DARCY IN THE LAND OF YOUTH
 
One of the few things Mick Darcy remembered of what the monks in the
North Monastery had taught him was the story of Oisin, an old chap who
fell in love with a fairy queen called Niamh and went to live with her
in the Land of Youth. Then, one day when he was a bit homesick, he got
leave from her to come back and have a look at Ireland, only she
warned him he wasn’t to get off his horse. When he got back, he found
his pals all dead and the whole country under the rule of St Patrick,
and, seeing a poor labourer trying to lift a heavy stone that was too
big for him but that would have been nothing at all to fellows of his
own generation, Oisin bent down to give him a hand. While he was doing
it, the saddle-girth broke and Oisin was thrown to the ground, an old,
tired, spiritless man with nothing better to do than get converted and
be thinking of how much better things used to be in his day. Mick had
never thought much of it as a story. It had always struck him that
Oisin was a bit of a mug, not to know when he was well off.  But the
old legends all have powerful morals though you never realize it till
one of them gives you a wallop over the head. During the war, when he
was out of a job, Mick went to England as a clerk in a war factory,
and the first few weeks he spent there were the most miserable of his
life. He found the English as queer as they were always supposed to
be; people with a great welcome for themselves and very little for
anyone else.

Then there were the air-raids, which the English pretended not to
notice. In the middle of the night Mick would be awakened by the wail
of a siren, and the thump of faraway guns like all the window-panes of
Heaven rattling: the thud of artillery, getting louder, accompanied a
faint buzz like a cat’s purring that seemed to rise out of a corner of
the room and mount the walls to the ceiling, where it hung, breathing
in steady spurts, exactly like a cat. Pretending not to notice things
like that struck Mick as too much of a good thing. He would rise and
dress himself and sit lonesome by the gas fire, wondering what on
earth had induced him to leave his little home in Cork, his girl, Ina,
and his pal, Chris—his world.

The daytime was no better. The works were a couple of miles outside
the town, and he shared an office with a woman called Penrose and a
Jew called Isaacs. Penrose called him ‘Mr Darcy’, and when he asked
her to call him ‘Mick’ she wouldn’t. The men all called him ‘Darcy’,
which sounded like an insult. Isaacs was the only one who called him
‘Mick’, but it soon became plain that he only wanted to convert Mick
from being what he called ‘a fellow traveller’, whatever the hell that
was.

‘I’m after travelling too much,’ Mick said bitterly.

He wasn’t a discontented man, but he could not like England or the
English. On his afternoons off, he took long, lonesome country walks,
but there was no proper country either, only redbrick farms and
cottages with crumpled oak frames and high red-tiled roofs; big,
smooth, sick-looking fields divided by low, neat hedges which made
them look as though they all called one another by their surnames;
handsome-looking pubs that were never open when you wanted them, with
painted signs and nonsensical names like ‘The Star and Garter’ or ‘The
Shoulder of Mutton’. Then he would go back to his lodgings and write
long, cynical, mournful letters home to Chris and Ina, and all at once
he and Chris would be strolling down the hill to Cork city in the
evening light, and every old house and bush stood out in his
imagination as if spotlit, and everyone who passed hailed them and
called him Mick. It was so vivid that when his old landlady came in to
draw the black-out, his heart would suddenly turn over.

But one day in the office he got chatting with a girl called Janet who
had something to do with personnel. She was a tall, thin, fair-haired
girl with a quick-witted laughing air. She listened to him with her
head forward and her eyebrows raised. There was nothing in the least
alarming about Janet, and she didn’t seem to want to convert him to
anything, unless it was books, which she seemed to be very well up in,
so he asked her politely to have supper with him, and she agreed
eagerly and even called him Mick without being asked. She seemed to
know as if by instinct that this was what he wanted.

It was a great ease to him; he now had someone to argue with, and he
was no longer scared of the country or the people. Besides, he had
begun to master his job, and that always gave him a feeling of
self-confidence. He had a quiet conviction of his own importance and
hated servility of any sort. One day a group of them, including Janet,
had broken off work for a chat when the boss’s brisk step was heard,
and they all scattered—even Janet hastily said: ‘Good-bye.’ But Mick
just gazed out the window, his hands still in his pockets, and when
the boss came in, brisk and lantern-jawed, Mick looked at him over his
shoulder and gave him a greeting. The boss only grinned. ‘Settling in,
Darcy?’ he asked. ‘Just getting the hang of things,’ Darcy replied
modestly. Next day the boss sent for him, but it was only to ask his
advice about a scheme of office organization. Mick gave his opinions
in a forthright way. That was another of his little weaknesses; he
liked to hear himself talk. Judging by the way the boss questioned
him, he had no great objection.

But country and people still continued to give him shocks. One
evening, for instance, he had supper in the flat which Janet shared
with a girl called Fanny, who was an analyst in one of the
factories. Fanny was a good-looking, dark-haired girl with a tendency
to moodiness. She asked how Mick was getting on with Mrs Penrose.

‘Oh,’ Mick said with a laugh, sitting back with his hands in his
trouser pockets, ‘she still calls me Mister Darcy.’

‘I suppose that’s only because she expects to be calling you something
else before long,’ said Fanny.

‘Oh, no, Fanny,’ said Janet. ‘You wouldn’t know Penrose now. She’s a
changed woman. With her husband in Egypt, Peter posted to Yorkshire,
and no one to play with but George, she’s started to complain of
people who can’t appreciate the simple things of life. Any day now
she’ll start talking about primroses.’

‘Penrose?’ Mick exclaimed with gentle incredulity, throwing himself
back farther in his chair. ‘I never thought she was that sort. Are you
sure, Janet? I’d have thought she was an iceberg.’

