The Pornographer (10 page)

“You seem to have it all figured out. If I didn’t believe there wasn’t some happiness I don’t know how I’d be able to go on.”

“You would,” I said. “Anyhow it all got too much. She drew the line.”

“I don’t see what’s funny about something as horrible as that. All the sex writing must twist and blind you to everything about love, make it just pure cynical.”

“On the contrary. It clears it out of the way. You learn it has nothing to do with love or living. It’s like sport. Except it’s between the sheets instead of in the gym.”

“Was she younger than you?” she was still biting into herself.

“She was, a few years. Why don’t we go to bed?”

The pain made her look tired and older. “Let’s clear up,” she said. “I hate waking up to a dirty kitchen.”

After we tidied up I fell into a drugged sleep and woke with the splitting headache of a hangover. Later in the morning she asked, “Since it’s Sunday why don’t we spend the day together?”

“I’d love to but I have to work,” and I walked her part of the way to where she lived. It was one of those spring mornings, the sun thawing the white frost out of the front gardens, and people with prayerbooks were going and coming between the Masses.

“Look. We’ll have the whole of next weekend together,” I said as we parted. “What’ll you do for the day?”

“I think I’ll go to Mass like the other people,” she said.

We drove in the stream of traffic out of the city the next weekend. It didn’t build any speed till it got past Lucan, and even there we found ourselves continually shut in behind slow trucks and milk tankers.

“Ireland will soon be as jammed up as everywhere else. That’s what’s wonderful about the rivers and lakes. They’re empty. Isn’t it exciting to be spending the whole weekend away from people?”

“People are all right,” I said morosely.

“There’re towns and villages that we can put in at. That’s what’s wonderful about the Shannon. You have a choice. You can be with people or get away and there’re pubs up lanes or a few fields from the river. There’s one in particular that we must visit in a village past Carrick, the man is fat and lovely and he’s always in good humour.”

After Kinnegad the road emptied and we drove steadily and fast. Outside Longford a great walled estate with old woods stretched away to the left and children from a tinker encampment threw a stone that grazed the windscreen. In the distance, between rows of poplars, the steel strip of the Shannon started to flash.

“There it is—the Shannon River,” she greeted excitedly. “They said they’d meet us in the first bar on the right. That’s it. Over there. The Shannon Pot.”

We had hardly time to look around the big lounge, a large pike preserved in a lighted glass case above the bar, the only sign of a connection with water, when a man in a well-cut worsted suit came up to us and enquired, “Would you be the people from the magazine?” When we told him we were he shook hands in the old courtly way, standing far back and bowing. “Mr Smith, the man who owns the boats, asked me
to apologize for him. He meant to be here himself but was called to England the day before yesterday on sudden business, but he said all the information was here in these brochures, and if there was anything else you needed to know for the article to just leave word and he’d phone it in as soon as ever he got back. I’m supposed to see,” he smiled, “that you lack for nothing on the voyage. I’m known everywhere as Michael. And how was your journey down—good?”

“It was easy. We drove down,” I said.

He then introduced us to the barman, a young man in shirtsleeves.

“What about something warm after the journey? The evening is fine but it’s chill enough,” and we all had hot whiskeys. We had hardly touched them when another round appeared without a word, and then another. We started to protest but Michael waved our protest aside as if it was an appreciated but thoroughly unnecessary form of politeness. “We better see the boat first,” I had to say firmly, “then we can come back here.”

“The boat’s just across the road. There’s nothing to it,” he said and led us out.

The boat was across the road, a large white boat with several berths. It had a fridge, a gas stove, central heating and a hi-fi system. The Shannon, dark and swollen, raced past its sides. Night was starting to fall.

