The Ginger Man

  "O you're a fine woman with a build of a woman of thirty."

  "Go on out of that Where's the man with the beard?"

  "He's in Maynooth. He said the price of drink was scandalous and for a few prayers he could get it for nothing."

  "Don't be blasphemous now and watch those barrels. You're a troublemaker you are—have my hands full with the lot of you."

  "Now, now, Madam—"

  "Don't call me madam—I know what you're up to."

  Group moving slowly. Down the alley. Through a door. Along the black hall. And into the yellow light of the medieval room. This is the pineal eye of the world.

  "Where's Catherine, the girl? Send her with two scalding malts and spot of gin for the lady and anything for yourself. And I wouldn't be past a bit of bed with you."

  "O go on out of that and no noise, mind."

  In this semi-circle of expectation. Twisted bulgin' sofas. Not much British fellowship here in spite of the sportiness of the room, with hunts racing everywhere. Catherine is a beauty and so's Mary around the nose and eyes. But this is a horsehair sofa. Say after me, Mary.

  Sebastian

  Thou art blessed,

  And Sebastian,

  Also the true song.

  A tinder of night together

  With being

  A bargain basement

  Of kisses.

  Get astride me.

  Touch, whoops, tender

  Me,

  Mr. big tree of love.

  Catherine, the maid, pushed through the door with a tray of drinks. Regarding Sebastian with a sly, shy grin. Blue-eyed, and a bit of the Celtic bovinity around the ankles. The horse-cab man wiping his mouth with his sleeve and the lip of glass with his hand to purify it. Mary sitting still, smoothing out her skirt and watching Sebastian.

  "Now, isn't this nice, Mary?"

  "It's all right."

  "It's a good bit of malt, sir."

  "Rather."

  "It's been showery weather"

  "For sure."

  I don't think I'm getting far with this conversation or with Mary. Play on her sympathy for being outside the church and grace. Might be the thread needle hole to her own. I've got a cloacal grip on life. Lot of people have said that. Nor am I going to let go. If there is illusion, live it with a flourish. I'll get you, Mary. Just like Marion. In the good old days I had Marion wrapped around. My finger. Up to get the tea. And toast. That was love. But I killed it. Things just don't last. They change. And sometimes they multiply, like babas.

  The woman of the establishment came in.

  "Now that was the last round. I have to get my sleep."

  "One for the road and for yourself. Weary travelers we are."

  "Do you want to have me arrested ?"

  "For fear we get killed on the highways."

  "Go on out of that. You're a fine one. Once you get in here I can't get you out. Just one more. Catherine, two whiskies and a gin, and get a move on. Can't get an ounce of work out of them these days with all their fancy clothes and going out to dances. A while back I'd take the arse out of the likes of her and her men friends. They don't want to work these days."

  "They don't know their place."

  "Don't I know it Up from the country and you'd think they was from society. Take that out of them"

  "Catch them in the first-class"

  "The likes of them should walk—never mind riding in the first-class"

  "Discipline. More discipline"

  "Out with black men every night of the week. I'll pound that out of them"

  "There'll be a day of reckoning for all their laziness. That's for sure"

  "And it won't be too soon."

  "I'm a great believer in the fairness"

  "It's all right"

  "Now if you'll excuse me a moment, I must make wee wee"

  "That's thirteen and six."

  "My driver will see to that."

  Sebastian felt his way through the hall and out a door under the sky. He pissed indiscriminately. He met Catherine coming back in the darkness. They locked. And she put her hand between his legs. And dropped the tray with a dang. The hall suddenly alight.

  "What's going on? Now I won't have any of this going on with my girls. Stop it Catherine, take your arms from around that gentleman, you dirty little slut."

  "Now, now, everything's all right. Catherine and I were lost in the hall."

  "I've had enough of your carrying on, Romeo. And get back into that kitchen you, the very nerve of you. Slut."

