My Oedipus Complex (31 page)

The sergeant would not be outdone in generosity. Politeness required him not to yield to the old man's defence of his superiors and their mysterious ways.

‘It is the secrets I'd be sorry for,' said Dan, summing up. ‘Men die and
men are born, and where one man drained another will plough, but a secret lost is lost forever.'

‘True,' said the sergeant mournfully. ‘Lost forever.'

Dan took his cup, rinsed it in a bucket of clear water by the door and cleaned it again with the shirt. Then he placed it carefully at the sergeant's elbow. From the dresser he took a jug of milk and a blue bag containing sugar; this he followed up with a slab of country butter and – a sure sign that he had been expecting a visitor – a round cake of home-made bread, fresh and uncut. The kettle sang and spat and the dog, shaking his ears, barked at it angrily.

‘Go away, you brute!' growled Dan, kicking him out of his way.

He made the tea and filled the two cups. The sergeant cut himself a large slice of bread and buttered it thickly.

‘It is just like medicines,' said the old man, resuming his theme with the imperturbability of age. ‘Every secret there was is lost. And leave no one tell me that a doctor is as good a man as one that had the secrets of old times.'

‘How could he be?' asked the sergeant with his mouth full.

‘The proof of that was seen when there were doctors and wise people there together.'

‘It wasn't to the doctors the people went, I'll engage?'

‘It was not. And why?' With a sweeping gesture the old man took in the whole world outside his cabin. ‘Out there on the hillsides is the sure cure for every disease. Because it is written' – he tapped the table with his thumb – ‘it is written by the poets “wherever you find the disease you will find the cure”. But people walk up the hills and down the hills and all they see is flowers. Flowers! As if God Almighty – honour and praise to Him! – had nothing better to do with His time than be to making old flowers!'

‘Things no doctor could cure the wise people cured,' agreed the sergeant.

‘Ah, musha, 'tis I know it,' said Dan bitterly. ‘I know it, not in my mind but in my own four bones.'

‘Have you the rheumatics at you still?' the sergeant asked in a shocked tone.

‘I have. Ah, if you were alive, Kitty O'Hara, or you, Nora Malley of the Glen, 'tisn't I'd be dreading the mountain wind or the sea wind; 'tisn't I'd be creeping down with my misfortunate red ticket for the blue and pink and yellow dribble-drabble of their ignorant dispensary.'

‘Why then indeed,' said the sergeant, ‘I'll get you a bottle for that.'

‘Ah, there's no bottle ever made will cure it.'

‘That's where you're wrong, Dan. Don't talk now till you try it. It cured my own uncle when he was that bad he was shouting for the carpenter to cut the two legs off him with a handsaw.'

‘I'd give fifty pounds to get rid of it,' said Dan magniloquently. ‘I would and five hundred.'

The sergeant finished his tea in a gulp, blessed himself, and struck a match which he then allowed to go out as he answered some question of the old man. He did the same with a second and third, as though titillating his appetite with delay. Finally he succeeded in getting his pipe alight and the two men pulled round their chairs, placed their toes side by side in the ashes, and in deep puffs, lively bursts of conversation, and long, long silences enjoyed their smoke.

‘I hope I'm not keeping you?' said the sergeant, as though struck by the length of his visit.

‘Ah, what would you keep me from?'

‘Tell me if I am. The last thing I'd like to do is waste another man's time.'

‘Begor, you wouldn't waste my time if you stopped all night.'

‘I like a little chat myself,' confessed the policeman.

And again they became lost in conversation. The light grew thick and coloured and, wheeling about the kitchen before it disappeared, became tinged with gold; the kitchen itself sank into cool greyness with cold light on the cups and basins and plates of the dresser. From the ash tree a thrush began to sing. The open hearth gathered brightness till its light was a warm, even splash of crimson in the twilight.

Twilight was also descending outside when the sergeant rose to go. He fastened his belt and tunic and carefully brushed his clothes. Then he put on his cap, tilted a little to side and back.

‘Well, that was a great talk,' he said.

‘ 'Tis a pleasure,' said Dan, ‘a real pleasure.'

