Pseudonym of Michael O’Donovan [1903-1966], playwright, novelist, and short-story writer
⇒Interview⇐[1957]
¤ «First Confession» ⇓
All the trouble began when my grandfather died and my grand-mother – my father’s mother – came to live with us. Relations in the one house are a strain at the best of times, but, to make matters worse, my grandmother was a real old countrywoman and quite unsuited to the life in town. She had a fat, wrinkled old face, and, to Mother’s great indignation, went round the house in bare feet-the boots had her crippled, she said. For dinner she had a jug of porter and a pot of potatoes with-some-times-a bit of salt fish, and she poured out the potatoes on the table and ate them slowly, with great relish, using her fingers by way of a fork.
Now, girls are supposed to be fastidious, but I was the one who suffered most from this. Nora, my sister, just sucked up to the old woman for the penny she got every Friday out of the old-age pension, a thing I could not do. I was too honest, that was my trouble; and when I was playing with Bill Connell, the sergeant-major’s son, and saw my grandmother steering up the path with the jug of porter sticking out from beneath her shawl, I was mortified. I made excuses not to let him come into the house, because I could never be sure what she would be up to when we went in.
When Mother was at work and my grandmother made the dinner I wouldn’t touch it. Nora once tried to make me, but I hid under the table from her and took the bread-knife with me for protection. Nora let on to be very indignant (she wasn’t, of course, but she knew Mother saw through her, so she sided with Gran) and came after me. I lashed out at her with the bread-knife, and after that she left me alone. I stayed there till Mother came in from work and made my dinner, but when Father came in later, Nora said in a shocked voice: «Oh, Dadda, do you know what Jackie did at dinnertime?» Then, of course, it all came out; Father gave me a flaking; Mother interfered, and for days after that he didn’t speak to me and Mother barely spoke to Nora.
And all because of that old woman ! God knows, I was heart-scalded. Then, to crown my misfortunes, I had to make my first confession and communion. It was an old woman called Ryan who prepared us for these. She was about the one age with Gran; she was well-to-do, lived in a big house on Montenotte, wore a black cloak and bonnet, and came every day to school at three o’clock when we should have been going home, and talked to us of hell. She may have mentioned the other place as well, but that could only have been by accident, for hell had the first place in her heart.
She lit a candle, took out a new half-crown, and offered it to the first boy who would hold one finger, only one finger! – in the flame for five minutes by the school clock. Being always very ambitious I was tempted to volunteer, but I thought it might look greedy. Then she asked were we afraid of holding one finger-only one finger! – in a little candle flame for five minutes and not afraid of burning all over in roasting hot furnaces for all eternity. «All eternity! Just think of that! A whole lifetime goes by and it’s nothing, not even a drop in the ocean of your sufferings.» The woman was really interesting about hell, but my attention was all fixed on the half-crown. At the end of the lesson she put it back in her purse. It was a great disappointment; a religious woman like that, you wouldn’t think she’d bother about a thing like a half-crown.
Another day she said she knew a priest who woke one night to find a fellow he didn’t recognise leaning over the end of his bed. The priest was a bit frightened, naturally enough but he asked the fellow what he wanted, and the fellow said in a deep, husky voice that he wanted to go to confession. The priest said it was an awkward time and wouldn’t it do in the morning, but the fellow said that last time he went to confession, there was one sin he kept back, being ashamed to mention it, and now it was always on his mind. Then the priest knew it was a bad case, because the fellow was after making a bad confession and committing a mortal sin. He got up to dress, and just then the cock crew in the yard outside, and lo and behold! – when the priest looked round there was no sign of the fellow, only a smell of burning timber, and when the priest looked at his bed didn’t he see the print of two hands burned in it? That was because the fellow had made a bad confession. This story made a shocking impression on me.
But the worst of all was when she showed us how to examine our conscience. Did we take the name of the Lord, our God, in vain? Did we honour our father and our mother? (I asked her did this include grandmothers and she said it did.) Did we love our neighbours as ourselves? Did we covet our neighbour 5 goods? (I thought of the way I felt about the penny that Nora got every Friday.) I decided that, between one thing and another, I must have broken the whole ten commandments, all on account of that old woman, and so far as I could see, so long as she remained in the house, I had no hope of ever doing anything else.
