My Oedipus Complex (52 page)

‘What sailors were there ever in Caheragh?' snarled Flurry. ‘If they had men against them instead of who they had they wouldn't get off so easy.'

‘Begor, 'tis a pity you weren't rowing yourself, Flurry,' said the sergeant gravely. ‘I'd say you could still show them a few things.'

‘Ten years ago I might,' said Flurry bitterly, because the sergeant had
touched on another very sore subject; his being dropped from the regatta crews, a thing he put down entirely to the brother's intrigues.

‘Why then, indeed,' said the sergeant, ‘I'd back you still against a man half your age. Why don't you and Patch have a race now and settle it?'

‘I'll race him,' shouted Patch with the greatest enthusiasm, rushing for his own boat. ‘I'll show him.'

‘My boat is being mended,' said Flurry shortly.

‘You could borrow Sullivan's,' said the sergeant.

Flurry only looked at the ground and spat. Either he wasn't feeling energetic or the responsibility was too much for him. It would darken his last days to be beaten by a Caheragh. Patch sat in his shirt-sleeves in the boat, resting his reeling head on his oars. For a few minutes it looked as if he was out for the evening. Then he suddenly raised his face to the sky and let out the wild Caheragh war-whoop, which sounded like all the seagulls in Ireland practising unison-shrieking. The effect on Flurry was magical. At that insulting sound he leaped from the wall with an oath, pulled off his coat, and rushed to the slip to another boat. The sergeant, clumsy and heavy-footed, followed, and the pair of them sculled away to where Sullivan's boat was moored. Patch followed them with his eyes.

‘What's wrong with you, you old coward?' he yelled. ‘Row your own boat, you old sod, you!'

‘Never mind,' said Mike Mountain from the top of the slip. ‘You'll beat him, boat or no boat.… He'll beat him, ladies and gentlemen,' he said confidently to the little crowd that had gathered. ‘Ah, Jase, he's a great man in a boat.'

‘I'm a good man on a long course,' Patch shouted modestly, his eyes searching each of us in turn. ‘I'm slow getting into my stroke.'

‘At his age I was the same,' confided his father. ‘A great bleddy man in a boat. Of course, I can't do it now – eighty-one; drawing on for it. I haven't the same energy.'

‘Are you ready, you old coward?' shrieked Patch to Flurry who was fumbling savagely in the bottom of Sullivan's boat for the rowlocks.

‘Shut up, you foreign importation!' snarled Flurry.

He found the rowlocks and pulled the boat round in a couple of neat strokes; then hung on his oars till the sergeant got out. For seventy-six he was still a lively man.

‘Ye know the race now?' said the sergeant. ‘To the island and back.'

‘Round the island, sergeant,' said Mike Mountain plaintively. ‘Patch is like me; he's slow to start.'

‘Very good, very good,' said the sergeant. ‘Round the island it is, Flurry. Are ye ready now, both of ye?'

‘Ready,' grunted Flurry.

‘Yahee!' shrieked Patch again, brandishing an oar over his head like a drumstick.

‘Mind yourself now, Patch!' said the sergeant who seemed to be torn between his duty as an officer of the peace and his duty as umpire. ‘Go! – ye whoors,' he added under his breath so that only a few of us heard him.

They did their best. It is hard enough for a man with a drop in to go straight even when he's facing his object, but it is too much altogether to expect him to do it backwards. Flurry made for the
Red Devil
, the doctor's sailing boat, and Patch, who seemed to be fascinated by the very appearance of Flurry, made for him, and the two of them got there almost simultaneously. At one moment it looked as if it would be a case of drowning, at the next of manslaughter. There was a splash, a thud, and a shout, and I saw Flurry raise his oar as if to lay out Patch. But the presence of the sergeant probably made him selfconscious, for instead he used it to push off Patch's boat.

‘God Almighty!' cried Mike Mountain with an air of desperation, ‘did ye ever see such a pair of misfortunate bosthoons? Round the island, God blast ye!'

But Patch, who seemed to have an absolute fixation on Flurry, interpreted this as a command to go round him, and, seeing that Flurry wasn't at all sure what direction he was going in, this wasn't as easy as it looked. He put up one really grand spurt, and had just established himself successfully across Flurry's bow when it hit him and sent him spinning like a top, knocking one oar clean out of his hand. Sullivan's old boat was no good for racing, but it was grand for anything in the nature of tank warfare, and as Flurry had by this time got into his stroke, it would have taken an Atlantic liner to stop him. Patch screamed with rage, and then managed to retrieve his oar and follow. The shock seemed to have given him new energy.

