A Star Called Henry (7 page)

The bed groaned again and a black mountain grew in front of Henry. A head took shape, and shoulders. A head that was made huge by hair that would have been plenty for five women. It was a wig, Henry knew. It was one of the things he knew about his employer: she was bald. One of the very few things he knew.

—What kind of a nincompoop are you? she said.

He took the question seriously. He stayed quiet. He began to see her, not just her outline. She was sitting up now. The wig was massive and brown. She was wearing a red gown, or something. She shifted, and powder quickly reached Henry’s nose.

—Well? she said.

Another thing he knew about her: she was twenty-five. She looked and moved like a monument but she was younger than he was. It had been her brothel since he’d been the bouncer; she couldn’t have been far past fifteen when she became the madam.

—Has your tongue gone the same way as your leg?

—No.

—Good.

She sighed, and peppermint joined her powder.

—I am a businesswoman, she said.

There was a hint of the foreigner in her words, just now and again. Nothing as strong as an accent, just a bend or a tiny fracture in a phrase. Or each word precisely delivered where the locals took shortcuts.

—A businesswoman, she said.—Yes. And, Mister - tell me your name.

—Henry.

—Henry and?

—Smart.

—And, Mister Smart, what is my business?

—Em—

—Men come into my house, they fuck my girls and then they leave with less money. That is my business. Yes?

—Yes, said my father.

—They drink some gin and listen to the piano player murdering my piano but, essentially, they fuck my girls. Is that right?

—Yes.

—Yes, she said.—Prostitution. That is my business. She stopped. He was sure that she expected something from him.

—Yeah, he said.

—Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. The men are happy, my girls are happy, I am happy. Say Yeah.

—Yeah.

—No. I am not happy. Why not?

—Em—

—Because there is no business taking place in my house. Because you will not let it take place. You will not let the men in to fuck my girls. There is not one man in my house at this moment. Except you. And you do not count, Mister Smart.

—Sorry, said Henry.

—Your apology I accept, she said.—But, still, I must dispose of you.

How? he wondered. He considered telling her about his dead children, his son’s name, his fight with God. But he couldn’t.

—I pay you how much?

—Fifteen shillings a week, said Henry.

—I will pay you fifteen shillings and fifteen shillings more and you will go. You are not good for business.

He was getting the sack. He wasn’t going to be flung into the Liffey or fed to the pigs beyond Tallaght. It was only the sack. There’d be other jobs. There was always work for bullies, or other work.

—However, said Dolly Oblong.

Henry waited. He felt stronger now. He knew: she wasn’t even going to sack him.

—However, she said again.—However, Mister Smart, I have other business ventures. You know this. I have partnerships.

She was a grand chunk of a woman, Henry decided. Red suited her. Especially in the dark.

—Mister Gandon speaks highly of you, she said.—You are efficient. You are cautious enough not to ask questions, stupid enough not to care. He likes this.

—Good, said Henry.

He was being insolent, he knew. But not too insolent. Fresh peppermint arrived at his nose. He liked it.

—Yes, said Dolly Oblong.—I am glad that you say Good. Mister Gandon tells me that you do a very professional job. This makes me happy.

He decided against more insolence. Stupid first, now he was being cautious. Mister Gandon knew his man.

—Yes, said Dolly Oblong.—There are two Mister Smarts. One makes me unhappy, the other makes me very happy. Which Mister Smart am I addressing? Well?

—I’ve always admired Mister Gandon, said Henry. Never met the man, he said to himself. Then, again to himself:
She’s
Alfie Gandon. It made him smile. It was brilliant; it thrilled him. He liked her even more.

—Good, she said.—Good.

He wanted to serve her.

She clapped her hands. Powder and sin danced around his face. He decided to shave. And brush his coat.

—Very well, she said.

And varnish his leg.

—I will not dispose of you.

He waited for more.

—I am going to give you a second chance, said Dolly Oblong.

—Thank you, said Henry.

—But you must allow the men to come into my house and spend their money.

—Yes, said Henry.

