Collected Stories (24 page)

“God,” I said bitterly, “when I think what I've been through in the past few weeks!”

“I know,” said Kitty, biting her lip. “I was a bit fed up too.”

Then we said nothing for a few moments.

“You're sure you mean it?” she said suspiciously.

“But I tell you I was on the point of committing suicide,” I said angrily.

“What good would that be?” she asked with another shrug, and this time she looked at me and laughed outright—the little jade!

I insisted on telling her about my prospects. She didn't want to hear about my prospects; she wanted me to kiss her, but that seemed to me a very sissy sort of occupation, so I told her just the same, in the intervals. It was as if a stone had been lifted off my heart, and I went home in the moonlight, singing. Then I heard the clock strike, and the singing stopped. I remembered the mother's “Sure you won't be late?” and my own “Am I ever late?” This was desperation too, but of a different sort.

The door was ajar and the kitchen in darkness. I saw her sitting before the fire by herself, and just as I was about to throw my arms around her, I smelt Kitty's perfume and was afraid to go near her. God help us, as though that would have told her anything!

“Hullo Mum,” I said with a nervous laugh, rubbing my hands. “You're all in darkness.”

“You'll have a cup of tea?” she said.

“I might as well.”

“What time is it?” she said, lighting the gas. “You're very late.”

“I met a fellow from the office,” I said, but at the same time I was stung by the complaint in her tone.

“You frightened me,” she said with a little whimper. “I didn't know what happened you. What kept you at all?”

“Oh, what do you think?” I said, goaded by my own sense of guilt. “Drinking and blackguarding as usual.”

I could have bitten my tongue off as I said it; it sounded so cruel, as if some stranger had said it instead of me. She turned to me with a frightened stare as if she were seeing the stranger too, and somehow I couldn't bear it.

“God Almighty!” I said. “A fellow can have no life in his own house.”

I went hastily upstairs, lit the candle, undressed, and got into bed. A chap could be a drunkard and blackguard and not be made to suffer what I was being made to suffer for being out late one single night. This, I felt, was what you got for being a good son.

“Jerry,” she called from the foot of the stairs, “will I bring you up your cup?”

“I don't want it now, thanks,” I said.

I heard her sigh and turn away. Then she locked the doors, front and back. She didn't wash up, and I knew that my cup of tea was standing on the table with a saucer on top in case I changed my mind. She came slowly upstairs and her walk was that of an old woman. I blew out the candle before she reached the landing, in case she came in to ask if I wanted anything else, and the moonlight came in the attic window and brought me memories of Kitty. But every time I tried to imagine her face as she grinned up at me, waiting for me to kiss her, it was the mother's face that came up instead, with that look like a child's when you strike him for the first time—as if he suddenly saw the stranger in you. I remembered all our life together from the night my father died; our early Mass on Sunday; our visits to the pictures, and our plans for the future, and Christ! Michael John, it was as if I was inside her mind while she sat by the fire waiting for the blow to fall. And now it had fallen, and I was a stranger to her, and nothing I could ever do would make us the same to one another again. There was something like a cannon-ball stuck in my chest, and I lay awake till the cocks started crowing. Then I could bear it no longer. I went out on the landing and listened.

“Are you awake, Mother?” I asked in a whisper.

“What is it, Jerry?” she replied in alarm, and I knew that she hadn't slept any more than I had.

“I only came to say I was sorry,” I said, opening the door of her room, and then as I saw her sitting up in bed under the Sacred Heart lamp, the cannon-ball burst inside me and I began to cry like a kid.

“Oh, child, child, child!” she exclaimed, “what are you crying for at all, my little boy?” She spread out her arms to me. I went to her and she hugged me and rocked me as she did when I was only a nipper. “Oh, oh, oh,” she was saying to herself in a whisper, “my storeen bawn, my little man!”—all the names she hadn't called me in years. That was all we said. I couldn't bring myself to tell her what I had done, nor could she confess to me that she was jealous: all she could do was to try and comfort me for the way I'd hurt her, to make up to me for the nature she had given me. “My storeen bawn!” she said. “My little man!”

