Collected Short Stories, page 18
Cold frosty weather set in and I took a day off. He was up to see me after school-hours and sat on the edge of the bed, talking incessantly: ‘The average is going down …When a teacher stays away it’s a bad example for the children … There’ll be forty per cent absent tomorrow.’ He ran his forefinger round the circumference of his celluloid collar and stretched out his empty palm over the bed-clothes: ‘What capitation-grant will I lift at the end of the year? Nothing! Not a solitary penny!’
‘But I’ve a temperature!’ I almost shouted.
‘A temperature! A young man like you to have a temperature! My God you talk like a medical student! Do you know how many days I’ve missed within the last twenty years?’ I had heard it all before so I turned my head to the wall. He leaned over the bed-clothes: ‘Not one day have I missed! There’s a record for you … And here you are – a young man with rich, luscious blood to be talking about a temperature!’ Then he whispered close to my ear: ‘You’ll be in tomorrow, Michael? Don’t let me down.’ To get rid of him I said ‘Yes!’ and though the next morning I arrived after ten I was confronted with his ponderous watch which lay ticking beside the teachers’ roll. He rubbed his hands, and while I signed my time on the roll-book I was conscious of his scrutinising eyes.
I was tired of him and looked out for a change. Easter approached, and he described with great volubility how he was yearning for the week’s holidays. ‘Where do you intend going?’ I asked him.
‘To the old home … To my mother’s across the Bann … I never go anywhere else on my holidays. I’ve been doing that for the past thirty years – there’s a record for you!’ And that Easter when I was going to Ballymena to catch the train I saw him perched on his bicycle ready to set off for his mother’s. He had on his only suit – the heavy Donegal tweed; a spring clip was fixed to the rim of his hat and attached to it was a piece of cord which in turn was swivelled to a button on his coat. On the trailer was a crate of hens, poking out their heads, and chuckling hysterically when a dog came over and sniffed at them. ‘Have a good time,’ he said to me and then got down from the saddle and whispered: ‘I’m taking some of the hens with me for the week. That housekeeper I have would starve them.’ But later when I came back after the week’s holidays it was rumoured throughout the country that he had taken the laying hens with him for the week and left the others with the housekeeper.
I avoided him now as much as possible and saw little of him except during school-hours or when he rode past the house on a sunny afternoon on his way to the moss. But towards the end of June he asked me to his house to help him with the rolls and averages for the school-year.
It was late in the evening when I arrived, and his housekeeper brought me into his bare little sitting-room. The turf was set in the grate, the white papers sticking out ready to be lit. She told me that Master Neeson had to go out as the parish priest had sent for him, and she handed me a note which the Master had left. In it he advised me how to proceed with the calculations and admonished me – underlining the words heavily – to be sure and do the calculations in pencil and he would check them.
‘Would you put a match to the fire?’ I asked the housekeeper.
‘Oh, sir,’ she said, twisting her apron, ‘I think you shouldn’t light it till the Master comes back. There’s a way in lighting it or it’ll smoke the place.’
I bent down and lit the fire and she stood with a hand to her cheek, watching me. I smiled to her: ‘I’ll take the blame.’ She stared at me with wide knowing eyes and then went out quickly.
On a round table near the window was a corkless bottle of ink with a jagged top, a pen, four roll-books backed with brown paper and on the ledge of the window a few dead flies, a Superseded Spelling Book and a Nesfield’s English Grammar. In that atmosphere I worked steadily for two hours, looking through the window now and again to see if the Master were coming. I lit the lamp, but there was little oil in it and after half an hour it went dead. I hammered on the table for the housekeeper, but she didn’t hear me, and getting up I struck matches and went to look for her. She was sitting in the kitchen, a kettle simmering on a sunken fire, a skimpy light stretching from the lamp on the wall which was bare except for a grocer’s calendar.
