The Bay Page 3

“Yes, Uncle.”

  “That’s good. Two portions, Leary, then. By the way— you like it, Luke? You can eat liver and bacon?”

  “I love it, Uncle.”

  “You’re sure, now. Don’t be rash. Take your time and be sure. We don’t want——”

  He broke off, as I blushed at the painful memory.

  “No, truly, Uncle. Ann Dunn gives it to me, sometimes. For a treat.”

  I wish I could convey to you the joy and pleasure that beamed from my uncle’s face as those words reached him. The happy combination of circumstances was almost too much. He nearly wept with delight.

  “There’s potatoes in their jackets, and mashed turnips,” supplemented Leary.

  “Do you like turnips, Luke?”

  “Yes, Uncle. Very much.”

  “Bedad, then, we’re in luck.” He rubbed his hands. “We’re in luck. I think, you know, Leary, we did as well to wait, and go to see the boy’s uncle afterwards. It’s treacherous weather to be traipsing the quays on an empty stomach. We’ll do better in an hour’s time, with the weight of food inside us.”

  Leary nodded, moved behind the bar, and began to polish it with a dirty rag. He was a man of indeterminate age—anything from twenty-seven to forty-five. I suppose, if I had to guess, I’d put him in the late thirties. I can see him very clearly at this minute, pale, blue-shaven, with long jaws, a leathery face, and one eye that had something odd about it, neither a cast nor a blindness, but a lack of expression you only noticed by realising that the other eye was brighter. He was in his shirt sleeves, despite the cold weather—I never saw him any other way—and a blue tattooed anchor showed dimly through the jungle of hair on his forearm.

  Uncle John began to go through his pockets, whistling softly to himself. I don’t know what he was looking for, and I doubt if he did himself, for he never found it, and didn’t seem to mind. A wild gust of wind hit the front of the pub. A second came, with a spatter on the frosted glass. Leary looked up.

  “That’s the rain,” he said.

  “Rain?” Uncle John heaved himself round, and gazed affronted at the window.

  “Aye. I thought it was coming. I felt it in me foot.”

  “There’s small company here today, Leary,” Uncle said irrelevantly. “You’ll be ruined at this rate.”

  “They’ll be along,” Leary said.

  “You’re often full for dinner. How will you do, with all your nice liver and bacon spoiling on you?”

  “It won’t spoil,” Leary said. “Sure, we don’t have it ready till a quarter after one.”

  “I would have wagered, Leary—I’m not a betting man— but I would have wagered you’re full before the hour.”

  “One day we are, the next day we aren’t. Ye must be thinking of Nolan’s. We’re depending on the boats. We don’t work to fixed hours here, like in the city. All the same,” he went on quickly, seeing a dignified expression coming over my uncle’s face, “we often do get a rush about twenty after one.”

  He withdrew, leaving Uncle John and me together. There was a silence. Uncle John shut his eyes, and frowned. He lowered his head for a moment, then raised it.

  “‘Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back

  Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

  A great sized monster of ingratitudes:’”

  he began, and stopped, staring at the wall. He cleared his throat.

  “Listen to this, Luke. It’ll do ye good.”

  He shut his eyes again, and started in a clear, strong voice, ringing an echo from the bottles on the shelves. The door opened behind us, and a gust of air rushed in. Uncle took no notice.

  “’Perseverance, dear my lord,’” he chanted, “’Keeps honour bright.’ (Don’t forget that, Luke.) ‘To have done, is to hang Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail, in monumental mockery.’ (When I was learning that, I didn’t observe it carefully, and read out ‘like a rusty nail’. Glory, how I caught it!)”

  There was a quiet sound behind us of the door closing again. Evidently the customer had been daunted. Uncle’s voice rose in triumph.

  “‘For emulation hath a thousand sons

  That come by even pressure: if you give way—’”

  he waved a jovial hand to Leary, who came in again—

  “‘if you give way, Leary,

  Or budge aside from the direct forthright,

  Like to an entered tide they all rush by

  And leave you hindmost.

  Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,

  Lie there for pavement to the abject rear’—

  —take notice of that, you two: let that soak into you.

  ‘Lie there for pavement to the abject rear.—’”

  The door behind was opened again timidly. Leary looked up, and, in answer to an obvious enquiry, gave a reassuring nod. The newcomer, a little, elderly man with his collar up, crept in and sat at a table. Uncle acknowledged his entry with a wave of the hand, but did not stop.

  “‘Then what they do in present

  Though less than yours, in past, must o’ertop yours.

  For time is like a fashionable host——’”

  he made a flourish towards Leary, who was coming to lay knives and forks for us—

  “‘That lightly shakes his parting guest by the hand,

  And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,

  Grasps in the comer.’”

  He made to embrace Leary, who sidestepped skilfully.

  The newcomer, reassured, gave a diffident smile. He could understand this.

  “‘Welcome ever smiles …’”

  Uncle stopped, and a blank look came over his face. He was forgetting what came next. At once his hand went to his hip pocket. He pulled out his cheque book, and mechanically fingered the used stubs. Suddenly his face lightened, and he went on in a louder voice.

  “‘Welcome ever smiles,

  And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek

  Remuneration for the thing it was:

  For beauty, wit,

  High birth, vigour of bone, desert in service,

  Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

  To envious and calumniating time.’”

  The street door opened again, and he turned to it with a flourish.

  “‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.’ (Good morning, gentlemen. Come in.)

  ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

  That all, with one consent, praise new-born gauds,

  Though they are made and moulded of things past,

  And give to dust that is a little gilt

  More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.’”

  I wished terribly that he would stop, even though the new arrivals did not seem put out. They appeared to find it quite natural that a Shakespearian speech should be going on in a quayside bar at one o’clock. Indeed, looking back on it, I don’t know that I should be surprised myself. But I was ultrasensitive, as a child is. I knew my uncle was vulnerable, that he’d had a drop too much: and I was terrified they would laugh at him. I was afraid, too, lest he’d forget again. As I told you, I never saw him stumped in all the years I knew him. He’d go blank sometimes—again, only when he’d had too much—but the cheque book was an infallible talisman. What in heaven’s name it did to him, I can’t imagine. He’d often take it out when he was reciting from memory. Sometimes he’d have it in his hand all through, fingering the stubs one after another, turning them over, even scrutinising them earnestly in some calm or philosophic passage. They were an unfailing aid to memory for him, God knows how.

  The speech ended, and Uncle began to comment on it, and explain to the new customers where it occurred and in what circumstances it was delivered. They listened with an appearance of respect, but one, lifting his glass to his mouth, gave another a quiet wink. I wanted to hate him, but somehow I couldn’t. He had vivid dark eyes, and he looked interesting.

  Then the food came, and I’d no attention for what anyone else
was doing. I was hungry, despite what Ann Dunn had given me before we set out, and I attacked the big plateful with determination. Even so, I had time to notice the gargantuan relish, the vigour, the gusto with which Uncle John set about his far bigger dollop: the energy with which he masticated, the concentration with which he pursued the rich brown gravy with a forkful of floury potato, the copious daubing of mustard, the shaking of pepper, the digging up of salt on the point of his knife, the crumbling of bread, and the frequent glasses of porter poured out, so thick and rich it hardly made a sound, from a fat embossed blue and white jug on which Garibaldi, mounted, set out to deliver his countrymen from their oppressors.

  Leary’s prophecy was fulfilled. The door kept opening, and men crowded in, shaking their coats and hats, blowing, and complaining of the rain. Each time it opened, those inside would turn and cheerfully curse the newcomers, who would grin and curse back. Soon the bar was full of steam and uproar. Through it all my Uncle John sat regally, consuming his victuals with a relish and a cunning that raised eating to the dignity of exercise. What is more, he grew in moral stature with each mouthful. The indecisiveness, the vulnerability induced by the whiskey fell from him. By the time he pushed his plate away, belched, and looked for Leary to know what was coming after, he was fit to face a king.

