"Marion, I think I'll go and study in the park this morning."
"Take the baby with you."
"The pram is broken."
"Carry her."
"She'll piss on my shirt."
"Take the rubber sheet."
"How am I going to study, watching her? She'll crawl into the pond."
"I say, can't you see? I've got my hands full with all this, the mess. Look at the ceiling. And there you are, and you're wearing my sweater. I don't want you wearing my sweater. What do I have."
"Jesus."
"And why don't you go to see Mr. Skully and have this loathsome toilet fixed? I know why. You're afraid of him, that's why."
"Not a bit of it."
"You are. All I have to do is say Skully and you're off up the stairs like a frightened rabbit, and don't think I can't hear you crawling under the bed either."
"Just tell me where my sun glasses are, that's all."
"I didn't have them last."
"I must have them. I absolutely refuse to go out of this house without them."
"Well look."
"Do you want me to be recognized? Do you?"
"Yes, I do."
"God damn this house. It's the size of a closet and I can't even find my own foot in it. I'll break something in a minute."
"Don't you dare. And here, a revolting post-card from your friend O'Keefe."
Marion flicked it across the room.
"Watch my correspondence. I don't want to have it thrown about."
"Your correspondence, indeed. Read it."
Scrawled in large capitals:
WE HAVE THE FANGS OF ANIMALS
"E. O aye."
"That's what he is, a detestable animal."
"What else?"
"Bills of course."
"Well don't blame me."
"I will blame you. Who started the account in Howth? Who was the one who bought whisky and gin? Who was?"
"Where are my sun glasses?"
"And who pawned the fire irons? And who pawned the electric kettle-"
"Now look Marion, can't we be friends for this morning? The sun's out. Christians at least."
"See? You immediately get sarcastic. Why do we have to live like this?"
"My glasses, damn it. British hide everything. Can't hide the toilet now, anyway."
"I won't have this talk."
"Have this then."
"Someday you will regret all this. Vulgar."
"Do you want bird calls all your life, the B.B.C.? I'll do a series of programs for you called 'My Bottom was Green'."
"Your nasty mind."
"I'm cultured."
"Yes, from your chromium plated life in America."
"I'm distinguished-looking. Speak the King's English. Impeccably tailored."
"What rot. I don't know how I ever let you meet Mommy and Daddy."
"Your Mommy and Daddy thought I had lots of money.
And I, for that matter, thought that they had lots of money. Neither had nicker, no notes, no love."
"That's a lie. You know it's a lie. There never was a question of money until you started it."
"All right. Get the baby. I can't stand it any more. I need a long trolley ride in the womb, to take me out of this."
"Take you out? I'm the one who ought to be taken out and it may be any day now."
"All right. Let's be friends."
"Yes, it's easy isn't it. Just like that, after being so horrid."
"I'll take the baby."
"And you can do some shopping too. Get me some bones from the butcher and don't bring back one of those revolting sheep's heads, and don't let Felicity fall in the pond."
"I insist on a sheep's head."
"Be careful shutting the door. It fell on the mailman this morning."
"Suffering saints and sick sinners. I'll be god damn well sued on top of everything."
Out on Mohammed road wild with traffic and thundering trams. The laundry a hive of activity. See them in there beating sheets and that's the way it ought to be. Warm yellow sun. Most beautiful country in the world, full of weeds and weeds are people. Stay here to die and never die. Look at the butcher shop. Look at the hooks, groaning with the meat. He has his sleeves rolled way up with the chopper. A bunch of them behind the counter.
