The Pornographer (9 page)

It was in Kavanagh’s upstairs lounge that we met to arrange the boat trip on the Shannon. She was so energetic with happiness when she came that I could believe she was lit by some inner light, except I knew by this time that all her power came from outside. Walter was thrilled by the idea of the article. The people that owned the boats were falling over backwards to help. Her two friends, the American girls, thought it a wonderful idea and were really dying to meet me.

“Pornography and all?” I asked in more dismay than sarcasm.

“I thought they’d be shocked but it didn’t phase them one bit. They were tickled pink.”

I groaned inwardly at the sea of talk that must have been set rippling by our small dark meetings, and resolved to end it as soon as the boat trip ended. Out of guilt at my own withdrawal, my useless passivity, I made my own poor gesture toward the doomed charade.

“I’ll be able to get a car,” I said. “I’ll drive you down to the boat.”

“You’ll drive us down.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Betty and Janey said they’d be glad to lend us their car for the weekend.”

“No, I can borrow a car or van from the paper. I used to have a car of my own but I didn’t have enough use for it.”

“I’d have a car,” she said, “if I could afford it. I think a car is a wonderful extension of your life. It’s almost as good as a third arm.”

“Will you have a last drink?” I asked towards closing time. “We’ll not go back to my place tonight.”

It was like pulling the trigger of a gun that had been following the movement of a bird settling in high branches, pulled as much out of the tiredness of following it among the branches as any desire of killing.

“Why?” she demanded.

It’d serve as a rehearsal for finishing it, I thought, a sounding out, though plain sense said that the only way to finish it was by finishing it now, and I flinched from that.

“There’s a lot of trouble,” I explained. “My aunt has taken a turn for the worse. My uncle is coming up. I’ll have to shepherd him around. And I have all this work to do.”

Maloney was fond of saying that every good lie must be flavoured with a little truth, as whiskey with water.

“He won’t be up tonight, will he?”

“No, but there’s things I have to do before he comes.”

“When will we meet, then?” she didn’t question it further.

“Say, Saturday night.”

“All that length of time. It’s almost time for the boat trip then.”

“We’ll have all that weekend on the boat and I just want to be free this whole week. Since you complain of these pubs, we’ll do anything you want to do on Saturday,” I said by way of appeasement.

She thought for a while and then said without hesitation, “I know what I’d like to do,” she was suddenly aglow. “I’ll come to your place and cook you a meal.”

“My place is a mess as far as cooking goes. I’ll take you out for a meal. Any place you want.”

“No. I have this feeling you’re not looking after yourself properly. I want to cook you a good meal. I’ll get the food but I’ll leave the wine to you.”

I tried to protest but I saw that she had her mind made up. “What kind of wine will I get? Red or white?” I backed down.

“Red. Get red wine,” it seemed she had the meal already half planned.

My aunt was sitting up in bed, combed and made-up when I brought her in the bottle of brandy the next evening. She looked excited and happy.

“I’m going home,” she said, though it wasn’t necessary to say it. “You’ll not have to waste your money bringing in the old brandy any more but God bless you for it. I don’t know what I’d have done without it.”

“How are you going?”

“I rang last night. Your uncle is coming up for me tomorrow. He’s taking the big car. He wants you to ring him tonight.”

“Why isn’t Cyril coming?” I asked her sharply.

“Poor Cyril is far too busy,” she answered with equal sharpness, intolerant of the question.

My uncle was far the busier, but all the foolish sweetness of her late love was for Cyril and pardoned everything he did before turning it to praise. My uncle’s hard-working, decent life counted for nothing by its side, his refusal to be anything but his own man just another woeful example of bad manners and general inconsiderateness. Facts were just left carelessly around by other people in order to trip you up. “He’s certainly as busy as Cyril,” I said carefully, but she flushed with anger.

“You never liked Cyril. Of course you’d take your uncle’s side, what else could I expect?”

“Liking has nothing to do with it, just plain facts.”

“It’s no wonder poor Cyril always complained the both of you ganged up on him.”

“I’m very fond of my uncle but that has nothing got to do with it.”

“Oh has it not? If you were to strip off those city manners you’d find that both of you are the exact same breed. What passes for quiet is stubbornness and you’re both thick as ditches.”

