My Oedipus Complex (27 page)

‘And you, too, Miss Lomasney,' Ned said gaily.

‘Thanks, Mr Lowry,' she replied with the same crooked smile.

And they all felt afterwards as though they had been attending a funeral.

Justin and Rita married, and Ned, like all the Hayfield Hourigans, behaved in a decorous and sensible manner. He did not take to drink or violence or do any of the things people are expected to do under the circumstances. He gave them an expensive clock as a wedding present, went a couple of times to visit them, permitted Justin to try and convert him back to Catholicism, and took Rita to the pictures when Justin was on circuit. At the same time he began to walk out with an assistant in Halpin's; a gentle, humorous girl with a great mass of jetblack hair, a snub nose and a long, melancholy face. You saw them everywhere together.

He also went regularly to Sunday's Well to see the old couple and Nellie, who wasn't married yet. One evening when he called, Mr and Mrs Lomasney were down at the church, but Rita was there, Justin being again away. It was months since she and Ned had met; she was having a baby and very near her time, and it made her self-conscious and rude. She said it made her feel like a yacht that had been turned into a cargo-boat. Three or four times she said things to Ned that would have maddened anyone else, but he took them in his usual way, without resentment.

‘And how's little Miss Bitch?' she asked insolently.

‘Little Miss who?' he asked.

‘Miss – how the hell can I remember the names of all your dolls? The Spanish-looking one who sells the knickers at Halpin's.'

‘Oh, she's very well, thanks.'

‘What you might call a prudent marriage,' Rita went on, all on edge.

‘How's that?'

‘You'll have the ring and the trousseau at cost price.'

‘Aren't you very interested in her?' Nellie asked suspiciously.

‘I don't give a damn about her,' Rita said contemptuously. ‘Would Senorita What's-her-name ever let you stand godfather to my footballer, Ned?'

‘Why not?' Ned asked mildly. ‘I'd be delighted, of course.'

‘You have the devil's own neck to ask him after the way you treated him,' said Nellie.

Nellie was fascinated. She knew that Rita was in one of her emotional states and longed to know what it all meant. Ordinarily Rita would have delighted in thwarting her, but now it was as though she actually wanted an audience.

‘What did I do to him?' she asked with interest.

‘Codding him along like that for years, and then marrying a man that was twice your age. What sort of conduct is that?'

‘Well, how did he expect me to know the difference?'

Ned rose and took out a packet of cigarettes. Like Nellie, he knew that Rita had deliberately staged the scene for some purpose of her own. She was leaning far back in her chair and laughed up at him while she took a cigarette and waited for him to light it.

‘Come on, Rita,' he said encouragingly. ‘As you've said so much you may as well tell us the rest.'

‘What else is there to tell?'

‘What had you against me,' he said, growing pale.

‘Who said I had anything against you?'

‘Didn't you?'

‘Not a damn thing. Just that I didn't love you. Didn't I tell you distinctly when you asked me to marry you that I didn't love you? I suppose you thought I didn't mean it?'

He paused for a moment and then raised his eyebrows.

‘I did,' he said quietly.

She laughed. Nellie did not laugh.

‘The conceit of some people!' Rita said lightly: then, with a change of tone: ‘I had nothing against you, Ned. This was the one I had the needle in. Herself and Kitty forcing me into it.'

‘Well, the impudence of you!' cried Nellie.

‘And isn't it true for me? Weren't you both trying to get me out of the house?'

‘We were not,' Nellie replied hotly. ‘And even if we were, that has nothing to do with it. We didn't want you to marry Justin if you wanted to marry Ned.'

‘I didn't want to marry Ned. I didn't want to marry at all.'

‘What made you change your mind, so?'

‘Nothing made me change my mind. I didn't care about anyone only Tony, only I didn't want to go to that damn place, and I had no alternative. I had to marry one of them, so I made up my mind that I'd marry the first one that called.'

It was directed to Nellie, but every word was aimed straight at Ned, and Nellie was wise enough to realize it.

‘My God, you must have been mad!' she said.

