Collected Short Stories (14 page)

‘He'd damn his soul over the head of it,' Mary shouted.

I don't now what made me do it, but I remember asking Jimmy to turn out his pockets. Ah, God forgive me for asking him to do the like of that! Sure I should have known he hadn't it after he swore he hadn't.

He got up from that side of the table near the looking-glass and he pushed in his chair slowly – I'll never forget that! He went upstairs to his room and after five or six minutes of rummaging and rumbling he came down the stairs and banged the front door on his way out.

‘Under God where is he away to?' I said.

‘He's away to spend it,' Mary jeered.

I went upstairs to his room and I saw nothing behind the back of the door only a bare coat-hanger, and on my way downstairs I noticed his heavy overcoat was gone from the rack in the hall.

‘He's left us,' I said.

‘He'd be good riddance if he did,' Mary said.

‘He'll come back,' I said, ‘Jimmy's not the kind of boy that'd run away from home.'

Little did I know then, and it fifteen years ago, that he wouldn't come back. Yes, indeed, fifteen long and lonesome years.

She rocked herself gently on the chair and began to cry. Then she dried her eyes in her apron and looked slowly round the cheerless kitchen. There was no light in it except the dull glow of the fire, and in the window space a blue sky was sprinkled with stars.

She shuddered and as she leaned forward to lever up the coal in the grate there was a loud knock at the door that startled her. She rested the poker on the hob and waited. The knock came again. She hoisted herself from the chair, and as she walked down the hallway she heard the impatient shuffle of feet outside. She opened the door slowly and a few boys shouted breathlessly at her: ‘Hurry up, Missus, we're going to light the bonfire now.'

She hesitated for a moment in the hallway, and then pulling a shawl over her shoulders she made her way down to the middle of the street. The street lamps were in darkness and there was nothing but the tapping of feet, the mumble of unseen crowds, and a warm smell of paraffin. Boys, strangely dressed and their faces painted, were screaming like Indians and applying torches of paper to the heap of stuff they had collected. Then in a few minutes there came a hurl and burl of flame, a crackling of sticks, and a cheer from the crowd that drowned the noises of the fire. The flames lit up the faces and hands of the crowd and tilted their shadows on the red-brick houses. Flames like flowing water sped over the old sofa, a bicycle tyre was a ring of flame, leafy branches of trees hissed in the heat, and a rubber boot entangled among the twigs was furred with flame and dripped drops of fire from its writhing toe.

The old woman moved out from the heat with its sickening smell of paraffin, and stood in the cooler shadows cast by the outer ring of swaying onlookers. No one noticed her. They began to sing ‘Kevin Barry', and when the singing came to an end a loud cheer volleyed above the houses, squibs banged in the fire, and a rocket gushed into the sky trailing behind it an arc of bright blue stars. The noise frightened the old woman and she hurried away from it. Near her home she looked back and saw the smoke lighted up by the fire and heard an accordion playing an Irish reel. She didn't stop to listen to it. She went into the house and halting in the hallway she clasped her hands and cried: ‘Mother of God, are you listening to me? Wherever Jimmy is this night tell him that I believe him – tell him that from me!'

Charley was six at the time, or maybe seven. His Mammie was beside him in a white apron, her hands on her lap doing nothing. His Daddy lay stretched in sleep on the sofa. Sunday evening was always quiet. The fire-glow filled the room. It glowed redly on Charley's knees and face, glinted in the fender, and threw shadows on the ceiling and the red-tiled floor. It was nice to be sitting alone with your Daddy and Mammie, feeling the heat on your knees, and listening to the kettle singing, and ashes falling in the grate. In the fire you could see animals and sometimes men and sometimes ships, and when your eyes got sticky you could just sit and look at nothing.

Suddenly the milkman knocked and Charley jumped. His Mammie went into the scullery for the white jug. His Daddy wakened and took out his big watch in the fire-glow.

‘Boys-o-boys!' he said. ‘Is it that time?'

He got up and was on his feet when Mammie came back and placed the jug on the clean table. Daddy was very tall standing on the floor, with the fire winking on his watch-chain and his face all red and rosy.

‘Do you think you'll go this evening?' Mammie said.

‘Indeed I will,' said Daddy.

‘Maybe you'd take Charley with you, he never gets anywhere.'

So Charley was going out with his Daddy, out at night when the lamps would be lit and all other wee boys in bed.

