More Pricks Than Kicks (3 page)

“Yes” she said “I know the passage. It is a famous teaser. Off-hand I cannot tell you, but I will look it up when I get home.”

The sweet creature! She would look it up in her big Dante when she got home. What a woman!

“It occurred to me” she said “apropos of I don't know what, that you might do worse than make up Dante's rare movements of compassion in Hell. That used to be” her past tenses were always sorrowful “a favourite question.”

He assumed an expression of profundity.

“In that connexion” he said “I recall one superb pun anyway:

‘qui vive la pietà quando è ben morta…’”

She said nothing.

“Is it not a great phrase?” he gushed.

She said nothing.

“Now” he said like a fool “I wonder how you could translate that?”

Still she said nothing. Then:

“Do you think” she murmured “it is absolutely necessary to translate it?”

Sounds as of conflict were borne in from the hall. Then silence. A knuckle tambourined on the door, it flew open and lo it was Mlle Glain, the French instructress, clutching her cat, her eyes out on stalks, in a state of the greatest agitation.

“Oh” she gasped “forgive me. I intrude, but what was in the bag?”

“The bag?” said the Ottolenghi.

Mlle Glain took a French step forward.

“The parcel” she buried her face in the cat “the parcel in the hall.”

Belacqua spoke up composedly.

“Mine” he said, “a fish.”

He did not know the French for lobster. Fish would do very well. Fish had been good enough for Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour. It was good enough for Mlle Glain.

“Oh” said Mlle Glain, inexpressibly relieved, “I caught him in the nick of time.” She administered a tap to the cat. “He would have tore it to flitters.”

Belacqua began to feel a little anxious.

“Did he actually get at it?” he said.

“No no” said Mlle Glain “I caught him just in time. But I did not know” with a blue-stocking snigger “what it might be, so I thought I had better come and ask.”

Base prying bitch.

The Ottolenghi was faintly amused.

“Puisqu'il n'y a pas de mal …” she said with great fatigue and elegance.

“Heureusement” it was clear at once that Mlle Glain was devout “heureusement.”

Chastening the cat with little skelps she took herself off. The grey hairs of her maidenhead screamed at Belacqua. A devout, virginal blue-stocking, honing after a penny's worth of scandal.

“Where were we?” said Belacqua.

But Neapolitan patience has its limits.

“Where are we ever?” cried the Ottolenghi “where we were, as we were.”

Belacqua drew near to the house of his aunt. Let us call it Winter, that dusk may fall now and a moon rise. At the corner of the street a horse was down and a man sat on its head. I know, thought Belacqua, that that is considered the right thing to do. But why? A lamplighter flew by on his bike, tilting with his pole at the standards, jousting a little yellow light into the evening. A poorly dressed couple stood in the bay of a pretentious gateway, she sagging against the railings, her head lowered, he standing facing her. He stood up close to her, his hands dangled by his sides. Where we were, thought Belacqua, as we were. He walked on gripping his parcel. Why not piety and pity both, even down below? Why not mercy and Godliness together? A little mercy in the stress of sacrifice, a little mercy to rejoice against judgment. He thought of Jonah and the gourd and the pity of a jealous God on Nineveh. And poor McCabe, he would get it in the neck at dawn. What was he doing now, how was he feeling? He would relish one more meal, one more night.

His aunt was in the garden, tending whatever flowers die at that time of year. She embraced him and together they went down into the bowels of the earth, into the kitchen in the basement. She took the parcel and undid it and abruptly the lobster was on the table, on the oilcloth, discovered.

“They assured me it was fresh” said Belacqua.

Suddenly he saw the creature move, this neuter creature. Definitely it changed its position. His hand flew to his mouth.

“Christ!” he said “it's alive.”

His aunt looked at the lobster. It moved again. It made a faint nervous act of life on the oilcloth. They stood above it, looking down on it, exposed cruciform on the oilcloth. It shuddered again. Belacqua felt he would be sick.

“My God” he whined “it's alive, what'll we do?”

The aunt simply had to laugh. She bustled off to the pantry to fetch her smart apron, leaving him goggling down at the lobster, and came back with it on and her sleeves rolled up, all business.

