A THING OF NOTHING

I

Ned Lynch was a decent poor slob of a man with a fat purple face, a
big black moustache like the villain in a melodrama, and a paunch. He
had a brassy voice that took an effort of his whole being to reduce it
by a puff, sleepy bloodshot eyes, and a big head. Katty, who was a
well-mannered, convent-educated girl, thought him very
old-fashioned. He said the country was going to the dogs and the land
being starved to put young fellows into professions, ‘educating them
out of their knowledge,’ he said. ‘What do they want professions for?’
he asked. ‘Haven’t they the hills and the fields—God’s great,
wonderful book of Nature?’ He courted her in the same stiff
sentimental way, full of poetic nonsense about ‘your holy delicate
white hands’ and ‘the weaker sex’.

The weaker sex indeed! You should see him if he had a headache. She
havered for years about marrying him at all. Her family thought he was
a very good catch, but Katty would have preferred a professional
man. At last she suggested that they should separate for a year to see
whether they couldn’t do better for themselves. He put on a sour puss
at that, but Katty went off to business in Dublin just the
same. Except for one drunken medical who borrowed money from her, she
didn’t meet any professional men, and after lending the medico more
money than she could afford, she was glad enough to come back and
marry Ned. She didn’t look twenty-five, but she was thirty-nine. The
day of the marriage he handed her three anonymous letters about
herself and the medico.

Katty thought a lot about the anonymous letters. She thought she knew
the quarter they had come from. Ned had a brother called Jerry who was
a different class of man entirely. He was tall and dark and lean as a
rake, with a high colour and a pair of bright-blue eyes. Twenty years
before, himself and Ned had had some disagreement about politics and
he had opened Ned with a poker. They hadn’t spoken since, but as Jerry
had two sons and only one farm, Katty saw just why it mightn’t suit
him that Ned and herself would marry.

She was a good wife and a good manager; a great woman to send to an
auction. She was pretty and well behaved; she dressed younger than her
years in short coloured frocks and wide hats that she had to hold the
brim of on a windy morning. She managed to double the business inside
two years. But before the first year was well out she began to see
rocks ahead. First there was Ned’s health. He looked a giant of a man,
but his sister had died of blood pressure, and he had a childish craze
for meat and pastries. You could see him outside the baker’s, looking
in with mournful, bloodshot eyes. He would saunter in and stroll out
with a little bag of cakes behind his back, hide them under the
counter, and eat them when she wasn’t looking. Sometimes she came into
the shop and found him with his whole face red and one cheek
stuffed. She never said anything then; she was much too much a lady,
but afterwards she might reproach him gently with it.

And then to crown her troubles one day Father Ring called and Ned and
himself went connyshuring in the parlour. A few days later—oh, dear,
she thought bitterly, the subtlety of them!—two country boys walked
in. One was Con Lynch, Jerry’s second son. He was tall and gawkish,
with a big, pale, bony face; he walked with a pronounced stoop as if
his sole amusement was watching his feet, his hands behind his back,
his soft hat down the back of his neck, and the ragged ends of his
trousers trailing round the big boots.

He looked at Katty and then looked away; then looked at her again and
said: ‘Good morra.’ Katty put her hands on the counter and said with a
smile: ‘How d’ye do?’ ‘Oh, all right,’ said Con, as if he thought she
was presuming. Ned didn’t say anything. He was behind the counter of
the bar in his shirt-sleeves.

‘Two bottles of stout, i’ ye plaze,’ said Con with a
take-it-or-leave-it air, planking down the two-shilling piece he had
squeezed in the palm of one hand. Ned looked at the money and then at
Con. Finally he turned to the shelves and poured out three stiff
glasses of Irish.

‘Porter is a cold drink between relations,’ he said in his kind, lazy
way. 

‘Begor, ’tis true for you,’ said Con, resting his two elbows on the
counter while his whole face lit up with a roguish smile. ‘’Tis a
thin, cold, unneighbourly Protestant sort of drink.’

