FISH FOR FRIDAY

Ned McCarthy, the teacher in a village called Abbeyduff, was wakened
one morning by his sister-in-law. She was standing over him with a
cynical smile and saying in a harsh voice:

“Wake up! ’Tis started.’

“What’s started, Sue?’ Ned asked wildly, jumping up in bed with an
anguished air.

‘Why?’ she asked dryly. ‘Are you after forgetting already? There’s no
immediate hurry, but you’d better get the doctor.’

‘Oh, the doctor!’ sighed Ned, remembering all at once why he was
sleeping alone in the little back room and why that unpleasant female
was in the house. She only came when Kitty was having a baby, and she
went round like a Redemptorist missioner on an annual retreat.

He dressed in a hurry, said a few words of encouragement to Kitty,
talked to the kids while swallowing a cup of tea, and got out the
car. He was a well-built man in his early forties with fair hair and
pale grey eyes, nervous and excitable under his placid manner. He had
plenty to be excited about. The house, for instance. It was a fine
house, an old shooting lodge, set back at a distance of two fields
from the main road, with a lawn leading to the river and steep gardens
climbing the wooded hill behind. It was an ideal house, in fact, the
sort he had always dreamed of, where Kitty could keep a few hens and
he could garden and get in a bit of shooting. But scarcely had he
settled in than he realized it was a mistake. The loneliness of the
long evenings when dusk settled on the valley was something he had
never even imagined.

He had lamented it to Kitty, and it was she who had suggested the car,
but even this had drawbacks because it heeded as much attention as a
baby. When Ned was alone in it he chatted to it encouragingly; when it
stopped he kicked it viciously, and the villagers swore he had
actually been seen stoning it. This and the fact that he sometimes
talked to himself when he hadn’t the car to talk to had given rise to
the legend that he had a slate loose.

He drove down the lane and across the footbridge to the main
road. Then he stopped before the public-house at the corner which his
friend, Tom Hurley, owned.

‘Anything you want in town, Tom?’ he shouted.

“What’s that, Ned?’ said a voice from within, and Tom himself, a
small, round, russet-faced man came out with his wrinkled grin.

‘I have to go to town. Is there anything you want?’

‘No, no, Ned, I think not, thanks,’ Tom said in his hasty way, all the
words trying to come out together. ‘All we wanted was fish for the
dinner, and the Jordans are bringing that.’

‘I’d sooner them than me,’ Ned said, making a face.

‘Och, isn’t it the devil, Ned?’ Tom said with a look of real
anguish. ‘the damn smell hangs round the shop the whole day. But what
the hell else can you do on a Friday? Is it a spin you’re going for?’

‘No, for the doctor,’ said Ned.

‘Och, I see,’ said Tom, beginning to beam. His expression exaggerated
almost to caricature whatever emotion his interlocutor might be
expected to feel. ‘Ah, please God, it’ll go off all right. There’s no
hurry, is there? Come in and have a drop.’

No, thanks, Tom, Ned said with resignation. ‘I’d better Not start so
early.’

‘Ah, hell to your soul, you will,’ fussed Tom. ‘It won’t take you two
minutes. Hard enough it was for me to keep you sober the time the
first fellow arrived.’

Ned got out of the car and followed Tom inside.

‘That’s right, Tom, he said in surprise. ‘I’d forgotten about
that. Who was it was here?’

‘Och, God, you had half the countryside in,’ Tom said, shaking his
head. ‘It was a terrible night, a terrible night. You had Jack Martin,
the teacher, and Owen Hennessey, and that publican friend of yours
from town—what’s that his name is?—Cronin. That’s right, Larry
Cronin. Ye must have dropped just where ye stood, glasses and all. The
milkman found ye next morning littering the floor, and ye never even
locked the doors after ye. Ye could have had my licence taken from
me.’

‘Do you know, I’d forgotten about that completely,’ said Ned with a
pleased smile. ‘My memory isn’t what it was. I suppose we’re getting
old.’

‘Och, well, tis never the same after the first,’ said Tom, and he
poured a large drink for Ned and a few spoonfuls for himself. ‘God,
isn’t it astonishing what the first one does for you, Ned?’ he added
in his eager way, bending across the counter. ‘You feel you’re getting
a new lease of life. And by the time the second comes you’re beginning
to wonder will the damn thing ever stop. God forgive me for talking,’
he said, lowering his voice. ‘Herself would have my life if she heard
me.’

