Through Streets Broad and Narrow (4 page)

“But I know you,” she said. “Why, don't you remember, Oonagh? This is John Blaydon; I met him in Anglesey, I was telling you—”

“Of course,” he said. “You wrote to me once.”

“Did I?”

“I think I answered it; I'm not sure. You asked about Green-bloom, didn't you?”

“That's right, that Jew man at Porth Newydd that night. Whatever happened to him, did he go back to France?”

“Yes, he's got a villa somewhere. I don't know what he's doing but sometimes he sends me books of French poetry published by Gallimard.”

“But how extraordinary,” she said. “I'd no idea you were in Dublin; how long have you been here?”

“This is my second term.”

“Oh.”

Oonagh said, “Who's Greenbloom?”

Dymphna said, “Oh, he was great crack.”

John thought, She uses slang.

“Wasn't he?” she said to him.

“Yes.”

“He had a Bentley and wore that most fascinating shirts, little flowers all over them and talked a hundred to the dozen. I don't think he liked me, did he?” she asked.

“Come on, let's go and have some coffee,” John said. “I'll walk in the middle.”

It doesn't matter whether he liked her or not, he thought. Why should I answer a question like that for her? Thank God she means nothing to me; it's pleasant to be bored by a pretty girl, especially when she could not possibly expect it.

He said to Oonagh, “Did you get my letter?”

“Yes, didn't you get my answer?”

“I haven't read it yet.”

Dymphna asked, “Do you two write to each other?”

And Oonagh said nothing, neither did John.

“In the holidays?” Dymphna persisted.

“Yes.”

“But they were over two weeks ago.”

“We write in the term as well,” he said, “Every day.”

“Good heavens. What on earth do you find to write about?”

“Oh, anything. It's amusing; a game, really.”

Then they were all silent until they got into Mitchell's, when Dymphna made a great splash, waving prettily to the third year
and the rugger team gang, talking to the Boat Club and their girls, but making very sure that she came back to John and Oonagh at the end of it, who were saying things like, “But I did mean it,” or, “No, you misread it, I meant that I think of you
differently
.” Dymphna said to Oonagh, “Are you and John going to the Gresham tonight?”

And John leaned back and pretended he hadn't heard what she said; that therefore, by his abstraction, he was on a very much more intimate footing with Oonagh than was really the case. He looked up at Dymphna as though he had forgotten her and noticed that her hands moved more restlessly than ever.

“I can't tonight,” he said in the end. “I'm working. We've got a terminal in six weeks' time. Oonagh's going with Bill Collins, I think.”

“Bill Collins,” said Dymphna ardently. “He's tremendous.”

“I didn't know you knew Bill.”

“
I
don't,” said John. “He's fourth year.”

“No, I meant Oonagh.”

“Oh he's all right,” Oonagh said, “but he dances like an elephant.”

“But he's great crack,” said Dymphna.

And John thought, I wish she'd stop that rot; it means nothing. Thank God I don't care for her.

He got up as though he were late for something and said, “I've got to go now, I'm meeting Michael Groarke for lunch in the Buffet.”

“You won't be coming to the match in the park, then?” Oonagh asked.

“I can't, I'm afraid, we're going to get down to the Chemistry. Groarke's managed to get hold of the key to the lab or bribed someone—”

Dymphna said, “Well, it was extraordinary meeting you again like that. Where are your rooms? Are you living ‘in' or in digs?”

“In Glasnevin,” he said, “but we're sure to meet again. We come here nearly every Saturday and in any case I'm taking Oonagh to the Boat Club Dance next week; so if not before—”

Dymphna interrupted, “Oh, yes, everyone goes to that. By
the way, who's this Michael Groarke you were talking about? I don't know the name.”

“He lives in Kingstown, I believe.”

“Kingstown?”

“Somewhere like that.” He was deliberately vague because this habit of Dubliners' thinking they could place everyone immediately had begun to annoy him. “Or Foxrock; I can't remember.”

