The Ginger Man (5 page)

Sebastian passing the cream, smiling and waving his feet from the edge of the bed. Letting his body fall with a squeal of springs and looking at the patches of pink in the ceiling. Marion a bit upset and confused. Difficult for hen She was breaking. Isn't as strong as me, led a sheltered life. Maybe shouldn't have married me. Matter, all of it, of time. Pumping it around and around and around, air in, air out and then it all goes like the shutters of a collapsing house. Starts and ends in antiseptic smell. Like to feel the end would be like closing leaves of honeysuckle, pressing out a last fragrance in the night but that only happens to holy men. Find them in the morning with a smile across the lips and bury them in plain boxes. But I want a rich tomb of Vermont marble in Woodlawn Cemetery, with automatic sprinkler and evergreens. If they get you in the medical school they hang you up by the ears. Never leave me unclaimed, I beg of you. Don't hang me all swollen, knees pressing the red nates of others where they come in to see if I'm fat or lean and all of us stabbed to death on the Bowery. Kill you in the tenement streets and cover you in flowers and put in the juice. By God, you hulking idiots, keep the juice away from me. Because I'm a mortician and too busy to die.

"'Marion, do you ever think of death?"

"No."

"Marion, do you ever think you're going to die?"

"I say, Sebastian, would you mind awfully stopping that sort of talk. You're in that nasty mood."

"Not at all."

"You are. Coming up here every morning to watch the funerals of these wretched people. Dreadful and sordid. I think you get a perverse pleasure out of it."

"Beyond this vale of tears, there is a life above, unmeasured by the flight of years and all that life is love."

"You think you're frightening me with these sinister airs of yours. I find them only boring and they tend to make you repulsive"

"What?"

"Yes, they do"

"For the love of Jesus, look at me. Look at my eyes. Go ahead, come on"

"I don't want to look in your eyes"

"Honest globes they are"

"You can't talk seriously about anything"

"I just asked you about death. Want to know how you feel, really get to know you. Or maybe you think this is forever"

"Rubbish. You think it's forever, I know you do. You're not as flippant as this in the mornings, I notice."

"Takes me a few hours to adapt. Snap out of the dream."

"And you scream."

"What?"

"You were yelling a few nights ago, how do I get out of this. And another time you were screaming, what's that white thing in the corner, take it away."

Dangerfield holding his belly, laughing on the squeaking springs.

"You can laugh, but I think there's something serious at the root of it."

"What's at the root? Can't you see I'm mad. Can't you see? Look. See. Madness. E. I'm mad."

Sebastian ogled and wagged his tongue.

"Stop it. Always willing to clown but never to do anything useful."

Dangerfield watched from the bed as she flexed her long arms behind her back and her breasts fell from the cups of her brassiere, tan nipples hardening in the cold air. Red line on her shoulder left by the strap. Stepping wearily out of her underpants, facing the mirror and rubbing white cream into her hands and face. Little brown strands growing round the nipples. You've often said, Marion, about giving it the wax treatment but I like them that way after all.

Sebastian quietly stepping from the bed approaching the naked body. Pressing his fists against her buttocks and she pushes his hands away.

"I don't like you touching me there"

And kissing her on the back of the neck. Wet the skin with the tongue and the long blond hair gets in the mouth. Marion taking the blue nightdress from the nail. Sebastian stripping and sitting naked on the edge of the bed, taking white fluff out of the navel, and doubling himself. plucking the congealed dirt from between his toes.

"Sebastian, I wish you'd take a bath."

"Kills the personality."

"You were so clean when I first knew you."

"Given up the cleanliness for a life of the spirit. Preparation for another and better world. Hardly take offence at a little scruffiness. Clean soul's my motto. Take off your nightie."

"Where are they?"

"Under my shirts."

"And the vaseline?"

"Behind the books on the box."

Marion ripping the silver paper. Americans great for packages. Wrap anything up. And she draws the opening of her nightdress back from her shoulders, letting it fall to her feet and folding it carefully across the books. She kneels on the bed. What are other men like, do they grunt and groan, are they all curved and circumcised, with or without. She climbs into bed, a soft voice.

"Let's do it the way we used to in Yorkshire."

"Umn."

"Do you still like my breasts the way they are?"

"Umn."

"Tell me things, Sebastian, talk to me. I want to know."