“Well” she said “it is to be hoped so, indeed.”

“All this time” muttered Belacqua. Then, suddenly aware of her hideous equipment: “What are you going to do?” he cried.

“Boil the beast” she said, “what else?”

“But it's not dead” protested Belacqua “you can't boil it like that.”

She looked at him in astonishment. Had he taken leave of his senses?

“Have sense” she said sharply, “lobsters are always boiled alive. They must be.” She caught up the lobster and laid it on its back. It trembled. “They feel nothing” she said.

In the depths of the sea it had crept into the cruel pot. For hours, in the midst of its enemies, it had breathed secretly. It had survived the Frenchwoman's cat and his witless clutch. Now it was going alive into scalding water. It had to. Take into the air my quiet breath.

Belacqua looked at the old parchment of her face, grey in the dim kitchen.

“You make a fuss” she said angrily “and upset me and then lash into it for your dinner.”

She lifted the lobster clear of the table. It had about thirty seconds to live.

Well, thought Belacqua, it's a quick death, God help us all.

It is not.

T
HE
last girl he went with, before a memorable fit of laughing incapacitated him from gallantry for some time, was pretty, hot and witty, in that order. So one fine Spring morning he brought her out into the country, to the Hill of Feltrim in the country. They turned east off the road from Dublin to Malahide short of the Castle woods and soon it came into view, not much more than a burrow, the ruin of a mill on the top, choked lairs of furze and brambles passim on its gentle slopes. It was a landmark for miles around on account of the high ruin. The Hill of the Wolves.

They had not been very long on the top before he began to feel a very sad animal indeed. But she was to all appearance in high spirits, enjoying the warm sun and the prospect.

“The Dublin mountains” she said “don't they look lovely, so dreamy.”

Now Belacqua was looking intently in the opposite direction, across the estuary.

“It's the east wind” he said.

She began to admire this and that, the ridge of Lambay Island rising out of the brown woods of the Castle, Ireland's Eye like a shark, and the ridiculous little hills far away to the north, what were they?

“The Naul” said Belacqua. “Is it possible you didn't know the Naul?” This in the shocked tone of the travelled spinster: “You don't say you were in Milan (to rime with villain) and never saw the Cena?” “Can it be possible that you passed through Chambéry and never called on Mme de Warens?”

“North Dublin” she said “I don't know at all. So flat and dull, all roads leading to Drogheda.”

“Fingal dull!” he said. “Winnie you astonish me.”

They considered Fingal for a time together in silence. Its coast eaten away with creeks and marshes, tesserae of small fields, patches of wood springing up like a weed, the line of hills too low to close the view.

“When it's a magic land” he sighed “like Saône-et-Loire.”

“That means nothing to me” said Winnie.

“Oh yes” he said, “bons vins et Lamartine, a champaign land for the sad and serious, not a bloody little toy Kindergarten like Wicklow.”

You make great play with your short stay abroad, thought Winnie.

“You and your sad and serious” she said. “Will you never come off it?”

“Well” he said “I'll give you Alphonse.”

She replied that he could keep him. Things were beginning to blow up nasty.

“What's that on your face?” she said sharply.

“Impetigo” said Belacqua. He had felt it coming with a terrible itch in the night and in the morning it was there. Soon it would be a scab.

“And you kiss me” she exclaimed “with that on your face.”

“I forgot” he said. “I get so excited you know.”

She spittled on her handkerchief and wiped her mouth. Belacqua lay humbly beside her, expecting her to get up and leave him. But instead she said:

“What is it anyway? What does it come from?”

“Dirt” said Belacqua, “you see it on slum children.”

A long awkward silence followed these words.

“Don't pick it darling” she said unexpectedly at last, “you'll make it worse.”

This came to Belacqua like a drink of water to drink in a dungeon. Her goodwill must have meant something to him. He returned to Fingal to cover his confusion.

“I often come to this hill” he said “to have a view of Fingal, and each time I see it more as a back-land, a land of sanctuary, a land that you don't have to dress up to, that you can walk on in a lounge suit, smoking a cigar.” What a geyser, she thought. “And where much has been suffered in secret, especially by women.”

