The Dark (14 page)

T
HE DREAM WAS TORN PIECEMEAL FROM THE UNIVERSITY
before the week was over. Everyone wanted as much security and money as they could get.

“What are you doing?” was the conversation under the notices in the archway.

“Dentistry.”

Why?

“It’s about the best. There’s a shortage. You can earn
£
4,000 a year. The initial cost of the equipment to start out with is the worst, but there’s a lot of hard cash in it after that.”

Will teeth absorb your life?

“No, but you can get interested in anything if you’re at it long enough and if you’ve enough money it can compensate for a lot. If you have to be scraping all the time for money see how long you’ll be happy.”

And money was dream enough to soldier on too. Choice of
car and golf club and suburban house, grade A hotels by any sea in summer, brandy and well-dressed flesh.

“Security. Security. Everyone’s after security. And the only gilt-edged security to be had is the kingdom of heaven,” the Reverend Bull Reegan thumping at the old annual retreats in Carrick.

The college had opened. You’d listened to the President’s address, a white-haired Monsignor, saying something about an idea of a university in Gaelic, with many quotations—and no one able to follow.

Classes had commenced, and still you didn’t know what to do. You drifted from one lecture to another, soon you’d have to decide.

“The Association of Scientists estimates that by 1968 the present serious shortage of scientists will have more than doubled. But standards are rising. Last year out of a class of thirty-two no more than fourteen passed their B.Sc. You must have aptitude and be prepared to work. It is no place for the frivolous. But those who qualify can be assured of a well remunerated position.”

The appearance of the lecturer didn’t seem to matter as you left, neither his shape nor features nor the clothes he wore, he was what he said. The University was here. Green oaks lined the boundary wall. Farther out was Galway Bay. Everybody in the world was supposed to be unique.

“Unless you have private incomes the majority of you doing English must know that you’ll wind up teachers if you’re lucky, which has its compensations, though affluence is unlikely to be numbered among them. If there are any among you who have literary ambitions the evidence would seem to point to a dosshouse or a jail as a more likely place of genesis than a University,” and went on to say that nothing interfered so much with his day as the unaesthetic sight of students lounging on the drive when he came in and out.

On the walk as he was laughed at afterwards, you’d heard them say that he had only one real ambition, to drive to Dublin in under three hours, he’d already had several crashes in the attempt.

Though there were one or two who simply spoke about their subject with love, and their quiet excitement was able to come through, one frail grey-haired woman in a botany class, a younger man at mathematics who continually brushed imaginary chalk specks from his gown as he spoke and you came away wanting to learn and share, both were beautiful and young in some way.

Your doubts grew as you wandered, you wanted less and less to stay the more you saw, but it was easier to stay than go. It was clear that there’d be little dream, mostly the toil of lectures, and at night the same swotting and cramming in a room for the exams same as last year. You wondered as you came home by Eglington Street at four if it’d be long till the E.S.B. clerkships were announced, they were based on the Leaving results, you’d entered the same as the others, and the same marks that got the Scholarships were bound to get high there too. If you stayed you’d have to choose some course before the end of this week, this dithering had a limit, you thought it had to be Science. The fees were too high for medicine. Six years was too long a course. Science was three years. A job was certain at its end. Fear close to despair came at the image of failing or getting sick or losing the Scholarship, you’d have to fall back on Mahoney for support. It was frightening.

The night was the night of the Jibs’ Dance in the Aula, a new poster was up in the archway, you’d to meet John O’Donnell inside at nine.

The preparations took over an hour, shaving and washing, clean white shirt and collar out of the case, shining of the shoes, brushing of every speck from the suit, the hair flattened
with Brylcream, the teeth brushed, the painful knotting and unknotting of the wine tie before the mirror, diarrhoea of tension.

What would it be like, the band, the music, the dances, the women? Would you be scorned by these women?

Because you couldn’t dance.

Were you good-looking enough, would they look at you with revulsion?

Would you by watching pick up the steps and rhythms of the dance?

Would you have courage to ask a girl to dance?

Would you find yourself on the floor trampling on her feet, not able to dance, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m not able to dance, I’m only learning,” and would she leave you in the middle, “You’d better pick someone else to learn on,” or would she endure you in stony silence?

What would you talk to a girl about?

Would you be able to endure the white softness of her bare arm, the rustle of taffeta or the scent of lacquer when she leaned her hair close, without losing control and trying to crush her body to yours?

Would you be the one leper in the hall at Ladies Choice, flinching as every woman in the place casually inspected and rejected you, their favour falling on who was beside you, the other men melting like snow about you until you stood a rejected laughing stock out on the floor in the way of the dancers, no woman would be seen with you? It would be as if your life was torn out of your breast by every couple dancing together and you could slink towards the shadow of the pillars, fit to weep, watch your own mangled life go dancing past.

“Off to the dance,” they said downstairs as you went.

“Off to the dance,” you repeated and pressed your features into an embarrassed smile.

“All the girls will be falling for him tonight, but don’t do anything we wouldn’t do.”

“No. Good night.”

Laughter wreathed about their “Good night”, and was it mockery.

Down the hill to Eyre Square and coldness of the night on your flushed face and by Moon’s Corner down Eglington Street. It was after nine on the clocks, every step brought you nearer to your first dance and you wished they went in the opposite direction. It would be so easier to hang about the streets, but you’d promised to meet John O’Donnell beside the bandstand at nine, it was already past nine. With a sinking of the guts you crossed the Weir Bridge round the canal, the high jail wall there, and the footpath under the green oaks up University Road. There were all lights about the college, and it was surely music you could hear. Your feet slowed, you let your eyes close, if only you could turn back.