His mother put on his little round hat with the elastic that nipped him under the chin, and when he was going out the front door she stopped and kissed him.

‘Say a prayer for your Mammie who has to stay at home,' she said.

And now they were walking down the street. He felt big to be out so late with the sky dark and the lamps lit. The snow had fallen. It wasn't deep snow, but it covered the ground, and lines of it lay on the black garden railings, and on the arms of the lamp-posts. The milkman's cart was near a lamp and its brass fittings shone and steam came from the horse's nose. The milkman said to his Daddy, ‘A cold evening that,' and the steam came from his mouth, too. Then his cans rattled. The cart moved on in front and the wheels began to unwind black ribbons on the snow.

They walked out of the street on to the road, on to the road where the trams ran. Charley put his hand in his Daddy's pocket and it was lovely and warm. Up in the sky it was black, as black as ink, and far away was the moon which Mammie called God's lamp, and stars were round it like little candle lights.

A tram passed, groaning up the hill where they were walking. Sparks, green ones and red ones and blue ones, crackled from the trolley, but the tram went on and slithered out of sight. And now there was nothing on the road only the snow and the black lines where the trams ran. Up above were the telephone wires covered with crumbs of snow, but the trolley wires were all dark. Presently they lit up with gold light and soon a black motor-car came slushing down the hill, covered with snow. Then it was very quiet.

Other people, big people all in black, were out and most of them were walking in the same direction as Charley and his Daddy. They passed shops, the sweetshop with Mrs Dempsey standing at the door.

‘Good-night, Mister Conor,' she said. His Daddy raised his hat, the hard hat that he wore on Sundays.

‘Do you know Missus Dempsey, Daddy?'

‘I do, son.'

‘I know her; that's where I buy when I've pennies.' But his Daddy looked in front with the steam coming out of his mouth.

They passed policemen standing in doorways, stamping their feet, the policemen who chased you for playing football in the streets. But Charley wasn't afraid now, he was walking with his hand clutched tightly in his Daddy's – inside the big warm pocket.

After a while they came to the chapel. All the people seemed to be going to the chapel. It was dark outside, but a man stood in a lighted porch holding a wooden plate, and on the plate Charley's father put pennies.

Inside it was warm and bright. You could smell the heat as you walked up the aisle. His Daddy's boots squeaked and that was a sign they weren't paid for. They went into a seat up near the altar and his father knelt down with a white handkerchief spread under his knees. Charley sat with his legs swinging to and fro. At the sides were windows, and when tram-cars passed you could see lightning and blue diamonds and red diamonds.

Someone came in at the end of their seat and Charley and his Daddy had to move up. It wasn't nice for people to move you into a cold place, when you had the seat warmed.

A priest came out. Charley could answer the prayers like the rest and he felt very big. After a long time they stood up to sing and Charley turned round to look at the organ-man away high up at the back of the Church. The organ looked like big, hot-pipes. At the end of the hymn he said:

‘Are we going home now, Daddy?'

‘S-s-sh,' his Daddy said softly.

‘Well, when are we going home?'

His Daddy didn't answer. Charley lifted the little round hat and began crackling the elastic and putting it in his mouth. His Daddy told him to sit at peace.

A priest came into the pulpit. He talked about lightning, and he said that the sun would be dark, and that the stars would fall from Heaven. He talked for a long, long time, but Charley fell asleep. After a while his father caught him by the arm and with difficulty he opened his eyes. A big boy with a long taper was lighting rows of candles and Charley began to count them. One candle didn't light at first, and he had to come back and touch it a few times. Soon the altar was all lit up and here and there were bunches of flowers. Dim lights shone from the brass bell that stood on the altar steps like a big gold mushroom.

The organ began playing softly, very softly, and Charley turned to see what was wrong. A woman in the seat behind him was praying, her lips moving in a low whistle. He watched the moving lips and then they stopped suddenly. The woman was making a face at him and he turned and sat closer to his Daddy.

He filled his mind with everything, everything to tell his big brothers and sisters. There were boys with fat brass candlesticks and a priest with a golden cloak that sparkled with lights. God was on the altar, too, behind a little glass window with gold spikes all around it. A boy was shaking a silver thing like a lamp and smoke came out of it, nice-smelling smoke, and if you shut your eyes it made a noise like nails in a tin.