After that Con and his brother Tom dropped in regularly. Tom was
secretary of some political organization and, though very uncouth,
able to hold his own by sheer dint of brass, but Con was uncouth
without any qualification. He sat with one knee in the air and his
hands locked about it as if he had sprained his ankle, or crouched
forward with his hands joined between his legs in a manner that Katty
would have been too lady-like to describe, and he jumped from one
position to another as if a flea had bitten him. When she gave him
salad for tea he handed it back to her. ‘Take that away and gi’ me a
bit o’ mate, i’ ye plaze,’ he said with no shyness at all. And the
funny thing was that Ned, who in his old-fashioned way knew so much
better, only smiled. When he was going, Ned always slipped a packet of
cigarettes into his pocket, but Con always pulled them out
again. ‘What are thim? Faga? Chrisht! Ah, the blessings of God on
you!’ And then he smiled his rogue’s smile, rubbed his hands
vigorously, lowered his head as if he were going to butt the first man
he met, and plunged out into the street.

It was easy to see how the plot was developing. She was a year married
and no child!



II

One day a few weeks later Katty heard a scuffle. She looked out the
shop window and saw Jerry with the two boys holding him by the arms
while he let on to be trying to break free of them.

‘Come on, come on, and don’t be making a show of us!’ said Tom
angrily.

‘I don’t give a Christ in hell,’ cried his father in a shrill tremolo,
his wild blue eyes sweeping the sunlit street in every direction
except the shop. ‘I’ll go where I’m asked.’

‘You’ll go where you’re told,’ said Con with great glee—clearly he
thought his father was a great card. ‘Come on, you ould whore you,
come on!’

Ned heard the scuffle and leaned over the counter to see what it
was. He gave no sign of being moved by it. There was a sort of
monumental dignity about Ned, about the slowness of his thoughts, the
depth of his sentiment, and the sheer volume of his voice, which
enabled him to time a scene with the certainty of an old stage
hand. He lifted the flap of the counter and moved slowly out into the
centre of the shop and then stopped and held out his hand. That, by
the way, did it. Jerry gave a whinny like a young colt and sprang to
take the proffered hand. They stood like that for a full minute,
moryah they were too overcome to speak! Katty watched them with a
bitter little smile.

‘You know the fair lady of my choice,’ said Ned at last.

‘I’m very glad to meet you, ma’am,’ said Jerry, turning his knife-blue
eyes on her, his dropped chin and his high, small perfect teeth making
it sound like the greeting of a well-bred weasel to a rabbit. They all
retired to the back parlour, where Katty brought the drinks. The
atmosphere was maudlin. After arranging for Katty and himself to spend
the next Sunday at the farm, Ned escorted them down the street. When
he came back there were tears in his eyes—a foolish man!

‘Well,’ he said, standing in the middle of the shop with his hands
behind his back and his bowler hat well down over his eyes, ‘’twas
nice being all under the one roof again.’

‘It must have been grand,’ said Katty, affecting to be very busy. ‘I
suppose ’twas Father Ring did it,’ she added over her shoulder with
subtle mockery.

‘Ah,’ said Ned, looking stolidly out at the sunlit street with
swimming eyes, ‘we’re getting older and wiser. What fools people are
to embitter their lives about nothing! There won’t be much politics
where we’re going.’

‘I wonder if ’tis that,’ said Katty, as if she were talking to herself
while inwardly she fumed at the stupidity of the man.

‘Ah, what else could it be?’ asked Ned, wrapped up in whatever
sentimental fantasies he was weaving.

‘I suppose ’twould never be policy?’ she asked archly, looking up from
under her brows with a knowing smile.

‘How could it be policy, woman?’ asked Ned, his voice harsh with
indignation. ‘What has he to gain by policy?’

‘Ah, how would I know?’ she said, reaching towards a high shelf. ‘He
might be thinking of the shop for Con.’

‘He’d be thinking a very long way ahead,’ said Ned after a pause, but
she saw it had gone home. 

‘Maybe he’s hoping ’twouldn’t be so long,’ she said smoothly.

‘How’s that?’ said Ned.

‘Julia, God rest her, went very suddenly,’ said Katty.

‘He’d be a very foolish man to count on me doing the same,’ boomed
Ned, but his face grew purple from shame and anger—shame that he had
no children of his own, anger that she had pricked the sentimental
bubble he had blown about Jerry and the boys.

It was a warning to Katty. Twice in the next year she satisfied
herself that she was having a baby, and each time put the whole house
into confusion. She lay upstairs on the sofa with a handbell at her
side, made baby clothes, ordered the cradle, even got an option on a
pram. To secure herself against accidents she slept in the spare
room. And then it passed off and with a look like murder she returned
to the big bedroom. Ned stared at her over the bedclothes with an
incredulous, long-suffering air and then heaved a heavy sigh and
turned in.

