The Landlady


Three of our chaps were lodging together at the end of the town in the
house of a widow called Kent. They lived like rajahs, and in England
during the war that was something to congratulate yourself on. I envied
them; and I was far from being the worst off of the Irish crowd. After
a fortnight in a dosshouse I managed to get lodgings in the house of an
old coachman who had married the lady’s maid in the Big House. They
left when the owner got divorced. ‘Of course, we couldn’t stay after
that,’ said the old lady to me. I fancy she had a grievance against him
for not staying married because herself and the old man never stopped
talking about him. ‘Of course, he wasn’t English,’ she said.

The other lodger was a poor devil of a Czech with a doll in the
W.A.A.F.’s and about three sentences of English. I don’t know what fun
she got out of him, but English girls were great on foreigners. Every
time there was a raid on he dressed and tramped up and down the room,
and I declare to my God, I think he used to carry a suitcase. ‘You can
see he’s not English,’ said the landlady with a great air of
resignation. (After that I never walked round myself except in my bare
feet, but even then I don’t think she looked on me as a proper Englishman.)

At last the Czech’s doll got fed up with hearing the same three
sentences the whole time, and when the old dame told me I saw by the
look in her eye that something good was coming. ‘Of course,’ said I,
‘he’s not English, is he?’ and she looked at me with a new
respect. ‘No, he isn’t, is he?’ she said, and after that she gave me
tea after my dinner. It was extraordinary how far you could get with
that one phrase. The fellows in the factory loved it.

Myself and the other three Irish lads used to meet every night in a pub
under the Castle and compare notes on our landladies. It was a nice old
pub with harness badges all over the walls. They were always talking
about how their landlady went on the tiles; up to Oxford or down to
Brighton with a chap called Clements in the chemist’s shop. She was
blonde and pretty and as bold as brass. She had a little girl of five
but that was no inconvenience to her. She explained it all to the lads
too, just in case they mightn’t understand; how she didn’t believe in
marriage and all she wanted was a good time, and even if Clements asked
her to marry him, she didn’t know whether she would or not.

‘Oh, the woman is a cow,’ Kenefick used to say. ‘A nice looking cow, but
a cow just the same.’

Kenefick was a bit of a card. He was an insignificant little man with a
battered old hat, tin specs and a small moustache. At the same time,
like all small men he had a great opinion of himself. Normally he’d
have to crane his neck to look at you, but when he wanted to be
serious, he stuck his hands in his trousers pockets, put out his chest,
buried his chin in it and looked at the floor yards away as though he
was looking down at you. In a queer way I always had great regard for
Kenefick. In his own way he was a clever chap and as honest as they
make them. I had a sneaking suspicion that he was connected with some
political organization, but it was just as well his landlady didn’t
know that because she had a holy horror of one of the Irish chaps being
found with bombs in her house. She was sure we all carried them. 

Even about a little thing like that Kenefick and Mac couldn’t
agree. MacNamara thought that Kenefick was frightfully
disillusioned. Mac was tall and thin and goodlooking, with a slight
cast in one eye, and though he came from some God-forsaken little place
in West Cork, he put on an English accent and English airs, saying ‘Old
chap’ and ‘Old man’ at every hand’s turn. He was always trying to
introduce himself into groups of G.I.’s and Tommies to explain to them
that they mustn’t confuse the Irish lower-classes who worked in the
factories with educated Irishmen like himself. That got on Kenefick’s
nerves, and he took occasion to make it clear that his mother was a
washerwoman and his father a builder’s labourer out of a job. ‘Mac,’ he
said one night, ‘is getting so grand he pronounces “Mass” as “church”.’

And, of course, when they talked about their landlady Mac felt it was
up to him as a man of the world to defend her.

‘But, my goodness, Stevie,’ he said, sticking his thumbs in the
armholes of his vest, ‘isn’t it the girl’s own business? Damn it, old
man, we’d all do the same if we got a chance.’

‘Well,’ said Kenefick glumly, ‘what’s stopping you?’

‘Ah, but look here,’ said Mac, refusing to be put down by what he
called Kenefick’s ‘narrow-mindedness,’ ‘you’re not pretending a little
thing like that makes any difference?’

‘I’m not pretending anything at all, Mac,’ snarled Kenefick. ‘I’m
stating it as a fact. Merciful God,’ he said with a sweep of his arm to
indicate all the W.A.A.F.’s and A.T.S. in the pub, ‘do you think girls
like that are going back to scrub floors and bring up kids on ten bob a
week?’

