MY FIRST PROTESTANT

It was when I was doing a line with Maire Daly that I first came to
know Winifred Jackson. She was my first Protestant. There were a
number in our locality, but they kept to themselves. The Jacksons were
no exception. The father was a bank manager, a tall, thin,
weary-looking man, and the mother a chubby, pious woman who had a lot
to do with religious bazaars. I met her once with Winifred and liked
her. They had one son, Ernest, a medical student who was forever
trying to get engaged to some trollop who had caught his fancy for the
moment—a spoiled pup if ever there was one.

But Winifred caused her parents far more concern than he did. They
probably felt she had to be taken seriously. She and Maire were both
learning the piano from old Streichl, and they became great
friends. The Dalys’ was a grand house in those days. The father was a
builder; a tall, thin, sardonic man who, after long and bitter
experience, had come to the conclusion that the whole town was in a
conspiracy against him, and that his family—all but his wife, whom he
regarded as a friendly neutral—was allied with the town. His wife was
a handsome woman, whose relations with the enemy were far closer than
her husband ever suspected. As for the traitors—Joe, Maire, Brenda,
and Peter, the baby—they had voices like trumpets from shouting one
another down and exceedingly dirty tongues to use when the vocal cords
gave out.

Joe was the eldest; a lad with a great head for whiskey and an even
better one for books if only he had taken them seriously, but it was a
convention of the Daly family to take nothing seriously but money and
advancement. Like a lot of other conventions this one didn’t bear much
relation to the fundamental facts. The only exception to the
convention was Peter, who later became a Jesuit, and Peter had
something in common with a submarine. He was a handsome lad with an
enormous brow and bright blue eyes; he sometimes saluted you with a
curt nod, but more often cut you dead, being submerged. For weeks he
sat in his room, reading with ferocity, and then suddenly one night
decided to come up for air and a little light conversation, and argued
like a mad dog until two in the morning. That, the Dalys said flatly,
was what reading did for you.

Yet it was a wonderfully pleasant house on a Sunday evening when the
children and their friends were in, and old Daly concluded an
armistice with us for the evening. There was always lashings of stuff;
the Dalys, for all their shrewdness, could do nothing in a small and
niggardly way. If you borrowed a cigarette from one of them, you were
quite liable to be given a box of a hundred, and attempting to repay
it might well be regarded as a deadly insult. Brenda, the younger
girl, slouched round with sandwiches and gibes; Joe sang “Even Bravest
Heart May Swell” with an adoring leer at “Loving smile of sister
kind”; while Maire, who played his accompaniment, muttered furiously:
“Of all the bloody nonsense! A puck in the gob was all that we ever
got.”

“Really,” Winifred said with a sigh as I saw her home one night, “they
are an extraordinary family.”

I didn’t take this as criticism. Having been brought up in a fairly
quiet home myself, I sometimes felt the same bewilderment.

“Isn’t that why you like them?” I asked.

“Is it, do you think?” she said with surprise. “I dare say you’re
right. I wish Daddy thought the same.”

“What does he object to?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing in particular,” she replied with a shrug. “Just that
they’re the wrong persuasion. Haven’t I nice girls of my own class to
mix with? Don’t I realize that everything said in that house is
reported in Confession? ... Is it, by the way?” she added eagerly.

“Not everything.”

“I hardly thought so,” she added dryly. “Anyhow, they can confess
everything I say to them.”

“You’re not afraid of being converted?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re welcome to try,” she said indifferently. “Really, people
are absurd about religion.”

I didn’t say that some such ambition was not far from Mrs. Daly’s
mind. I had seen for myself that she liked Winifred and thought she
was good company for Maire, and it was only natural that a woman so
big-hearted should feel it a pity that such a delightful girl dug with
the wrong foot. It probably wasn’t necessary to say it to Winifred.
There was little about the Dalys which she wasn’t shrewd enough to
observe for herself. That was part of their charm.

On the whole her parents did well to worry. What had begun as a
friendship between herself and Maire continued as a love affair
between herself and Joe. It came to a head during the summer holidays
when the Dalys took a house by the sea in Crosshaven and Winifred
stayed with them. I went down for occasional weekends, and found it
just like Cork, and even more so. By some mysterious mental process of
his own, Mr. Daly had worked out that, as part of a general
conspiracy, the property-owners of Crosshaven charged high rents and
then encouraged you to dissipate the benefits of your seaside holiday
by depriving you of your sleep, and insisted on everybody’s being in
bed at eleven o’clock of a summer night, so, with the connivance of
the neutral power, we all slipped out again when he was asleep, for a
dance in some neighbor’s house, a moonlight swim or row, or a walk
along the cliffs. I was surprised at the change in Winifred. When
first I had seen her, she was prim and demure, and, when anyone ragged
her out of this, inclined to be truculent and awkward. Now she had
grown to accept the ragging that was part of the Dalys’ life, and
evolved a droll and impudent expression which gave people the
impression that it was she who was making fun of them. Naturally, this
was far more effective.