Oonagh was looking distrait, the look he imagined her having when she was writing one of her letters to him. The mood became her and he decided that if ever he did succeed with her she would never look vague again, or hurt; she would just look desperate with knowing what she wanted. Perhaps after that he would fall in love with her; but he doubted it because he was still in love with Theresa.

He paid the bill and left them sitting there, purposely going slowly so that he might hear what Dymphna said, and she said, “John's changed enormously since I met him in Anglesey.”

It was the impression he had wished to give and, greatly elated, he went off to the Chete's rooms where he was due to meet Groarke.

When he reached Mahaffey Buildings the Chete was pulling the fuzz out of his pockets so that his nails might remain clean. He evaginated all the linings one after the other, removed the dust and fluff, then clipped his nails carefully and scrubbed them in the bedroom.

They played the gramophone and John looked at the photograph of the Chete's fiancée on the mantelpiece. Her name was Claire and she lived in Eastbourne in Sussex. The Chete's strange affair with her had been going on for months. When he was sober he would described their love-making in great detail and when he was drunk he would ring her up long distance and be without money for a week afterwards. His mother was either dead or divorced, no one was sure which, and his father ran a golf club and drank in a respectable way, never getting more than drunk.

In some manner the Chete assumed that he was very much older than the rest of the first year and they were inclined to
concede him this affectation. It was partly because his father drank so carefully and partly because the Chete was really engaged and had been so several times; but in addition to this the consent was also given in view of his social aura. The fact, for instance, that he had a mature way of polishing his shoes and a man-about-town set of dicta concerning dress, contraceptives and whiskey.

He was very hospitable. People could wander into his rooms at any old time, crank up the gramophone, make a cup of tea, or ask him about his rowing or his sex life.

That evening, for example, the Chete left him the key of his room and said that if he and Groarke wanted to make tea later on, then for God's sake to empty the cups and ashtrays after them.

He did not return until about six o'clock, very drunk and wanting to change into evening dress for a private dinner and dance somewhere between Dublin and Glendalough. Fitzgerald, whom the Chete had met at Epsom or Aldenham, and who had Dublin relations of the Right kind, was with him. Fitzgerald was fairly sober, he was too good-looking ever to get really drunk, but he enjoyed seeing the Chete drunk and the three of them had an amusing time giving him cold towels, strong coffee and a bucket to be sick into. They managed to get him into a dinner jacket in his bedroom, made sure that he had his cuff-links and silver cigarette case and then sent him off singing happily beside Fitzgerald in Fitzgerald's M.G.

Groarke said, “Where does he get it all from?”

“His father,” John said.

“Poor bastard.”

“His father?” John asked.

“Both of them,” Groarke said, “it's so boring.”

They played a bit more gramophone and then talked Physics and Chemistry. It was an idea of Groarke's to discuss everything in terms of the subject in hand, whether they were talking about food, sex, psychology or books. In this instance, all metaphors and similes had to be relevant physical or chemical concepts or analogues. In this way a subject became a part of you. You lived in it, you saw everything in terms of it, yourself
included; so that even when you were not actually working you were still mentally engaged and thus could not fail to progress faster than anyone else.

After about an hour of it Groarke suddenly became colder-looking and said he was going back to Kingstown. He said he would see John at Fallon's Biochemistry lecture on Monday morning and went out very quickly without saying goodnight.

When he had gone John had another look at Claire's photograph and thought about the Chete's love-making.

“You get nowhere until you get engaged to them,” the Chete had said. On the other hand Groarke said, “Until you've got money or you're close to qualification, which is the same thing, you'll get nowhere until you've frightened them.”

“Theresa wouldn't become engaged to me even if I asked her because she doesn't know whether she's in love with me,” John had told the Chete.

“She won't let me have her because she's not engaged to me,” he had told Groarke.

“Well, for God's sake find someone else,” they had said, to which Groarke had added, “Get a mackintosh.”