I was scared to death of confession. The day the whole class went, I let on to have a toothache, hoping my absence wouldn’t be noticed, but at three o’clock, just as I was feeling safe, along comes a chap with a message from Mrs. Ryan that I was to go to confession myself on Saturday and be at the chapel for communion with the rest. To make it worse, Mother couldn’t come with me and sent Nora instead.
Now, that girl had ways of tormenting me that Mother never knew of. She held my hand as we went down the hill, smiling sadly and saying how sorry she was for me, as if she were bringing me to the hospital for an operation.
«Oh, God help us!» she moaned. «Isn’t it a terrible pity you weren’t a good boy? Oh, Jackie, my heart bleeds for you! How will you ever think of all your sins? Don’t forget you have to tell him about the time you kicked Gran on the shin.»
Lemme go! » I said, trying to drag myself free of her. » I don’t want to go to confession at all.»
But sure, you’ll have to go to confession, Jackie! she replied in the same regretful tone. «Sure, if you didn’t, the parish priest would be up to the house, looking for you. ‘Tisn’t, God knows, that I’m not sorry for you. Do you remember the time you tried to kill me with the bread-knife under the table? And the language you used to me? I don’t know what he’ll do with you at all, Jackie. He might have to send you up to the bishop.»
I remember thinking bitterly that she didn’t know the half of what I had to tell-if I told it. I knew I couldn’t tell it, and understood perfectly why the fellow in Mrs. Ryan’s story made a bad confession; it seemed to me a great shame that people wouldn’t stop criticising him. I remember that steep hill down to the church, and the sunlit hillsides beyond the valley of the river, which I saw in the gaps between the houses like Adam’s last glimpse of Paradise.
Then, when she had manoeuvered me down the long flight of steps to the chapel yard, Nora suddenly changed her tone. She became the raging malicious devil she really was.
«There you are ! «she said with a yelp of triumph, hurling me through the church door. «And I hope he’ll give you the penitential psalms, you dirty little caffler.»
I knew then I was lost, given up to eternal justice. The door with the coloured-glass panels swung shut behind me, the sunlight went out and gave place to deep shadow, and the wind whistled outside so that the silence within seemed to crackle like ice under my feet. Nora sat in front of me by the confession box. There were a couple of old women ahead of her, and then a miserable-looking poor devil came and wedged me in at the other side, so that I couldn’t escape even if I had the courage. He joined his hands and rolled his eyes in the direction of the roof, muttering aspirations in an anguished tone, and I wondered had he a grandmother too. Only a grandmother could account for a fellow behaving in that heartbroken way, but he was better off than I, for he at least could go and confess his sins; while I would make a bad confession and then die in the night and be continually coming back and burning people’s furniture.
Nora’s turn came, and I heard the sound of something slamming, and then her voice as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and then another slam, and out she came. God, the hypocrisy of women! Her eyes were lowered, her head was bowed, and her hands were joined very low down on her stomach, and she walked up the aisle to the side altar looking like a saint. You never saw such an exhibition of devotion; and I remembered the devilish malice with which she had tormented me all the way from our door, and wondered were all religious people like that, really. It was my turn now. With the fear of damnation in my soul I went in, and the confessional door closed of itself behind me. It was pitch-dark and I couldn’t see priest or anything else. Then I really began to be frightened. In the darkness it was a matter between God and me, and He had all the odds. He knew what my intentions were before I even started; I had no chance. All I had ever been told about confession got mixed up in my mind, and I knelt to one wall and said: «Bless me, father, for I have sinned; this is my first confession.» I waited for a few minutes, but nothing happened, so I tried it on the other wall. Nothing happened there either. He had me spotted all right.
It must have been then that I noticed the shelf at about one height with my head. It was really a place for grown-up people to rest their elbows, but in my distracted state I thought it was probably the place you were supposed to kneel. Of course, it was on the high side and not very deep, but I was always good at climbing and managed to get up all right. Staying up was the trouble. There was room only for my knees, and nothing you could get a grip on but a sort of wooden moulding a bit above it. I held on to the moulding and repeated the words a little louder, and this time something happened all right. A slide was slammed back; a little light entered the box, and a man’s voice said «Who’s there?»
«Tis me, father,» I said for fear he mightn’t see me and go away again. I couldn’t see him at all. The place the voice came from was under the moulding, about level with my knees, so I took a good grip of the moulding and swung myself down till I saw the astonished face of a young priest looking up at me. He had to put his head on one side to see me, and I had to put mine on one side to see him, so we were more or less talking to one another upside-down. It struck me as a queer way of hearing confessions, but I didn’t feel it my place to criticise.
