Collected Stories (26 page)

One Sunday, Florrie came up the main road from the village. She went past him slowly, waiting for him to speak to her, but he wouldn't. It was all her fault, really. Then she stopped and turned to speak to him. It was clear that she knew he'd be there and had come to see him and make it up.

“Is it anyone you're waiting for, Terry?” she asked.

“Never mind,” Terry replied rudely.

“Because if you're waiting for your aunt, she's not coming,” Florrie went on gently.

Another time Terry wouldn't have entered into conversation, but now he felt so mystified that he would have spoken to anyone who could tell him what was keeping his aunt and Mr. Walker. It was terrible to be only five, because nobody ever told you anything.

“How do you know?” he asked.

“Miss Clancy said it,” replied Florrie confidently. “Miss Clancy knows everything. She hears it all in the Post Office. And the man with the gray car isn't coming either. He went back to England.”

Terry began to snivel softly. He had been afraid that Mr. Walker wasn't really in earnest. Florrie drew closer to him and then sat on the grass bank beside him. She plucked a stalk and began to shred it in her lap.

“Why wouldn't you be said by me?” she asked reproachfully. “You know I was always your girl and I wouldn't tell you a lie.”

“But why did Mr. Walker go back to England?” he asked.

“Because your aunt wouldn't go with him.”

“She said she would.”

“Her mother wouldn't let her. He was married already. If she went with him he'd have brought you as well. You're lucky he didn't.”

“Why?”

“Because he was a Protestant,” Florrie said primly. “Protestants have no proper religion like us.”

Terry did his best to grasp how having a proper religion made up to a fellow for the loss of a house with lights that went off and on, a park and a bicycle, but he realized he was too young. At five it was still too deep for him.

“But why doesn't Auntie come down like she always did?”

“Because she married another fellow and he wouldn't like it.”

“Why wouldn't he like it?”

“Because it wouldn't be right,” Florrie replied almost pityingly. “Don't you see the English fellow have no proper religion, so he wouldn't mind, but the fellow she married owns the shop she works in, and Miss Clancy says 'tis surprising he married her at all, and he wouldn't like her to be coming here to see you. She'll be having proper children now, you see.”

“Aren't we proper children?”

“Ah, no, we're not,” Florrie said despondently.

“What's wrong with us?”

That was a question that Florrie had often asked herself, but she was too proud to show a small boy like Terry that she hadn't discovered the answer.

“Everything,” she sighed.

“Florrie Clancy,” shouted one of the men outside the pub, “what are you doing to that kid?”

“I'm doing nothing to him,” she replied in a scandalized tone, starting as though from a dream. “He shouldn't be here by himself at all. He'll get run over.… Come on home with me now, Terry,” she added, taking his hand.

“She said she'd bring me to England and give me a bike of my own,” Terry wailed as they crossed the tracks.

“She was only codding,” Florrie said confidently. Her tone changed gradually; it was becoming fuller, more scornful. “She'll forget all about you when she has other kids. Miss Clancy says they're all the same. She says there isn't one of them worth bothering your head about, that they never think of anyone only themselves. She says my father has pots of money. If you were in with me I might marry you when you're a bit more grown-up.”

She led him up the short cut through the woods. The trees were turning all colors. Then she sat on the grass and sedately smoothed her frock about her knees.

“What are you crying for?” she asked reproachfully. “It was all your fault. I was always your girl. Even Mrs. Early said it. I always took your part when the others were against you. I wanted you not to be said by that old one and her promises, but you cared more for her and her old toys than you did for me. I told you what she was, but you wouldn't believe me, and now, look at you! If you'll swear to be always in with me I'll be your girl again. Will you?”

“I will,” said Terry.

She put her arms about him and he fell asleep, but she remained solemnly holding him, looking at him with detached and curious eyes. He was hers at last. There were no more rivals. She fell asleep too and did not notice the evening train go up the valley. It was all lit up. The evenings were drawing in.