Only gradually was the sergeant's strategy beginning to reveal itself to me. The problem was to get the Caheraghs out of the village without a fight, and Flurry and Patch were spoiling for one. Anything that would
exhaust the pair of them would make his job easier. It is not a method recommended in Police Regulations, but it has the distinct advantage of leaving no unseemly aftermath of summonses and cross-summonses which, if neglected, may in time turn into a regular vendetta. As a spectacle it really wasn't much. Darkness had breathed on the mirror of the water. A bonfire on the island set a pendulum reflection swinging lazily to and fro, darkening the bay at either side of it. There was a milky light over the hill of Croghan; the moon was rising.

The sergeant came up to me with his hand over his mouth and his big head a little on one side, a way he had of indicating to the world that he was speaking aside.

‘I see by the paper how they're after making it up again,' he whispered anxiously. ‘Isn't she a changeable little divil?'

It took me a moment or two to realize that he was referring to Coleman and the publican's daughter; I always forget that he looks on me as a fellow-artist of Coleman's.

‘Poets prefer them like that,' I said.

‘Is that so?' he exclaimed in surprise. ‘Well, everyone to his own taste.' Then he scanned the bay thoughtfully and started suddenly. ‘Who the hell is that?' he asked.

Into the pillar of smoky light from the bonfire a boat had come, and it took us a little while to identify it. It was Patch's, and there was Patch himself pulling leisurely to shore. He had given up the impossible task of going round Flurry. Some of the crowd began to shout derisively at him but he ignored them. Then Mike Mountain took off his bowler hat and addressed us in heart-broken tones.

‘Stone him!' he besought us. ‘For Christ's sake, ladies and gentlemen, stone him! He's no son of mine, only a walking mockery of man.'

He began to dance on the edge of the slip and shout insults at Patch who had slowed up and showed no inclination to meet him.

‘What the hell do you mean by it?' shouted Mike. ‘You said you'd race the man and you didn't. You shamed me before everyone. What sort of misfortunate old furniture are you?'

‘But he fouled me,' Patch yelled indignantly. ‘He fouled me twice.'

‘He couldn't foul what was foul before,' said his father. ‘I'm eighty-one, but I'm a better man than you. By God, I am.'

A few moments later Flurry's boat hove into view.

‘Mike Mountain,' he shouted over his shoulder in a sobbing voice, ‘have you any grandsons you'd send out against me now? Where are the great Caheragh sailors now, I'd like to know?'

‘Here's one of them,' roared Mike, tearing at the lapels of his coat. ‘Here's a sailor if you want one. I'm only a feeble old man, but I'm a better man in a boat than either of ye. Will you race me, Flurry? Will you race me now, I say?'

‘I'll race you to hell and back,' panted Flurry contemptuously.

Mike excitedly peeled off his coat and tossed it to me. Then he took off his vest and hurled it at the sergeant. Finally he opened his braces, and, grabbing his bowler hat, he made a flying leap into his own boat and tried to seize the oars from Patch.

‘ 'Tisn't fair,' shouted Patch, wrestling with him. ‘He fouled me twice.'

‘Gimme them oars and less of your talk,' snarled his father.

‘I don't care,' screamed Patch. ‘I'll leave no man lower my spirit.'

‘Get out of that boat or I'll have to deal with you officially,' said the sergeant sternly. ‘Flurry,' he added, ‘wouldn't you take a rest?'

‘Is it to beat a Caheragh?' snarled Flurry viciously as he brought Sullivan's boat round again.

Again the sergeant gave the word and the two boats set off. This time there were no mistakes. The two old men were rowing magnificently, but it was almost impossible to see what happened them. A party of small boys jumped into another boat and set out after them.

‘A pity we can't see it,' I said to the sergeant.

‘It might be as well,' he grunted gloomily. ‘The less witnesses the better. The end of it will be a coroner's inquest, and I'll lose my bleddy job.'

Beneath us on the slip, Patch, leaning against the slimy wall, seemed to have fallen asleep. The sergeant looked down at him greedily.

‘And 'tis only dawning on me that the whole bleddy lot of them ought to be in the lock-up,' he muttered.

‘Sergeant,' I said, ‘you ought to be in the diplomatic service.'

He brought his right hand up to shield his mouth, and with his left elbow he gave me an agonizing dig in the ribs that nearly knocked me.

