“Pray for the soul of,” and it took iron effort to keep back the rush of grief.
Eternal rest grant unto her, Ο Lord.
And let perpetual light shine upon her.
And may she rest in peace. Amen.
On the road as I came with her from town loaded with parcels and the smell of tar in the heat I’d promised her that one day I’d say Mass for her. And all I did for her now was listen to Mahoney’s nagging and carry on private orgies of abuse.
I’d never be a priest. I was as well to be honest. I’d never be anything. It was certain.
There was little to do but sit at the fire and stare out at the vacancy of my life at sixteen.
6
MUCH OF THE WORST IN THE HOUSE HAD SHIFTED TOWARDS THE others, you had your own room with the red shelves after long agitation, you had school and books, you were a growing man.
There had only been one heavy beating in the year, a time over a shocking absurdity with cotton wool and a corset far too tight for Joan when her first flow of blood came to her, but it was less possible to stand and watch him beat the others, and much of the fear of him was going. He was frozen out. He had to play patience alone all the time, and as he felt his power go in the house he took fits of brute assertion, carried away by rage and suspicions, and it was only a matter of time till there’d be a last clash.
He came in crazy to do someone after tripping over a bucket he’d left carelessly behind him in the darkness. He picked “always” out of a conversation over by the sewing-machine. He was crazy with frustration.
“Did I hear you mention always?” he attacked in a savage voice and the girls turned afraid.
“Did you know that there’s only one thing you should use always about and that’s God. He always was and always will be, for ever and ever, Amen,” he shouted, half-frothing already with the force of the nonsense rhetoric. “Did you know that?”
“No.”
“What were you talking about?”
“We were just saying it’d be always like this,” and they looked so afraid that it roused his suspicion. They’d been talking about him, their hopeless life with no sign of change. It’d be always as this.
“The weather,” Joan said but it was plain she was lying, and he pounced, gripping her by the shoulder and hair.
“No. It was not. Out with the truth. Before it’s too late — I’ll not give you a second chance.”
“We said it’d be always like this, in this house.”
“This house,” he repeated. “This house. It’ll be always like this. So you’re not satisfied, it’s not grand enough for you, is it not? Not for lying and throwing buckets out of your hand for people to kill themselves across.”
He swung her by the hair. Her feet left the ground. He started to swing her round by the dark hair, mouthing, “I’ll teach you to lie. Talk about people behind their backs. I’ll teach you to lie,” and she was screaming.
You’d watched it come to this, hatred rising with every word and move he made, but you’d watched so many times it was little more than habit. Then her heels left the ground and swung, the eyes staring wide with terror out of the face, and the screaming. You couldn’t bear any more this time.
“Stop it. Stop it, I tell you.”
Mahoney stopped as if struck, she fell in a heap on the floor, though he did not loose his grip of the hair.
“What did you say?”
“I said to stop it, let her go,” and you couldn’t control the trembling. Mahoney let go the hair and she slumped on the floor. With one savage bound and swing he sent you hurtling against the table, you felt the wood go hard into the side, but no pain, it was almost a kind of joy. You came back from the table and able to shout, “Hit,” as he came.
He did hit, swinging his open palm with his whole strength across the face, and this time you went sideways to crash against the dresser.
You didn’t even feel the white knob drive into your side. You were mad with strength, coming off the dresser like a reflex.
“Hit and I’ll kill you,” you said and you knew nothing, there was no fear, you watched the hand come up to hit, your own hands ready and watching the raised hand and the throat. You knew or felt nothing, except once the raised hand moved you’d get him by the throat, you knew you’d be able, the fingers were ready. No blow could shake you, only release years of stored hatred into that one drive for the throat.
Mahoney fell back without striking, as if he sensed, mixture of incomprehension and fear on the face. The world was a shattered place.
“I reared a son that’d lift a hand to his father. A son that’d lift a hand to his father.”
“Do you see her hair still in your fingers?” Some of the tautness had gone, you wouldn’t attack now, but there was more than enough violence left.
He had to look. Strands of her black hair were tangled in his fingers. By spreading them he thought the hair would fall loose but it didn’t.
“I reared a son that’d lift a hand to his father.”
The sudden strength of madness that had come was now draining rapidly away.
“Get up, Joan,” you stooped to get her to her feet and help her to the big armchair. The others stood as stones about. They knew that something strange and different had happened in the house.
“Get her a drink of water,” you asked and one of the girls obeyed as decisively as if you were Mahoney and you didn’t care or know.
“You’d hit your father?”
“You wouldn’t swing a pig like that.”
“I’d swing anyone that way, you too. Pigs. The whole lot of you are pigs, a vicious litter of pigs. It’s the whip I should have given the whole lot of you.”
“You’ll give no one the whip,” and you were drained and sick of it all.
“So you’ll stop it. You’ll be the hero now. Come on, try it, hit your father, the pup is stronger than the dog. Come on, my pup, and try it.”
You hadn’t the strength even if you’d wanted. The whole kitchen and world was sick and despairing. Hatred had drained everything empty.
“No. I’ll not hit.”
“But you would hit. You’d lift a hand to your father only for you’re too yellow, that’s all that’s keeping you back. And you’re the one that goes to school too, the makings of the priest. A fine young cuckoo they’ll have then. A priest, no less, and saying Mass and everything,” he laughed.
The violence had been easier far than the jeering and mockery.
“You’d more than a year’s luck on your side that you didn’t hit,” Mahoney went on asserting. “I’d have smashed you to pieces, do you hear that, to pieces, you pup, and you’d have tried it, you pup.”
“You can hit away. Batter and beat away as you always did. No one cares any more.”
Mahoney kept taunting, moving to the fire, where he dis¬ entangled the hairs out of his fingers, and let them drop into the flames. The silence of some horror came at last when they sizzled there as flesh.
You went outside into the night, clean with stars, but you didn’t linger; but went by the plot of great rhubarb stalks to the dark lavatory, refuge of many evenings.
7
ABOUT THE CONFESSION BOXES THE QUEUES WAITED, DARK IN their corners, the centre of the church the one place lighted, red glow of the lamp high before the tabernacle and the candles in their sockets burning above the gleaming brass of the shrine. Beads rattled, bodies eased their positions. Feet came in down at the door, step after step tolling on the stones as they neared the rails to genuflect before the tabernacle and turn to the boxes in the dark corners, eyes on them till they were recognized in the tabernacle light. All waited for forgiveness, in the listless performance of habit and duty or torturing and turning over their sins and lives, time now to judge themselves and beg, on the final day there would be neither time nor choice.