—That is how society works. Money. Making it, taking it, spending it. Without money we are nothing, not even animals. We are not efficient enough to be animals, Mister Smart, so we make money instead. So. You must give the men the opportunity to spend their money. This makes more money. It is good for society. It is good for the city, the country and the Empire. Everybody. Food, clothes, roofs over our heads. Because men like to fuck nice girls. You may go.

What a woman, all the same. He found the door. A leader, a genius and a floozy. He was close to swooning, falling over. Dolly Gandon, Alfie Oblong. And dozens of other mixtures, more than likely. And, maybe, his name in the mixing bowl. The open door brought some light.

—Mister Smart?

—Eh—

He turned to face her.

—Yeah. Yes?

There was more of her to see now. A shoulder he wanted to kiss, hair he wanted to drown in, or just touch. A wig - he didn’t care, no one knew for sure. It looked real enough, better than real. Teeth - Jesus, her teeth. He wanted to kneel at the bed and whimper. And offer himself. Give her his leg to beat him with.

—Yes? he said, hanging on to the door.

—You never fuck my girls.

—No.

—Why not?

—I’m married, he said.

She smiled. He saw teeth, and more teeth. False, like the hair? It didn’t matter. The lips were real and impossible, red, huge and open.

—How lovely, she said.—You are a breath of fresh air, Mister Smart. You may go. But also.

He waited.

—From now on I will pay you twelve shillings a week.

My father closed the door. A new man. Again, yet again. A slave this time. What a woman. He was floating. She had force to match God’s. She
was
God. She was her own invention - like him, but successful - her hair, teeth, her name, everything about her and around her. She’d created her own world and made it happen. She pulled strings from her bed - Henry almost fainted at the thought - and all of Dublin shook. People died, people lived while she sucked pepper-mints. She was the Queen of the city, and nobody knew. Except herself and, now, my father. My father was in love.

Side by side, they’d take on God and win. They’d rule the world. He’d never let a name destroy his life again. They’d invent and change names as it suited them - Dolly Gandon, Alfie Oblong, Dolly Smart. He’d be the puppet at the end of Dolly Oblong’s strings. Pinocchio Smart. He already had the wooden leg. He’d be a good boy for her and it would become flesh.

There was a man at the bottom of the steps. Henry stood aside, and the man came up and ducked past him.

—They’re inside waiting on you, said Henry.

He knew that Dolly Oblong had heard the door opening, would now hear it closing. She would hear another door inside opening, money being spent. She’d be pleased. She’d think of him. She was already thinking of him. There were more men, coming up the street. More money for Dolly Oblong. There was no anger left in my father, none at all, no bitterness, no past. He really was a new man.

 

 

I grew.

I grew and stretched and raged around the room, filled the place with my fists and feet. I got my knees off the floor and walked. I hit the walls and clawed them. I broke through the clothes that were put on me. I wailed and cursed, hard words that came through the open window to me. I only stopped to swallow snot and any food that got in my way. My mother grew fat on the air that I left her. I slept where I fell.

More newspapers were put on the mattress, carefully and slowly as Granny Nash read down through the columns and tut-tutted and sniggered. She tore off corners, left neat holes in the middle of pages and hid the pieces under her shawl. My mother’s groans came out of the clouds of steam. I charged right in and ripped the pages from the bed. I tried to knock over the buckets. I screamed and kicked as the tingling hands that had brought me into the world picked me up and dumped me gently on the landing outside.

—Stay out here for a while, little manny.

A rope was tied around my waist and to the stair-rail. I pulled and pulled and scraped at the hempen veins of the rope until my blood had drenched them. But it was too late. A new cry filled the room on the other side of the door. Alexander came first and, before I’d got used to that invasion, Susie joined Alexander and I was the oldest. The little man of the house. I smelt milk that should have been mine, and went mad.