She knew he blamed her. After being taken in like that it would be
weeks before he started again. Weaker sex, indeed! One would think it
was he that was trying to start the baby. But Katty blamed herself as
well. It was the final year in Dublin and the goings-on with the
drunken medico that had finished her. For days on end she sat over the
range in the kitchen with a little shawl over her shoulders, shivering
and tight-lipped, taking little tots of brandy when Ned’s back was
turned and complaining of him to the servant girl. To make it worse,
the daughter of another shopkeeper came home on holidays from England;
a nurse with fast, flighty ways that appealed to Ned. He was always in
and out there, full of old-fashioned gallantries. He kissed her hand
and even called her ‘a rose’. It reached Katty’s ears and she clamped
her lips. She was far too well bred to make vulgar scenes. Instead,
with her feet on the fender, hands joined in her lap, she asked in the
most casual friendly way:

‘Ned, do you think that was a proper remark to make to the Dunne
girl?’

‘What remark?’ asked Ned, growing crimson—it showed his guilty
conscience.

‘Well, Ned, you can hardly pretend you don’t know, considering that
the whole town is talking about it.’

‘Are you mad, woman?’ he shouted, his voice brassy with rage.

‘I only asked a simple question, Ned,’ she said with resignation,
fixing him with her clear blue eyes. ‘Of course, if you prefer not to
answer there’s no more to be said.’

‘You have me driven distracted!’ cried Ned. ‘I can’t be polite to a
neighbour’s daughter but you sulk for days on me.’

‘Polite!’ said Katty to the range. ‘However,’ she added, ‘I suppose I
have no cause to complain. The man that would do worse to me wouldn’t
be put out by a little thing like that.’

‘Do worse to you?’ shouted Ned, going purple as if he was in danger of
congestion. ‘What did I ever do to you?’

‘Aren’t you planning to leave me in my old age without a roof over my
head?’ she asked suddenly, turning on him.

‘I’m not planning to leave anything to anyone yet,’ roared Ned. ‘With
the help of the Almighty God, when I do ’twill be to a child of my
own.’

‘Indeed, I hope so,’ said Katty, ‘but after all, if the worst came to
the worst—’

‘If the worst came to the worst,’ he interrupted solemnly, ‘we don’t
know which of us the Lord—glory and praise to His holy name—might
take first.’

‘Amen, O Lord,’ breathed Katty piously, and then went on in her
original tone. ‘I’m not saying you’ll be the first to go, and the way I
am, Ned,’ she added bitterly, ‘I wouldn’t wish it. But ’tis only common
prudence to be prepared for the worst. You know yourself how Julia
went.’

‘My God,’ he said mournfully, addressing his remarks out the empty
hall, ‘the foolishness of it! We have only a few short years on the
earth; we come and go like the leaves of the trees, and instead of
enjoying ourselves, we wear our hearts out with planning and
contriving.’

‘Ah, Ned,’ she said, goaded to fury, as she always was by his
philosophizing and poetry talk, ‘’tis easy it comes to you. I only
wish the money would come as easy. I didn’t work myself to the bone in
the shop to be left a beggar in my old age.’

‘A beggar?’ he cried. ‘Do you think I wouldn’t provide for you?’

‘Provide for me?’ she gibed. ‘Con Lynch in the shop and me in the back
room! Fine provisions I’d get!’

‘I never said I’d leave it to Con Lynch,’ said Ned chokingly.

‘Then what is he coming here for?’ she shrieked, suddenly bounding
into the middle of the kitchen and spreading out her arms. ‘What is he
doing in my home? Can’t you do what any other man would do and let
them know you’re leaving the shop to me?’

‘I can’t,’ he shouted back, ‘and you know I can’t.’

‘Why not?’ she said, stamping.

‘Because ’tis an old custom. The property goes with the name.’

‘Not with the people I was brought up with,’ she said proudly.

‘Well, ’twas with those I was brought up with,’ said Ned. ‘Women as
good as you were satisfied. Ay, and better than you! Better than you,’
he added with a backward glance as he went out.

