Collected Stories (86 page)

James observed it, too, but with a deep disapproval. He thought Jimmy cheapened himself.

“Ah, that's only because you can get away from them, boy,” Jimmy said with his toughest air. “Boy, if my family was living in England,
I
wouldn't worry about them, either.”

“Well, your father
is
living in England, and you went to see him,” said James. “I daresay I'll see my family, too, one day, but I don't want to see them now, thank you.”

“If you have any sense you'll have nothing to do with them,” said Jimmy. “They'll only look down on you.”

“I don't think so,” said James. “At the moment they might, but if they meet me when I'm a professor at the University, or a senior civil servant, they'll behave differently. You see, Jimmy,” he went on in the tone he would use when he was a professor at the University, “people like that pay far too much attention to public opinion, and they won't neglect anyone who can be useful to them.”

Kate felt that there was a sad wisdom in what James said. While Jimmy, who had something of his father's weakness and charm, might prove a liability to those who didn't understand him, James would work and save, and only when he was established and independent would he satisfy his curiosity about those who had abandoned him. And, though she mightn't live to see it, James would make quite certain that nobody patronized him. She would have given a great deal to see how James dealt with his family.

But she knew that she wouldn't see it. She fell ill again, and this time Molly came to the house to nurse her, while Nora, who looked after Molly's children, came in the evenings, and sometimes one of the husbands. Molly made an immediate change in the house. She was swift and efficient; she fed the boys and made conversation with callers, leaning against the doorpost with folded arms as though she had no thought in the world but of them, though occasionally she would slip away into the front room and weep savagely to herself for a few minutes before returning to her tasks.

The priest came, and Molly invited him into the front room and chatted with him about the affairs of the parish. After he had left, Kate asked to see Jimmy and James. They went up the stairs quietly and stood at either side of the bed. Her eyes were closed and her hands outstretched on the bed. Jimmy took one, and after a moment James took the other. James was never a boy for a deathbed.

“Don't upset yeerselves too much over me,” she said. “I know ye'll miss me, but ye have nothing to regret. Ye were the two best boys a mother ever reared, and I'm proud of ye.” She thought hard for a moment and then added something that shocked them all. “And yeer father is proud of ye, I'm sure.”

Molly, who was standing with Nora behind James, leaned forward and said urgently, “Mammy, 'tisn't who you think. 'Tis Jimmy and James.”

Kate opened her eyes for a moment and looked straight at her, and her eyes were no colder than the words she spoke. “Excuse me, child, I know perfectly well who I have.” Her eyes closed again, and she breathed noisily for what seemed a long, long time, as though she were vainly trying to recollect herself. “Don't either of ye do anything yeer father would be ashamed of. He was a good man, and a kind man, and a clean-living man, and he never robbed anyone of a ha'penny.… Jimmy,” she added in a voice of unexpected strength, “look after your little brother for me.”

“I will, Mammy,” Jimmy said through his tears.

Something in that sudden reversion to the language of childhood made Molly break down. She left the room and took refuge in the parlor downstairs. Nora, realizing that something had upset her sister, followed and shouted at her as all the Mahoneys had always shouted at one another. “Wisha, Molly, will you have a bit of sense? Sure you know poor Mammy's mind was wandering.”

“It was
not
wandering, Nora,” Molly said hysterically. “She knew perfectly well what she was saying, and Jimmy knew it, too. They were her real children all the time, and we were only outsiders. Oh, Nora, Nora, how could she do
that
to us?”

That night, when Kate was quiet at last in her brown shroud, with her hands clutching the rosary beads on her breast, and the neighbors were coming from all parts into the little front room to say a prayer for her, people in every little house around were asking the same question that Molly had been asking herself, though they asked it with a touch of envy. How could a woman who was already old take the things the world had thrown away and out of them fashion a new family, dearer to her than the old and finer than any she had known? Hanna Dinan had the last word. Having sat there for an hour, she took a last look at her old crony on the bed, then pulled her coat about her and said casually, “Wisha, wasn't she a great little woman! She had them all against her and she bested them. They had everything, and she had nothing, and she bested them all in the end.”

