Through Streets Broad and Narrow (7 page)

Theresa said, “I have a headache.”

Dymphna laughed and gave her a glass. “Best thing for a headache: wine and dancing. Go on, John! Take her out the minute the band starts. I'll have to go and separate those two in the bar. It would be terrible if they got to drinking in there and then saw each other. Bill boxes heavyweight for Trinity. He can afford to be good-tempered, but— Away now! There's a foxtrot for you.”

She sang, “Isn't it a pity that you're such a scatterbrain,” pecked at another glass of wine and left them.

John said to Theresa, “Are you sure you won't dance? I know I've made a fool of myself—”

She didn't make him any answer at all and he was furious waiting for it.

He burst out, “You make me feel dead. What do you think about all the time? Why don't you say something? For God's sake, talk to me. You can't just sit there all the time as though we're in a cinema. Some time you've got to talk and think things; you've got to feel them. You ought to be in love or something. Why didn't you love me? Why didn't you? What's the matter with me?” And he answered his own question with great vehemence,
“Nothing!”

She got up.

“Where are you going?”

“To get my things.”

“I'll come with you.”

“No, thank you.”

“A taxi, I'll get you a taxi; you can't go home alone.”

He ran after her, past her, down the stairs and sent the commissionaire out for a taxi with his last five shillings. Collins could pay for the wine and some of the dinner.

He thought, Silence is best; if I start talking to her again, telling her, I'll never finish. If I don't see her into the taxi I shan't be left guessing any further than I have to guess already what she felt for me—if anything. I
did
love her; just an atom
of encouragement and I'd love her still and the new thing that's starting with Dymphna would get nowhere. Victoria loved me back; my God, Victoria
saw
me and look how I loved her,
love
her wherever she is.

He fell to thinking about Victoria so desperately with such trembling images of her in his mind's eye that the stair carpet disappeared and the music he was approaching became inaudible until some transposition took place, giving Victoria back to the very moment he was living. He saw her awaiting him in the ballroom, as pale, as excited, as swift as ever. Not mysterious with death but with vitality; dancing round him in her impatience for him to move with her onto the floor.

Under this splendid delusion he now ran up the stairs as fast as he had previously run down them; to find Dymphna, to see her only and what she was doing, to catch in one look she might give him the sense that she might
be
Victoria by virtue of loving him.

Oonagh was at the table with Collins. He asked them where the others were.

“If you mean your Irish friend, he's dancing with Dymphna,” Oonagh said.

“Good God! Groarke
dancing!”

“She's giving him a lesson,” Collins said. “Dymphna'd teach anyone to dance in half an hour, even a navvy in hobnailed boots. Tell me now, Blaydon, where'd you pick that fellow up? He makes a very nice fist.”

“Oh, I don't know, he lives somewhere about; Kingstown, I think.”

“Does he box?”

“He told me he used to run a club somewhere when he was younger.”

“Well, well.” Collins was leaning one elbow on the table with his hand at the side of the jaw where Groarke had hit him. All the time he was talking his eyes were ranging the dancers until they came to rest and moved more slowly. It was a temptation to follow the direction of his settled glance to see where it was concentrated. John resisted it but Oonagh didn't; she said, “They
seem to be doing quite well together, don't they?”

“Dymphna's the girl,” said Collins. “Why don't you two get on the floor together and when the little tenement angel comes back, I'll see what I can do with her.”

“Tenement angel?”

“That's Oonagh's name for your partner.”

“You mean Groarke's partner,” John said.

But Collins only said, “That would about fit.”

So John danced with Oonagh. He told her that Theresa had left and she said, “You must be enjoying yourself.”

“I'm not.”

“Do you always tell lies?”

“What lies?”

“You told me that Theresa was your Irish friend's partner;
she
told me that she'd never met him before.”

“I was making a foursome.”

“It's a fivesome now,” she said, “but don't worry; it's useful to know, that's all.”

“What is?”

“That you're a liar.”

“Why shouldn't I lie to
you?”

