Public Opinion

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking how nice ’twould be
to live in a little town. You could have a king’s life in a house like
this, with a fine garden and a car so that you could slip up to town
whenever you felt in need of company. Living in Dublin, next door to
the mail boat and writing things for the American papers, you imagine
you could live here and write whatever you liked about MacDunphy of
the County Council. Mind, I’m not saying you couldn’t say a hell of a
lot about him! I said a few things myself from time to time. All I
mean is that you wouldn’t say it for long. This town broke better
men. It broke me and, believe me, I’m no chicken.

When I came here first, ten years ago, I felt exactly the way you do,
the way everybody does. At that time, and the same is nearly true
today, there wasn’t a professional man in this town with a housekeeper
under sixty, for fear of what people might say about them. In fact,
you might still notice that there isn’t one of them who is what you
might call “happily” married. They went at it in too much of a hurry.

Oh, of course, I wasn’t going to make that mistake! When I went to
choose a housekeeper I chose a girl called Bridie Casey, a handsome
little girl of seventeen from a village up the coast. At the same time
I took my precautions. I drove out there one day when she was at home,
and I had a look at the cottage and a talk with her mother and a cup
of tea, and after that I didn’t need anyone to recommend her. I knew
that anything Bridie fell short in her mother would not be long in
correcting. After that, there was only one inquiry I wanted to make.

“Have you a boy, Bridie?” said I.

“No, doctor, I have not,” said she with an innocent air that didn’t
take me in a bit. As a doctor you soon get used to innocent airs.

“Well, you’d better hurry up and get one,” said I, “or I’m not going o
keep you.”

With that she laughed as if she thought I was only joking. I was not
joking at all. A housekeeper or maid without a fellow of her own is as
bad as a hen with an egg.

“It’s no laughing matter,” I said. “And when you do get a fellow, if
you haven’t one already, you can tell him I said he could make free
with my beer, but if ever I catch you diluting my whiskey I’ll sack
you on the spot.”

Mind, I made no mistake in Bridie or her mother either. She mightn’t
be any good in the Shelbourne Hotel, but what that girl could cook she
cooked well and anything she cleaned looked as if it was clean. What’s
more, she could size a patient up better than I could myself. Make no
mistake about it, as housekeepers or maids Irish girls are usually not
worth a damn, but a girl from a good Irish home can turn her hand to
anything. Of course, she was so good-looking that people who came to
the house used to pass remarks about us, but that was only jealousy.
They hadn’t the nerve to employ a good-looking girl themselves for fear
of what people would say. But I knew that as long as a girl had a man
of her own to look after she’d be no bother to me.

No, what broke up my happy home was something different enirely. You
mightn’t understand it, but in a place like this ’tis the devil
entirely to get ready money out of them. They’ll give you anything else
in the world only money. Here, everything is what they call
“friendship.” I suppose the shops give them the habit because a regular
customer is always supposed to be in debt and if ever the debt is paid
off it’s war to the knife. Of course they think a solicitor or a
doctor should live the same way, and instead of money what you get is
presents: poultry, butter, eggs, and meat that a large family could not
eat, let alone a single man. Friendship is all very well, but between
you and me it’s a poor thing for a man to be relying on at the
beginning of his career.

I had one patient in particular called Willie Joe Corcaran of
Clashanaddig—I buried him last year, poor man, and my mind is easier
already—and Willie Joe seemed to think I was always on the verge of
starvation. One Sunday I got in from twelve-o’clock Mass and went to
the whiskey cupboard to get myself a drink when I noticed the most
extraordinary smell. Doctors are sensitive to smells, of course—we
have to be—and I couldn’t rest easy till I located that one. I
searched the room and I searched the hall and I even poked my head
upstairs into the bedrooms before I tried the kitchen. Knowing Bridie,
I never even associated the smell with her. When I went in, there she
was in a clean white uniform, cooking the dinner, and she looked round
at me.

“What the hell is that smell, Bridie?” said I.

She folded her arms and leaned against the wall, as good-looking a
little girl as you’d find in five counties.

“I told you before,” says she in her thin, high voice, “’tis that
side of beef Willie Joe Corcoran left on Thursday. It have the whole
house ruined on me.”

“But didn’t I tell you to throw that out?” I said.

“You did,” says she as if I was the most unreasonable man in the
world, “but you didn’t tell me where I was going to throw it.”

“What’s wrong with the ash can?” said I.

“What’s wrong with the ash can?” says she. “There’s nothing wrong
with it, only the ashmen won’t be here till Tuesday.”

“Then for God’s sake, girl, can’t you throw it over the wall into the
field?” 

“Into the field,” says she, pitching her voice up an octave till she
sounded like a sparrow in decline. “And what would people say?”

“Begor, I don’t know, Bridie,” I said, humoring her. “What do you
think they’d say?”

“They’re bad enough to say anything,” says she.

I declare to God I had to look at her to see was she serious. There
she was, a girl of seventeen with the face of a nun, suggesting things
that I could barely imagine.

“Why, Bridie?” I said, treating it as a joke. “You don’t think they’d
say I was bringing corpses home from the hospital to cut up?”

