My Oedipus Complex (23 page)

‘If you were fourteen at the time,' said Father Cassidy, setting aside the obvious invitation to discuss the power of first love, ‘you're only nineteen now.'

‘That's all.'

‘And do you know,' he went on broodingly, ‘that unless you can break yourself of this terrible vice once for all it'll go on like that till you're fifty?'

‘I suppose so,' she said doubtfully, but he saw that she didn't suppose anything of the kind.

‘You suppose so!' he snorted angrily. ‘I'm telling you so. And what's more,' he went on, speaking with all the earnestness at his command, ‘it won't be just one man but dozens of men, and it won't be decent men but whatever low-class pups you can find who'll take advantage of you – the same horrible, mortal sin, week in week out till you're an old woman.'

‘Ah, still, I don't know,' she said eagerly, hunching her shoulders ingratiatingly, ‘I think people do it as much from curiosity as anything else.'

‘Curiosity?' he repeated in bewilderment.

‘Ah, you know what I mean,' she said with a touch of impatience. ‘People make such a mystery of it!'

‘And what do you think they should do?' he asked ironically. ‘Publish it in the papers?'

‘Well, God knows, 'twould be better than the way some of them go on,' she said in a rush. ‘Take my sister, Kate, for instance. I admit she's a couple of years older than me and she brought me up and all the rest of it, but in spite of that we were always good friends. She showed me her love letters and I showed her mine. I mean, we discussed things as equals, but ever since that girl got married you'd hardly recognize her. She talks to no one only other married women, and they get in a huddle in a corner and whisper, whisper, whisper, and the moment you come into the room they begin to talk about the weather, exactly as if you were a blooming kid! I mean you can't help feeling 'tis something extraordinary.'

‘Don't you try and tell me anything about immorality,' said Father Cassidy angrily. ‘I know all about it already. It may begin as curiosity but it ends as debauchery. There's no vice you could think of that gets a grip on you quicker and degrades you worse, and don't you make any mistake about it, young woman! Did this man say anything about marrying you?'

‘I don't think so,' she replied thoughtfully, ‘but of course that doesn't mean anything. He's an airy, light-hearted sort of fellow and it mightn't occur to him.'

‘I never supposed it would,' said Father Cassidy grimly. ‘Is he in a position to marry?'

‘I suppose he must be since he wanted to marry Kate,' she replied with fading interest.

‘And is your father the sort of man that can be trusted to talk to him?'

‘Daddy?' she exclaimed aghast. ‘But I don't want Daddy brought into it.'

‘What you want, young woman,' said Father Cassidy with sudden exasperation, ‘is beside the point. Are you prepared to talk to this man yourself?'

‘I suppose so,' she said with a wondering smile. ‘But about what?'

‘About what?' repeated the priest angrily. ‘About the little matter he so conveniently overlooked, of course.'

‘You mean ask him to marry me?' she cried incredulously. ‘But I don't want to marry him.'

Father Cassidy paused for a moment and looked at her anxiously through the grille. It was growing dark inside the church, and for one horrible moment he had the feeling that somebody was playing an elaborate and most tasteless joke on him.

‘Do you mind telling me,' he inquired politely, ‘am I mad or are you?'

‘But I mean it, father,' she said eagerly. ‘It's all over and done with now. It's something I used to dream about, and it was grand, but you can't do a thing like that a second time.'

‘You can't what?' he asked sternly.

‘I mean, I suppose you can, really,' she said, waving her piously joined hands at him as if she were handcuffed, ‘but you can't get back the magic of it. Terry is light-hearted and good-natured, but I couldn't live with him. He's completely irresponsible.'

‘And what do you think you are?' cried Father Cassidy, at the end of his patience. ‘Have you thought of all the dangers you're running, girl? If you have a child who'll give you work? If you have to leave this country to earn a living what's going to become of you? I tell you it's your bounden duty to marry this man if he can be got to marry you – which, let me tell you,' he added with a toss of his great head, ‘I very much doubt.'