‘I felt it,' Rita said with a shrug. ‘I sat at the window the whole afternoon, looking out at the rain. Remember that day, Ned?'

He nodded.

‘Blame the rain if you want to blame something. I think I half hoped you'd come first. Justin came instead – an old aunt of his was sick and he came to supper. I saw him at the gate and he waved to me with his old brolly. I ran downstairs to open the door for him. “Justin, if you still want to marry me, I'm ready,” I said, and I grabbed him by the coat. He gave me a dirty look – you know Justin! “Young woman, there's a time and place for everything,” he said, and off with him to the lavatory. Talk about romantic engagements! Damn the old kiss did I get off him, even!'

‘I declare to God!' Nellie said in stupefaction. ‘You're not natural, Rita.'

‘I know,' Rita said, laughing again at her own irresponsibility. ‘Cripes, when I knew what I'd done I nearly dropped dead!'

‘Oh, so you did come to your senses, for once?' Nellie asked.

‘Of course I did. That's the trouble with Justin. He's always right. That fellow knew I wouldn't be married a week before I'd forgotten Tony. And there was I, sure that my life was over and that it was marriage or the river. Women!' she cried, shaking her head in a frenzy. ‘God! God! The idiots we make of ourselves about men!'

‘And I suppose it was then that you found out you'd married the wrong man?' Nellie asked, but not inquisitively this time. She knew.

‘Who said I married the wrong man?' Rita asked hotly.

‘It sounds damn like it, Rita,' Nellie said wearily.

‘You get things all wrong, Nellie,' Rita said, her teeth on edge again. ‘You jump to conclusions too much. If I married the wrong man, I wouldn't be likely to tell you – or Ned either.'

She looked mockingly at Ned, but her look belied her. It was plain enough now why she needed Nellie as audience. It kept her from saying more than she had to say, from saying things that once said, might make her own life unbearable. We all do it. Once let her say ‘Ned, I love you', which was all she was saying, and he would have to do something about it, and then everything would fall in ruin about them.

He rose and flicked his cigarette ash into the fire. Then he stood with his back to it, his hands behind his back, his feet spread out on the hearth, exactly as he had stood on that night when he had defended her against her family.

‘You mean, if I'd come earlier you'd have married me?' He asked quietly.

‘If you'd come earlier, I'd probably be asking Justin to stand godfather to your brat,' said Rita. ‘And how do you know but Justin would be walking out the Senorita, Ned?'

‘And you wouldn't be quite so interested whether he was or not,' Nellie said, but she didn't say it maliciously. It was only too plain what Rita meant, and Nellie was sorry for her. She had a long lifetime yet to go through. ‘Dear God,' she added ingenuously, ‘isn't life awful?'

Ned turned and lashed his cigarette savagely into the fire. Rita looked up at him mockingly.

‘Go on!' she taunted him. ‘Say it, blast you!'

‘I couldn't,' he said bitterly.

A month later, he married the Senorita.

Spring had only come and already he was tired to death; tired of the city, tired of his job. He had come up from the country intending to do wonders, but he was as far as ever from that. He would be lucky if he could carry on, be at school each morning at half past nine and satisfy his half-witted principal.

He lodged in a small red-brick house in Rathmines that was kept by a middle-aged brother and sister who had been left a bit of money and thought they would end their days enjoyably in a city. They did not enjoy themselves, regretted their little farm in Kerry, and were glad of Ned Keating because he could talk to them about all the things they remembered and loved.

Keating was a slow, cumbrous young man with dark eyes and a dark cow's-lick that kept tumbling into them. He had a slight stammer and ran his hand through his long limp hair from pure nervousness. He had always been dreamy and serious. Sometimes on market days you saw him standing for an hour in Nolan's shop, turning the pages of a schoolbook. When he could not afford it he put it back with a sigh and went off to find his father in a pub, just raising his eyes to smile at Jack Nolan. After his elder brother Tom had gone for the church he and his father had constant rows. Nothing would do Ned now but to be a teacher. Hadn't he all he wanted now? his father asked. Hadn't he the place to himself? What did he want going teaching? But Ned was stubborn. With an obstinate, almost despairing determination he had fought his way through the training college into a city job. The city was what he had always wanted. And now the city had failed him. In the evenings you could still see him poking round the
second-hand bookshops on the quays, but his eyes were already beginning to lose their eagerness.

