The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics) (67 page)

“
Tinkers
,” the driver said with contempt, and proceeded slowly, half off the narrow pavement, while the tinkers and the horse, hoofs clonking, surged about in the dark.

“
Jem, don’t sell that harse!
”

“’
M sellin’ the bugger!
”

“Daddy,” said the younger boy, who was sitting on Daddy’s lap with Kitty, his stuffed cat, on his lap. “What’s
wrong
?”

“Nothing’s wrong. The man who owns the horse—his friend doesn’t want him to sell it. That’s all.”

“Beebee’ll buy it,” said the older boy, who was sitting with Beebee, his teddy bear, on his lap, between Daddy and the driver, and gurgled at the thought of Beebee’s wealth.

“Give it a rest,” Daddy said.

Beebee, a millionaire (hotels, railroads, shipping, timber), had thrown his weight around on this trip—rather, had had it thrown around for him. When they checked into the hotel in New York, not a bad hotel, Daddy had been told, “Beebee usually stays at the Waldorf,” and when they found their cabins on the ship, “Beebee usually goes First Class,” and in the dining room on the first night, “Beebee usually drinks champagne”—and the wine steward, obviously a foreigner with ideas about American parents and children, had to be told no, that was not an order. Mama and Daddy were getting a little older, and had suffered a little more on this trip.

It was not their first one to Ireland. They had gone there for a year when the teenagers were small, again when the boys were smaller, and—the last time—the youngest child had been born there. Each time, they had rented a house in Ballydoo, and were hoping to do so again. And this time they wouldn’t have to settle for what was immediately available, would be able to look around for a while, because they would be staying on as sole tenants of the hotel after it closed for the winter and the proprietors, Major and Mrs Maroon, went to London. This arrangement, initiated by Irish friends, had been concluded by correspondence, and since the rent would be reasonable, and Mama and Daddy could not recall a small hotel facing the harbor, they were anxious to see it. When they did, they recalled it (
them
, rather, these Victorian terrace houses, externally two, now internally one), now the—though it, or they, looked eastward to the sea—Westward Ho Hotel.

Without too much ado, Mrs Maroon, a fiftyish outdoors type, received and registered them as guests, which they’d be for two weeks before coming into their tenancy, and after they were shown their rooms and given tea in the lounge (in the presence of two other guests, women such as one sees in lounges in the British Isles, one reading a book, one knitting), Major Maroon, portly in a double-breasted blue serge jacket with one of its brass buttons, a top one, missing, so that the five remaining looked like the Big Dipper, appeared and proposed billiards—to the boys.

“Oh, I don’t know about
that
,” Daddy said, rising, and, with visions of cues plowing up green pastures of cloth, accompanied the boys and Major Maroon, who smelled of stout, to what he called the Smoking Room and Library, which smelled of dog.

Billiards proved to be a form of skittles, the little table to be coin-operated. Major Maroon financed the first game, Daddy the second, after which he, having looked through the Library, a bookcase containing incunabula of the paperback revolution (Jeeves, Raffles) and Aer Lingus schedules for the previous summer but one (Take One), said it was past bedtime. “Ah, the lads’ll like it here,” said Major Maroon, and showed them where they’d find the cues.

Later that night, when the children were, it was to be hoped, asleep in their rooms, and Mama and Daddy were having a duty-free drink in theirs (no bar at the Westward Ho), Daddy mentioned the little coin-operated table.

Mama said severely, “It’s something we’ll have to watch.”

And Daddy resented this—that she’d not only taken his point and given it back to him as her own, which was one of her conversational tricks, but that she had turned it against him in the process. He was touchy on this subject, the subject of thrift. He had been profligate in the past, yes, though badly handicapped by lack of wherewithal to be profligate with. But he had learned plenty from Mama in the years since their marriage, and while he still had plenty to learn about thrift, he did think it was time she forgot the past and saw him, if not as her equal,
as he was today
. He hadn’t used shaving cream or lotion in years, and he hardly ever changed a blade. He always bought,
if
he bought, the economy size, and didn’t take the manufacturer’s word for it—had learned from Mama to weigh price against ounces. He saved string, wrapping paper, claret corks, and the parts of broken things that might come in handy, though many never did—pipestems, for instance. He kept the family in combs he found in the street and washed—how many fathers, not professional scavengers, did that? He had paid for only three deck chairs on the ship coming over. In Ireland, he always smoked pensioners’ plug. In short, he was probably America’s thriftiest living author. Yes, but—this was where he pooped out as a paterfamilias—he could not provide his loved ones with a lasting home. He had subjected them to too many moves, some presented as trips abroad, but still moves. And this one, at the other end, before they left, had been the worst to date.