‘An iceberg?’ Janet said gleefully, rubbing her hands. ‘Oh, boy! A
blooming fireship!’

‘You’re not serious?? murmured Mick, looking doubtfully at the two
girls and wondering what fresh abyss might remain beneath the smooth
surface of English convention.

Going home that night through the pitch-dark streets, he no longer
felt a complete stranger. He had made friends with two of the nicest
girls a man could wish for—fine broad-minded girls you could talk to
as you’d talk to a man. He had to step in the roadway to make room for
a couple of other girls, flicking their torches on and off before
them; schoolgirls, to judge by their voices. ‘Of course, he’s
married,’ one of them said as they passed, and then went off into a
rippling scale of laughter that sounded almost unearthly in the
sinister silence and darkness.

A bit too broad-minded, thought Mick, coming to himself. Freedom was
all very well, but you could easily have too much of that too.

But the shock about Penrose was nothing to the shocks that came on top
of it. In the spring evenings Janet and he cycled off into the near-by
villages and towns for their drinks. Sometimes Fanny came too, but she
didn’t seem very keen on it. It was as though she felt herself in the
way, but at the same time she saw them go off with such a reproachful
air that she made Janet feel bad.

One Sunday evening they went to church together. It seemed to surprise
Janet that Mick insisted on going to Mass every Sunday morning, and
she wanted him to see what a Protestant service was like. Her own
religion was a bit mixed. Her father had been a Baptist lay preacher;
her mother a Methodist; but Janet herself had fallen in love with a
parson at the age of eleven and become Church for a while till she
joined the Socialist Party and decided that Church was too
conservative. Most of the time she did not seem to Mick to have any
religion at all, for she said that you were just buried and rotted and
that was all anyone knew. That seemed the general view. There were any
amount of religions, but nobody seemed to believe anything.

It was against Mick’s principles, but Janet was so eager that he
went. It was in a little town ten miles from where they lived, with a
brown Italian fountain in the market-place and the old houses edging
out the grey church with its balustraded parapet and its blue
clock-face shining in the sun. Inside there was a young sailor playing
the organ while another turned over for him. The parson rang the bell
himself. Only three women, one of whom was the organist, turned up.

The service, to Mick’s mind, was an awful sell. The parson turned his
back on them and read prayers at the east window; the organist played
a hymn, which the three people in church took up, and then the parson
read more prayers. There was no religion in it that Mick could see,
but Janet joined in the hymns and seemed to get all worked up.

‘Pity about Fanny,’ she said when they were drinking their beer in the
inn yard later. ‘We could be very comfortable in the flat only for
her. Haven’t you a friend who’d take her off our hands?’

“Only in Ireland,’ said Mick.

‘Perhaps he’d come,’ said Janet. ‘Tell him you’ve a nice girl for
him. She really is nice, Mick.’

‘Oh, I know,’ said Mick in surprise. “But hasn’t she a fellow
already?’

‘Getting a fellow for Fanny is the great problem of my life,’ Janet
said ruefully. ‘I’ll never be afraid of a jealous husband after
her. The sight of her johns with the seat up is enough to depress her
for a week.’

‘I wonder if she’d have him,’ Mick said thoughtfully, thinking how
very nice it would be to have a friend as well as a girl. Janet was
excellent company, and a good woman to learn from, but there were
times when Mick would have been glad of someone from home with whom he
could sit in judgment on the country of his exile.

‘If he’s anything like you, she’d jump at him,’ said Janet.

“Oh, there’s no resemblance,’ chuckled Mick, who had never before been
buttered up like this and loved it. ‘Chris is a holy terror.’

‘A terror is about what Fanny needs,’ Janet said grimly.

It was only as the weeks went on that he realized that she wasn’t
exaggerating. Fanny always received him politely, but he had the
feeling that one of these days she wouldn’t receive him at all. She
didn’t intend to be rude, but she watched his plate as Janet filled
it, and he saw she begrudged him even the food he ate. Janet did her
best to shake her out of it by bringing her with them.

‘Oh, come on, Fanny!’ she said one evening with a weary air, ‘I only
want to show Mick the Plough in Alton.’

“Well, who’d know it better?’ Fanny asked sepulchrally.

‘There’s no need to be difficult,’ Janet replied with a flash Gf
temper.

“Well, it’s not my fault if I’m inhibited, is it?’ Fanny asked with a
cowed air. 

‘I didn’t say you were inhibited,’ Janet replied in a ringing tone. ‘I
said you were difficult.’

‘Same thing from your point of view, isn’t it?’ Fanny asked. ‘Oh, I
suppose I was born that way. You’d better let me alone.’

All the way out, Janet was silent and Mick saw she was in a flaming
temper, though he failed to understand what it was all about. It was
distressing about Fanny, no doubt, but things were pleasanter without
her. The evening was fine and the sun in wreath and veil, with the
fields a bright blue-green. The narrow road wound between bulging
walls of flint, laced with brick, and rows of old cottages with
flower-beds in front that leaned this way and that as if they were
taking life easy. It wasn’t like Ireland, but still it wasn’t bad. He
was getting used to it as he was to being called Darcy. At the same
time the people sometimes left him as mystified as ever. He didn’t
know what Fanny meant about being inhibited, or why she seemed to
think it wrong. She spoke of it as if it was some sort of infectious
disease.

‘We’ll have to get Chris for Fanny all right,’ he said. ‘It’s
extraordinary, though. An exceptional girl like that, you’d think
she’d have fellows falling over her.’

‘I don’t think Fanny will ever get a man,’ Janet replied in the
shrill, scolding voice she used when upset. ‘I’ve thrown dozens of
them in her way, but she won’t even make an effort. I believe she’s
one of those quite attractive women who go through life without ever
knowing what it’s about. She’s just a raging mass of inhibitions.’

