Her questioning, her fear exasperated you to that. Now you saw how she drew away from your violence, that was not what she needed, and it was only with someone simple and weak you were able to be violent or in your own walled head but you weren’t very violent with the priest two nights before.
“So we’re going home, Joan.” You placed your hand quickly on the back of her hand. “We’ll have the great honour and joy of meeting our beloved father soon.”
“Aye,” she began to smile.
“So you’re home, are you? Where’s the food going to come outa to fill extra bellies. God, Ο God, Ο God, what did I do to deserve this cross? The poor-house, it’s the poor-house ye’ll all wind up in, and ye needn’t say I didn’t warn ye.”
“O God, what did I do to deserve such a pack?” she took up shyly but laughing.
“Only for ye have your eejit of a father to come home to what would ye do? Then such thankless bastards the sun never saw.”
“The poor-house, the poor-house, the poor-house,” the girl was suddenly mimicking with real gaiety, taken out of herself, rocking with laughter when you took up where she stopped.
17
THERE WAS THAT MOMENTARY SILENCE OF SURPRISE WHEN they entered the kitchen by the back way and without knock¬ ing, opening slow the doors for warning. The evening meal was on the tables. They stood at the door, waiting for some reception, afraid.
“Joan, you’re home,” Mahoney was slow with surprise. He rose and took her hands and she kissed him, “You’re welcome.”
“Joan. Joan. Joan’s home,” the army of children showed a shouting of delight on their faces, but it was suppressed, because of their father’s presence. They gathered shyly round her, she was the attraction. No one had ever been away for so long before. She’d a half-pound of cream caramels for them too.
“You’re in the right time for the food,” the father laughed and soon they were at the tables, porridge of Indian meal, coarse and golden, dissolving in fine grains in the mouth, its delicate watery flavour drowned by the cream; and afterwards potatoes with buttered soda bread, and tea.
“It’s a long time since you got the Indian meal,” he joked, he seemed delighted. The scent of apples roasting in the baking-oven filled the kitchen, the hollow scooped in their centres full of melted sugar, and their green jackets turning to the yellow of butter. They were eaten as cards were played in the long evening afterwards, the father did not go out to the fields again though there was light, he took delight in the roasted apples and the playing.
“We’ll have pains in our bellies tonight after these apples. Do you know, I’m like a perfessor now,” he laughed, emphatically mispronouncing, as he rakishly dealt the cards, a pencil behind his ear, the sheet of foolscap on which he kept the scores by his elbow on the table.
“Sit on it. Wallop it,” he shouted every time a trump made a tentative appearance. “Whatever else you do, keep the top man down.”
“Ah, lucky card,” he called out caressingly when the easy fall trick came his way.
The lamp was lit late. The night went unnoticed in this flash of happiness. The children, and Joan with them, went smiling to bed after he’d kissed them good night.
“This night you’re home and safe at last,” he kissed Joan.
Only when they’d all drifted to their rooms and Mahoney sat dealing out cards of patience did the night change to uneasiness and problems.
“Joan’s home,” he mused.
“She’s home.”
“You didn’t stay long yourself with the Reverend Gerald?” he did not look up, crouched over the cards spread on the soft green surface of the table.
“No. There was no point.”
“Things went badly so?”
“They didn’t go very well.”
“It’s not on holidays Joan is home, is it?”
“No.”
“Did anything happen?” his voice was low and probing, his hands moving the cards on the table, their corners flicking deliberately away. The silence and the tautness grew intense —white moths fluttered about the globe of the lamp.
“She was afraid. Ryan was interfering with her. She couldn’t stay, it was I made her come home.”
“How was he interfering with her?” the playing stopped for the first time, the eyes left the cards to search.
“As a girl. Sexually.”
“Did he do her any harm?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
He felt what had happened as an accusation, the face darkened with hostility.
“What’ll she do now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Stay here and wear the arse off herself sitting on chairs?”
“No.”
“There’s not enough of you as it is to feed, is there? How could anyone do anything with such a pack about him?”
“She can go to England.”
It halted Mahoney. Slowly he gathered the cards into a solid pack.
“Go on the streets, is it?”
“She could train to be a nurse.”
“But England’s rotten, full of filth and dirt. No girl could be safe there.”
“She wasn’t very safe where she’s after coming from and it’s no England,” it brought it to a sour enough end. Mahoney unlaced his boots, then quenched the lamp.
“It’s time for bed,” he said and as he turned away he asked tentatively, “What about yourself? How did things go between you and the priest?”
“I’m not going on to be a priest,” it came to his own ears strangely as it sounded in the darkness that took on the quality of brooding night when Mahoney no longer moved. It was hard to believe the words he’d said were final yet.
The father began to say something but stopped. The cockroaches were boldly coming out of their holes, sense of them crawling from all walls in the darkness, the moving mass of legs carrying the shining shells of their backs, black and reddish brown. When Mahoney moved one of them cracked under his loose boots.
“May God direct you. Go to your bed now. There’s no use hanging over the rakings in the dark.