The Frying-Pan

F
ATHER
F
OGARTY'S
only real friends in Kilmulpeter were the Whit-tons. Whitton was the teacher there. He had been to the seminary and college with Fogarty, and, like him, intended to be a priest, but when the time came for him to take the vow of celibacy, he had contracted scruples of conscience and married the principal one. Fogarty, who had known her too, had to admit that she wasn't without justification, and now, in this lonely place where chance had thrown them together again, she formed the real center of what little social life he had. With Tom Whitton he had a quiet friendship compounded of exchanges of opinion about books or wireless talks. He had the impression that Whitton didn't really like him and considered him a man who would have been better out of the Church. When they went to the races together, Fogarty felt that Whitton disapproved of having to put on bets for him and thought that preists should not bet at all. Like other outsiders, he knew perfectly what priests should be, without the necessity for having to be that way himself. He was sometimes savage in the things he said about the parish priest, old Father Whelan. On the other hand, he had a pleasant sense of humor and Fogarty enjoyed retailing his cracks against the cloth. Men as intelligent as Whitton were rare in country schools, and soon, too, he would grow stupid and wild for lack of educated society.

One evening Father Fogarty invited them to dinner to see some films he had taken at the races. Films were his latest hobby. Before this it had been fishing and shooting. Like all bachelors, he had a mania for adding to his possessions, and his lumber-room was piled high with every possible sort of junk from chest-developers to field-glasses, and his library cluttered with works on everything from Irish history to Freudian psychology. He passed from craze to craze, each the key to the universe.

He sprang up at the knock, and found Una at the door, all in furs, her shoulders about her ears, her big, bony, masculine face blue with cold but screwed up in an amiable monkey-grin. Tom, a handsome man, was tall and self-conscious. He had graying hair, brown eyes, a prominent jaw, and was quiet-spoken in a way that concealed passion. He and Una disagreed a lot about the way the children should be brought up. He thought she spoiled them.

“Come in, let ye, come in!” cried Fogarty hospitably, showing the way into his warm study with its roaring turf fire, deep leather chairs, and the Raphael print above the mantelpiece; a real bachelor's room. “God above!” he exclaimed, holding Una's hand a moment longer than was necessary. “You're perished! What'll you have to drink, Una?”

“Whi-hi-hi—” stammered Una excitedly, her eyes beginning to pop. “I can't say the bloody word.”

“Call it malt, girl,” said the priest.

“That's enough! That's enough!” she cried laughingly, snatching the glass from him. “You'll send me home on my ear, and then I'll hear about it from this fellow.”

“Whiskey, Tom?”

“Whiskey, Jerry,” Whitton said quietly with a quick conciliatory glance. He kept his head very stiff and used his eyes a lot instead.

Meanwhile Una, unabashably inquisitive, was making the tour of the room with the glass in her hand, to see if there was anything new in it. There usually was.

“Is this new, father?” she asked, halting before a pleasant eighteenth-century print.

“Ten bob,” the priest said promptly. “Wasn't it a bargain?”

“I couldn't say. What is it?”

“The old courthouse in town.”

“Go on!” said Una.

Whitton came and studied the print closely. “That place is gone these fifty years and I never saw a picture of it,” he said. “This is a bargain all right.”

“I'd say so,” Fogarty said with quiet pride.

“And what's the sheet for?” Una asked, poking at a tablecloth pinned between the windows.

“That's not a sheet, woman!” Fogarty exclaimed. “For God's sake, don't be displaying your ignorance!”

“Oh, I know,” she cried girlishly. “For the pictures! I'd forgotten about them. That's grand!”

Then Bella, a coarse, good-looking country girl, announced dinner, and the curate, with a self-conscious, boyish swagger, led them into the dining room and opened the door of the sideboard. The dining room was even more ponderous than the sitting room. Everything in it was large, heavy, and dark.

“And now, what'll ye drink?” he asked over his shoulder, studying his array of bottles. “There's some damn good Burgundy—'pon my soul, 'tis great!”

“How much did it cost?” Whitton asked with poker-faced humor. “The only way I have of identifying wines is by the price.”