  He belched again, and caught my eye.

  “Good, that, little son. Never keep it in. That’s the way old women get indigestion—they retain their gas.”

  I did not reply. I did not know what to say anyhow, since I knew Ann Dunn would not approve these sentiments, much less my aunt. Happily, my mouth was full. The liver was good, but it- needed chewing. I began to feel there was more on my plate than I could eat.

  Uncle eyed me, nodded encouragement, and bawled for Leary. The suddenness and volume of his voice startled the room. Heads were turned.

  Uncle John was wholly unperturbed. So was Leary.

  “That was good, Leary. Very good. Are you done, Luke? Don’t eat more than you want, now.”

  I realised at once that I’d had enough, and thankfully resigned my plate to Leary.

  “Well now. What have you next?”

  “Apple dumplings, and custard.”

  “Very good, Leary. Very good indeed.”

  My heart sank. I plucked up courage.

  “I’d only like the apple and the custard, Uncle. I can’t eat the paste.”

  “Sure it’s not paste, son. It’s suet.”

  “I can’t eat it, anyhow, Uncle.”

  “But it’s good. It’s the best of the dish.” Uncle shook his head, and looked at Leary. “What can we do for him, Leary? What can we do for him at all?”

  “Sure that’s easy,” Leary said, giving me a look of encouragement. “I have only to split a dumpling, and tip out the apple.”

  I sat back and sighed with relief. A love of Leary, who had saved me from enormity, rose in my heart. To have trespassed against the laws of Hegarty’s would have been the last shame: yet I knew, from frequent admonition, that I must not eat pastry or suet. And suppose I were sick again?

  The same thought evidently struck Uncle John. He bent over and smiled.

  “There’s a good boy. You’re a wise son, that you are, not to go eat anything that might disagree with ye.”

  “I daresay it would be all right, Uncle John. But Ann Dunn always tells me it wouldn’t suit me.”

  “Ah well, son, she’d know. She’d know, you may depend on it.”

  Leary came back with the plates, Uncle’s heaped, mine an appetising mess of apple, red, yellow, brown, in a golden flood of custard. Uncle John bent anxiously forward.

  “Will that be right, son, now?”

  “Lovely, Uncle.”

  “You’re sure? You wouldn’t like anything else?”

  “No, Uncle.”

  “Good.” He sat back, and beamed at Leary. “That’s good.”

  I recall little after that but a babel of voices, the warm sweet taste of the apple, the feel of my legs dangling from the chair, and a picture, clear in spite of a haze of tobacco smoke, of Uncle John in vigorous conversation with two seafaring men, demonstrating something to them with the aid of matches, clicking his tongue because porter had slopped over on the table, and shifting things to find a dry spot. The name of a politician named Biggar, whose identity and function I did not learn for several years, came somehow into the conversation, and for a long time afterwards I connected him vaguely with matches.

  Then Uncle John was paying his reckoning, and had risen to go. I struggled to my feet.

  “It’s sleepy he is,” said one of the seafaring men, smiling at me.

  “He has a good right,” said the other.

  A look of concern came over my Uncle John’s face. He bent down to me.

  “Ought you to take a rest after your dinner, son? Ought you to lie down?”

  I shook my head, ashamed.

  “The fresh air will soon waken him,” said the man who had spoken first.

  He was right: it very soon did. The rain had stopped, but everything seemed wet and mean and leaden. The river had a swollen, livid look, the ships seemed to sulk. The wind was not so strong, but it was colder.

  “There’s more rain on the way,” said Uncle John to himself. Then he belched so loudly and suddenly that I jumped.

  “That to ye,” he said to the elements generally: and we set off to call on Uncle George.

  Uncle George was master of a tramp steamer that plied between Dublin and West of England ports such as Falmouth, Plymouth, and Bristol, occasionally venturing as far round as Poole and as far up as New Milford. She was called the Lily, a name which even I felt to be inappropriate. Her bows were high, she had a queer funnel with three rings round it, and her whole appearance suggested that she was trying to sit down. Drawn up at the quay, its straight line accentuating the backward tilt of her, she looked as if at any moment she might sink by the stern.

