Collected Stories (45 page)

“Now, that's exactly what it would do,” said Tommy.

“Ah, what signifies a bite or two?” Deirdre asked laughingly, throwing off her irritation. “Anyway,” she added reasonably, “you could marry her now.”

“Is it Elsie?” said Tommy in surprise. “She's probably married herself by now.”

“Well, can't you go and see, man?” said Deirdre. “Even if she is, she won't eat you. Anyway, wouldn't she be better for you than your old doctor and her fifteen thousand? God Almighty, Tommy, that's not life!”

“That's the question, of course,” Tommy said sternly. “What is life?”

“I don't know, but I'm going to try and find out.”

“I read a good many books, and I can't say I ever learned much about it,” said Tommy. “How would you find out?”

“By living it.”

“That was tried.”

“It's a novelty round these parts. I'm hoping to go to a job in Dublin after Christmas. Did I tell you?”

“You did not,” Tommy said in consternation. “What do you want going to Dublin for? Aren't you all right here?”

“My views are too large for a place this size,” Deirdre replied with a laugh.

And after Tommy had drunk his cocoa in the sitting room, Deirdre went to drink tea with Joan in the kitchen. The two girls had the room to themselves.

“Well,” asked Joan, “had you a great clatther with Mr. Dodd?”

“Oh, great!” said Deirdre, thinking how disappointed Joan would be if she knew how little clatthering they did.

“Maybe ye might make a match of it yet?” Joan said hopefully.

“I wouldn't say so,” said Deirdre. “I fancy Tommy doesn't care much about me, except to be talking to.”

“That fellow never cared about anyone,” said Joan. “Only himself and his monkey nuts.”

But Deirdre couldn't feel critical of him just then. She felt that the memory of his abortive romance would be linked in her mind with the bit of the night that had gone astray and nested in her; that she'd always have a soft spot in her heart for the town and its people because of that glimpse into their frustrated and lonely lives.

“Ah, Tommy is romantic enough when he gets the chance,” she said. “You never heard about the girl he was living with in Dublin?”

“Living with in Dublin?” Joan said incredulously. “Tommy Dodd? You're not serious! Who was it?”

“Some girl he was in digs with. A university student, I suppose.”

“And he was living with her?”

“Oh, not openly, of course,” Deirdre said with regret. She could have wished Tommy some experience less furtive, but she knew it was impossible.

“Jesus!” Joan exclaimed. “I'd never trust a man again.”

A
WEEK
passed and one wet afternoon Deirdre came in from school and Joan gave her dinner in the parlor. It was cold there and there was no fire. In the street she saw a father and son coming together at the other side of the road, each of them sucking a ripe tomato. They scarcely looked human.

“Mr. Dodd didn't say when he was going to give the doctor the chocolates?” asked Joan, turning as she reached the door.

“He never mentioned them,” said Deirdre. “Why? Are they there still?”

“The divil a stir out of them,” said Joan. “He's laying his traps well, but he might get a poacher's welcome.”

“How's that?”

“I heard the doctor was saying she'd fling them in his face if he as much as opened his mouth to her,” Joan said in blood-curdling tones.

“But how does she know about them?” Deirdre asked in alarm.

“I suppose he told someone,” said Joan with a guilty air. “You don't think you were the only one he talked to about her, do you?”

That was precisely what Deirdre did think, and it gave her a nasty shock to know that his words had been passed on. She had only just begun to realize that in a town like ours, every remark starts a long and successful career as a public event.

“She needn't be so cocksure,” she grumbled with her mouth full. “He's a better man than she's likely to get, even with her fifteen thousand.”

“Is it fifteen thousand she have?” Joan asked in an awe-stricken whisper, and Deirdre realized that she'd done it again. To live in a town like ours you have to enunciate every word with an eye to its ultimate effect, which is probably why so many people find it easier to leave the town.

“If she had fifty Tommy Dodd would be too good for her,” she said crossly.

“Too good for her?” gasped Joan. “And he with a fancy-woman in Dublin?”

“But she knows nothing about that,” said Deirdre, now thoroughly alarmed.

