DAYDREAMS Except for occasional moments of embarrassment I never really minded being out of work. I lived at home, so I didn’t need money, and though this made things harder for Mother, and Father put on a sour puss about having to feed and clothe me, I spent so much of my time out of doors that I didn’t need to think about them. The uncomfortable moments came when I saw some girl I knew on a tram and could not get on it because I could not pay her fare, or when I was walking with some fellows whose conversation I enjoyed and I had to make some excuse to leave them when they went in for a drink. At times like these I was very sorry for myself and very angry with people and life. Never for long, though, and the rest of the time I was perfectly happy, for I was free to go on with my own thoughts. I wasn’t opposed to work on principle because I knew a number of quite nice people who thought highly of it, but I did think that in practice people wasted too much valuable time on it for the little it gave them back. While I had worked on the railway I had been miserable, doing things I disliked and talking to chaps to whom I felt indifferent. When the weather was really too bad, I sat in the reading room in the Public Library and read steadily through all the reviews and periodicals, about the crisis in British politics, penal reform, unemployment, and social security. I was very strongly in favour of social security. When the weather was fair, and even when it wasn’t, I walked a great deal; and because I felt I really had no right to my walks, they gave me something of the same pleasure I felt as a kid when I went on the lang from school. There is only one element common to all forms of romance—guilt; and I felt guilty about my views on the Conservative Party and social security, while all the places I walked in had a curious poetic aura, as though each of them belonged to an entirely different country—the Glen to Scotland, the country north of our house, with its streams and fields and neat little farmhouses, to England, the river roads to the Rhineland—so that it would not have surprised me in the least if the people I met in them all spoke different languages. Each neighbourhood, too, had its own sort of imaginary girl, noble and tragic in the Glen, gentle and charming in the English countryside, subtle and cultivated along the river, like the big houses that stood there, sheltered behind their high stone walls. Sometimes we just met and talked, since she shared my liking for the countryside; and we both realized, as we told one another the story of our lives, that, different in every way as these were, we had everything else in common. She was usually rich— English or American; and I had to persuade her about the political folly of her class, but this never seemed to offer any difficulties to her clear and sympathetic intelligence. But at other times, perhaps when the feeling of guilt was strongest in me, she would be in some serious difficulty; being run away with by a wild horse, flying from kidnappers, or just drowning. At the right moment, with a coolness that was bound to appeal to any girl, I stepped in: stopped the horse, scattered the gangsters, or swam ashore with her from the sinking boat. Though modesty required that I should then leave without telling her my name, leaving her to a life-long search, it nearly always happened that I accompanied her back to the Imperial Hotel and was introduced to her father, who was naturally grateful and, besides, had been looking for a young man just like me, with a real understanding of the political situation, to take over his business. If I thought of my own position at all on those walks, it was only with a gentle regret that economic conditions deprived the world of the attention of a really superior mind. And the worse my situation was, the better my mind functioned. My real difficulty came from good-natured friends who didn’t, as they would have put it, want to see me wasting my time. They were always trying to get me introductions to influential people who might be able to fit me in somewhere as a warehouse clerk at thirty bob a week. I knew they meant it well, and I did my best to be grateful, but they hurt me more than Father did with his scowling and snarling, or than any of the handful of enemies I had in the locality, who, I knew, talked of me as a good-for-nothing or a half-idiot. “Well, Larry,” my friends would say sagaciously, “you’re getting on, you know. ’Twon’t be long now till you’re twenty, and even if it was only a small job, it would be better than nothing.” And I would look at them sadly and realize that they were measuring me up against whatever miserable sort of vacancy they were capable of imagining, and seeing no disparity between us. Of course, I interviewed the influential people they sent me to, and pretended a life-long interest in double-entry bookkeeping, though I never