“But I'm in love with her.”

“Oh Christ!”

“———”

“People
do
fall in love,” John had insisted. “Look, when I go out with Oonagh, anyone else but Theresa, I'm thinking about
her
all the time. I think about her in the middle of Fallon's lectures, in my bath, at night; when I ring her up my knees start knocking and my mouth goes dry.”

The Chete sang a snatch of, “Was it tears that fell or was it rain?” and Groarke went cold on them. He got a notebook out as though he were in a bitter wind, strapping it down on his knee and muttering chemical formulae to himself with great urgency.

Response of this sort never stopped John from consulting them but he found it better to get them alone since he suspected that when they were together they were vying with one another and not in the least accessible to what they really thought or felt about Theresa or Love.

He counted his money; there was five and threepence and a farthing that had got attached to him several weeks ago and which he was always mistaking for a sixpence in his pocket. It would have to be a careful evening. He would have to walk to Cork Street now or all the way back to Glasnevin when it was over.

He washed up the Chete's cups and threw the farthing into the waste bucket, then took the tram to the Clynches'. Theresa would lend him the Glasnevin fare when it was over.

She had made herself a two-piece out of some buff-coloured cotton and piped it with darker brown to match the buttons. The bridge party had knocked off for bacon, eggs and tea with all the family in the downstairs sitting-room, old Clynche included. Perhaps it was having them all in the room that made her so encouraging. She was swinging a little evening bag which toned with her hat and looked really dreadful from the point of view of clothes. But her face was so beautiful that even sitting down in one of the battered armchairs he felt his knees shaking inside his trouser legs; the dry bursting feeling settled down in his chest and started struggling to get its wings out so that he found it difficult to breathe. It was somebody's birthday again: Britta's or James', and the Clynches were passing round the awful presents: an electric razor so new that it looked cheap against all the shabbiness, and a selection of striped silk ties.

Theresa suddenly came and sat on the end of John's knees and made a little rumba movement of gaiety, saying he should have brought a present. This was exactly what he was thinking himself and like a fool he said he'd already got it but that it was back in his rooms at Glasnevin; a new Kodak.

“New” was the word; it had been his own only for a matter of six or eight weeks, his eldest brother David's Christmas present to him and scarcely used; merely looked at practically every night in bed before he put the light out. He wasn't even sure how to work it yet, but that was half the fun because you could be sure of getting results in the end—with a machine.

If they'd known that it was that minute rumba she'd given him which had made it impossible for him
not
to give the Kodak to James or Kevin, they'd have thought he was mad.
He wondered himself. He should have given it to Theresa if he'd been going to give it to anyone but it was against his rules to give her anything expensive.

As it was, they made a tremendous fuss of him. Brigid pinned her hair back and started talking about exams; she rattled off the course the R.C. lodgers were racing through at the National University and then said that Aileen's husband had just been promoted in the R.A.F. Medical Branch for passing an Eye diploma. Aileen would soon be able to live in Baghdad where she would have a seven-room house and servants she could summon by clapping her hands and hissing.

Brittas said you hissed in Malaya and clapped in Siam, but Brigid said what did it matter? She'd willingly do both together for a hand with the coals. James said it was “onnatural” anyway and that free men weren't made to be servants to the bloody British Raj in India or anywhere else.

John asked him what the Irish would do if it weren't for the British Empire and James said they'd settle for the Six Counties as a beginning and wanted nothing from England except a back view.

Somebody went out for a half-dozen of porter while old Clynche heated up the poker to warm them with, and Theresa and John left for Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire at the Theatre Royal.

“If James doesn't want the Kodak from England,” he said, “he'd probably be offended if I gave it him. So—”

“Sure that's an American Company,” Theresa said. “We've an uncle in Aurora, Illinois. James always wanted a camera.”

“Ah, that's different then.”

“Well, it's terribly sweet of you. Fancy remembering.”