«Bless me, father, for I have sinned ; this is my first confession» I rattled off all in one breath, and swung myself down the least shade more to make it easier for him.
«What are you doing up there?» he shouted in an angry voice, and the strain the politeness was putting on my hold of the moulding, and the shock of being addressed in such an uncivil tone, were too much for me. I lost my grip, tumbled, and hit the door an unmerciful wallop before I found myself flat on my back in the middle of the aisle. The people who had been waiting stood up with their mouths open. The priest opened the door of the middle box and came out, pushing his biretta back from his forehead; he looked something terrible. Then Nora came scampering down the aisle.
«Oh, you dirty little caffler! «she said. «I might have known you’d do it. I might have known you’d disgrace me. I can’t leave you out of my sight for one minute.»
Before I could even get to my feet to defend myself she bent down and gave me a clip across the ear. This reminded me that I was so stunned I had even forgotten to cry, so that people might think I wasn’t hurt at all, when in fact I was probably maimed for life. I gave a roar out of me.
«What’s all this about? «the priest hissed, getting angrier than ever and pushing Nora off me. «How dare you hit the child like that, you little vixen?»
«But I can’t do my penance with him, father,» Nora cried, cocking an outraged eye up at him.
«Well, go and do it, or I’ll give you some more to do,» he said, giving me a hand up. «Was it coming to confession you were, my poor man?» he asked me.
«‘Twas, father,» said I with a sob.
«Oh,» he said respectfully, «a big hefty fellow like you must have terrible sins. Is this your first?»
‘Tis, father,» said I.
«Worse and worse,» he said gloomily. «The crimes of a lifetime. I don’t know will I get rid of you at all today. You’d better wait now till I’m finished with these old ones. You can see by the looks of them they haven’t much to tell.»
«I will, father,» I said with something approaching joy.
The relief of it was really enormous. Nora stuck out her tongue at me from behind his back, but I couldn’t even be bothered retorting. I knew from the very moment that man opened his mouth that he was intelligent above the ordinary. When I had time to think, I saw how right I was. It only stood to reason that a fellow confessing after seven years would have more to tell than people that went every week. The crimes of a lifetime, exactly as he said. It was only what he expected, and the rest was the cackle of old women and girls with their talk of hell, the bishop, and the penitential psalms. That was all they knew. I started to make my examination of conscience, and barring the one bad business of my grandmother, it didn’t seem so bad.
The next time, the priest steered me into the confession box himself and left the shutter back, the way I could see him get in and sit down at the further side of the grille from me.
«Well, now,» he said, «what do they call you?»
«Jackie, father,» said I.
«And what’s a-trouble to you, Jackie?»
Father,» I said, feeling I might as well get it over while I had him in good humour, «I had it all arranged to kill my grandmother.»
He seemed a bit shaken by that, all right, because he said nothing for quite a while.
«My goodness,» he said at last, «that’d be a shocking thing to do. What put that into your head?»
Father,» I said, feeling very sorry for myself, » she’s an awful woman.
Is she? » he asked. » What way is she awful?
She takes porter, father,» I said, knowing well from the way Mother talked of it that this was a mortal sin, and hoping it would make the priest take a more favourable view of my case.
«Oh, my ! » he said, and I could see he was impressed.
«And snuff, father,» said I.
«That’s a bad case, sure enough, Jackie,» he said.
«And she goes round in her bare feet, father,» I went on in a rush of self-pity, «and she knows I don’t like her, and she gives pennies to Nora and none to me, and my da sides with her and flakes me, and one night I was so heart-scalded I made up my mind I’d have to kill her.»
«And what would you do with the body? «he asked with great interest.
«I was thinking I could chop that up and carry it away in a barrow I have,» I said.
«Begor, Jackie,» he said, «do you know you’re a terrible child?
«I know, father,» I said, for I was just thinking the same thing myself. «I tried to kill Nora too with a bread-knife under the table, only I missed her.»
Is that the little girl that was beating you just now?» he asked.
Tis, father.»
«Someone will go for her with a bread-knife one day, and he won’t miss her,» he said rather cryptically. «You must have great courage. Between ourselves, there’s a lot of people I’d like to do the same to, but I’d never have the nerve. Hanging is an awful death.»
Is it, father? «I asked with the deepest interest-I was always very keen on hanging. «Did you ever see a fellow hanged?»
