Collected Stories (11 page)

“You seem to get on very well with your class,” he said later in the day.

“I make a point of it,” Carmody explained pompously.

“Treat them as man to man, like?” Sam said, luring him on.

“That's the modern method, of course,” said Carmody.

“That so?” Sam said dryly, and at the same moment he made a face. It was the first twinge of the dyspepsia.

He and Nancy usually had their lunch together in the open air, sitting on the low wall between the two schools. They were there a few minutes when Carmody came out. He stood on the steps and sunned himself, thrusting out his chest and drawing in deep gulps of what a Kerryman would call the ozone.

“Fine figure of a man, Sam,” Nancy said, interpreting and puncturing his pose.

As though he had heard her and taken it in earnest Carmody came up to them with an air which he probably thought quizzical.

“That's a fine view you have,” he said jocularly.

“You won't be long getting tired of it,” Sam said coldly.

“I believe 'tis a quiet sort of place,” said Carmody, unaware of any lack of warmth.

“It must be simply shocking after Kerry,” Sam said, giving Nancy a nudge. “Were you ever in Kerry, Mrs. Mac?”

“Never, Mr. Higgins,” said Nancy, joining in the sport. “But I believe 'tis wonderful.”

“Wonderful,” Sam agreed mournfully. “You'd wonder where the people got the brains till you saw the scenery.”

Carmody, as became a modest man, overlooked the implication that the intellect of a Kerryman might be due to environment rather than heredity; he probably didn't expect better from a native.

“Tell me,” he asked with great concern, “what
do
you do with yourselves?”

The impudence of this was too much even for Sam. He gaped at Carmody to see was he in earnest. Then he pointed to the town.

“See the bridge?”

“I do.”

“See the abbey tower near it?”

“Yes.”

“When we get tired of life we chuck ourselves off that.”

“I was being serious,” Carmody said icily.

“Oh, begor, so was I,” said Sam. “That tower is pretty high.”

“I believe you have some sort of dramatic society,” Carmody went on to Nancy as though he couldn't be bothered carrying on conversation at Sam's level.

“We have,” said Nancy brightly. “Do you act?”

“A certain amount,” said Carmody. “Of course, in Kerry we go in more for the intellectual drama.”

“Go on!” said Sam. “That'll be a shock to the dramatic society.”

“It probably needs one,” said Carmody.

“It does,” said Sam blithely, getting down and looking at Carmody with his lower lip hanging and the sunlight dazzling on his spectacles. “The town needs a bit of attention too. You might notice 'tis on the downgrade. And then you can have the whole country to practice on. It often struck me it needed a bombshell to wake it up. Maybe you're the bombshell.”

It wasn't often that Sam, who was a bit tongue-tied, made a speech as long as that. It should have shut anyone up, but Carmody only stuck his thumbs in his armholes, thrust out his chest, and giggled.

“But of course I'm a bombshell,” he said with a sidelong glance at Nancy. You couldn't pierce Carmody's complacency so easily.

A
WEEK
or two later Sam dropped into Johnny Desmond's for his pint.

“Mrs. Mac and the new teacher seem to be getting very great,” Johnny said by way of no harm.

“That so, Johnny?” Sam replied in the same tone.

“I just saw them going off for a spin together,” added Johnny.

“Probably giving her a lift home,” said Sam. “He does it every day. I hope she's insured.”

“'Twasn't that at all,” Johnny said, opening a bottle of boiled sweets and cramming a fistful into his mouth. “Out Bauravullen way they went. Have a couple of these, Mr. Higgins!”

“Thanks, Johnny, I won't,” Sam said sourly, glancing out the door the way Johnny wouldn't notice how he was hit. There was damn little Johnny didn't notice, though. He went to the door and stood there, crunching sweets.

“Widows are the devil,” he said reflectively. “Anything at all so long as 'tis in trousers. I suppose they can't help it.”

“You seem to know a lot about them,” said Sam.

“My own father died when I was only a boy,” Johnny explained discreetly. “Clever chap, young Carmody,” he added with his eyes on the ground.

“A human bombshell,” said Sam with heavy irony.

“So I believe, so I believe,” said Johnny, who didn't know what irony was but who was going as far as a man like himself could go towards indicating that there were things about Carmody he didn't approve of. “A pity he's so quarrelsome in drink,” he said, looking back at Sam.