Sebastian rolled near, pressing the long, blond body to his, thinking of a world outside beating drums below the window in the rain. All slipping on the cobble stones. And standing aside as a tram full of Bishops rumbles past, who hold up sacred hands in blessing. Marion's hand tightening and touching in my groin. Ginny Cupper took me in her car out to the spread fields of Indiana. Parking near the edge of woods and walking out into the sunny rows of corn, waving seeds to a yellow horizon. She wore a white blouse and a gray patch of sweat under her arms and the shadow of her nipples was gray. We were rich. So rich we could never die. Ginny laughed and laughed, white saliva on her teeth lighting up the deep red of her mouth. fed the finest food in the world. Ginny was afraid of nothing. She was young and old. Her brown arms and legs swinging in wild optimism, beautiful in all their parts. She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth. Heads pressed in the hot Indiana soil and pinned me in a cross. A crow cawed into the white sun and my sperm spurted into the world. Ginny had driven her long Cadillac through the guard rails of a St. Louis bridge and her car shone like a dot of blood in the mud and murk of the Mississippi. We were all there in the summer silence of Suffolk, Virginia, when the copper casket was gently placed in the cool marble vault. I smoked a cigarette and crushed it out on the black and white squares of the tomb. In the stagnant emptiness of the train station after the cars were gone, I walked into the women's toilet and saw the phallic obscenities on the wooden doors and gray walls. I wonder if people will think I'm a lecher. Ginny had gardenias in her lovely brown hair. I hear the train, Marion's breath in my ear. My stomach's shaking, my last strength. The world's silent. Crops have stopped growing. Now they grow again.

7

"Marion, I think I'll go and study in the park this morning."

'Take the baby with you"

"The pram is broken"

"Carry her"

"Shell piss on my shirt"

"Take the rubber sheet"

"How am I going to study, watching her? She'll crawl into the pond"

"I say, can't you see? I've got my hands full with all this, the mess. Look at the ceiling. And there you are, and you're wearing my sweater. I don't want you wearing my sweater. What do I have"

"Jesus."

"And why don't you go to see Mr. Skully and have this loathsome toilet fixed? I know why. You're afraid of him, that's why."

"Not a bit of it."

"You are. All I have to do is say Skully and you're off up the stairs like a frightened rabbit, and don't think I can't hear you crawling under the bed either."

"Just tell me where my sun glasses are, that's all"

"I didn't have them last."

"I must have them. I absolutely refuse to go out of this house without them."

"Well look."

"Do you want me to be recognized? Do you?"

"Yes, I do."

"God damn this house. It's the size of a closet and I can't even find my own foot in it I'll break something in a minute."

"Don't you dare. And here, a revolting post-card from your friend O'Keefe"

Marion flicked it across the room.

"Watch my correspondence. I don't want to have it thrown about"

"Your correspondence, indeed. Read it"

Scrawled in large capitals:

WE HAVE THE FANGS OF ANIMALS

"E.O aye."

"That's what he is, a detestable animal"

"What else?"

"Bills of course."

"Well don't blame me."

"I will blame you. Who started the account in Howth? Who was the one who bought whisky and gin? Who was?"

"Where are my sun glasses ? "

"And who pawned the fire irons? And who pawned the electric kettle—"

"Now look Marion, can't we be friends for this morning? The sun's out Christians at least"

"See? You immediately get sarcastic Why do we have to live like this?"

"My glasses, damn it. British hide everything. Can't hide the toilet now, anyway."

"I won't have this talk."

"Have this then."

"Someday you will regret all this. Vulgar."

"Do you want bird calls all your life, the B.B.C.? I'll do a series of programs for you called 'My Bottom was Green'"

"Your nasty mind."

"I'm cultured."

"Yes, from your chromium plated life in America."

"I'm distinguished-looking. Speak the King's English. Impeccably tailored."

"What rot. I don't know how I ever let you meet Mommy and Daddy."

"Your Mommy and Daddy thought I had lots of money. And I, for that matter, thought that they had lots of money. Neither had nicker, no notes, no love"

"That's a lie. You know it's a lie. There never was a question of money until you started it"

"All right Get the baby. I can't stand it any more. I need a long trolley ride in the womb, to take me out of this."

"Take you out? I'm the one who ought to be taken out and it may be any day now"

"All right Let's be friends"

"Yes, it's easy isn't it Just like that, after being so horrid"

I'll take the baby"

"And you can do some shopping too. Get me some bones from the butcher and don't bring back one of those revolting sheep's heads, and don't let Felicity fall in the pond."

"I insist on a sheep's head."

"Be careful shutting the door. It fell on the mailman this morning."

"Suffering saints and sick sinners. I'll be god damn well sued on top of everything."