Entering the park. Green, green grass, soft and sweet from the night rain. The flower beds. Circles and crosses and nice little fences. Pick that bench. Newly painted. If my father dies by Autumn I'll be very rich, golden udder. And sit on a park bench for the rest of my life. What a warm, lovely day. I'd like to take off my shirt and let a sup of sun to me chest but they'd be hounding me out of the place for indecency. Help my hairs to grow, give them a fashionable tinge of blond. Dear child, stop kicking me in the back. Here, now get on this blanket and play and I don't want any nonsense from you. Jesus, let go of the blanket, think I was going to kill you. Papa's got to study his law and become a big big K.C. and make lots of money. A great big golden udder. A tan on my chest means wealth and superiority. But I'm proud of my humility. And here, reading the dead language, my little book of Roman Law. For parricide, flung off the cliff in a bag with a viper. Fat ugliness writhing in the crotch. And little daughter, gurgling on the grass, have fun now. Because papa is finished. Getting it from all sides. Even in dreams. And last night I dreamt I was carrying a bundle of newspapers under my arm and climbed on a bus and went racing across the Curragh with massive horses galloping beside. In the bus, a man studying butterflies with a magnifying glass. And we were going to the West. Then a bullock leaped from behind a hedge and the bus cut him up and left him hanging on a huge hook in front of a village butcher shop. Then suddenly I was in Cashel. Streets filled with goats and gutters brown with dried blood. And in the hot sun's stillness, a crowd of men and women in thick black overcoats walking down the middle of a winter road, summer's hesitating heat on every side. The funeral of the gombeen man. He caught her, lips bubbling, eyes spinning, sitting on the shop assistant on a crate from Chicago and he heard it collapse and was after them with a hatchet. And they conspired between hot wet lips, clutching at each other's clothes to put poison in the tea, trembling hands to the till and each other's flesh, to wind a cocoon of sin between the pineapple and peaches. The box was closed. Summer. The long line shuffling. Through Cashel. A song:
Shuffling through Cashel
A box in the sun
Through Cashel, through Cashel
The gombeen man's dead.
The gombeen man's dead
In a box in the sun.
The assistant got the wife
And the gombeen man got done.
Poor mercy on the gombeen man.
There's a hand in the till,
There's a box in the sun,
God's mercy on the gombeen man.
Someone talking to Felicity. Good God. Wow.
She was kneeling on one knee and crouched over her tight legs, Felicity tugging at her outstretched finger. She wagged her head. Hello, little girl, hello. Wearing a green skirt, matched on the grass and her lisle stockings, slim slender ankles. Her gleaming round bottom poked up her heels.
"Hello."
She didn't turn around. Prodding the baby belly. Fading magic moment. That bun of black hair.
"Hello."
Looking over her shoulder, direct dark eyes. Mellow voice.
"Hello. Admiring your child. What's her name?"
"Felicity."
"Really. Hello, Felicity, aren't you a pretty little girl? Aren't you now?"
What lips across what white teeth. The shoulders of her suit, arms through small circles. I'd like to get my hands on you.
"You work in the laundry, don't you?"
"Yes. And you live in the house across the street."
"Yes."
"I suppose you've seen me looking in your windows."
"What do you do in that room?"
"That's my office."
"I see you drink a lot of tea."
"Coffee."
"Pleasant."
"She's got such lovely hair. Haven't you, haven't you, little girl? I must go. Bye bye now, Felicity, bye bye."
Waving long fingers. A little smile and she walks away on the asphalt path. Chevrons dividing across her calves and wider over her thighs. She waves again. She smiles once more. Please come back and play with me. Your sensible clothing is sexy.
Throw this damn law in the sea. I can't learn a thing. Children are good advertising. Shows them the end product, the thing you do it for. I think she has hair on her legs. That's what I like, slight suggestion of the male. I'm in love with that girl. The way she walks, a twist of the hips. The neck tells everything, slight gangle. Certainly I'm not homosexual or an elf's child. I want to know where she lives and what she does at night. I must know. O I think things are beginning to straighten out. If I get that toilet fixed. Anything. Block it up, run it into the street, just anything. But there is so little that Egbert and I have in common, especially money. How does one make this approach about impaired function of the drain. I feel I am moving to a different level of experience. Get my dark suit out of pawn and take Marion to the Dolphin for a grilled steak and Beaujolais. She needs a little recreation. Poor girl. I'm such a hard bastard to live with. And I'll come to the park tomorrow.
There was a sheep's head simmering in the big black pot. Marion washing her bottom in a pan on the floor. Fine thing for sixpence. The baby quietly to bed upstairs, the afternoon over, the evening begun. They are coming into their houses all over Dublin city with their arms light with a few sausages, old butter and little bags of tea.
"Sebastian, give me my talcum powder on the window sill."
"Certainly."
"How was the park?"
"Very nice."
"That's such an odor."