‘But why should they?’ asked Mac.

‘No reason at all, Mac,’ said Kenefick, ‘only your old one did it.’

‘Ah, but look here, Stevie, look here,’ said Mac, pretending to be cut
to the heart by Kenefick’s old-fashioned ideas, ‘you must admit that in
marriage there are hard cases.’

‘Hard cases?’ said Kenefick with the eyes popping behind the tin
specs. ‘There’s nothing else only hard cases. That’s what I’m trying
to knock into your thick head. There’s no such thing as a happy
marriage any more than there’s such a thing as a happy family. All you
can do is to make the best of what you have.’

‘Still, Stevie,’ said Long, beginning to stutter, ‘there’s marriages
you can make nothing out of.’

Longie was the third of the gang, a country boy, supposed to be from
somewhere in Limerick or Clare, though he never told us precisely
where. Like all country boys he never told you anything precisely, not
knowing what use you might make of it.

‘I’m not denying that either, Tim,’ said Kenefick.

‘But what are you going to do about them, man?’ shouted Mac, as if he
expected Kenefick to hand him a solution then and there.

‘I’m not going to do anything at all about them,’ said Kenefick. ‘What
do you think I am, a clinic or what?’

‘But look here,’ said Mac triumphantly, feeling that at last he had
Kenefick in a corner, ‘just suppose you’re going with a doll,’

‘There’s no need to suppose anything,’ said Kenefick, looking at the
floor. ‘I am.’

‘I’m not referring to anyone in particular,’ said Mac.

‘What she doesn’t know won’t harm her,’ said Kenefick.

‘Well,’ said Mac, full of concern for all poor suffering humanity,
‘supposing—God between us and all harm!—you found out there was
madness in her family?’

‘That’s for me to make sure of, Mac,’ said Kenefick, looking at him
sternly over the specs.

‘You’d be sure of a lot if you were sure of that, Stevie,’ said Long,
shaking his head and looking away in the distance.

‘You’d be sure of nothing if you married a doll that might walk out on
you in the morning,’ said Kenefick.

They got great value out of that landlady.

But then, all of a sudden, things took a nasty turn. Celia Kent and
the chemist had some sort of row, and she stopped going away for
week-ends with him. Kenefick, being a cold-blooded, realistic chap,
couldn’t refrain from pointing out to Mac that that was the way
affairs like that always ended up, but by this time Mac was in such a
state of illumination that even this didn’t worry him. He said the
fellow might have his own reasons.

But it stopped being a joke when Celia Kent said she was closing up the
house and taking a job in a factory. As I say, looking for digs in
wartime was no joke. The town we were in was packed like a
cattle-truck, and the only alternative was the place where I was, but
the factory was about three miles away. That was a terrible
joint. Every night, wet or fine, it was a pleasure to me to jump on my
bike and get away from it.

Kenefick offered to increase the rent, but Mrs Kent said it wouldn’t be
worth her while. For all her old gab she was cut up about whatever the
fellow in the chemist’s had done to her. That night when the three
Irish lads came into the pub by the Castle they were nearly scratching
one another’s eyes out. I can’t say I felt much sympathy for them. They
never showed any for me.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘maybe the next landlady ye get, ye won’t be so
critical.’

‘But what the hell are we to do, lads?’ said Mac, giving me a fishy
look with his squint eye. ‘This is getting frightfully serious.’

‘There’s nothing we can do, there’s nothing we can do,’ said Kenefick,
jingling the coins in his trousers pockets and looking at the
floor. You could see the man was hurt at the very suggestion that there
was anything he hadn’t thought of. ‘’Tisn’t money she wants—ye saw
that.’

‘What does she want?’ asked Mac.

‘She wants a man,’ said Kenefick glumly—and he didn’t put it as
nicely as that either. Kenefick believed in calling a spade a spade.

‘Ye might kidnap Clements and make him marry her,’ said I, but the
three of them looked at me the way you’d look at a man who made a joke
in a wakehouse.

‘Well,’ said Mac, half in joke and half in earnest, ‘what’s wrong with
one of ourselves?’

‘Couldn’t be done, Mac,’ said Kenefick, still studying the floor. ‘We
haven’t the knack of that sort of thing.’

‘Who was talking about that sort of thing?’ asked Mac. ‘What’s wrong
with the girl anyway?’

Kenefick raised his eyes slowly from the floor and took a good look at
Mac to see if he was in his right mind.

‘Are you suggesting one of us ought to marry her?’ he said.