‘Still, there’s a lot of truth in it, Tom,’ said Ned, relieved to feel
that the gloom in his mind was nothing unusual. ‘It’s not the same
thing at all. And I suppose that even that is only an illusion. Like
when you fall in love and think you’re getting first prize in the
lottery, while all the time it’s only Nature’s little way of putting
you on the spot.’

‘Ah, well, they say it all comes back when you’re a grandfather,’
said Tom with a chuckle.

‘But who wants to be a grandfather?’ asked Ned, already feeling sorry
for himself with his home upset, that unpleasant woman bossing the
house and more money to be found somewhere.

He drove off but his mood had darkened. It was a grand bit of road
between his house and the town, with the river below him on the left,
and the hills at either side with the first faint wash of green on
them like an unfinished water-colour. Walking or driving, it was a
real pleasure to him because of the prospect of civilization at the
other end. The town was only a little run-down port, but it had shops
and pubs and villas with electric light, and a water supply that did
not give out in May, and there were all sorts of interesting people to
be met there. But the prospect didn’t cheer him now. He realized that
the rapture of being a father doesn’t go on repeating itself and it
gave him no pleasure at all to look forward to being a grandfather. He
felt decrepit enough the way he was.

At the same time he was haunted by some memory of days when he was not
decrepit but careless and gay. He had been a Volunteer and roamed the
hills for months with a column, wondering where he would spend the
night. Then it had all seemed uncomfortable and dangerous enough, but
at least he had felt free. Maybe, like an illusion of re-birth at
finding himself a father, it was only an illusion of freedom, but it
was terrible to think he wouldn’t be able to feel it any more. It was
associated in his mind with high hills and wide views, but now his
life had descended into a valley like the one he was driving along. He
had descended into it by the quiet path of duty—a steady man, a
sucker for responsibilities, treasurer of the Hurling Club, treasurer
of the Republican Party, secretary of three other organizations. He
talked to the car as he did whenever something was too much on his
mind.

‘It’s all Nature, old girl,’ he said despondently. ‘It gives you a set
of illusions, but all the time it’s only bending you to its own
purposes as if you were a cow or a tree. You’d be better off with no
illusions at all. No illusions about anything! That way, Nature
wouldn’t get you quite so soon.’

Being nervous, he did not like to drive through the town. He did it
when he had to, but it made him flustered and fidgety so that he
missed seeing who was on the streets, and a town was nothing without
people. He usually parked his car outside Cronin’s pub on the way in
and walked the rest of the way. Larry Cronin was an old comrade of
revolutionary days who had married into the pub.

He went in to tell Larry. This was quite unnecessary as Larry knew
every car for miles around and was well aware of Ned’s little
weakness, but it was a habit and Ned was a man of more habits than he
realized himself.

‘I’m leaving the old bus for half an hour, Larry,’ he called through
the door in a plaintive tone that expressed regret for the
inconvenience he was causing Larry and grief for the burden that was
being put on himself.

‘Ah, come in, man, come in!’ cried Larry, a tall, engaging man with a
handsome face and a sunny smile that was quite sincere if Larry liked
you and damnably hypocritical if he didn’t. His mouth was like a
showcase with the array of false teeth in it. ‘What has you out at
this hour of the morning?’

‘Oh, Nature, Nature,’ Ned said with a laugh, digging his hands into his
trouser pockets.

‘How do you mean, Nature?’ asked Larry, who did not understand the
allusive ways of intellectuals but admired them none the less.

‘Kitty, I mean. I’m going for the doctor.’

‘Ah, the blessings of God on you!’ Larry said jovially. ‘Is this the
third or the fourth? You lose count after a while, don’t you? You
might as well have a resiner as you’re in. Ah, you will, you will, God
blast you! ’Tis hard on the nerves. That was a great night we had the
time the boy was born.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ said Ned, beaming at the way people remembered it. ‘I was
only talking to Tom Hurley about it.’