“Is he so?” said Sam.

“Himself and Donovan of the Exchange were at it here last night. I believe Father Ring is hoping he'll settle down. I dunno will he?”

“God forbid!” said Sam.

He went home but he couldn't read or rest. It was too cold for the garden, too hot for the room. He put on his hat again and went for a walk. At least, he explained it to himself as going for a walk, but it took him past Nancy's bungalow. There was no sign of life in that and Sam didn't know whether this was a good sign or a bad one. He dropped into Johnny's, expecting to find the Bombshell there, but there were only a couple of fellows from the County Council inside, and Sam had four drinks which was three more than was good for him. When he came out the moon was up. He returned the same way, and there, sure enough, was a light in Nancy's sitting-room window and the Bombshell's car standing outside.

For two days Sam didn't show his nose in the playground at lunch-time. When he looked out he saw Carmody leaning over the wall, talking to Nancy, and giggling.

On the afternoon of the third day, while Sam was in the garden, Nancy called and Delia opened the door.

“Oh, my!” Delia cried in her laughing, piping voice. “Such a stranger as you're becoming!”

“You'd never guess what I was up to?” Nancy asked.

“I believe you were motoring,” replied Delia with a laugh.

“Ah, you can't do anything in this old town,” Nancy said with a shrug of disgust. “Where the blazes is Sam? I didn't see him these ages.”

“He's in the workshop,” said Delia. “Will I call him in?”

“Time enough,” Nancy said gaily, grabbing her by the arm. “Come on in till I talk to you.”

“And how's your friend, Mr. Carmody?” asked Delia, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice.

“He's all right as long as you don't go out in a motor car with him,” laughed Nancy, not noticing Delia's edginess. “Whoever gave him that car was no friend.”

“I'm not in much danger of being asked, dear, am I?” Delia asked, half joking, half wincing. “And is he still homesick for Kerry? I dare say not.”

“He'll settle down,” said Nancy, blithely unconscious of the volcano of emotion under her feet. “A poor gom like that, brought up in the wilds, what more could you expect?”

“I dare say,” said Delia. “He has every inducement.”

Just then Sam came up the garden and in the back door without noticing Nancy's presence. He stood at the door, wiping his boots, his hat shading his eyes, and laughed in an embarrassed way. Even then, if only he could have welcomed her as he longed to do, things might have been all right, but no more than Delia was he able to conceal his feelings.

“Oh, hullo,” he drawled idly. “How're you?”

“Grand, Sam,” Nancy said, sitting up and flashing him an extra-special look. “Where were you the last couple of days?”

“Working,” said Sam. “Or trying to. It's hard to do anything with people pinching your things. Did you take the quarter-inch chisel, Delia?”

“Is that a big chisel, Sam?” she asked innocently.

“No,” he drawled. “Not much bigger that a quarter of an inch, if you know what that is.”

“I think it might be on top of the press, Sam,” she said guiltily.

“Why the hell women can't put things back where they find them!” he grunted as he got a chair. He pawed about on top of the press till he found the chisel. Then he held it up to the light and closed one eye. “Holy God!” he moaned. “Were you using it as a screwdriver or what?”

“I thought it was a screwdriver, Sam,” she replied with a nervous laugh.

“You ought to use it on yourself,” he said with feeling, and went out again.

Nancy frowned. Delia laughed again, even more nervously. She knew what the scene meant, but Nancy was still incredulous.

“He seems very busy,” she said in a hurt tone.

“He's always pulling the house to pieces,” Delia explained apologetically.

“There's nothing wrong with him?” Nancy asked suspiciously.

“No, dear,” Delia said. “Only his digestion. That's always a trouble to him.”

“I suppose it must be,” said Nancy, growing pale. Only now was she beginning to realize that the Higginses wanted to have no more to do with her. Deeply offended, she began to collect her things.

“You're not going so soon, Nancy?”

“I'd better. I promised Nellie the afternoon off.”

“Oh, dear, Sam will be so disappointed,” sighed Delia.

“He'll get over it,” said Nancy. “So long, Delia.”