She dropped back beaten into her chair. She was afraid to cross him
further. He looked like a man that might drop dead at any moment. She
was only a stranger, a foreigner, with no link at all between herself
and him. Con Lynch was more to him now than she was. It was only then
she realized it was time to stop looking after the shop and look after
herself instead.

In the autumn she said she was going to Dublin to see a specialist.
Ned didn’t say anything to dissuade her, but it was clear he had no
faith in it. She didn’t see a specialist. Instead she saw a nurse she
had known in Dublin, another old flame of the medico’s. Nurse O’Mara
kept a maternity home on the canal. She was a tall, handsome woman
with a fine figure and a long face that was growing just the least
shade hard. She listened to Katty with screwed-up eyes and a
good-natured smile. She was tickled by the situation. After all, if
she hadn’t got much out of the medico, Katty hadn’t got much more.

‘And you don’t think that ’tis any use?’ asked Katty doubtfully.

‘I wouldn’t say so,’ said the nurse.

‘And I suppose there’s nothing else I can do?’ asked Katty in a low
voice and an almost playful tone, never taking her blue eyes from the
nurse’s face.

‘Unless you’d borrow one,’ said the nurse mockingly.

‘That’s what I mean,’ said Katty slyly.

‘You’re not serious?’ said the nurse, her smile withering.

‘Haven’t I reason?’ asked Katty, her smile growing broader.

‘You’d never get away with it.’

‘Why not, girl?’ asked Katty almost inaudibly. ‘Who’s to know? If
there was someone that was willing.’

‘Oh, hundreds of them,’ said the nurse, with the bitterness o! the
childless woman.

‘You’d know where to find one I could ask,’ murmured Katty, still with
her eyes steadily fixed.

‘I suppose so,’ said the nurse doubtfully. ‘There’s nothing illegal
about it. I’m not supposed to know what you’re up to.’

‘And to have my letters addressed to your place,’ continued Katty.

‘Why not?’ asked Nurse O’Mara with a shrug. ‘For that matter, you can
come and stay any time you like.’

‘That’s all I want,’ said Katty with blazing eyes. ‘I have a hundred
or so put on one side. I’ll give it to you, and you can make whatever
arrangements you like.’

She returned to town triumphant with two new hats, wider and more
girlish than those she usually wore. Then she set about a
reorganization of the house, running up and down stairs and chattering
with the maid.

‘Well?’ said Ned lazily, interpreting her behaviour with a touch of
anxiety. ‘He gave you some hope?’

‘I don’t know if you’d call it hope,’ said Katty, furrowing her
brow. ‘He thought I mightn’t come out of it. Of course, I’ll have to
go back to him if anything happens.’

‘But he thought it might?’ asked Ned.

‘Wisha,’ said Katty, ‘like the rest of them he wouldn’t like to give
an opinion.’

That, she saw, impressed Ned more than any more favourable verdict
could have done. Almost from that on, he looked at her every morning
with a solicitous, questioning air. Katty kept her mouth shut and went
on with the housework. One night she said with her nunlike air: ‘I
think I’ll sleep in the spare room for the present.’ Even then she
could see he only half believed her, but as the weeks passed, he
started coming up to her in the evenings, settling the fire, and
retailing whatever gobbets of gossip he had picked up in the bar. He
started to tell her about his own boyhood, a thing he had never done
before.

Jerry called once with Con and was brought upstairs with appropriate
solemnity. She knew he had only come to see for himself, and she
watched while the electric-blue eyes roved distractedly about the room
till they alighted like a bluebottle on her stomach. That settled it
so far as Jerry was concerned. He was crafty but not long-sighted.
When the game looked like going against him he threw in his hand. He
didn’t come back, nor did Tom, though Con dropped in once or twice out
of pure good nature. To Katty’s surprise, Ned noticed and resented it.

‘Ah,’ she said charitably, ‘I wouldn’t mind that. They’re probably
busy on the farm this weather.’

‘They weren’t so busy they couldn’t go to Hartnett’s,’ said Ned, who
made it his business to know all they did.

‘Ah, well, Hartnett’s is near enough to them,’ said Katty, protesting
against his unreasonableness.

‘This place was near enough to them too when they thought they had a
chance of the money,’ said Ned resentfully.

She looked at him archly from under her brows. She felt the time was
ripe to say what she had to say.

‘They didn’t send you any more anonymous letters?’ she asked lightly.

