The 40s: The Story of a Decade (115 page)

“It was love sent me there, Ma’am,” she would say to my mother, in a rich, wheezy, humorous voice. “Love was always the ruination of me. If I might have stuck on there, I could have chummed up with some old, sickly geezer of seventy that would think the world of me and leave me his money when he’d die. I was a fine-looking girl in those days. Frankie Leary used to say I was like the picture of the Colleen Bawn.”

I often studied the picture of the Colleen Bawn in her kitchen to see could I detect some resemblance between herself and Mrs. Leary, but I failed. The Colleen Bawn was a glorious-looking creature, plump and modest and all aglow, as if she had a lamp inside her.

“Why then indeed,” my mother would say loyally, “you’re a fine woman to this day, Mrs. Leary.”

“Ah, I’m not, Ma’am, I’m not,” Mrs. Leary would say
with resignation. “I had great feeling, and nothing ages a woman like the feelings. But I was mad in love with Frankie Leary, and lovers can never agree. I had great pride. If he so much as lay a hand on me, I’d fight in a bag tied up.”

“Ah, ’tis a wonder you’d put up with it from him,” my mother would say. She had strong ideas about the dignity of womanhood.

“Ah, wisha, you would, Ma’am, you would,” Mrs. Leary would
say with a sigh for my mother’s lack of experience. “A man would never love you properly till he’d give you a clout. I could die for that man when he beat me.”

Then, with a tear in her eye, she’d take out the snuffbox she kept in her enormous bosom and tell again the sad story of herself and Frankie. Frankie, it seemed, had even greater pride than herself. He had always been too big for his boots. America, he had said, was the only country for a man of spirit. Now, Mrs. Leary had a weakness for the little drop, and several times Frankie had warned her that if she didn’t give it up he’d leave her and go to America. One night when she was on a bat, she came home and found that he had been as good as his word. But she had a spirit as great as his own. Leaving Stevie, still a baby, with her mother-in-law, she had followed her husband to America. True, she had never succeeded in finding him. America was a big place, and Frankie Leary wasn’t the sort to leave traces. All the same, she’d had the experience, and she never let you forget it. Even Mrs. Delury, whom she mostly worked for, didn’t succeed in keeping her in her place. Mrs. Delury owned a shop and had a son in Maynooth going for the priesthood, but Mrs. Leary dismissed both of these sources of pride with a sarcastic “We have a priest in the family and a pump in the yard.” As Mrs. Delury said, you couldn’t expect better of anyone who had spent years in that horrible country.

Stevie was twelve, the same age I was, with a big, round, almost idiotic face and a rosy complexion, a slovenly, hasty stride that was almost a scamper, and a shrill, scolding, old woman’s voice. He was always in a hurry, and when someone called to him and he stopped, it was just as if some invisible hand had tightened the reins on him; he slithered and skidded to a halt with his beaming face over his shoulder. He was never a kid like the rest of us. He took life too seriously. His mother had told him the story of an American millionaire who had made his way up from rags to riches, and Stevie hoped to do the same thing. He collected swill for the Mahoneys, carried messages for the Delurys, and for a penny would do anything for you, from minding the baby to buying the dinner. He had a frightfully crabbed air, and would talk in that high-pitched voice of his about what was the cheapest sort of meat to make soup of. “You should try Reilly’s, Ma’am,” he would tell my mother. “Reilly’s keeps grand stewing beef.” My mother thought he wasn’t quite right in the head. “Ah, he’s a good poor slob,” she would say doubtfully when politeness required her to praise him to his mother. Mrs. Leary would sigh and take a pinch of snuff and say, “Ah, he’ll never be the man his father was, Ma’am.” I more or less knew Stevie’s father as the man Stevie would never be.

Occasionally, Mrs. Leary’s feelings would get too much for her. We’d be playing some boys’ game and Stevie would be sitting on the wall outside their little cottage, looking at us with a smile that was half superciliousness and half envy. A kid coming up the road would say, “Stevie, I seen your old one on a bat again.” “Oh, japers!” Stevie would groan. “That woman will be the death of me. Where is she now, Jerry?” “I seen her down by the Cross.” “Clancy’s or Mooney’s?” Stevie would ask, and away he would go. Sometimes I would go along after him and watch him darting into each pub as he passed, the very image of an up-to-date businessman, and shouting to the barmaid, “You didn’t see my ma today, Miss O.?…You didn’t? I’ll try Riordan’s.” Eventually he would discover her in some snug with a couple of cronies. Mrs. Leary was the warm sort of drunkard who attracts hangers-on.