“This is all a dream” she said. “I see nothing but three acres and cows. You can't have Cincinnatus without a furrow.”

Now it was she who was sulky and he who was happy.

“Oh Winnie” he made a vague clutch at her sincerities, for she was all anyway on the grass, “you look very Roman this minute.”

“He loves me” she said, in earnest jest.

“Only pout” he begged, “be Roman, and we'll go on across the estuary.”

“And then…?”

And then! Winnie take thought!

“I see” he said “you take thought. Shall we execute a contract?”

“No need” she said.

He was as wax in her hands, she twisted him this way and that. But now their moods were in accordance, things were somehow very pleasant all of a sudden. She gazed long at the area of contention and he willed her not to speak, to remain there with her grave face, a quiet puella in a blurred world. But she spoke (who shall silence them, at last?), saying that she saw nothing but the grey fields of serfs and the ramparts of ex-favourites. Saw! They were all the same when it came to the pinch—clods. If she closed her eyes she might see something. He would drop the subject, he would not try to communicate Fingal, he would lock it up in his mind. So much the better.

“Look” he pointed.

She looked, blinking for the focus.

“The big red building” he said “across the water, with the towers.”

At last she thought she saw what he meant.

“Far away” she said “with the round tower?”

“Do you know what that is” he said “because my heart's right there.”

Well, she thought, you lay your cards on the table.

“No” she said, “it looks like a bread factory to me.”

“The Portrane Lunatic Asylum” he said.

“Oh” she said “I know a doctor there.”

Thus, she having a friend, he his heart, in Portrane, they agreed to make for there.

They followed the estuary all the way round, admiring the theories of swans and the coots, over the dunes and past the Martello tower, so that they came on Portrane from the south and the sea instead of like a vehicle by the railway bridge and the horrible red chapel of Donabate. The place was as full of towers as Dun Laoghaire of steeples: two Martello, the red ones of the asylum, a water-tower and the round. Trespassing unawares, for the notice-board was further on towards the coastguard station, they climbed the rising ground to this latter. They followed the grass margin of a ploughed field till they came to where a bicycle was lying, half hidden in the rank grass. Belacqua, who could on no account resist a bicycle, thought what an extraordinary place to come across one. The owner was out in the field, scarifying the dry furrows with a fork.

“Is this right for the tower?” cried Belacqua.

The man turned his head.

“Can we get up to the tower?” cried Belacqua.

The man straightened up and pointed.

“Fire ahead” he said.

“Over the wall?” cried Belacqua. There was no need for him to shout. A conversational tone would have been heard across the quiet field. But he was so anxious to make himself clear, he so dreaded the thought of having to repeat himself, that he not merely raised his voice, but put on a flat accent that astonished Winnie.

“Don't be an eejit” she said, “if it's straight on it's over the wall.”

But the man seemed pleased that the wall had been mentioned, or perhaps he was just glad of an opportunity to leave his work, for he dropped his fork and came lumbering over to where they were standing. There was nothing at all noteworthy about his appearance. He said that their way lay straight ahead, yes, over the wall, and then the tower was on top of the field, or else they could go back till they came to the road and go along it till they came to the Banks and follow up the Banks. The Banks? Was this fellow one of the more harmless lunatics? Belacqua asked was the tower an old one, as though it required a Dr Petrie to see that it was not. The man said it had been built for relief in the year of the Famine, so he had heard, by a Mrs Somebody whose name he misremembered in honour of her husband.

“Well Winnie” said Belacqua, “over the wall or follow up the Banks?”

“There's a rare view of Lambay from the top” said the man.

Winnie was in favour of the wall, she thought that it would be more direct now that they had come so far. The man began to work this out. Belacqua had no one but himself to blame if they never got away from this machine.

“But I would like to see the Banks” he said.

“If we went on now” said Winnie “now that we have come so far, and followed the Banks
down
, how would that be?”

They agreed, Belacqua and the man, that it needed a woman to think these things out. Suddenly there was a tie between them.