‘And I won't forget the bottle for you.'

‘Heavy handling from God to you!'

‘Good-bye now, Dan.'

‘Good-bye, sergeant, and good luck.'

Dan didn't offer to accompany the sergeant beyond the door. He sat in
his old place by the fire, took out his pipe once more, blew through it thoughtfully, and just as he leaned forward for a twig to kindle it, heard the steps returning. It was the sergeant. He put his head a little way over the half-door.

‘Oh, Dan!' he called softly.

‘Ay, sergeant?' replied Dan, looking round, but with one hand still reaching for the twig. He couldn't see the sergeant's face, only hear his voice.

‘I suppose you're not thinking of paying that little fine, Dan?'

There was a brief silence. Dan pulled out the lighted twig, rose slowly, and shambled towards the door, stuffing it down in the almost empty bowl of the pipe. He leaned over the half-door while the sergeant with hands in the pockets of his trousers gazed rather in the direction of the laneway, yet taking in a considerable portion of the sea line.

‘The way it is with me, sergeant,' replied Dan unemotionally, ‘I am not.'

‘I was thinking that, Dan; I was thinking you wouldn't.'

There was a long silence during which the voice of the thrush grew shriller and merrier. The sunken sun lit up rafts of purple cloud moored high above the wind.

‘In a way,' said the sergeant, ‘that was what brought me.'

‘I was just thinking so, sergeant, it only struck me and you going out the door.'

‘If 'twas only the money, Dan, I'm sure there's many would be glad to oblige you.'

‘I know that, sergeant. No, 'tisn't the money so much as giving that fellow the satisfaction of paying. Because he angered me, sergeant.'

The sergeant made no comment on this and another long silence ensued.

‘They gave me the warrant,' the sergeant said at last, in a tone which dissociated him from all connexion with such an unneighbourly document.

‘Did they so?' exclaimed Dan, as if he was shocked by the thoughtlessness of the authorities.

‘So whenever 'twould be convenient for you – '

‘Well, now you mention it,' said Dan, by way of throwing out a suggestion for debate, ‘I could go with you now.'

‘Ah, sha, what do you want going at this hour for?' protested the
sergeant with a wave of his hand, dismissing the notion as the tone required.

‘Or I could go tomorrow,' added Dan, warming to the issue.

‘Would it be suitable for you now?' asked the sergeant, scaling up his voice accordingly.

‘But, as a matter of fact,' said the old man emphatically, ‘the day that would be most convenient to me would be Friday after dinner, because I have some messages to do in town, and I wouldn't have the journey for nothing.'

‘Friday will do grand,' said the sergeant with relief that this delicate matter was now practically disposed of. ‘If it doesn't they can damn well wait. You could walk in there yourself when it suits you and tell them I sent you.'

‘I'd rather have yourself there, sergeant, if it would be no inconvenience. As it is, I'd feel a bit shy.'

‘Why then, you needn't feel shy at all. There's a man from my own parish there, a warder; one Whelan. Ask for him; I'll tell him you're coming, and I'll guarantee when he knows you're a friend of mine he'll make you as comfortable as if you were at home.'

‘I'd like that fine,' Dan said with profound satisfaction. ‘I'd like to be with friends, sergeant.'

‘You will be, never fear. Good-bye again now, Dan. I'll have to hurry.'

‘Wait now, wait till I see you to the road.'

Together the two men strolled down the laneway while Dan explained how it was that he, a respectable old man, had had the grave misfortune to open the head of another old man in such a way as to require his removal to hospital, and why it was that he couldn't give the old man in question the satisfaction of paying in cash for an injury brought about through the victim's own unmannerly method of argument.

‘You see, sergeant,' Dan said, looking at another little cottage up the hill, ‘the way it is, he's there now, and he's looking at us as sure as there's a glimmer of sight in his weak, wandering, watery eyes, and nothing would give him more gratification than for me to pay. But I'll punish him. I'll lie on bare boards for him. I'll suffer for him, sergeant, so that neither he nor any of his children after him will be able to raise their heads for the shame of it.'