There it was again—prohibitions, exhibitions, inhibitions! He wished
to God Janet would use simple words. He knew what exhibitions were
from one old man in the factory who went to jail because of them. You
would assume that inhibitions meant the opposite, but if so, what were
the girls grousing about?

‘Couldn’t we do something about them?” he asked helpfully, not wishing
to display his ignorance.

‘Yes, darling,’ she replied with a mocking air. “You can take her away
to Hell and give her a good roll in the hay.’

Mick was so staggered that he didn’t reply. Even then it took along
time for Janet’s words to sink in. By this time he was used to English
dirty jokes, but he knew that this was something different. No doubt
Janet was joking about the roll in the hay—though he wasn’t altogether
sure that she was joking about that either and didn’t half hope that
he might take her at her word—but she was not joking about Fanny. She
really meant that all that was wrong with Fanny was that she was still a
virgin, and that this was a complaint she did not suffer from herself.

The smugness horrified him as much as the savagery with which it was
uttered. Put in certain way, it might be unde standable, and even
forgivable. Girls of Janet’s kind were known at home as ‘damaged
goods’, but he had never permitted the expression to pass. He had a
strong sense of justice and always tended to take the side of the
underdog. Some girls had not the same strength of character as others;
some were subjected to greater temptation than others; he had never
met any, but he was quite sure that if he had he would have risen to
the occasion. But to have a girl like that stand up and treat her own
weakness as strength and another girl’s strength as weakness was
altogether too much for him to take. It was like asking him to stand
on his head.

Having got rid of her spite, Janet began to brighten. ‘This is
wonderful,’ she sighed with tranquil pleasure as they floated downhill
towards Alton and the Plough, a pleasant little inn, standing at the
bridge, half-timbered above and stone below, with a big yard to one
side where a dozen cars were parked, and at the other a long garden
with rustic seats overlooking the river. Mick didn’t feel it was so
very wonderful. He felt as lonely as he had done in his first weeks
there. While Janet sat outside, he went to the bar for beer and stood
there for a few minutes unnoticed. There was a little crowd at the
bar; a bald fat man in an overcoat, with a pipe, a good-looking young
man with a fancy waistcoat, and a local with a face like a turnip. The
landlord, a man of about fifty, had a long, haggard face with
horn-rimmed glasses, and his wife, apparently twenty years younger,
was a good-looking young woman with bangs and a Lancashire
accent. They were discussing a death in the village.

‘I’m not against religion,’ the local spluttered excitedly. ‘I’m
chapel myself, but I never tried to force me views on people. All them
months poor Harry was paralysed, his wife and daughter never so much
as wet his lips. That idn’t right, is it? That idn’t religion?’

‘No, Bill,’ the landlord said, shaking his head. ‘Going too far, I
call that.’

‘Everyone is entitled to his views, but them weren’t old Harry’s
views, were they?”

‘No, Bill,’ sighed the landlord’s wife, ‘they weren’t.’

‘I’m for freedom,’ Bill said, tapping his chest. ‘The night before he
died, I come in here and got a quart of old and mild, didn’t I, Joe?’

‘Mild, wadn’t it, Bill?’ the publican asked anxiously, resettling his
glasses.

“No, Joe, old and mild was always Harry’s drink.’

‘That’s right, Joe,’ the landlady expostulated. ‘Don’t you remember?’

‘Funny,’ said her husband. ‘I could have swore it was mild.’

‘And I said to Millie and Sue, ‘All right,’ I said. ‘You got other
things to do. I’ll sit up with old Harry.’ Then I took out the
bottle. His poor eyes lit up. Couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, but I
shall never forget the way he looked at that bottle. I had to hold his
mouth open’—Bill threw back his head and pulled one side of his
mouth awry in illustration—‘and let it trickle down. No. If that’s
religion give me beer!’

‘Wonder where old Harry is now?’ the fat man said, removing his pipe
reverently. ‘It’s a mystery, Joe, i’nt it?’

‘Shocking,’ the landlord said, shaking his head.

“We don’t know, do we, Charles?’ the landlady said sadly.

‘Nobody knows,’ Bill bawled scornfully as he took up his pint
again. ‘How could they? Parson pretends to know, but he don’t know any
more than you and me. Shove you in the ground and let the worms get
you—that’s all anybody knows.’

It depressed Mick even more, for he felt that in some way Janet’s
views and those of the people in the pub were of the same kind and
only the same sort of conduct could be expected from them. Neither had
any proper religion and so they could not know right from wrong.

‘Isn’t it lovely here?’ Janet sang out when he brought the drinks.

‘Oh, grand,’ said Mick without much enthusiasm.

‘We must come and spend a few days here some time. It’s wonderful in
the early morning. ... You don’t think I was too bitchy about Fanny,
do you, Mick?’

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ he said, seeing that she had noticed his
depression. ‘I wasn’t thinking of Fanny particularly. It’s the whole
set-up here that seems so queer to me.’

‘Does it?’ she asked with interest.

‘Well, naturally—fellows and girls from the works going off on
weekends together, as if they were going to a dance.’

He looked at her with mild concern as though he hoped she might
enlighten him about a matter of general interest. But she didn’t
respond.

‘Having seen the works, can you wonder?’ she asked, and took. a long
drink of her beer.

‘But when they get tired of one another, they go off with someone
else,’ he protested. ‘Or back to the fellow they started with. Like
Hilda in the packing shed. She’s knocking round with Dorman, and when
her husband comes back she’ll drop him. At least, she says she will.’

‘Isn’t that how it usually ends?’ she asked politely, raising her
brows and speaking in a superior tone that left him with nothing to
say. This time she really succeeded in scandalizing him.

