The Bay Page 4

  Uncle George had a family likeness to his brother, but was thinner. His face was red, but not so red. His nose was bigger, his eyes colder and clearer. What hair he still had was inclined to be sandy, and he had long whiskers of the same colour. I believe he was seven or eight years older than Uncle John, but he was in far better trim physically, and looked, if anything, the younger of the two. He wore a dirty blue uniform that had had innumerable things spilled on it, and the widest trousers I ever saw on any man.

  The wink seemed to have removed Uncle George’s resentment, if he felt any.

  “Ah, be damned to ye, John,” he said good-humouredly. “You’re always late.”

  “You didn’t wait on us, I hope.”

  “I did then. But not altogether, as you see. Well—how are ye?” Uncle John looked much relieved.

  “Faith, I’m well, George. Middling well. And yourself?”

  “Oh, I’m all right. I have to be. Hey, Joe!” he shouted over his shoulder, then looked at me with a grin. “Avast heaving!” he called.

  I blushed, and tried to smile back. This was a perpetual joke against me. When I was very small and had visited Uncle George, he had said “Avast heaving” to the man who waited on him at table: and I, all wonder at the strange world of the ship, innocently supposed this to be the man’s name, and reported it when I got home.

  I could never make up my mind whether I liked Uncle George or not. I could have disliked him for the “Avast heaving” joke, if Uncle John hadn’t appeared to enjoy it too, so I supposed it must be all right. The fact is, I was afraid of him. I remember him coming to our house when I was very small, and singing a roaring song in such a loud voice that I was terribly distressed. Another time, or perhaps it was the same, he brought three other captains with him, and there was a great deal of noise, and one of them recited something about Lally and the Irish Brigade. They smoked till my head sang, and I was carried off to bed, thankful to be out of it, but I could still hear, before I fell asleep, the roaring and tumult below.

  A door at the side of the cabin opened, and “Avast Heaving” came in. His real name was Joe Birrell. The first time I saw him, I thought he was a pirate, a belief with which the mysterious name Avast Heaving fitted well. He had a long nose, an olive-coloured complexion, and a grin which at first sight looked villainous, and then was seen to be pure goodwill. He wore brass ear-rings and a filthy scarlet jersey, and his hands were covered with warts. I was cured by now of my early delusions, but, looking at him, I thought to myself, even then, that I had a good right to take him for a pirate.

  Avast Heaving gave me a terrifying leer, which was his smile of greeting. He sidled up behind Uncle George, shot a grimy paw round his shoulder, whipped away his plate, and substituted one on which stood three enormous baked apples.

  “One each would have been for you, if you’d been in time,” said Uncle George equably. “As it is, I’ll eat all three.”

  “You’re very welcome,” said Uncle John absently.

  Uncle George looked at him, as if to detect satire, but his brother sat with his knees apart, and his two hands folded on his stomach, gazing towards a tinted photograph that hung above the narrow sideboard.

  Uncle George’s glance followed his, and Uncle John became aware of it.

  “Poor Letty,” he said, and sighed.

  “Aha,” said Uncle George, in a more reserved manner, and proceeded to spoon Demerara sugar freely over his baked apples. He stopped in the middle. “Would you like one of these?”

  “Ah no, thanks, George. I have my enough.”

  “Would the boy?”

  “Ah no. He doesn’t want any more—do you, son?”

  I gulped, and murmured something. I couldn’t get words out, I don’t know why. Uncle George embarrassed me.

  “Very well,” he said composedly, and went on giving himself sugar. Uncle John looked back at the portrait. It showed a simpering young woman, with delicate colouring—if you could trust the artist—with shining crinkled hair and big, bright dark eyes, like a lemur.

  “Poor Letty,” he said again, and shook his head. “She was a pretty thing, when that was taken.”