“There’s nothing to these boats,” he said and switched on the engine. It purred like a good car, the Fibreglass not vibrating at all once it was running. “And there’s the gears—neutral, forward, neutral, reverse. There’s the anchor. And that’s the story. They’re as simple as a child’s toy. And still you’d grow horses’ ears with some of the things people manage to do to them. They crash them into bridges, get stuck in mudbanks, hit navigation signs, foul the propeller up with nylons, fall overboard. I’ll tell you something for nothing: anything that can be done your human being will do it. One thing you have to give to the Germans though is
that they leave the boats shining. They spend the whole of the last day scrubbing up. But do you think your Irishman would scrub up? Not to save his life. Your Irishman is a pig,” he said. Only for the speech I’d not have noticed that he was by no means sober. “I’ve used this type of boat before, Michael,” she interrupted the flow. “They’re a lovely job. But—this shouldn’t have been done. The fridge is full, there’s wine, a bottle of whiskey.…”

“Mr Smith wanted everything to be right for yous. Mr Smith is a gentleman.”

Outside the misted windows the Shannon raced. When I wiped the port window clear the gleam of the water was barely discernible in the last lights.

“What’ll we do?” I asked. “Will we make a start or stay?”

“I’d hoped to make Carrick tonight,” she said.

“I think it’s too late. I think we should stay here tonight and leave at daybreak.”

“It’s the best thing ye can do,” Michael chorused.

I unscrewed the cap from the whiskey bottle in the fridge and poured three whiskeys.

“We’ll just have one drink here with Michael and then we’ll go and get the things out of the car. What kind of man is Mr Smith?’ I asked by way of conversation.

“A gentleman. The English are a great people to spend money. They’re pure innocent. But your Irishman’s a huar. The huar’d fleece you and boast about it to your face. Your Irishman is still in an emerging form of life.” The whiskey was large enough to have lasted a half-hour but he finished it in two gulps. When I poured him another drink he finished it too. Then, in case he’d settle in the boat for the rest of the evening, I suggested we should go back and have a last drink in the pub.

“I’ll stay,” she said as we went to leave. “I’ll check out the things on the boat, see what we need for the night, and I’ll join you later.”

“There’s no beating an intelligent woman,” Michael said as we climbed out of the boat.

“Do you live far from here?” I asked him over the whiskey and chaser I bought him in the bar.

“I’ve a few acres with some steers a mile or two out the road. There’s an auld galvanized thing on the place, and it does for the summer, the hay and that, but in the winter I live on one or other of the boats. It’s in the winter we do up the boats for the summer.”

“Who looks after the cattle?”

“A neighbour. I let him graze a few of his own on it and that keeps him happy. Before the boats started up I used to work here and there at carpentry. The wife was easy-going. She always gave me my head,” he joked since it was plain he had no wife at all.

It was with great difficulty he was prevented from buying her a large brandy when she joined us though she only wanted a soft drink. Afterwards he told us stories, all of them fluent. We only got away early by saying that in order to do the article we had to be on the move at first light. He caught both our hands at the wrist, murmuring, “Good people, good people. The best,” and making us promise several times to see him as soon as we got back. He got unsteadily to his feet to wave, “God bless,” as we went out. We got our things out of the car and went across to the boat.

“Well, that was a bit of local colour to start off with.”

“He was nice enough,” she said, “but he’s spoiled with the tourists.”

I was uneasy when she came into my arms in the boat. There was the pure pleasure of her body in the warmth, the sense of the race of water outside, the gentle resting movements of the boat, but I did not want to enter her.

“Why?” she protested.

“It’s just too dangerous.”

“According to the calendar I am back into the safe days.”

“It’s too risky.”

I felt her stiffen and recoil as I came outside and when I tried to touch her she angrily drew away, “You may be skilful but it’s not skilfulness I need. I would put a little warmth and naturalness and trust ahead of a thousand manuals but obviously that doesn’t rate very high in your book,” and she crossed to the other bunk. I could feel her anger in the close darkness but fought back the desire to appease it. I listened to the simple, swift flow of the water. All over the countryside dogs were barking, the barking starting up at different points, going silent, and then taken up again from a different point, like so many footnotes growing out of a simple text. Suddenly there was a loud banging of car doors, revving engines, horns, indistinct shouts in the night. The bars were closing. I must have been close to sleep for I did not notice her till she was kneeling by the bunk, her lips on mine.