Out on Mohammed road wild with traffic and thundering trams. The laundry a hive of activity. See them in there beating sheets and that's the way it ought to be. Warm yellow sun. Most beautiful country in the world, full of weeds and weeds are people. Stay here to die and never die. Look at the butcher shop. Look at the hooks, groaning with the meat He has his sleeves rolled way up with the chopper. A bunch of them behind the counter.

Entering the park. Green, green grass, soft and sweet from the night rain. The flower beds. Circles and crosses and nice little fences. Pick that bench. Newly painted. If my father dies by Autumn I'll be very rich, golden udder. And sit on a park bench for the rest of my life. What a warm, lovely day. I'd like to take off my shirt and let a sup of sun to me chest but they'd be hounding me out of the place for indecency. Help my hairs to grow, give them a fashionable tinge of blond. Dear child, stop kicking me in the back. Here, now get on this blanket and play and I don't want any nonsense from you. Jesus, let go of the blanket, think I was going to kill you. Papa's got to study his law and become a big big K.C. and make lots of money. A great big golden udder. A tan on my chest means wealth and superiority. But I'm proud of my humility. And here, reading the dead language, my little book of Roman Law. For parricide, flung off die cliff in a bag with a viper. Fat ugliness writhing in the crotch. And little daughter, gurgling on the grass, have fun now. Because papa is finished. Getting it from all sides. Even in dreams. And last night I dreamt I was carrying a bundle of newspapers under my arm and climbed on a bus and went racing across the Curragh with massive horses galloping beside. In the bus, a man studying butterflies with a magnifying glass. And we were going to the West. Then a bullock leaped from behind a hedge and the bus cut him up and left him hanging on a huge hook in front of a village butcher shop. Then suddenly I was in Cashel. Streets filled with goats and gutters brown with dried blood. And in the hot sun's stillness, a crowd of men and women in thick black overcoats walking down the middle of a winter road, summer's hesitating heat on every side. The funeral of the gombeen man. He caught her, lips bubbling, eyes spinning, sitting on the shop assistant on a crate from Chicago and he heard it collapse and was after them with a hatchet. And they conspired between hot wet lips, clutching at each other's clothes to put poison in the tea, trembling hands to the till and each other's flesh, to wind a cocoon of sin between the pineapple and peaches. The box was closed. Summer. The long line shuffling. Through Cashel. A song:

Shuffling through Cashel

A box in the sun

Through Cashel, through Cashel

The gombeen man's dead.

The gombeen man's dead

In a box in the sun.

The assistant got the wife

And the gombeen man got done.

Poor mercy on the gombeen man.

There's a hand in the till,

There's a box in the sun,

God's mercy on the gombeen man.

Someone talking to Felicity. Good God. Wow.

She was kneeling on one knee and crouched over her tight legs, Felicity tugging at her outstretched finger. She wagged her head. Hello, little girl, hello. Wearing a green skirt, matched on the grass and her lisle stockings, slim slender ankles. Her gleaming round bottom poked up her heels.

"Hello."

She didn't turn around. Prodding the baby belly. Fading magic moment. That bun of black hair.

"Hello."

Looking over her shoulder, direct dark eyes. Mellow voice.

"Hello. Admiring your child. What's her name?"

"Felicity."

"Really. Hello, Felicity, aren't you a pretty little girl? Aren't you now ? "

What lips across what white teeth. The shoulders of her suit, arms through small circles. I'd like to get my hands on you.

"You work in the laundry, don't you?"

"Yes. And you live in the house across the street."

"Yes."

"I suppose you've seen me looking in your windows."

"What do you do in that room?"

"That's my office."

"I see you drink a lot of tea."

"Coffee."

"Pleasant."

"She's got such lovely hair. Haven't you, haven't you, little girl? I must go. Bye bye now, Felicity, bye bye."

Waving long fingers. A little smile and she walks away on the asphalt path. Chevrons dividing across her calves and wider over her thighs. She waves again. She smiles once more. Please come back and play with me. Your sensible clothing is sexy.

Throw this damn law in the sea. I can't learn a thing. Children are good advertising. Shows them the end product, the thing you do it for. I think she has hair on her legs. That's what I like, slight suggestion of the male. I'm in love with that girl. The way she walks, a twist of the hips. The neck tells everything, slight gangle. Certainly I'm not homosexual or an elf's child. I want to know where she lives and what she does at night I must know. O I think things are beginning to straighten out. If I get that toilet fixed. Anything. Block it up, run it into the street, just anything. But there is so little that Egbert and I have in common, especially money. How does one make this approach about impaired function of the drain. I feel I am moving to a different level of experience. Get my dark suit out of pawn and take Marion to the Dolphin for a grilled steak and Beaujolais. She needs a little recreation. Poor girl. I'm such a hard bastard to live with. And I'll come to the park tomorrow.