  My Aunt Letty was Uncle George’s wife. She died long ago, years before I was born. I only know one thing about her, told me by Uncle John. It happened soon after she and Uncle George were married. Aunt Letty was very fond of dogs, but her father had never let her keep one, so Uncle George had promised her that, the moment they were married, she should have a good big dog. It would not only be company, but would take care of her when Uncle George was away. So she got a mastiff, of all things, a big brindled rackety brute, and he kept her company enough for six. He was always wanting to be let out, and she had to take him out, hail, rain, or snow. The poor girl wasn’t able to control him at all, and he was a dog of strong passions, whether for love or war. One fine Sunday morning there was a terrible scene on Drumcondra Bridge. Uncle George was at home, but had stayed in to read the papers, so Uncle John, who was visiting the house, volunteered to help Letty give the dog his airing. Bruce—that was the dog’s name—Bruce pretty near had the arms pulled out of him, trying to fight other dogs and swallow cats and chase tramcars and God knows what, till at last Uncle John was so hot he had to leave the dog with its mistress and step into the nearest public-house for a glass of porter. This seemed safe enough, as Bruce, after some particularly violent escapade, had been slapped by Aunt Letty, a proceeding which always evoked his affection for her. He would lie down while it was going on, and beam adoration at her, and lick any part of her he could reach.

  Well, as I was saying, Uncle John rested himself for a few minutes, and drank his porter, and came out feeling at peace with the world and able for the business of taking Bruce and Aunt Letty home. He came out, and stood transfixed: for there, in the middle of the bridge, holding up the horse-drawn tram which couldn’t get by, Bruce was consummating his nuptials with a black retriever, with Aunt Letty in tears pulling vainly at his strap, the passengers in the tram looking on or looking away, according to temperament, and a crowd of dairymen and corner boys on the bridge laughing and offering obscene advice.

  Normally such a scene would have rejoiced Uncle John, but Aunt Letty’s shame and distress spoiled it for him. He got her away somehow, Bruce, appeased, following like a lamb. She cried all the way home, defying his efforts to comfort her: and small comfort she got from Uncle George either, for all he said was “Pshaw, woman,” and went on reading his paper.

  Poor Aunt Letty. That’s all I know about her.

  After Uncle John’s remark upon the portrait, there was a minute of silence. Avast Heaving put his head around the door and asked would the gentlemen take coffee. Uncle George eyed us enquiringly: his mouth was full. Uncle John roused himself, declined, and sank back. Avast Heaving gave me another leer, and jerked his head invitingly towards his galley: but I pretended not to see. I had watched him apprehensively each time he came in, not from fear of him, but because he had a horrible red monkey which used to come in with him and run about the cabin. Uncle George liked it, and could do anything with it: but it was a bad tempered, dirty brute, and made messes when it was angry. It hated me, and I hated it.

  Uncle George read my look.

  “The monkey’s dead,” he said. “It got pneumonia. Last Winter.”

  “Is that so?” said Uncle John.

  “Yes. It’s not much loss. It bit one of the crew—the Dutchman: you remember him, John. The bite went bad, and he was three weeks ashore. They thought he’d lose his arm. We decided we’d have to shoot it. We didn’t want to, but you couldn’t have things like that happening. It behaved better for a bit. I believe it knew. Then it died, and solved the problem.”

  “Ah yes.”

  There was another silence. Uncle George broke it.

  “That was a damned silly thing,” he said. “What did that have to happen for?”

  For an instant I was bewildered, thinking he meant the monkey. But Uncle John understood.
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  “I don’t know, George. I don’t know.”

  “At Killarney, for God’s sake. Where people go half the year round.”

  “Not half the year, George. Not half the year. It’s quite a short season, really.”

  “Well, anyway, damn it—— If it had been abroad, or at Niagara, or something. But Killarney.”

  “There were three others drowned at the same time. And one of the boatmen,” said Uncle John, as if that were a sort of excuse. “It was a sudden squall, you know. A sudden squall.”

  “I know,” growled Uncle George. “I read the papers. What in the wide earth anyone wants to go to Killarney for, anyway!”

  “Ah, George, it’s a beautiful place. Ye can’t deny that. And they had a special sentiment for it. It’s where they spent their honeymoon.”

  “Pshaw.” Uncle George tilted his plate, and scraped up the melted brown sugar in his spoon.