The organ began to growl and people to sing. Charley put his fingers to the flaps of his ears. You could hear the noise very small, then it would get big like thunder, and if you moved your fingers in and out the noise would go ziz-zaz and a-ah-aha-aaah! But it soon stopped. People bowed their heads and Daddy bowed his head too. Charley covered his eyes with his hands, but looked through his fingers to see what was going on. Someone coughed far, far away. Someone else coughed. Then it became so still you could hear your heart thumping.

The bell on the altar rang once. His Daddy whispered something to himself, and when the bell rang again Charley heard him say, ‘My Lord and my God!' He thought of his Mammie and he told God to love his Mammie who had to stay at home. He closed his eyes and he saw her in a snowy apron, the white jug on the table and he wondered if she would have cake for his tea, cake with currants in it.

And now they were going home, out into the cold air, and on to the road where the trams ran.

His big brothers and sisters were in when he got home. They were taking tea and there was cake with currants in it on the table. They asked him questions, but laughed at his answers, so he just sat and ate his cake. But his Mammie was good and he told her that when the bell rang Daddy said, ‘My Lord and my God!' But his Daddy didn't laugh at this. He just said, ‘That child is dying with sleep; he should be in bed.'

So his Mammie brought him to bed, up to the bedroom where the red-lamp was, the red-lamp that burned like a tulip's head before a picture of Holy God. He knelt and said his prayers on the cold, oilcloth floor. In bed it was cold, too, colder than the seat in the chapel. But it soon got warm; and he thought of the organ in his ears … the candle that wouldn't light … the tram that went up the hill with lights crackling from the trolley … and stars falling … falling …

She was seated at the parlour window in a blue frock, a gilt bangle on her wrist, and a copy of
Woman's Notes
open on her lap. Her attention was not given to the book, for she was watching the people passing in the street and the last of the autumn sun mellowing the small red-bricked houses opposite. Behind her in the hall her two little boys were playing and to their play she was giving no ear. Everyone that passed the window would glance at the fire blazing in the grate and then abruptly look away when they caught sight of the blue frock. She knew well what they'd be thinking. There she is, they would say, on the look-out for another husband and her other man not two years in his grave. And little cause she has to be marrying again, they'd add, and she with two nice little boys to keep her company and her widow's pension to keep her comfortable; and hadn't she her own father a while back with her, drawing his old-age pension and helping to keep the house respectable. But would they add that he smoked all his pension-money in his pipe? They would not. After all what did they really know about the inside of any house – nothing; nothing, except what their own evil natures would tell them.

Since she first came into the street she had made sure the neighbours wouldn't know much of her business. She had kept herself to herself, gave harm or hindrance to no one, and didn't join in the general borrowings of tea and sugar, and the running in and out of one another's houses. She had looked after her husband when he was alive, dressed her two boys neatly for school, saw them off in the morning, and instead of having a gossip with her next-door neighbour she would close the door, attend to her house and keep it clean in spite of the smuts from the factory chimneys that whorled down upon the street both day and night. But keeping her-self to herself didn't please the neighbours. Too high in her ways she was. And hadn't they often shouted things at her little boys: ‘Run home now and tell that to your ladylike mother – her that was never seen with a thumb-mark of black-lead at the side of her nose. Her with her grand airs and graces and her face powdered and painted like a clown's in a circus – trying to look twenty and she on the wrong side of forty.' It wasn't once or twice they shouted that at her two innocent children. But did they ever remember the priest at the mission who began his sermon: ‘Is it wrong for a woman to paint her face?' and then took a handkerchief leisurely from his sleeve, blew his nose, and put the handkerchief back again. ‘No,' he answered, ‘No, it is not wrong as long as she does it to attract a husband or to keep the one she has got.' Very few of them, she was sure, remembered that. And this evening if Frank asked her would she marry again she would say yes – that'd let the neighbours see what she thought of them! She gave a laugh, half of joy and half of scorn, and
Woman's Notes
fell onto the oilclothed floor.

As she stooped to pick it up, she paused, listening to her two boys at play. She gripped the book and drew near to the open parlour door that led into the hall.

‘You be granda now for awhile,' John was saying to Tom.

‘Lend me the stick then,' Tom answered.

‘No, no. Pretend you're him up in the workhouse – you're best at that. Lie down on the mat like you done before.'

Tom stretched out on the mat and pillowed his head on his arms and began to imitate his granda: ‘'Tis terrible to be shut up within four black walls and you without a friend in the world. 'Tis terrible that you work hard all your life and this is the end of it. Me that once wrought in the country and knew the name of every bush and every tree. 'Tis terrible to be old and be ordered away from your bit of fire, and now I am without spoon or cup to call my own. And I have to smoke at set hours and have no little boys to chat with me of an evening.'