The American Wife

E
LSIE
C
OLLEARY
, who was on a visit to her cousins in Cork, was a mystery even to them. Her father, Jack Colleary's brother, had emigrated when he was a kid and done well for himself; he had made his money in the liquor business, and left it to go into wholesale produce when Elsie was growing up, because he didn't think it was the right background for a girl. He had given her the best of educations, and all he had got out of it was to have Elsie telling him that Irishmen were more manly, and that even Irish-Americans let their wives boss them too much. What she meant was that
he
let her mother boss him, and she had learned from other Irish people that this was not the custom at home. Maybe Mike Colleary, like a lot of other Americans, did give the impression of yielding too much to his wife, but that was because she thought she knew more about things than he did, and he was too soft-hearted to disillusion her. No doubt the Americans, experienced in nostalgia, took Elsie's glorification of Irishmen good-humoredly, but it did not go down too well in Cork, where the men stood in perpetual contemplation of the dangers of marriage, like cranes standing on one leg at the edge of the windy water.

She stood out at the Collearys' quiet little parties, with her high waist and wide skirts, taking the men out to sit on the stairs while she argued with them about religion and politics. Women having occasion to go upstairs thought this very forward, but some of the men found it a pleasant relief. Besides, like all Americans, she was probably a millionaire, and the most unworldly of men can get a kick out of flirting with a real millionaire.

The man she finally fell in love with did not sit on the stairs with her at all, though, like her, he was interested in religion and politics. This was a chap called Tom Barry. Tom was thirty-five, tall and thin and good-looking, and he lived with his mother and two good-looking sisters in a tiny house near the Barrack, and he couldn't even go for a walk in the evening without the three of them lining up in the hallway to present him with his hat, his gloves, and his clean handkerchief. He had a small job in the courthouse, and was not without ambition; he had engaged in several small business enterprises with his friend Jerry Coakley, but all they had ever got out of these was some good stories. Jerry was forty, and
he
had an old mother who insisted on putting his socks on for him.

Elsie's cousins warned her against setting her cap at Tom, but this only seemed to make her worse. “I guess I'll have to seduce him,” she replied airily, and her cousins, who had never known a well-bred Catholic girl to talk like that, were shocked. She shocked them even more before she was done. She called at his house when she knew he wasn't there and deluded his innocent mother and sisters into believing that she didn't have designs on him; she badgered Tom to death at the office, gave him presents, and even hired a car to take him for drives.

They weren't the only ones who were shocked. Tom was shocked himself when she asked him point-blank how much he earned. However, he put that down to unworldliness and told her.

“But that's not even a street cleaner's wages at home,” she said indignantly.

“I'm sure, Elsie,” he said sadly. “But then, of course, money isn't everything.”

“No, and Ireland isn't everything,” she replied. It was peculiar, but from their first evening together she had never ceased talking about America to him—the summer heat, and the crickets chattering, and the leaves alive with fireflies. During her discussions on the stairs, she had apparently discovered a great many things wrong with Ireland, and Tom, with a sort of mournful pleasure, kept adding to them.

“Oh, I know, I know,” he said regretfully.

“Then if you know, why don't you do something about it?”

“Ah, well, I suppose it's habit, Elsie,” he said, as though he weren't quite sure. “I suppose I'm too old to learn new tricks.”

But Elsie doubted if it was really habit, and it perplexed her that a man so clever and conscientious could at the same time be so lacking in initiative. She explained it finally to herself in terms of an attachment to his mother that was neither natural nor healthy. Elsie was a girl who loved explanations.

On their third outing she had proposed to him, and he was so astonished that he burst out laughing, and continued to laugh whenever he thought of it again. Elsie herself couldn't see anything to laugh at in it. Having been proposed to by men who were younger and better-looking and better off than he was, she felt she had been conferring an honor on him. But he was a curious man, for when she repeated the proposal, he said, with a cold fury that hurt her, “Sometimes I wish you'd think before you talk, Elsie. You know what I earn, and you know it isn't enough to keep a family on. Besides, in case you haven't noticed it, I have a mother and two sisters to support.”