I turned the lamp up full. ‘Oh, Sir!’ she started. I told her about the lamp in the room. She shook her head and told me that the Master had the key of the outhouse where the oil was stored. I sat on the table and chatted to her and because I had a splitting headache I asked her to make me a cup of tea.
‘Sir, sir, I couldn’t!’ and she looked up at me with frightened eyes. ‘Not till Master Neeson arrives.’ I understood everything, and I stretched up my hand to the mantelpiece and lifted down the tea-canister. ‘I’ll make it!’ I said. ‘Many’s the cup I made in school for the Master.’
‘Please, sir,’ she pleaded, ‘don’t meddle with it! He has it marked!’
‘How – marked?’
‘He has a livin’ fly in the inside of the canister, sir, and if she gets out he’ll know somebody was at the tea.’
I took the lid off the canister and a fly rose out, circled round the lamp, and then flew up to the white ceiling to join her companions. Under my breath I damned the Master and wished that he had come in while I was making the tea. I sat on the table, drank the tea, and gorged myself with four thick slices of his loaf. The housekeeper joined and unjoined her hands, refused to take the tea I had poured out for her telling me that tea would put her off her sleep. Near midnight I left for home.
In the morning he was waiting for me in the school-porch. I smiled to him and he blazed at me with his narrow little eyes: ‘What right have you to interfere in my domestic affairs! Are you going to teach me how to manage my own house – a young pup from the city that knows nothing of country life or country people!’ The sweat gleamed on his bald head; his celluloid collar was clammy on his neck and he wiped it with his handkerchief. He asked me to apologise and I walked in past him and signed my time heavily on the teachers’ roll.
For a whole week we did not speak to one another and a week later I sent in my resignation and shortly afterwards returned home.
Yesterday the postman brought me a letter without a stamp. I looked at the familiar handwriting on the envelope and handed it back to the postman. But, being suspicious by nature, I’ve been wondering ever since what it was he had to say to me and why he still considers me as one of his ‘special friends’.
Six Weeks On and Two Ashore
In the early hours of the night it had rained and the iron gate that led to the lightkeepers’ houses had rattled loose in the wind, and as it cringed and banged it disturbed Mrs O’Brien’s spaniel where he lay on a mat in the dark draughty hallway. Time and time again he gave a muffled growl, padded about the hall, and scratched at the door. His uneasiness and the noise of the wind had wakened Mrs O’Brien in the room above him, and she lay in bed wondering if she should go down and let him into the warm comfort of the kitchen. Beside her her husband was asleep, snoring loudly, unaware of her wakefulness or of the windows shaking in their heavy frames. The rain rattled like hailstones against the panes and raced in a flood into the zinc tank at the side of the house. God in Heaven, how anybody could sleep through that, she said – it was enough to waken the dead and there he was deep asleep as if it were a calm summer night. What kind of a man was he at all! You’d think he’d be worrying about his journey to the Rock in the morning and his long six weeks away from her. He was getting old – there was no mistake about that. She touched his feet – they were cold, as cold as a stone you’d find on a wintry beach.
The dog growled again, and throwing back the bedclothes she got up and groped on the table for the matchbox. She struck one match but it was a dead one, and she clicked her tongue in disapproval. She was never done telling Tom not to be putting his spent matches back into the box but he never heeded her. It was tidy he told her; it was exasperating if she knew anything. She struck three before coming upon a good one, and in the spurt of flame she glanced at the alarm-clock and saw that it was two hours after midnight. She slipped downstairs, lit the lamp, and let the dog into the kitchen. She patted his head and he jumped on the sofa, thumped it loudly with his tail and curled up on a cushion. On the floor Tom’s hampers lay ready for the morning when the boatmen would come to row him out to the lighthouse to relieve young Frank Coady. She looked at the hampers with sharp calculation, wondering if she had packed everything he needed. She was always sure to forget something – boot polish or a pullover or a corkscrew or soap – and he was always sure to cast it up to her as soon as he stepped ashore for his two weeks leave. She could never remember a time when he arrived back without some complaint or other. But this time she was sure she had forgotten nothing for she had made a list and ticked each item off as she packed them into the cases. Yes, he wouldn’t be able to launch any of his ill-humour on her this time!