‘O, Tom, if granda heard you he'd laugh his eyes out, so he would. Go on and give us more, Tom. Pretend you're talking to the man in the next bed. Begin: “Are you asleep there, Billdoe?” '

But Tom at that moment saw his mother standing her full height in the doorway, and he sat up on the mat and stared at her with a guilty, frightened look.

‘Tom! John!' she said, the words husky in her throat. Her breast heaved and she turned the bangle on her wrist. ‘Go inside to the kitchen and I'll speak to you in a minute.' There was the sound of a lagging step in the street outside, and her heart pounded in her ears, but the step passed on. She turned into the parlour, and in the mirror above the mantlepiece looked at her face and dabbed away the tears that had risen to her eyes. She powdered her face, and rolling the magazine in her hand went into the boys, now sitting in the dusk of the kitchen.

Her voice was cold: ‘Where did I tell you your granda was. Where?' she said to Tom. For a moment he didn't answer. She caught him by the arm: ‘Where have you to say your granda is? Do you hear me, Tom? Answer me – I'm not going to beat you.'

‘He's away to the country for the good of his health,' Tom said.

‘Say it again so that you'll not forget it. And you say it with him, John.'

‘He's away to the country for the good of his health,' they said together.

‘Don't let me ever hear you say anything else about him. If your granda was back at this fireside it wouldn't answer the two of you. It's not boots you'd have on your feet – you'd be running about barefoot like some of the other good-for-nothings in this locality.' She rolled and unrolled the magazine as she spoke, and then some look in the younger's face reproached her and she put her arm round his shoulder and stroked his head: ‘Go on to bed now like good little boys. You've got your tea,' and she stood and watched them climb the stairs.

‘Shout down when you're in,' she said. ‘And don't forget to say your prayers.'

She went into the parlour again and took her seat at the window. The sun had set, and above the roof-tops a greenish light was stretched across the sky. The lamplighter was passing up the street with his yellow pole over his shoulder, and a crowd of little girls scampered in front of him and held out their pinafores as they stood under a lamp awaiting the first pale blossom of light. Then as the pole was manoeuvred into the lamphead, the mantle lit with a plop, and they all shouted: ‘Silver and gold I hold in my lap,' and ran ahead to the next lamp.

They should all be in bed, she thought, running mad about the streets to this time of night, and nobody to care about them whether they're hungry or whether they're dirty. She saw faces in the kitchen-windows opposite and the curtains pulled to the side to let in the last light of the day. She saw her own firelight reflected in the cold windowpane and the first stars appearing in the sky. The street was quiet now, and then a woman appeared in a doorway and called harshly: ‘Cissie, Jackie, where the hell are ye to this time o' night. Wait'll I lay my hands on ye!' There was a scurry of feet and a clash of doors. Darkness fell, and through the silence there was the rumble of machinery from the factory at the head of the street, a rumble that nobody noticed for it had become part and parcel of their lives as much as the ticking of a clock. But someday, please God, she'd get away from all this roughness, away to the fringes of the city where she'd have a house with an extra room, and, maybe, take her father out of the workhouse and bring him home again where he could sun himself in a patch of garden at the back and maybe see the whins in bloom on the mountain and hear the larks singing. ‘O God,' she said aloud, ‘if one had to live one's life again!' Wasn't she always at Peter, when he was alive, to move away from this street and go to a place where the boys could get a corner of a field to kick football. But you couldn't move him! ‘The rent is cheap here,' he always said. ‘The rent is cheap and what we save we'll put past for their education.' It wasn't as if she hadn't thought about their education herself and how it would break her heart to see them astride a bicycle when they leave school and the name of some grocer painted in white on a big plate between the bars.

She sighed, rolled and unrolled the magazine on her lap, and glanced at the table set for two and the firelight glinting on the cups.

‘We're in bed now, mother,' Tom shouted from the room above the parlour.

She went up to them and sat on the bed and ran her fingers through their hair. ‘I'll tell you a secret and you mustn't breathe it to anyone,' she whispered. ‘It's a secret, mind you, and you mustn't mention it to a living soul. Some day you'll have your granda back. And you'll have fields to play in and a real ball to kick on the grass, and never again will you be kicking a rag-ball between the lampposts in the street and have the neighbours complaining about you breaking their windows and tormenting their babies out of their sleep. It'll be a great day for us the day we bring your granda back.'