  Sebastian gave madam a pinch in the bottom as he waltzed by and she slapped his hand. O good O. We'll all go and sit under the shittah tree. Something that no one knows is that I pawned a mirror of a public toilet. One of those modern jobs, just screwed in. I had the end of a fork to take them out and went to my broker. Then I went to the Grafton Cinema to have a supper in the pseudy tudy interior. Sitting by the window from where I could see Dawson Lounge written up on a high wall. Happiness can be uncomfortable. And waiting for food it was great but I called on a few fears to temper the glow of conservative mellowness. The waitress, a lovely black build of a girl. full mouth and white teeth and healthy breasts full of opulent undulation as she came with plates of stuff. O the hunger of it

  Madam stood at the door. huge bosom coming out the hall.

  "Now that's all. the lot of you out of here now, before the Guards come breaking down the door."

  "And let me thank you for a fine evening."

  "Just get out."

  "Am I becoming the hound?"

  The lady of the house laughed. Ushered them through the long dark hall and out up the alley of barrels. And drunks lurking in doorways, reeling and pissing. Sebastian told the driver to let them off at the Metal Bridge and that there would be a day coming when he would repay him for his great kindness.

  They went up the flat steps. Stopped, watching gulls and swans. Mary took Sebastian's arm.

  "It's a lovely view."

  "Quite."

  "All the seagulls."

  "Yes."

  "I like to do this sort of thing."

  "Do you?"

  "Yes. It gives me a nice feeling."

  "True."

  "As if you were floating or something."

  "Yes, floating."

  "What's the matter. don't you like it?"

  "Love it, Mary."

  "You just go on and on and then you get a queer notion and don't say much."

  It was the meal at the Grafton Cinema that took my mind i76 away. Because the waitress was so kind. A plate full of fine, fat sausages, lashings of rashers and a mountain of golden chips. I heard the waitress saying down the hatch would they ever hurry up because this fine gentleman was starving. And the tea was so good that I'd giggle with the impossible joy of it all. And a gentle Grafton Street breeze, tempting me to stay alive forever. But I know when to be pushing up the mushrooms, flavorful and frequent And just as I was laying knife to a sausage there was a scream. The pantry curtain flew open. The waitress scurrying out, a white plate breaking on her head, and chased by a steamy faced girl, her hair, congealed tresses scattered round her head. She was yelling that she would commit murder, that she couldn't stand it any more in this hot hole. Crying and telling them all to leave her alone. She went on breaking dishes. And selfishly, I worried for fear she would destroy my sweet I did feel that my supper had been ruined with the indignity that was in it But she calmed down and they gave her five minutes off to be getting this rebellion out of her head. Only for my meal, I was all tenderness for her working skin and the red blotches on her legs. But there must be discipline. However, I'm all for that moment of reverie at time of crackup.

  Sebastian leaned on Mary's blunt shoulder, kissing the corner of her mouth as she twisted away.

  "Don't do it where everybody can see us. Let's go look in the window of the woolen shop."

  They crossed the bridge, holding hands. They looked at the pieces of cloth. Mary said she was saving to have a s
uit for Spring. She said her father would never let her buy any new clothes and accused her of wanting to wear them to dances.

  She told Sebastian she had friends who colored photographs and some of the pictures weren't very nice. Perhaps she would do that soon because her uncle might be able to take her brothers and then she would be free. The only thing she didn't like about living in Phibsboro was that Mountjoy prison. Coming by one day she saw a man hanging between the bars and he had a funny beard and he asked me to bring him some champagne and smoked salmon. I just ran away and it's just the same with that Grangegorman, the lot of them running around in there without a brain in their heads.

  They walked along the old torn houses of Dominick Street Mary showed him a house where she lived before they moved up the Cabra Road. Saying it was an awful street with drink and them beating each other to death with bicycle chains. She was frightened out of her wits to go out at night. But in Cabra she walked in the Botanic Gardens and liked to read all the funny names in Latin on the plants, and along the Tolka, a nice river.

  "I live here."

  They stood in front of a red brick house.