‘Oh, come, come, Janet!’ he said scornfully. “You can’t take that line
with me. You’re not going to pretend there’s nothing more than that in
it?’

“Well, I suppose, like everything else, it’s just what you make of
it,’ she replied with a sophisticated shrug.

‘But that’s not making anything at all of it,’ he said, beginning to
grow heated, ‘If it’s no more than a roll in the hay, as you call it,
there’s nothing in it for anybody.’

‘And what do you think it should be?’ she asked with a politeness that
seemed to be the equivalent of his heat. He realized that he was not
keeping to the level of a general discussion. He could distinctly hear
how common his accent had become, but excitement and a deep-seated
feeling of injury carried him away.

‘But look here, Janet,’ he protested, sitting back stubbornly with his
hands in his trouser pockets, ‘learning to live with somebody isn’t a
thing you can pick up in a weekend. It’s a blooming job for life. You
wouldn’t take up a job somewhere in the middle, expecting to like it,
and intending to drop it in a few months’ time if you didn’t, would
you?’

‘Oh, Mick,’ she groaned in mock distress, ‘don’t tell me you have
inhibitions too!’

“Oh, you can call them what you like,’ retorted Mick, growing commoner
as he was dragged down from the heights of abstract discussion to the
expression of his own wounded feelings. ‘I saw the fellows who have no
inhibitions, as you call them, and they didn’t seem to me to have very
much else either. If that’s all you want from a man, you won’t have
far to go.’

By this time Janet had realized that she was dealing with feelings
rather than with general ideas and was puzzled. After a moment’s
thought she began to seek for a point of reconciliation.

“But after all, Mick, you’ve had affairs yourself, haven’t you?’ she
asked reasonably.

Now, of all questions, this was the one Mick dreaded most, because,
owing to a lack of suitable opportunities, for which he was in no way
to blame, he had not. For the matter of that, so far as he knew,
nobody of his acquaintance had either. He knew that in the matter of
experience, at least, Janet was his superior, and, coming from a
country where men’s superiority—affairs or no affairs—was
unchallenged, he hesitated to admit that, so far as experience went,
Fanny and he were in the one boat. He was not untruthful, and he had
plenty of moral courage. There was no difficulty in imagining himself
settling deeper down on to his bench and saying firmly and quietly:
‘No, Janet, I have not,’ but he did not say it. ,

‘Well, naturally, I’m not an angel,’ he said in as modest a tone as he
could command and with a shrug intended to suggest that it meant
nothing in particular to him.

‘Of course not, Mick,’ Janet replied with all the enthusiasm of a
liberal mind discovering common ground with an opponent. ‘But then
there’s no argument.’

‘No argument, maybe,’ he said coldly, ‘but there are distinctions to
be made.’

“What distinctions?”

‘Between playing the fool and making love,’ he replied with a weary
air as though he could barely be bothered explaining such matters to a
girl as inexperienced as she. From imaginary distinctions he went on
to out-and-out prevarication. ‘If I went out with Penrose, for
instance, that would be one thing. Going out with you is something
entirely different.’

‘But why?’ she asked as though this struck her as a doubtful
compliment.

‘Well, I don’t like Penrose,’ he said mildly, hoping that he sounded
more convincing than he felt. ‘I’m not even vaguely interested in
Penrose. I am interested in you. See the difference?’

“Not altogether,’ Janet replied in her clear, unsentimental way ‘You
don’t mean that if two people are in love with one another, they
should have affairs with somebody else, do you?’

‘Of course I don’t,’ snorted Mick, disgusted by this horrid example of
English literal-mindedness. ‘I don’t see what they want having affairs
at all for.’

‘Oh, so that’s what it is!’ she said with a nod.

‘That’s what it is,’ Mick said feebly, realizing the cat was out of
the bag at last. ‘Love is a serious business. It’s a matter of
responsibilities. If I make a friend, I don’t begin by thinking what
use I can make of him. If I meet a girl I like, I’m not going to begin
calculating how cheap I can get her. I don’t want anything cheap,’ he
added with passion. ‘I’m not going to rush into anything till I know
the girl well enough to try and make a decent job of it. Is that plain?’

‘Remarkably plain,’ Janet replied icily. ‘You mean you’re not that
sort of man. Let me buy you a drink.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘Then I think we’d better be getting back,’ she said, rising and
looking like the wrath of God.

Mick, crushed and humiliated, followed her at a slouch, his hands
still in his trouser pockets. It wasn’t good enough. At home a girl
would have gone on with the argument till one of them fell
unconscious, and in argument Mick had real staying power, so he felt
she was taking an unfair advantage. Of course, he saw that she had
some reason. However you looked at it, she had more or less told him
that she expected him to be her lover, and he had more or less told
her to go to hell, and he had a suspicion that this was an entirely
new experience for Janet. She might well feel mortified.

But the worst of it was that, thinking it over, he realized that even
then he had not been quite honest. He had not told her he already had
a girl at home. He believed all he had said, but he did not believe it
quite so strongly as all that; not so as not to make exceptions. Given
time, he might quite easily have made an exception of Janet. She was
the sort of girl people made an exception of. It was the shock that
had made him express himself so violently; the shock of realizing that
a girl he cared for had lived with other men. He had reacted that way
almost in protest against them.

But the real shock had been the discovery that he minded so much what
she was.


They never resumed the discussion openly, on the same terms, and it
seemed as though Janet had forgiven him, but only just. The argument
was always there beneath the surface, ready to break out again. It
flared up whenever she mentioned Fanny—‘I suppose one day she’ll
meet an Irishman, and they can discuss one another’s inhibitions.’ Or
when she mentioned other men she had known, like Bill, with whom she
had spent a holiday in Dorset, or an American called Tom with whom she
had gone to the Plough in Alton, she seemed to be contrasting the
joyous past with the dreary present, and she became cold and insolent.