Alexander this, Susie that, name-dropping all day long, the only thing my mother and father had left in common, the odd time he remembered who he was and came home. They patted me when they could catch me, but would they drop my name? One word, two syllables, so easy to remember.
What about meeee!
Then there were no names at all. She was closing down, packing up to join the stars. He was off, away knocking heads for Dolly Oblong, wearing his big thick heart on the sleeve of his bloodstained coat. He wasn’t with us any more. There was no tap tap outside on the street when Alexander and Susie were being born. He was on important business, delivering love letters from Dolly to Alfie. He’d come home now and again, wherever the latest home was. He never took the leg off; he didn’t have the time and he knew I’d have my teeth into it the second he put it down. So he got up on the bed with the leg, made his noises, filled my mother, and went. To his new life. And, sometimes, he’d look my way and recognise me. He’d smile, and go.

I broke free of the room, pulled the door from its hinges, and attacked the house. I dug my heels into the stairs, smashed the banisters. I rolled down the stairs and steps, out onto the street. I screamed at the sky.

—Where are you off to, Sonny Jim?

—UCK OFF! I roared.

And I invaded Dublin. Out under the horses and the wheels I went, through the puddles and hawkers, dung and carters, the noise and the soot, in bare feet that became as hard as the stone under them.

—Seven plums a penny! Seven for a penny!

I hit the bad streets of Dublin, a three-year-old earthquake, a bomb going off, a complete and utter brat.

—Cheaper the apples! Even cheaper the apples!

Infested, hungry and unloved, I fell in with the crowd. I wandered up and down outside the house, a wolf in a rusting cage. I slid under big legs and climbed along the railings. I looked up at women’s faces, passing women and women on the other steps. Remember me? The Glowing Baby. The baby who made you smile. They looked at me and saw the screaming get from the top back in No. 7, the little get who made his poor mammy’s life a red hot purgatory long before her due. Or else they didn’t look at all. They’d enough on their plates, screaming gets of their own.

But I loved the street, from the second I landed on it. The action, the noise and smells - I gobbled them all up, I was starving for more. I was looking at misery that matched my own. I was at home in the rags and scarcity, dirt and weakness. And there were new things too, colour, laughter, chaos and escape. It was glorious. It was my world and it could be as big and as small as I wanted it to be. There was a corner and, beyond that, more corners. There were doorways, and more doors inside. There were carts and cabs and the music of tram bells coming from beyond the packed houses, somewhere I couldn’t yet see, but near, around more corners and off. There were hawkers’ shouts and foreign accents, and new smells spilling over the old ones. I heard a foghorn and it told me that there were places far away.

—Where’s your mammy, little man?

—UCK OFF.

—Holy God. What’s your name?

—HEN’Y.

I was there, at home, an instant street arab, welcome and ignored. I fought my corner. I looked and learned. A police whistle, an ice-cream seller’s bugle, wheels going over stone, women shouting for their children, a woman fighting the price of a brush—

—D’you call them things bristles?

—Good bristles, yes. Feel, please.

—I can see them from here, sure. It’s hardly a brush at all. It’s only a piece of oul’ wood that needs a shave. If I gave you a penny for it, it would be only to give it a home.

—Is good brush. I use it myself.

—I can see that. Sure, the poor thing’s nearly worn away.

A milkman filled a jug from a churn on the back of his cart. He tilted the ladle again and let more milk fall onto the milk already in the jug.

—And a drop more for the cat.

He handed the jug down to a woman and the jug and milk went under her shawl. He led the horse to the next door where the house’s women were waiting for their milk. Already, there was sex. I watched all the women. I followed them, I rubbed against them. I breathed them in and waited for them to arrive. I fell in love fifteen times a minute. I followed them to their doors. I heard their noise and bustle; I heard them crying. A woman crying - and there were plenty - made me furious and thrilled. You need
meeee
. Pick me up; I’ll take your tears. And I went weak when they were together, laughing or complaining or fighting; I needed the railings to keep me standing. Women together. The sounds they made, the way they walked, the shawls that wrapped and hid them. Oh God, those shawls. I wanted to climb in under and die for the rest of my life. I saw them looking at men. I watched their eyes following as they tightened their shawls and stood still. I wanted to feel their eyes. I wanted to get up to their eyes. I sat down on the street and ached.