«Dozens of them,» he said solemnly. «And they all died roaring.»
«Jay ! » I said.
Oh, a horrible death ! » he said with great satisfaction.
«Lots of the fellows I saw killed their grandmothers too, but they all said ‘twas never worth it.»
He had me there for a full ten minutes talking, and then walked out the chapel yard with me. I was genuinely sorry to part with him, because he was the most entertaining character I’d ever met in the religious line. Outside, after the shadow of the church, the sunlight was like the roaring of waves on a beach; it dazzled me; and when the frozen silence melted and I heard the screech of trams on the road, my heart soared. I knew now I wouldn’t die in the night and come back, leaving marks on my mother’s furniture. It would be a great worry to her, and the poor soul had enough.
Nora was sitting on the railing, waiting for me, and she put on a very sour puss when she saw the priest with me. She was mad jealous because a priest had never come out of the church with her.
«Well,» she asked coldly, after he left me, «what did he give you?»
«Three Hail Marys,» I said.
«Three Hail Marys,» she repeated incredulously. «You mustn’t have told him anything.»
«I told him everything,» I said confidently.
«About Gran and all?»
«About Gran and all.»
(All she wanted was to be able to go home and say I’d made a bad confession.)
«Did you tell him you went for me with the bread-knife?» she asked with a frown.
«I did to be sure.»
«And he only gave you three Hail Marys?»
«That’s all.»
She slowly got down from the railing with a baffled air. Clearly, this was beyond her. As we mounted the steps back to the main road, she looked at me suspiciously.
«What are you sucking?» she asked. Bullseyes.»
«Was it the priest gave them to you? ‘Twas.»
«Lord God,» she wailed bitterly, «some people have all the luck! ‘Tis no advantage to anybody trying to be good. I might just as well be a sinner like you.»
•→Frank O’Connor talks about the art of the short story in a lecture from 1964←
Listen ⇑
•→»My Oedipus Complex«←[read]
¤ «The drunkard»
The Drunkard tells of Mick Delaney, a long-time alcoholic whose addiction has substantially affected the lives of his wife and son. His spouse, Mrs. Delaney is a hardworking woman who finds herself constantly excusing her husband’s behavior with herself, her son and Mick’s employers. Larry Delaney, Mick’s son, relates tales from his youth of living in fear of the frequent drinking binges engaged in by his father. Mick Delaney does not drink constantly and spends great spans of time where his is sober. During this time Mick looks down on others around him who spend their money with publicans, even calculating the amounts of money he has saved by being sober. This attitude of moral superiority over his fellow men has consequences, and once Mick’s pride swelled enough, he celebrates his morality over his neighbors by having a drink. Realizing his mistake, Mick would continue to drink to try to forget how foolish he feels. During a visit to a local tavern, Mick takes Larry with him and begins to drink. While Mick is talking with the other people he had looked down on earlier while sober, Larry sneaks his father’s pint away and drinks it, becoming intoxicated and physically ill. Shamed at his son’s drunkenness, Mick walks his son home, in full view of the neighbors on his street. After putting the boy to bed, Mick is confronted by his wife, who is outraged that her son drank while with his father. Sufficiently shamed, Mick quietly returns to work the next morning, and Mrs. Delaney allows her son to rest, comforted that he was with his father at the tavern. The Drunkard ends with Mrs. Delaney thankful to her son that he got drunk the night before, instead of his father. Mrs. Delaney treats her son kindly, calling him his father’s guardian angel
· · · read ⇓
It was a terrible blow to Father when Mr. Dooley on the terrace died. Mr. Dooley was a commercial traveller with two sons in the Dominicans and a car of his own, so socially he was miles ahead of us, but he had no false pride. Mr. Dooley was an intellectual, and, like all intellectuals the thing he loved best was conversation, and in his own limited way Father was a well-read man and could appreciate an intelligent talker. Mr. Dooley was remarkably intelligent. Between business acquaintances and clerical contacts, there was very little he didn’t know about what went on in town, and evening after evening he crossed the road to our gate to explain to Father the news behind the news. He had a low, palavering voice and a knowing smile, and Father would listen in astonishment, giving him a conversational lead now and again, and then stump triumphantly in to Mother with his face aglow and ask: “Do you know what Mr. Dooley is after telling me?” Ever since, when somebody has given me some bit of information off the record I have found myself on the point of asking: “Was it Mr. Dooley told you that?”