‘Whisht, you divil you! Whisht, whisht, whisht!' he said.

The pendulum of firelight, growing a deeper red, swayed with the gentle motion of an old clock, and from the bay we could hear the excited voices of the boatful of boys, cheering on the two old men.

‘ 'Tis Mike,' said someone, staring out into the darkness.

‘ 'Tisn't,' said a child's voice. ‘ 'Tis Flurry. I sees his blue smock.'

It was Flurry. We were all a little disappointed. I will say for our people that whatever quarrel they may have with the Portuguese, in sport they have a really international outlook. When old Mike pulled in a few moments later he got a rousing cheer. The first to congratulate him was Flurry.

‘Mike,' he shouted as he tied up Sullivan's boat, ‘you're a better man than your son.'

‘You fouled me,' shouted Patch.

In response to the cheer Mike rose in the rocking boat. He stood in the bow and then, recollecting his manners, took off his hat. As he removed his hand from his trousers, they fell about his scraggy knees, but he failed to perceive that.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he said pantingly, ‘ 'twasn't a bad race. An old man didn't wet the blade of an oar these twelve months, 'twasn't a bad race at all.'

‘Begod, Mike,' said Flurry, holding out his hand from the slip, ‘you were a good man in your day.'

‘I was, Flurry,' said Mike, taking his hand and staring up affectionately at him. ‘I was a powerful man in my day, my old friend, and you were a powerful man yourself.'

It was obvious that there was going to be no fight. The crowd began to disperse in an outburst of chatter and laughter. Mike turned to us again, but only the sergeant and myself were listening to him. His voice had lost its carrying power.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,' he cried, ‘for an old man that saw such hard days, 'tis no small thing. If ye knew what me and my like endured ye'd say the same. Ye never knew them, and with the help of the Almighty God ye never will. Cruel times they were, but they're all forgotten. No one remembers them, no one tells ye, the troubles of the poor man in the days gone by. Many's the wet day I rowed from dawn to dark, ladies and gentlemen; many's the bitter winter night I spent, ditching and draining, dragging down the sharp stones for my little cabin by starlight and moonlight. If ye knew it all, ye'd say I was a great man. But 'tis all forgotten, all, all, forgotten!'

Old Mike's voice had risen into a wail of the utmost poignancy. The
excitement and applause had worked him up, and all the past was rising in him as in a dying man. But there was no one to hear him. The crowd drifted away up the road. Patch tossed the old man's clothes into the boat, and, sober enough now, stepped in and pushed off in silence, but his father still stood in the bow, his bowler hat in his hand, his white shirt flapping about his naked legs.

We watched him till he was out of sight, but even then I could hear his voice bursting out in sharp cries of self-pity like a voice from the dead. All the loneliness of the world was in it. A flashlight glow outlined a crest of rock at the left-hand side of the bay, and the moonlight, stealing through a barrier of cloud, let a window of brightness into the burnished water. The peace was safe for another week. I handed the sergeant a cigarette and he fell into step beside me.

‘He's in the wrong job altogether,' he whispered, and again I had to pull myself together to realize the way his mind had gone on, working quietly along its own lines. ‘ 'Tis in Dublin he ought to be. There's nothing for a fellow like that in our old job. Sure, you can see for yourself.'

Stay for me there. I will not fail

To meet thee in that hollow vale.

Always in the evenings you saw her shuffle up the road to Miss O.'s for her little jug of porter, a shapeless lump of an old woman in a plaid shawl, faded to the colour of snuff, that dragged her head down on to her bosom where she clutched its folds in one hand; a canvas apron and a pair of men's boots without laces. Her eyes were puffy and screwed up in tight little buds of flesh and her rosy old face that might have been carved out of a turnip was all crumpled with blindness. The old heart was failing her, and several times she would have to rest, put down the jug, lean against the wall, and lift the weight of the shawl off her head. People passed; she stared at them humbly; they saluted her; she turned her head and peered after them for minutes on end. The rhythm of life had slowed down in her till you could scarcely detect its faint and sluggish beat. Sometimes from some queer instinct of shyness she turned to the wall, took a snuffbox from her bosom, and shook out a pinch on the back of her swollen hand. When she sniffed it it smeared her nose and upper lip and spilled all over her old black blouse. She raised the hand to her eyes and looked at it closely and reproachfully, as though astonished that it no longer served her properly. Then she dusted herself, picked up the old jug again, scratched herself against her clothes, and shuffled along close by the wall, groaning aloud.