Collected Short Stories (10 page)

My Granny sat at the fire and at every sip she sighed and held the glass up to the light. ‘Poor fellas, but they run great risks to make that. None of your ould treacle about the Lough Beg stuff … made from the best of barley.'

As she sipped it she talked to me about my school, and the little sense my father had in his head to be bothering himself about game cocks and maybe land himself in jail; and when the car came up for him she went to the door and waved him off. ‘Mind the peelers,' she shouted. ‘Ye'd never know where they'd be sniffing around.'

During the day I played about the house and tormented the tethered goat, making her rise on her hind legs. I went to the well at the foot of the field and carried a bucket of water to my Granny, and she said I was a big, strong man. Later my Uncle brought me through the tumbled demesne wall and showed me where he had slaughtered a few trees for the fire. I talked to him about Dick and I asked him why he didn't keep game cocks. He laughed at me and said, ‘I wouldn't have them about the place. They destroy the hens and make them as wild as the rooks. ‘ I didn't talk any more about game cocks, but all the time as we walked to the Big House I thought about Dick and wondered would he win his fights. The Big House was in ruins, crows were nesting in the chimneys, and the lake was covered with rushes and green scum. When I asked my uncle where were all the ladies and gentlemen and the gamekeeper, he spat through the naked windows and replied, ‘They took the land from the people and God cursed them.'

When we came back my Granny was standing at the door looking up and down the road wondering what was keeping my father. A few fellows coming from the cockfights passed on bicycles, and soon my father arrived. He was in great form, his face red, and his navy blue trousers covered with clay.

The cock's comb was scratched with blood, his feathers streaky, and his eyes half shut. He was left in the byre until the tea was over. While my father was taking the tea he got up from the table and stood in the middle of the floor telling how Dick had won his fights. ‘Five battles he won and gave away weight twice.'

‘Take your tea, Mick, and you can tell us after,' my Granny said, her hands in her sleeves, and her feet tapping the hearth.

He would eat for a few minutes and he'd be up again. ‘Be the holy frost if ye'd seen him tumbling the big Pyle cock from Derry it'd have done yer heart good. I never seen the like of it. Aw, he's a great battler. And look at the morning he put in on them yard walls … up and down a dozen streets he went, running and flying and crowing. And then to win his fights. Wait till Jimmy Reilly hears about this and the nice nest egg I have for him. The poteen was great stuff. A great warrior!' And he smiled in recollection.

I was glad when he was ready for home and gladder still when we were in the train where I made the wheels rumble and chant …
They took the land from the people … God cursed them.

It was dark when we reached Belfast and I carried Dick in the potato bag. We got into a tram at the station; the lights were lit and we sat downstairs. The people were staring at my father, at the clabber on his boots and the wrinkles on his trousers. But he paid no heed to them. In the plate glass opposite I could see our reflections; my father was smiling with his lips together, and I knew he was thinking of the cock.

‘He's very quiet, Da,' I whispered. ‘The fightin' has fairly knocked the capers out of him.'

‘Aw, son, he's a great warrior,' and he put his hand in his pocket and slipped me a half crown. ‘I'll get his photo took as soon as he's his old self again.'

I held the money tightly in my hand, and all the way home I rejoiced that Johnny Moore wasn't with us, for he would have set me a problem about a half-crown.

In the kitchen I left the bag on the floor and sat on the sofa, dead tired. My father got down the olive oil to rub on Dick's legs, but when he opened the bag the cock never stirred. He took him out gently and raised his head, but it fell forward limply, and from the open mouth blood dripped to the floor.

‘God-a-God, he's dead!' said my father, stretching out one of the wings. He held up the cock's head in the gaslight and looked at him. Then he put him on the table without a word and sat on a chair. For awhile I said nothing, and then I asked quietly, ‘What'll you do with him, Da?'

He turned and looked at the cock, stretched on the table. ‘Poor Dick!' he said. And I felt a lump rise in my throat.

Then he got up from the chair. ‘What'll I do with him! What'll I do with him! I'll get him stuffed! That's what I'll do!'

In spite of the hard rain that struck against the windows the air in the compartment was warm and comfortable, and as the almost empty train rattled and shrugged through the night-dark countryside the woman in the corner seat persisted with her knitting, and her husband, whose eyes were at their fading stage, tried to read, the book shuffling on his knee despite his efforts to steady it. They were alone, and in the rack above them were two suitcases, a man's tweed hat and a fishing rod in a brown canvas cover. They spoke little to one another, but when the train would draw up at a station the woman would raise her head from her knitting and say: ‘Where are we now John?'

Her husband would glance at his watch and tell her, and a few minutes later the porter, passing outside on the platform, would confirm in a loud voice the name of the station John had already announced. Then the guard's whistle would flare into the night and with a jolt the train would move off again, the lights from the platform shining for a moment into the passing compartments.

The woman would again take up her knitting, the man his reading, their reflections in the dark windows keeping abreast of them.

