Collected Short Stories (16 page)

‘Wait now,' said the granda, and he put his hand under the pillow and produced his purse tied with string. He gave them a penny each. ‘And, Tommy, don't forget to tell Smith to come up and give me a decent shave.'

Mary shook her father's hand and he held on to it and looked up at her: ‘Night and day I'll pray you'll do the right thing.' She smiled wanly down at him.

‘Hurry up and get better,' Tom said as they walked away.

At the door the boys turned round and waved to him and he waved back, and farther at the foot of the ward the man with the earphones was sitting up and waving too.

The mother walked quickly, and passing visitors with baskets she kept a handkerchief to her face, and held her head down in case some of them might know her. But once outside the main gates she cut down a nearby street and only then did she speak, scolding John for mentioning the dog.

‘Will granda be home soon?' Tom said.

‘I don't know,' she said with obvious impatience.

‘Will he be home for Christmas?' he persisted.

‘I don't know. And what's more don't be giving granda's message to Smith. He's well enough shaved without sending a special man up for him.'

Entering her own street she saw a few neighbours gossiping as usual at their doors. ‘Where's your granda if anybody asks you?' she warned the boys.

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

‘Quick now,' she said, as she hurried up the street past the neighbours. At her own door she halted and though she held the key in her hand she pretended to search for it in her handbag. She'd just show the neighbours she wasn't a bit flustered about them. But out of the corner of her eye she saw that they had turned their backs to her. ‘Hm,' she said aloud, and thought how they'd be gossiping about her now. Tomorrow night she'd give them something else to talk about when she'd go for her walk with Frank and leave the boys for the first time in her life to mind the house. She opened the door and let the lads enter in front of her. After all they were big enough and old enough to stay alone in their bed for a few hours of a Sunday evening. She had them spoiled – there was no mistake about that. If they were anybody else's children in the street their mothers wouldn't give it a second thought.

She hung up her hat and coat in the hall and finding a smell of stale cigarette smoke coming from the parlour she went in and opened the window. On a chair she found a folded newspaper and her rolled-up
Woman's Notes
. She lifted the paper, and suddenly there came to her a sharp resentment against Frank: the way he refused the second cup of tea and the way he spread himself out before the fire. She paused; and then she saw herself mending and cooking for him, her boys with no education, and maybe her father dying a lonely death in the workhouse. ‘No,' she said and she squeezed up the newspaper in a ball and flung it on the cold grate. ‘No, I'll not go to meet him tomorrow night! I'll not stir hand or foot out of the house. I'll see what he'll do then!'

When Sunday morning came her determination not to meet Frank had wavered, and throughout the day she was afraid to face the question whether or not she should go for the walk with him. If she stopped for a minute and put the question to herself she felt she'd give in to his arrangement, but rather than come to a decision she plunged herself into her work and tried to put him from her mind. She let the boys go up to the Park to gather chestnuts. After all if the worst came to the worst and she did go it'd be better if her boys were tired so that they'd settle down to sleep before she went out.

In the early evening when they had come back from their walk, hungry and tired, each had three glossy chestnuts which they held out to show her, and as she prepared their tea she watched them boring a hole in the chestnuts with a nail and threading a string though the hole. They began to play: Tom held his chestnut dangling from the end of a string and John whacked at it with his chestnut, and time and again they had to call to her to settle a dispute. But when they had taken their tea and were ready for bed she took the chestnuts from them and put them on the mantelpiece where they would take no harm until morning. Then she dressed and got ready to go out to meet Frank.

She went up to their room and was pleased to see the moon shining through the bare window: ‘Go asleep,' she said, ‘I'll not be long till I'm back.'

‘Tell us a story,' John pleaded, ‘and it will make us sleepy.'

‘I'll tell you one tomorrow night if you're good. If there's any knocks at the door don't open it, do you hear?'

‘Are we going to get the dog?' John said.

‘Yes.'

‘When's granda coming home?' Tom added.

‘I don't know.'

‘Will he be home for Christmas?'

‘We'll see … Go asleep now.' And as she bent over to kiss them they smelt the warm thick perfume from her clothes.

They heard the front door close and her quick footsteps down the street. No neighbour had seen her, but once out of the street her steps lagged and she stopped under the light from a streetlamp and looked in her handbag to see if the key was safe. ‘I'm not doing right,' she said to herself. ‘It's not right to leave them by themselves.' She hesitated for a minute and then walked ahead. Frank shouldn't have asked her to do the like of this. Wasn't the comfort of the house and a fire better at this time of the year than rambling about the cold country roads. And what with his talk about the moon you'd think he was just a lad into long trousers. She should have laughed him out of that notion. Why must she be always playing a part and giving ear to his silly talk. Her father had said he's too settled in his ways – God knows he may be right, for there's something in what he said, now that she came to think about it.