There was a sheep's head simmering in the big black pot Marion washing her bottom in a pan on the floor. Fine thing for sixpence. The baby quietly to bed upstairs, the afternoon over, the evening begun. They are coming into their houses all over Dublin city with their arms light with a few sausages, old butter and little bags of tea.

"Sebastian, give me my talcum powder on the window sill."

"Certainly.''

"How was the park?"

"Very nice."

"That's such an odor."

"I tell you, it's the finest thing in the world. I need it for my brains. Sheep's head gives brain food."

Sebastian picked up a movie magazine and sank in the easy chair, waiting for the sheep. Red brash brightness of these faces. I was once approached by a talent scout in summer stock. He said, how would you like to come to Hollywood. I told him they'd have to feed me brandy day and night He said he was serious and wanted me to think the offer over. I told him my allowance from home was as much as that. But kid, you just wait till after your first picture. This man's name was Bill Kelly. Call me Bender Kelly. He said his mother and father were born in Ireland and someday he thought he would take a trip over there looking for talent, and maybe find some real talent. Mr. Kelly said they got a lot of girls from Ireland. But, you see, these Irish girls don't get far in Hollywood. Got to drop the drawers at the strategic moment You see, you got to realize there's compromise wherever you go in this world, get screwed or sacked. Some hold out but not for long. But a guy with your stuff could go places. Where'd you pick up acting? I beg your pardon, Mr. Kelly, I was born an actor. Well, that's what they all say, Mr. Kelly had a few more drinks and said Hollywood killed you like these Aztec guys used to get one of these girls and dress her all up, big star, then put her up there on the altar and tear her heart out. But Mr. Kelly, how sordid. It's sordid all right, that's why you've got to be tough. But I'm just a frond, I just know I couldn't bear it. Well, Mr. Sebastian Beet Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield. Jesus. Well, anyway, I'd like to get married and have some kids. I've knocked up some high school girls. Maybe that's not so good but isn't that the way life is, all squeeze and tease? I've handled some big stars in my time. Big. Really big. And Mr. Kelly got drunk and vomited all over the bar. It is well to remember there's a village called Hollywood in the Wicklow mountains.

Marion humming in the kitchen. Not often that happened.

"Make some toast, baby."

"Slice the bread."

"I'm studying."

"I see that silly movie magazine."

"Marion, do you like men with hairy chests ? "

"Yes."

"Biceps?"

"A bit"

"How about the shoulders?"

"So that he can wear a suit"

"Would you say now, that I'm your man?"

"Don't like men with pots."

"I beg your pardon. Pot? Not a bit—just look. Will you look in here a minute. See. Nothing there at all. You might even say I was wasted."

"Come and deal with this wretched head."

"Delighted. O I tell you, it's coming along a jolly treat What ho and bang on and wizard whip. Sound the horn you buggers."

"Cut the bread."

"Of course, darling."

"Don't say that if you don't mean it"

"I mean it"

"You don't mean it"

"All right, I don't mean it Why don't we buy a radio? I think we need a radio."

"With what?"

"Hire purchase. A system for people like us."

"Yes, and that could pay our milk bill."

"We can have milk too. Few shillings a week."

"Why don't you take a part time job then?"

"Must study."

"Of course. Yes of course, you must study."

"O now, now, now, give me a little kiss. Come on, on the lips, one."

"Get away from me."

"Not cricket"

"Bring in the chair, please."

"Then, let's go to the cinema."

"Have you forgotten? We have a child you know."

"Shit"

"Stop it, stop it Stop using that ugly word to me."

"Shit"

"If you say that word once more I'll leave this house. You may use that sort of language with your working class friends but I shan't stand for it"

"Leave."

"Every meal is like this, every meal"

"Meals? What meals?"

"My God, what did I marry."

"You certainly didn't have to marry me."

"Well, I wish I hadn't now. Father was right You're a wastrel. Done nothing but drink with your wretched friends, all useless people. Will they help you to get on?"

"British rubbish. Get on where ? Where to ? "

"Make something of yourself. You think it's so easy, don't you. I don't even think you'll get your degree. Cheat on your exams. Don't think everything you do escapes attention. Don't look shocked, and I know how you go and butter up your professors. How long do you expect to get away with it?"

"Absurd"

"You've insulted every friend I have. People who could help you. Do you think they'll help a rotter, an absolute rotter?"