“She’s coming on,” I said to Maire one evening when we were lying on
the cliffs.

“She’s getting more natural,” admitted Maire. “At first she’d disgrace
you. It wasn’t bad enough wanting to pay for her own tea, but when she
tried to give me the penny for the bus I thought I'd die with shame.
God, Dan, do you know I was so flabbergasted I took it from her.”

The picture of Maire taking the penny made me laugh outright, for she
too had all the Daly lavishness, and there was nothing flashy about
it; it was just that the story of their lives was written like that,
in large capital letters.

“It’s all very well for you,” said Maire, who didn’t know what I was
laughing at, “but that family of hers must be as mean as hell.”

“Not mean,” I said. “Just prudent.”

“Prudent! Pshaw!”

“Where is she now?”

“Spooning with Joe, I suppose. They’re doing a terrible line. She’d be
grand for him. She wouldn’t stand for any of his nonsense.”

“Is that the sort Joe is?” I asked, closing my eyes to enjoy the sun.

“He’s as big a bully as Father,” said Maire, busily tickling my nose
with a blade of grass. “God, the way Mother ruins that fellow!—she
expects us to let him walk on us. Aren’t Protestants great, Dan?”

“We'll see when her family hears she’s walking out with Joe,” I said.

“Oh, I believe they’re kicking up hell about that already,” she said,
throwing away one blade and picking up another to chew, a most
restless woman. I looked round and she was sitting with one leg under
her, staring away towards the sea. “They think he was put on to her by
the Pope.”

“And wasn’t he?”

“Is it Mother?” laughed Maire. “God help us, you wouldn’t blame
her. Two birds with one stone—a wife for Joe and a soul for God.”

I watched Winifred’s romance with sympathy, perhaps with a
reminiscence of Romeo and Juliet in my mind, perhaps already with a
feeling of revolt against the cliques and factions of a provincial
town. But for a time it almost appeared to mean more to me than my own
relationship with Maire.

One autumn evening when I was coming home from the office I saw
Winifred emerge from a house on Summerhill. She saw me too and waved,
before she came charging after me with her long legs flying. She
always remained leggy even in middle age; a tall, thin girl with a
long, eager face, blue eyes, and fair hair. When she caught up on me
she took my arm. That was the sort of thing I liked in her; the way
she ran, the way she grabbed your arm; her capacity for quick,
spontaneous moments of intimacy without any element of calculation in
them.

“How’s Joe?” I asked. “I haven’t seen him this past week.”

“No more have I,” she replied lightly.

“How’s that?” I asked gravely. “I thought you’d be giving us a night
by this time.”

“Ah, I don’t think it’ll ever come to that, Dan,” she replied in the
same tone, but without any regret that I could see.

“You're not going to disappoint us?” I asked, and I fancy there must
have been more feeling in my voice than in hers.

“Well, we’ve discussed it, of course,” she said in a businesslike
tone, but it seems impossible. He can’t marry me unless I become a
Catholic,”

“Can’t he?” I asked in surprise.

“Well, I suppose he couldn’t be stopped, but you know how it would
affect his business.”

“I dare say it would,” I said, and mind you, it was the first time the
idea of that had crossed my mind—I must have been even more
sentimental than I know, even now. “But you could get a dispensation.”

“Yes, if I agreed to have the children brought up as Catholics.”

“And wouldn’t you?”

“Really, Dan, how could I?” she asked wearily. “It’s all that the
parents threatened me with from the beginning. I suppose it was wrong
of me really to start anything with Joe, but I couldn’t walk out on
them now.”

“It’s your life, not theirs,” I pointed out.

“Even so, Dan, I have to consider their feelings, just as Joe has to
consider his mother’s. She wouldn’t like to see her grandchildren
brought up as Protestants, and they feel just the same. You may think
their opinions are wrong, but it would hurt them just as much as if
they were right.”

“I think the sooner people with opinions like those get hurt, the
better,” I said with a queer feeling of disappointment.

“Oh, I know,” she retorted, flaring up at me like a real little
termagant. “You're just like Joe. You’re the normal person. I’m the
freak; consequently, you expect me to make all the sacrifices.”