“You could earn enough to support them in America,” she protested.

“And I told you already that I had no intention of going to America.”

“I have some money of my own,” she said. “It's not much, but it would mean I'd be no burden to you.”

“Listen, Elsie,” he said, “a man who can't support a wife and children has no business marrying at all. I have no business marrying anyway. I'm not a very cheerful man, and I have a rotten temper.”

Elsie went home in tears, and told her astonished uncle that all Irishmen were pansies, and, as he had no notion what pansies were, he shook his head and admitted that it was a terrible country. Then she wrote to Tom and told him that what he needed was not a wife but a psychiatrist. The writing of this gave her great satisfaction, but next morning she realized that her mother would only say she had been silly. Her mother believed that men needed careful handling. The day after, she waited for Tom outside the courthouse, and when he came out she summoned him with two angry blasts on the horn. A rainy sunset was flooding the Western Road with yellow light that made her look old and grim.

“Well,” she said bitterly, “I'd hoped I'd never see your miserable face again.”

But that extraordinary man only smiled gently and rested his elbows on the window of the car.

“I'm delighted you came,” he said. “I was all last night trying to write to you, but I'm not very good at it.”

“Oh, so you got my letter?”

“I did, and I'm ashamed to have upset you so much. All I wanted to say was that if you're serious—I mean really serious—about this, I'd be honored.”

At first she thought he was mocking her. Then she realized that he wasn't, and she was in such an evil humor that she was tempted to tell him she had changed her mind. Then common sense told her the man would be fool enough to believe her, and after that his pride wouldn't let him propose to her again. It was the price you had to pay for dealing with men who had such a high notion of their own dignity.

“I suppose it depends on whether you love me or not,” she replied. “It's a little matter you forgot to mention.”

He raised himself from the car window, and in the evening light she saw a look of positive pain on his lean, sad, gentle face. “Ah, I do, but—” he was beginning when she cut him off and told him to get in the car. Whatever he was about to say, she didn't want to hear it.

T
HEY
settled down in a modern bungalow outside the town, on the edge of the harbor. Elsie's mother, who flew over for the wedding, said dryly that she hoped Elsie would be able to make up to Tom for the loss of his mother's services. In fact, it wasn't long before the Barrys were saying she wasn't, and making remarks about her cooking and her lack of tidiness. But if Tom noticed there was anything wrong, which is improbable, he didn't mention it. Whatever his faults as a sweetheart, he made a good husband. It may have been the affection of a sensitive man for someone he saw as frightened, fluttering, and insecure. It could have been the longing of a frustrated one for someone that seemed to him remote, romantic, and mysterious. But whatever it was, Tom, who had always been God Almighty to his mother and sisters, was extraordinarily patient and understanding with Elsie, and she needed it, because she was often homesick and scared.

Jerry Coakley was a great comfort to her in these fits, for Jerry had a warmth of manner that Tom lacked. He was an insignificant-looking man with a ravaged dyspeptic face and a tubercular complexion, a thin, bitter mouth with bad teeth, and long lank hair; but he was so sympathetic and insinuating that at times he even gave you the impression that he was changing his shape to suit your mood. Elsie had the feeling that the sense of failure had eaten deeper into him than into Tom.

At once she started to arrange a match between him and Tom's elder sister, Annie, in spite of Tom's warnings that Jerry would never marry till his mother died. When she realized that Tom was right, she said it was probably as well, because Annie wouldn't put his socks on him. Later she admitted that this was unfair, and that it would probably be a great relief to poor Jerry to be allowed to put on his socks himself. Between Tom and him there was one of those passionate relationships that spring up in small towns where society narrows itself down to a handful of erratic and explosive friendships. There were always people who weren't talking to other people, and friends had all to be dragged into the disagreement, no matter how trifling it might be, and often it happened that the principals had already become fast friends again when
their
friends were still ignoring one another in the street. But Jerry and Tom refused to disagree. Jerry would drop in for a bottle of stout, and Tom and he would denounce the country, while Elsie wondered why they could never find anything more interesting to talk about than stupid priests and crooked politicians.