“They said worse,” she said in a squeak, and I saw that she took a
very poor view of my powers of imagination. Because you write books,
you think you know a few things, but you should listen to the
conversation of pious girls in this town.

“About me, Bridie?” said I in astonishment.

“About you and others,” said she. And then, by cripes, I lost my
temper with her.

“And is it any wonder they would,” said I, “with bloody fools like
you paying attention to them?”

I have a very wicked temper when I’m roused and for the time being it
scared her more than what people might say of her.

“I’ll get Kenefick’s boy in the morning and let him take it away,” said
she. “Will I give him a shilling?”

“Put it in the poor box,” said I in a rage. “I’ll be going out to
Dr. MacMahon’s for supper and I’ll take it away myself. Any damage
that’s going to be done to anyone’s character can be done to mine. It
should be able to stand it. And let me tell you, Bridie Casey, if I
was the sort to mind what anyone said about me, you wouldn’t be where
you are this minute.”

I was very vicious to her, but of course I was mad. After all, I had
to take my drink and eat my dinner with that smell round the house,
and Bridie in a panic, hopping about me like a hen with
hydrophobia. When I went out to the pantry to get the side of beef,
she gave a yelp as if I’d trodden on her foot. “Mother of God!” says
she. “Your new suit!” “Never mind my new suit,” said I, and I wrapped
the beef in a couple of newspapers and heaved it into the back of the
car. I declare, it wasn’t wishing to me. I had all the windows open,
but even then the smell was high, and I went through town like a
coursing match with the people on the footpaths lifting their heads
like beagles to sniff after me.

I wouldn’t have minded that so much only that Sunday is the one day I
have. In those days before I was married I nearly always drove out to
Jerry MacMahon’s for supper and a game of cards. I knew poor Jerry
looked forward to it because the wife was very severe with him in the
matter of liquor.

I stopped the car on top of the cliffs to throw out the meat, and just
as I was looking for a clear drop I saw a long galoot of a country man
coming up the road towards me. He had a long, melancholy sort of face
and mad eyes. Whatever it was about his appearance I didn’t want him
to see what I was up to. You might think it funny in a professional
man but that is the way I am.

“Nice evening,” says he.

“Grand evening, thank God,” says I, and not to give him an excuse for
being too curious I said: “That’s a powerful view.”

“Well,” says he sourly, just giving it a glance, “the view is all
right but ’tis no good to the people that has to live in it. There is
no earning in that view,” says he, and then he cocked his head and
began to size me up, and I knew I’d made a great mistake, opening my
mouth to him at all. “I suppose now you’d be an artist?” says he.

You might notice about me that I’m very sensitive to inquisitiveness.
It is a thing I cannot stand. Even to sign my name to a telegram is a
thing I cannot stand. Even to sign my name to a telegram is a thing I
never like to do, and I hate a direct question.

“How did you guess?” said I.

“And I suppose,” said he, turning to inspect the view again, “if you
painted that, you’d find people to buy it?”

“That’s what I was hoping,” said I.

So he turned to the scenery again, and this time he gave it a studied
appraisal as if it was a cow at a fair.

“I dare say for a large view like that you’d nearly get five pounds?”
said he.

“You would and more,” said I.

“Ten?” said he with his eyes beginning to pop.

“More,” said I.

“That beats all,” he said, shaking his head in resignation. “Sure, the
whole thing isn’t worth that. No wonder the country is the way it
is. Good luck!”

“Good luck,” said I, and I watched him disappear among the rocks over
the road. I waited, and then I saw him peering out at me from behind a
rock like some wild mountain animal, and I knew if I stayed there till
nightfall I wouldn’t shake him off. He was beside himself at the
thought of a picture that would be worth as much as a cow, and he
probably thought if he stayed long enough he might learn the knack and
paint the equivalent of a whole herd of them. The man’s mind didn’t
rise above cows. And, whatever the devil ailed me, I could not give
him the satisfaction of seeing what I was really up to. You might
think it shortsighted of me, but that is the sort I am.

I got into the car and away with me down to Barney Phelan’s pub on the
edge of the bay. Barney’s pub is the best in this part of the world
and Barney himself is a bit of a character; a tall excitable man with
wild blue eyes and a holy terror to gossip. He kept filling my glass
as fast as I could lower it, and three or four times it was on the tip
of my tongue to tell him what I was doing; but I knew he’d make a
story out of it for the boys that night and sooner or later it would
get back to Willie Joe Corcoran. Bad as Willie Joe was, I would not
like to hurt his feelings. That is another great weakness of mine. I
never like hurting people’s feelings.

Of course that was a mistake, for when I walked out of the pub, the
first thing I saw was the cliff dweller and two other yokels peering
in at the parcel in the back of my car. At that I really began to feel
like murder. I cannot stand that sort of unmannerly inquisitiveness.

“Well,” I said, giving the cliff dweller a shoulder out of my way, “I
hope ye saw something good.”

At that moment Barney came out, drying his hands in his apron and
showing his two front teeth like a weasel.

“Are those fellows at your car, doctor?”

“Oho!” said the cliff dweller to his two friends. So a docthor is
what he is now!”