The Babes in the Wood

W
HENEVER
Mrs. Early made Terry put on his best trousers and gansey he knew his aunt must be coming. She didn't come half often enough to suit Terry, but when she did it was great gas. Terry's mother was dead and he lived with Mrs. Early and her son, Billy. Mrs. Early was a rough, deaf, scolding old woman, doubled up with rheumatics, who'd give you a clout as quick as she'd look at you, but Billy was good gas too.

This particular Sunday morning Billy was scraping his chin frantically and cursing the bloody old razor while the bell was ringing up the valley for Mass, when Terry's aunt arrived. She come into the dark little cottage eagerly, her big rosy face toasted with sunshine and her hand out in greeting.

“Hello, Billy,” she cried in a loud, laughing voice, “late for Mass again?”

“Let me alone, Miss Conners,” stuttered Billy, turning his lathered face to her from the mirror. “I think my mother shaves on the sly.”

“And how's Mrs. Early?” cried Terry's aunt, kissing the old woman and then fumbling at the strap of her knapsack in her excitable way. Everything about his aunt was excitable and high-powered; the words tumbled out of her so fast that sometimes she became incoherent.

“Look, I brought you a couple of things—no, they're fags for Billy” (“God bless you, Miss Conners,” from Billy) “—this is for you, and here are a few things for the dinner.”

“And what did you bring me, Auntie?” Terry asked.

“Oh, Terry,” she cried in consternation, “I forgot about you.”

“You didn't.”

“I did, Terry,” she said tragically. “I swear I did. Or did I? The bird told me something. What was it he said?”

“What sort of bird was it?” asked Terry. “A thrush?”

“A big gray fellow?”

“That's the old thrush all right. He sings in our back yard.”

“And what was that he told me to bring you?”

“A boat!” shouted Terry.

It was a boat.

After dinner the pair of them went up the wood for a walk. His aunt had a long, swinging stride that made her hard to keep up with, but she was great gas and Terry wished she'd come to see him oftener. When she did he tried his hardest to be grown-up. All the morning he had been reminding himself: “Terry, remember you're not a baby any longer. You're nine now, you know.” He wasn't nine, of course; he was still only five and fat, but nine, the age of his girl friend Florrie, was the one he liked pretending to be. When you were nine you understood everything. There were still things Terry did not understand.

When they reached the top of the hill his aunt threw herself on her back with her knees in the air and her hands under her head. She liked to toast herself like that. She liked walking; her legs were always bare; she usually wore a tweed skirt and a pullover. Today she wore black glasses, and when Terry looked through them he saw everything dark; the wooded hills at the other side of the valley and the buses and cars crawling between the rocks at their feet, and, still farther down, the railway track and the river. She promised him a pair for himself next time she came, a small pair to fit him, and he could scarcely bear the thought of having to wait so long for them.

“When will you come again, Auntie?” he asked. “Next Sunday?”

“I might,” she said and rolled on her belly, propped her head on her hands, and sucked a straw as she laughed at him. “Why? Do you like it when I come?”

“I love it.”

“Would you like to come and live with me altogether, Terry?”

“Oh, Jay, I would.”

“Are you sure now?” she said, half-ragging him. “You're sure you wouldn't be lonely after Mrs. Early or Billy or Florrie?”

“I wouldn't, Auntie, honest,” he said tensely. “When will you bring me?”

“I don't know yet,” she said. “It might be sooner than you think.”

“Where would you bring me? Up to town?”

“If I tell you where,” she whispered, bending closer, “will you swear a terrible oath not to tell anybody?”

“I will.”

“Not even Florrie?”

“Not even Florrie.”

“That you might be killed stone dead?” she added in a bloodcurdling tone.

“That I might be killed stone dead!”

“Well, there's a nice man over from England who wants to marry me and bring me back with him. Of course, I said I couldn't come without you and he said he'd bring you as well.… Wouldn't that be gorgeous?” she ended, clapping her hands.