had been able to understand the damned thing, and tried to look like a quiet, hard-working, religious boy who would never give any trouble. I could scarcely tell the owner of a big store that I liked being out of work. Anyway, I doubt if there was any need, because any jobs they had didn’t come my way. One night I went all the way to Blackrock, a little fishing village down the river from Cork, to see a solicitor who was supposed to have an interest in some new factory; and he talked to me for two solid hours about the commercial development of the city, and, at the end of it all, said he’d keep me in mind in case anything turned up. I left his house rather late and discovered to my disgust that I hadn’t the price of the tram. This was one of my really bad moments. To feel guilty and have to walk is one thing; to feel as virtuous as I did, after talking for hours about reclamation schemes, and still have to walk is another. Besides, I had no cigarettes. There were two ways into town: one through the suburbs, the other, a little shorter, along the river-bank, and I chose this. It was a pleasant enough place by day; a river-walk called the Marina facing a beautiful road called Tivoli at the other side, and above Tivoli were the sandstone cliffs and expensive villas of Montenotte, all named with the nostalgia of an earlier day. It had an avenue of trees, a bandstand, seats for the nursemaids, and two guns captured in the Crimea, over which the children climbed. It was part of the Rhineland of my daydreams, but by night the resemblance was not so clear. As it approached the city it petered out in jetties, old warehouses, and badly lit streets of sailors’ lodging-houses. I had just emerged into this part when I heard a woman scream. It startled me out of my reverie, and I stood and looked about me. It was very dark. Then under a gas lamp at the corner of a warehouse I saw a man and a woman in some sort of cling. The woman was screaming her head off, and, thinking that she might have been taken ill, I ran towards them. As I did, the man broke away and walked quickly up the quay, and the woman stopped screaming and began to sob, turning her face to the wall in a curiously childish gesture of despair. As she wasn’t sick, I felt awkward and merely stopped and raised my cap. “Can I help you, miss?” I asked doubtfully. She shook her head several times without looking at me. “The dirty rat!” she sobbed, rubbing her face with her hand, and then she poured forth a stream of language I had never heard the like of, and some of which I didn’t understand at all. “All I earned the last two nights he took from me, the rat! the rat!” “But why did he do that?” I asked, wondering if the man could be her husband, and she gaped at me in astonishment, the tears still streaming down her little painted face. It wouldn’t have been a bad face if only she’d let it alone. “Because he says ’tis his beat,” she said. “All the girls has to pay him. He says ’tis for protection.” “But why don’t you tell the police?” I asked. “The police?” she echoed in the same tone. “A hell of a lot the police care about the likes of us. Only to get more out of us, if they could.” “But how much did he take?” I asked. “Five quid,” she replied, and began to sob again, taking out a dirty little handkerchief to dab her eyes. “Five blooming quid! All I earned in the past two nights! And now there won’t be another ship for a week, and the old landlady will be after me for the rent.” “All right,” I said, coming to a quick decision, “I’ll ask him about it.” Which was exactly as far as I proposed to go. It was all still well beyond my comprehension. I quickened my step and went after the footsteps I heard retreating up the quay. Like all dreamy and timid people who will do anything to avoid a row on their own account, I have always taken an unnatural delight in those that other people thrust on me. It never even crossed my mind that I was in a dangerous locality and that I might quite well end up in the river with a knife in my back. Some of my doubts were dispelled when the man in front of me looked back and began to run. This seemed like an admission of guilt, so I ran, too. Since I walked miles every day, I was in excellent condition, and I knew he had small chance of getting away from me. He soon realized this as well and stopped with his back to the wall of a house and his right arm lifted. He was a tall, thin fellow with a long, pasty, cadaverous face, a moustache that looked as though it had been put in with an eyebrow pencil, and side-burns. He was good-looking, too, in his own coarse way. “Excuse me,” I said, panting but still polite, “the lady behind seems to think you have some money of hers.” “Lady?” he snarled. “What lady? That’s no lady, you fool!” I didn’t like his tone and I strongly resented his words. I realized now what the girl behind me was, but that made no difference to me. I had been