‘And you broke the vase.’
‘Yes. That is why. And why I must pay you for it.’
‘Of course you mustn’t. This is so mournful. Leila. So very mournful.’
‘That is the first time you have ever used my name. And that is mournful.’
‘Could we not make love. Even sometime.’
‘Please. Don’t ask me to do that.’
‘I must. Because I want to so much. And you say you are leaving. I must not let you go. And what would happen to you. Out in the world.’
‘But it is where I come from. Out in the world.’
‘But have you a job or somewhere to stay.’
‘When I go, you need not ever worry. I am well able to take care of myself. I’ve lived rough. I have run away many times from many places. I’ve been with travelling people on the side of the road. I went begging with them in the towns. And I could beg as much money in an afternoon than any ten of them could beg in a month. And they didn’t want me to go away from them. They’d watch me day and night. Take any money off me. Even kept me short of food. It is how I have this cough in my lungs. But to keep my teeth good I’d chew as much carrots and turnips as I could. I’m not complaining but the men would be forever pestering. And you’d never know whether they were more of a nuisance when they were drunk or when they were sober. But one day in Birr where we were begging I got away. I went as if I were begging at the station. I had extra shillings hid in my shoes and knew the time of the train. Asked the station master to let me use the bogs. He wouldn’t let the rest of them come. I got on the train to Dublin.’
‘And what did you do in Dublin.’
‘I got a job. A waitress in a cinema cafe in Grafton Street. Ah but I must not just sit here telling the tale of my life.’
‘I ran away once. And was a waif too on the road. Why do you smile.’
‘Because I would like to believe you but I think that I shouldn’t.’
‘I was found dying and delirious by some kindly monks. May I. Just to hold your hand. And I want so much to hold you close.’
‘No. Please. Please don’t.’
‘Why. Surely just to touch you.’
‘I should tell you too. I have already had a child. Who was torn out of my arms. A little boy I shall never see again. And I have also sold myself on the street. And I have had diseases. You see. You are. Although you pretend not. You are shocked. You want to run away out of this room, don’t you. Don’t you.’
‘But I have not run out of this room.’
‘I cannot tell you more now than I’ve told you. But I have reasons now to go away. And you must not ask me what they are. But there is one more thing I want to say. With all my heart. With all my soul and with all my sins. Even as I know my already spoken words one by one have closed all the little gates that lead to the garden of your heart. And all I want to say.
Is
I
Love
You
16
Leaden skies above this morn. Flurries of snow swirling across the grey of the granite. A nosegay of heathers in one’s overcoat buttonhole. Above the trees of the distant wood a flock of crows circling. Waiting here on the front steps of Andromeda Park. The clatter of hoofs from the stable yard. Up the road, Sexton driving the victoria. Wheeling it to stop precisely in front of one. Wield up to his hands my portmanteau. Step down one step and step up.
‘It’s not a bad old morning now, Master Darcy. There’d be a bit of kindness lurking in the air behind the present bitter bit of breeze.’
Overgrown rhododendron leaves down the drive brushing against our faces. Out across the grey fields a momentary distant ray of sun. The only seldom brightness to come in one’s life these many past days. Leila gone one morning. Departed as I still lay asleep. And woke nearly knowing when I heard the distant sound of the train whistle come in my open window on the chill silent air.
‘And how are you Sexton. How is your back keeping.’
‘Ah a mite more than middling you’d say, if you had to say anything. But it would be me soul I’d be more worried about. I was, not long after dawn’s early light, planning to say me Stations of the Cross around the garden.’
‘That’s very commendable, Sexton.’
‘Ah by me prayer be exalting the humble and weak. And putting the Pharisee and the Philistine to flight. But wasn’t that brazen butcher banging with his stick on me door. With a bill tabulating up two years he was collecting, he was.’
‘Awfully impromptu of him that hour Sexton.’
‘He said he wouldn’t want to approach you himself in the big house direct. As you might not understand. Sure he knows quite right that you’d have blown him off the porch with a shotgun. Ah god now, they’ll give you credit in the town Master Darcy. Up to your eyebrows. And you’d think with the slabs of bacon he’d be giving you a little extra, throwing in the offal and the dog bones and the like for nothing but by god when he’s got the bill high enough giving you what he wants to get rid of and what you think is a good luck penny, then by god you’ll get the bill counting up the whole lot of it. Deceit. Fraud. No other name for it.’
The roar of a motor car. Horn beeping past. Petunia shying and Sexton reining her in along the verge. Wheel hitting a stone nearly upturning us. A wave out the window, exhaust smoke pouring out. Foxy Slattery, a smile across his face leaving consternation across Sexton’s.
‘Look at the like of that lout now. Driving a motor car no less.’
‘Foxy Slattery Sexton.’
‘Don’t I know it’s him. And now an even bigger lout than he was then. The country is sine dubio going to the dogs, I’m telling you. They’re kicking in the teeth of the holy Roman Church that’s protected the moral fibre of their souls all these centuries. While at the same time they’re parading their vain-gloriousness as members in good standing of Fatima and the Legion of Decency.’
‘You’re taking a very poor view this morning Sexton. Don’t we as a race and people have something to boast about.’
‘Well as a race we’ve never wasted time rushing anywhere. But no one can beat us at the speed with which we break up your grand piano into your anonymous atoms. Or at destroying your objet d’art into useless smithereens. Or your best architecture burned to the ground.’
‘I may remind you Sexton that soda water was invented in Dublin. And the bubbles are reputed to be of the highest quality.’
‘Well you could say too Master Darcy our lies are of the purest falsehood. Without one redeeming semblance of truth in them. We’re a nation of champions at least in that I can tell you.’
‘We are waxing eloquent in and Irish propaganda this morning Sexton.’
‘Well I caught your blind man Mick McGinty and his swamp trollop wife. Over in our bog stealing turf. You’d think the lesson I taught them when they attacked you when you were a lad would be enough. Sure they were rushing away to beat the band when they see me coming a mile away. But their old horse idling making a contrary fuss. Wouldn’t get on pulling home his cart full of turf. Eager to be out of there. The pair of them. And doesn’t the blind McGinty give the poor horse such a clatter of his fist. I could hear it where I stood. And didn’t the eegit knock the poor horse dead in its tracks. And then didn’t the wife attack him with the spade. Ah it was a great scene of justice. The pair of them running. And leaving of course the poor old horse there dead for us to bury. But now isn’t the pair of them back to me now for the cart. Sure they’re related to another whole slovenly family like themselves, beyond the edge of Thormondstown, brother, mother, sister, old father and sons, and a more treacherous bunch never walked the face of the earth.’