The big old house they’d occupied as tenants had been sold, and the new owners, Mr and Mrs Stout, who planned to turn it into a barracks with bunk beds for college students, as they’d done with other big old houses in the neighborhood, had been underfoot constantly in the last thirty days—asking if it would be all right to have a few trees cut down; the front sidewalk taken up; the yard paved for parking; a notice posted at the college inviting students, possible occupants of the bunk beds, to drop around; and more, much more. It had been hard not to go along with all these requests, even though Mama and Daddy were free, legally, to reject them and were up to their ears in packing, for the Stouts were very pleasant people and were motivated, it seemed, by charity in their dirty work. “Golly, where will those poor kids park their cars?” Mama and Daddy had felt guilty about rejecting the paving project, even when the trees came crashing down. The Stouts had been too much.

Fifteen years earlier, when Mama and Daddy had begun their career as tenants and travelers, when they’d surrendered their house in the woods, the first and last place they’d owned, to the faceless men of the highway department for a service road, and a few years later, when they’d surrendered the beautiful old place, the oldest house in town, to the faceless men of the department of education for a parking lot (now occupied by a faceless building), there had been acrimony, arguments about the nature of progress, between usurpers and usurpees. This time, no. The Stouts, such pleasant people, had been too much. Mama and Daddy were still talking and, in the case of Mama, still dreaming about this move.

That night, at the Westward Ho, she suddenly said, “You know who
they
are?”

“Who
who
are?”

“The Maroons.”

“How d’ya mean? Who
are
they?”

“The Stouts.”

“Oh, now, I wouldn’t say that.”

The hotel closed for the winter on schedule, but for some reason the Maroons were still there a week later. Mama and Daddy then heard from the youngest child, to whom Mrs Maroon had confided, that London might not agree with Happy. (This was the
genius loci
of the Smoking Room and Library, a hairy terrier that looked like Ireland on the map when in motion, a very mixed-up dog, to judge by the way—ways, rather—it relieved itself.) So Mama and Daddy spoke up, and two days later the proprietors checked out.

Life in the hotel was then homier for the tenants in one respect than it had been in any house to date, in that they had a pet, but otherwise was much the same for them there as anywhere else they’d settled for a time. The children—the teenagers attending school in Dublin, the younger ones in Ballydoo—had their new friends (the older boy often entertaining his at billiards: it had occurred to Daddy but evidently not to Major Maroon that it would be a good idea to leave the tenants with the key to the little coin-operated table). Mama, of course, had her shopping, cooking (in a kitchen caked with grease), and her house- or hotel-keeping. Daddy had his “office,” a small room in the uninhabited part of the hotel, where he read the
Irish Times
and the
Daily Telegraph
, listened to the BBC, and did his writing.

He was between books, preparing to strike out in a genre new to him. What he had in mind was a light-hearted play, later to be a musical and a movie, about a family of campers, possibly Germans, who, on arriving in Ireland and wishing to do it right, would hire one of those colorful horse-drawn caravans but make the mistake of pulling into a bivouac of tinkers for the night. There would be singing, dancing, drinking, and fighting around the campfire, a nice clash of lifestyles (
these
, in the end, would be exchanged!) with plenty of love interest along the way—German boy, tinker girl, or vice versa, maybe several of each for more love interest. He couldn’t overdo it, since he was writing for the theatre, but there
were
problems. He knew nothing about tinkers or Germans or, they might be, French, and if he got them acting and talking right, would they, particularly the tinkers, be intelligible to an American audience? Would this audience—as it must—immediately grasp what the Germans, French, or, they might be, Japanese would not; namely, that the tinkers were not proper campers like themselves? He was afraid he’d have to do the whole damn thing in basic American first, then do a vivid translation, thoughts of which, since he was still in several minds as to the campers’ nationality (
Wunderbar! C’est magnifique! Banzai!
) turned his stomach slightly. He had once read that nobody ever wrote a best seller, however bad, without believing in it, but he doubted this, and even if it was true, he doubted that it was true of a smash-hit play, however bad. And what had struck him as a good idea for one (“This one will run and run”) continued to do so.