‘To tell you the truth I doubt it myself,' she replied with a shrug that fully expressed her feelings about Terry and nearly drove Father Cassidy insane. He looked at her for a moment or two and then an incredible idea began to dawn on his bothered old brain. He sighed and covered his face with his hand.

‘Tell me,' he asked in a far-away voice, ‘when did this take place?'

‘Last night, father,' she said gently, almost as if she were glad to see him come to his senses again.

‘My God,' he thought despairingly, ‘I was right!'

‘In town, was it?' he went on.

‘Yes, father. We met on the train coming down.'

‘And where is he now?'

‘He went home this morning, father.'

‘Why didn't you do the same?'

‘I don't know, father,' she replied doubtfully as though the question had now only struck herself for the first time.

‘Why didn't you go home this morning?' he repeated angrily. ‘What were you doing round town all day?'

‘I suppose I was walking,' she replied uncertainly.

‘And of course you didn't tell anyone?'

‘I hadn't anyone to tell,' she said plaintively. ‘Anyway,' she added with a shrug, ‘it's not the sort of thing you can tell people.'

‘No, of course,' said Father Cassidy. ‘Only a priest,' he added grimly to himself. He saw now how he had been taken in. This little trollop, wandering about town in a daze of bliss, had to tell someone her secret, and he, a good-natured old fool of sixty, had allowed her to use him as a confidant. A philosopher of sixty letting Eve, aged nineteen, tell him all about the apple! He could never live it down.

Then the fighting blood of the Cassidys began to warm in him. Oh, couldn't he, though? He had never tasted the apple himself, but he knew a few things about apples in general and that apple in particular that little Miss Eve wouldn't learn in a whole lifetime of apple-eating. Theory might have its drawbacks but there were times when it was better than practice. ‘All right, my lass,' he thought grimly, ‘we'll see which of us knows most!'

In a casual tone he began to ask her questions. They were rather intimate questions, such as a doctor or priest may ask, and, feeling broadminded and worldly-wise in her new experience, she answered courageously and straightforwardly, trying to suppress all signs of her embarrassment. It emerged only once or twice, in a brief pause before she replied. He stole a furtive look at her to see how she was taking it, and once more he couldn't withhold his admiration. But she couldn't keep it up. First she grew uncomfortable and then alarmed, frowning and shaking herself in her clothes as if something were biting her. He grew graver and more personal. She didn't see his purpose; she only saw that he was stripping off
veil after veil of romance, leaving her with nothing but a cold, sordid, cynical adventure like a bit of greasy meat on a plate.

‘And what did he do next?' he asked.

‘Ah,' she said in disgust, ‘I didn't notice.'

‘You didn't notice!' he repeated ironically.

‘But does it make any difference?' she burst out despairingly, trying to pull the few shreds of illusion she had left more tightly about her.

‘I presume you thought so when you came to confess it,' he replied sternly.

‘But you're making it sound so beastly!' she wailed.

‘And wasn't it?' he whispered, bending closer, lips pursed and brows raised. He had her now, he knew.

‘Ah, it wasn't, father,' she said earnestly. ‘Honest to God it wasn't. At least at the time I didn't think it was.'

‘No,' he said grimly, ‘you thought it was a nice little story to run and tell your sister. You won't be in such a hurry to tell her now. Say an Act of Contrition.'

She said it.

‘And for your penance say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys.'

He knew that was hitting below the belt, but he couldn't resist the parting shot of a penance such as he might have given a child. He knew it would rankle in that fanciful little head of hers when all his other warnings were forgotten. Then he drew the shutter and didn't open the farther one. There was a noisy woman behind, groaning in an excess of contrition. The mere volume of sound told him it was drink. He felt he needed a breath of fresh air.

He went down the aisle creakily on his heavy policeman's-feet and in the dusk walked up and down the path before the presbytery, head bowed, hands behind his back. He saw the girl come out and descend the steps under the massive fluted columns of the portico, a tiny, limp, dejected figure. As she reached the pavement she pulled herself together with a jaunty twitch of her shoulders and then collapsed again. The city lights went on and made globes of coloured light in the mist. As he returned to the church he suddenly began to chuckle, a fat good-natured chuckle, and as he passed the statue of St Anne, patron of marriageable girls, he almost found himself giving her a wink.