Mick gave as good as he got. He had a dirty tongue, and he had
considerable more ammunition than she. The canteen was always full of
gossip about who was living with whom, or who had stopped living with
whom, or whose wife or husband had returned and found him or her
living with someone else, and he passed it on with a quizzical
air. The first time she said ‘Good!’ in a ringing voice. After that,
she contented herself with a shrug, and Mick suggested ingenuously
that perhaps it took all those religions to deal with so much
fornication. ‘One religion would be more than enough for Ireland,’ she
retorted, and Mick grinned and admitted himself beaten.

But, all the same, he could not help feeling that it wasn’t nice. He
remembered what Fanny had said about nobody’s knowing the Plough
better, and Janet about how nice it was in the early morning. Really,
really, it wasn’t nice! It seemed to show a complete lack of
sensibility in her to think of bringing him to a place where she had
stayed with somebody else, and made him suspicious of every other
place she brought him. He had never been able to share her enthusiasm
for old villages of red-brick cottages, all coloured like geraniums,
grouped about a grey church tower, but he lost even the desire to
share it when he found himself wondering what connection it had with
Bill or Tom.

At the same time, he could not do without her. They met every evening
after work, went off together on Saturday afternoons, and she even
came to Mass with him on Sunday mornings. Nor was there any feeling
that she was critical of it. She followed the service with great
devotion. As a result, before he returned home on his first leave,
everything seemed to have changed between them. She no longer
criticized Fanny’s virginity and ceased altogether to refer to Bill
and Tom. Indeed, from her conversation it would have been hard to
detect that she had ever known such men, much less been intimate with
them. Mick wondered whether it wasn’t possible for a woman to be
immoral and yet remain innocent at heart and decided regretfully that
it wasn’t likely. But no wife or sweetheart could have shown more
devotion than she in the last week before his return, and when they
went to the station and walked arm-in-arm to the end of the long,
drafty platform to say good-bye, she was stiff with unspoken
misery. She seemed to feel it was her duty to show no sign of emotion.

“You will come back, Mick, won’t you?’ she asked in a clear voice.

‘Why?’ Mick asked banteringly. ‘Do you think you can keep off Americans
for a fortnight?’

That she spat out a word that showed only too clearly her intimacy
with Americans and others. It startled Mick. The English had strong
ideas about when you could joke and when you couldn’t, and she seemed
to think this was no time for joking. To his surprise, he found she
was trembling all over.

At any other time he would have argued with her, but already in spirit
he was half-way home. There, beyond the end of the line, was Cork, and
with it home and meat and butter and nights of tranquil sleep. When he
leaned out of the window to wave good-bye, she was standing like a
statue, looking curiously desolate. Her image faded quickly, for the
train was crowded with Irish servicemen and women, clerks and
labourers, who gradually sorted themselves out into north and south,
country and town, and within five minutes, Mick, in a fug of steam
heat and tobacco smoke, was playing cards with a group of men from the
South Side who were calling him by his Christian name. Janet was
already farther away than any train could leave her.

It was the following evening when he reached home. He had told no one
of his coming and arrived in an atmosphere of sensation. He went
upstairs to his own little whitewashed room with the picture of the
Sacred Heart over his bed and lost himself in the study of his shelf
of books. Then he shaved and, without waiting for more than a cup of
tea, set off down the road to Ina’s.

Ina was the youngest of a large family, and his arrival there created a
sensation too. Elsie, the eldest, a fat, jolly girl, just home from
work, shouted with laughter at him.

“He smelt the sausages.’

“You can keep your old sausages,’ Mick said scornfully. ‘I’m taking
Ina out to supper.’

“You’re what?’ shouted Elsie. “You have high notions like the goats in
Kerry.’

‘But I have to make my little brothers’ supper, honey,’ Ina said
laughingly as she smoothed his hair. She was a slight, dark, radiant
girl with a fund of energy.

‘Tell them make it themselves,’ Mick said scornfully.

‘Tell them, you!’ cried Elsie. ‘Someone ought to have told them years
ago, the caubogues! They’re thirty, and they have no more intention of
marrying than flying. Have you e’er an old job for us over there? I’m
damned for the want of a man.’

Ina rushed upstairs to change. Her two brothers came in, expressed
astonishment at Mick’s appearance, satisfaction at his promotion,
incredulity at his view that the English weren’t beaten, and began
hammering together on the table with their knives and forks.

‘Supper up! Supper up!’ shouted the elder, casting his eyes on the
ceiling. ‘We can’t wait all night. Where the hell is Ina?’

‘Coming out to dinner with me,’ replied Mick with a sniff, feeling
that for the first time in his life he was uttering a curtain line.

They called for Chris, an undersized lad with a pale face like a fist
and a voice like melted butter. He expressed pleasure at seeing them,
but gave no other signs of it. It was part of Chris’s line never to be
impressed by anything. In a drawling voice he commented on priests,
women, and politicians, and there was little left of any of them when
he had done. He had always regarded Mick as a bit of a softy because
of his fondness for Ina. For himself, he would never keep a girl for
more than a month because it gave them ideas.

“What do you want going to town for supper for?’ he drawled
incredulously, as though this were only another indication that Mick
was a bit soft in the head. ‘Can’t ye have it at home?’

“You didn’t change much anyway,’ said Mick with a snort of
delight. ‘Hurry up!’

He insisted on their walking so as not to miss the view of the city he
had been dreaming of for months; the shadowy perspective of winding
road between flowering trees, and the spires, river, and bridges far
below in evening light. His heart was overflowing. Several times they
were stopped by neighbours who wanted to know how things were in the
outside world. Because of the censorship, their ideas were very vague.