“It’s useful,” I started to say, but then was appalled to find myself in the middle of a quarrel. These were the first unkind words we’d had all the time she’d been in the hospital, and she was going home tomorow. “I’ll see you tomorrow and I’ll ring him this evening,” I changed, but she didn’t answer. After a few steps I wanted to turn back to say that I was sorry, but by then I saw that she was crying.

“O, aye,” my uncle said when I told him my aunt had asked me to telephone. “You know I’m going up tomorrow?”

“I know that.”

“Well, I was wonderin’ if you’d meet me somewhere out of the city. I don’t like driving the big car in the city.”

“I’ll meet you at Maynooth, then. Would eleven be all right?”

“Eleven would be fine. Say, at the gates of the priests’ factory,” it was one of his few jokes. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine. How are you keeping yourself?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he said. “And there’d be no use complaining anyhow if it wasn’t.”

I took the bus out to Maynooth the next morning, and was waiting for him at the seminary gates when the “big car” pulled up ten or fifteen minutes after eleven, a black V8, old and heavy enough to have come out of any of several gangster movies. Among other things, he kept it on the principle that, since driving was so careless in Ireland, someone was bound
to hit him sooner later and when that happened “The other fella wasn’t going to come out looking for a light.” Since he took it out so seldom, the fact that it swallowed petrol was a small price to pay for such insulated misanthropy. He left the engine running and moved over to let me take the wheel.

“It’s a great ease for me that you’re taking her in,” he shuffled in his pocket and took out a box of small cigars. “There was a time I used to take trucks three times a week through to the docks but not any more with this traffic.”

“She running beautifully,” I said, and it was a pleasure to feel her roll, solid and stately.

“There’s no plastic in this old bus. They made them to last in those days.”

As we drew in towards the city, I saw people nudge and smile at us. I smiled back and was glad my uncle didn’t notice. It would not have pleased him that the big car had now reached the status of an antique.

“Well, how is the patient?” he had to ask at long last.

“I’m afraid I ran into trouble with her last night.”

“What sort of trouble?” he asked apprehensively.

“It was nothing. I got a bit annoyed when she said poor Cyril was too busy to come up for her and told you were far busier. It was just a puff. It’ll be all over but you’re as well to know about it.”

“The only time poor Cyril gets busy these days is on the high stool,” he chuckled. “But you couldn’t tell that woman that. And you should hear the pity he has for himself, you’d think it was him that should be in the hospital, especially if there’s a woman near to listen, and you know there’s no use talking to a woman once her mind’s made up. Trying to talk to a woman with her mind made up is like trying to turn back a pig in a wide meadow: they’ll always go past you.”

“I was sorry I got into it. It was no time for crossing her,” I said.

“Is she not coming home cured, then?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it.”

“Why are they sending her out, so?”

“Maybe there’s nothing more they can do for her,” and I was glad not to have to watch his face.

“Will you go in for her?” he asked when I parked at the hospital. “I’d sooner sit out here in the car. And there’s nothing much I can do in there anyhow.” And when I looked towards him he had already looked away.

“I thought yous were never coming,” she was all waiting, her cases by the armchair at the entrance to the ward.

“We’re hardly late at all.”

“Once you know you’re going you can’t wait to get away. Where’s your uncle?”

“He’s waiting out at the car.”

“That’s just like him. Let you haul out all the cases,” she started to complain.

He was standing outside the V8, the boot up, the back door open,

“Will you look at him, standing there, like a railway porter,” I saw now that she was just complaining out of happiness and relief to be entering again into the familiar. He hid his nervousness by busily stacking the cases in the boot, and then settling her among the rugs and pillows in the back, she making noises of protestation. “Well, it’s great to see you better and going home,” he let rumble out as the car rolled away from the hospital.

“Maybe I’m not well at all.”

“Ah well, Mary, you never missed! You were always a great one for having both ends. Sure, you’re even looking well,” and though she grumbled on I saw that the tiny scold had reassured her.

At Maynooth I left them. “There’ll be a bus back in any minute. I don’t want you to wait.”

“You’ll be down soon?” my uncle said as we shook hands.