  “Well—Mary had a fancy to go. They both had a fancy to go to the place they’d been so happy. Damn it, George,” Uncle John sat up, and hit the table with his hand. “That’s a natural thing. You can’t blame them for that.”

  “I call it morbid.” Uncle George cleared his lips with his tongue, and dried his whiskers. “You can’t relive the past.”

  “Sure I know that, George. Everyone knows that. But——”

  “They were paid for it anyway. They lost their lives when they needn’t. If they’d stayed at home, or gone to Greystones, or some such place; if they’d cornea trip with me, even: they’d have been alive now, and this——” He nodded towards me. “We shouldn’t have this problem. People who have children—they should think.”

  “Ah, George, sure, who would suppose——”

  “That’s what I was saying. Killarney. It’s ridiculous.” Uncle George seemed aware that his position was not impregnable logically, for he moved the subject on. “Anyway, the problem is, what are we going to do? I’m no good: and you’re no good: so——”

  “Just what I was saying to Edith.” Uncle John leaned forward eagerly. “I’ve sounded her. I sounded her very tactfully, I think I may say. She’ll take——”

  He broke off, for Uncle George had jerked his head towards me meaningly.

  “Luke,” he said, “run in now and be with Joe for a bit. Your uncle and I have something private to talk about.”

  I nodded, and got down thankfully off the chair. I was awkward, yet somehow I wanted to hear what they were saying. I didn’t quite close the door when I went out, and then I stood in the narrow, smelly little alley, listening.

  “Edith!” There was the sound of Uncle George spitting. “God help the child. Sure, what sort of a life will she lead him?”

  “There’s Ann Dunn, George.” I could imagine Uncle John leaning forward again, and reaching for his brother’s knee. “There’s Ann Dunn. She’ll stay and keep an eye to him. She was devoted to Harry and Mary, as you know: and she’ll watch him.”

  “Hm. How will Edith like that?”

  “She’ll have to like it. Or lump it. It’s a condition.”

  “We can’t lay down conditions.”

  “Yes we can. We’re paying our share.”

  The blood rushed to my face. I wished I hadn’t heard. As I moved away, I heard Uncle George’s voice.

  “What the hell the fools wanted to get drowned for!” And, as Uncle John made a sort of shocked sound, he went on, “It’s not the money. I’d pay the whole, willingly. God knows I’ve nothing to spend money on. But I hate to see the poor child a waif. When it all need never have happened.” He got up. “I tell you, John, it makes me damned angry.”

  I went to the galley, confused, stunned, with an entirely new feeling for Uncle George rising in my breast. I’d never really cared for him before. I thought he looked on me as a little ninny, and laughed at me. And now- So confused was I, I hardly heard the stories Avast Heaving told me as he washed up, in the half dark, at a dirty battered tin basin. I presently recovered enough to ask him for an account of the monkey’s last hours, which he gave with gruesome precision. Then it was time to go.

  Saying good-bye to Uncle George, I tried to show him my new affection and my gratitude, but his manner was as offhand as ever. I did my best not to be chilled, and told myself I’d have to try again later on. As I walked away down the quay, my hand in Uncle John’s, I turned and took a long look at the Lily, feeling for the first time a pang at leaving her.

  I never saw her again. I never got my chance to show Uncle George my new feeling towards him. All of that spring and summer and autumn he was away, or I was at school: anyway, I didn’t see him. Then, one night in the winter, a terrible night when the river was swept by snow and sleet and hidden in black darkness, two of the Lily’s crew decided to desert or get ashore, which they did through a door under the bowsprit. Either they were drunk, or the dinghy wasn’t where they expected it. At all events, they fell into the fast running river. The yells they let came to Uncle George’s ears, and he dived overboard after them. He saved them both, God knows how: the boatman who got him and them out said it was a miracle. Uncle George went ashore to a hotel, where they put him to bed, but he developed pneumonia, like the monkey, and was dead in three days.

  I felt a terrible emptiness for weeks afterwards, and to this day a hollow feeling comes in my stomach, to think I was never able to speak to him, as I could now, and tell him how grateful I was. Not that he’d care, I expect. It would have been a thoroughly embarrassing interview. He’d have shut me up, as like as not, or hated it.

