Strumpet City

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The gateway that gave access to the kitchen garden was unlocked. So too was the next gate, the smaller one, leading to the orchard. Beyond that was the side gate opening on to the public laneway. The laneway led to the sand dunes and the sea.

It was sometime in September. What date, Father Giffley did not know. What day he was not quite sure. Thursday perhaps. But the route from the main grounds of the Nursing Home was by now quite familiar. It was also forbidden. That did not bother him. The orchard was heavy with sunshine and the odours of apples and pears. They lay at intervals along the grass-grown pathway, they bent in profusion over him as he searched in the broken water butt by the wall. It was there. He looked about him to be sure there was no one to see. Then, with the bottle of whiskey hidden in his coat he let himself out the side gate and set off for the sand dunes. It was three o’clock. He was quite certain of that. His pocket watch was the one thing in the world that was always right.

Wasps were busy among the blackberries in the laneway. Soon they would die. He admired their yellow-and-black-hooped bodies. They were delicate, cruel, innocent. As he walked sand that had been blown from the sea dusted his broad black toecaps. It lay along the bottom of the hedges too in little grey and silver mounds, left there by the wind. Sand was like spirit, unconfinable. It would get into his socks soon.

The laneway dipped under the railway arch. The arch itself was scrawled with messages of love and obscenity. His feet sank in powdered sand. He climbed among hillocks of wiry seagrass and scattered shells. Beyond was the sea, calm now with a thin edge of foam. It was wide and sunlit. He found a hollow which gave him privacy. The horizon was far away and sea noises spoke to him of changelessness and unalterability. He sat down. He opened the whiskey bottle.

In Kingstown, which was a little nearer to the city, Yearling put his latchkey in the lock and let himself into his house. He had been away for over two months. Now he wondered why he had bothered to return at all. His servants had been let go. Accumulated mail littered the hall. The air was stagnant and unpleasant. He too, felt like a drink. But there was none in the house. He gathered up the letters and automatically inspected the rooms. Nothing had been disturbed. Nothing was out of place. He drew the curtains from the window. Sunlight flooded in. He opened the window and the room seemed to stir. It was as though it had taken a deep breath. He sat down at the table to examine his post.

By six o’clock the whiskey bottle was empty. Father Giffley did not mind. He had the foresight to fill his hip flask with enough to meet the needs of the night. For the moment he was happy to contemplate the empty sea, to explore at leisure the notions of immortality and eternity. The rocks, the sand, the sea, the declining sun, these were eternity. No doubt they had changed a little in all their billions of years and conceivably they would not last for ever. But they lasted a long, long time. Long enough to satisfy any reasonable mind. Human beings changed from era to era, indeed from minute to minute, but mankind remained. It, too, lasted. For long enough. For more than long enough. That was immortality, or as much of it as he could burden his long-suffering and often overtaxed imagination with. Above and beyond that eternity and this immortality was God, or That which was Greatest. Should the Devil ever become greatest then he would become God in turn and the order of creation would be changed in an instant. Not changed simply as from that moment, but right back to wherever and however it had had its beginnings. But in God and Divine Order there is no Becoming, no passive Potentiality. All Is. No Was or Shall Be. The Devil hadn’t a hope. Poor devil. Amen.

He decided to commit something to the sea, a thing he had been fond of doing as a child. He found a pencil and tore a page from his pocket diary and scrawled:

Time takes all away. This was written by a madman on the shores of a mad island.

He put the note in the bottle, pushed in the cork, and threw the bottle as far as he could into the sea. Not very far. He could see it bobbing up and down. He had to squint to do so. His eyes were not very good.

By that time the troopship had cast off from the North Wall, the civilians had finished their cheering and waving, the band on the quayside had come to the end of its brassy music, Mary and Mrs. Mulhall were already on their way back to Chandlers Court. Fitz, the leavetaking over, leaned on the rail of the ship while below him the water of the river whirled past. On the quayside every single thing was familiar, every shed, every crane that raised a bony finger along the South Wall. He saw the gateway of Doggett & Co., the gateway of Nolan & Keyes, the Gas Company gasometers, the corrugated shelter that housed the emergency water supply on the roof of No. 4 house in the yard of the foundry. He hoped they had found someone who could work it. At the Pigeon House, where the river widened out, he saw the strand he had walked with Mary and the Shellybanks where he had proposed to her. Children were exploring its seapools. He wondered if they were still searching for a crab that had money in its purse. Away inland he could see the Martello tower and the houses along Sandymount Strand.