“Promise,” she said as I kissed her. “And thanks for everything and God bless you.”

“I promise. If you don’t go now you’ll soon find yourself
driving into the sun.” I shut the door but she continued waving from the back window as the big car nosed out into the traffic.

I took the story in Friday evening to the Elbow Inn. Every Friday evening the people from the paper met there just after work. I took the story in instead of posting it because I wanted to borrow a car or van for the river trip.

Maloney had his back to the counter when I came in, pulling on a cigar. Around him there were three or four different conversations going but they all formed a single and distinct whole from the rest of the bar, and people were continually circulating between the points of conversation. There was a tradition of wit on those Fridays which resulted in a killing and artificial tedium. Though they put out pornographic papers it would be difficult to tell them from any bank or insurance party except that their dress was perhaps that bit more attractively careless. Some of the girls said “Hello, stranger” to me between the smiles and handshakes but it had as much significance as “yours sincerely”. Maloney bought me a drink and I gave him the story.

“I don’t suppose you’ll like it,” I said carelessly.

“If he doesn’t like it he doesn’t have to publish it,” one of the girls who was with him laughed.

“Even if we didn’t like it there’s a special place for odd-ball stuff our regulars come in with from time to time,” Maloney countered quickly, and started to slip through it. As he did I asked the girl where she intended to go on her summer holiday. Maloney interrupted tepid talk about the Aran Islands to say in his mock pompous voice, “It breaks no new ground but it’s up to your usual high, traditional standard and of course there’s the usual spunk, old boy. Where do you intend to exercise the Colonel and our good Mavis next?”

“I thought of a trip in a cruiser up the Shannon.”

“Excellent idea. Spend your holiday discovering Ireland. Support home industry. I’m all for that, old boy.”

“In fact, I’ve got an invite on one of those trips and I want to borrow a car for next weekend. It’s all the paper will have to contribute to the field work.”

“Very in-ter-est-ing. Do you have a Mavis to take along to your Colonel?”

“Sure,” I tried to cut the joking short. “She’s seventy-nine and after every time we do it we have to search between the sheets for her false teeth. What about the car?”

“Hi, John,” he called across to a young bald-headed man in a blue duffle coat, “What cars are free next Friday?”

“There’s a few, I’d take the black Beetle if I was him.”

“The Black Beetle, then,” I said and Maloney nodded gravely.

“What can I get you to drink before I go?” I offered, but it was refused, and I made the final arrangements for picking up the Volkswagen late afternoon of the next Friday.

There was a time I’d have hung on in the pub, afraid of missing something if I left, afraid of being mocked as soon as I left. But now I knew it didn’t matter, and anyhow it could not be controlled. There was always a time when you’d have to leave.

I spent the Saturday she was to come to cook dinner cleaning the kitchen. Then I got the fire to light and went out and bought the red wine.

She came with a large cane basket. The way she returned my kiss left no doubt as to how she planned for the evening to end. There was fresh rain on her face, and as we kissed I had no chance of curbing my own desire. Suddenly I wanted nothing but to sleep with her.

“I’ll show you the kitchen. Then I’ll set the table and draw the wine and leave you to the cooking. I’d only get in your
way. All that can be said about the kitchen is that it’s elemental.”

“It has all that I need. And it’s even clean,” she said.

“I tried to clean it but I’m afraid it’s not all that clean.”

“It’s just lovely,” she raised herself on her toes to be kissed again.

She unpacked the parcels from the basket: two steaks, a head of lettuce, mushrooms, three different kinds of cheeses, four apples.

“You see, I kept it simple.”

“It looks delicious. There’s fruit here as well. What’ll you have?”

“I’ll have a sherry.”

After I poured a glass of sherry, I said, “I’ll leave the bottle out. Is there anything else before I leave?”

“Yes. A kiss. And a radio. I like to play the radio while I cook.”

I took the transistor in from the other room, and the kiss was so prolonged that I put my hands beneath her clothes, moving them freely. It was she who broke loose. “I suppose I better make a start,” her face flushed. I wanted to say, “Why don’t we before you start?” but left the room.