  But I knew nothing of all that then. We turned a corner, I could no longer see the Lily, and then somehow or other we found ourselves in Hegarty’s. I remember sitting with Uncle John beside the bar, on a high three-legged stool, and looking at him, as he collogued and held forth, and once he roared with laughter so loud that I saw the gold stopping in one of his back teeth, and he nearly fell off his stool.

  Then I must have fallen asleep, for the next thing I remember, I was shivering at the cold air, and Leary and someone else were putting me into a cab and telling the cabman where to take me. I fell asleep again in the cab, though I remember first of all the jolting of it on the cobbles, and the cold, damp smell of old straw that came out of the cushions. Then I was home, and dear Ann Dunn was putting me to bed.

  I opened my eyes, as my head sank back on the pillow, and saw her for a moment. It may have been the firelight on her face, but it seemed to be working with a violent emotion.

  Then I fell fast asleep again.

  Chapter II

  Ann dunn had a funny little house in Fitzwilliam Street. I always thought of it as a separate house, but it was in fact only a basement; a vast, vault-like basement, let off separately, and having no egress to the house above, but still a basement. It was very dark at all times, with a curious brown darkness, dark by day, dark on a May morning even, when, in response to the sunlight above, its prevailing tint faded to a sort of yellow; and dark at night, when a mild oil lamp, its globe golden as a harvest moon, merely pushed the brown darkness a bit further back, against walls and into corners, making very little difference. If anything, the rooms were darker by day than by night. They smelled brown, too. The curtains were brown, the tablecloth brown or yellow, the chairs upholstered brown, the horsehair sofa indeterminate with age, and the bits of carpet brown and yellow. I wonder Ann Dunn didn’t wear brown clothes to match it; but she didn’t. She wore always black, and grey on Sundays, a grey bodice buttoned up the front, with little points fore and aft, like widows’ peaks, the one aft a little longer than the one fore, and a big cameo brooch at the throat, large and bland and expressionless, like her face. Well though I remember her and everything about her, I can’t tell you what was on that brooch. It was something in relief, but I’ve no idea what.

  Ann Dunn—no one spoke of her without using both names— Ann Dunn had been my mother’s nurse. She had stayed on till my mother, an only child, was eighteen years old. Several times it was decided she should
leave, but when the time came neither my mother nor my grandmother could bear it, and she stayed. She stayed until my mother was engaged. She took another place, but the little boy died, and she and my mother were both so unhappy that she came back till my mother was married. Then she went down to Woodenbridge, in Wicklow, to live with her married sister.

  She was at Woodenbridge till a fortnight or so before I was born. She’d come up, once or twice, to see how my mother was getting on: and one afternoon she arrived in the house, with her yellow tin trunk and a small holdall, and announced that she wasn’t going to budge till the child was born. My father laughed, but, to tell you the truth, he was glad of her, and my mother was delighted. Ann Dunn put her to bed that night, and my mother sat up, with her two hands on the counterpane, contented as a child.

  “It’s nice to have you here, Ann Dunn,” she said simply.

  Ann said, “Do you think I’d not be here,” and went on putting the room to rights.

  She was there when I was born, helping Doctor O’Kelly, and he said afterwards she was a marvellous help, cool, quick, and practical. He hadn’t wanted her to begin with, but it would have taken more than him to put her out. Don’t get the idea that she was pushful or aggressive. On the contrary, Ann Dunn was the most unobtrusive and quiet of women, quiet as a sheep, and indeed she looked very like a sheep, often, with her long oval face and general mild lack of expression: but a little, stubborn sheep, which no dog will hustle away from her lamb. She knew where her duty lay, and there, despite all obstacles, she would be. Nothing and no one could stop her.

  Ann Dunn looked after me for the first four years of my life. Then she did a thing which staggered us all, the one thing in her whole life which seemed out of character. She came one day to my mother and gave in her notice.

  My mother was knocked speechless. She couldn’t believe she’d heard straight.

  “But, Ann Dunn, darling,” she gasped, ‘’Why? What is wrong?’’

  Ann Dunn’s pale face was stained by a lavender flush.