brought up to treat every woman as a lady, and had no idea that a crook is as sensitive about respectability as a bank manager. It really pains him to have to deal with immoral women. “I didn’t know,” I said apologetically. “I’m sorry. But I promised to ask you about the money.” “Ask what you like!” he said, beginning to shout. “The money is mine.” “Oh, you mean she took it from you?” I said, thinking I was beginning to see the truth at last. “Who said she took it from me?” he growled, as though I had accused him of something really bad. “She owes it to me.” Apparently I wasn’t really seeing daylight. “You mean you lent it to her?” I asked, but that only seemed to make him mad entirely. “What the hell do you think I am?” he asked arrogantly. “A moneylender? She agreed to pay me to look after her, and now she’s trying to rob me.” “But how do you look after her?” I asked—quite innocently as it happened, though he didn’t seem to think so. “How do I look after her?” he repeated. “My God, man, a woman would have no chance in a place like this without a man to look after her. Or have you any idea what it’s like?” I hadn’t, and I regretted it. It struck me that perhaps I wasn’t really justified in interfering, that people had their own arrangements and she might have tried some sharp practice on him. I did not realize that every crook has to have a principle to defend; otherwise, he would be compelled to have a low opinion of himself, which is something that no crook likes. It was the fellow’s manner I distrusted. If only he had been polite, I wouldn’t have dreamed of interfering. “But, in that case, surely you should let her look after herself,” I said.’ “What the hell do you mean P” “I mean, if she broke a bargain, you should just refuse to look after her any more,” I explained reasonably. “That ought to bring her to her senses, and if it doesn’t, anything that happens is her own fault.” He looked at me incredulously, as though I was an idiot, which, recollecting the whole incident, is about the only way I can describe myself. “If I were you,” I went on, “I’d simply give her back the money and have nothing more to do with her.” “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said, drawing himself up. “That money is mine. I told you that.” “Now, look,” I said almost pleadingly, “I don’t want to have a row with you about it. It’s only the state she’s in.” “You think you can make me?” he asked threateningly. “Well, I promised the girl,” I said. I know it sounds feeble, but feeble was what my position was, not knowing right from wrong in the matter. He glanced up the quay, and for a moment I thought he was going to make a bolt for it, but he decided against it. God knows why! I can’t have looked very formidable. Then he drew himself up to his full height, the very picture of outraged rectitude, gave me a couple of pound notes, turned on his heel and began to walk away. I counted the notes and suddenly became absolutely furious. “Come back here, you!” I said. “What the hell is it now?” he asked as though this was the last indignity. “I want the rest of that money,” I said. “That’s all she give me,” he snarled. “What’s this? A hold-up ?” “That’s what it’s going to be unless you hand over what you stole, God blast you!” I said. Now no further doubts contained the flood of indignation that was rising in me. I had given him every opportunity of explaining himself and behaving like a gentleman, and this was how he had repaid me. I knew that a man who had tried to deceive me at such a moment was only too capable of deceiving a defenceless girl, and I was determined that he should deceive her no longer. He gave me the money, a bit frightened in his manner, and I added bitingly: “And next time you interfere with that girl, you’d better know what’s going to happen you. For two pins I’d pitch you in the river, side-burns and all, you dirty, lying little brute!” It alarms me now to write of my own imprudence, but even that did not rouse him to fighting, and he went off up the quay, muttering to himself. The girl had crept nearer us as we argued, and now she rushed up to me, still weeping. “God bless you, boy, God bless you!” she said wildly. “I’ll pray for you the longest day I live, for what you done for me.” And then suddenly I felt very weak, and realized that I was trembling all over, trembling so that I could scarcely move. Heroism, it seemed, did not come naturally to me. All the same I managed to muster up a smile. “You’d better let me see you home,” I said. “I don’t think you’ll have any more trouble with that fellow, but just at the moment it might be better not to meet him alone.” “Here,” she said, giving me back two of the five notes I had handed her. “Take these. For yourself!” “I will not, indeed,” I said, laughing. “For what?” “That’s all you know, boy,” she said bitterly. “That fellow have the heart scalded out of the poor unfortunate girls