“'Twould,” said Terry, clapping his hands in imitation. “Where's England?”

“Oh, a long way off,” she said, pointing up the valley. “Beyond where the railway ends. We'd have to get a big boat to take us there.”

“Chrisht!” said Terry, repeating what Billy said whenever something occurred too great for his imagination to grasp, a fairly common event. He was afraid his aunt, like Mrs. Early, would give him a wallop for it, but she only laughed. “What sort of a place is England, Auntie?” he went on.

“Oh, a grand place,” said his aunt in her loud, enthusiastic way. “The three of us would live in a big house of our own with lights that went off and on, and hot water in the taps, and every morning I'd take you to school on your bike.”

“Would I have a bike of my own?” Terry asked incredulously.

“You would, Terry, a two-wheeled one. And on a fine day like this we'd sit in the park—you know, a place like the garden of the big house where Billy works, with trees and flowers and a pond in the middle to sail boats in.”

“And would we have a park of our own, too?”

“Not our own; there'd be other people as well; boys and girls you could play with. And you could be sailing your boat and I'd be reading a book, and then we'd go back home to tea and I'd bath you and tell you a story in bed. Wouldn't it be massive, Terry?”

“What sort of story would you tell me?” he asked cautiously. “Tell us one now.”

So she took off her black spectacles and, hugging her knees, told him the story of the Three Bears and was so carried away that she acted it, growling and wailing and creeping on all fours with her hair over her eyes till Terry screamed with fright and pleasure. She was really great gas.

N
EXT DAY
Florrie came to the cottage for him. Florrie lived in the village so she had to come a mile through the woods to see him, but she delighted in seeing him and Mrs. Early encouraged her. “Your young lady” she called her and Florrie blushed with pleasure. Florrie lived with Miss Clancy in the Post Office and was very nicely behaved; everyone admitted that. She was tall and thin, with jet-black hair, a long ivory face, and a hook nose.

“Terry!” bawled Mrs. Early. “Your young lady is here for you,” and Terry came rushing from the back of the cottage with his new boat.

“Where did you get that, Terry?” Florrie asked, opening her eyes wide at the sight of it.

“My auntie,” said Terry. “Isn't it grand?”

“I suppose 'tis all right,” said Florrie, showing her teeth in a smile which indicated that she thought him a bit of a baby for making so much of a toy boat.

Now, that was one great weakness in Florrie, and Terry regretted it because he really was fond of her. She was gentle, she was generous, she always took his part; she told creepy stories so well that she even frightened herself and was scared of going back through the woods alone, but she was jealous. Whenever she had anything, even if it was only a raggy doll, she made it out to be one of the seven wonders of the world, but let anyone else have a thing, no matter how valuable, and she pretended it didn't even interest her. It was the same now.

“Will you come up to the big house for a pennorth of goosegogs?” she asked.

“We'll go down the river with this one first,” insisted Terry, who knew he could always override her wishes when he chose.

“But these are grand goosegogs,” she said eagerly, and again you'd think no one in the world but herself could even have a gooseberry. “They're that size. Miss Clancy gave me the penny.”

“We'll go down the river first,” Terry said cantankerously. “Ah, boy, wait till you see this one sail—ssss!”

She gave in as she always did when Terry showed himself headstrong, and grumbled as she always did when she had given in. She said it would be too late; that Jerry, the under-gardener, who was their friend, would be gone and that Mr. Scott, the head gardener, would only give them a handful, and not even ripe ones. She was terrible like that, an awful old worrier.

When they reached the riverbank they tied up their clothes and went in. The river was deep enough, and under the trees it ran beautifully clear over a complete pavement of small, brown, smoothly rounded stones. The current was swift, and the little sailing-boat was tossed on its side and spun dizzily round and round before it stuck in the bank. Florrie tired of this sport sooner than Terry did. She sat on the bank with her hands under her bottom, trailing her toes in the river, and looked at the boat with growing disillusionment.

“God knows, 'tisn't much of a thing to lose a pennorth of goosegogs over,” she said bitterly.