The Red And The Green (6 page)

‘I shouldn't say anything to Kathleen if I were you,' said Christopher. ‘And I'd advise you not to show your opinion in any way to Pat himself.' As he said this, Christopher looked quickly at Andrew.

Andrew felt an immediate pang of annoyance and the familiar sense of a threat. As if he would be such a fool as to bait his cousin for not having enlisted.

‘Well, you may be right,' said Hilda, getting up. The sea mist now shrouded the garden and enveloped the house, curling damply in through the interstices of the conservatory. The rain had stopped, but water now hung on the interior of the glass in rows of glittering beads which would suddenly start rolling, coalesce, and fall with a small splash on to the stiff linen table-cloth. Frances was packing up the tea things. As they began to drift in toward the drawing-room, Andrew heard his mother saying to Christopher, ‘I've been meaning to ask you for such a long time. What
exactly
did Wolfe Tone do?'

Chapter Three

‘H
AVE you heard this one?

As a beauty I'm not a star.

There are others more handsome by far.

But my face I don't mind it,

For I am behind it.

It's the people in front get the jar.'

‘That's not very funny.'

‘It's not meant to be funny. It's philosophical. Well, and it is so, funny. And have you heard this one, “There was an old man of Rathmines”—'

‘Oh, shut up, Cathal.'

‘Don't be always telling your brother to shut up,' said Kathleen, who was laying the table for tea. Her sons did not reply, but waited with an air of abstracted politeness for her to leave the room, which she did a moment later.

‘It's today the lilly-white boy is coming.'

‘That's a fine way to be after talking about your cousin.'

‘I mean it complimentary,' said Cathal.

‘You do not.'

‘All right, I don't. And you don't like him either. Isn't he a sort of a bloody English chancer.'

‘I don't mind him. I like him all right.'

‘Will he be in his uniform?'

‘I expect so.'

‘Will he be wearing spurs?'

‘How do I know? Yes, I suppose so.'

‘I shall laugh at his spurs. You'll hear me laughing and it'll be at his spurs.'

‘You'll behave yourself decently or I'll belt you.'

‘You will not.'

‘I will so.'

‘Yah! Yah! Patsie's not me da!' sang Cathal, waltzing the length of the drawing-room.

The Dumay's house stood at the upper end of Blessington Street, a wide, sad, dirty street due north of the Pillar, which crawled up the hill and ended at the railings of a melancholy little park. It had, under the pale bright sky, its own quiet air of dereliction, a street leading nowhere, always full of idling dogs and open doorways. Yet in form it closely resembled the other great Georgian arteries of Dublin, with its noble continuous façade of sombre blackened red brick which seemed to absorb, rather than to be revealed by, the perpetual rainy light. Looked at closely, the bricks of these houses showed in fact a variety of colours, some purplish red, some yellowish grey, all glued together by a jelly of filth to form a uniform organic surface rather like the scales of a fish, the basic material of Dublin, a city conjured from the earth all in one piece by some tousled Dido. Iron railings guarded deep cave-like areas where dandelions and young saplings flourished, and a few steps led up to each front door, above which was a graceful semicircular fanlight. The ornate pillars which flanked the doors, battered and flattened by time, had the air of Grecian antiquities. The windows alone were, the length of the street, handsome and elegant as upon their first day.

The doors varied. They were serious affairs, solid and many-panelled, and if well painted and provided with handsome knockers and a brass plate or two could sufficiently announce, even here, the residences of substantial citizens, well-bred reticent professional men. But by now many of the doors in the street were broken-down, their paint peeling off, chequered with mysterious holes, and lacking their knockers so that visitors had to shout through the letter-box. Various strange activities had meanwhile developed in the basements, such as a bicycle shop in one, a carpenter's workshop in another, and in one area a man sat all day mending cane chairs. While through grimy glass the fanlights displayed, besides the usual gaudy little figure of Christ the King, the cards of hairdressers and of chimney sweeps. At the end of the street there was even a house which had a sweet shop on the ground floor.