She reached the road and just missed a tram, and while waiting for another a massive cloud trailed across the moon and scooped the light from the street. And then there came into her mind the sight of the boys' room, the moonlight slipping from it, leaving nothing only the slanting light from the street lamp and the shadow of the window-sash on the ceiling. A tram passed in the opposite direction and she saw the people within, warm and bright. They sky was black now, the moon entirely hidden. The night would be dark – what'd be the use of going? – and it might rain and they'd have to turn back in any case. No, she needn't go. A tram came forward and she stepped away from the tram-stop and into the darkness. The car sped on. She crossed the road and hurried towards home. Up the street she went, her heels hard and clicking on the pavement. She put the key in the latch, and as she did so she heard the boys pounding up the stairs.

‘Come back here!' she said. ‘Come back here!' Her voice was edged with anger. ‘Didn't you promise me not to get out of bed!' And she turned up the gaslight in the kitchen.

‘We came down for a drink.'

‘What's that in your hand?'

‘Chestnuts.'

‘I'll chestnut ye!' and in her anger she took the chestnuts and flung them into the fire.

They began to cry.

‘That's for crying for nothing!' she said as she slapped each of them on the back of the hand. ‘Now go back and not another word out of you this night. You've my heart broken.'

They ran from her, and she heard John sobbing as she hung up her hat and coat. She looked into the fire and tried to retrieve the chestnuts with the poker but the more she levered at them the more they disappeared into the red heart of the fire. She went to the foot of the stairs and called up to them: ‘Go asleep. I'll get you some chestnuts tomorrow.'

She went into the parlour and put a match to the already prepared fire. She sat on a chair. It was a quarter past eight. He'd be sure to come when she didn't turn up. She went to the door. The darkness in the sky was loosening; she held out her hands, palms upward, in the hope of feeling spits of rain. But as she stood there the moon slid out and swung its shadows on roof and window.

She came into the parlour again, lifted her
Woman's Notes
but couldn't read it. Her head throbbed. She did the right thing in turning back – after all you'd never know what tricks Tom and John would be up to. A knock came to the door, and as she was tidying her hair before opening it the knock came again.

‘I'm glad you came,' she said, when Frank stepped in the hall. ‘Take off your coat.'

‘I'm not for staying. I'm foundered standing at the depot and searching every damned tram that came and turned.'

She explained to him how she had gone out and turned home as she thought it would rain.

‘Rain!' he said. ‘Rain – and the sky as smooth as silk. And why the blazes didn't you come up and tell me what you thought. Couldn't we've come back here if it had rained,' and he sat on the edge of the table, swinging his hat in his hand.

‘I never thought of that, Frank.'

‘No, you think of nothing only yourself and them two clips upstairs.'

‘Don't bring poor Tom and John into it.'

‘What about poor Frank,' he said, and he got down from the table and buttoned his coat. ‘Well,' he said, ‘are you going to come for the walk or are you not?'

She sat on the arm-chair, rolling and unrolling her magazine. ‘Is it not too late?' she said meekly.

‘Are you coming? – Yes or no?' he said, and the sharpness of his voice frightened her.

She turned a page in the magazine and then another. ‘Do you hear me – are you coming now or are you not?' Upstairs the boys startled by his voice began to cry and call to her. She drew herself erect from the chair: ‘No, Frank,' she said slowly, ‘I'm not going tonight.'

‘All right,' he said, and he put on his hat, and opened the front door to let himself out. In the stillness she heard her children crying, and she went up and lay down on top of the bed, her arms across them.

‘What are you crying for? Go asleep.'

‘Is the man gone?' Tom said.

‘He is and he'll never be back,' and she combed her fingers through his hair.

There was a great stillness in the room and outside in the street where the moon was shining. She clenched and unclenched her hands to stifle the sob in her throat.

‘When are you getting us the dog?' John asked her eagerly.

‘Soon,' she said.

‘And will granda be home for Christmas?' Tom asked.

‘He'll be out before it, before it,' she said. ‘Not another word … Go asleep,' and in the darkness as the tears flowed from her eyes she made no effort to stop them.

When he taught me some years ago he was an old man near his retirement, and when he would pass through the streets of the little town on his way from school you would hear the women talking about him as they stood at their doors knitting or nursing their babies: ‘Poor man, he's done … Killing himself … Digging his own grave!' With my bag of books under my arm I could hear them, but I could never understand why they said he was digging his own grave, and when I would ask my mother she would scold me: ‘Take your dinner, like a good boy, and don't be listening to the hard backbiters of this town. Your father has always a good word for Master Craig – so that should be enough for you!'

‘But why do they say he's killing himself?'