“No reason at all that I know of,” she said, “thank God.”

They said nothing else and went back to the table with a great dislike between them.

When the bills came round, Collins paid half of the whole thing and gave five shillings to the waiter. Everyone except Groarke protested against the injustice of his paying so much, but Groarke sat silent, smiling to himself or even, perhaps, at Collins' morocco leather wallet stuffed with pound notes.

Collins saw this smile and said, “I'll save you all a taxi; I've got a car outside.”

“The estate car,” said Dymphna.

“The ladies first,” Collins ordered, “and then the boys, after which I'll take Dymphna out to Mulhuddart.”

Groarke said, “I live in Kingstown.”

Collins said, “It's a long way to Dun Laoghaire,” making it rhyme with Tipperary; and they all got into the car.

At Trinity Hall John took Oonagh up the steps to the door.
Perversely he wanted to kiss her there, kiss someone. Why not? What was changed? Wasn't it over? He believed he had a right to kiss her because she was attractive to him, a girl. These damned dreary conventions had enmeshed him from the start and made complex the simple facts. One kiss, some warmth from Theresa in the first place would have dumbfounded the necessity for asking them both; Groarke. Who the hell made all these laws that came between them, the couples in the dance? Yet how impossible to kiss her now though he remembered having done so three hours earlier when he had picked her up at Trinity Hall.

“I suppose this means no more letters?” he said.

“Does it?”

“Well, doesn't it?”

The horn tooted and she looked over his shoulder at the brake.

“Thank you so much for taking me,” she said. “Goodnight.”

“Oh, goodnight.”

He ran back to the car and got in beside Groarke, Collins saying without coarseness, “Quin tickling on the steps and keeping me waiting.”

“Bill, you're terrible.”

“The tongue of Shakespeare,
Henry the Fifth.”

“Let's go and swim,” she said, “at the Forty Foot. Think of it in the moonlight.”

“Not tonight,” said Collins.

“But we've to go to Dun Laoghaire anyway,” she said, “to deliver this man in the back. Afterwards we could have a drink at the Purty Kitchen or go on out to the Greyhound on the way home.”

Nobody answered her and she sat silent for a very little time and then turned round to them in the back, letting one hand and arm hang down over the high seat, trailing it in the light flashes from the passing street.

“Sure you're all very quiet in there,” she said. “Now who's for a bathe at the Forty Foot?”

“I'll join you,” John said.

“And you,” she said to Groarke, “the man with the temper, wouldn't you like to cool your red hair in it?”

Groarke said nothing and for a while they drove on until Collins suddenly turned off the main road and drew up under a patch of tree shadow. He switched the engine off and said, “All right?”

Groarke got out through his door at the same moment and the two of them walked out of the shadow to where the road was blue under the moon. Collins hit first and as the doors were open they heard it almost before they saw anything, a flat sound and squashy like fruit. Groarke grunted and fell back onto the verge of grass; some purple fell on his white shirt front and he gave it a little stroke with his hand to look at it like a child, while Collins waited for him on the road. John got out then, ran up to them.

Groarke said, “Now wait!”

Then Dymphna called out
“Bill!”
but Collins said, “We'll see if he's able.”

John caught hold of Groarke's arm.

“For God's sake, Mike. Collins, you can't mash him up with nothing said.”

Groarke hit John a bit hard over the right eye and he fell over immediately, seeing no moonlight and hearing nothing from them except their breathing. He was very excited, horrified, angry to be knocked down so easily. Getting up, he heard a thick laugh from Collins still waiting, so he said, “Bloody fool Irish!” and walked back to Dymphna at the brake; he walked backwards so that he could watch them and he backed into Dymphna who breathed against him as Groarke moved out to Collins. Groarke's face was purple now, pale purple round the royal of his streaming blood. As he got near to Collins with his arms a little wide and his fists sprung from the stiff white cuffs which were too short for them, Collins caught him again in the middle of his shirt front. Groarke hung down on the blow as though he'd discovered his own shadow, Collins waiting for him to straighten. When he did straighten, Collins gave him a simple one that knocked him onto the grass again, this time on his back. He waited a little while and then said, “Well, that's it.”