I set the table, poured out a large whiskey, threw some more wood on the fire and stood leaning against the mantel sipping the whiskey while noises of utensils and smells of cooking came through the radio music from the kitchen. The evening was on its way like a life. There was no use kicking against it now. It had to be plundered like a meal.

“Everything’s ready,” she called from the kitchen. The smell of the grilled steaks was delicious. “We’ll just have the steaks with the mushrooms and we can have the salad at the same time,” she handed me the salad bowl. “There’s just one thing missing,” she cried out. “No candles!”

“There are candles somewhere,” I said and found an old packet among the liquor bottles. When she lit the candles and fixed them in their own wax in ashtrays round the room, she
switched off the light. There was hardly need of candles because of the leaping fire which flashed on glass and metal and made the plates glow white.

When I praised the meat she said, “I got it from Janey and Betty’s butcher. They told me he’s expensive but that you can always be certain of him. When I mentioned their names he put down the piece he was going to give me and went back and searched among the hanging pieces in the cold room.”

“So they too knew about the meal,” I said and she felt it as a rebuke for she didn’t answer. This was how quarrels usually began, and I stopped. When it had mattered to me I was never able to stop.

“Did you ever eat by candlelight before?” she asked. “It’s such a lovely light.”

“No,” I lied instantly. “The candles are here since the last blackout.”

“They certainly look it,” everything was running easily again. The candles hadn’t been used since She and I were here before going into the country, the last night we spent here together. The pain of that night still wavered in their flames, but wearily. It was over.

I helped her clear away the plates and we started to kiss after the cheese was brought out.

This time I said, “Why don’t we give the meal a rest? Come back to it.…”

“Why not?”

Between the sheets she said, “I feel marvellous. I don’t know what I was doing all those years, making the nine Fridays, going to the Sodality, out on the streets with the Legion of Mary, always in for nine when my uncle was saying the Rosary. I must have been crazy. Everybody must have been crazy. I was wasting my life and now I am doing what is natural. I don’t feel dirty or sinful or anything. I just feel that I have a great deal of lost living to make up for.”

“Sex is only a small part of living,” I said warily.

“Yes, but what is it without it? I’m crazy about you,” she raised herself so that her body shone above me before she bent to kiss. “I thought of nothing else all week. I wanted the week to run to Saturday night. I’d find my fingers reaching out, and I’d wonder what they were reaching for, and then I’d realize they were reaching for your skin.”

I drew her towards me, “This time we can take all the time in the world,” and when it was over, all the grossness of the food and wine seemed drained away and a peace that was almost purity seemed to settle on what a few moments before had been muscular and wild.

I put more wood on the fire when we rose and drew the cork of another bottle of wine. She lit the candles that had been blown out. They wavered on the half-filled wine glasses, on the Brie and Stilton and Cheddar and water biscuits on the wooden platter.

“This girl,” she said with a pause that I knew to be the pain of jealousy, “this girl, the girl you were in love with, who was she?”

I looked at her, how vulnerable and open the face was. She was going to hurt herself by searching about in a life that no longer existed, that she had been unaware of when it
was
going on. Crazy as it was, she was determined to cause herself that pain.

“We met much like we met—like most of Ireland meets—at a dance. We went casually out for a year. At first she did most of the running, and when she tired I took up the pursuit. It’s a usual enough pattern. The more I pushed myself on her the more tiresome I became to her, and that speeded up her withdrawal, which made her ten times as attractive. I felt I couldn’t live without her. Which made me ten times as tiresome. I was ill, lovesick, mad. If she’d finished it then it might have been easier, but who knows. She kept the thing going, interested in my madness, which was after all about her, and we can all do with an awful lot of ourselves. I think it nearly turned into a farce in the end.”

“I don’t know how you can call it a farce. It sounds horrible. What’s worst about it is that I wish I had her chance.”

“Marriage to a madman is hardly a recipe for domestic bliss. Because of her interest in this madness about herself I think she nearly fell in love with me. If she’d done that then it’d have been the farce.”

“Isn’t that what you’d want? Isn’t that what everybody wants, two people in love at the same time.”

“It doesn’t work that way. If she had fallen in love with me I think it would have soon cured me of my madness. No world can afford to have all its inmates mad at the same time.”