‘Ah, what the hell does Hurley know about it?’ Larry asked
contemptuously, pouring out a half tumbler of whiskey with the air of
a lord. ‘The bloody man went to bed at two. That fellow is too
cautious to be good. But Jack Martin gave a great account of
himself. Do you remember? The whole first act of _Tosca_, orchestra and
all. “The southern sunlight” he called it. You didn’t see Jack since
he came back?’

“Was Jack away?’ Ned asked in surprise. He felt easier now, being on
the doctor’s doorstep, and anyhow he knew the doctor would only be
waiting.

‘Ah, God he was,’ said Larry, throwing his whole weight on the
counter. ‘In Paris, would you believe it? He’s on the batter again, of
course. Wait till you hear him on Paris! ’Tis only the mercy of God if
Father Clery doesn’t get to hear of it.’

“That’s where you’re wrong, Larry,’ Ned said with a smile. ‘Martin
doesn’t have to mind himself at all. Father Clery will do all that for
him. If an inspector comes round while Martin is on it, Father Clery
will take him out to look at the antiquities.’

‘Begod, you might be right, Ned,’ said Larry. ‘But you or I couldn’t do
it. God Almighty, man, we’d be slaughtered alive. ’Tisn’t worried you
are about Kitty,’ he asked gently.

‘Ah, no, Larry,’ said Ned. ‘It’s only that at times like this a man
feels himself of no importance. A messenger boy would do as well.
We’re all dragged down to the same level.’

‘And damn queer we’d be if we weren’t,’ said Larry with his lazy,
sunny smile, the smile Ned remembered from the day Larry threw a Mills
bomb into a lorry of soldiers. ‘Unless you’d want to have the bloody
baby yourself.’

‘Ah, it’s not only that, Larry,’ Ned said gloomily. ‘It’s not that at
all. But you can’t help wondering what it’s all about.’

“Why, then indeed, that’s true for you,’ said Larry, who, as a result
of his own experience in the pub had developed a gloomy and
philosophic view of human existence. After all, a man can’t be looking
at schizophrenia for ten hours a day without wondering if it’s all
strictly necessary. ‘And ’tis at times like this you notice it—men
coming and going like the leaves on the trees. Ah, God, ’tis a great
mystery.’

But that wasn’t what Ned was thinking about either. He was thinking of
his own lost youth and what had happened to him.

‘That’s not what I mean, Larry,’ he said, drawing neat figures on the
counter with the bottom of his glass. ‘What I mean is you can’t help
wondering what happened yourself. We knew one another when we were
young, and look at us now, forty odd and our lives are over and we
have nothing to show for them. It’s as if when you married some good
went out of you.’

‘Small loss as the fool said when he lost Mass,’ retorted Larry, who
had found himself a comfortable berth in the pub and lost his thirst
for adventure.

‘That’s the bait, of course,’ Ned said with a grim smile. ‘That’s
where Nature gets us every time. A small contribution, you’ll never
miss it, and before you know where you are, you’re bankrupt.’

‘Ah, how bad Nature is!’ exclaimed Larry, not relaxing
his grin. ‘When your first was born you were walking mad round the
town, looking for people to celebrate it with, and there you are now,
looking for sympathy! God, man, isn’t it a great thing to have someone
to share your troubles with and give a slap on the ass to, even if she
does let the crockery fly once in a while? What the hell about an old
bit of china?’

‘That’s all very well, Larry, if that’s all it costs,’ said Ned darkly.

‘And what the hell else does it cost?’ asked Larry. “Twenty-one meals a
week and a couple of pounds of tea. Sure, ’tis for nothing!’

‘And what about your freedom?’ Ned asked. ‘What about the old days on
the column?’

‘Ah, that was different, Ned,’ Larry said with a sigh, and at once his
smile went out and his eyes took on a dreamy, faraway look. ‘But sure,
everything was different then. I don’t know what the hell is after
coming over the country at all.’

‘The same thing that’s come over you and me,’ Ned said with
finality. ‘Nature kidded us, the way it kidded us when we got married,
and the way it kidded us when the first child was born. There’s
nothing worse than illusions for getting you into the rut. We had our
freedom and we didn’t value it. Now our lives are run for us by women
the way they were when we were kids. ‘This is Friday and what do I
find? Hurley waiting for someone to bring home the fish. You waiting
for the fish. I’ll go home to a nice plate of fish, and I’ll guarantee
to you, Larry, not one man in that flying column is having meat for
his dinner today. One few words in front of the altar and it’s fish
for Friday the rest of your life. And they call this a man’s country!’