She quenched the lamp, and returning to her room she stood at the window for a moment and saw the lighthouse beam shine on the clouds and sweep through the fine wire of falling rain. Tom was still asleep, heedless of his coming sojourn on that windy stub of rock. But maybe if the wind would hold during the night the boatmen would be unable to row him out in the morning. But even that would be no comfort – waiting, and waiting, and watching the boatmen sheltering all day in the lee of the boathouse expecting the sea to settle. It’d be better, after all, that they’d be able to take him. She got into bed and turned her back to him, and as she listened to the rain she thought of how it would wash the muddy paw-marks from the cement paths and save her the trouble of getting down on her hands and knees in the morning.
She awoke without aid of the alarm-clock, and from her bed she saw the washed blue of the sky, and in the stillness heard the hollow tumult of the distracted sea. He’d have to go out this morning – there was no doubt about that! But God grant he’d return to her in better form! She got up quietly, and buttoning her frock at the window she gazed down at the Coady’s house. The door was open to the cold sun and Delia Coady was on her knees freshly whitening the doorstep that had been streaked in the night’s rain. All her windows were open, the curtains bulging in the uneasy draught. Delia raised her head and looked around but Mrs O’Brien withdrew to the edge of the window and continued to watch her. Delia was singing now and going to the zinc tank at the side of the house for a bucket of water.
Tom stirred in his bed and threw one arm across the pillow.
‘Do you hear her?’ his wife said.
‘Hear who?’ he mumbled crossly and pulled the clothes up round his chest.
‘Delia Coady is singing like a lark.’
‘Well, let her sing. Isn’t it a free country?’
The alarm clock buzzed on the table and she let it whirl out to the end of its spring.
Tom raised his head from the pillow and stared at her. ‘Isn’t it a great wonder you didn’t switch that damned thing off and you up before it?’
‘You better get up, Tom. Delia will think you’re in no hurry to take her Frank off the rock.’
‘I’ll go when it suits me – not a second faster. When young Coady’s as long on the lights as I am he’ll not hurry much. The way to get on in my job is to go slow, slow, slow – dead slow, snail slow, and always slow. Do you remember what one of the Commissioners said to me on the East Light in Rathlin? “Mister O’Brien,” he said, “there’s not as much dust in the whole place as would fill a matchbox.” And the secret is – slow.’
‘No Commissioner would use such a word as “matchbox”.’
‘And do you think, woman, that I’m making up that story? What would you have him say?’ and he affected a mincing feminine accent: ‘ “Lightkeeper O’Brien, there is not as much elemental dust in the hallowed precincts of this Lighthouse as would fill a silver snuff-box.” Is that what you would have him say?’ he added crossly.
‘I don’t think he’d pass any remark about dust or dirt.’
‘You don’t think! You don’t think! It’s a wonder you didn’t think of switching off the damned alarm-clock and you knowing I hate the sound of it.’
She said nothing. All their quarrels seemed to arise out of the simplest remarks – one remark following another, spreading out and involving them, before they were aware, in a quarrel of cold cruelty. She, herself, was to blame for many of them. She should have let him have his little story of ‘the matchbox’. What on earth possessed her to turn a word on him and this the last day she’d be speaking to him for six long weeks? She checked a long sigh, tidied the things in the room quietly, and all the time tried to find something to say that would soften her last words to him. She crossed to the window and put her hand to the snib to lower it. Delia was still singing and standing out from the door the better to see the freshly whitened window-sills and doorstep.
‘She has a lovely frock on,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘I never saw her in that before; it fairly becomes her.’
‘Didn’t I tell you she was married in blue! It’ll be the same frock.’
‘She has a nice voice.’
‘I think you’re jealous of her.”
‘Hm, I used to be able to sing very well myself.’
‘I must say I heard precious little of it.’