here. A hard life enough they have without it, the dear God knows!” “If he talks to you again, tell him you’ll put me on him,” I said. “Delaney is my name. Larry Delaney. Tell him I’m a middle-weight champion. I’m not, but he won’t know.” And I laughed again, in sheer relief. “Go on, Larry!” she said determinedly, trying to make me take the two banknotes. “Take them!” “I’ll do nothing of the sort,” I said. “But I’ll take a fag if you have one. I’m dying for a hale.” “God, isn’t it the likes of you would be without them?” she said, fumbling in her bag. “Here, take the packet, boy! I have tons.” “No, thanks,” I said. “It’s just that I get a bit excited.” Which was a mild way of describing the way my hands jumped when I stood and tried to light that cigarette. She saw it, too. “What brought you down here at all?” she asked inquisitively. “I had to walk from Blackrock,” I said. “And where do you work? Or are you still at school?” “I’m not working at the moment,” I said. “That’s what took me out to Blackrock, looking for a job.” “God help us, isn’t it hard?” she said. “But you won’t be long that way with God’s help. You have the stuff in you, Larry, not like most of them. You’re only a boy, but you stood up to that fellow that was twice your age.” “Oh, him!” I said with a sniff. “He’s only a blow-hole.” “Them are the dangerous ones, boy,” she said shrewdly, with a queer trick she had of narrowing her eyes. “Them are the ones you’d have to mind, or a bit of lead piping on the back of your head is what you’d be getting when you weren’t looking.” Frightened by her own words, she stopped and looked behind her. “Look, like a good boy,” she went on eagerly, “take the old couple of quid! Go on! Ah, do, can’t you! Sure, you’re out of a job—don’t I know damn well what ’tis like? I suppose you had to walk from Blackrock because you hadn’t the price of the tram. Do, Larry boy! Do! Just for fags! From me!” She stuffed the money into the pocket of my jacket, and I suddenly found that I wanted it. Not only for its own sake, though it meant riches to me, but because she was that sort of woman, warm and generous and addle-pated, and because I knew it would give her a feeling of satisfaction. Because I was in an excited, emotional state, her emotion infected me. All the same I put a good face on it. “That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll borrow it, and be very grateful. But I’m going to pay it back. And I don’t know your name or where you live.” “Ah, for God’s sake!” she exclaimed with a joyous laugh. “Forget about it! So long as I have enough to keep the old landlady’s puss off me. But if you want to see me, my name is Molly Leahy, and I have a room here. But they all know me. You have only to ask for me.” We shook hands and I promised to see her soon again. Mind, I meant that. I went over the bridges in a halo of self-satisfaction. I felt I had had a great adventure, had added a whole new area to my experience, and had learned things about life that nobody could ever have taught me. That mood of exaltation lasted just as long as it took me to reach the well-lit corner by the cinema in King Street, and then it disappeared, and I stood there in a cold wind, unable to face the thought of returning home. I knew the reason without having to examine my conscience. It was the damned money in my pocket. It had nothing to do with the girl, or how she had earned it, nothing even to do with the fact that she needed it a great deal more than I did and probably deserved it more. It was just that I realized that the great moment of my daydreams had come to me without my recognizing it; that I had behaved myself as I had always hoped I would behave myself, and I had then taken pay for it and in this world need never expect more. Someone passed and looked back at me curiously, and I realized that I had been talking to myself. Outside the Scots Church at the foot of Summerhill an old woman in a shawl was sitting on the low wall with her bag by her side. “Gimme a few coppers for the night, sir, and that the Almighty God may make your bed in Heaven,” she whined. “Here you are, ma’am,” I said with a laugh, handing her the two pound notes. Then I hurried up the hill, pursued by her clamour. Of course, the moment I had done it, I knew it was wrong, the exhibitionistic behaviour of someone who was trying to reconcile the conflict in himself by a lying dramatic gesture. Next day I would be without cigarettes again and cursing myself for a fool. I was really destitute now, without money or self-respect. After that I could find no pleasure in my solitary walks; the imaginary girls were all gone. I took the first job I was offered; but by the time I had saved two pounds and started to look down the Marina for Molly Leahy, she had disappeared, I suppose to Liverpool or Glasgow or one of the other safety-valves by which we pious folk keep ourselves safe in our own daydreams.