Yet the street had a spirit above these matters and in the evening when the lamp-lighter was just going his rounds, or on certain soft days when the sun shone through cloud, making everything vivid and exact as in a print, the street looked beautiful, with that particular sad, resigned, orderly beauty of Dublin. Those squared, cliff-like, blackened Dublin streets, stretching on and on, still had some inkling of perfection, even though the terraces sometimes looked more like warehouses, even had become warehouses, or in the poorer streets had gaping holes for windows and doors. Even then they seemed to know that they represented, they still in their darkened condition were, the most beautiful dwellings which the human race had ever invented.

The Dumays' house was not the finest in the street, nor was it the shabbiest. The door had been painted dark green some six years ago. It had a large brass knocker in the form of a wreath which the servant Jinny, a single girl of advancing years, who was paid eight shillings a week and lived in some nearby tenements affectionately called ‘the little hell', occasionally polished when the matter came into her mind. On entering the house the first impression was of an ecclesiastical darkness and of the smell referred to by Mrs Chase-White. The ecclesiastical air was contributed by a stained-glass window on the half-landing which was in fact inside a lavatory, the door of which, when untenanted, stood always open. This place may also have accounted for the smell. The upper landing, which was long and lit by a skylight, was divided into two, for no very clear reason, by a faintly jangling bead curtain; while along the walls stood a series of shrines or side-chapels containing stuffed birds, cairns of wax fruit, and cascades of disintegrating butterflies under glass domes.

The drawing-room in which Cathal was now prancing was a long brown room, dimmed by brownish-white lace curtains, and very full of bulbous mahogany furniture. There were a number of coloured pictures of flower gardens, a large pinkish print called
The Love Letter,
and a prominent crucifix. Both Kathleen and Pat were indifferent to their surroundings and accepted the miscellany of brass bowls, ginger jars, embroidered clothlets and photos in upholstered frames as a natural part of the daily scene, as little remarkable as the rocks upon the seashore. Only Cathal displayed any concern with interior decoration and his interests so far were limited to the collecting of model animals, which now jostled the other inhabitants of the tall and extremely complicated overmantel, causing Jinny, when the day for dusting them came round, to utter under her breath words which would have startled Father Ryan. In the midst of the overmantel, whose unsymmetrical undulations suggested a natural growth rather than the workings of the human mind, was a slim extremely tall elliptical mirror, which showed in reflection an even more melancholy room filled with an atmosphere the colour of strong tea.

Kathleen had returned now and was placing upon the blue-and-white cross-stitch tablecloth the large silver milk-jug and sugar-bowl reserved for special occasions. Her sons fell silent. They never addressed each other now in her presence. They watched her with a faint detached curiosity as one might watch an animal which had wandered into view close by. She for her part was irritably aware of them. She was wearing an old-fashioned skirt of brown serge which reached almost to the ground and a high-necked white blouse over which she had drawn for the occasion a long knitted jacket of purple and orange stripes. Her hair was still fairish, though dulling now towards a peppery grey, and strained straight back into a large round bun. She had a small straight nose and large light-brown eyes. Her forehead was not so much wrinkled as pitted and crumpled with anxiety. She had been handsome and still looked strong, but in rather a haunted way.

The two boys had returned to their books. Pat was reading a novel by George Moore, and Cathal was studying O'Growney's
Simple Lessons in Irish.
Pat was fond of his mother, but there had always been much awkwardness between them. Pat had been nearly sixteen when his father died, and Kathleen, out of an anxious fear that the boys might now get completely out of hand, had attempted to impose a strict regime upon him. Pat had accepted his father as a force of nature to be endured, evaded, and in later years challenged, but never resented. His mother appeared as an arbitrary human will, and his struggle with her produced in him excitements and emotions which he found in some way loathesome. He punished her subsequently by his silence and had now got into the habit of speaking to her very little. He had found her second marriage entirely incomprehensible; and although he liked rather than disliked his stepfather he felt contemptuous of him and had never regarded him as a person with any sort of authority.

‘They're here now,' said Jinny, ushering Frances Bellman and Andrew Chase-White into the room. Kathleen kissed Frances and complimented her on her dress. There was a mumble of greetings and a rumble of heavy chairs as everybody settled down about the small low tea-table, knocking it a good deal with their knees.

