THE FACE OF EVIL I could never understand all the old talk about how hard it is to be a saint. I was a saint for quite a bit of my life and I never saw anything hard in it. And when I stopped being a saint, it wasn’t because the life was too hard. I fancy it is the sissies who make it seem like that. We had quite a few of them in school, fellows whose mothers in- tended them to be saints, and who hadn’t the nerve to be anything else. I never enjoyed the society of chaps who wouldn’t commit sin for the same reason that they wouldn’t dirty their new suits. That was never what sanctity meant to me, and I doubt if it is what it means to other saints. The companions I liked were the tough gang down the road, and I enjoyed going down of an evening and talking with them under the gaslamp about football matches and school, even if they did sometimes say things I wouldn’t say myself. I was never one for criticizing; I had enough to do criticizing myself, and I knew they were decent chaps and didn’t really mean much harm by the things they said about girls. No, for me the main attraction of being a saint was the way it always gave you something to do. You could never say you felt time hanging on your hands. It was like having a room of your own to keep tidy; you’d scour it, and put everything neatly back in its place, and within an hour or two it was beginning to look as untidy as ever. It was a full-time job that began when you woke and stopped only when you fell asleep. I would wake in the morning, for instance, and think how nice it was to lie in bed, and congratulate myself on not having to get up for another half-hour. That was enough. Instantly a sort of alarm clock would go off in my mind; the mere thought that 1 could enjoy half an hour’s comfort would make me aware of an alternative, and I’d begin an argument with myself. I had a voice in me that was almost the voice of a stranger, the way it nagged and jeered. Some- times I could almost visualize it, and then it took on the appearance of a fat and sneering teacher ] had some years before at school — a man | really hated. 1 hated that voice. It always began in the same way, smooth and calm and dangerous. I could see the teacher rubbing his fat hands and smirking. ‘Don’t get alarmed, boy. You’re in no hurry. You have another half-hour.’ ‘I know well I have another half-hour,’ I would reply, trying to keep my temper. ‘What harm am I doing? I’m only imagining I’m down in a submarine. Is there anything wrong in that?’ ‘Oho, not the least in the world. I’d say there’s been a heavy frost. Just the sort of morning when there’s ice in the bucket.’ ‘And what has that to do with it? ‘Nothing, I tell you. Of course, for people like you it’s easy enough in the summer months, but the least touch of frost in the air soon makes you feel different. I wouldn’t worry trying to keep it up. You haven’t the stuff for this sort of life at all.’ And gradually my own voice grew weaker as that of my tormentor grew stronger, till all at once I would strip the clothes from off myself and lie in my nightshirt, shivering and muttering, ‘So I haven’t the stuff in me, haven’t I?’ Then I would go downstairs before my parents were awake, strip and wash in the bucket, ice or no ice, and when Mother came down she would cry in alarm, ‘Child of Grace, what has you up at this hour? Sure, ’tis only half past seven.’ She almost took it as a reproach to herself, poor woman, and I couldn’t tell her the reason, and even if I could have done so, I wouldn’t. How could you say to anybody ‘I want to be a saint’? Then I went to Mass and enjoyed again the mystery of the streets and lanes in the early morning; the frost which made your feet clatter off the walls at either side of you like falling masonry, and the different look that everything wore, as though, like yourself, it was all cold and scrubbed and new. In the winter the lights would still be burning red in the little cottages, and in summer they were ablaze with sunshine so that their interiors were dimmed to shadows. Then there were the different people, all of whom recognized one another, like Mrs MacEntee, who used to be a stewardess on the boats, and Macken, the tall postman, people who seemed ordinary enough when you met them during the day, but carried something of their mystery with them at Mass, as though they, too, were reborn. I can’t pretend I was ever very good at school, but even there it was a help. I might not be clever, but I had always a secret reserve of strength to call on in the fact that I had what I wanted, and that beside it I wanted nothing. People frequently gave me things, like fountain pens or pencil-sharpeners, and I would suddenly find myself becoming attached to them and immediately know I must give them away, and then feel the richer for it. Even without throwing my weight around I could help and protect kids younger than myself, and yet not become involved in their quarrels. Not to become involved, to remain detached—that was the great thing; to care for things and for people, yet not to care for them so much that your happiness became dependent on them. It was like no other hobby, because you never really got the better of yourself, and all at once you would suddenly find yourself reverting to childish attitudes; flaring up in a wax with some fellow, or sulking when Mother asked you to go for a message, and then it all came back; the nagging of the infernal alarm clock which grew louder with every moment until it incarnated as a smooth, fat, jeering face. ‘Now, that’s the first time you’ve behaved sensibly for months, boy. That was the right way to behave to your mother.’ ‘Well, it _was_ the right way. Why can’t she let me alone, once in a while? I only want to read. I suppose I’m entitled to a bit of peace some time?’ ‘Ah, of course you are, my dear fellow. Isn’t that what I’m saying? Go on with your book! Imagine you’re a cowboy, riding to the rescue of a beautiful girl in a cabin in the woods, and let that silly woman go for the messages herself. She probably hasn’t long to live anyway, and when she dies you’ll be able to do all the weeping you like.’ And suddenly tears of exasperation would come to my eyes and I’d heave the story book to the other side of the room and shout back at the voice that gave me no rest, ‘Cripes, I might as well be dead and buried. I have no blooming life.’ After that I would apologize to Mother (who, poor woman, was more embarrassed than anything else and assured me that it was all her fault), go on the message, and write another tick in my notebook against the heading of ‘Bad Temper’ so as to be able to confess it to Father O’Regan when I went to Confession on Saturday. Not that he was ever severe with me, no matter what I did; he thought I was the last word in holiness, and was always asking me to pray for some special intention of his own. And though I was depressed, I never lost interest, for no matter what I did I could scarcely ever reduce the total of times I had to tick off that item in my notebook. Oh, I don’t pretend it was any joke, but it did give you the feeling that your life had some meaning; that inside you, you had a real source of strength; that there was nothing you could not do without, and yet remain sweet, self-sufficient, and content. Sometimes too, there was the feeling of something more than mere content, as though your body were transparent, like a window, and light shone through it as well as on it, onto the road, the houses, and the playing children, as though it were you who was shining on them, and tears of happiness would come into my eyes, and I would hurl myself among the playing children just to forget it. But, as I say, I had no inclination to mix with other kids who might be saints as well. The fellow who really fascinated me was a policeman’s son named Dalton, who was easily the most vicious kid in the locality. The Daltons lived on the terrace above ours. Mrs Dalton was dead; there was a younger brother called Stevie, who was next door to an imbecile, and there was something about that kid’s cheerful grin that was even more frightening than the malice on Charlie’s broad face. Their father was a tall, melancholy man, with a big black moustache, and the nearest thing imaginable to one of the Keystone cops. Everyone was sorry for his loss in his wife, but you knew that if it hadn’t been that it would have been something else—maybe the fact that he hadn’t lost her. Charlie was only an additional grief. He was always getting into trouble, stealing and running away from home; and only his father’s being a policeman prevented his being sent to an industrial school. One of my most vivid recollections is that of Charlie’s education. I’d hear a shriek, and there would be Mr Dalton, dragging Charlie along the pavement to school, and whenever the names his son called him grew a little more obscene than usual, pausing to give Charlie a good going-over with the belt which he carried loose in his hand. It is an exceptional father who can do this without getting some pleasure out of it, but Mr Dalton looked as though even that were an additional burden. Charlie’s screams could always fetch me out. "What is it?” Mother would cry after me. ‘Ah, nothing. Only Charlie Dalton again.’ ‘Come in! Come in!’ ‘I won’t be seen.’ ‘Come in, I say. ’Tis never right.’ And even when Charlie uttered the most atrocious indecencies, she only joined her hands as if in prayer and muttered, ‘The poor child! The poor unfortunate child!’ I never could understand the way she felt about Charlie. He wouldn’t have been Charlie if it hadn’t been for the leatherings and the threats of the industrial school. Looking back on it, the funniest thing is that I seemed to be the only fellow on the road he didn’t hate. The rest were all terrified of him, and some of the kids would go a mile to avoid him. He was completely unclassed: being a policeman’s son, he should have been way up the social scale, but he hated the respectable kids worse than the others. When we stood under the gaslamp at night and saw him coming up the road, everybody fell silent. He looked suspiciously at the group, ready to spring at anyone’s throat if he saw the shadow of offence; ready even when there wasn’t a shadow. He fought like an animal, by instinct, without judgement, and without ever reckoning the odds, and he was terribly strong. He wasn’t clever; several of the older chaps could beat him to a frazzle when it was merely a question of boxing or wrestling, but it never was that with Dalton. He was out for