‘No,’ said Mac, having it put up to him like that. ‘I only wanted to
know what was wrong with her.’

Kenefick put back his head and laughed till the tears came to his eyes.

‘Holy God!’ he said. ‘How is it none of us thought of that before?’

The very notion of it seemed to put them into good humour again.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘Mac always had a great liking for this country.’

‘Here, boys,’ said Mac, beginning to giggle, ‘do you think she would
have me? I’m not a bad-looking chap, sure I’m not.’

‘Damn fine-looking chap, Mac,’ said Kenefick. ‘Besides, she can always
get rid of you.’

At that Mac let on to be deeply offended.

‘What way is that to encourage a man?’ he said indignantly. ‘I’m only
suggesting it for the good of the crowd.’

‘But what matter, Mac?’ said Kenefick. ‘As you say yourself—a little
thing like that!’

At the same time I was surprised. I saw that for all his larking Mac
was more in earnest than he let on to be. He went off for a round of
drinks and started blackguarding with the barmaid. I don’t know what
there is about a squint that women like, but Mac could be popular
enough when the fancy took him.

‘Here, lads,’ he said, coming back with the drinks, ‘we’re forgetting
the spokesman of the party. Stevie is the right man for this job, a
fine, educated chap and all.’

‘Anything to oblige, Mac,’ said Kenefick, taking it in good part, ‘but
certain interested parties mightn’t understand.’

‘Good God!’ said Mac, letting on to be staggered. ‘Has anyone in this
place any sense of responsibility? You wouldn’t mind doing a little
thing like that for the sake of a friend, Jerry?’ he said to me.

‘I’d be delighted, Mac,’ said I. ‘Ye wouldn’t have a spare bed?’

‘What about Longie?’ said Kenefick, sprawling against the counter and
pulling the old hat down over his eyes. ‘We all know he’s from
Limerick, and no one ever went back there that could avoid it.’

We were all entering nicely into the spirit of the thing when he said
that. Longie didn’t laugh.

‘I think he’d be a lucky man that would get her, Stevie,’ he said with
a stammer.

‘Think so, Tim?’ asked Kenefick, getting serious too.

‘We talk as if the woman ought to be honoured,’ Longie said, raising
his eyebrows into his hair. ‘She’s beyond us.’ Then he shook his head
as if he didn’t know what was coming over the world and looked at his
drink. ‘Beyond us,’ he said.

That was one of the longest connected statements we ever got out of
Longie, so it cast a sort of gloom over the proceedings.

“You might be right, Tim,’ said Kenefick.

‘Would you marry her, Longie?’ said Mac excitedly.

‘I wouldn’t have the chance, Mac.’

‘But would you? Would you if you had?’ repeated Mac.

‘To tell you the truth, Mac,’ said Longie in a low voice, ‘I’d consider
myself honoured.’ Then he raised his brows, looked sadly at me as if I
was the one who was responsible for all the levity, shook his head once
or twice and repeated ‘Honoured.’

‘I’ll make you a fair offer so,’ said Mac. ‘We’ll toss for it.’

This time there was no larking about it. I could hardly credit it but
Mac was in earnest. He wanted to marry that girl and settle down in
that nice little house of hers, and be a respectable English husband,
only he was afraid that the rest of us might think he was a fool. What
he really wanted from Longie was encouragement. Longie looked at him
and gave a hearty laugh.

‘Winning or losing wouldn’t improve the chance of a fellow like me,
Mac,’ he said.

‘All right, all right,’ snapped Mac, getting impatient with his
obtuseness. ‘If one of us doesn’t succeed the other can have a
shot. But are you game?’

Longie gave a sort of lost look at him, at me, and then at Kenefick, as
if he was asking himself what you could do with such a foolish
man. Then he laughed again.

‘I’m game,’ he said.

‘Come outside so and we’ll toss,’ said Mac. ‘There’s no time like the
present.’

Kenefick leaned back against the counter with his arms stretched out,
his legs wide and one of them cocked up against it—trying to make
himself look twice the size. He looked at them like a judge, over the
specs and under the brim of the old hat.

‘Are ye in yeer right minds?’ he asked.

‘Never felt better, old man,’ said Mac, tossing his head and rubbing
his hands.

‘Ye’re not forgetting, by any chance, that the woman has a family
already?’ said Kenefick, looking from one to the other.

‘Oh, as you’re so fond of saying yourself,’ said Mac with a laugh, ‘—a
little thing like that!’