"I tell you, it's the finest thing in the world. I need it for my brains. Sheep's head gives brain food."
Sebastian picked up a movie magazine and sank in the easy chair, waiting for the sheep. Red brash brightness of these faces. I was once approached by a talent scout in summer stock. He said, how would you like to come to Hollywood. I told him they'd have to feed me brandy day and night. He said he was serious and wanted me to think the offer over. I told him my allowance from home was as much as that. But kid, you just wait till after your first picture. This man's name was Bill Kelly. Call me Bender Kelly. He said his mother and father were born in Ireland and someday he thought he would take a trip over there looking for talent, and maybe find some real talent. Mr. Kelly said they got a lot of girls from Ireland. But, you see, these Irish girls don't get far in Hollywood. Got to drop the drawers at the strategic moment. You see, you got to realize there's compromise wherever you go in this world, get screwed or sacked. Some hold out but not for long. But a guy with your stuff could go places. Where'd you pick up acting? I beg your pardon, Mr. Kelly, I was born an actor. Well, that's what they all say. Mr. Kelly had a few more drinks and said Hollywood killed you like these Aztec guys used to get one of these girls and dress her all up, big star, then put her up there on the altar and tear her heart out. But Mr. Kelly, how sordid. It's sordid all right, that's why you've got to be tough. But I'm just a frond, I just know I couldn't bear it. Well, Mr. Sebastian Beef. Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield. Jesus. Well, anyway, I'd like to get married and have some kids. I've knocked up some high school girls. Maybe that's not so good but isn't that the way life is, all squeeze and tease? I've handled some big stars in my time. Big. Really big. And Mr. Kelly got drunk and vomited all over the bar. It is well to remember there's a village called Hollywood in the Wicklow mountains.
Marion humming in the kitchen. Not often that happened.
"Make some toast, baby."
"Slice the bread."
"I'm studying."
"I see that silly movie magazine."
"Marion, do you like men with hairy chests?"
"Yes."
"Biceps?"
"A bit."
"How about the shoulders?"
"So that he can wear a suit."
"Would you say now, that I'm your man?"
"Don't like men with pots."
"I beg your pardon. Pot? Not a bit-just look. Will you look in here a minute. See. Nothing there at all. You might even say I was wasted."
"Come and deal with this wretched head."
"Delighted. O I tell you, it's coming along a jolly treat. What ho and bang on and wizard whip. Sound the horn you buggers."
"Cut the bread."
"Of course, darling."
"Don't say that if you don't mean it."
"I mean it."
"You don't mean it."
"All right, I don't mean it. Why don't we buy a radio? I think we need a radio."
"With what?"
"Hire purchase. A system for people like us."
"Yes, and that could pay our milk bill."
"We can have milk too. Few shillings a week."
"Why don't you take a part time job then?"
"Must study."
"Of course. Yes of course, you must study."
"O now, now, now, give me a little kiss. Come on, on the lips, one."
"Get away from me."
"Not cricket."
"Bring in the chair, please."
"Then, let's go to the cinema."
"Have you forgotten? We have a child you know."
"Shit."
"Stop it, stop it. Stop using that ugly word to me."
"Shit."
"If you say that word once more I'll leave this house. You may use that sort of language with your working class friends but I shan't stand for it."
"Leave."
"Every meal is like this, every meal."
"Meals? What meals?"
"My God, what did I marry."
"You certainly didn't have to marry me."
"Well, I wish I hadn't now. Father was right. You're a wastrel. Done nothing but drink with your wretched friends, all useless people. Will they help you to get on?"
"British rubbish. Get on where? Where to?"
"Make something of yourself. You think it's so easy, don't you. I don't even think you'll get your degree. Cheat on your exams. Don't think everything you do escapes attention. Don't look shocked, and I know how you go and butter up your professors. How long do you expect to get away with it?"
"Absurd."
"You've insulted every friend I have. People who could help you. Do you think they'll help a rotter, an absolute rotter?"
"Rotter? Rotter? Me, a rotter?"
"And a liar."
"Liar?"
"You needn't smirk. My friends could help us. Lord Gawk could have introduced you to a firm in London."
"What's stopping him?"
"You. Your insulting manner. You've ruined me socially."
"Not at all. Why blame me if your pukka friends ignore you?"