“And what the hell else did you think he was, you fool?” asked Barney.

‘A painter is what he was when last we heard of him,” said the
lunatic.

‘And I suppose he was looking for a little job painting the huts ye
have up in Beensheen?” asked Barney with a sneer.

“The huts may be humble but the men are true,” said the lunatic
solemnly.

“Blast you, man,” said Barney, squaring up to him, “are you saying I
don’t know the doctor since he was in short trousers?”

“No man knows the soul of another,” said the cliff dweller, shaking
his head again.

“For God’s sake, Barney, don’t be bothering yourself with that
misfortunate clown,” said I. “’Tis my own fault for bringing the likes
of him into the world. Of all the useless occupations, that and
breaking stones are the worst.”

“I would not be talking against breaking stones,” said the cliff
dweller sourly. “It might not be long till certain people here would
be doing the same.”

At that I let a holy oath out of me and drove off in the direction of
Jerry MacMahon’s. When I glanced in the driving mirror I saw Barney
standing in the middle of the road with the three yokels around him,
waving their hands. It struck me that in spite of my precautions
Barney would have a story for the boys that night, and it would not be
about Willie Joe. It would be about me. It also struck me that I was
behaving in a very uncalled-for way. If I’d been a real murderer
trying to get rid of a real corpse I could hardly have behaved more
suspiciously. And why? Because I did not want people discussing my
business. I don’t know what it is about Irish people that makes them
afraid of having their business discussed. It is not that it is any
worse than other people’s business, only we behave as if it was.

I stopped the car at a nice convenient spot by the edge of the bay
miles from anywhere. I could have got rid of the beef then and there
but something seemed to have broken in me. I walked up and down that
road slowly, looking to right and left to make sure no one was
watching. Even then I was perfectly safe, but I saw a farmer crossing
a field a mile away up the hill and decided to wait till he was out of
sight. That was where the ferryboat left me, because, of course, the
moment he glanced over his shoulder and saw a strange man with a car
stopped on the road he stopped himself with his head cocked like an
old setter. Mind, I’m not blaming him! I blame nobody but myself. Up
to that day I had never felt a stime of sympathy with my neurotic
patients, giving themselves diseases they hadn’t got, but there was I,
a doctor, giving myself a disease I hadn’t got and with no excuse
whatever.

By this time the smell was so bad I knew I wouldn’t get it out of the
upholstery for days. And there was Jerry MacMahon up in Cahirnamona,
waiting for me with a bottle of whiskey his wife wouldn’t let him
touch till I got there, and I couldn’t go for fear of the way he’d
laugh at me. I looked again and saw that the man who’d been crossing
the field had changed his mind. Instead he’d come down to the gate and
was leaning over it, lighting his pipe while he admired the view of
the bay and the mountains.

That was the last straw. I knew now that even if I got rid of the beef
my Sunday would still be ruined. I got in the car and drove straight
home. Then I went to the whiskey cupboard and poured myself a drink
that seemed to be reasonably proportionate to the extent of my
suffering. Just as I sat down to it Bridie walked in without
knocking. This is one fault I should have told you about—all the time
she was with me I never trained her to knock. I declare to God when I
saw her standing in the doorway I jumped. I’d always been very careful
of myself and jumping was a new thing to me.

“Did I tell you to knock before you came into a room?” I shouted.

“I forgot,” she said, letting on not to notice the state I was
in. “You didn’t go to Dr. MacMahon’s so?”

“I did not,” I said.

“And did you throw away the beef?”

“I didn’t,” I said. Then as I saw her waiting for an explanation I
added: “There were too many people around.”

“Look at that now!” she said complacently. “I suppose we’ll have to
bury it in the garden after dark?”

“I suppose so,” I said, not realizing how I had handed myself over to
the woman, body and bones, holus-bolus.

That evening I took a spade and dug a deep hole in the back garden and
Bridie heaved in the side of beef. The remarkable thing is that the
whole time we were doing it we talked in whispers and glanced up at
the backs of the other houses in the road to see if we were being
watched. But the weight off my mind when it was over! I even felt
benevolent to Bridie. Then I went over to Jim Donoghue, the dentist’s,
and told him the whole story over a couple of drinks. We were
splitting our sides over it.

When I say we were splitting our sides I do not mean that this is a
funny story. It was very far from being funny for me before it was
over. You wouldn’t believe the scandal there was about Bridie and
myself after that. You’d wonder how people could imagine such things,
let alone repeat them. That day changed my whole life. ... Oh, laugh!
Laugh! I was laughing out the other side of my mouth before it was
through. Up to that I’d never given a rap what anyone thought of me,
but from that day forth I was afraid of my own shadow. With all the
talk there was about us I even had to get rid of Bridie and, of
course, inside of twelve months I was married like the rest of
them. ... By the way, when I mentioned unhappy marriages I wasn’t
speaking of my own. Mrs. Ryan and myself get on quite well. I only
mentioned it to show what might be in store for yourself if ever you
were foolish enough to come and live here. A town like this can bend
iron. And if you doubt my word, that’s only because you don’t know
what they are saying about you.


145
(1957)
Source: Collected Stories, 1981