Collected Stories (83 page)

She might have got angry if you had accused her of being an old dreamer who was really attracted by the romance and mystery of Jimmy's birth—something she had missed in her own sober and industrious life—but that was what she and Hanna enjoyed speculating about over a little glass when Jimmy was in bed. And later, when she had covered him for the night and lay awake in the next room saying her rosary, she would often forget her prayers and imagine how she would feel if one stormy night—one of those nights when the whole harbor seemed to move in on the town and try to push it down—there came a knock to the door and she saw Jimmy's father standing outside in the lane, tall and handsome, with a small black mustache and the tears in his eyes. “Mr. Mulvany,” she would say to the teacher (she was always making up ideal names and occupations for Jimmy's father), “your son wants nothing from you.” Or, if she was in a generous mood, “Senator MacDunphy, come in. Jimmy was beginning to think you'd never come.”

Nora was right. Stupid or not, Nora had seen through her. She was an old fool. And when Miss Hegarty had dangled the extra money in front of her, it wasn't the money that appealed to her so much as the girl who had been ready to throw away her chances with the rich Englishman for the sake of one wild fling with an old sweetheart. “An old fool,” Kate said to herself. She didn't feel repentant, though.

But dreamers are forever running into degrading practical realities, and there was one thing about her extraordinary family that Kate could do nothing about. Before she even laid eyes on him, the second boy was also christened James, and, so that Jimmy shouldn't be too upset and that she herself should do nothing against the law, she called him James—an unnatural name for any child, as she well knew. James was a baby with a big head, a gaping mouth, and a sickly countenance, and even from the first day he seemed to realize that he was in the world only on sufferance, and resigned himself to it. But Jimmy could see nothing wrong with him. He explored the neighborhood to study all the other babies, and told Kate that James was brighter than the whole lot of them. He adopted a possessive attitude, and wheeled the perambulator up and down the main road so that people could see for themselves the sort James was. When he came back, he reported with great satisfaction that three people, two men and a woman, had stopped him to admire his baby brother.

A
COUPLE
of times a year, Jimmy's real mother, whom he knew as Aunt Nance, came to stay with the friends in Cork who had arranged with Miss Hegarty for his being boarded out, and then Jimmy visited there and played with the two children, Rory and Mary. They were altogether too polite for Jimmy, but he liked his Aunt Nance a lot. She was tall and plump and good-looking, with a swarthy complexion and dark, dark hair. She talked in a crisp, nervous, almost common way, and was always forgetting herself and saying dirty words, like “Cripes!” and “Damn!,” that only men were supposed to know. Kate liked him to go there, and when he got home, she asked him all sorts of questions about his visit, like how many rooms there were in the house, what he ate, what sort of furniture there was and the size of the garden—things that never interested Jimmy in the least.

When James began to grow up, he too asked questions. He wanted to know what school Rory and Mary went to, what they learned there, and whether or not Mary played the piano. These too were questions that did not interest Jimmy, but it dawned on him that James was lonely when he was left behind and wanted to see the Martins' place for himself. This seemed an excellent idea to Jimmy, because James was a steady quiet kid who would get on much better with Rory and Mary than he did, but when he suggested it Kate only said James was too young and Aunt Nance said she'd see.

It ended by his suspecting that there was something fishy about James. There always had been something unusual about him—as though he weren't a member of the family at all. He didn't like rough games and he preferred little girls to little boys. Jimmy didn't know how you did become a member of the family, but from what he could see your mother had either to go to the hospital or lie up in the house, and he couldn't remember that Kate had done either. James had just been there one morning when he woke. The more he thought of it, the surer he became that James was adopted. He didn't know what “adopted” meant, except that kids it happened to lived with people who weren't really related to them, and he found the idea of this very stimulating.

One evening, when Kate was complaining of her rheumatics, he asked her if she hadn't gone to hospital with it.

“Oye, why would I go to hospital?” she asked sourly. “I was never in one in my life and I hope I'll never have to go there.”