‘They can say what they like now,’ said Ned, growing red.

Her smile faded as she watched him go out of the room. She knew now
she had made herself secure against any suspicions the Lynches might
have of her, but the change in Ned himself was something she hadn’t
allowed for and it upset her.

It even frightened her the day she was setting out for Dublin. She saw
him in the bedroom packing a little case.

‘What do you want that for?’ she asked, going cold.

‘You don’t think I’m going to let you go to Dublin alone?’ he replied.

‘But I may be there for weeks,’ she said despairingly.

‘Ah, well,’ he said as he continued to pack, ‘I’m due a little
holiday. I have it fixed up with Bridie.’

Katty sat on the bed and bit her lip. Somehow or other the Lynches had
succeeded in instilling their suspicions into him and he was coming to
see for himself. What could she do? Nothing. She knew O’Mara wouldn’t
be a party to any deception; it would be too much of a risk. ‘Mother
of God, direct me!’ she prayed, joining her hands in her lap.

‘You’re not afraid I’ll run off with a soldier?’ she asked lightly.

‘That’s the very thing I am afraid of,’ said Ned, turning round on
her. Suddenly his eyes clouded with emotion. ‘It won’t be wishing to
anyone that tries to get you,’ he added, with a feeble attempt to keep
up the joke.

‘Wisha, Ned,’ she cried, rushing across the room to him, her heart
suddenly lightened of a load, ‘’tisn’t the way you think anything will
happen to me?’

‘No, little girl,’ he said, putting his arm about her. ‘Nor I wouldn’t
wish it for a thousand pounds.’

‘Ah, is it a fine strong woman like me?’ she cried skittishly, almost
insane with relief. ‘What fear there is of me! Maybe I’ll let you come
up when the next one is arriving.’



III

From Kingsbridge she took a taxi to the maternity home and got rid of
some of her padding on the way. O’Mara opened the door for her
herself. Katty sat on the edge of a sofa by the window, her hands
joined in her lap, and looked expectantly up at the nurse.

‘Well,’ she asked in a low voice, ‘any luck?’

‘You’d better not try this game on too often,’ said O’ Mara with
amusement. ‘You’d never get past me with that complexion.’

‘I’m not likely to try, am I?’ asked Katty complacently. ‘That girl
you wrote about,’ she added in the same conspiratorial tone, ‘is she
still here?’

‘She is. You can see her now.’

‘I suppose you don’t know anything about her?’ Katty asked wistfully.

‘She’s a school-teacher,’ replied the nurse cautiously.

‘Oh, Law!’ said Katty in surprise. She hadn’t expected anyone of her
own class; it sounded too good to be true; and as plain as if it were
written there, her pinched little face registered the doubt whether
there wasn’t a catch in it somewhere. ‘I don’t know her by any chance,
do I?’ she added innocently.

‘I hope not,’ replied the nurse smoothly. ‘What you don’t know won’t
harm you.’

‘Oh, I’m not asking for information,’ protested Katty a shade too
eagerly. ‘But you think she’ll agree?’ she said, dropping her voice
again.

‘She’ll be a fool if she doesn’t.’

‘Of course, I’ll pay her well,’ said Katty. ‘I wouldn’t ask anyone to
do a thing like that for nothing.’ 

‘I wouldn’t mention that, if I was you,’ said O’Mara dryly, ‘She’s not
trying to make a profit on it.’

‘Oh,’ said Katty, suddenly beginning to shiver all over, ‘I’d give all
I ever had in the world to be out of it.’

‘But why?’ asked O’Mara in surprise. ‘You’re over the worst of it
now.’

‘It’s Ned,’ said Katty with a haggard look. ‘He’d murder me.’

‘Ah, well,’ said O’Mara with gruff kindness, ‘it’s a bit late in the
day to be thinking of that,’ and she led Katty up the stairs past a
big Venetian window that lit the well and overlooked the canal
bank. The lights were already lit outside. Through the trees she saw
brown-red houses with flights of steps leading to hall doors, and a
hump-backed limestone bridge.

There was a girl in bed in the room they entered; a young woman of
twenty-eight or thirty with a plump pale face and a helmet of limp
brown hair. Her face at any rate was innocent enough.

‘This is the lady I was speaking about, Monica,’ said the nurse with a
crooked smile. (Obviously she took a certain malicious pleasure in the
whole business.) ‘I’ll leave ye to discuss it for a while.’