‘Why do who say? Didn't I tell you to take your dinner and not be repeating what the idle gossips of this town are saying? Listen to me, son! Master Craig is a decent, good-living man – a kindly man that would go out of his way to do you a good turn. If Master Craig was in any other town he'd have got a place in the new school at the Square instead of being stuck for ever in that wee poky bit of a school at the edge of the town!'

It was true that the school was small – a two-roomed ramshackle of a place that lay at the edge of the town beyond the last street lamp. We all loved it. Around it grew a few trees, their trunks hacked with boys' names and pierced with nibs and rusty drawing-pins. In summer when the windows were open we could hear the leaves rubbing together and in winter see the raindrops hanging on the bare twigs.

It was a draughty place and the master was always complaining of the cold, and even in the early autumn he would wear his overcoat in the classroom and rub his hands together: ‘Boys, it's very cold today. Do you feel it cold?' And to please him we would answer: ‘Yes, sir, 'tis very cold.' He would continue to rub his hands and he would look out at the old trees casting their leaves or at the broken spout that flung its tail of rain against the window. He always kept his hands clean and three times a day he would wash them in a basin and wipe them on a roller towel affixed to the inside of his press. He had a hanger for his coat and a brush to brush away the chalk that accumulated on the collar in the course of the day.

In the wet windy month of November three buckets were placed on the top of the desks to catch the drips that plopped here and there from the ceiling, and those drops made different music according to the direction of the wind. When the buckets were filled the master always called me to empty them, and I would take them one at a time and swirl them into the drain at the street and stand for a minute gazing down at the wet roofs of the town or listen to the rain pecking at lunch-papers scattered about on the cinders.

‘What's it like outside?' he always asked when I came in with the empty buckets.

‘Sir, 'tis very bad.'

He would write sums on the board and tell me to keep an eye on the class and out to the porch he would go and stand in grim silence watching the rain nibbling at the puddles. Sometimes he would come in and I would see him sneak his hat from the press and disappear for five or ten minutes. We would fight then with rulers or paper-darts till our noise would disturb the mistress next door and in she would come and stand with her lips compressed, her fingers in her book. There was silence as she upbraided us: ‘Mean, low, good-for-nothing corner boys. Wait'll Mister Craig comes back and I'll let him know the angels he has. And I'll give him special news about you!' – and she shakes her book at me: ‘An altar boy on Sunday and a corner boy for the rest of the week!' We would let her barge away, the buckets plink-plonking as they filled up with rain and her own class beginning to hum, now that she was away from them.

When Mr Craig came back he would look at us and ask if we disturbed Miss Lagan. Our silence or our tossed hair always gave him the answer. He would correct the sums on the board, flivell the pages of a book with this thumb, and listen to us reading; and occasionally he would glance out of the side window at the river that flowed through the town and, above it, the bedraggled row of houses whose tumbling yard-walls sheered to the water's edge. ‘The loveliest county in Ireland is County Down!' he used to say, with a sweep of his arm to the river and the tin cans and the chalked walls of the houses.

During that December he was ill for two weeks and when he came back amongst us he was greatly failed. To keep out the draughts he nailed perforated plywood over the ventilators and stuffed blotting paper between the wide crevices at the jambs of the door. There were muddy marks of a ball on one of the windows and on one pane a long crack with fangs at the end of it: ‘So someone has drawn the River Ganges while I was away,' he said; and whenever he came to the geography of India he would refer to the Ganges delta by pointing to the cracks on the pane.

When our ration of coal for the fire was used up he would send me into the town with a bucket, a coat over my head to keep off the rain, and the money in my fist to buy a stone of coal. He always gave me a penny to buy sweets for myself, and I can always remember that he kept his money in a waistcoat pocket. Back again I would come with the coal and he would give me disused exercise books to light the fire. ‘Chief stoker!' he called me, and the name has stuck to me to this day.

It was at this time that the first snow had fallen, and someone by using empty potato bags had climbed over the glass-topped wall and stolen the school coal, and for some reason Mr Craig did not send me with the bucket to buy more. The floor was continually wet from our boots, and our breath frosted the windows. Whenever the door opened a cold draught would rush in and gulp down the breath-warmed air in the room. We would jig our feet and sit on our hands to warm them. Every half-hour Mr Craig would make us stand and while he lilted ‘O'Donnell Abu' we did a series of physical exercises which he had taught us, and in the excitement and the exaltation we forgot about our sponging boots and the snow that pelted against the windows. It was then that he did his lessons on Science; and we were delighted to see the bunsen burner attached to the gas bracket which hung like an inverted T from the middle of the ceiling. The snoring bunsen seemed to heat up the room and we all gathered round it, pressing in on top of it till he scattered us back to our places with the cane: ‘Sit down!' he would shout. ‘There's no call to stand. Everybody will be able to see!'

The cold spell remained, and over and over again he repeated one lesson in Science, which he called:
Evaporation and Condensation
.