We were passing the Cross at the time, and I stopped dead and looked
at her. Up to this I had never, I thought, felt so intensely about
anything.

“If that’s the sort you think I am, you’re very much mistaken,” I
said. “If you were my girl I wouldn’t let God, man, or devil come
between us.”

Her face suddenly cleared and she gave my arm a little squeeze.

“You know, Dan, I almost wish I was,” she said in a tone that restored
all our intimacy.

Anyone who didn’t know her would have taken it for an invitation, but
even then, emotional as I felt, I knew it was nothing of the sort. I
had a great admiration for her; I knew she’d make an excellent wife
for Joe, and I couldn’t help feeling that there was something wrong
about letting religion come between them.

The following evening I went for a walk with Joe up the Western Road
and we had it out.

“I had a talk with Winnie last night,” I said. “I hope you won’t think
me interfering if I mention it to you.”

“I know anything you said would be kindly meant, Dan,” he replied
reasonably.

That was one nice thing about Joe. However much of a bully he might
be, you didn’t have to skirmish for position with him. It had
something to do with the capital letters that the Dalys used as if by
nature. They had no time for trifles.

“I think she’s very fond of you, Joe,” I said.

“I think the same, Dan,” he agreed warmly, “and ’tisn’t all on one
side. I needn’t tell you that.”

“You couldn’t come to some agreement with her about religion?” I
asked.

“I’d like to know what agreement we could come to,” he said. “I can
talk to you about it because you know what it means. You know what
would happen the business if I defied everybody and married her in a
register office.”

“But you want her to do it instead, Joe,” I said.

“’Tisn’t alike, Dan,” he said in his monumental way. “And you know
’tisn’t alike. This is a Catholic country. Her people haven’t the
power they had. It might mean ruin to me, but it would mean nothing to
her.”

“That only makes it worse,” I said. “You want her to give up a
religion that may mean something to her for one that doesn’t mean
anything to you, only what harm it can do you.”

“I never said it meant nothing to me,” he said without taking
offense. “But you’ve shifted your ground, Dan. That’s a different
proposition entirely. We were talking about my responsibility to
provide for a family.”

“Very well then,” I said, seeing what I thought a way out of it. “Tell
her that! Tell her what you’ve told me; that you'll marry her your way
and take the responsibility for what happens, or marry her her way and
let her take the responsibility.”

“Aren’t you forgetting that it would still be my responsibility, Dan?”
he asked, laying a friendly hand on my shoulder.

“And because it is, she won’t take it,” I said warmly.

“Ah, well, Dan,” he said, “she mightn’t be as intelligent as you about
it, and then I’d have to face the consequences.”

“That’s not the sort of girl she is at all,” I said.

“Dan,” he said whimsically, “I’m beginning to think you’re the one that
should marry her.”

“I’m beginning to think the same,” I said huffily.

We didn’t discuss the subject again, but I'd still take my oath that
if he had done what I suggested she’d have pitched her family to
blazes and married him. All a girl like that wanted was proof that he
cared enough for her to take a risk, to do the big thing, and that was
what Joe wouldn’t do. Capital letters aren’t enough where love is
concerned. I don’t blame him now, but at that age when you feel that a
friend should be everything I felt disillusioned in him.

Winifred wasted no tears over him, and in a few months she was walking
out in a practical way with a schoolteacher of her own persuasion. She
still called at the Dalys’, but things weren’t the same beween
them. Mrs. Daly was disappointed in her. It seemed strange to her that
an intelligent girl like Winifred couldn’t see the error of
Protestantism, and from the moment she knew there was to be no
spectacular public conversion, she gave it up as a bad job. She told me
she had never approved of mixed marriages, and for once she got me
really angry.

“All marriages are mixed marriages, Mrs. Daly,” I said
stiffly. “They’re all right when the mixture is all right.”

And then I began to notice that between Maire and myself the mixture
had ceased to be all right. It was partly the feeling that the house
was not the same without Winifred there. These things happen to people
and to families; some light in them goes out, and afterwards they are
never the same again. Maire said the change was in me; that I was
becoming conceited and argumentative; and she dropped me.

I was sore about that for months. It wasn’t Maire I missed so much as
the family. My own home life had been quiet, too quiet, and I had
loved the capital letters, the gaiety and bad tempers. I had now
drifted into another spell of loneliness, but loneliness with a new
and disturbing feeling of alienation, and Cork is a bad place for one
who feels like that. It was as though I could talk to nobody. One
Sunday, instead of going to Mass, I walked down the quays and along
the river. It was charming there, and I sat on a bench under the trees
and watched the reflection of the big painted houses and the cliffs
above them at the opposite side of the river, and wondered why I
hadn’t thought of doing this before. I made a vow that for the future
I'd bring a book. A long, leisurely book.