But he wasn’t getting on with it. Hoping to see or hear something he could use, perhaps another line of tinkerese to go with those he had (“A few coppers, sor,” and, “I’ll pray for you, m’lord”), he would take the train into Dublin, visit the junky auction rooms on the Quays, the secondhand bookshops, just wander around—too bad, what was happening to Dublin’s fair city—and come home tired, with a few small purchases, always pastry from Bewley’s, cherry buns, shortbread, barmbrack (at Halloween), or fruitcake (as Christmas approached).

This they’d have that evening in the lounge, some with tea, some with cocoa and wearing their pajamas—a nice family scene, yes, but one of those present was an impostor, Daddy would think, considering his responsibilities and how he’d shot the day. On some evenings, while Mama was reading aloud from Captain Marryat, one of the few clothbound authors in the Library, Daddy would have a new chapter from Beebee’s family history to read, which was then in the writing and remarkable in one respect: the Beebee of the period (eighteenth century) had had a wife, children, and business associates with names like Kitty, Pussy, Toydy, Lion, Bear, Dragon, and Owl, whose present-day descendants were in precisely the same relationship to the present-day Beebee!

Stability, Daddy would think.

On some evenings, when the younger children were in bed and he was saying good night to them (another nice family scene) he would hear something to his credit, that the little girl liked living so close to the sea, the boys so close to the trains—sea and trains thanks to him, he’d think then, though the railway was now owned by Beebee, he understood. He was wary of Beebee. The millionaire had such a poor opinion of the Westward Ho that he wouldn’t buy it, he said—when Beebee spoke, it was through the older boy, dryly, rather like Mama’s father—but Beebee wasn’t in such good shape himself. He was worn smooth in places, and had a new nose (thanks to Mama) of different material, which he was sensitive about, withdrawing from the conversation if it was mentioned, as he did when frivolous remarks were made about his extreme wealth. “Well, good night, Millions,” Daddy would say—and might be told that Beebee (though present) was somewhere in the Indian Ocean, aboard
Butterscotch
, his yacht, on a trip around the world, and on his return would be buying new motorbikes for Lion and Bear, who, being teenagers, had crashed theirs. “On the yacht?” “They’re not with Beebee now. They radioed him about it.” “What’d Beebee say?” “‘Crazy kids. Just have to buy ’em new ones.’” The older boy would gurgle, and Daddy would shake his head in wonder at Beebee’s magnanimity. “Lion and Bear—they’re back at the ranch?” “Um.” “That’s the one in Colorado?” “Partly.” “It’s a big ranch.” “Um.”

Daddy would then retire to the same room he and Mama had occupied on the first night, where they now had two relatively easy chairs and special lighting—they now sat by two brass table lamps that he’d picked up at an auction, instead of under the traditional bulb suspended from the ceiling—and there, with the radio and the electric fire playing between them, with their reading matter and drinks, they’d spend the long evening.

By the middle of December, they were talking more about their problem. They had looked at a couple of houses that were too small, and one just not what they’d come to Ireland to live in (a thirties-period “villa” of poured concrete spattered with gravel—the agent had called it “pebbledash”), and one very nice place, “small Georgian,” with a saint’s well on the grounds, but unfurnished and rather remote
and
, it then came out, not for rent, the agent having presumed that they, as Americans, might buy it. That was all they’d done about their problem by the middle of December.

They weren’t worried yet. They had the hotel, if need be, through January, and felt secure there, so secure that on some evenings they were inclined—at least Daddy was—to feel sorry for their homeowning friends in America. He wouldn’t, he’d tell Mama, want to be Joe out there in the country, with the highway, perhaps, to be rerouted through his living room; or Fred by the river, with the threat of floods every spring (the American Forces Network, Europe, reporting six-foot drifts in the Midwest); or Dick in town, with that big frame house to paint every five years and those big old trees that, probably now heavy with snow and ice, might
not
fall away from the house if they fell.