“Good-bye, dear,” said Delia and, after shutting the door, began to cry. In a small town the end of a friendship has something of death about it. Delia had had hopes of something closer than friendship. Nancy had broken down her jealousy of other women; when she came to the house Sam was more cheerful and Delia found herself more cheerful too. She brought youth and gaiety into their lives.

Delia had a good long cry before Sam came in from the back. He said nothing about Nancy but went into the front room and took down a book. After a while Delia washed her eyes and went in. It was dark inside, and when she opened the door he started, always a bad sign.

“You wouldn't like to come for a little walk with me, dear?” Delia asked in a voice that went off into a squeak.

“No, Dee,” he said without looking around. “I wouldn't be able.”

“I'm sure a little drink in Johnny's would cheer you up,” she persisted.

“No, Dee,” he went on dully. “I couldn't stand his old guff.”

“Then wouldn't you run up to town and see a doctor, Sam?”

“Ah, what good are doctors?”

“But it must be something, Sam,” she said. She wished he'd say it and be done with it and let her try to comfort him as best she could: the two of them there, growing old, in a lonesome, unfriendly place.

“I know what it is myself,” he said. “It's that cheapjack, Carmody. Twenty years I'm in that school and I was never laughed at to my face before. Now he's turning the boys against me.”

“I think you only fancy that, dear,” she said timidly. “I don't believe Mr. Carmody could ever turn anybody against you.”

“There's where you're wrong, Dee,” he replied, shaking his head, infallible even in despair. “That fellow was put there with a purpose. Ring chose his man well. They'll be having a new head one of these days.”

S
CHOOL
had become a real torture to Sam. Carmody half-suspected his jealousy and played on it. He sent boys to the girls' school with notes and read the replies with a complacent smirk. Sam went about as though he was doped. He couldn't find things he had just left out of his hand, he forgot the names of the boys, and sometimes sat for a quarter of an hour at a time in a desk behind his class, rubbing his eyes and brow in a stupor.

He came to life only when he wrangled with Carmody. There was a window that Sam liked open and Carmody liked shut. That was enough to set the pair of them off. When Carmody sent a boy to shut the window Sam asked the boy who gave him permission. Then Carmody came up, stiff and blustering, and said no one was going to make him work with a draught down the back of his neck and Sam replied that a better man had worked there for ten years without noticing any draught at all. It was all as silly as that, and Sam knew it was silly, but that was how it took him, and no amount of good resolutions made it any better.

All through November he ate his lunch by the school fire, and when he looked out it was to see Carmody and Nancy eating theirs outside and Nancy putting up her hand to tidy her hair and breaking into a sudden laugh. Sam always felt the laugh was at him.

One day he came out, ringing the school bell, and Carmody, who had been sitting on the wall, jumped off with such an affectation of agility that the diary fell from his vest pocket. He was so occupied with Nancy that he didn't notice it, and Sam was so full of his own troubles that he went on down the playground and he didn't notice it either. He saw a bit of paper that someone's lunch had been wrapped in, picked it up and crumpled it into a ball. At the same time he noticed the diary, and, assuming that one of the boys had dropped it, picked it up and glanced through it. It puzzled him, for it did not seem like the notebook of a schoolboy. It was all about some girl that the writer was interested in. He couldn't help reading on till he came to a name that caused him to blush. Then he recognized the writing; it was Carmody's. When he turned the pages and saw how much of it there was, he put it in his pocket. Afterwards, he knew what he had done and saw it was wrong, but at the time he never even thought of an alternative. During the first lesson he sat at a desk and read on, his head in his hands.

Now, Carmody was a conceited young man who thought that everything about himself was of such importance that it had to be recorded for the benefit of posterity. Things Sam would have been ashamed even to think about himself he had all written down. Besides, Sam had led a sheltered life. He didn't know much of any woman but Delia. He had thought of Nancy as an angelic little creature whose life had been wrecked by her husband's death and who spent most of her time thinking of him. It was clear from the diary that this was not how she spent her time at all, but that, like any other bad, flighty, sensual girl, she let herself be made love to in motor cars by cheapjacks like Carmody, who even on his own admission had no respect for her and only wanted to see how far a widow like that would go. “Anything at all so long as 'tis in trousers,” as Johnny said. Johnny was right. Johnny knew the sort of woman she was. That was all Sam needed to make him hate Nancy as much as he already hated Carmody. She was another cheapjack.