He poured himself a very large whiskey, which he drank neat, and then added a smaller measure, filling the glass with water. The Principal had been right. The saucepan was full of steaming porridge when he lifted the lid. He ladled it into the bowls with a wooden spoon, leaving place enough in the bowl for milk and a sprinkling of sugar. It was all I could do to finish what was in the bowl. I noticed how remarkably steady his hand was as he brought the spoon to his lips.
‘If a man sticks to the stirabout he’s unlikely to go very far wrong,’ he concluded. ‘I hope you’ll be happy here. Mr Kennedy is a good man. He went on our side in that strike. He kept the school open. It was presumably good for the pupils. I think, though, it brought some trouble on himself. It’s seldom wise in the long run to go against your own crowd.’
He’d risen, laying his rug aside, but before I could leave he took me by the shoulder up to a large oil painting in a heavy gilt frame above the mantel. ‘Look at it carefully. What do you see?’
‘A tropical tree. It looks like an island.’
‘Look again. It’s a trick painting,’ he said, and when I could make nothing more of it he traced lines from the tree, which also depicted a melancholy military figure in a cocked hat. ‘Napoleon, on Elba,’ he laughed.
The Kennedys had invited me to their Sunday lunch the next day. Their kitchen was pleasant and extremely warm, the two girls setting the big table and smells of roasting chicken and apple stew coming from the black-leaded range. There was wine with the meal, a sweet white wine. Afterwards, the girls cleared the table and, asking permission, disappeared into the town. Oliver sat on in the room. Kennedy filled his wife’s glass to the brim with the last of the Sauterne and got himself a whiskey from the press in place of the wine.
‘You were just like he was twenty-one years ago. Your first school. Straight from the training college. Starting out,’ Mrs Kennedy said, her face pink with the wine and cooking.
‘Teachers’ jobs were hard come by in those days. Temporary assistant teacher for one year in the Marist Brothers in Sligo was my first job. There was pay but you could hardly call it pay. Not enough to keep a wren alive.’
‘It was the first of July. I remember it well. We had a bar and grocery by the harbour and sold newspapers. He came in for the Independent. He was tall then, with a thick head of brown hair. I know it was the first of July, but I forget the year.’
‘Nineteen thirty-three. It was the year I got out of college. I bought that Independent to see if there were any permanent jobs coming up in October.’
‘We were both only twenty. They told us to wait till we had saved some money, that we had plenty of time. But we couldn’t wait. My father gave us two rooms above the grocery part of the shop. Do you ever regret not waiting?’
‘We wouldn’t have saved anyhow. There was nothing to save. And we had those years.’
I felt like an intruder. Their son sat there, shamed and fascinated, unable to cry, stop, or tear himself away.
‘Those two rooms were rotten with damp, and when there were storms you should have heard the damned panes. You could have wallpapered the rooms with the number of letters beginning “The Manager regrets” that came through the letter-box that winter. Oliver here was on the way.’
‘Those two rooms were happiness,’ she said, lifting the glass of sweet wine to her lips, while her son writhed with unease on the sofa.
‘We could get no job, and then I was suddenly offered three at the same time. It’s always the same. You either get more than you want or you get nothing. We came here because the house went with the school. It meant a great deal in those days. It still does us no harm.’
*
I walked with Kennedy to the school on the Monday. He introduced me to the classes I was to teach. We walked together on the concrete during the mid-morning break. Eagerly, he started to talk as we walked up and down among the playing children. The regulation ten minutes ran to twenty before he rang the bell.
‘They’re as well playing in this weather. The inspectors never try to catch me out. They know the work gets done.’
It was the same at the longer lunchtime, the talk veering again to the early days of his marriage.
‘I used to go back to those two rooms for lunch. We’d just go straight to bed, grabbing a sandwich on the way out. Sometimes we had it off against the edge of the table. It was a great feeling afterwards, walking about with the Brothers, knowing that they’d never have it in the whole of their lives.’
I walked with him on that concrete in total silence. I must have been close to the perfect listener for this excited, forceful man. No one had ever spoken to me like this before. I didn’t know what to say. The children milled about us in the weak sun. Sometimes I shivered at the premonition that days like this might be a great part of the rest of my life: I had dreamed once that through teaching I would help make the world a better place.
‘What made you take up teaching?’ he asked. ‘I know the hours are good enough, and there’s the long holidays, but what the hell good is it without money?’
‘I don’t know why,’ I answered. ‘Some notion of service … of doing good.’
‘It’s easy to see that you’re young. Teaching is a lousy, tiring old job, and it gets worse as you get older. A new bunch comes at you year after year. They stay the same but you start to go down. You’ll not get thanked for service in this world. There were no jobs when I was young. It was considered a bloody miracle to have any sort of a job with a salary. If I was in your boots now I’d do something like dentistry or engineering, even if I had to scrape for the money.’
The time had already gone several minutes past the lunchtime. The children were whirling about us on the concrete in loud abandon, for them the minutes of play stolen from the school day were pure sweetness.
‘Still, if I had had those chances, I wouldn’t have gone to Sligo and I’d never have met her,’ he mused.
I was in my room in the digs after tea one evening when a daughter of the house in the blouse and gymfrock of the convent secondary school knocked and said, ‘There’s a visitor for you in the front room downstairs.’
A frail, grey-haired man rose as soon as I entered. He had an engaging handshake and smile.
‘I’m Owen Beirne, branch secretary of the INTO. I just called in to welcome you to the town and to invite you to our meeting on Friday night. I teach in a small school out in the country. Forgive the speech.’ He smiled as he sat down.
I explained briefly that I had joined the union already and suggested that we move from the stiff front room.
‘We’ll cross in a minute to the Bridge Bar. They always have a nice fire, but it’s safer to say what I have to say here. I suppose you don’t know about your Principal and the union.’
‘He told me he wasn’t a member.’
‘Did he try to stop you joining?’ he asked sharply.
‘No. I told him I’d joined already.’
‘Well, he was a member before the strike but he refused to come out on strike. For several months he crossed that picket line, while the church and de Valera tried to starve us to our knees.’
There was nothing for me to say.
‘As far as we are concerned, I mean the rest of the teachers around here, Kennedy doesn’t exist. You’re in a different position. He’s your Principal. You have to work with the man. But if we were to meet the two of you together, you might find yourself blackballed as well.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘It means nothing as far as you are concerned. You just go your own way and notice nothing. But should he try to pull the heavy on you in school — he did with one of your predecessors — let us know and we’ll fall on him like the proverbial load of bricks.’ He had risen. ‘That’s what I wanted to get out of the way.’