It had all seemed so clear. But then he had not counted on his own temper. He was popular because of his gentleness, but how many concessions that involved! He was hesitating, good-natured, slow to see guile, slow to contradict. He felt he was constantly underestimating his own powers. He even felt he lacked spontaneity. He did not drink, smoked little, and saw dangers and losses everywhere. He blamed himself for avarice and cowardice. The story he liked best was about the country boy and the letter box. ‘Indeed, what a fool you think I am! Put me letther in a pump!'

He was in no danger of putting his letter in a pump or anywhere else for the matter of that. He had only one friend, a nurse in Vincent's Hospital, a wild, light-hearted, light-headed girl. He was very fond of her and supposed that some day when he had money enough he would ask her to marry him; but not yet: and at the same time something that was both shyness and caution kept him from committing himself too far. Sometimes he planned excursions beside the usual weekly walk or visit to the pictures but somehow they seldom came to anything.

He no longer knew why he had come to the city, but it was not for the sake of the bed-sitting room in Rathmines, the oblong of dusty garden outside the window, the trams clanging up and down, the shelf full of second-hand books, or the occasional visit to the pictures. Half humorously, half despairingly, he would sometimes clutch his head in his hands and admit to himself that he had no notion of what he wanted. He would have liked to leave it all and go to Glasgow or New York as a labourer, not because he was romantic, but because he felt that only when he had to work with his hands for a living and was no longer sure of his bed would he find out what all his ideals and emotions meant and where he could fit them into the scheme of his life.

But no sooner did he set out for school next morning, striding slowly along the edge of the canal, watching the trees become green again and the tall claret-coloured houses painted on the quiet surface of the water, than all his fancies took flight. Put his letter in a pump indeed! He would continue to be submissive and draw his salary and wonder how much he could save and when he would be able to buy a little house to bring his girl into; a nice thing to think of on a spring morning: a house of his own
and a wife in the bed beside him. And his nature would continue to contract about him, every ideal, every generous impulse another mesh to draw his head down tighter to his knees till in ten years' time it would tie him hand and foot.

Tom who was a curate in Wicklow wrote and suggested that they might go home together for the long week-end, and on Saturday morning they set out in Tom's old Ford. It was Easter weather, pearly and cold. They stopped at several pubs on the way and Tom ordered whiskies. Ned was feeling expansive and joined him. He had never quite grown used to his brother, partly because of old days when he felt that Tom was getting the education he should have got, partly because his ordination seemed to have shut him off from the rest of the family, and now it was as though he were trying to surmount it by his boisterous manner and affected
bonhomie
. He was like a man shouting to his comrades across a great distance. He was different from Ned; lighter in colour of hair and skin; fat-headed, fresh-complexioned, deep-voiced, and autocratic; an irascible, humorous, friendly man who was well-liked by those he worked for. Ned, who was shy and all tied up within himself, envied him his way with men in garages and barmaids in hotels.

It was nightfall when they reached home. Their father was in his shirt-sleeves at the gate waiting to greet them, and immediately their mother rushed out as well. The lamp was standing in the window and threw its light as far as the whitewashed gate-posts. Little Brigid, the girl from up the hill who helped their mother now she was growing old, stood in the doorway in half-silhouette. When her eyes caught theirs she bent her head in confusion.

Nothing was changed in the tall, bare, whitewashed kitchen. The harness hung in the same place on the wall, the rosary on the same nail in the fireplace, by the stool where their mother usually sat; table under the window, churn against the back door, stair without banisters mounting straight to the attic door that yawned in the wall – all seemed as unchanging as the sea outside. Their mother sat on the stool, her hands on her knees, a coloured shawl tied tightly about her head, like a gipsy
woman with her battered yellow face and loud voice. Their father, fresh-complexioned like Tom, stocky and broken bottomed, gazed out the front door, leaning with one hand on the dresser in the pose of an orator while Brigid wet the tea.