Till I actually saw him laid out in his brown shroud with the rosary beads entwined between his waxy fingers I did not take the report of his death seriously. Even then I felt there must be a catch and that some summer evening Mr. Dooley must reappear at our gate to give us a lowdown on the next world. But Father was very upset, partly because Mr. Dooley was about one age with himself, a thing that always gives a distinctly personal turn to another man’s demise; partly because now he would have no one to tell him what dirty work was behind the latest scene at the Corporation. You could count on your fingers the number of men in Blarney Lane who read the papers as Mr. Dooley did, and none of these would have overlooked the fact that Father was only a laboring man. Even Sullivan, the carpenter, a mere nobody, thought he was a cut above Father. It was certainly a solemn event.
“Half past two to the Curragh,” Father said meditatively, putting down the paper.
“But you’re not thinking of going to the funeral?” Mother asked in alarm.
“’Twould be expected,” Father said, scenting opposition. “I wouldn’t give it to say to them.”
“I think,” said Mother with suppressed emotion, “it will be as much as anyone will expect if you go to the chapel with him.”
(“Going to the chapel,” of course, was one thing, because the body was removed after work, but going to the funeral meant the loss of a half-day’s pay.)
“The people hardly know us,” she added.
“God between us and all harm,” Father replied with dignity, “we’d be glad if it was our own turn.”
To give Father his due, he was always ready to lose a half day for the sake of an old neighbor. It wasn’t so much that he liked funerals as that he was a conscientious man who did as he would be done by; and nothing could have consoled him so much for the prospect of his own death as the assurance of a worthy funeral. And, to give Mother her due, it wasn’t the half day’s pay she begrudged, badly as we could afford it.
Drink, you see, was Father’s great weakness. He could keep steady for months, even for years, at a stretch, and while he did he was as good as gold. He was first up in the morning and brought the mother a cup of tea in bed, stayed at home in the evenings and read the paper; saved money and bought himself a new blue serge suit and bowler hat. He laughed at the folly of men who, week in week out, left their hard-earned money with the publicans; and sometimes, to pass an idle hour, he took pencil and paper and calculated precisely how much he saved each week through being a teetotaller. Being a natural optimist he sometimes continued this calculation through the whole span of his prospective existence and the total was breathtaking. He would die worth hundreds.
If I had only known it, this was a bad sign; a sign he was becoming stuffed up with spiritual pride and imagining himself better than his neighbors. Sooner or later, the spiritual pride grew till it called for some form of celebration. Then he took a drink—not whisky, of course; nothing like that—just a glass of some harmless drink like lager beer. That was the end of Father. By the time he had taken the first he already realized he had made a fool of himself, took a second to forget it and a third to forget that he couldn’t forget, and at last came home reeling drunk. From this on it was “The Drunkard’s Progress,” as in the moral prints. Next day he stayed in from work with a sick head while Mother went off to make his excuses at the works, and inside a forthnight he was poor and savage and despondent again. Once he began he drank steadily through everything down to the kitchen clock. Mother and I knew all the phases and dreaded all the dangers. Funerals were one.
“I have to go to Dunphy’s to do a half-day’s work,” said Mother in distress. “Who’s to look after Larry?”
“I’ll look after Larry,” Father said graciously. “The little walk will do him good.”
There was no more to said, though we all knew I didn’t need anyone to look after me, and that I could quite well have stayed at home and looked after Sonny, but I was being attached to the party to act as a brake on Father. As a brake I had never achieved anything, but Mother still had great faith in me.
Next day, when I got home from school, Father was there before me and made a cup of tea for both of us. He was very good at tea, but too heavy in the hand for anything else; the way he cut bread was shocking. Afterwards, we went down the hill to the church, Father wearing his best blue serge and a bowler cocked to one side of his head with the least suggestion of the masher. To his great joy he discovered Peter Crowley among the mourners. Peter was another danger signal, as I knew well from certain experiences after mass on Sunday morning: a mean man, as Mother said, who only went to funerals for the free drinks he could get at them. It turned out that he hadn’t even known Mr. Dooley! But Father had a sort of contemptuous regard for him as one of the foolish people who wasted their good money in public-houses when they could be saving it. Very little of his own money Peter Crowley wasted!
It was an excellent funeral from Father’s point of view. He had it all well studied before we set off after the hearse in the afternoon sunlight.