“Eight bob a bottle,” Fogarty replied at once.

“That's a very good price,” said Whitton with a nod. “We'll have some of that.”

“You can take a couple of bottles home with you,” said the curate, who, in the warmth of his heart, was always wanting to give his treasures away. “The last two dozen he had—wasn't I lucky?”

“You have the appetite of a canon on the income of a curate,” Whitton said in the same tone of grave humor, but Fogarty caught the scarcely perceptible note of criticism in it. He did not allow this to upset him.

“Please God, we won't always be curates,” he said sunnily.

“Bella looks after you well,” said Una when the meal was nearly over. The compliment was deserved so far as it went, though it was a man's meal rather than a woman's.

“Doesn't she, though?” Fogarty exclaimed with pleasure. “Isn't she damn good for a country girl?”

“How does she get on with Stasia?” asked Una—Stasia was Father Whelan's old housekeeper, and an affliction to the community.

“They don't talk. Stasia says she's an immoral woman.”

“And is she?” Una asked hopefully.

“If she isn't, she's wasting her own time and my whiskey,” said Fogarty. “She entertains Paddy Coakley in the kitchen every Saturday night. I told her I wouldn't keep her unless she got a boy. And wasn't I right? One Stasia is enough for any parish. Father Whelan tells me I'm going too far.”

“And did you tell him to mind his own business?” Whitton asked with a penetrating look.

“I did, to be sure,” said Fogarty, who had done nothing of the sort.

“Ignorant, interfering old fool!” Whitton said quietly, the ferocity of his sentiments belied by the mildness of his manner.

“That's only because you'd like to do the interfering yourself,” said Una good-humoredly. She frequently had to act as peacemaker between the parish priest and her husband.

“And a robber,” Tom Whitton added to the curate, ignoring her. “He's been collecting for new seats for the church for the last ten years. I'd like to know where that's going.”

“He had a collection for repairing my roof,” said the curate, “and 'tis leaking still. He must be worth twenty thousand.”

“Now, that's not fair, father,” Una said flatly. “You know yourself there's no harm in Father Whelan. It's just that he's certain he's going to die in the workhouse. It's like Bella and her boy. He has nothing more serious to worry about, and he worries about that.”

Fogarty knew there was a certain amount of truth in what Una said, and that the old man's miserliness was more symbolic than real, and at the same time he felt in her words criticism of a different kind from her husband's. Though Una wasn't aware of it she was implying that the priest's office made him an object of pity rather than blame. She was sorry for old Whelan, and, by implication, for him.

“Still, Tom is right, Una,” he said with sudden earnestness. “It's not a question of what harm Father Whelan intends, but what harm he does. Scandal is scandal, whether you give it deliberately or through absent-mindedness.”

Tom grunted, to show his approval, but he said no more on the subject, as though he refused to enter into an argument with his wife about subjects she knew nothing of. They returned to the study for coffee, and Fogarty produced the film projector. At once the censoriousness of Tom Whitton's manner dropped away, and he behaved like a pleasant and intelligent boy of seventeen. Una, sitting by the fire with her legs crossed, watched them with amusement. Whenever they came to the priest's house, the same sort of thing happened. Once it had been a microscope, and the pair of them had amused themselves with it for hours. Now they were kidding themselves that their real interest in the cinema was educational. She knew that within a month the cinema, like the microscope, would be lying in the lumber-room with the rest of the junk.

Fogarty switched off the light and showed some films he had taken at the last race meeting. They were very patchy, mostly out of focus, and had to be interpreted by a running commentary, which was always a shot or two behind.

“I suppose ye wouldn't know who that is?” he said as the film showed Una, eating a sandwich and talking excitedly and demonstratively to a couple of wild-looking country boys.

“It looks like someone from the Country Club,” her husband said dryly.

“But wasn't it good?” Fogarty asked innocently as he switched on the lights again. “Now, wasn't it very interesting?” He was exactly like a small boy who had performed a conjuring trick.