I had been doing that for months when one day I noticed a man who
turned up each Sunday about the same time as myself. I knew him. He
was a teacher from the South Side, with a big red face and a wild mop
of hair. We chatted, and the following Sunday when we met again he
said in an offhand way:

“You seem to be very fond of ships, Mr. Hogan?”

“Mr. Reilly,” I said, “those that go down to the sea in ships are to
me the greatest wonder of the Lord.”

“Oh, is that so?” he said without surprise. “I just wondered when I
saw you here so much.”

That morning I was feeling a bit depressed, and I didn’t care much who
knew my reason for being there.

“It happens to be the most convenient spot to the church where my
family think I am at the moment,” I said with a touch of bitterness.

“I fancied that from the book you have under your arm,” he said. “I
wouldn’t let too many people see that book if I was you. They might
misunderstand you.” Then as he noticed another man we had both seen
before come towards us, he added with amusement: “I wonder would he,
by any chance, be one of us too?”

As a matter of fact, he was. It was remarkable, after we all got to
know one another, the number of educated men who found their way down
the Marina Walk on Sunday mornings. Reilly called us “the Atheists’
Club” but that was only swank, because there was only one
atheist. Reilly and myself were agnostics, and the rest were
anticlericals or young fellows with scruples. All this revealed itself
gradually in our Sunday-morning arguments. It was also revealed to me
that I was not the only young man in town who was lonely and unhappy.

After Winifred married I visited her a few times, and her husband and
I got on well together. He was a plump, jolly, good-humored man, fond
of his game of golf and his glass of whiskey, and he and she seemed to
hit it off excellently. They had two sons. Joe Daly never gave her any
cause to regret him, because, though his business prospered, he proved
a handful for the girl who married him. Drink was his trouble and he
bore it with great dignity. At one time half the police in Cork seemed
to be exclusively occupied in preventing him from being charged with
drunkenness, and, except for one small fine for being on unlicensed
premises after hours—a young policeman was to blame and he was
transferred immediately—he never was charged.

But, of course, we all drifted apart. Ten years later when I heard
that Winifred’s husband was dead, I went to the funeral for the sake
of old times, but I knew nobody there and slipped away again before it
reached the cemetery.

A couple of months later I strolled back from the Atheists’ Club one
Sunday morning as Mass was ending to pick up two orthodox
acquaintances who I knew would attend it. It was a sunny day. The
church, as usual, was crammed, and I stood on the pavement watching
the crowds pour down the steps. Suddenly I glimpsed Winifred passing
under the portico at right angles in the direction of the back
entrance. She had the two children with her. It was the sight of these
that convinced me I wasn’t imagining it all. I made a dash through the
crowd to reach her, and when she saw me her face lit up. She caught my
hands—it was one of those instinctive gestures that at once brought
back old times to me.

“Dan!” she cried in astonishment. “What on earth brings you here?”

“Young woman,” I said, “I’m the one that should ask that question.”

“Oh, that’s a long story,” she said with a laugh. “If you’re coming
back my way I might tell you. ... Run along, Willie!” she called to
the elder boy, and he and his brother went ahead of us up the steps.

“So you took the high jump!” I said.

“‘Ah, there’s nothing to keep me back now,” she said with a
shrug. “Daddy and Mummy are dead, and you know how much Ernest cares.”

“Well, you still seem quite cheerful,” I said. “Almost as cheerful as
a roaring agnostic like me.”

“Ah, but look at you!” she said mockingly, taking my hand again quite
without self-consciousness. “A bachelor, with nothing in the world to
worry you! Why on earth wouldn’t you be cheerful?”

I nearly told her why but thought better of it. It was complicated
enough as it was. But for the first time I understood how her life had
gone awry. A woman always tries to give her children whatever it is
she feels she has missed in life. Sometimes you don’t even know what
it is till you see what she is trying to give them. Perhaps she
doesn’t know herself. With some it’s money, with others it’s
education; with others still, it is love. And the kids never value it,
of course. They have never really known the loss of it.

And there, as we sat over our drinks in the front room of her little
house, two old cronies, I thought how strange it was that the same
thing should have blown us in opposite directions. A man and woman in
search of something are always blown apart, but it’s the same wind
that blows them.


(1951)
First Published: Traveller’s Samples; 1951
Source: Collected Stories; 1981