The Ginger Man (13 page)

16

Sebastian sat hunched over his belly, transfused with joy. A night of a party. They were sitting in the Scotch House between two big barrels. Outside the Guinness boats going chug chug. Clocklan bellowing laughter.

I think I will see a great night of it All manner of men invited. Sick and infirm, the bogus and bitchy. Those unclean and disgraced. Daily communicants and members in good standing of the Legion of Mary. The failed and about to fail. Dublin is great for minor clerks and officials. Nine in the office till six o'clock at home. The wracked and choked bodies. The wife will not put her hand on it or have a painful pump. A party of the anguished and underling. Mr. Danger-field, alias Danger, Bullion, Balfe, Boom and Beast, will tell you how to get out of it. But well to remember it's hard but it's fair. These little buggerings showed people you could take it The pain as well as the pleasure.

And I think there ought to be a table in the middle of the floor for a demonstration of the animal. Penny notebooks for notes, please. Tell you anything you want to know. I might not look like much now, but in five years. Wow. And don't forget that I'm at Trinity either. No end to where I am. To dose the evening I'll do a Spanish dance and catch olives in the mouth and a few other things as well. And songs of course, led by Mr. Dangerfield and the tea and cakes served by genuine North of Dublin whores for those of you who are repressed.

"Clocklan, I'm suffering from a woeful case of blackdog."

"Get the bloody stout and never mind the blackdog. This is going to be a great party."

"I ought to go home, Percy."

"Go on out of that Can't miss this bash."

They were walking up Grafton Street carrying gray parcels of stout Dangerfield singing:

My heart is like

A squeezed grape

Only the pip

Is left

Only the pip.

"I'll be thrown out of the house"

"Jesus, what kind of a house do you keep. Give your woman a good boot in the hole. Throw you out? Nonsense. This is Ireland"

They pushed through an iron gate and down the black, steep steps. Tony Malarkey, host, grinning, a pleased bull smelling the hot rump of a cow in heat, counting the parcels of stout Eyes on the corks. Through a scullery there was a huge kitchen. Drink was put on the table. Clocklan brought his to a corner of the room, hiding the bottles under some rags. Malarkey watching him.

"Where are you going with that drink, Clocklan, you stingy ould whore ?
"

"Not wasting it on your ould guts"

The air filled with the popping of corks. A smell of damp walls and cavities. A feeling of long corridors and hidden rooms, tunnels in the earth, black pits and wine cellars filled with mouldy mattresses. A bulb burning in the center of the kitchen. The floor, stained, red tiles. Whitewashed walls and scabby buttresses crossing the ceiling. And more people bursting in the door laden with bags of stout

Sebastian putting bottles in his pockets. Arming. He crossed over the room. A short, stocky girl standing alone. Smoldering green eyes and long black hair. Perhaps her father is a casket maker. Or she is a servant.

Sebastian next to her. She raised an eyebrow. Wow, this is no servant or serf either. What green, animal eyes. He took the bottle. holding it between his knees, a quick spin of the corkscrew. Then straighten the body. Bop. The brown foam dripped over the sides of his mouth. He smiled at the girl.

"What's your name?"

"That's a funny question to be asking me right off."

"What would you like me to ask you?"

"I don't know. It's just funny asking my name right away"

"My name is Sebastian."

"My name is Mary."

"You look Italian, Mary."

"Are you being fresh ?"

"Boooobebo. Danggigigeegi. That's African for, certainly not beautiful maiden."

"You're making fun of me. I don't like it. You're queer."

"Have a bottle of stout, Mary. I want to tell you a few things. First a little bit about sin."

"What do you know about sin ? "

"I can forgive sin."

"That's a sin you're saying. I won't talk to you if you say things like that"

Assuming the role of gentleman, Sebastian gave Mary a glass of stout. He brought her to where they could sit on a bench and talk. She said she minded the house. Her father had not been able to move his bowels for three weeks and they had to call the doctor and the doctor couldn't do anything for him and they thought he would die of the poison. She said he would just lie in bed and wouldn't go out to look for a day's work. Been there for months and the smell was too much and she had to take care of the house and her two small brothers.