  "When can I see you again, Mary?"

  "I don't know. Talk quiet and we can go in the hall. We live upstairs."

  "You're a nice girl, Mary."

  "You tell them all that."

  "Let me kiss your hand."

  "All right, if you want."

  "Lovely green eyes, and black hair."

  "You think I'm too fat?"

  "Not at all. Are you mad, Mary?"

  "Well, I'm going on a diet."

  "Let me feel you. O not at all, just makes you ripe. This, just the way you want them."

  "O you really are bold."

  Her back against the wall, standing in front of her, arms cocked, holding her by the elbows in her plum colored coat. He kissed her and she bent her head back.

  "Do you like it, Mary ?"

  "I shouldn't tell you that."

  "You can tell me."

  "But you don't kiss like the rest of them"

  "Them?"

  "Yes."

  "But, Mary, I'm a man of refinement"

  "But they don't do that."

  "And they're not refined."

  "It isn't that."

  "I'll give you another one."

  She put her arms around his back, tight and tied.

  "It isn't the way they do it"

  "Do you like it?"

  "Why do you want to know?"

  "I want to take you away."

  A noise came through the ceiling. Mary stiffened, holding her head back, listening. She whispered.

  "Give me your hand."

  She led him to the back of the hall and down two steps behind the stairs. They waited and then she put her hand up into his hair and scratched. Good for dandruff. O the tenor of it in this hall. The safety of it Mary, your mouth and tomato sauce.

  "Sebastian is a funny name."

  "Venerable."

  "What?"

  "That's what it means. Deserving of honor and respect"

  "You're funny."

  "Eeeee and eeeee and eak."

  "You're a gas man."

  "And you're a great build of girl."

  "You're just saying that."

  "O you are. Right here. Lovely. And there, too. You're just great all round."

  "It isn't safe here."

  "Where?"

  "We could go in the back. We must be quiet."

  Some light at the end of the passage. Passing a line of broken prams, great for transport to the pawn. Could pass by any landlord Must have the wits these days. I'm starved for love. Not ordinary love but real love. The love that's like music or something. Mary's a good strong girl for heavy work. Scrub floors and things. Get her and a house that's a box for the soul. And I'm fed up with the cardboard type. If I got Mary as the maid. Chris as the boarder. Miss Frost as secretary and Marion to run the whole lot, we'd be a great bunch. Then take my proper place in society, suits overhauled and the rest. O there'll be changes made. I won't take any nonsense either, or concede carelessness. At least I have rules. And I know society respects a man for his discipline.

  She was holding his hand, leading him. At this early hour in the morning. I must get home. And out of these dung smells. Mary pushed open the half broken door of a shed.

  "Mind the bicycles. In here."

  "What's that?"

  "Coal."

  "For the love of Jesus."

  "What's the matter?"

  "What's this, Mary?"

  "A mattress."

  The clatter of a falling broom. Mary whispering with fright:

  "Jesus, Mary and Joseph."

  And Sebastian, to be helpful.

  "Pray for us, Blessed Oliver."

  "It'll be all right. Would you like a bottle of stout?"

  "Mary, I'll love you till your dying day. Where is it?"

  Mary reached behind boxes and turf.

  "It's the landlord's. He hides it back here for when the pubs shut His wife raises holy murder if he brings it in the house."

  "This is good of you, Mary."

  "Do you say a lot of things you don't mean?"

  "What?"

  "What you said"

  "What did I say ?"

  "When I said I had the stout"

  "Come here and sit beside me while I open this bottle"

  She came and sat on the mattress beside him, leaning against the wall, watching him with a flourish of wrist, pop the cork. We lay in the remnants of coal And a pile of turf. I happen to know that dogs and cats prefer coal and turf. And I don't relish finding myself sitting in it

  "This is peace, Mary"

  "It's quiet here"

  "I need this, Mary"

  "Why?"