She went out, switching on the electric light as she did. Katty shook
hands with the girl and then glanced shyly at the cot.

‘Oh, isn’t he lovely?’ she cried with genuine admiration.

‘He’s sweet,’ said the girl called Monica, in a curiously common
voice, and then reached out for a cigarette.

‘I never smoke, thanks,’ said Katty, and then hastily drew a chair
over to the bed, resting her hands on her lap and smiling under her
big hat in a guilty, schoolgirl way that was curiously attractive.

‘I suppose,’ she said, throwing back her head, ‘you must think I’m
simply terrible?’

It wasn’t intended to be a good opening but it turned out that
way. The girl smiled, and her broad face crinkled.

‘And what about me?’ she asked, putting them both at once on a common
level. ‘Will you get away with it though?’

‘Oh, I’ll have to get away with it, girl,’ said Katty flatly. ‘My
livelihood depends on it. Did nurse tell you?’

‘She did, but I still don’t understand what you did to your husband to
make him do that to you.’

‘Oh, that’s an old custom,’ said Katty eagerly, seeing at once the
doubt in the girl’s mind. ‘Now, I know what yow’re thinking,’ she
added with a smile, raising her finger in warning, ‘but ’tisn’t that
at all. Ned isn’t a bit like that. I won’t wrong him. He is a country
boy, and he hasn’t the education, but apart from that he’s the best
poor slob that ever lived.’ She was surprised herself at the warmth
that crept into her voice when she spoke of him. ‘So you see,’ she
added, dropping her voice and smiling discreetly, ‘you needn’t be a
bit afraid of us. We’d both be mad about him.’

‘Strange as it may seem,’ said Monica, her voice growing sullen and
resentful, ‘I’m a bit mad about him myself.’

‘Oh, you are, to be sure,’ said Katty warmly. ‘What other way would
you be?’ At the same time she was bitterly disappointed. She began to
realize that it wasn’t going to be so easy after all. Worse than that,
she had taken a real fancy to the baby. The mother, whatever her
faults, was beautiful; she was an educated woman; you could see she
wasn’t common. ‘Of course,’ she added, shaking her head, ‘the idea
would never have crossed my mind only that nurse thought you might be
willing. And then, I felt it was like God’s doing. ... You are one of
us, I suppose?’ she asked, raising her brows discreetly.

‘God alone knows what I am,’ said the girl, taking a deep pull of the
cigarette. ‘A bloody atheist or something.’

‘Oh, how could you?’ asked Katty in a shocked tone. ‘You’re
convent-educated, aren’t you?’

‘Mm.’

‘!’d know a convent girl anywhere,’ said Katty, shaking her head with
an admiring smile. ‘You can always tell. I went to the Ursulines
myself. But you see what I mean? There was I looking for a child to
adopt, and you looking for a home for yours, and Nurse O’Mara bringing
us together. It seemed like God’s doing.’

‘I don’t know what you want bringing God into it for,’ said Monica
impatiently. ‘The devil would do as well.’

‘Ah,’ said Katty with a knowing smile, ‘that’s only because you’re
feeling weak. ... But tell me,’ she added, still wondering whether
there wasn’t a catch in it, ‘I’m not being curious or anything—but
isn’t it a wonder the priest wouldn’t make him marry you?’

‘Who told you he wouldn’t marry me?’ asked Monica quietly.

‘Oh, Law!’ cried Katty, feeling that this was probably the catch. ‘Was
it the way he was beneath you?’ she asked with the least shade of
disappointment.

‘Not that I know of,’ said Monica brassily. Then she turned her eyes
to the ceiling and blew out another cloud of smoke. ‘He asked me was I
sure he was the father,’ she added lightly, almost as if it amused
her.

‘Fancy that!’ said Katty in bewilderment. ‘But what made him say that,
I wonder.’

‘It seems,’ said Monica in the same tone, ‘he thought I was going with
another fellow at the same time.’

‘And you weren’t?’ said Katty knowingly.

‘Not exactly,’ said Monica dryly, giving Katty a queer look that she
didn’t quite understand.

‘And you wouldn’t marry him?’ said Katty, knowing perfectly well that
the girl was only trying to take advantage of her simplicity. Katty
wasn’t as big a fool as that though. ‘Hadn’t you great courage?’ she
added.