Clocklan across the room, paying court to a smooth skinned blonde. The party distilling overtones of boredom and discontent. Suddenly a stout bottle whistled across the room, smashing an effeminate man's head. There was a quavering word of admonition and a chorus of encouragement. A chair broke, a girl twisting and yelling that she would not be handled Sebastian retreating down his bench with Mary, giving her an account of what was going on. Something brewing across the room. Clocklan had turned from his blonde woman and was talking to a tiny man who someone said was a jeweler by trade and disposition. Suddenly, Clock-Ian raised his fist and drove it into the little man's face. He fell on the floor, crawling desperately towards safety under a bench and away from the bellow of Clocklan, to receive a kick in the face from a girl who thought he was trying to look up her dress.

A cellar of the damned for sure. I cannot tolerate economic cripples and I do not like those who were once rich. In it all to get away from it all. Perhaps I cannot bear to ever finish waiting. Those few left in the center of the room. The others beaten in battle had retreated to the corners of the room and did not have any opinions, standing glassy eyed and drunk.

Mary looking up out of her green eyes.

"O the things that are happening here."

"An awful bunch, Mary."

"Where are you from in England?"

"I'm not lime, Mary."

"What are you then."

"I'm American."

"Are you. Really?"

"And you're Irish."

"Yes."

"And do you like Ireland?"

"I like it. I wouldn't live anywhere else."

"Have you lived anywhere else?"

"No."

"And do you like your father?"

"That's a funny question. Why do you ask me these funny questions?"

"I like you. I want to know if you like your father."

"No. I don't like him."

"Why?"

"Because he doesn't like me."

"Why doesn't he like you?"

"I don't know but he's never liked me"

"How do you know he doesn't like you?"

"Because he punches and beats me"

"Good God, Mary. I say, he beats you?"

"Yes, he beats me"

"What for?"

"For nothing"

"Must be for something"

"No. If I come home late he asks me why I'm late and no matter what I say he finds some excuse to start punching me and he gets me in the hall so I can't get away and just punches me. He hates me"

"He does?"

"Yes. And there's no reason for it. As soon as I come in the house, he's sitting listening to the wireless and I go to put my coat away and he calls me into the sitting room and then asks me where I've been and accuses me of seeing men in parks and going off with them. And I haven't seen any men. Then he calls me a liar and awful names and then if I say I'm telling the truth, he comes after me"

"What about your mother?"

"She's dead"

"And you take care of your father and brothers?"

"Yes"

"Why don't you leave? Go to England and get a job."

"I don't want to leave my little brothers. They are only small"

"He can't beat you up now."

"He tries to sometimes but I'm stronger than he is now."

I can look at Mary. What's this thing? She's easy to look at. Are you easy to feel, too? Sleeves of her sweater stuffed up around her elbows, slender smooth wrists and a fine set of shoulders. Wouldn't want to come to grips, 'cept in mutual passion.

There was suddenly a crash at the door, the center boards giving way and a huge head came through singing.

Mary Maloney's beautiful arse

Is a sweet apple of sin.

Give me Mary's beautiful arse

And a full bottle of gin.

A man, his hair congealed by stout and human grease, a red chest blazing from his black coat, stumpy fists rotating around his rocky skull, plunged into the room of tortured souls with a flood of song.

Did your mother come from Jesus

With her hair as white as snow

And the greatest pair of titties

The world did ever know.

Mary tugged at Sebastian,

"Who's that? It's a shocking song he's singing"

That's the son of the rightful Lord Mayor of Dublin. And his uncle wrote the national anthem"

Mary appreciative, smiling.

This man swept across the red tiles wildly greeting people on all sides, telling the room,

"I loved the British prisons. And you lovely women. The fine builds of ye, I'd love to do you all and your young brothers,"

He saw Sebastian,

"For the love of our Holy Father, the Pope, may he get himself another gold typewriter. Give me your hand Sebastian before I beat you to death with bound copies of the
Catholic Herald.
How are you for Jesus' sake?"

"Barney, I want you to meet Mary. Mary, this is Barney Berry."