“I’m sorry, love,” she said, “Let’s not do anything to spoil the trip.”

I took her in my arms. “I should be the sorry one. I want to but I’m afraid. In fact, there’s nothing I want more.”

“Goodnight, love. I’ve set the alarm for five.”

“Goodnight,” I said. “I hope you sleep well. You have a hard day tomorrow getting the article together.”

We got the boat away before it was quite light and the early morning mist didn’t look like rising. In the white mist and cold of morning, the boat beating steadily up the centre of the still water, the dead wheaten reeds on either side, occasional cattle and horses and the ghostly shapes of tree trunks and half-branches along the banks, there was a feeling of a dream, souls crossing to some other world. But the grey stone of the bridge of Garrick came solidly towards us out of the mist around eight. We tied the boat up, had a breakfast of fried eggs and bacon and scalding tea in a café by the bridge that had just opened. Afterwards we separated. She went about her business of collecting material for the
article. I walked for an hour about the town, bought newspapers, and went back to read them on the boat. Nobody came by until she got back.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she climbed down into the boat.

“I was just reading the papers. Did you get everything you wanted?”

“Everything,” she flipped through notes and showed them like a trophy. “The people were wonderful. In fact, if anything, they were just too co-operative,” she jumped about like a girl. “We’re still ahead of time. In not much more than an hour we’ll be in that village I told you about.”

The wind had risen, blowing the mist away. The fields along the banks were all flooded, the river defined only by its two narrow lines of dead reeds. After about two miles we came out into a large lake, the waves rocking the boat; but when I turned the power up the boat, big enough to be comfortable on the sea, smashed through the waves. It was exciting to feel its chopping power. All this time she worked on her notes in the cabin. On the far side of the lake we joined the river again, passing between a black navigation sign and a red, the banks flooded for miles, the distance between the lines of reeds growing narrow. Soon, across the flooded fields the village came into view, goal posts upright in a football field, smoke rising from a few houses or shops scattered at random round a big bald ugly barn of a church.

“It’s certainly not much to look at,” I said when she came out of the cabin.

“But the fat man is lovely. That’s his bar next to the church, with the smoke rising from the chimneys.”

We tied up the boat at the small stone pier with four metal bollards that made an arm with the stone bridge, flooded fields and woods, another lake shining in the three eyes of its arches in the next distance. We walked to the bar, the village scattered round a single field, no two shops or houses together, all standing away from one another at angles and distances of irreconcilable disagreements.

“Probably half of them aren’t talking,” she laughed. “The fat man says he’d go mad with the boredom except for the boats.”

Because of the talk of his fatness I did not find the man all that fat: he had limp thinning hair, a pleasant red face, and he wore a striped butcher’s apron, the formality of any apron unusual in these villages. Two hatted men nodded drunkenly at the corner of the counter. The man knew her at once, seemed delighted to see her, saying only that she was early this year. He made up delicious ham sandwiches, offered us a choice of coffee or white wine, and refused money for either the coffee or sandwiches. While we ate he sat with us on a heavy ecclesiastical bench that must have come out of some old church. She had several questions to ask him about the river and the trade from the boats, and she wrote down most of his answers. When they’d finished she read back to him what he’d said. While they worked I tried to follow the whispers of the hatted pair at the counter who continually cast spying glances our way but all that came clear from the words and half-phrases was one hoarse whisper, “That’s the answer. Get up early. And you’ll win them all. You’ll bate the whole effin’ lot of them if you get up early.”

All day I’d been seeing a far more attractive person than the woman I had known up till then. For the first time I was seeing her work, and she shone in the distance its discipline made.

We had shared nothing but pleasure, and no two people’s pleasure can be the same at the same time for long, the screw turned tighter till it had to be forced on the wrong threads. If we’d shared some work instead of pleasure would it have made any difference? It didn’t matter, it was ending now, and ending on an older note, one withdrawing before becoming enmeshed in the other, intolerant of all chains but those forged in its own pain.