‘Oh, all right,’ Mick replied modestly.

‘Ye’re having it bad.”

‘A bit noisy at times, but you get used to it,’ he said lightly.

‘I dare say, I dare say.’

There was pity rather than belief in their voices, but Mick didn’t
mind. It was good to be back where people cared whether you were
having it bad or not. But in his heart Mick felt you didn’t get used
to it, that you never could, and that all of it, even Janet, was
slightly unreal. He had a suspicion that he would not return. He had
had enough of it.

Next morning, while he was lying in bed in his little attic, he
received a letter from Janet. It must have been written while he was
still on the train. She said that trying to face things without him
was like trying to get used to an amputated limb; she kept on making
movements before realizing that it wasn’t there. He dropped the letter
at that point without trying to finish it. He couldn’t help feeling
that it sounded unreal too.

Mick revisited all his old haunts. “You should see Fair Hill,’ his
father said with enthusiasm. ‘’Tis unknown the size that place is
growing.’ He went to Fair Hill, to the Lough, to Glanmire, seeing them
with new eyes and wishing he had someone like Janet to show them off
to. But he began to realize that without a job, without money, it
would not be very easy to stay on. His parents encouraged him to stay,
but he felt he must spend another six months abroad and earn a little
more money. Instead, he started to coax Chris into coming back with
him. He knew now that his position in the factory would ensure a
welcome for anyone he brought in. Besides, he grew tired of Ina’s
brothers telling him how the Germans would win the war, and one
evening was surprised to hear himself reply in Chris’s cynical drawl:
‘They will and what else?’ Ina’s brothers were surprised as well. They
hadn’t expected Mick to turn his coat in that way.

‘You get the feeling that people here never talk of anything only
religion and politics,’ he said one evening to Chris as they went for
their walk up the Western Road.

‘Ah, how bad it is!’ Chris said mockingly. ‘Damn glad you were to get
back to it. You can get a night’s sleep here anyway.’

“You can,’ Mick said in the same tone. “There’s no one to stop you.’

Chris looked at him in surprise, uncertain whether or not Mick meant
what he seemed to mean. Mick was developing out of his knowledge
entirely.

‘Go on!’ he said with a cautious grin. ‘Are they as good-natured as
that?’

‘Better come and see,’ Mick said sedately. ‘I have the very girl for
you.’

“You don’t say so!’ Chris exclaimed with the smile of a child who has
ceased to believe in Santa Claus but likes to hear about it just the
same.

‘Fine-looking girl with a good job and a flat of her own,’ Mick went
on with a smile. “What more do you want?’

Chris suddenly beamed.

‘I wouldn’t let Ina hear me talking like that if I was you,’ he
said. ‘Some of them quiet-looking girls are a terrible hand with a
hatchet.’

At that moment it struck Mick with cruel force how little Ina had to
reproach him with. They were passing the college, and pairs of clerks
and servant girls were strolling by, whistling and calling to one
another. There was hardly another man in Ireland who would have
behaved as he had done. He remembered Janet at the station with her
desolate air, and her letter, which he had not answered. Perhaps,
after all, she meant it. Suddenly everything seemed to turn upside
down in him. He was back in the bar in Alton, listening to the little
crowd discussing the dead customer, and carrying out the drinks to
Janet on the rustic seat. It was no longer this that seemed unreal,
but the Western Road and the clerks and the servant girls. They were
like a dream from which he had wakened so suddenly that he had not
even realized that he was awake. And he had waked up beside a girl
like Janet and had not even realized that she was real.

He was so filled with consternation that he almost told Chris about
her. But he knew that Chris would no more understand him than he had
understood himself. Chris would talk sagaciously about ‘damaged goods’
as if there were only one way in which a woman could be damaged. He
knew that no one would understand, for already he was thinking in a
different language. Suddenly he remembered the story of Oisin that the
monks had told him, and it began to have meaning for him. He wondered
wildly if he would ever get back or if, like Oisin in the story, he
would suddenly collapse and spend the rest of his days walking up and
down the Western Road with people as old and feeble as himself, and
never see Niamh or the Land of Youth. You never knew what powerful
morals the old legends had till they came home to you. On the other
hand, their heroes hadn’t the advantages of the telephone.

‘I have to go back to town, Chris,’ he said, turning in his
tracks. ‘I’ve just remembered I have a telephone call to put through.’

‘Good enough,’ Chris said knowingly. ‘I suppose you might as well tell
her I’m coming too.’


When Chris and himself got in, the alert was still on and the station
was in pitch-darkness. Outside, against the clear summer sky, shadowy
figures moved with pools of light at their feet, and searchlights
flickered like lightning over the battlements of the castle. For
Chris, it had all the novelty it had once had for Mick, and he
groaned. Mick gripped his arm and steered him confidently.

‘This is nothing,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Probably only a scouting
plane. Wait till they start dropping a few wagons of high explosive
and you’ll be able to talk.’

It was sheer delight to Mick to hear himself speak in that
lighthearted way of high explosives. He seemed to have become forceful
and cool all at once. It had something to do with Chris’s being there,
as though it gave occupation to all his protective instincts. But
there was something else as well. It was almost as though he were
arriving home.

There was no raid, so he brought Chris round to meet the girls, and
Chris groaned again at the channel of star-shaped traffic signals that
twinkled between the black cliffs of houses whose bases opened
mysteriously to reveal pale stencilled signs or caverns of smoky
light.