The train gathered speed, and the book balanced on the man's knee shook so unsteadily that he turned down a page at the corner, closed it, and folding his arms leaned back against the headrest. His wife looked across at him, at his white hair, and at his pale face that would, after a couple of weeks' fishing, turn to the brown colour she loved to see on him. It would be their first holiday together since he retired from teaching, a holiday she allowed him to arrange without even one suggestion from herself. And to her delight he chose the last week in August and the first week in September. The hotels would be quieter then, and their sleep undisturbed by the restless holidaymakers who crammed the hotels from July to the middle of August. Yes, the hotels, like the train, would be comfortably empty.

The train slowed down, and when it stopped the man awoke and heard the rain slapping from the roof of the carriages and strolling down the pane. He yawned and rubbed his eyes.

‘Where are we now, John?'

He didn't answer, but with a folded newspaper wiped away some mist on the window and peered out at a dreary platform where rain-soaked advertisements glistened in the lights from the train. He waited for the porter to call out the name of the station, but evidently, the train being almost empty, the porter didn't consider it worthwhile.

He stood up to open the window and his wife ordered him to put on his hat or he'd catch cold. He obeyed her, crammed it on his head, and on opening the window a few drops of rain flew into the compartment. The air was cold against his face, the wet platform deserted except for the guard and porter, and beyond the white arrow-pointed palings that marked the end of the platform a red light of a signal glowed in the darkness.

The train hissed, the guard raised his flag and blew his whistle, and as the train slowly passed the end of the platform John saw the name TOOME in large white letters against a black rectangle. For a moment he caught sight of the lights in the village and he continued to lean out, his wife calling to him to close the window at once. But he didn't seem to hear her, and in a minute the train was thundering over the bridge across the river and a solitary light on its bank scribbled its reflection on the cold water.

‘John!'

His wife rose, pushed him to the side, and heaved up the window on its leather strap.

‘Do you want to get your neuralgia back again?'

‘That was Toome!'

‘I don't care if it was Buckingham Palace. You'd no call to stand there so long. Such a miserable place to be gazing out at!'

‘I once lived there myself, Margaret,' he said quietly.

‘No,' she said, incredulous, looking across at him.

‘Yes, but only for a short spell. It was my first teaching post.'

‘You never mentioned that before. And how long have we been married – forty years. Well, well, why did you never tell me you taught there?'

‘No reason whatsoever, Margaret. It just didn't occur to me – that's all.'

‘Come now, John. You must have had some reason. What was it?'

She had suddenly become animated, and she rolled up her knitting and put it inside a magazine beside her.

‘There's some reason why you have kept it from me all these years. Come now – out with it like a good man!'

The train whistled sharply and sped on into the night, and the man, no longer interested in his book, closed his eyes, a sad expression ageing his face.

His wife leaned forward and touched his knee.

‘What made you leave? Was it too lonely for you?'

‘It wasn't lonely. I liked it. I loved the fishing and the boating. I used to spend hours on that river we're after crossing.'

‘And you left because you liked it. That doesn't make sense to me. Come now: why are you so secretive about it? I must know.'

‘There's nothing to tell, Margaret,' he said, giving a sad smile. ‘It's over forty years ago since I was there and there's really nothing to tell.'

He shrugged his shoulders and leaned back against the seat.

‘Were you in love – is that it?'

‘I don't think it was that.'

Over the long flat stretch of land the train stretched out eagerly, their shoulders jogged and swayed, and the back of the man's head rubbed against the leather headrest. Toome was a long way behind now, the Toome that he had known: its river that unrolled like a web of ice over the falls and then broadened itself into little lakes which he had explored in the long days of a summer gone by.

‘John, there's something on your mind about that place and I must know.'

‘Wouldn't it be better to let the past lie? Please, Margaret, don't go on.'

‘So you have a past! And all our married years I have never known.'

He smiled and remained remote from her, wrapped up in his own secret memory.

She opened her handbag, touched up her face, and for a moment the compartment smelt like a bathroom. They had no children and in spite of her years she wore young clothes to set off a figure that was still attractive. The train would be late arriving in Derry, where they would spend the night before setting out for Donegal in the morning.

‘And she was handsome – this early sweetheart of yours?'

‘I didn't say she was a sweetheart. It's you that has said it.'

‘I suppose she was handsome if you fell in love with her. Was she a teacher in the same school?'

‘She was. She was a few years older than I was and she was the principal. It was a two-roomed school.'

‘And you proposed to her and she refused and you left in affront.'

‘No, Margaret, she was already married.'

‘That makes it more interesting.'

‘It makes it more sad.'

‘Why are you so aggravating? You want me to tell what I know nothing of.'

‘You're making a brave hand at it, I may tell you … Sure it doesn't matter now. It's all over and done with, some forty years ago.'

‘I love you so much I could still be a bit jealous,' she said with unconscious irony. ‘You gave me to understand I was the first girl you ever fell in love with.'

‘And so you were. And that's the truth.'

‘How annoying you are this evening! Perhaps you'd like us to return and spend a few days fishing in Toome?'

‘No, I wouldn't want that. I have never been back there since I left.'

‘Is she still alive, this person?'

‘No, she died shortly after I left. She died in a boating accident. I read an account of it in the papers. May God have mercy on her.'