James was sitting by the window, scribbling, and Jimmy didn't say anything more. But later, when James was in bed, he asked her casually, “You're not James's mother, are you, Mammy?”

He was surprised at the way she turned on him. “What's that you say?”

“Nothing, only that you're not James's mother.”

“Who told you that?” she asked angrily.

“Nobody told me,” he said, becoming defensive, “but you never went to hospital, like Mrs. Casey. You told me yourself.”

“Don't let the child hear you saying things like that, you caffler!” she hissed.

“I never told him anything,” he said sullenly. “But it's true, isn't it? That's the reason you get the money.”

“Mind your own business!” she retorted.

Still, she was frightened. “Oh, my! The cunning of him!” she said next day to her old crony. “The way he cross-examined me—that poor Jack Mahoney never did the like! And what am I to say to him? Who will I get to advise me?”

Hanna, who had an answer for everything, was all for telling Jimmy the whole truth at once, but what did Hanna know about it and she an old maid? The other neighbors were inclined to think it was a judgment on Kate for her foolishness. And all the while, Jimmy's behavior got worse. At the best of times it wasn't very good. Though sometimes he was in high spirits and entertained herself and James telling funny stories, more often he was low-spirited and lay on his bed sulking over a comic. After that, he would go out with other boys and return with a guilty air she could spot from the end of the lane, and she would know he had been up to mischief and broken a window or stolen from a shop. At times like that, she was never free of anxiety for him, because apart from the fact that she had a holy terror of the law, she knew his naughtiness threatened the sufferance the neighbors extended to him on her account, and that they would be only too ready to say that it was all you could expect of a boy like that.

Finally, she decided to take Hanna Dinan's advice. But when James was asleep and she and Jimmy were sitting together in the darkness over the fire, she lost courage. She had no notion of how he would take it, and if he took it badly, she'd get the blame. She told him, instead, about James and his mother. She told him how some people, like herself, were lucky, because their fancy never strayed from the one person, while others, like James's mother, had the misfortune to love someone they couldn't marry. She was pleased by Jimmy's silent attention. She thought she had impressed him. But his first words startled her. “All the same, Mammy,” he said, “James should be with his own mother.”

She was astonished at the maturity in his tone. This was no longer any of the Jimmys she had known, but one who spoke with the sort of authority poor Jack had exercised on the rare occasions when he had called his family to order.

“Ah, how could he be with her?”

“Then she ought to tell him who he is and why she can't have him.”

“Is it to be upsetting the child?” she asked complainingly.

“If she doesn't upset him, somebody else will,” he said with his brooding, old-mannish air.

“They will, they will, God help us!” she sighed. “People are bad enough for anything. But the poor child may as well be happy while he can.”

But it wasn't of James that she was thinking. James might get by, a colorless, studious, well-behaved boy who never gave offense to anybody, but one day Jimmy would beat up another boy or steal from a shop, and some woman would spite him by using the word Kate now dreaded—the word she had so often used lightly herself when she had no one to protect from it. Again she was tempted to tell him the whole truth, and again she was too afraid.

Meanwhile, for a short time at least, she had given Jimmy a purpose in life. Jimmy was always like that, either up or down, either full of purpose or shiftless and despondent. Now he took James over personally. He said it was bad for James to be so much alone, and took him along with him when he went down the Glen with the bigger boys. James didn't like being with the bigger boys. He liked to go at his own slow pace, gaping at everything, and he didn't in the least mind being left alone, but he was flattered by Jimmy's attention. When he came home he repeated his adventures to Kate in the manner of a policeman making a report. “Jimmy showed me a blackbird's nest. You can't touch a bird's nest, because the bird would know and leave the little eggs to die. I think it is wrong to rob a bird's nest, don't you, Mammy?” James collected bits of information, right and wrong, apparently thinking that they would all come in handy someday, and to each he managed to attach a useful moral lesson. No wonder he made Jimmy laugh.