Groarke was getting up. First of all he mopped his face and pushed back his hair from his eyes, then he took in some deep breaths. He came to the three of them on his toes in a secret
fashion until he was nearly there, when he jumped. The weight of him landing on Collins knocked the three of them against the back of. the brake; in trying to get this weight off, Collins fell forward into the road on his knees with Groarke down there under him. But when Collins started to get up, Groarke bunted him under the chin with his bloodied head. Then they were both up again and Groarke was knocking Collins all over the road without just boxing; he would get him round the neck a space and sponge his nose with the other fist, let him go and catch him on the ear with one lead and in the belly fairly low down with the other. Collins kept on trying to box him but Groarke wasn't there, he was behind him, jumping at him again to pull him down; at one point he sat jockeyed on Collins' chest and hammered his head on the flints as if he would crack it like a nut.

Then Dymphna stopped holding John's hand and breathing against him.

“For God's sake, get him off, he's murdering him.”

But Collins heaved up and threw Groarke over his head in some way.

“You've got to stop!” she screamed at them. “John, stop that madman.”

“How can I? He's about two stone lighter.”

“A stone,” Groarke put in. “Heavy bastard.”

Collins was getting up and Groarke with him; they were grey now with the black having run into the white, the blood and road dust washed over them; they seemed to be getting out of the road, not off it.

“Fight foul,” Collins said.

“Always,” said Groarke.

“Don't fight foul fighters.”

“Gentleman!”
With the word Groarke spat some blood into the road, “Anglo-Irish!”

Collins said, “Box on,” and hit him again.

Dymphna said, “If you don't stop I'll blow the horn until the police come.”

“She loves it,” Groarke said, and tackled Collins, football fashion, half-tripping him with his arms.

They rolled about over the road grunting and Dymphna said, “Blow the horn, John!”

“No, they'll be all right, they'll stop in a minute; they've talked.”

“I will, then.”

“Don't, you'll only get us all into trouble.”

“It's disgusting,” she said, “horrible. What did he mean, I love it?”

“Well, you should know.”

There was a loud thud, the thud of Collins' fist somewhere on Groarke's face, and this time he didn't get up. He lay back on the grass for a very long time, long enough for John and Dymphna to sit him up and undo his tie while Collins propped himself against the front wing of the car.

They helped Groarke along and he crawled into the back seat, letting his head roll against it. Collins got in too, in the front, and Dymphna drove them to the church at Dun Laoghaire where Groarke got out. He would not say where he lived, he would not speak; he went along on the brighter, moony side of the road towards his home, and they watched him for a hundred yards until he turned off somewhere and disappeared.

Dymphna took them home, talking only towards the end. She wanted them to let her get them a drink at the Greyhound but they insisted on going straight back to Front Gate.

“Are you sure you're all right, Bill?” she asked, and Collins only said, “I sugared him.”

When they had both gone, John set back on the walk to Glasnevin and the Flynns', about three miles.

Crossing O'Connell Bridge the first rain came on very fast and heavy. In the skeleton street-lighting he saw the drops of it running down the swords of the angels on the monument to Daniel O'Connell. The copper leads of the deserted tramways glistened with it and soon the pavements took on a shine.

He could have sheltered; in fact he need not have walked at all if he had asked Dymphna to run him back; but he walked and got wet just the same. His boiled shirt limpened and his dinner jacket grew blacker than ever; soon the water squelched in his pumps and ran without diminution out of his hair and into his eye sockets.

He passed a guard and felt the man watching after him for
a long way down the street, all the way to the Rotunda where lights were shining in the theatre windows: the labour wards, he guessed, from the dimensions of the undivided glass. Seeing them, he stood there for quite a time imagining what was going on behind them and thinking of that initial trip with George when he'd had his first taste of Ireland and Medicine.