“Ah, come on home now, Ma,” Stevie would cry coaxingly.

“Jasus help us!” the cronies would say in pretended admiration. “Isn’t he a lovely little boy, God bless him!”

“Ah, he’ll never be the man his father was, Ma’am,” Mrs. Leary would say, beaming at him regretfully. “There was a man for you, Ma’am! A fine, educated, independent man!”

It might be nightfall before Stevie got her home—a mountain of a woman, who would have stunned him if she’d collapsed on him. He would make her a cup of tea, undress her, and put her to bed. If my mother were by, she would lend a hand and, furious at any woman’s making such an exhibition of herself and before a child, she would rate Mrs. Leary soundly.

Sometimes, late at night, we’d hear Stevie crying, “Ah, stay here, Ma, and I’ll get it for you!” and his mother roaring, “Gimme the money!” Stevie would groan and steal away to whatever hiding hole he was then keeping his savings in. “That’s all I have now,” he would say hopefully. “Will tuppence do you?” With the cunning of all drunkards, Mrs. Leary seemed to know to a farthing how much he had. Night after night she shuffled down to Miss O.’s with nothing showing through the hood of the shawl but one sinister, bloodshot eye, and tuppence by tuppence Stevie’s capital vanished, till he started life again with all the bounce gone out of him, as poor as any of us who had never heard the life story of an American millionaire.

Then one night Frankie Leary came back from the States. My mother was at Mrs. Leary’s when Frankie strolled up the road one summer evening, without even a bag, and stood in the doorway with an impassive air. “Hallo,” he said lightly. Mrs. Leary rose from her stool by the fire, gaping at him; then she tottered, and finally she ran and enveloped him in her arms. “Oh, Frankie!” she sobbed. “After all the years!” This apparently wasn’t at all the sort of conduct that the independent Frankie approved of. “Here, here,” he said roughly. “There’s time enough for that later. Now I want something to eat.” He pushed her away and looked at Stevie, who was staring at him, enraptured by the touching scene. “Is this the boy?” he asked, and then all at once he smiled pleasantly and held out his hand. “How’re ye, Son?” he asked heartily. “Oh, grand, Father,” said Stevie, who was equal to any occasion. “Did you have a nice journey?”

Frankie didn’t even reply to that. Maybe he hadn’t had a nice journey. Unlike the American Stevie had been told of, Frankie came home as poor as he left, and next day he had to go to work on the railway. It seemed America wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

· · ·

For a week or two, Stevie was in a state of real hysteria over his father’s arrival. For the first time he had, like the rest of us, a da of his own, and as our das generally flaked hell out of us, Stevie felt it was up to him to go in fear and trembling of what “my da” might do to him. Of course, it was all showing off, for his da did nothing whatever to him. On the contrary, Frankie was painfully and anxiously correct with him, as though he were trying to make up for any slight he might have inflicted on the boy by his eleven-year absence. He found that Stevie was interested in America, and talked to him patiently for hours on end about it while Stevie, in an appalling imitation of some old man he had seen in a pub, sat back in his chair with his hands in his trousers pockets.

Frankie spoke to him one day about keeping his hands in his pockets, and even this mild criticism, delivered in a low, reasonable tone, was enough to make Stevie jump. He tried in other ways to please Frankie. He tried to moderate his intense, fancy-haunted shamble so that he wouldn’t have to pull himself up on the rein, to break his voice of its squeak, and to imitate his father.

Stevie trying to be tough like Frankie was one of the funniest of his phases, for undoubtedly Frankie was the man Stevie would never be. He
was a lean, leathery sort of man, with a long face, cold eyes, and a fish’s mouth. No doubt he had his good points. He made Mrs. Leary give up the daily work and wear a hat and coat instead of the shawl. He made Stevie give up the swill and the messages and learn to read and write, an accomplishment that had apparently been omitted from the education of whatever American millionaire he had been modelling himself on. Frankie had few friends on the road; he was a quiet, self-centered, scornful man. But with his coming the years seemed to drop from Mrs. Leary. I understood at last what she meant when she said that Frankie in their courting days had compared her to the Colleen Bawn. She seemed to become all schoolgirlish and lit up inside, as though, but for modesty, she’d love to take you aside and tell you what Frankie did to her.