“Five carriages!” he exclaimed. “Five carriages and sixteen covered cars! There’s one alderman, two councillors and ‘tis known how many priests. I didn’t see a funeral like this from the road since Willie Mack, the publican, died.”
“Ah, he was well liked,” said Crowley in his dusky voice.
“My goodness, don’t I know that?” snapped Father. “Wasn’t the man my best friend? Two nights before he died—only two nights—he was over telling me the goings-on about the housing contract. Them fellow in the Corporation are night and day robbers. But even I never imagined he was as well connected as that.”
Father was stepping out like a boy, pleased with everything: the other mourners, and the fine houses along Sunday’s Well. I knew the danger signals were there in full force: a sunny day, a fine funeral, and a distinguished company of clerics and public men were bringing out all the natural vanity and flightiness of Father’s character. It was with something like genuine pleasure that he saw his old friend lowered into the grave; with the sense of having performed a duty and a pleasant awareness that however much he would miss poor Mr. Dooley in the long summer evenings, it was he and not poor Mr. Dooley who would do the missing.
“We’ll be making tracks before they break up,” he whispered to Crowley as the gravediggers tossed in the first shovelfuls of clay, and away he went, hopping like a goat from grassy hump to hump. The drivers, who were probably in the same state as himself, though without months of abstinence to put an edge to it, looked up hopefully.
“Are they nearly finished, Mick,” bawled one.
“All over now bar the last prayers,” trumpeted Father in the tone of one who brings news of great rejoicing.
The carriages passed us in a lather of dust several hundred yards from the public-house, and Father, whose feet gave him trouble in hot weather, quickened his pace, looking nervously over his shoulder for any sign of the main body of mourners crossing the hill. In a crowd like that a man might be kept waiting.
When we did reach the pub the carriages were drawn up outside, and solemn men in black ties were cautiously bringing out consolation to mysterious females whose hands reached out modestly from behind the drawn blinds of the coaches. Inside the pub there were only the drivers and a couple of shawly women. I felt if I was to act as a brake at all, this was the time, so I pulled Father by the coattails.
“Dadda, can’t we go home now?” I asked.
“Two minutes now,” he said, beaming affectionately. “Just a bottle of lemonade and we’ll go home.”
This was a bribe, and I knew it, but I was always a child of weak character. Father ordered lemonade and two pints. I was thirsty and swallowed my drink at once. But that wasn’t Father’s way. He had long months of abstinence behind him and an eternity of pleasure before. He took out his pipe, blew through it, filled it, and then lit it with loud pops, his eyes bulging above it. After that he deliberately turned his back on the pint, leaned one elbow on the counter in the attitude of a man who did not know there was a pint behind him, and deliberately brushed the tobacco from his palms. He had settled down for the evening. He was steadily working through all the important funerals he had ever attended. The carriages departed and the minor mourners drifted in till the pub was half full.
“Dada,” I said, pulling his coat again, “can’t we go home now?”
“Ah, your mother won’t be in for a long time yet,” he said benevolently enough. “Run out in the road and play, can’ you?”
It struck me as very cool, the way grown-ups assumed that you could play all by yourself on a strange road. I began to get bored as I had so often been bored before. I knew Father was quite capable of lingering there till nightfall. I knew I might have to bring him home, blind drunk, down Blarney Lane, with all the old women at their doors, saying: “Mick Delaney is on it again.” I knew that my mother would be half crazy with anxiety; that next day Father wouldn’t go out to work; and before the end of the week she would be running down to the pawn with the clock under her shawl. I could never get over the lonesomeness of the kitchen without a clock.
I was still thirsty. I found if I stood on tiptoe I could just reach Father’s glass, and the idea occurred to me that it would be interesting to know what the contents were like. He had his back to it and wouldn’t notice. I took down the glass and sipped cautiously. It was a terrible disappointment. I was astonished that he could even drink such stuff. It looked as if he had never tried lemonade.
I should have advised him about lemonade but he was holding forth himself in great style. I heard him say that bands were a great addition to a funeral. He put his arms in the position of someone holding a rifle in reverse and hummed a few bars of Chopin’s Funeral March. Crowley nodded reverently. I took a longer drink and began to see that porter might have its advantages. I felt pleasantly elevated and philosophic. Father hummed a few bars of the Dead March in Saul. It was a nice pub and a very fine funeral, and I felt sure that poor Mr. Dooley in Heaven must be highly gratified. At the same time I thought they might have given him a band. As Father said, bands were a great addition.