On the following Friday he made ready his donkey and butt and set out.
On his way he collected a number of neighbours who wished to bid him farewell. At the top of the hill he stopped to send them back. An old man, sitting in the sunlight, hastily made his way indoors, and a moment later the door of his cottage was quietly closed.

Having shaken all his friends by the hand, Dan lashed the old donkey, shouted: ‘Hup there!' and set out alone along the road to prison.

It's extraordinary, the bitterness there can be in a town like ours between two people of the same family. More particularly between two people of the same family. I suppose living more or less in public as we do we are either killed or cured by it, and the same communal sense that will make a man be battered into a reconciliation he doesn't feel gives added importance to whatever quarrel he thinks must not be composed. God knows, most of the time you'd be more sorry for a man like that than anything else.

The Luceys were like that. There were two brothers, Tom and Ben, and there must have been a time when the likeness between them was greater than the difference, but that was long before most of us knew them. Tom was the elder; he came in for the drapery shop. Ben had to have a job made for him on the County Council. This was the first difference and it grew and grew. Both were men of intelligence and education but Tom took it more seriously. As Ben said with a grin, he could damn well afford to with the business behind him.

It was an old-fashioned shop which prided itself on only stocking the best, and though the prices were high and Tom in his irascible opinionated way refused to abate them – he said haggling was degrading! – a lot of farmer's wives would still go nowhere else. Ben listened to his brother's high notions with his eyes twinkling, rather as he read the books which came his way, with profound respect and the feeling that this would all be grand for some other place, but was entirely inapplicable to the affairs of the County Council. God alone would ever be able to disentangle these, and meanwhile the only course open to a prudent man was to keep his mind to himself. If Tom didn't like the way the County Council was run,
neither did Ben, but that was the way things were, and it rather amused him to rub it in to his virtuous brother.

Tom and Ben were both married. Tom's boy, Peter, was the great friend of his cousin, Charlie – called ‘Charliss' by his Uncle Tom. They were nice boys; Peter a fat, heavy, handsome lad who blushed whenever a stranger spoke to him, and Charles with a broad face that never blushed at anything. The two families were always friendly; the mothers liked to get together over a glass of port wine and discuss the fundamental things that made the Lucey brothers not two inexplicable characters but two aspects of one inexplicable family character; the brothers enjoyed their regular chats about the way the world was going, for intelligent men are rare and each appreciated the other's shrewdness.

Only young Charlie was occasionally mystified by his Uncle Tom; he hated calling for Peter unless he was sure his uncle was out, for otherwise he might be sent into the front room to talk to him. The front room alone was enough to upset any high-spirited lad, with its thick carpet, mahogany sideboard, ornamental clock, and gilt mirror with cupids. The red curtains alone would depress you, and as well as these there was a glass-fronted mahogany bookcase the length of one wall, with books in sets, too big for anyone only a priest to read:
The History of Ireland
,
The History of the Popes
,
The Roman Empire
,
The Life of Johnson
, and
The Cabinet of Literature
. It gave Charlie the same sort of shivers as the priest's front room. His uncle suited it, a small, frail man, dressed in clerical black with a long pinched yellow face, tight lips, a narrow skull going bald up the brow, and a pair of tin specs.

All conversations with his uncle tended to stick in Charlie's mind for the simple but alarming reason that he never understood what the hell they were about, but one conversation in particular haunted him for years as showing the dangerous state of lunacy to which a man could be reduced by reading old books. Charlie was no fool, far from it; but low cunning and the most genuine benevolence were mixed in him in almost equal parts, producing a blend that was not without charm but gave no room for subtlety or irony.

‘Good afternoon, Charliss,' said his uncle after Charlie had tied what he called ‘the ould pup' to the leg of the hallstand. ‘How are you?'

‘All right,' Charlie said guardedly. (He hated being called Charliss; it made him sound such a sissy.)

‘Take a seat, Charliss,' said his uncle benevolently. ‘Peter will be down in a minute.'

‘I won't,' said Charlie. ‘I'd be afraid of the ould pup.'