‘Still, Ned, there’s nothing nicer than a good bit of fish,’ Larry
said wistfully. ‘If ’tis well done, mind you. If ’tis well done. And I
grant you ’tisn’t often you get it well done. God, I had some fried
plaice in Kilkenny last week that had me turned inside out. I declare
to God if I stopped that car once I stopped it six times, and by the
time I got home I was after caving in like a sandpit.’

‘And yet I can remember you in Tramore, letting on to be a Protestant
to get bacon and eggs on Friday,’ Ned said accusingly.

‘Oh, that’s the God’s truth,’ Larry said joyously. ‘I was a divil for
meat, God forgive me. I used to go mad seeing the Protestants lowering
it, and me there with nothing only a boiled egg. And the waitress,
Ned—do you remember the waitress that wouldn’t believe I was a
Protestant till I said the _Our Father_ the wrong way for her? She said
I had too open a face for a Protestant. How well she’d know a thing
like that about the _Our Father_, Ned!’

‘A woman would know anything she had to know to make you eat fish,’
Ned said, finishing his drink and turning away. ‘And you may be
reconciled to it, Larry,’ he added with a mournful smile, ‘but I’m
not. I’ll eat it because I’m damned with a sense of duty, and I don’t
want to get Kitty into trouble with the neighbours, but please God,
I’ll see one more revolution before I die, even if I have to swing for
it.’

‘Ah, well,’ sighed Larry, ‘youth is a great thing, sure
enough...Coming, Hanna, coming!’ he boomed as a woman’s voice yelled
from the room upstairs. He gave Ned a nod and a wink to suggest that
he enjoyed it, but Ned knew that that scared little rabbit of a wife
of his would be wanting to know about the Protestant prayers, and
would then go to Confession and ask the priest was it a reserved sin
and should Larry be sent to the Bishop. And then he remembered Larry
during the Dunkeen ambush when they had to run for it, pleading with
that broad smile of his, ‘Ah, Chris, Ned, let me have one more crack
at them!’ ‘No life, no life,’ Ned said aloud to himself as he
sauntered down the hill past the church. And it was a great mistake
taking a drink whenever he felt badly about the country because it
always made the country seem worse.

Someone clapped him suddenly on the shoulder. It was Jack Martin, the
vocational-school teacher, a small, plump, nervous man with a baby
complexion, a neat greying moustache and big, blue, innocent
eyes. Ned’s face lit up. Of all his friends Martin was the one he
warmed to most. He was a talented man and a good baritone. His wife
had died a few years before and left him with the two children, but he
had not married again and had been a devoted if over-anxious
father. Yet two or three times a year, and always coming on to his
wife’s anniversary, he went on a tearing drunk that left some legend
behind. There was the time he tried to teach Verdi to the tramp who
played the penny whistle and the time his housekeeper hid his
trousers and he got out of the window in his pyjamas and had to be
brought home by the parish priest.

‘MacCarthy, you scoundrel, you were hoping to give me the slip,’ he
said delightedly in his shrill nasal voice. ‘Come in here one minute
till I tell you something, God, you’ll die!’

‘If you wait there ten minutes, Jack, I’ll be back to you,’ said
Ned. ‘There’s only one little job I have to do, and then I’ll be able
to give you my full attention.’

‘All right, all right, but have one little drink before you go, Martin
said irritably, ‘One drink and I’ll release you on your own
recognizances. You’ll never guess where I was, Ned. I woke up there,
as true as God!’

Martin was like that. Ned decided good-humouredly that five minutes’
explanation in the bar was easier than ten minutes’ argument in the
street. It was quite clear that Martin was ‘on it’. He was full of
clock-work vitality, rushing to the counter for fresh drinks, fumbling
over money, trying to carry glasses without spilling them, and talking
thirteen to the dozen. Ned beamed at him. Drunk or sober, he liked the
man.

‘Ned, I’ll give you three guesses where I was.’

‘Let me see,’ said Ned in mock meditation. ‘I suppose ’twould never
be Paris?’ and then laughed boyishly at Martin’s hurt air.

