My Oedipus Complex (20 page)

It was quite dark when he rose to go. The moon was rising over the hills to the left, far away, and the little stream beside the house sounded very loud in the stillness.

‘If there was e'er an old barn or an outhouse,' he said as if to himself.

‘There's a bed inside,' she answered. He looked round at her in surprise.

‘Ah, I wouldn't ask to stop within,' he exclaimed.

Suddenly her whole manner changed. All the brightness, if brightness it could be called, seemed to drop away from her, leaving her listless, cold and melancholy.

‘Oh, please yourself,' she said shortly, as if banishing him from her thoughts. But still he did not go. Instead, he sat down again, and they faced one another across the fireplace, not speaking, for he too had lost his
chatter. The kitchen was in darkness except for the dwindling glow of the turf inside its cocoon of grey dust, and the wan nightlight above the half-door. Then he laughed, rubbing his palms between his knees.

‘And still you know, I'd ask nothing better,' he added shyly.

‘What's that?'

‘I'd ask nothing better than to stop.'

‘Go or stop as you like.'

‘You see,' he went on, ignoring her gathering surprise, ‘I'm an honest fellow. I am, on my oath, though maybe you wouldn't think it, with the rough talk I have, and the life I lead. You could leave me alone with a bag of sovereigns, not counting them, and I'd keep them safe for you. And I'm just the same other ways. I'm not a bit forward. They say a dumb priest loses his benefit, and I'm just like that. I'm apt to lose me benefit for want of a bit of daring.'

Then (and this time it was he who was surprised) she laughed, more with relief, he thought, than at anything he had said. She rose and closed the door, lit the lamp and hung up the heavy kettle. He leaned back in his chair with a fresh sigh of pleasure, stretching out his feet to the fire, and in that gesture she caught something of his nostalgia. He settled down gratefully to one of those unexpected benefits which are the bait with which life leads us onward.

When she rose next morning, she was surprised to find him about before her, the fire lit, and the kettle boiling. She saw how much he needed a shave, and filled out a pan of water for him. Then when he began to scrub his face with the soap, she produced a razor, strop and brush. He was enchanted with these, and praised the razor with true lyric fire.

‘You can have it,' she said. ‘Have them all if they're any use to you.'

‘By God, aren't they though,' he exclaimed reverently.

After breakfast he lit his pipe and sat back, enjoying to the full the last moments which politeness would impose upon hospitality.

‘I suppose you're anxious to be on your road?' she asked awkwardly. Immediately he reddened.

‘I suppose I'm better to,' he replied. He rose and looked out. It was a grey morning and still. The green stretched no farther than the hedge; beyond that lay a silver mist, flushed here and there with rose. ‘Though 'tis no anxiety is on me – no anxiety at all,' he added with a touch of bitterness.

‘Don't take me up wrong,' she said hastily. ‘I'm not trying to hunt you. Stop and have your dinner. You'll be welcome.'

‘I chopped a bit of kindling for you,' he replied, looking shyly at her from under lowered lids. ‘If there was something else I could be doing, I'd be glad enough to stop, mind you.'

There was. Plenty else to be doing. For instance, there was an outhouse that needed whitewashing, and blithely enough he set about his task, whistling. She came and watched him; went, and came again, standing silently beside him, a strange stiff figure in the bright sunlight, but he had no feeling of supervision. Because he had not finished when dinner was ready he stayed to tea, and even then displayed no hurry to be gone. He sang her some of his poems. There was one about Mallow Races, another about a girl he had been in love with as a boy, ‘the most beautiful girl that was ever seen in Kerry since the first day', so he naively told her. It began:

I praise no princesses or queens or great ladies,

Or figures historical noted for style,

Or beauties of Asia or Mesopotamia,

But sweet Annie Bradie, the rose of Dunmoyle.

A sort of confidence had established itself between them. The evening passed quickly in talk and singing – in whistling too, for he was a good whistler, and sometimes performed for dancing: to judge by his own statements he was a great favourite at wakes and weddings and she could understand that.