Inside the lodge gates there was some commotion. You crossed the other side of the road, glad of any excuse of delay, the blood pounding at the temples, you felt you could sit all night on a lavatory bowl. The hands were trembling.

“Control yourself. Control yourself. It’s not the end of the world. It’ll be forgotten by tomorrow morning,” but it was no use.

“You can’t face it,” the nerves shivered.

“If you don’t go to this dance it’ll be even harder the next time, you’ll never be able to go, you’ll never be able to take any natural part in life, get any natural fulfilment. You’ll be an oddity all your days.

“No. No. I’m not able to face it. I’m sick. Another night it’ll be easier.”

You’d drawn a most level with the gates on the opposite pavement. If you stood and stopped the crazy fighting within yourself you’d be able to see what the noise inside the gates
was. It was a crowd of students out of range of the lodge lamp under the chestnuts. A pair of girls with college scarves passed in. The shouting started up again into a foxtrot drifting from within the quadrangle. The words were easy enough to catch out of the general howl as the girls came level.

The phases could be picked out before the shouting rose to one general howl of derision as the girls hurried up the drive to the main door.

A single man student went through the gates, the same performance started under the trees. He paid no attention. He continued along the drive, in the one unruffled stride, and that was the way to go past, but you were certain by this that you wouldn’t go past, perhaps you’d not pass even if they weren’t there, they were no more than the easy way out you’d be looking for all along. You stood on the pavement and watched and listened. The music came over the short distance from the quadrangle, changed to a quickstep you recognized from some sponsored radio programme.

A vision of the dance floor came to plague you, naked shoulders of the women, glitter of jewellery on their throats, scent and mascara and the blood on their lips, the hiss of silk or taffeta stretching across their thrusting thighs, and always their unattainable crowned heads floated past. And you stood on the pavement outside the lodge gates.

This was the dream you’d left the stern and certain road of the priesthood to follow after, that road so attractive now since you hadn’t to face walking it any more, and this world of sensuality from which you were ready to lose your soul not so easy to drag to your mouth either for that one destructive kiss,
as hard to lose your soul as save it. Only in the mind was it clear.

You turned away, back towards the town, not able to return to the room because of the shame if you were seen slink through the hallway, you’d have to wait till they were sleeping or the dance was over.

You walked, it soothed and gathered back calm in some way, along the rotting network of the canals, stars caught between the invading grass and reeds, the flour-mills at the bridges and not many about under the lamps, your life and all life a strange thing.

In the café, over cups of coffee, in Shop Street, you spent the last part of the night; here you’d sat with John O’Donnell after the Savoy; and tonight he was dancing.

You envied the old waitress, she seemed asleep in everything she did, there were worse lives. All day she served nondescript customers that came through the swing doors, tired on her feet at the end, the one desire to get back to her bed and room, but perhaps it wasn’t as simple as that either, perhaps nothing was. When the café was closing, chairs being stacked on some of the tables, you made your way back to Prospect Hill. It was after twelve, and the dance should have been about over. By this time it didn’t seem to matter whether anyone was up or not to ask you about the dance. You felt like telling them the truth, and as violently as possible, it’d be some compensation.

The next morning two letters were waiting when you came down; one from Mahoney, the other had been redirected, it was typed, with a Dublin postmark. When you tore it open it was from the E.S.B. You were asked to present yourself for a medical examination in Dublin on Monday, and if passed, you should be ready to take up employment with the Board almost immediately.

It’d be pleasant to walk to work on a fine morning through
the streets of Dublin, to have pay coming at the end of each week, to be free for ever from dependence on Mahoney, to be able to go to Croke Park Sunday afternoons, and to be free. Chained to a desk all day would be the worst part, but there was money for it, and freedom. Staying here at the University would be three years of cramming rubbish into the mind in constant dread of sickness and failure at the exams. You just couldn’t go home defeated to Mahoney.

It was strange this morning leaving Prospect Hill in the rain, through Eyre Square for the last time or the beginning of every morning for the next three years, you’d have to answer the letter this evening, dallying was over, you’d have to answer it one way or the other. You’d have to choose.

With a new detachment you watched the goalposts, strangely luminous in the rain, the green onion domes, and the first classes of the day. You’d have to make up your mind to stay here or leave before this evening, and then an absurd accident struck that removed all detachment.

The Physics Theatre was full, the seats rising in stairs to the back, and the waiting crowd shouting and beginning to grow restless when a white-coated attendant entered with some apparatus for an experiment. The restlessness became directed at the little attendant. He was loudly cheered down to the table, feet were stamped, the theatre close to a football match when the lecturer red with fury appeared.

In a second dead silence fell.

“I won’t tolerate hooliganism in my class now or at any other time,” the lecturer, small with glasses, thundered, and there wasn’t even a stirring of feet.

It was strange, the sudden deadly silence in place of the shouting, and his fury too big in some way for the small man with the glasses, several of the students who were dumb now could have taken him in their hands and thrown him out the window.

“I’ll tolerate no hooliganism in my class,” the small lecturer who would teach physics through Irish and who’d told them in the previous class that he’d found no difficulty in following lectures in Germany once he’d got over the initial newness of the language, and he saw no reason why they shouldn’t be able to do the same through Irish, shouted again from the table, and it suddenly seemed too comic, the huge
hooliganism
too big in his mouth, and the students roaring a minute ago, quiet as mice before him, and you made the mistake of smiling.

“Get out you,” he pointed.

Whoever was next you stood.

“No. Not you. The gentleman on your left.”

It couldn’t be, you were suddenly bewildered, but stood expecting it to be someone else.

“What’s your name?”

The room swam, you were hardly able to answer, there was sense of bewildering unreality, everyone must be looking at you. You’d been quiet, but why had you to cursed smile.