Another soldier said to him:

‘Got a match?’

He took out his box. The soldier offered a cigarette. He took it. The wind whipped at the match. He cradled the flame between his palms. They lit up.

His heart was full of Mary. Each moment that passed was putting its extra little piece of world between them, each twist of the propeller carried him further and further from her. But she would have the allowance. The children would eat. The rent would be paid. In the Royal Army Service Corps he would learn to be a motor mechanic or a car driver. He would be sure of a job when he came back. If he came back. That was as would be.

The soldier seemed lonely and leaned beside him on the rail. He was from Dublin too. He said:

‘Funny feeling—isn’t it?’

He was looking at the mountains that surrounded the bay. They were floating dreamily on sea and sunlight. Multicoloured.

The two of them smoked together. The Black Lighthouse loomed up and fell behind them as the ship cleared the river at last and swung into the bay. Bells tinkled remotely. Their speed increased. Ireland slipped away behind. Before them lay England and training camps, beyond that the Continent. Foreign tongues, unfamiliar countries, shattered towns. War.

The bottle kept returning to Father Giffley. Three times he flung it into the sea. Three times the sea, after long intervals of indecision, brought it back and left it lying again on the shore. The third time it deposited it almost at his feet. He picked it up angrily and smashed it against a rock. Then he became conscience stricken and carefully gathered together the broken pieces. He took them back among the sand dunes and stowed them in a place where they could inflict no damage on bare feet. He cut his own thumb in the process. Blood ran down his coat sleeve and stained the cuff of his shirt. He wrapped his handkerchief around his thumb. The pain set his nerves on edge. He allowed himself a measure from his hip flask, enough to soothe but not so much as would leave him short for his need later on.

The letter from the Bradshaws dated 19th July told Yearling they had been to Portsmouth to view the test mobilisation of the Fleet on a day of perfect weather when the whole place had been en fête and the seafront packed with people. They would both be returning to Ireland in September but not to Dublin. They would stay with Mrs. Bradshaw’s family in Kilkenny while they looked around for somewhere permanent. They hoped to see him.

The letter was two months old. It read already like something from twenty years before. He stuffed the remaining correspondence in his pocket and rose to his feet. He knew now he would go to London. Not because of the war. The war was irrelevant. The war was neither here nor there. He had been uneasy and restless for such a long time. Among the lakes and rivers of Connemara where he had fished and dreamed for two not very memorable months, among people he had met in clubs and hotels, among the streets and byways of Dublin. Nothing would ever happen in Ireland again. Not to him anyway. Nothing ever had. But in London, for a little while and impossibly long ago, life had revealed briefly its dangerous dimensions. Perhaps in London it would do so again. In some other way, of course. And without heartbreak.

He went over to his piano and lifted the lid. It looked lonely too. Very gently he pressed one of the keys. A single musical sound startled the room. It was sweet toned, luminous, sad. He shut the lid again. It was time to go. There was nothing to stay for any longer. He closed the window and let himself out the hall door. It clicked shut behind him.

As Father Giffley made his way back up the lane a train crossed the bridge. He heard its rumble in the distance, stopped, decided to look. Two children at a window saw his black-coated figure and waved their handkerchiefs at him. He waved back. The sky had filled with a pink light which tinted the inland fields and spread its glowing stain on the sea. They continued to wave at each other, the children with their white handkerchiefs, he with his bloodstained one, until the train had gone a long way and looked like a giant black caterpillar against the fields and the pink sky.

Father Giffley made his way up the lane again. The wasps were still busy about the hedges, the blackberries shone in the evening light. He could hear still the never-ceasing movement of the sea.