18
ONE LONG GRIND OF STUDY FACED YOU THROUGH THAT WINTER if you were to get anywhere in the exams and the kitchen was no place for concentration. Preparing of meals or washing, someone sweeping the floor, the squabbles and the games of the children. Mahoney was hammering, the sharp crack of sprigs driven in, and the grating of the rasp on leather, confused into the moral character of Henry of Navarre. The will loosened. The page got blank, easier far to watch the shining balls of metal run hissing from the iron when he soldered an old saucepan. The guilt that you sat over books while he slaved into the night was driven home to the quick.
“Get the sprigs. We want to be finished before morning. We have to work. We can’t be planked over a book. We have to work.”
The blow sank in and brought blood to the face but there was too much control. The eyes slowly came up from the page and watched the large hands hammering. They bent down again with the half bitterness of a smile, they noted and kind of understood and they did not forgive, it was no house for reasonableness. You could only be silent and bow to it with as much detachment as you could get, and it might be right as anywhere else, it was simply the way the world was here, one day there might possibly be ferocity, but it was not to be this day.
When Mahoney was away they’d want to play: the rollicking blind-man’s-buff, chairs going over, everything in danger, the wild rushes of the blind man and the escaping. No matter how you tried resentment rose, and you cried at them in rage.
“Can you not go easy? How can I get much work done in that racket?”
They’d stop, go to their places or schoolbags, sit in suppression. You were their tyrant in place of Mahoney now, and you’d be too disturbed after to be able to concentrate again.
“Go on. Play away,” you’d get up in frustration and close the books, peace gone for that evening, and you’d watch them wary of you till they’d forget and grow int
ent as animals on their game, lost in the lamplight.
Impossible not to watch the slow hopscotch, whether the throw would find the chalked square, whether the piece of slate would remain steady on the head and hopping toe, fascination of eternal chance. Impossible too to refuse the invitation to join, see whether concentration and skill would defeat the limitations and traps, just for one game that so easily became several. The excitement of the danger of Mahoney coming never far, the slate picked up, the chalk marks obliterated by the wet brush kept handy, he’d have no chance to nag.
“Everything quiet of a sudden when I come, too quiet for good,” but there was nothing he could prove, they’d confront his suspicion with simple blankness.
No work much was got done. The weeks were going wasted.
“Can the man not keep quiet? Can he not sit? How can I go on? I must be going crazy,” you cursed, a night in late October, the kitchen hot and crowded, Mahoney’s hammer going ring-cling-cling on the rim of the bucket, the books useless on the table.
You might as well give up for good. It was useless trying. It was either give up, or go to one of the bedrooms upstairs where there was quiet. You’d freeze to death in those rooms without a fire, and to ask him for a fire was sure to rise trouble, but you were too driven desperate to care.
“I’m not able to study in this kitchen.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?” he was immediately suspicious as always.
“There’s too much noise. I just amn’t able to concentrate.”
“I thought that if you had your mind enough on what you’re doing you’d be able to hear nothing else.”
“No. I can’t. The noise is driving me crazy.”
“Well, we can’t go round on tiptoe just for the one person. There’s too much to do in this house, things to fix, too much work to do, and it can’t be put on one side.”
“There’d be no need. I could do the study in one of the rooms upstairs, there’s an extra lamp.”
“It’s not the summer, you know.”
“We could put a fire down.”
“That’d be an extra fire in the house, wouldn’t it?”
“It would but it’d be only for a few hours. We could put it in your room. It’d take the damp out of the walls. You’re always saying it’s the coldest room in the house,” there was need for cunning once waste of money was in the air.
“So it is! It’d give you your death, that room would.”
“We can put the fire there then, it’d be killing two birds that way.”
“You might as well so if it’s that important but I’m telling you it’ll be all for nothing,” he consented. “And remember we can’t be going to Arigna for coal if the turf and sticks run out.”
The fire was lit each evening in the room, the globe cleaned, the lamp lit. You’d sit at the table between the fire and the brass bells of the bed and read and write, the oil-lamp burning above the quiet books, the clock ticking, and the room warm with the fire. Downstairs the racket went on, but it was far away, remote as the wind in the winter outside. Each night you had a set amount of work to get through. You willed to do it perfectly, though the calm act of sitting down at the table never came easy. You’d find books to fiddle with or poke the fire into flame or wander away on any dream or distraction. It was a kind of tearing the sitting down. Once you were working you didn’t mind, you didn’t think of any outside world, the first breaking of the ice to be calm and sit was the worst.
You had to grind to do well in June. It could only be done a night at a time. You didn’t know what you wanted to do with your life even if you did do well in June. June was as blank and distant as your death, with hot days perhaps. The only way to get release was to work. You’d not go down or stand aside, you’d ride on top of the others if you could, whatever security that’d give. It was too grisly to think, it was easier to work than to think. Death was all that mattered, it gave quickness, that was one accent you’d never lose. You didn’t have to say it out loud. Life was the attraction, every instinct straining its way, and it was whether to be blind and follow, and work was a way out. Pass the exam. Learn the formula. Things would come out that way.