  The Lily was dirty, and everyone aboard her. I don’t know whether it was she who influenced Uncle George and the crew, or they who neglected her, but dirt prevailed. The very gangplank was greasy. Uncle John, reaching it, emitted a bellow which he doubtless intended for a nautical hail. Loud though it was, it blew away helplessly into the windy greyness, flattened, deprived of resonance. No one was visible on board: no one took any notice. Uncle John flushed, cleared his throat, and handed me on to the gangplank.

  “Careful, little son. Careful, now. Easy does it.”

  It was a ramshackle affair, minus a few boards, so that in places you saw the pale oily water below, sheltered between hull and quay, but heaving uneasily in response to the wind at either end. Then we were on deck. The deck was greasy too.

  Uncle John clicked his tongue.

  “No method aboard this ship. No system. Nobody on the watch. Tck. Tck. Anything might happen.”

  He forced his way disapprovingly down a narrow alleyway, and reached the companion that led to his brother’s cabin. This was all but vertical. I hesitated at it, and as I did the queer hot smell of the ship came up at me, part of a permanent dilemma. I don’t suppose that in actual fact I went down that companion more than a dozen times. But the dilemma seems as much a feature of my life as anything I did every day. The companion was so steep I could never make up my mind whether to go down it frontways, as one walks downstairs, in which case I was afraid of pitching forward on my face: or whether I should turn about and go down it as if it were a ladder, in which case, so dark was the cabin, I couldn’t see where to put my feet. The only help, in going down or coming up, was a greasy balustrade of rope, put there as makeshift years ago when the original brass one broke, and never replaced. It was little help if one went down frontways, for it was loose, and came awkwardly to my right hand, which could get practically no purchase on it. Ladder-ways, it was more use, but to offset that I had to hold it in my left hand, which gave me no feeling of security.

  Again and again, in my bed at home, I relived that perplexity in a sweat
of indecision. It was complicated by the fear of committing a solecism and disgracing myself. I would make up my mind, one way or the other, and go to sleep. But each time the situation recurred in real life, my indecision returned. Hesitating at the top of that infernal ladder, with the hot oily smell pressing up so thick that to enter it was like going under water—that was one of the major cruces of my life. I experience it still, as I try to put it on paper.

  Uncle John’s solution of the problem was characteristic, but no help to me. He grasped the rope in his right hand, turned his large body sideways, and slithered down so fast that I could not imagine what he did with his feet. Once down, he stretched up a hand and accelerated whatever method of progress I was attempting by catching hold of me and lifting me bodily off the ladder. Humiliated, but relieved, and feeling as if my clothes were up around my neck, I stood blinking inside the cabin.

  My Uncle George was sitting at a table, finishing his meal. He looked at us with something forced behind his smile.

  “Well, you,” he said to John. “You’re late.”

  Uncle John made a slight motion, as of ducking his head.

  “Well, George, you see——”

  “I was expecting you to dinner.”

  He indicated the plates of cold beef that stood reproachfully beside a stone jampot and a dish of congealed bubble and squeak.

  “Did you, George. Did you. Sure——”

  “You said you were coming, and bringing the boy. How are you, Luke? That’s fine. Yes, John. You said to expect you.”

  “Did I now, George. Well now, ye see—we were late getting away, and what with the cold and all, I was in dread the child might—I thought we’d best have a bit of dinner in the town, and not be troubling you.”

  I watched Uncle George as this halting narrative proceeded, hot inside, overcast with Uncle John’s guilt, longing to defend him. This must have showed in my face, for Uncle George further confused my emotions by giving me an expressionless wink. I would not respond. The wink both deepened my embarrassment and relieved me. It showed that Uncle George was not angry, and that was greatly to the good: but I hated him for putting his brother in difficulties, for troubling him to make lame explanations of something that needed no explaining.