For almost half an hour she sat in silence, listening intently to the singing without joining in herself. She had a bit more of her stout and noticed that it did seem to taste better, though her lips still puckered at its bitterness. At least it was an effective antidote for her hunger, if not a proper substitute for a real dinner.
Mostly she watched the singer or gazed down at her hands and the pint of stout between them. Twice, though, she looked up, to catch the eye of a young man seated halfway around the bar from her. He was tall, with a broad forehead and long black hair, and when he joined in the singing his voice was one of the loudest in the room. He seemed to know the words to almost everything that was sung, although he wasn’t so good when it came to melody; he frequently sang off-key and often lost the tune entirely. But this didn’t bother her nearly so much as the way he seemed to keep looking at her.
She thought of girls at college who had come back from European vacations with tales of being pinched in Rome or propositioned in Florence. She had rather envied them at the time, and now she smiled at the thought of being so intently eyed herself by a handsome Irishman in a Dublin pub.
But once she began to join in the singing, her own voice soft but sure and clear in tone, she stopped noticing the tall young man on the other side of the bar. She joined with the others in calling requests to the piano player, and she was taking swallows of the rich black stout now instead of merely sipping at it, and before she knew it her glass was quite empty. It wasn’t bad at all, she decided. She felt pleasantly lightheaded. She lit another cigarette and asked the barman for another pint. She took a deep drag on her cigarette and a big swallow from the fresh pint of stout and wondered if perhaps she was getting just a little bit tipsy. After all, she hadn’t had anything to eat since just past noon, so she was drinking on an empty stomach. And how strong was stout, anyway? It ought to be like beer, but then it tasted much stronger than beer...
“Sing ‘The Patriot’s Mother,’ ” she called to the pianist. “Do you know that one?”
“Just the chorus.”
“Ah, that’s a fine old air,” another man said. “Let’s hear it, Tim.”
“I would, but I don’t know the words. Just the chorus.”
“I know the verses.” She spoke without thinking. “I mean...”
“Then sing for us, girl.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. I—”
“Come, give us the song.” It was the young man whose eyes she had caught. “We’re none of us professionals here except Tim, and he hears so much bad singing every night that it wouldn’t bother him a bit. Give us the song.”
She let herself be talked into it. The song was a favorite of hers, and she had managed to put it on one of her records. It was the song of an Irish mother imploring her captured son to be true to Ireland and die on the gallows rather than turn informer. It was corny and sentimental, and once at the Gaslight on MacDougal Street she had sung it humorously, holding a shawl over her head and singing in a comic brogue, playing the old ballad for laughs. It had gone over well, but she had sung it straight on the record and she did it straight now.
Softly she began.
And the chorus:
She was performing now, and she loved it. The song coursed through her veins, sang in her blood, and the music flowed from her like a river. No introduction, no round of applause, but it was a performance, and the others recognized it. At first some started to join in the chorus. Then, as if in response to a signal, their voices died out and left her to carry on alone.
Often, at an informal hootenanny or a Village party, she and other singers made it a practice to leave out some of the less vital verses in the longer ballads. Many of the old songs were well nigh endless, and it seemed a kindness to cut them short. One friend of hers knew over forty verses to “Stackolee,” and she herself knew almost as many to “Greensleeves,” and rarely sang more than five or six at a sitting.
Now, though, she did not omit a single quatrain. She sang all seven verses and sang the chorus each time, sang with her head tilted back and her eyes closed and her body perched comfortably on the bar stool, sang with the room still and silent around her, sang with the piano providing sure but restrained background accompaniment, sang with her own fingers itching for want of her guitar. She sang, and at last finished singing, and for a long moment the room was deathly still. And then there was applause, a sudden, astonishing, thunderous burst of applause. It was the first applause of the evening, and she thought that she was going to cry.
“But you’re a singer, girl! Here we were playing at singing and you with a voice like that and keeping still...”
“Fifteen years if it’s a day since a woman sang a song to make me cry, and be god if you haven’t half-done it tonight....”
“John, give the girl a drink. Drink up, Miss, and have another. John, tell her to put her money away, it’s all counterfeit and she can’t spend a penny of it here. Drink up, you nightingale!”
“Not a Dublin girl, are you? And are you singing professional? Have you made any records?”
“Ah, my girl, give us another!”
She could not remember ever having felt so proud and happy. She drained her mug of stout in a swallow, and the barman filled it again for her, and there was suddenly a lump in her throat so massive that she thought she could never possibly sing through it.
She said, “Oh, if I only had my guitar...”
“Sean, go get the girl a guitar. Get a guitar for the lady. Don’t you have one?”
“I’ve a banjo...”
“Can you play the banjo, Miss?”
“Not very well. I—”
“Then it has to be a guitar, Sean. Hasn’t Jimmy Daly one?” Not that he could play more than a bird call on it.”
“Then wake him and tell him we need a guitar for Miss — now I don’t know your name, do I?” The pianist introduced himself with a gesture. “I’m Tim Flaherty, and pleased to be of service to you, and these” — a wave at the rest of the men at the bar — “are all good lads, but you’ll live as good a life without knowing them by name—”
“Ah, go on with you, Tim!”
“—But we don’t know your name, Miss, and I’m sure it’s one we’ll want to know.”
“Ellen Cameron.”
“You’ve the voice of an angel, Miss Cameron. Will you let us have another while Sean goes for the guitar?”
“Do you know ‘The Royal Blackbird,’ Miss Cameron?”
“Now let her be singing what she wants,” the piano player said sternly. And, sweetly now, “Come, give us a song, Miss Cameron. But first have a taste of that pint to wet your throat. A woman that can sit at a bar and drink her stout and sing with the voice of an angel and still be as sweet and pretty as spring flowers. Oh, I’d marry you in a minute, Miss Cameron, but what would my good wife say to that, do you suppose?”