‘Oh, just as ye like,’ said Kenefick, and he finished his drink and
went out into the yard after them. It was easy to see he was
puzzled. The moonlight was coming in the back passage and a
W.A.A.F. and her fellow were sitting there, holding hands. It looked
grand out in the yard with the moonlight shining on the old tower of
the church.

Kenefick took out a coin, looking very grave. That was where the man’s
height came in: he couldn’t help taking advantage of any occasion that
made him feel six feet two.

‘Well, lads,’ he said, ‘what’s it to be?’

‘Harps,’ said Mac.

Kenefick flicked the coin in the air and then stepped aside. He took
out an old torch and flashed it on.

‘Well, Mac,’ he said, ‘you seem to be out of this anyway. Our turn
now, Tim!’

‘You have nothing to do with this, Stevie,’ said Longie after a moment,
raising his big paw.

‘Who said I had nothing to do with it?’ Kenefick asked as if he was
looking for a fight.

I tumbled at once to what he meant. He was leader of that gang, and he
wasn’t going to have them getting out of hand and doing cracked things
on their own. It’s extraordinary the way vanity takes small men.

‘You have other responsibilities,’ said Longie, and you could see he
was troubled about it.

‘Time enough to meet trouble when you come to it,’ said Kenefick. Then
he looked at me, threw back his head and brayed. ‘Holy God!’ he
said. ‘Look at Reilly’s face! He thinks we’re mad.’

‘I know what my landlady would say about ye if she saw ye now,’ I said.

‘Well, call, man!’ said Kenefick.

‘Heads, Stevie,’ said Longie.

Kenefick tossed again, and it came up harps.

Well,’ he said, turning on his heel, ‘that settles it.’

‘Yes,’ said I, ‘and if the girl saw ye ’twould settle ye as well.’

We had another drink, and then went home together up the Main Street,
past the Castle and the old church. I was walking with Kenefick. I
could see the man still didn’t know what to make of it, or how serious
the others were, or whether they were serious at all. I don’t think he
even quite knew what to make of himself, and that probably bothered him
most.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I saw some queer things in my time, but I never before
saw three man tossing for a doll. What the devil ailed Mac?’

‘Ah,’ said Kenefick, ‘fellows like him are kept down too much at
home. The Yanks are the same. Some of them take it out in drink and
more in women. I suppose ’tis only natural.’

‘It looked more like hysterics to me,’ said I.

He gave a lonesome sort of laugh out of him at that.

‘There might be something in that too,’ he said.

But he was right about one thing. From the time Longie and the Kent
woman started knocking round together, there was no more talk about
breaking up the happy home. The thing was a mystery to me for the man
had no conversation, but after the Czech and his W.A.A.F. I said it
couldn’t last.

‘Sure, of course it won’t last, man,’ said Mac with a superior smile.

‘I don’t know,’ said Kenefick. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Longie
is an interesting fellow. He has a mind of his own.’

‘What mind?’ said Mac. ‘Is it a half idiot of a country boy?’

Kenefick said nothing to that, but when Mac went out the back, he threw
back his head and bawled.

‘Holy God, Jerry,’ he said. ‘He’s jealous.’

Mind you, I didn’t believe him, but he was right. Celia Kent was the
sort of woman that when she likes a man always wants to give him
things, and from the time she started going out with Longie, she was
giving him pullovers and scarves and slippers, and all sorts of things
poor Longie didn’t want and didn’t know what to do with, but it drove
Mac wild. He said he was paying as much as Longie and he was entitled
to the same treatment. One night when Longie got two rashers of bacon
instead of one, he didn’t talk until supper was over, then he took his
hat and went over to Belmore on the bus and arranged to share with a
couple of other fellows there. The same night Kenefick came belting up
to my place and I gave notice. I didn’t mind how many rashers Longie
got so long as I got something to eat.

I was there for the wedding in the Town Hall. I was there too a couple
of months after when two bobbies called at the factory and marched
Longie off. It seems all the time he had a wife and a house full of
kids at home in Clare. Neither Kenefick nor myself heard of it till
after, and he called for me to go to the barrack with him. To give the
man his due he was very upset.

‘Oh, I might have guessed it, I might have guessed it,’ he said, as if
it was a miracle to him that he didn’t forsee it all. ‘And, merciful
God,’ he said, throwing out his arms like windmills and rolling his
eyes to Heaven, ‘can’t you imagine what the wife and kids are like?’

I could; only too well. A poor devil of a country boy, married at
eighteen, and knowing no more of life than a city kid, what chance has
he?

