replied with a brassy air. “She doesn't mind what I do.”

“She doesn't, I hear,” Kate retorted mockingly. “I suppose 'twas jealous you were?”

“What would I be jealous of?” Jimmy asked defiantly.

“Your stepfather, who else?” she said, screwing up her eyes in mockery at him. “You wanted all the attention. And now she'll be blaming it all on me. She'll be saying I have you spoiled. And she'll be right. I have you ruined, you little caffler! Ruined!” she repeated meditatively as she went and opened the back door. The whole hill behind was reflecting the morning light in a great rosy glow. “Oh, my!” she said as though to herself. “There's a beautiful morning, glory be to God!”

Just then she heard the unfamiliar sound of a car in the lane, and it stopped outside the front door. She knew then what it was that had seemed wrong in Jimmy's story, and turned on him. “You ran away from home,” she said. “Is that the police?”

Jimmy didn't seem to be listening to her. “If that's my stepfather, I'm not going back with him,” he said.

Kate went to the front door and saw a good-looking young man with large ears and the pink-and-white complexion she called “delicate.” She knew at once it was Jimmy's stepfather.

“Mrs. Mahoney?” he asked.

“Come in, sir, come in,” she said obsequiously, and now she was no longer the proud, possessive mother whose boy had come back to her but the old hireling who had been caught with property that wasn't hers.

The young man strode into the kitchen with a confident air and stopped dead when he saw Jimmy.

“Now, what made me think of coming here first?” he shouted good-humoredly. “Mrs. Mahoney, I have the makings of a first-class detective, only I never got a chance.”

When Jimmy said nothing, he tossed his head and went on in the same tone. “Want a lift, Jimmy?”

Jimmy glared at him. “I'm not going back with you, Uncle Tim,” he said.

“Oh, begod, that's exactly what you
are
going to do, Jimmy,” his stepfather said. “If you think I'm going to spend the rest of my days chasing you round Ireland, you're wrong.” He dropped into a chair and rubbed his hands, as though to restore the circulation. “Mrs. Mahoney,” he asked, “what do we have them for?”

Kate liked his way of including her in the conversation. She knew, too, he was only talking like that to make things easier for Jimmy.

“I don't want to go back, Uncle Tim,” Jimmy said furiously. “I want to stop here.”

“Listen to that, Mrs. Mahoney,” his stepfather said, cocking his head at Kate. “Insulting Dublin to a Dublin man! And in Cork, of all places!”

“I'm not saying anything against Dublin!” Jimmy cried, and again he was a child and defenseless against the dialectic of adults. “I want to stay here.”

Kate immediately came to his defense. “Wisha, 'tis only the way he got a bit homesick, sir. He thought he'd like to come back for a couple of days.”

“I don't want to come back for a couple of days!” Jimmy shouted. “This is my home. I told Aunt Nance so.”

“And wasn't that a very hard thing to say to your mother, Jimmy?” his stepfather asked. He said it gently, and Kate knew he liked the boy.

“It's true,” Jimmy said. “I knew I wasn't wanted.”

“You really think that, Jimmy?” his stepfather asked reproachfully, and Jimmy burst into wild tears.

“I didn't say
you
didn't want me. I know you did want me, and I wanted you. But my mammy didn't want me.”

“Jimmy!”

“She didn't, she didn't.”

“What made you think she didn't?”

“She thought I was too like my father.”

“She said you were too like your father?” his stepfather asked incredulously.

“She didn't have to say it,” sobbed Jimmy. “I knew it, every time she looked at me when I done something wrong. I reminded her of him, and she doesn't want to think of him. She only wants to think of you. And it's not my fault if I'm like my father, but if she didn't want me to be that way she should have took me sooner. She shouldn't have left it so late, Uncle Tim.”

His stepfather said nothing for a moment and then rose in a jerky movement and walked to the back door. “You might be right there, son,” he said with a shrug. “But you're not going the right way about it, either.”

“All right, Uncle Tim,” Jimmy cried. “What is the right way? I'll do whatever you tell me.”

“Talk it over properly with your mother, and then come back here after the holidays,” his stepfather said. “You see, old man, you don't seem to realize what it cost your mother to bring you to live with her at all. Now, you don't want her explaining why you ran away after a couple of weeks, do you?”

“He's right, Jimmy boy, he's right,” Kate pleaded. “You could never go back there again, with all the old talk there'd be.”

“Oh, all right, all right,” Jimmy said despairingly, and went to get his cap.

“Sit down, the pair of ye, till I make a cup of tea!” cried Kate. But Jimmy shook his head.

“I'd sooner go now,” he said.

And it was real despair, as she well knew, not sham. Of course, he showed off a bit, the way he always did, and didn't kiss her when he was getting into the car. And when James in his gentle way said, “You'll be back soon,” Jimmy only drew a deep breath and looked up at the sky.