“Doesn't she, indeed?” Joan said pityingly. “'Tisn't because I wouldn't know it that others wouldn't. Let me tell you, Deirdre,” she went on, wagging a warning finger, “between the Post Office and the bobbies, there's very little that isn't known in this town. How well I could meet a woman this morning that could tell me where Celia Johnson's baby is after being put out to nurse, and I'll engage Celia Johnson thinks that no one knows she had a baby at all. He'd better mind himself. There's plenty of influential people were put out of business for less.”

Deirdre finished her dinner in complete depression. Tommy was certainly going to be ruined, and it would be all her fault. She could never realize that others wouldn't look at things as she did; and that what for her had been the one interesting thing about Tommy, the one spot of brilliant color in the gray bogland of his life, might be murder to others. Worse than murder, in fact, because there was at least one notorious murderer on the town council, and people fell over themselves trying to conciliate him. But love, of course, was different. There was no money in love. And the worse of it was that any time now Tommy might find out from the doctor how she had betrayed what he probably regarded as his most intimate confidences. The only thing she could think of, in her desperation, was to try and keep him away from the doctor.

That evening, when he came into the parlor, she encouraged him to talk in his usual way about the townspeople. Poor man, he didn't know the sort of things the townspeople were saying about him now!

“You didn't propose to the doctor yet, Tommy?” she asked, taking the bull by the horns.

“The who?” Tommy asked with a start.

“The doctor.”

“No,” Tommy said without undue depression. “I'm in no great hurry.”

“Sure, of course you're not,” Deirdre agreed with a real relief. “You'd want to think a lot before you did a thing like that?”

“Why did you ask?” he inquired.

“I was only wondering was she the right sort for you.”

“Is that so?” he asked. “Now, what makes you think she isn't, Deirdre?”

“I suppose it's just that I'm getting to know you better,” said Deirdre. “Sometimes, you get very false impressions of people. It just struck me that you'd probably want someone more domesticated.”

“You might be right,” he conceded, and in the same breath: “Do you like chocolates?”

She could hardly believe in her own good fortune. It would be a real achievement to get the knife out of the child's hands before he did himself any damage.

“Love them,” she said with a smile.

“I have some in my room,” said Tommy, and went out with great strides and took the stairs three at a time. When he returned he handed her the box of chocolates as though it were a gun.

“Go on with what you were saying,” he said.

“I don't know should I,” she said thoughtfully, struggling with the box, though in fact nothing but an earthquake would have stopped her. “But, you know, Tommy, I have a sort of feeling that you're not half as calculating as you think.”

“Who said I thought anything of the kind?” Tommy retorted indignantly.

“You do, Tommy,” she said flatly. “You think you're the smartest crook in this town, and you're not. You have a much finer nature than you realize. If you married a woman like that, you'd want to cut your throat inside six months.”

“I'd be more likely to cut hers,” said Tommy with a chuckle.

“You wouldn't, Tommy,” Deirdre said gravely. “You see, in your heart and soul, you're really an idealist. You can't help it. You ought to have married that girl in Dublin—Elsie What's-her-name.”

“Begor, I ought not,” said Tommy with grave enjoyment.

“You ought, Tommy,” said Deirdre with finality. “Whatever you may think now, the girl had courage. You don't want to admit it, because you know you treated her badly.”

“Oh, indeed, I did nothing of the sort,” Tommy said with conviction.

“Ah, Tommy,” Deirdre cried impatiently, “why do you be always denying the better part of your nature? You know yourself you treated her badly, whatever disagreement you may have had with her. You don't want to do the decent, manly thing even when you know you ought to. That girl might have had a child.”

“There was no danger.”

“There's always danger. Anyway, you ought to meet her again; even to talk to her. I think you'd find you looked at the whole thing differently now. I can't help feeling, Tommy, that Elsie was the only real thing in your whole life; that all the rest of it, your life here, and your plotting and planning with the Ku Klux Klan, doesn't mean any more to you than dreaming. Do you understand me, Tommy? She was the
only
real thing.”

“Begor, I hope not,” he said with a laugh, striking his knee.