When we got to the barrack Long was after being released, and Kenefick
said we should cycle back home and tell the Kent girl. It was a spring
day with high clouds and a high wind, and there was Kenefick, bent over
the handlebars, shouting about Long.

‘What the hell did he want to marry her at all for?’ he said. ‘Couldn’t
he tell the girl the truth and go and live with her like anyone else?’

‘Ah,’ said I, ‘he had too much respect for her.’

‘Respect?’ said Kenefick. “What sort of respect is that? Couldn’t he
leave her to Mac?’

‘Maybe he liked the girl himself,’ said I.

‘He took a damn queer way of showing it,’ said Kenefick.

When Celia heard us she came running out, rubbing her hands in her
white coat. Kenefick put on a solemn air, drawing his shoulders up
round his scraggy neck, till all he wanted was the black tie.

‘Anything wrong, Stevie?’ she said in holy terror.

‘I’m afraid so, Celia,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Longie’s after
being arrested.’

‘Arrested?’ she said, getting pale. ‘What was it? Something political?’

‘Worse than that,’ said Kenefick, who didn’t see her point of view
about bombs at all. ‘It seems he’s married already.’

‘Tim?’ she said. ‘Tim married? But why didn’t he tell me?’

‘Why didn’t he tell me?’ said Kenefick, with his eyes beginning to pop,
implying that this was the sort of thing that always happened when
people wouldn’t ask his advice. ‘I could have told him he wouldn’t get
away with it.’

‘What will they do to him?’ she asked.

‘God knows,’ said Kenefick glumly. ‘He’s released now of course. He
might get six months.’

‘Released?’ she said. ‘But where is he?’

‘Walking mad, I suppose,’ said Kenefick with a toss of his head. Then
he gave her a sharp look. ‘You know, of course, that none of us had any
idea more than yourself,’

‘Oh,’ she said with a shrug, ‘I don’t mind. There’s no harm done. I was
a fool to take it seriously, that’s all. If he’d trusted me I should
have behaved just the same.’

Jerry is probably right,’ said Kenefick. ‘He says Longie thought too
much of you.’

‘Do you think so really?’ she said to me, but all the same she flushed
up. It was the same as the presents. Any little compliment, no matter
how silly it was, gave her pleasure. ‘Well, it sounds just dotty to me,
but if you say so I suppose I’d better go and look for him.’

When we got out in the road, Kenefick lifted the front wheel of his
bike and brought it down with a wallop on the road.

‘And to think I might be married to that girl!’ he said.

It sounded very queer coming from Kenefick, after all he said about
her.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘you could still, if it came to that.’

‘That one would go into the river after someone she liked,’ said
Kenefick.

She wouldn’t, and I was very surprised to hear a level-headed fellow
like Kenefick suggesting it, but it showed me the way the wind was
blowing. That evening when neither Longie nor Celia put in an
appearance, I almost began to believe the man was right about that
too. We made our own supper, went up to the pub, and then dossed
down. It was late when the other pair came in. They had an argument
about whether or not Longie was going to have his supper, and, judging
by the noises, she won. Then she brought us up cups of tea, Kenefick
was lying with a book on his knee and one arm under his head, and he
looked at her over the specs.

‘So you found him?’ he muttered.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘In Belmore, looking for lodgings! Of all the
dotty bastards! Just fancy! He said his luck was out. “It’s not your
luck,” I said. “It’s just that you’re dotty.”’ Then she laughed,
swaying on her heels with her hands behind her back. ‘Of all the silly
things to do to someone you say you like! That fellow’s barmy! Just
barmy! He says he wants to come back, and now I suppose I shall have
to keep going somehow till he comes out of gaol. Fancy me with a bloke
in gaol! That old cat, Mrs Drake, won’t half be hopping.’

Then they came up to bed, and for hours they continued talking. She
seemed to be speaking pretty sharp to him. I suppose girls like that
can nag, just like others. Then the sirens began, and the wailing
drifted away across the country, like a bloody big banshee, wringing
her hands.

‘I was the one that should have married her,’ says Kenefick all of a
sudden out of the darkness.

I knew what he meant all right. I felt a little bit that way myself. He
was the most independent of them. It was just as if some row he was
having inside himself was settled, and he wasn’t a foreigner any
more. Of course, Mac wouldn’t have agreed with that at all, but then
Mac would never be anything only a foreigner. As my old landlady said
‘You could see he wasn’t English.’

(1949)