He glanced away from the interrogating eyes of his wife and looked at the window, at the blurred reflection of his hands, his white hair, and his face.

‘She was married to a man years older than herself. When he had drink taken he was rough with her. For some reason she used to confide in me. She felt, I suppose, that I would understand and wouldn't gossip.'

He raised a hand and it fell back limply on his knee. ‘Ah, Margaret, we'll let the long past lie in peace,' and he shook his head with a sad gesture.

‘So she confided in you because she trusted you. And here we are at this distance on in our lives and you've no wish to confide in me.'

‘After forty years I'm not absolved from the promises she made me give her. Time should not erode one's faith and trust. She asked me never to repeat what she had confided in me, and I have never done that.'

‘I'm not asking you to. But surely you could tell me what she looked like and how she dressed.'

He paused and gave a resigned smile.

‘She had black hair. It was very black and her eyes were a kind of grey or green. She usually wore a blouse and skirt. Sometimes a yellow blouse or a white or green one and a rose pinned to it.'

‘For a young lad just fresh from the training college you took good stock of her.'

‘I see her in memory only. It's your questions that bring it all back.'

‘But what reason had she to confide in you?'

‘I don't know. There were only the two of us all day long in the school. I suppose the poor girl was lonely and had no one else to talk to. It was her confidence in me that made me leave and look out for another school. At lunch-hour when the children were out in the playground and the two of us were drinking tea she used to roll up her sleeve and show me the dark bruises on her arm and the marks of a man's fingers. I had pity for her. I often yearned to put my arm round her to console her.'

He shook his head: ‘There are times, Margaret, when sympathy and pity can be dangerous.'

‘You'd think, John, you had never heard of the ninth commandment.'

‘Yes, it was that that made me leave so suddenly. I knew it couldn't go on … When I saw the tears in her eyes it took my whole strength to hold back from lifting her hand and kissing it … And the way she could sing. I used to pause in my work to listen as she led the children through ‘The Last Rose of Summer'. That song, God knows, is sad enough. But the way she sang it made it the saddest of all songs.'

The train whistled and the wheels rocking unevenly over a roadcrossing drowned his voice, and he clasped his hands and drooped them between his knees and fell silent.

‘Go on, John, let me know more about this woman. Did you ever kiss her?'

‘Never!'

‘On your oath?'

‘Why do you pester me, Margaret, over an incident that happened forty years ago? I didn't kiss her, I tell you!'

‘But you would have liked to!'

‘She was another man's wife. But I was horrified one day on our way home from school to see chalked up on a stone by the roadside our initials: J.T. loves M.D. Mary Doyle, you see, was her name. I rubbed the initials off with a sod I pulled out from the ditch. She laughed and said: “Aren't they the little divils!” I was more distressed than she was. But she really loved the children – you could sense that by the way she spoke to them. Even when she was angry they sensed her love for them. “How would you like to see your own mothers' names chalked up on gateposts?” she said to them. And do you know, Margaret, they loved and respected her so much it never recurred again. I was glad of that. If her husband had heard of it or seen it God knows what he would have thought.'

A sudden squall struck the windows, and the rain rattled against them as hard as pebbles. He sighed, stared at the swaying leather strap of the window, and went on.

‘And yet there was nothing wrong in this friendship of ours. She it was who opened the school early in the morning, and in the afternoon, because my road led past her house, she used to ask me to wait for her while she tidied up the rooms. And the silence then, with the children gone, was like no other silence I can remember ever since. The clock, which we couldn't hear all day, tocked on the wall like the blows of a mallet. And around us were the empty desks, a boy's torn cap on a peg, and on one wall the large map of Ireland patched with sticking-plaster. I can see it all as if it were yesterday. She seemed reluctant to leave it. It was like home for her, I suppose. And after she had powdered her face at a little mirror no bigger than a postcard I held her coat for her as she struggled into it. She used to smile at that and say in her musical voice: “Oh, how kind you are.” And then on our way home we talked about books. She liked reading but her husband didn't. I used to lend her books, but her husband burnt one in one of his rages and she refused after that to accept another. That was the kind of her – always thoughtful of others. I remember one day on going home like this she saw a child's ribbon in the dust of the road, and, instead of kicking it with her toe, she lifted it. And put it in her handbag, and in the morning she had it washed and ironed and sought out its owner. Isn't it sad, Margaret, a young wife like that to be drowned in a boating accident?'

‘From what you say I gather you were in love with this Doyle woman. Were you?'

‘No, I don't think I was. Ah, how could I be and she with a wedding ring on her finger.'

‘And she was in love with you, do you think?'

‘I don't know that either. She never did anything or said anything to express it as far as I know.'

‘Would you have been shocked if she had done something?'

‘I intended for my own soul's sake to leave. She was already married. I used to find myself thinking of her – thinking of her coarse husband and how cruel he was to her, and she so gentle. In the mornings her eyes were often red from crying. But I never let on I noticed it, and then as the day progressed she became happier, younger looking. The presence of the children she loved had that effect on her. She was happiest when she was teaching or when she was drying the children's wet coats by the fire in the school. And how brisk and graceful she was in all her movements.'