It was quite dark when they stopped the conversation. Again he made as if to go, and again in her shy, cold way she offered him the chance of staying. He stayed.

For days afterward there seemed to be some spell upon them both. A week passed in excuses and delays, each morning finding him about long before she appeared with some new suggestion, the garden to be weeded, potatoes to be dug, the kitchen to be whitewashed. Neither suggested anything but as it were from hour to hour, yet it did not occur to the man that for her as for him their companionship might be an unexpected benefit.

He did her messages to the village whenever Dan, the ‘boy', a sullen, rather stupid, one-eyed old man, was absent, and though she gave no sign
that she did not like this, he was always surprised afresh by the faint excitement with which she greeted his return; had it been anyone else one might have called her excitement gaiety, but gay was hardly a word one could apply to her, and the emotion quickly died and gave place to a sullen apathy.

She knew the end must come soon, and it did. One evening he returned from an errand, and told her someone had died in the village. He was slightly shocked by her indifference. She would not go with him to the wake, but she bade himself go if he pleased. He did please. She could see there was an itch for company on him; he was made that way. As he polished his boots he confessed to her that among his other vocations he had tried being a Trappist monk, but stuck it only for a few months. It wasn't bad in summer, but it was the divil and all in winter, and the monks told him there were certain souls like himself the Lord called only for six months of the year (the irony of this completely escaped him).

He promised to be back before midnight, and went off very gay. By this time he had formed his own opinion of the woman. It was not for nothing she lived there alone, not for nothing a visitor never crossed the threshold. He knew she did not go to Mass, yet on Sunday when he came back unexpectedly for his stick, he had seen her, in the bedroom, saying her rosary. Something was wrong, but he could not guess what.

Her mood was anything but gay and the evening seemed to respond to it. It was very silent after the long drought; she could hear the thrush's beak go tip-tap among the stones like a fairy's hammer. It was making for rain. To the north-west the wind had piled up massive archways of purple cloud like a ruined cloister, and through them one's eyes passed on to vistas of feathery cloudlets, violet and gold, packed thick upon one another. A cold wind had sprung up: the trees creaked, and the birds flew by, their wings blown up in a gesture of horror. She stood for a long while looking at the sky, until it faded, chilled by the cold wind. There was something mournful and sinister about it all.

It was quite dark when she went in. She sat over the fire and waited. At half past eleven she put down the kettle and brewed herself tea. She told herself she was not expecting him, but still she waited. At half past twelve she stood at the door and listened for footsteps. The wind had risen, and her mind filled slowly with its childish sobbing and with the harsh gushing of the stream beside the house. Then it began to rain. To herself she gave him until one. At one she relented and gave him another half-hour, and it
was two before she quenched the light and went to bed. She had lost him, she decided.

She started when an hour or more later she heard his footsteps up the path. She needed no one to tell her he was alone and drunk: often before she had waited for the footsteps of a drunken old man. But instead of rushing to the door as she would have done long ago, she waited.

He began to moan drowsily to himself. She heard a thud followed by gusty sighing; she knew he had fallen. Everything was quiet for a while. Then there came a bang at the door which echoed through the house like a revolver shot, and something fell on the flagstones outside. Another bang and again silence. She felt no fear, only a coldness in her bowels.

Then the gravel scraped as he staggered to his feet. She glanced at the window. She could see his head outlined against it, his hands against its frame. Suddenly his voice rose in a wail that chilled her blood.

‘What will the soul do at the judgement? Ah, what will the soul do? I will say to ye, “Depart from me into everlasting fire that was prepared for the divil and his angels. Depart from me, depart!” '

It was like a scream of pain, but immediately upon it came a low chuckle of malice. The woman's fists clenched beneath the clothes. ‘Never again,' she said to herself aloud, ‘never again!'

‘Do you see me, do you?' he shouted. ‘Do you see me?'