But the wonderful thing about porter was the way it made you stand aside, or rather float aloft like a cherub rolling on a cloud, and watch yourself with your legs crossed, leaning against a bar counter, not worrying about trifles but thinking deep, serious, grown-up thoughts about life and death. Looking at yourself like that, you couldn’t help thinking after a while how funny you looked, and suddenly you got embarrassed and wanted to giggle. But by the time I had finished the pint, that phase too had passed; I found it hard to put back the glass, the counter seemed to have grown so high. Melancholia was supervening again.
“Well,” Father said reverently, reaching behind him for his drink, “God rest the poor man’s soul, wherever he is!” He stopped, looked first at the glass, and then at the people round him. “Hello,” he said in a fairly good-humored tone, as if he were just prepared to consider it a joke, even if it was in bad taste, “who was at this?”
There was silence for a moment while the publican and the old women looked first at Father and then at his glass.
“There was no one at it, my good man,” one of the women said with a offended air. “Is it robbers you think we are?”
“Ah, there’s no one here would do a thing like that, Mick,” said the publican in a shocked tone.
“Well, someone did it,” said Father, his smile beginning to wear off.
“If they did, they were them that were nearer it,” said the woman darkly, giving me a dirty look; and at the same moment the truth began to dawn on Father. I supposed I might have looked a bit starry-eyed. He bent and shook me.
“Are you all right, Larry?” he asked in alarm.
Peter Crowley looked down at me and grinned.
“Could you beat that?” he exclaimed in a husky voice.
I could, and without difficulty. I started to get sick. Father jumped back in holy terror that I might spoil his good suit, and hastily opened the back door.
“Run! run! run!” he shouted.
I saw the sunlit wall outside with the ivy overhanging it, and ran. The intention was good but the performance was exaggerated, because I lurched right into the wall, hurting it badly, as it seemed to me. Being always very polite, I said “Pardon” before the second bout came on me. Father, still concerned for his suit, came up behind and cautiously held me while I got sick.
“That’s a good boy!” he said encouragingly. “You’ll be grand when you get that up.”
Begor, I was not grand! Grand was the last thing I was. I gave one unmerciful wail out of me as he steered me back to the pub and put me sitting on the bench near the shawlies. They drew themselves up with an offended air, still sore at the suggestion that they had drunk his pint.
“God help us!” moaned one, looking pityingly at me, “isn’t it the likes of them would be fathers?”
“Mick,” said the publican in alarm, spraying sawdust on my tracks, “that child isn’t supposed to be in here at all. You’d better take him home quick in case a bobby would see him.”
“Merciful God!” whimpered Father, raising his eyes to heaven and clapping his hands silently as he only did when distraught, “What misfortune was on me? Or what will his mother say? … If women might stop at home and look after their children themselves!” he added in a snarl for the benefit of the shawlies. “Are them carriages all gone, Bill?”
“The carriages are finished long ago, Mick,” replied the publican.
“I’ll take him home,” Father said despairingly…. “I’ll never bring you out again,” he threatened me. “Here,” he added, giving me the clean handkerchief from his breast pocket, “put that over your eye.”
The blood on the handkerchief was the first indication I got that I was cut, and instantly my temple began to throb and I set up another howl.
“Whisht, whisht, whisht!” Father said testily, steering me out the door. “One’d think you were killed. That’s nothing. We’ll wash it when we get home.”
“Steady now, old scout!” Crowley said, taking the other side of me. “You’ll be all right in a minute.”
I never met two men who knew less about the effects of drink. The first breath of fresh air and the warmth of the sun made me groggier than ever and I pitched and rolled between wind and tide till Father started to whimper again.
“God Almighty, and the whole road out! What misfortune was on me didn’t stop at my work! Can’t you walk straight?”
I couldn’t. I saw plain enough that, coaxed by the sunlight, every woman old and young in Blarney Lane was leaning over her half-door or sitting on her doorstep. They all stopped gabbling to gape at the strange spectacle of two sober, middle-aged men bringing home a drunken small boy with a cut over his eye. Father, torn between the shamefast desire to get me home as quick as he could, and the neighbourly need to explain that it wasn’t his fault, finally halted outside Mrs. Roche’s. There was a gang of old women outside a door at the opposite side of the road. I didn’t like the look of them from the first. They seemed altogether too interested in me. I leaned against the wall of Mrs. Roche’s cottage with my hands in my trousers pockets, thinking mournfully of poor Mr. Dooley in his cold grave on the Curragh, who would never walk down the road again, and, with great feeling, I began to sing a favorite song of Father’s.