Janet opened the door, gave one hasty, incredulous glance at Chris,
and then hurled herself at Mick’s neck. Chris opened his eyes with a
start—he later admitted to Mick that he had never before seen a doll
so quick off the mark. But Mick was beyond caring for appearances.
While Chris and Fanny were in the throes of starting a conversation,
he followed Janet into the kitchen, where she was recklessly tossing a
week’s rations into the pan. She was hot and excited and used two
dirty words in quick succession, but he didn’t mind these either. He
leaned against the kitchen wall with his hands in his trouser pockets
and smiled at her.

‘I’m afraid you’ll find I’ve left my principles behind me this time,’
he said with amusement.

‘Oh, good!’ she said—not as enthusiastically as he might have
expected, but he put that down to the confusion caused by his
unexpected arrival.

“What do you think of Chris?”

‘A bit quiet, isn’t he?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Scared,’ replied Mick with a sniff of amusement. ‘He’ll soon get over
that. Should we go off somewhere for the weekend?’

‘Next weekend?’ she asked aghast.

“Or the one after. I don’t mind.’

“You’re in a hurry, aren’t you?’

‘So would you be if you’d spent a fortnight in Cork.’

‘All of us?”

“The more the merrier. Let’s go somewhere really good,’ he went on
enthusiastically. “Take the bikes and make a proper tour of it. I’d
like Chris to see a bit of the country.’

It certainly made a difference, having Chris there. And a fortnight
later the four of them set off on bicycles out of town. It was a
perfect day of early summer. Landscape and houses gradually changed;
old brick and flint giving place to houses of small yellow tile,
tinted with golden moss, and walls of narrow tile-like stone with deep
bands of mortar that made them seem as though woven. Out of the woven
pullovers rose gables with coifs of tile, like nuns’ heads. It all
came over Mick in a rush; the presence of his friend and of his girl
and a country that he had learned to understand. While they sat on a
bench outside a country public-house, he brought out the beer and
smiled with quiet pride.

‘Good?’ he asked Chris with a slight lift of his brows.

‘The beer isn’t up to much, if that’s what you mean,’ replied Chris,
who still specialized in not being impressed.

In the late evening they reached their destination, having cycled
through miles of suburb with gardens in flower, and dismounted in the
cobbled yard of an inn where Queen Elizabeth was supposed to have
stayed and Shakespeare’s company performed; the walls of the narrow,
twisting stairs were dark with old prints, and the windows deep
embrasures that overlooked the yard. The dining-room had great oak
beams and supports. At either end there was an oak dresser full of
window-ware, with silver sauceboats hanging from the shelves and brass
pitchers on top.

‘You’d want to mind your head in this hole,’ Chris said with an
aggrieved air.

‘But this place is four hundred years old, man,’ protested Mick.

‘Begor, in that time you’d think they’d make enough to rebuild it,’
said Chris.

He was still acting in character, but Mick was just the least bit
disappointed in him. He hit it off with Fanny, who had been thrown
into such a panic that she was prepared to hit it off with anyone, but
he seemed to have lost a lot of his dash. Mick wasn’t quite sure yet
but that he would take fright before Fanny. He would certainly do so
if he knew what a blessed innocent she was. Whenever Mick looked at
her, her dark, sullen face broke into a wistful smile that made him
think of a Christian martyr’s first glimpse of the lion. No doubt he
would lead her to paradise, but the way was messy and uncomfortable.

After supper Janet showed them the town and finally led them to a very
nice old pub which was on no street at all but was approached by a
system of alleyways. The little bar-room was full, and Janet and he
were crowded into the yard, where they sat on a bench in the
starlight. Beyond the clutter of old tiled roofs a square battlemented
tower rose against the sky. Mick was perfectly happy.

‘You’re certain Fanny will be all right with Chris?’ Janet asked
anxiously.

‘Oh, certain,’ replied Mick with a slight feeling of alarm lest his
troops had opened negotiations behind his back. ‘Why? Did she say
anything?’

‘No,’ said Janet in a bustle of motherly solicitude, ‘but she’s in a
flat spin. I’ve told her everything, but she’s afraid she’ll get it
mixed up, and if anyone could that girl will. He does understand,
doesn’t he?’ 

‘Oh, perfectly,’ said Mick with a confidence he did not feel, but his
troops were already sufficiently out of hand. If Janet started to give
orders they would undoubtedly cut and run.

When they returned to the hotel and the boys retired to their room,
the troops were even more depressed.

‘A fellow doesn’t know how well off he is,’ said Chris mournfully.

He said it by way of a joke, but Mick knew it was something
more. Chris was even more out of his element than he had been. All his
life he had practised not being impressed by anything, but in this new
country there was far too much not to be impressed about.

“Why?’ Mick asked from his own bed. ‘Would you sooner be up the
Western Road?’

‘Don’t talk to me about the Western Road!’ groaned Chris. ‘I think
I’ll never see it.’

He didn’t sound in the least dashing, and Mick only hoped he wouldn’t
break down and beg Fanny to let him off. It would be a sad end to the
picture he had built up of Chris as the romantic Irishman.

Then the handle of their door turned softly and Janet tiptoed in in
her bathing-wrap, her usual competent self, as though arriving in
men’s bedrooms at that hour of night was second nature to her. ‘Ready
Chris?’ she whispered. Chris was a lad of great principle and Mick
couldn’t help admiring his manliness. With a face like death on him he
went out, and Janet closed the door cautiously behind him. Mick
listened to make sure he didn’t hide in the toilet. Then Janet
switched off the light, drew back the black-out, and, shivering
slightly, opened the window on the darkened inn yard. They could hear
the Klaxons from the street, while the stuffy room filled with the
smells and rustlings of a summer night.