‘I see you,' she whispered to herself.

‘For ye, for ye, I reddened the fire,' went on the man, dropping back into his whine, ‘for ye, for ye, I dug the pit. The black bitch on the hill, let ye torment her for me, ye divils. Forever, forever! Gather round, ye divils, gather round, and let me see ye roast the black bitch that killed a man.… Do you hear me, do you?'

‘I hear you,' she whispered.

‘Listen to me!

‘When the old man was sleeping

She rose up from her bed,

And crept into his lone bedroom

And cruelly struck him dead;

'Twas with a hammer she done the deed,

May god it her repay,

And then she…then she
…

‘How does it go? I have it!

‘And then she lifted up the body

And hid it in the hay.'

Suddenly a stone came crashing through the window and a cold blast followed it. ‘Never again,' she cried, hammering the bedframe with her fists, ‘dear God, never again.' She heard the footsteps stumbling away. She knew he was running. It was like a child's malice and terror.

She rose and stuffed the window with a rag. Day was breaking. When she went back to bed she was chilled and shaken. Despairing of rest, she rose again, lit a candle and blew up the fire.

But even then some unfamiliar feeling was stirring at her heart. She felt she was losing control of herself and was being moved about like a chessman. Sighing, she slipped her feet into heavy shoes, threw an old coat about her shoulders, and went to the door. As she crossed the threshold she stumbled over something. It was a boot; another was lying some little distance away. Something seemed to harden within her. She placed the boots inside the door and closed it. But again came the faint thrill at her heart, so light it might have been a fluttering of untried wings and yet so powerful it shook her from head to foot, so that almost before she had closed the door she opened it again and went out, puzzled and trembling, into a cold noiseless rain. She called the man in an extraordinarily gentle voice as though she were afraid of being heard; then she made the circle of the farmhouse, a candle sheltered in the palm of her hand.

He was lying in the outhouse he had been whitewashing. She stood and looked down at him for a moment, her face set in a grim mask of disgust. Then she laid down the candle and lifted him, and at that moment an onlooker would have been conscious of her great physical strength. Half lifting, half guiding him, she steered the man to the door. On the doorstep he stood and said something to her, and immediately, with all her strength, she struck him across the mouth. He staggered and swore at her, but she caught him again and pushed him across the threshold. Then she went back for the candle, undressed him and put him to bed.

It was bright morning when she had done.

*

That day he lay on in bed, and came into the kitchen about two o'clock looking sheepish and sullen. He was wearing his own ragged boots.

‘I'm going now,' he said stiffly.

‘Please yourself,' she answered coolly. ‘Maybe you'd be better.'

He seemed to expect something more, and because she said nothing he felt himself being put subtly in the wrong. This was not so surprising, because even she was impressed by her own nonchalance that seemed to have come suddenly to her from nowhere.

‘Well?' he asked, and his look seemed to say, ‘Women are the divil and all!' one could read him like a book.

‘Well?'

‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?'

‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?' she retorted. ‘I had enough of your blackguarding last night. You won't stop another hour in this house unless you behave yourself, mark me well, you won't.'

He grew very red.

‘That's strange,' he answered sulkily.

‘What's strange?'

‘The likes of you saying that to me.'

‘Take it or leave it. And if you don't like it, there's the door.'

Still he lingered. She knew now she had him at her mercy, and the nonchalance dropped from her.

‘Aren't you a queer woman?' he commented, lighting his pipe. ‘One'd think you wouldn't have the face to talk like that to an honest man. Have you no shame?'

‘Listen to who's talking of shame,' she answered bitterly. ‘A pity you didn't see yourself last night, lying in your dirt like an old cow. And you call yourself a man. How ready you were with your stones!'

‘It was the shock,' he said sullenly.

‘It was no shock. It was drink.'

‘It was the shock I tell you. I was left an orphan with no one to tell me the badness of the world.'

‘I was left an orphan too. And I don't go round crying about the badness of the world.'