"Blame you? My God, how can you say that I can't blame you, when you called Lady Gawk a whore, ruined her whole party and shamed me. Blame you?"
"The woman is stupid. Moral decadent."
"It's a lie. You sit there and you haven't had a bath for a month, your feet smell and your fingernails are filthy."
"Quite."
"And I have had to suffer the humiliation of having my family involved. What do you think? Daddy was so right."
"Daddy was so right. Right. God's teeth, let me for Christ's sake eat my dinner. Daddy, daddy. Sterile bastard, that daddy of yours is merely a leech on the Admiralty's bottom and a pompous lot of shit."
Marion ran from the room, she tripped up the narrow stairs. He heard her slamming the bedroom door and the creak of the bed springs as she fell. Silence and then her choked sobs. He reached for the salt, shook it over the plate. Nothing came out. He raised his arm. The salt cellar crashed through the window and smashed to little pieces on the gray concrete wall outside. He kicked his chair over, picked up his jacket. He went behind the clock where he knew Marion had been saving change for weeks. He took it all and let it slip, clinking, into his pocket.
A very red face. Guilt. Grinding the teeth. Soul trying to get out of the mouth, swallowing it back into the body. Shut out the sobs.
He ordered a bottle of stout and a Gold Label, telling the boy to bring him another stout and Gold Label. Boy didn't understand. Sebastian stamping his foot, shouting.
"Do as I say."
Boy, short sleeved, mumbling.
"I don't think you should talk to me that way, sir."
"Sorry, I'm upset. Bring me some cigarettes too."
What a sorry sad day. I want company. A morass of black coats, coughing and spitting. Get out of here.
He went across the street. Had a nickelodeon there. He played "That Old Black Magic," and "Jim Never Brings Me Any Pretty Flowers." Like Chicago. A man in Chicago accused me of having a Harvard accent. What are you, from Evanston? Don't talk to guys like me. The bruised and dumb, the snotty and sniffling. Her stinking hairy tits. I'm not blaming her for hair around her nipples. That's all right. I just don't like the British, a sterile genital-less race. Only their animals are interesting. Thank God they have dogs. She wants her life sitting on her fanny in India, whipping the natives. Wants Bond Street. Afternoon tea at Claridges. Lady Gawk tickling her twat with a Chinese fan. I'll break something over that woman's face. The way I lose my dignity is dreadful. Worrying about silly misunderstandings. She can leave. I'll tell her to get out. Stay out.
The end of the song. Outside, standing in front of the cinema waiting for the roaring tram. It's so noisy, coming down the hill out of the night, mad teetering vehicle. Seems to work like a coffee grinder. But I love the color and the seats, all green and warm, orange, pink and passionate. Like to run up the spiral stairs to the top and see the schoolchildren sitting on the outside platform. I like it because I can see into all the gardens and some of the evening windows. I was impressed by trams when I first set foot in this country. From the top deck you can see into some personal windows. Women wearing slips only. I often saw a great deal of chromium plate in the bedrooms and electric fires glaring from the walls. Also the beds were covered with satin eiderdowns, big, thick and puce.
He got off at College Street. Swarms of people. A girl pipers' band was rounding the front of Trinity College, all green and tassels and drumming. La, de da deda la de. Followed by gurriers. This English amusement park. Must get into a public house. Where? I owe money in every one. That's one thing about me anyway, I can run up credit in a public house and that's saying a whole lot. Go up the Grafton Street, cheer me up with its wealth. But where are the rich. Just poor miserable bastards like me, have nowhere to go. Invited nowhere. Why doesn't someone invite me. Come on, invite me. You're all afraid.
At Duke Street. Just about to cross. Foot half down from the curb. Hold on.
On the opposite side, looking in the shoe shop. I mustn't panic. No bungle. Get to her before she starts walking again. She's staying. Stay still. Rebuffed. I'll not be rebuffed. Whoa. She sees me. She's confused. Optimum moment. Show slight surprise. I am surprised. Don't have to show it. Be natural. Brave and noble. And a gentleman, of course. A quick greeting.
"Good evening."
"Hello."
"Are you window shopping?"
"Yes, it passes the time."
Mate in one move.
"Come and have a drink with me."
"Well."