‘Oh, great,’ said Monica in the same ironic tone.

‘The dear knows,’ said Katty regretfully, thinking of her own troubles
with the medico, ‘they’re a handful, the best of them! But are you
sure you’re not being hasty?’ she added with girlish coyness, cocking
her little head. ‘Don’t you think when you meet him again and he sees
the baby, ye might make it up?’

‘If I thought that,’ said the girl deliberately, ‘I’d walk out of this
into the canal, and the kid along with me.’

‘Oh, Law!’ said Katty, feeling rather out of her depth and the least
bit frightened. At the same time she now wanted the baby with
something like passion. It was the same sort of thing she sometimes
felt at auctions for little gewgaws from women’s dressing-tables or
bits of old china; as if she couldn’t live without it. No other child
would ever satisfy her. She’d bid up to the last farthing for it—if
only she knew what to bid.

Then Nurse O’Mara came back and leaned on the end of the bed, her
knees bent and her hands clasped.

‘Well,’ she asked, looking from one to the other with a mocking smile,
‘how did ye get on?’

‘Oh, grand, nurse,’ said Katty with sudden gaiety. ‘We were only
waiting for yourself to advise us.’

‘Why?’ asked the nurse. ‘What is there between ye?’

‘Only that I don’t want to part with him,’ said Monica steadily.

‘Aren’t you tired of him yet?’ asked the nurse ironically.

‘Jesus, woman, be a bit human!’ said Monica with exasperation. ‘He’s
all I have and I had trouble enough having him.’

‘That’s nothing to the trouble you’ll have keeping him,’ said the
nurse.

‘I know that well enough,’ said Monica in a more reasonable tone, ‘but
I want to be able to see him. I want to know that he’s well and
happy.’

‘Oh, if that’s all that’s troubling you,’ said Katty eagerly, ‘you can
see him as much as you like at our place.’

‘She could not,’ said the nurse angrily. ‘The less the pair of you see
of one another, the better for both. ... Listen, Mon,’ she said
pleadingly, ‘I don’t care what you do. I’m only speaking for your
good.’

‘I know that, Peggy,’ said Monica.

‘I know you think you’re going to do marvels for that kid, but you’re
not. I know the sort of places they’re brought up in and the sort that
bring them up—the ones that live. I tell you, after the first time,
you wouldn’t be so keen on seeing him again.’

Monica was staring at the window, which had faded in the pale glare of
the electric light. There was silence for a few moments. Katty heard
the night wind whistling across the rooftops from the bay. The trees
along the canal heard it too and sighed. Something about it impressed
her; the wind, and the women’s voices, and the sleeping baby, and the
heart contracted inside her as she thought of Ned, waiting at
home. She pulled herself together with fictitious brightness.

‘Now, nurse,’ she said firmly, ‘it isn’t fair to push the young lady
too hard. We’ll give her till tomorrow night, and I’ll say a prayer to
Our Lady of Good Counsel to direct her.’

‘I’ll give her all the good counsel she wants,’ said the nurse
coarsely. If you’re thinking of yourself, Monica, you might as well
say no now. We won’t have to look far for someone else. If you’re
thinking of the kid and want to give him a fair chance in life after
bringing him into it, you’d better say yes while you have the chance.’

Monica suddenly turned her face away, her eyes filling with tears.

‘She can have him,’ she said in a dull voice. 

‘Oh, thank you, thank you,’ said Katty eagerly. ‘And I give you my
word you’ll never have cause to regret it.’

‘But for Christ’s sake don’t leave him in the room with me tonight,’
cried the girl, leaping up in bed and turning her wild eyes on Nurse
O’Mara. ‘I’m warning ye now, don’t leave him where I can lay my hands
on him. I tell ye I won’t be responsible.’

Katty bit her lip and her face went white.

‘There’s supper waiting for you downstairs,’ said the nurse, beckoning
her to go.

‘You’re sure I couldn’t be of any assistance?’ whispered Katty,

‘Certain,’ said the nurse dryly.

As Katty turned to look back, the girl threw herself down again,
holding her head in her hands. The nurse from the end of the bed
looked at her with a half-mocking, half-pitying smile, the smile of a
childless woman. The baby was still asleep.



(1946)
FP: Cornhill; 1946-03
Source: The Best of Frank O’Connor