‘You can’t do anything in this town, said Martin. ‘Next, I suppose
you’ll be telling me what I did there.’

‘No,’ said Ned gravely. ‘It’s Father Clery who’ll be telling about
that—from the pulpit.’

‘Ah, to hell with Father Clery!’ said Martin. ‘No, Ned, this is
se-e-e-rious. This is vital. It only came to me in the last
week. We’re only wasting our time in this misfortunate country.’

‘You’re probably right,’ Ned said urbanely. ‘The question is,
what else can you do with Time?”

‘Ah, this isn’t philosophy, man,’ Martin said testily. ‘This is
se-e-e-rious, I tell you.’

‘I know how serious it is all right,’ Ned said complacently. ‘Only
five minutes ago I was asking Larry Cronin where our youth was gone.’

‘Youth?’ said Martin. ‘But you can’t call that youth, what we have in
this country. Drinking bad porter in public houses after closing time
and listening to someone singing _The Rose of Tralee_. Sure, that’s not
life, man.’

‘But isn’t that the question?’ asked Ned. ‘What is Life?’ Ned couldn’t
help promoting words like ‘time’ and ‘life’ to the dignity of capital
letters.

‘How the hell would I know?’ asked Martin. ‘I suppose you have to go
out and look for the bloody thing. You’re not going to find it round
here. You have to go south, where they have sunlight and wine and good
cooking and women with a bit of go.’

‘And you don’t think it would be the same thing there?’ Ned asked
quietly.

‘Oh, God, dust and ashes! Dust and ashes!’ wailed Martin. ‘Don’t go on
with that! Don’t we get enough of it every Sunday in the chapel?’

Now, Ned was very fond of Martin, and admired the vitality with which
in his forties he still pursued a fancy, but he could not let him get
away with the notion that Life was merely a matter of geography.

‘But that’s a way Life has,’ he said oracularly. “You think you’re
seeing it, and it turns out it was somewhere else all the time. Like
women; the girl you lose is the one that could have made you happy. Or
revolutions; you always fought the wrong battle. I dare say there are
people in the south wishing they could be in some wild place like
this. I admit it’s rather difficult to imagine, but I suppose it could
happen. No, Jack, we might as well resign ourselves to the fact that
wherever Life was, it wasn’t where we were looking for it.’

‘For God’s sake!’ cried Martin. ‘You’re talking like an old man of
ninety-five.’

I’m forty-two,’ Ned said with quiet emphasis, ‘and I have no
illusions left. You still have a few. Mind, I admire you for it, You
were never a fighting man like Cronin or myself. Maybe that’s what
saved you. You kept your youthfulness longer. You escaped the big
disillusionments. But Nature has her eye on you as well. You’re light
and airy now, but what way will you be next week? We pay for our
illusions, Jack. They’re only sent to drag us deeper into the mud.’

‘Ah, ’tisn’t that with me at all, Ned,’ said Martin, ‘It’s my
stomach. I can’t keep it up.’

‘No, Jack, it’s not your stomach. It’s the illusion. I saw other men
with the same illusion and I know the way you’ll end up. You’ll be in
and out of the chapel ten times a day for fear once wasn’t enough,
with your head down for fear you’d catch a friendly eye and be led
astray, beating your breast, lighting candles and counting
indulgences. And that, Jack, may be the last illusion of all.’

‘I don’t know what the hell is after coming over you, Martin said in
bewilderment. ‘You’re—you’re being positively personal. And Father
Clery knows perfectly well the sort of man I am. I have all Shaw’s
plays on my shelf, and I never tried to hide them from anybody.’

‘I know that, Jack, I know that,’ Ned said sadly, overcome by the force
of his own oratory. ‘And I’m not being personal, because it isn’t a
personal matter. It’s only Nature working through you. It works
through me as well only it gets me in a different way. My illusion was
a different sort, and look at me now. I turn every damn thing into a
duty, and in the end I’m good for nothing. I know the way I’ll die
too. I’ll disintegrate into a husband, a father, a schoolteacher, a
local librarian, and fifteen different sorts of committee men, and
none of them with enough energy to survive. Unless, with God’s help, I
die on a barricade.’