"Come along."
"Well, there's nothing stopping me. All right."
"Where do you live?"
"South Circular Road."
"You're not Irish."
"What makes you say that? My voice?"
"No, your teeth. All the Irish's teeth are rotting. You have good teeth."
"Ha, ha."
They walked to the bottom of Grafton Street.
"We'll go in that pub. Nice soft seats upstairs."
"All right."
They wait on the curb. Two beetle American cars go by. A breeze. Cool sky. Taking her hand an instant, warm knuckles of her long fingers. Just guiding you safely across. She went up the stairs before him, curious climber. White petticoat. Slight pigeon toe. The voices around the corner and in the door. Slight hush as they enter, and sit. She crosses her legs and smooths her skirt over her nice knee.
"My name is Christine."
"Mine-"
"I know yours."
"How?"
"One of the girls in the laundry. She has a friend who works in the grocers where your wife shops."
"Fantastic."
"I agree."
"Must know what I eat too."
"Yes."
"What?"
"Sheep's head."
"O aye."
What a good-looking girl you are. White. Your body must be very white. Let me eat the lotus. I came out tonight feeling badly. How weak are our hearts. Because now I can jump with joy. The world obeys a law. Large and brown black. Eyes.
"Do you like working in the laundry?"
"I hate it."
"Why?"
"O the heat and steam and noise."
"And what's it like where you live?"
"O I don't know. Don't know how I can describe it. There are trees down the street anyway. That's always something. Just one of those terraced houses on South Circular Road. I live in the basement. It's quite nice though, compared to what I might have to live in."
"Alone?"
"Alone. I can't bear sharing."
"What would you like?"
"Stout, please."
"How long have you been working in the laundry?"
"A few months."
"Money?"
"Not much. Four pounds ten."
"Now, Christine, I think you are a most pleasant girl."
"What do you study?"
"Law. This is most pleasant. I was in despair. Wretched. Beat. A walk up Grafton Street sometimes kills it. But everyone looked beat like me."
"Wrong time. Just people looking for somewhere to go."
"You?"
"Just looking. I often just look. I like to feel there is something in the shops I want. I get off the bus at the top of Stephen's Green and walk through the park. I like that best and watch the ducks from the bridge and go down Grafton Street. Sometimes I have a coffee in one of those icecream parlors. Then I go home. That's all there is to my life."
"No culture?"
"Cinema, and sometimes I go sit in the back of the Gate for a shilling."
Sitting there and then lighting up cigarettes. I don't usually approve of smoking. I find now that things seem good. That suddenly out of the darkness the light. That's Christian. The light showing the way. When I've thought of it, I've stepped into Clarendon Street Church, to pray and sometimes to see if it was warmer and after sitting awhile, to relax a bit from the tension. I have awful tensions and in that Catholic gloom and the Erse that is in it, I grew slightly sad and pitiful, considering the after and before and I often got the feeling there that I was really going to haul down some quids. I don't know why quids get rid of gloom. But they get rid of it. O Christine. What are you like underneath?
They had one more round of stout and she turned and smiled and said that she must be going home. And may I take you? That's all right. I insist. It's really not necessary. For the joy that's in it then. O.K.
They set off along Suffolk Street, into the Wicklow Street and up the Great George's. And over there Thomas Moore was born. Come in and see it, a nice public house indeed. But I must go home and wash my hair. But just a quick one.
In they went. The embarrassed figures looking at them and bird whispering. The man showed them to a booth, but Mr. Dangerfield said that they were just in for a fast one.
O surely, sir and it's a grand evening. 'Tis that.
And passing the Bleeding Horse he tried to steer her in there. But she said she could go on alone just around the corner. But I must come.
The house she lived in was one at the end of a long row.
Went through an iron gate, just a speck of garden with a bush and bars over her window. And her door just at the bottom of three steps with a drain to run the water off that would surely be going under the door. Only that I must wash my hair I'd ask you in. That's quite all right. And thank you for walking me home. Not at all, and may I see you again? Yes.
She went down the steps. Paused, turned, smiled. Key. Green door. Few seconds. A light goes on. Shadow moves across the window. Hers. What sweet stuff, sweeter than all the roses. Come down God and settle in my heart on this triangular Friday.