In the middle of the night Mick woke up and wondered where he
was. When he recollected, it was with a feeling of profound
satisfaction. It was as if he had laid down a heavy burden he had been
carrying all his life, and in the laying down had realized that the
burden was quite unnecessary. For the pleasantest part of it was that
there was nothing particular about the whole business and that it left
him the same man he had always been. 

With a clearness of sight which seemed to be part of it, he realized
that all the charm of the old town had only been a putup job of
Janet’s because she had been here already with someone else. He should
have known it when she took them to the pub. That, too, was her reason
for suggesting this pleasant old inn. She had stayed there with
someone else. It was probably the American and possibly the same
bed. Women had no interest in scenery or architecture unless they had
been made love to in them. And, Mick thought with amusement, that
showed very good sense on their part. If he ever returned with another
woman, he would also bring her here, because he had been happy
here. Happiness, that was the secret the English had and the Irish
lacked.

It was only then that he realized that what had wakened him was
Janet’s weeping. She was crying quietly beside him. At first it filled
him with alarm. In his innocence he might quite easily have made a
mess of it without even knowing. It was monstrous, keeping men in
ignorance up to his age. He listened till he could bear it no longer.

“What is it, Jan?’ he asked in concern.

‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied, dabbing her nose viciously with her
handkerchief. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘But how can I and you like that?’ he asked plaintively. ‘Was it
anything I did?’

‘No, of course not, Mick.’

‘Because I’m sorry, if it was.’

‘Oh, it’s not that, it’s not that,’ she replied, shaking her head
miserably. ‘I’m just a fool, that’s all.’

The wretchedness of her tone made him forget his own doubts and think
of her worries. Being a man of the world was all right, but Mick would
always be more at home with other people’s troubles. He put his arm
about her and she sighed and threw a bare leg over him. It embarrassed
him for a moment, but then he remembered that now he was a man of the
world.

‘Tell me,’ he whispered gently.

‘Oh, it’s what you said that night at the Plough,’ she sobbed.

‘The Plough?’ he echoed in surprise.

‘The Plough at Alton.’

Mick found it impossible to remember what he had said at the Plough,
but he was used to the peculiar way women remembered things which some
man had said and forgotten, and which he would have been glad if they
had forgotten too.

‘Remind me of it,’ he said.

‘Oh, when you said love was a matter of responsibilities.’

‘Oh, yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I remember now.’ But he didn’t. What he
remembered mostly was that she had told him about the other men, and
he had argued with her. ‘But you shouldn’t take that too seriously,
Jan.’

‘Oh, what else could I do but take it seriously?’ she asked
fiercely. ‘I was mad with you, but I knew you were right. I knew that
was the way I’d always felt myself, only I blinded myself. Just as you
said; taking up love like a casual job you could drop whenever you
pleased. I’m well paid for my own bloody folly.’

She began to sob again. Mick found it very difficult to readjust his
mind to the new situation. One arm about her and the other supporting
his head, he looked out the window and thought about it.

‘Oh, of course, that’s perfectly true, Janet,’ he agreed, ‘but, on the
other hand, you can take it to the fair. You have to consider the
other side of the question. Take people who’re brought up to look at
the physical facts of love as inhuman and disgusting. Think of the
damage they do to themselves by living like that in superstitions. It
would be better for them to believe in fairies or ghosts if they must
believe in some sort of nonsense.’

‘Yes, but if I had a daughter, I’d prefer to bring her up like that
than in the way I was brought up, Mick. At least she wouldn’t fool
with serious things, and that’s what I’ve done. I made fun of Fanny
because she didn’t sleep around like the rest of us, but if Fanny
falls for Chris, the joke will be on me.’

Mick was silent again for a while. The conversation was headed in a
direction he had not foreseen, and he could not yet see the end of it.

‘You don’t mean you didn’t want to come?’ he asked in astonishment.

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ she cried, beating her forehead with her
fist. ‘Don’t you see that I wanted to prove to myself that I could be
a decent girl for you, and that I wasn’t just one of the factory janes
who’ll sleep with anything? I wanted to give you something worth while,
and I have nothing to give you.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Mick said in embarrassment. He was feeling
terribly uncomfortable. Life was like that. At one moment you were on
top of the world, and the next you were on the point of tears. At the
same time it was hard to sacrifice his new-found freedom from
inhibitions, all in a moment, as you might say. Here he had lain,
rejoicing at being at last a man of the world, and now he was being
asked to sacrifice it all and be an ordinary decent fellow again. That
was the worst of dealing with the English, for the Irish, who had to
be serious whether they liked it or not, only wanted to be frivolous,
while the one thing in the world that the English seemed to demand
was the chance of showing themselves serious. But the man of the
world was too new a development in Mick to stand up to a crisis.

‘Because you don’t have to do it unless you like,’ he added
gently. ‘We could always be married.’

That threw her into positive convulsions, because if she agreed to
this, she would never have the opportunity of showing him what she was
really like, and it took him a long time to persuade her that he had
never really thought her anything but a seriousminded girl—at least,
for most of the time. Then she gave a deep sigh and fell asleep in the
most awkward manner on his chest. Outside, the dawn was painting the
old roofs and walls in the stiff artless colours of a child’s
paint-box. He felt a little lonely. He would have liked to remain a
man of the world for just a little longer, to have had just one more
such awakening to assure him that he had got rid of his inhibitions,
but clearly it was not to be. He fell asleep soon after, and was only
wakened by Chris, who seemed to have got over his ordeal well.

Chris was furious when Mick told him, and Mick himself realized that
as a man of the world he had been a complete washout. Besides, Chris
felt that now Fanny would expect him to marry her as well. She had
already given indications of it.

Later, he became more reconciled to the idea, and when last heard of
was looking for a house. Which seems to show that marriage comes more
natural to us.


(1949)
Source: The Best Of Frank O’Connor, 2009