But Jimmy still continued to worry about James's future. He waited till Aunt Nance came to Cork, and when he got her to himself he poured it all out to her in his enthusiastic way. He had managed to persuade himself that Kate didn't understand the seriousness of the situation but that Aunt Nance would. Before he had even finished, Aunt Nance gave him a queer look and cut him off. “You're too young to understand these things, Jimmy,” she said.

“But don't
you
think he should be with his mother?” he asked indignantly.

“I don't know a thing about it, and if I did I wouldn't be able to do anything.”

Jimmy left her in one of his mutinous, incoherent fits of rage. Instead of taking the bus, he walked, and when he reached the river he stood on the bank in the darkness throwing stones. It was late when he got home, but Kate was waiting up for him. He tossed his cap on the chair and went upstairs.

“What kept you?” she asked after him.

“Nothing.”

“Don't you want a cup of tea?”

“I don't.”

“He knows about it,” Kate muttered to herself. “She must have told him. Now what'll I do?”

After a time she went upstairs to bed, but she heard him from the little attic room next door, where he and James slept, tossing and muttering to himself. She lit the candle and went in. He sat up in bed and looked at her with mad eyes.

“Go away!” he said. “You're not my mother.”

“Oye!” she whimpered, sleepy and scared. “You and your goings on.”

“You're not, you're not, you're not,” he muttered. “I'm like James, only you wouldn't tell me. You tell me nothing but lies.”

“Whisht, whisht, and don't wake the child!” she whispered impatiently. “You ought to be ashamed, a big boy like you. Come into the other room.”

He stumbled out ahead of her, and she sat on the edge of her bed and put her arm round him. He was shivering. She no longer felt capable of handling him. She was old and tired and bothered in her head.

“What made you think of that, child?”

“Aunt Nance,” he said with a sob.

“What did she tell you?”

“She wouldn't tell me anything, only I saw she was afraid.”

“What was she afraid of?”

“I asked her to get James's mother to bring him home and she got frightened.”

“Oh, oh, oh, you poor misfortunate child!” she said with a wail. “And you only did it for the best.”

“I want to know who my mother is,” he cried despairingly. “Is it Aunt Kitty or Aunt Nance?”

“Look, child, lie down here and you can sleep with Mammy.”

“How can I sleep?” he asked frantically. “I only want to know who my mother is, and ye all tell me lies.” Then, turning suddenly into a baby again, he put his head in her lap and bawled. She put her hand under his nightshirt and patted his fat bottom.

“Oh, you poor putog, you're perished,” she sighed. Then she raised him onto the bed and pulled the covers about his shoulders.

“Will I get you a cup of tea?” she asked in a loud voice, and as he shook his head she muttered, “I will, I will.”

She threw an old coat round her and went downstairs to the kitchen, where the oil lamp was turned low. There was still red ash in the grate, and she blew on it and boiled the kettle. Then her troubles seemed to get the better of her, and she spoke to herself in a loud, angry, complaining tone. “'Twas the price of me for having anything to do with them—me that was never used to anything but decent people.” When she heard herself she was ashamed. And then she shrugged, and whined, “I'm too old.” As she climbed awkwardly back up the stairs with the two big mugs of tea, she heard him still sobbing, and stopped, turning her eyes to the ceiling. “God direct me!” she said aloud.

She sat on the edge of the bed and shook him. “Drink this!” she said roughly.

“I don't want it,” said Jimmy. “I want to know who my mother is.”

“Drink it, you dirty little caffler!” she said angrily. “Drink it or I won't tell you at all.”

He raised himself in the big bed and she held the mug to his lips, though he could not keep himself from shivering and the tea spilled over his shirt and the bedclothes. “My good sheet,” she muttered, and then took up her own cup and looked away into a corner of the room as if to avoid his eyes. “She is your mother, your Aunt Nance,” she said in a harsh, expressionless voice, “and a good mother she is, and a good woman as well, and it will be a bad day for you when you talk against her or let anyone else do it. She had the misfortune to meet a man that was beneath her. She was innocent. He took advantage of her. She wasn't the first and she won't be the last.”