"Pleased to know you, Barney,"

"Why you lovely woman, Mary, How are you? I'd love to do you. Don't let this whore touch or pluck your flower. How are you again, Mary?"

"I'm fine."

Barney leaped away and up on the table and did a quick goat dance.

Mary turned to Sebastian.

"He's good gas"

"A fine build of a man, Mary."

"Did his uncle write the song?"

"Mary, when I say something, it's the truth. I speak nothing but the truth. And tell me, Mary, what are you going to do with yourself?"

"What do you mean?"

"In life."

"You mean what am I going to be? I don't know. I don't know what I want to be. When I was little I wanted to be a dancer. I wouldn't mind going to the art school. I like to draw."

"What do you draw?"

"All sorts of things. I like to draw women."

"Why not men?"

"I like women better. I like men too."

"But women most?"

"Yes. No one has ever asked me these questions before. I've never met a nice man."

"None?"

"I don't mean you. I don't know you. Perhaps you're all right. Women are kind."

"Do you like women's bodies ? "

"These are funny questions. Why do you want to know these things anyway?"

"Because you have a nice build."

"How do you know ? "

"By your teeth."

"How?"

"Good teeth a good body. God's teeth are great teeth. Mary you must come with me for a drink."

"Everything is closed."

"O there are places."

The room thick with smoke. Bobbing skulls. Those beaten into silence, glued to the white peeling walls and the beaters, a great bunch. Barney singing, swaying on the tiles. Sweating. Clocklan had left the blonde to drag the little jeweler to the black rear of the catacombs for further discipline. Busting him in the head with the bottom of his fist. I tell you, the place is writhing, simply writhing. Malarkey shouting he was high bloody king and if they all didn't cheer up he would break their faces. Clocklan's woman got up on the table to dance. Wiggling wang, she called it. And Percy came back with a grand grin which he wiped when he saw his woman on the table and he said she was a disgusting tramp and didn't she have any pride at all to be dancing like that in front of a whole bunch of people.

I think Mary's father an uncouth, constipated boor. Things in the North of Dublin have nothing to recommend them. But I think Mary has great charm and sensibility. Take her with me into my personal garden of sunshine which I do not call Eden for obvious reasons. Madam, may I touch your nipples with my eyes. I think these people here are mostly against each other. They think nothing of living between dirty sheets and carrying on indiscriminately. With nary a thought of the consequences stored up with God.

Malarkey grabbed Dangerfield by the arm.

"Sebastian, do you want to see the most amazing thing in your life?"

"I do."

"Come back into the wine cellar."

Sebastian and Mary following Tony.

"Now for the love of Jesus, don't make a sound or old Clocklan will have a fit. Just take a look inside."

At the end of the long black hall, they paused before a half-open window. Leaning over the sill, peering into the black hole. In the center of the room, two figures on a narrow canvas camp bed, reeling on four twisted legs. Writhing. There was a great squeak. And then a squeal. The camp bed collapsing, bare bums slapping the stone. A naked Clocklan clinging desperately to the smooth nude. She said O my God what's happened and groaned. Clocklan grunting, ignoring the laughs in the hall, glued to the bleating blonde.

"Have you ever seen anything like it in your life before, Sebastian?"

Tony, I must say that Clocklan is full of spirit"

"Ould dirty whore. He'd get up on his mother in her coffin"

Mary had run back to the kitchen. A jammed place. Floor covered with broken bottles. A girl standing in the corner, drunk, pissing down her nylon leg. A nice pool. A voice declaring.

"Say what you want about me, but by God, don't insult my King"

"Hump your old King."

"Who said that?"

"Hump your old King."

"I say, I say there, out with it. Who said that?"

"The King is a shit."

"Look here, I won't stand for it."

"Up Ireland."

"God save the King."

"Bollocks the King."

"God save all here. And the others as well."

O thread my way back into this Catholic blood. And there's something about slaughter. Fists in the smoke and smell. What a tiresome scene. A decibel of this is enough. Moral decadence. And an agreeable lack of fibre. But decency, not a bit of it anywhere. I must put a stop to it.