You wouldn’t believe the change that came over their little cottage. Of course, a couple of times there were scenes when Mrs. Leary came home with the signs of drink on her. They weren’t scenes as we understood them. Frankie didn’t make smithereens of the house, as my da did when domesticity became too much for him. But for all that, the scenes frightened Stevie. Each time there was one, he burst into tears and begged his father and mother to agree.

And then one night a terrible thing happened. Mrs. Leary came in a bit more expansive than usual. She wasn’t drunk, she told my mother afterward—just friendly. Frankie had been reading the evening paper and he looked up.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“Ah, I ran into Lizzie Desmond at the Cross and we started to talk,” Mrs. Leary said good-humoredly.

“Then ye started to drink, you mean.”

“We had two small ones,” said Mrs. Leary with a shrug of her shoulders. “What harm was there in that? Have you the kettle boiling, Stevie?”

“You know better than anyone what harm is in it,” Frankie said. “I hope you’re not forgetting what it cost you last time?”

“And if it did, wasn’t I well able to get along without you? ’Tisn’t many would be able for what I did, with my child to bring up, and no one to advise me or help me.”

“Whisht now, Ma! Whisht!” Stevie cried in an agony of fear. “You know my da is only speaking for your good.”

“Speaking for my good?” she shouted. With great dignity she drew herself up and addressed Frankie. “How dare you? Is that my thanks
after all I did for you—crossing the briny ocean after you, you insignificant little gnat!”

“What’s that you said?” Frankie asked quietly. Without waiting for an answer, he threw down his paper and went up to her with his fists clenched.

“Gnat!” she repeated scornfully, looking him up and down. “Insignificant little gnat, that wouldn’t make a bolt for a back door! How dare you?”

Even before Stevie could guess what he was up to, Frankie had drawn back his fist and given it to her fair in the mouth. He didn’t pull his punch, either. Stevie nearly got sick at the sound. Mrs. Leary gave a shriek that was heard in our house, and then went in a heap on the floor. Stevie shrieked, too, and rushed to her assistance. He lifted her head on his knee. Her mouth was bleeding and her eyes were closed.

“Oh, Ma, look at me, look at me!” he bawled distractedly. “ ’Tis all right. I’m Stevie, your own little boy.”

She opened one red-rimmed eye and looked at him for a moment. Then she closed it carefully, with a moan of pain, as though the sight of him distressed her too much. Stevie looked up at his father, who seemed to be hardly aware of his presence.

“Will I get the priest for her, Da?” asked Stevie. “She’s dying.”

“Get to bed out of this,” Frankie replied in a tone that put the fear of God into Stevie. He crept into bed, leaving his mother still lying on the floor. A little later he heard his father close the bedroom door on himself. His mother still lay there. He was quite certain she was dead until an hour later he heard her pick herself up and make herself a cup of tea. But never before had Stevie allowed his mother to remain like that without assistance. It couldn’t have happened except for Frankie. He was afraid of Frankie.

Stevie woke next morning with all the troubles of the world on his young shoulders. Things were desperate in the home. All the light he had on the subject was contained in a sermon he had once heard in which the preacher said children were a great bond between the parents. Stevie felt it was up to him to be a bond. Purposefully cheerful, he gave Frankie his breakfast and took his mother a cup of tea. After that she insisted on getting up and going out. He begged her to stay in bed, and offered to bring the porter to her, but she wouldn’t. He knew she was going out to get drunk, and at the same time that she was far more frightened than he was. That was what she meant when she said that lovers could never
agree. It was her terrible pride that wouldn’t allow her to give in to his father.

In the afternoon, Stevie found her in a pub in town and brought her home. He did everything he could to make her presentable; he made her tea, washed her face, combed her hair, and finally even tried to induce her to hide in our house. At six, Frankie came in, and Stevie bustled around him eagerly and clumsily, laying the table for his supper. In his capacity of bond, he had reverted to type. “You’d like a couple of buttered eggs?” he squeaked. “You would, to be sure. Dwyer’s keeps grand eggs.”

After supper, Frankie grimly got up and took his cap. “You won’t be late, Da?” Stevie asked appealingly. Frankie didn’t answer. Stevie went to the door and watched him all the way down the road. Then he returned and sat opposite his mother by the fire.

“Ah,” he said, “I don’t suppose he’ll come back at all.”