Though lost to Mononia and cold in the grave He returns to Kincora no more.“Wisha, the poor child!” Mrs. Roche said. “Haven’t he a lovely voice, God bless him!”
That was what I thought myself, so I was the more surprised when Father said “Whisht!” and raised a threatening finger at me. He didn’t seem to realize the appropriateness of the song, so I sang louder than ever.
“Whisht, I tell you!” he snapped, and then tried to work up a smile for Mrs. Roche’s benefit. “We’re nearly home now. I’ll carry you the rest of the way.”
But, drunk and all as I was, I knew better than to be carried home ignominiously like that.
“Now,” I said severely, “can’t you leave me alone? I can walk all right. “Tis only my head. All I want is a rest.”
“But you can rest at home in bed,” he said viciously, trying to pick me up, and I knew by the flush on his face that he was very vexed.
“Ah, Jasus,” I said crossly, “what do I want to go home for? Why the hell can’t you leave me alone?”
For some reason the gang of old women at the other side of the road thought this very funny. They nearly split their sides over it. A gassy fury began to expand in me at the thought that a fellow couldn’t have a drop taken without the whole neighbourhood coming out to make game of him.
“Who are ye laughing at?” I shouted, clenching my fists at them. “I’ll make ye laugh at the other side of yeer faces if ye don’t let me pass.”
They seemed to think this funnier still; I had never seen such ill-mannered people.
“Go away, ye bloody bitches!” I said.
“Whisht, whisht, whisht, I tell you!” snarled Father, abandoning all pretence of amusement and dragging me along behind him by the hand. I was maddened by the women’s shrieks of laughter. I was maddened by Father’s bullying. I tried to dig in my heels but he was too powerful for me, and I could only see the women by looking back over my shoulder.
“Take care or I’ll come back and show ye!” I shouted. “I’ll teach ye to let decent people pass. Fitter for ye to stop at home and wash yeer dirty faces.”
“Twill be all over the road,” whimpered Father. “Never again, never again, not if I lived to be a thousand!”
To this day I don’t know whether he was forswearing me or the drink. By way of a song suitable to my heroic mood I bawled “The Boys of Wexford,” as he dragged me in home. Crowley, knowing he was not safe, made off and Father undressed me and put me to bed. I couldn’t sleep because of the whirling in my head. It was very unpleasant, and I got sick again. Father came in with a wet cloth and mopped up after me. I lay in a fever, listening to him chopping sticks to start a fire. After that I heard him lay the table.
Suddenly the front door banged open and Mother stormed in with Sonny in her arms, not her usual gentle, timid self, but a wild, raging woman. It was clear that she had heard it all from the neighbours.
“Mick Delaney,” she cried hysterically, “what did you do to my son?”
“Whisht, woman, whisht, whisht!” he hissed, dancing from one foot to the other. “Do you want the whole road to hear?”
“Ah,” she said with a horrifying laugh, “the road knows all about it by this time. The road knows the way you filled your unfortunate innocent child with drink to make sport for you and that other rotten, filthy brute.”
“But I gave him no drink,” he shouted, aghast at the horrifying interpretation the neighbours had chosen to give his misfortune. “He took it while my back was turned. What the hell do you think I am?”
“Ah,” she replied bitterly, “everyone knows what you are now. God forgive you, wasting our hard-earned few ha’pence on drink, and bringing up your child to be a drunken corner-boy like yourself.”
Then she swept into the bedroom and threw herself on her knees by the bed. She moaned when she saw the gash over my eye. In the kitchen Sonny set up a loud bawl on his own, and a moment later Father appeared in the bedroom door with his cap over his eyes, wearing an expression of the most intense self-pity.
“That’s a nice way to talk to me after all I went through,” he whined. “That’s a nice accusation, that I was drinking. Not one drop of drink crossed my lips the whole day. How could it when he drank it all? I’m the one that ought to be pitied, with my day ruined on me, and I after being made a show for the whole road.”
But the next morning, when he got up and went out quietly to work with his dinner-basket, Mother threw herself at me in the bed and kissed me. It seemed it was all my doing, and I was being given a holiday till my eye got better.
“My brave little man!” she said with her eyes shining. “It was God did it you were there. You were his guardian angel.”
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