‘Maybe you didn’t! Maybe you’d be interested to know I gave that up shortly after we were married – some twelve years ago.’
‘And whose fault was that?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said, controlling herself.
He pulled the clothes over his shoulder and she pleaded with him to get up and not be the sort that’d deprive another man of even one hour of his leave on shore.
‘Is it Frank Coady I’d hurry for! Not me! I’ll take my time. I’m over thirty years on the lights and he’s a bare half-dozen. He doesn’t rush much if he’s coming out to relieve me.’
‘You can’t blame him and he not long married,’ she said, scarcely knowing what she was saying as she spoke into the mirror and brushed her hair.
‘Last time he came out to relieve me I was waiting for the boat all morning and it didn’t come to the afternoon. And what did he say as he stepped ashore? “God, Tom, I’m sorry the boat’s late. I took a hellish pain in my stomach and had to lie down for a couple of hours.” That’s what the scamp said to me instead of offering to give me an extra day on account of his hellish pains. Well, I feel tired this morning and I’m not stirring hand or foot for another hour at least!’
She turned round in her chair from the mirror: ‘I’m beginning to get tired of that word “tired” of yours. You were tired last night, tired the night before – always tired. You’ve said nothing else since you stepped ashore two weeks ago. Tired! – it’s not out of any consideration you show me. Going off to the pub of an evening and waiting there till somebody gives you a lift home.’
‘And what do you want me to do? What do you want off me?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she almost cried, ‘nothing! I’m used to loneliness now! I’m used to my married widowhood! In my marriage! You won’t come for a game of Bridge of an evening. You’re tired – you always say. And if I go you won’t wait up till I come back. You lower the lamp and go to your bed. Oh, it’s no wonder my hair is beginning to turn grey at the temples.’
‘My own is white!’
‘What do you expect and you nearing sixty?’
‘You’re lovely company!’
‘Company! Only for the companionship of the old dog I’d go out of my mind.’
‘If you’d go out of this room I might think of getting up.’
‘Oh, if I’d thought I was keeping you back I’d have gone long ago,’ and she lifted the alarm-clock, the box of matches, and hastened from the room.
He stretched his arms and looked at the glass of water on the table. He’d not drink that! The stale taste of it would upset him – and what with his stomach upset and his mind upset he’d be in a nice fix for a journey on the sea. He’d smoke a cigarette – and stretching out to the chair for his coat, he lit one, and lay back on the pillows, frowning now and then at the cold air that blew through the open window. He could hear Delia singing and he wondered if Mag sang when she was expecting him home. He doubted it! She was more attached to that damned old dog, and she thought nothing of walking five miles of an evening for a game of cards and bringing the old dog with her. If she were on the rock for awhile it’d soon tether her, soon take the skip out of her step. Ah, he should have married somebody less flighty, somebody a bit older and settled, somebody that’d enjoy a glass of stout with you of an evening and not be wanting to drag you over the whole blasted country in search of a game of Bridge.
Downstairs he heard Mag opening the front door and letting out the dog for a run, and he heard her speak across to Delia and say how glad she was that it had cleared up in time for Frank’s homecoming. Hm, he thought, she’s greatly concerned about the neighbours. He looked at the cigarette in his hand, and from the bed he tried to throw it through the open window but it struck the pane and fell on the floor, and he had to get up and stamp on the lighted end.
His clothes were folded neatly for him on the edge of the table: a clean white shirt, his trousers creased and the brass buttons on his jacket brightly polished. He pulled on the cold starched shirt and gave a snort of contempt. He wished she’d be less particular – ye’d think he was expecting a visit from the Commissioners on the Rock. Damn the thing you ever saw out there except an exhausted pigeon or a dead cormorant that you’d have to kick into the sea to keep the blowfly from stalking around it. It’s remarkable the nose a blowfly has for decaying flesh – flying two or three miles out to sea to lay its eggs on a dead sea bird. Nature’s remarkable when you come to think about it – very remarkable!