‘I'll show you how to purify the dirtiest of water,' he had told us. ‘Even the filthiest water from the old river could be made fit for drinking purposes.' In a glass trough he had a dark brown liquid and when I got his back turned I dipped my finger in it and it tasted like treacle or burnt candy, and then I remembered about packets of brown sugar and tins of treacle I had seen in his press.

He placed some of the brown liquid in a glass retort and held it aloft to the class: ‘In the retort I have water which I have discoloured and made impure. In a few minutes I'll produce from it the clearest of spring water.' And his weary eyes twinkled and although we could see nothing funny in that, we smiled because he smiled.

The glass retort was set up with the flaming bunsen underneath, and as the liquid was boiling, the steam was trapped in a long-necked flask on which I sponged cold water. With our eyes we followed the bubbling mixture and the steam turning into drops and dripping rapidly into the flask. The air was filled with a biscuity smell, and the only sound was the snore of the bunsen. Outside was the cold air and the falling snow. Presently the master turned out the gas and held up the flask containing the clear water.

‘As pure as crystal!' he said, and we watched him pour some of it into a tumbler, hold it in his delicate fingers, and put it to his lips. With wonder we watched him drink it and then our eyes travelled to the dirty, cakey scum that had congealed on the glass sides of the retort. He pointed at this with his ruler: ‘The impurities are sifted out and the purest of pure water remains.' And for some reason he gave his roguish smile. He filled up the retort again with the dirty brown liquid and repeated the experiment until he had a large bottle filled with the purest of pure water.

The following day it was still snowing and very cold. The master filled up the retort with the clear liquid which he had stored in the bottle: ‘I'll boil this again to show you that there are no impurities left.' So once again we watched the water bubbling, turning to steam, and then to shining drops. Mr Craig filled up his tumbler: ‘As pure as crystal,' he said, and then the door opened and in walked the Inspector. He was muffled to the ears and snow covered his hat and his attaché case. We all stared at him – he was the old, kind man whom we had seen before. He glanced at the bare firegrate and at the closed windows with their sashes edged with snow. The water continued to bubble in the retort, giving out its pleasant smell.

The Inspector shook hands with Mr Craig and they talked and smiled together, the Inspector now and again looking towards the empty grate and shaking his head. He unrolled his scarf and flicked the snow from off his shoulders and from his attaché case. He sniffed the air, rubbed his frozen hands together, and took a black notebook from his case. The snow ploofed against the windows, the wind hummed under the door.

‘Now, boys,' Mr Craig continued, holding up the tumbler of water from which a thread of steam wriggled in the air. He talked to us in a strange voice and told us about the experiment as if we were seeing it for the first time. Then the Inspector took the warm tumbler and questioned us on our lesson. ‘It should be perfectly pure water,' he said, and he sipped at it. He tasted its flavour. He sipped at it again. He turned to Mr Craig. They whispered together, the Inspector looking towards the retort which was still bubbling and sending out its twirls of steam to be condensed to water of purest crystal. He laughed loudly, and we smiled when he again put the tumbler to his lips and this time drank it all. Then he asked us more questions and told us how, if we were shipwrecked, we could make pure water from the salt sea water.

Mr Craig turned off the bunsen and the Inspector spoke to him. The master filled up the Inspector's tumbler and poured out some for himself in a cup. Then the Inspector made jokes with us, listening to us singing and told us we were the best class in Ireland. Then he gave us a few sums to do in our books. He put his hands in his pockets and jingled his money, rubbed a little peep-hole in the breath-covered window and peered out at the loveliest sight in Ireland. He spoke to Mr Craig again and Mr Craig shook hands with him and they both laughed. The Inspector looked at his watch. Our class was let out early, and while I remained behind to tidy up the Science apparatus the master gave me an empty treacle tin to throw in the bin and told me to carry the Inspector's case up to the station. I remember that day well as I walked behind them through the snow, carrying the attaché case, and how loudly they talked and laughed as the snow whirled cold from the river. I remember how they crouched together to light their cigarettes, how match after match was thrown on the road, and how they walked off with the unlighted cigarettes still in their mouths. At the station Mr Craig took a penny from his waistcoat pocket and as he handed it to me it dropped on the snow. I lifted it and he told me I was the best boy in Ireland …

When I was coming from his funeral last week – God have mercy on him – I recalled that wintry day and the feel of the cold penny and how much more I know now about Mr Craig than I did then. On my way out of the town – I don't live there now – I passed the school and saw a patch of new slates on the roof and an ugly iron barrier near the door to keep the home-going children from rushing headlong on to the road. I knew if I had looked at the trees I'd have seen rusty drawing-pins stuck into their rough flesh. But I passed by. I heard there was a young teacher in the school now, with an array of coloured pencils in his breast pocket.