‘And will it come soon?' they asked, and laughed with nervous expectancy.

‘It'll come soon, please God, and you'll see the fine house we'll have with three bedrooms. Not like this one with only two, and maybe we'll afford one with a bath in it. But, whatever comes, there'll be a bit of grass at the back where you can play ball.'

‘Can we get a dog?' John asked.

‘I'll get you a dog. And maybe you'll have a new father that will make things for you and make a box for your dog.'

‘Where'll the house be?'

‘It'll not be far away.'

‘How far?'

‘It's a secret. Go asleep now, and when I bring you to see your granda tomorrow you mustn't tell him about it. It's to be a surprise for him.'

‘Is the man coming tonight again?' Tom asked excitedly.

‘Sh, sh,' she said.

She pushed the clothes around them and stood at the window looking down at the lamp-lighted street and its sweepings lying in little heaps awaiting the Corporation men to shovel them into their shambling cart. Her hand toyed with the tassel of the blind and it tocked against the pane.

‘Don't pull down the blind,' Tom said.

‘Close your eyes. If I hear another word out of you I'll come up and pull it down.' Her hand rested on her cheek. The lamplight shone through the window and stretched a shadow of the sash on the ceiling. There was a shuffling step at the front door and presently a knock. It'll be Frank, she thought. She'd let him knock again so that a neighbour or two might get a look at him – it'd give them something more to talk about.

She went down and opened the door, helped him off with his overcoat and hung it on the rack in the hall. He smoothed his thick grey hair with his hand and took the newspaper out of his pocket.

‘How are you this evening, Mary?' he said, putting his arm round her waist as they stepped into the parlour.

She threw back her head and smiled up at him: ‘The same as usual, Frank. The woman at the window they'll be calling me.'

‘Who'll be calling you the woman at the window?' he asked.

‘The neighbours,' she said, lighting the gas with a piece of twisted paper.

‘The neighbours be damned. They'd find worse fault if you sat outside on the window-sill.'

‘I'm glad you think of them that way,' she said. ‘Poor Peter, God rest him, always told me it was my imagination when I used to tell him how the neighbours were spying at me. He had always excuses for them because he was foreman in their factory, and was, in many ways, like one of themselves.'

‘You wouldn't like to spend all your days here?' he put in.

‘I would not indeed. It'd be lovely to be in a place where you'd get fresh air and see flowers and trees growing,' and she laughed. ‘That reminds me of a story Peter used to tell of a poor woman used to live next door to the factory and the only smell she got every day and every night was the oily smell from the wired factory-windows. And then one day that poor woman went to the country to spend a week and when she wakened in the morning she used to sniff and sniff and wonder what the smell was until some one told her it was fresh air.'

‘God above – that's a good one. Fresh air, she smelt. That poor woman wasn't about much in her life, I'd say,' and he sat down in an arm-chair at the fire. ‘The old man will be fairly filling his lungs with fresh air these fine days, I'm thinking. Any word from him?'

‘He's doing bravely,' she said.

‘He's a lucky man to have a place to go to in the country.'

‘All the same I miss him out of the house, Frank.'

‘The only thing I missed was the smell of his oul' pipe as I came in the door. He was too quiet – he hadn't a word to throw to a dog.'

‘Ah, Frank, if you knew him better you'd get on well together. He's an interesting man, and I often heard people say he knew more about country customs than you'd get in any book.'

On the floor above them there was the pound of running feet and she stood, listening.

‘One of them out of bed,' she smiled, and when she went up the stairs he could hear her scolding and hooshing them.

‘It was Tom,' she said when she came into the parlour again. ‘He was looking out of the window.'

‘They have you tormented, Mary,' he said, opening out his newspaper. ‘Why don't you pack them off to the country to their granda. The old man was fond of them and it'd do them a world of good to get to the country for awhile. There's nothing to beat the country for growing lads.'

‘I'd be lonely without them,' she said, standing with one hand resting on the table and looking at him holding wide the wings of the paper.

‘Lonely! Sure you'll have me.'

She smiled and waited for him to add something more but he only turned back the wings of the paper, the stir of air shaking the flames in the fire.

‘I'll wet the tea,' she said, ‘I'll not be a tick.'

When they were seated at the table and she was helping him to some salad there was the rumble of a cart outside, and then another pad of feet overhead and a laugh from the two boys.