“Why not?”

“Because there's no such woman,” he said with a guffaw.

“But you told me yourself, Tommy.”

“Ah, surely you can understand a joke?”

“That's a queer sort of joke,” grumbled Deirdre, so shaken by this fresh revelation that she couldn't even be certain of her own original impression of his sincerity.

“What's queer about it? 'Twould be damn queer if there was any truth in it, if I went round doing that sort of thing, making an idiot of myself. 'Tis all very well in storybooks, Deirdre, but it won't do, girl, it won't do.”

“'Twould be no joke for you if someone went and repeated it,” Deirdre said shortly, still incensed at the suggestion that she had mistaken a joke for a confession.

“No one would believe them, girl,” said Tommy, but his face lost some of its glow.

“I wouldn't be too sure of that,” Deirdre said stiffly. “Plenty of influential people were put out of business for less.”

She hardly knew that she was quoting Joan, but Tommy recognized his master's voice. He might know little about love-making but he knew a lot about small towns and their inhabitants.

“Anyway, I didn't say it to anyone only you,” he said humbly. “Will you marry me, Deirdre?”

“Ah, will I what?” she snapped at this fresh shock.

“Marry me? You know I never gave a damn for another girl only you. I'm telling you no lies. Ask anyone you like.”

“But didn't you tell me yourself in this very room only a couple of weeks ago that 'twas the doctor you wanted to marry?” she cried angrily.

“Ah, for God's sake!” exclaimed Tommy. “You don't mean you took that seriously too. I couldn't be bothered with the old doctor. She hasn't a brain in her head. You were the only one I ever met that I respected enough to ask.”

“But, Tommy,” she cried almost in tears, “you said you wanted to marry her for the fifteen thousand.”

Tommy looked at her in real surprise and consternation.

“And you took that seriously?” he exclaimed. “Do you know, Deirdre, I'm surprised at you. I declare to God I thought better of you. I'd have thought a woman of your discernment would know that I wasn't the sort to marry for money. If I wanted to do that I could have done it years ago. Anyway, she hasn't fifteen thousand.”

“Tommy,” Deirdre said desperately, “you don't mean that was all lies too.”

“I don't know why you call it lies,” Tommy said indignantly. “We have to say something. It seems to me there are a lot of misunderstandings. Anyway, will you marry me now?”

“I will not,” snapped Deirdre ungraciously.

“Why not?” he shouted with real anger.

“Because you're too young.”

“Too young? I'm fifteen years older than you.”

“You're old enough to have sense,” she retorted, picking up her handbag and strutting to the door. She felt hopelessly undignified. “Oh, God, for the age of the sagas!” she thought, and reaching the door, she broke down. “Ah, Tommy, what did you want to spoil it all for?” she wailed. “A fortnight ago I'd have jumped at you, but how the blazes could I marry you now? It's too ridiculous. Too ridiculous!”

Darcy in the Land of Youth

O
NE OF
the few things Mick Darcy remembered of what the monks in the North Monastery had taught him was the story of Oisin, an old chap who fell in love with a fairy queen called Niamh and went to live with her in the Land of Youth. Then, one day when he was a bit homesick, he got leave from her to come back and have a look at Ireland, only she warned him he wasn't to get off his horse. When he got back, he found his pals all dead and the whole country under the rule of St. Patrick, and, seeing a poor laborer trying to lift a heavy stone that was too big for him but that would have been nothing at all to fellows of his own generation, Oisin bent down to give him a hand. While he was doing it, the saddle-girth broke and Oisin was thrown to the ground, an old, tired, spiritless man with nothing better to do than get converted and be thinking of how much better things used to be in his day. Mick had never thought much of it as a story. It had always struck him that Oisin was a bit of a mug, not to know when he was well off.

But the old legends all have powerful morals though you never realize it till one of them gives you a wallop over the head. During the war, when he was out of a job, Mick went to England as a clerk in a war factory, and the first few weeks he spent there were the most miserable of his life. He found the English as queer as they were always supposed to be; people with a great welcome for themselves and very little for anyone else.