  "Lot of reasons. Little difficulties here and there. Misunderstanding mostly. A girl like you is a great comfort"

  "It's not very clean or nice here"

  "Come closer"

  "I don't know what to say to you"

  "I'm married"

  "I know you are"

  "I say, Good God, Jude, Joseph and a general variety of the blessed and saintly"

  "But I don't care if you are. I don't think I'll ever get married"

  "Don't"

  "Why?"

  "Might marry an Irishman"

  "What's the matter with an Irishman?"

  "They come home drunk and beat your head off. Jump on your arse every Saturday night and prod you to death with it Other nights too. Pigs. You don't want that Mary."

  "I might"

  "Far be it, then, for me to give you advice. Get me another bottle of stout."

  "You drink fast"

  "Got to with the lack of decency around us, Mary."

  "What do you do?"

  "Read law"

  "Outside that?"

  "Gardening. Collect stamps, horse brasses. I'm very interested in bird watching. I refuse to gamble. Absolutely refuse to bet on a horse."

  Mary's eyes broody. Sebastian leaned over and pressed his lips to her ear. Mary came down on top of him. And I put my hands up under her sweater. These two mountains up out of the sea.

  "Mary, would you like to come to England with me?"

  "Yes. I'll go anywhere you want me to."

  "We'll need a little money."

  "I have thirty pounds in the bank."

  "That'll do nicely."

  "But I'm not sure I can get it out"

  "It's in your name?"

  "Yes."

  "Bob's your rudd."

  Dangerfield grunting for she was no lightweight But here was a girl good and strong, not afraid of work, I don't think. Willing to get her shoulder to the wheel. That's the trouble with the world, not enough of these people with shoulders to the wheel, letting others do the work. Kick some of the laziness out of them, out on Sundays, taking senseless rides in the country. It's painful to see them looking for something to do on a day off. I must roll Mary over on her back becaus
e lumps of coal are pressing through this mattress into my spine. Whee. Like turning turtle. Over you go. I don't think I'm quite up to this exertion. Circus, clowning, her sweater pulled up. Wow what a wench and puffing heavily. Do my most penetrating thinking just slopping around with someone else's body, penetrating to the root How many more interesting things can be done with thirty pounds than keeping it in the bank. Her breasts are all over her chest I haven't met with nipples like these before. A breast feeder for sure. There is a restaurant in Grafton Street called the Udder Shop served by hefty wenches from the country. Teat lunch a specialty. Stop this deprivation of the breast. Because in my own case I can't get enough of them and even though I am a little tired tonight I'm enjoying playing with this strange pair.

  "I've never felt this way before, Sebastian. Purple inside. Do everything to me, all the things. I want you to do everything."

  "Easy, Mary. You don't want to have a baby, do you?''

  "I don't care. I want everything, all of it."

  "Ruin your life."

  "I want it anyhow."

  "Some other night when I'm prepared."

  "I don't want you to use those things anyway. I want it the way it is. Go ahead."

  "For Jesus sake, take it easy, Mary. Don't break it off altogether. You don't want to be a fool."

  "I'm not a fool, I know what I want."

  "Ruin both our lives. These babas want to eat, I can't let you, Mary. Not tonight."

  "Please do it to me. I want everything. I've never felt this way before."

  "You'll get this way again."

  Mary ground her lips down on him. Locking her thighs on his knee, forcing him over on his back and knocking over a bottle of stout. Jesus, Mary, I can't get involved. Don't do this to me. There's enough misunderstanding in my life already without a case of illegitimacy. She's trying to force me to submit. I absolutely refuse to be taken by force. The indignity. She's quite mad. Also without any reserves. Stop at nothing.

  "Someone's sure to hear us, Mary"

  "Everyone's in bed. I like it."

  "Mary!"

  "I like it."

  "Mary, really"

  "You're sweet"

  "Mary, we'll get caught"

  "You're so sweet"

  "Mary, stop"

  "I like the feel of it I've never felt it before. Is it poison?"

  "It's great for sore throats"

  "Cod"

  "It is"