Ned Lowry and Rita Lomasney had, one might say, been lovers from childhood. The first time they had met was when he was fourteen and she a year or two younger. It was on the North Mall on a Saturday afternoon, and she was sitting on a bench by the river under the trees; a tall, bony string of a girl with a long, obstinate jaw. Ned was a studious-looking young fellow in a blue and white college cap – thin, pale and spectacled. As he passed he looked at her owlishly, and she gave him back an impudent stare. This upset him – he had no experience of girls – so he blushed and raised his cap. At this she seemed to relent.

‘Hallo,' she said experimentally.

‘Good afternoon,' he replied with a pale, prissy smile.

‘Where are you off to?' she asked.

‘Oh, just up the Dyke for a walk.'

‘Sit down,' she said in a sharp voice, laying her hand on the bench beside her, and he did as he was told. It was a summer evening, and the white quay walls and tall, crazy, claret-coloured tenements under a blue and white sky were reflected in the lazy water, which wrinkled only at the edges and seemed like a painted carpet.

‘It's very pleasant here,' he said complacently.

‘Is it?' she asked with a truculence that startled him. ‘I don't see anything very pleasant about it.'

‘Oh, it's very nice and quiet,' he said in mild surprise as he raised his fair eyebrows and looked up and down the Mall. ‘My name is Lowry,' he added politely.

‘Are ye the ones that have the jeweller's shop on the Parade?' she asked.

‘That's right,' he replied with modest pride.

‘We have a clock we got from ye,' she said. ‘ 'Tisn't much good of an old clock either,' she added with quiet malice.

‘You should bring it back to the shop,' he said with concern. ‘It probably needs overhauling.'

‘I'm going down the river in a boat with a couple of fellows,' she said, going off at a tangent. ‘Will you come?'

‘Couldn't,' he said with a smile.

‘Why not?'

‘I'm only left go up the Dyke for a walk,' he replied complacently. ‘On Saturdays I go to Confession at St Peter and Paul's; then I go up the Dyke and come back the Western Road. Sometimes you see very good cricket matches. Do you like cricket?'

‘A lot of old sissies pucking a ball!' she said shortly. ‘I do not.'

‘I like it,' he said firmly. ‘I go up there every Saturday when it's fine. Of course, I'm not supposed to talk to anyone,' he added with mild amusement at his own audacity.

‘Why not?'

‘My mother doesn't like me to.'

‘Why doesn't she?'

‘She comes of an awfully good family,' he answered mildly, and but for his gentle smile she might have thought he was deliberately insulting her. ‘You see,' he went on gravely in his thin, pleasant voice, ticking things off on his fingers and then glancing at each finger individually as he ticked it off – a tidy sort of boy – ‘there are three main branches of the Hourigan family: the Neddy Neds, the Neddy Jerrys, and the Neddy Thomases. The Neddy Neds are the Hayfield Hourigans. They are the oldest branch. My mother is a Hayfield Hourigan, and she'd have been a rich woman only for her father backing a bill for a Neddy Jerry. He defaulted and ran away to Australia,' he concluded with a contemptuous sniff.

‘Cripes!' said the girl. ‘And had she to pay?'

‘She had. But of course,' he went on with as close as he ever seemed likely to get to a burst of real enthusiasm, ‘my grandfather was a very well-behaved man. When he was eating his dinner the boys from the National School in Bantry used to be brought up to watch him, he had such beautiful table manners. Once he caught my uncle eating cabbage
with a knife, and he struck him with a poker. They had to put four stitches in him after,' he added with a joyous chuckle.

‘Cripes!' said the girl again. ‘What did he do that for?'

‘To teach him manners,' Ned said earnestly.

‘That's a queer way to teach him manners. He must have been dotty.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't say that,' Ned said, a bit ruffled. Everything this girl said seemed to come as a shock to him. ‘But that's why my mother won't let us mix with other children. On the other hand, we read a good deal. Are you fond of reading, Miss – I didn't catch the name.'