One-two-three-four the reasons Napoleon failed at Waterloo. Get by heart passages of prose to support an answer to Addison’s style when you knew every characteristic of style except that it was simply the inexplicable way a man who usually donned britches in the mornings had of writing. Learn how to praise the sensuous mysticism, the haunting lyricism of Ode to the Nightingale if they asked for an appreciation: how Keats’s imagination was befogged by too much heavy sensuousness if a criticism was the order of the day. On and on, further rubbish by the ton, cram it into the skull, get a high place in the Exam, play up and play the game well, ride down the slowcoaches.
You’d rise hot and tired from it all at ten, worn out. Pleasant to gather slowly then the books for the morning and quench the lamp, go down and look at the scrubbed raw boards of the table and linger over a cup of tea. The mind was drained, it wanted no more than to look at the solidity of things in tiredness and contentment. It had worked well. It could do no more. That was a kind of satisfaction that was hard to lose before sleep.
“Did you open the window before you came down? Not to have the room stinkin’ with bad air.”
“I did,” the aggression couldn’t even grate.
“How long were you up there tonight?”
“Four hours.”
“It’s alright till we’ll have a doctor’s bill on our hands, then we’ll see. Then we’ll see.”
“That’s the time the Superior says we should do.”
“What does he care, what does he care? He’ll not have to worry if you get sick.”
What use was there answering, you were at peace. Let him continue, let him come to his own stop, let him rave till he choked.
“It’s me has to do everything while you’re at the school all day and up there with a fire at your arse all night. Will the turf last out to the summer at that going? That’s the question. Do you think we can afford to get coal from Arigna?”
“It doesn’t burn that much. I can pay you back,” the resolution to stay clear of conflict didn’t last long.
“You’ll pay me back. I’d like to see that. Where’s the money coming outa? Nineteen damned near and not a round copper earned yet.”
“I’ll be finished in a few months.”
“We’ll be all finished in a few months be the look of things or in the poor-house or somewhere. What’ll you do when you’re finished—walk round with your hands in your pockets like the other gents about that went to college.”
“I can get a job.”
“Ye’ll not all get jobs, that’s certain shooting. Only the ones with the pull will get the jobs.”
“If you’re good enough you’ll get a job.”
“There seems an awful lot about not good enough then. You’ll be the outstanding one, of course.”
“I can go to England and pay you back from there.”
“Anyone can go to England. You don’t have to waste years at school to go to England. If you’ve a fiver in your pocket and the boat fare you can go to England, that’s all that’s wanting. And I don’t want any dirty money from England. What do I want your money for? I got on before I ever saw sight or light of you, and I’ll get on after. Who wants your cursed money?”
Violence had grown, steady eye on his throat and talking face, urge to smash him. Hate gave such strength that you felt you could break him, you didn’t care about anything any more, there was only this doghouse of the teeth at the throat.
“Can you not shut up? Can you not even leave me alone for these few months?” you cried violently into his face and Mahoney was taken back, he could not meet it with his own old violence.
“Look. Look at you now, the eyes gone mad. In the lunatic asylum you’ll wind up, that’s what your study will do,” he mocked when he recovered. “No one’s doing anything to you. Of course as usual
make a mountain out of a molehill. You can have as much peace as’ll burst you in this house.”
“Alright, will you just, just leave me alone?” you shouted and went hurrying outside before he had time to answer. You heard him turn in sudden fury on some of the others as you closed the door.
You were crying. No one else in the class had to put up with such as this. They’d be helped and encouraged to study, not this mess, with that bastard of a madman shouting and hammering and abusing away, and why had you to be given such a dog’s chance.
Your feet were on the mould of the rhubarb bed going for the lavatory with its Jeyes Fluid and solitary airhole when you stopped. You couldn’t do it, go in and smother yourself with sympathy and cursing.
What happened didn’t matter, you had to go on, that was all. You had to look it in the face. That was the way your life was happening, that was the way you were. There was no time for sadness or self-pity. The show of your life would be always moving on to the next moment. The best was to dress up and bow to it and smile or just look on but it was easier to say than do.
The night was cold. Away towards Oakport, above the Limekiln Wood, you began to watch the clouds cross the face of the three-quarter moon.
19
THE NEXT NIGHT YOU DIDN’T GIVE UP, YOU’D GO THROUGH IN the face of set teeth before you’d give up now or be crushed by some other force outside your own will. You forced yourself down to Stamp’s account of the Black Earth belt of Russia, underlining as you went, pausing to go back over. When it was finished you shut the book and with savage gloating whispered the account point by point into the night of the bedroom. A grim smile over Virgil. This was the slow night of struggle, night after night till June, and the strain couldn’t be much worse in life afterwards. You’d the satisfaction of staggering away from it downstairs at ten, completely worn, the swaying contentment after the football pitch or alley, only more so, diabolical pride of drawing the mind to the boundaries of what it could take, the shiver of the nerves as it trembled back from the edges.