‘What barricade?’ asked Martin, who found all this hard to follow.

‘Any barricade,’ Ned said with a wild sweep of his arms, ‘I don’t care
what it’s for so long as it means a fight. I don’t want to die of
disseminated conscientiousness. I don’t want to be one of Nature’s
errand boys. I’m not even a good one. Here I am arguing with you in a
pub instead of doing what I was sent to do.’  He paused for a moment
to think and then broke into his boyish laugh, because he realized
that for the moment he had forgotten what it was. ‘Whatever the hell
it was, he added. ‘Well, that beats everything! That’s what duty does
for you!’

‘Ah, that’s only because it wasn’t important,’ said Martin.

‘That’s where you’re wrong again, Jack,’ said Ned, beginning to enjoy
the situation thoroughly. ‘Maybe it was of no importance to us but it
was probably of great importance to Nature. What _was_ the damn thing?
My memory’s gone to hell.’

He closed his eyes and lay back limply in his chair, though even
through his self-induced trance he smiled at the absurdity of it.

‘No good,’ he said briskly, starting up. ‘It’s an extraordinary thing,
the way it disappears as if the ground opened and swallowed it. And
there’s nothing you can do about it. It’ll come back of its own
accord, and there won’t be any reason for that either. I was reading
an article about a German doctor who says you forget because it’s too
unpleasant to think about.’

‘It’s not a haircut?’ Martin asked helpfully, and Ned, a tidy man,
shook his head.

‘Or clothes?’ Martin went on. “Women are great on clothes.’

‘No,’ said Ned, frowning. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t anything for myself.’

‘Or for the kids? Shoes or the like?’

‘It could be, I suppose,’ said Ned. ‘Something flashed across my mind
just then.’

‘If it’s not that it must be groceries.’

‘I don’t see how it could be. Williams deliver them every week, and
they’re nearly always the same.’

‘In that case it’s bound to be something to eat,’ said
Martin. ‘They’re always forgetting things—bread or butter or
milk.’

‘I suppose so, but I’m damned if I know what,’ said Ned. ‘Jim,’ he said
to the barman, ‘I’m after forgetting the message I was sent on. What
do you think of that’

‘Ah, I suppose ’twas fish, Mr Mac,’ said the barman.

‘Fish!’ said Martin. ‘The very thing.’

‘Fish?’ repeated Ned, stroking his forehead. ‘I suppose it could be,
now you mention it. I know I offered to bring it for Tom Hurley and I
had a bit of an argument with Larry Cronin about it. He seems to like
it.

‘I can’t stand the damn stuff, said Martin, ‘only the housekeeper has
to have it for the kids.’

‘Ah, ’tis fish all right, Mr Mac,’ the barman said. ‘In an hour’s time
you wouldn’t forget it, not with the stink of it all round the town. I
never could stand it myself since the last war and all the poor
unfortunates getting drowned. You’d feel you were making a cannibal
out of yourself.’

‘Well, obviously, it has something to do with fish,’ said Ned with a
laugh. ‘It may not exactly be fish, but it’s something very like
it. Anyway, if that’s the case, there’s no particular hurry. We’ll
have another of these, Jim.’

‘Whether it is or not, she’ll take it as kindly meant,’ said
Martin. ‘The same as flowers. Women in this country don’t seem to be
able to distinguish between them.’

Two hours later, the two friends, more talkative than ever, drove up
to Ned’s house for lunch.

‘Mustn’t forget the fish, Ned said with a knowing smile as he reached
back for it. ‘The spirit of the revolution, Jack—that’s what it’s
come to.’

At that moment they both heard the wail of a new-born infant from the
front bedroom. Ned grew very white.

‘What’s that, Ned?’ asked Martin, and Ned gave a deep sigh.

‘That’s the fish, Jack, I’m afraid,’ said Ned.

‘Oh, God, I’m not going in so,’ Martin said hastily, getting out of
the car. ‘Tom Hurley will give me a bit of bread and cheese.’

‘Nonsense, man!’ Ned said boldly, knowing perfectly well what his
welcome would be if he went in alone. ‘I’ll get you something. That’s
not what’s worrying me at all. What’s worrying me is why I thought it
could be fish. That’s what I can’t understand.’

(1957)