Pat stared at Andrew Chase-White without troubling to conceal the fact that he was inspecting him. Andrew had grown up a good deal since their last meeting. He had, almost, the face of a man, and an imposing blond moustache which he plucked at affectedly. He looked well in uniform, seeming taller and broader, and Pat felt no inclination to laugh at the glittering spurs and highly polished boots. Even Cathal seemed rather impressed and silenced. There entered the room with this smartly turned-out young officer the strong atmosphere of a larger public world. He seemed almost too good-looking, too typical, as if he had been chosen as a special envoy, a role which he seemed almost consciously to be playing, as he twitched his moustache and talked gallantly in a loud voice to Mrs Drumm, casting sidelong glances at Pat. He also spent a good deal of time examining the room as if to make sure that there had been no unauthorized alterations in his absence. His gaze returned uneasily to the crucifix.

Pat was surprised to find how much he was affected by seeing Andrew in uniform. He had no particular interest in his cousin, though as he had said to Cathal he ‘didn't mind him'. As a boy he had only been concerned with children older than himself and Andrew had always been among the small fry. What struck him now was simply that whiff of the public world, that incarnate image of the soldier, official, stamped and approved. Actually to have this large topical object planted, as if by a practical joke, in his own drawing-room affected him not so much with annoyance as with surprise. There was also a certain envy, though not of Andrew personally. The young officer was an emblem of power. But Pat had his own reasons for not joining up.

Pat, who was vaguely aware that he had been, at various childhood times, rather ‘hard on' Andrew, was conscious now of his cousin's almost frantic desire to impress him. There was an atmosphere of revenge in the air. Pat noticed it absently, casually, since he felt himself entirely invulnerable through being completely superior. He was prepared, even with a sort of amusement, to let his opponent enjoy what he took to be an advantage, easily inhibiting an assertion of personality which would have put young Andrew definitively in his place. As far as Pat was concerned, Andrew was still the little shouting boy who had followed him about, making a nuisance of himself on beaches all round the coast of Ireland. The present phenomenon was interesting not as an individual but as a type.

Kathleen was now talking to Frances, laying down certain principles for dealing with the servant problem which were to be passed on to Hilda. The conversation among the other three was staccato: Andrew condescendingly over-friendly, Pat distantly polite, Cathal, now recovering from his first discomfiture, definitely truculent. Andrew addressed his remarks to Pat, who offered minimal replies, while they both ignored provocative interjections from Cathal.

‘I see you have an Irish grammar there. How interesting. Who's studying it?'

‘Cathal is.'

‘Is Irish a difficult language?'

‘I understand that it's not an easy language.'

‘It must be grand to know it.'

‘Why don't you learn it then?'

‘Do you think it important that the Irish people should learn it?'

‘Sure, aren't you Irish yourself?'

‘It has a certain symbolic value.'

‘“A country without language is a country without a soul.”'

‘Yes, I appreciate that it has a symbolic value. On the other hand, if one is born to the language of Shakespeare—'

‘You mean the language of Cromwell.'

‘Don't keep interrupting, Cathal.'

‘Well, I know when I'm not wanted!'

Cathal turned his chair right round to face Frances and his mother. Pat felt, like a small electric shock, a change in the emotional temperature which he realized to be Andrew's apprehension of their being left as it were tete-a-tete. Pat began to feel extreme irritation. He hoped that the conversation would not start to come round to the question of the war. He thought he could feel, and that with even more annoyance, Andrew deliberately avoiding the subject. At the thought that the ‘lilly-white boy' might see himself as tactfully sparing his interlocutor an embarrassment a jeering scowl invaded Pat's face. He composed his features with difficulty.

‘You must come round and see my mother's new house.'

‘Oh yes.'

‘She's always asking after you.'

‘I trust Aunt Hilda is well?'

‘She's fine now. She was awfully upset by the Zepps, you know.'

‘Was she?'

‘And how is my Uncle Barnabas these days?'

‘Very well, I believe.'

‘I'm so glad. You see, I haven't had time to come and see him since I came over, actually.'

‘Really.'

Calmly determined to let the conversation run if necessary to a stand-still Pat fixed his eyes upon the crucifix above Andrew's head. He realized that this object somehow upset his cousin. Andrew squirmed in his seat. Pat thought he would try to force Andrew to look at the crucifix. But at that moment there was a little uproar from the other group.

‘Our Lord said, “I bring not peace but a sword”.' Cathal, who was incapable of tolerating a conventional conversation, had somehow steered the talk on to more general topics and was raising his voice.