blood and usually got it. Yet he was never that way with me. We weren’t friends. All that ever happened when we passed one another was that I smiled at him and got a cold, cagey nod in return. Sometimes we stopped and exchanged a few words, but it was an ordeal because we never had anything to say to one another. It was like the signalling of ships, or more accurately, the courtesies of great powers. I tried, like Mother, to be sorry for him in having no proper home, and getting all those leatherings, but the feeling which came uppermost in me was never pity but respect: respect for a fellow who had done all the things I would never do: stolen money, stolen bicycles, run away from home, slept with tramps and criminals in barns and doss-houses, and ridden without a ticket on trains and on buses. It filled my imagination. I have a vivid recollection of one summer morning when I was going up the hill to Mass. Just as I reached the top and saw the low, sandstone church perched high up ahead of me, he poked his bare head round the corner of a lane to see who was coming. It startled me. He was standing with his back to the gable of a house; his face was dirty and strained; it was broad and lined, and the eyes were very small, furtive and flickering, and sometimes a sort of spasm would come over them and they flickered madly for half a minute on end. ‘Hullo, Charlie,’ I said. ‘Where were you?’ ‘Out,’ he replied shortly. ‘All night?’ I asked in astonishment. ‘Yeh,’ he replied with a nod. ‘What are you doing now?’ He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Waiting till my old bastard of a father goes out to work and I can go home.’ His eyes flickered again, and selfconsciously he drew his hand across them as though pretending they were tired. ‘I’ll be late for Mass,’ I said uneasily. ‘So long.’ ‘So long.’ That was all, but all the time at Mass, among the flowers and the candles, watching the beautiful, sad old face of Mrs MacEntee and the plump, smooth, handsome face of Macken, the postman, I was haunted by the image of that other face, wild and furtive and dirty, peering round a corner like an animal looking from its burrow. When I came out, the morning was brilliant over the valley below me; the air was punctuated with bugle calls from the cliff where the barrack stood, and Charlie Dalton was gone. No, it wasn’t pity I felt for him. It wasn’t even respect. It was almost like envy. Then, one Saturday evening, an incident occurred which changed my attitude to him; indeed, changed my attitude to myself, though it wasn’t until a long time after that I realized it. I was on my way to Confession, preparatory to Communion next morning. I always went to Confession at the parish church in town where Father O’Regan was. As I passed the tramway terminus at the Cross, I saw Charlie sitting on the low wall above the Protestant church, furtively smoking the butt-end of a cigarette which someone had dropped getting on the tram. Another tram arrived as I reached the Cross, and a number of people alighted and went off in different directions. I crossed the road to Charlie and he gave me his most distant nod. ‘Hullo,’ ‘Hullo, Cha. Waiting for somebody?’ ‘No. Where are you off to?’ ‘Confession.’ ‘Huh.’ He inhaled the cigarette butt deeply and then tossed it over his shoulder into the sunken road beneath without looking where it alighted. ‘You go a lot.’ ‘Every week,’ I said modestly. ‘Jesus!’ he said With a short laugh, ‘I wasn’t there for twelve months,’ I shrugged my shoulders. As I say, I never went in much for criticizing others, and, anyway, Charlie wouldn’t have been Charlie if he had gone to Confession every week. ‘Why do you go so often?’ he asked challengingly. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said doubtfully.‘I suppose it keeps you out of harm’s way.’ ‘But you don’t do any harm,’ he growled, just as though he were defending me against someone who had been attacking me. ‘Ah, we all do harm.’ ‘But, Jesus Christ, you don’t do anything,’ he said almost angrily, and his eyes flickered again in that curious nervous spasm, and almost as if they put him into a rage, he drove his knuckles into them. ‘We all do things,’ I said. ‘Different things.’ ‘Well, what do you do?” ‘I lose my temper a lot,’ I admitted. ‘Jesus!’ he said again and rolled his eyes. ‘It’s a sin just the same,’ I said obstinately. ‘A sin? Losing your temper? Jesus, I want to kill people. I want to kill my bloody old father, for one. I will too, one of those days. Take a knife to him.’ ‘I know, I know,’ I said, at a loss to explain what I meant. ‘But that’s just the same thing as me.’ I wished to God I could talk better. It wasn’t any missionary zeal. I was excited because for the first time I knew that Charlie felt about me exactly as I felt about him, with a sort of envy, and I wanted to explain to him that he didn’t have to envy me, and that he could be as much a saint as I was just as I could be as much a sinner as he was. I wanted to explain that it wasn’t a matter of tuppence ha’penny worth of sanctity as opposed to tuppence worth that made the difference, that it wasn’t what you did, but what you lost by doing it, that mattered. The whole Cross had become a place of mystery; the grey light, drained of warmth; the trees hanging over the old crumbling walls, the tram, shaking like a boat when someone mounted it. It was the way I sometimes felt afterwards with a girl, as though everything about you melted and fused and became one with a central mystery. ‘But when what you do isn’t any harm?’ he repeated angrily, with that flickering of the eyes I had almost come to dread. ‘Look, Cha,’ I said, ‘you can’t say a thing isn’t any harm. Everything is harm. It might be losing my temper with me and murder with you, like you say, but it would only come to the same thing. If I show you something, will you promise not to tell?’ ‘Why would I tell?’ ‘But promise.’ ‘Oh, all right.’ Then I took out my little notebook and showed it to him. It was extraordinary, and I knew it was extraordinary. I found myself, sitting on that wall, showing a notebook I wouldn’t have shown to anyone else in the world to Charlie Dalton, a fellow any kid on the road would go a long way to avoid, and yet I had the feeling that he would understand it as no one else would do. My whole life was there, under different headings—Disobedience, Bad Temper, Bad Thoughts, Selfishness, and Laziness—and he looked through quietly, studying the ticks I had placed against each count. ‘You see,’ I said, ‘you talk about your father, but look at all the things I do against my mother. I know she’s a good mother, but if she’s sick or if she can’t walk fast when I’m in town with her, I get mad just as you do. It doesn’t matter what sort of mother or father you have. It’s what you do to yourself when you do things like that.’ ‘What do you do to yourself?” he asked quietly. ‘It’s hard to explain. It’s only a sort of peace you have inside yourself. And you can’t be just good, no matter how hard you try. You can only do your best, and if you do your best you feel peaceful inside. It’s like when I miss Mass of a morning. Things mightn’t be any harder on me that day than any other day, but I’m not as well able to stand up to them. It makes things a bit different for the rest of the day. You don’t mind it so much if you get a hammering. You know there’s something else in the world besides the hammering.’ I knew it was a feeble description of what morning Mass really meant to me, the feeling of strangeness which lasted throughout the whole day, and reduced reality to its real proportions, but it was the best I could do. I hated leaving him. ‘I’ll be late for Confession,’ I said regretfully, getting off the wall. ‘I’ll go down a bit of the way with you,’ he said, giving a last glance at my notebook and handing it back to me. I knew he was being tempted to come to Confession along with me, but my pleasure had nothing to do with that. As I say, I never had any missionary zeal. It was the pleasure of understanding rather than that of conversion. He came down the steps to the church with me and we went in together. I’ll wait here for you,’ he whispered, and sat in one of the back pews. It was dark there; there were just a couple of small, unshaded lights in the aisles above the confessionals. There was a crowd of old women outside Father O’Regan’s box, so I knew I had a long time to wait. Old women never got done with their confessions. For the first time I felt it long, but when my turn came it was all over in a couple of minutes: the usual ‘Bless you, my child. Say a prayer for me, won’t you?’ When I came out, I saw Charlie Dalton sitting among the old women outside the confessional, waiting to go in. I felt very happy about it in a quiet way, and when I said my penance I said a special prayer for him. It struck me that he was a long time inside, and I began to grow worried. Then he came out, and I saw by his face that it was no good. It was the expression of someone who is saying to himself with a sort of evil triumph, ‘There, I told you what it was like.’ ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered, giving his belt a hitch. ‘You go home.’ ‘I’ll wait for you,’ I said. ‘I’ll be a good while.’ I knew then Father O’Regan had given him a heavy penance, and my heart sank. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I’ll wait.’ And it was only long afterwards that it occurred to me that I might have taken one of the major decisions of my life without being aware of it. I sat at the back of the church in the dusk and waited for him. He was kneeling up in front, before the altar, and I knew it was no good. At first I was too stunned to feel. All I knew was that my happiness had all gone. I admired Father O’Regan; I knew that Charlie must have done things that I couldn’t even imagine—terrible things—but the resentment grew in me. What right had Father O’Regan or anyone to treat him like that? Because he was down, people couldn’t help wanting to crush him further. For the first time in my life I knew real temptation. I wanted to go with Charlie and share his fate. For the first time I realized that the life before me would have complexities of emotion which I couldn’t even imagine. The following week he ran away from home again, took a bicycle, broke into a shop to steal cigarettes, and, after being arrested seventy-five miles from Cork in a little village on the coast, was sent to an industrial school. (1954) Source: _Masculine Protest and other stories_, 1972, pp. 23-34