The Old Jest Read online

  ‘I’d like to be safe. Things have always been so safe, protected. I feel …’ Her fingers unconsciously rattled the latch. ‘… if you know things, it must help … you know when you have to move alone. Know and understand. You have to find out …’ She looked at him. Smoke trailed from his lips. His head was slightly stooped to avoid the poking twigs above them. He peered past her, forwards into the light of the garden beyond.

  ‘Oh well …’ she said with resignation. She poked him with a finger.

  ‘Hey … You. Do you think I’m pretty?’

  ‘Oh … Nancy … I was thinking … away.’ He looked her up and down. ‘Not too bad. You’ll improve. You’re perhaps just a bit …’

  ‘Immature?’

  ‘That’s the sort of thing. You know what I mean …’

  She kicked the gate open with her right foot and they went into the Caseys’ garden. Geometric beds were filled with the tidiest of flowers. Even after the rain no petals had dared to drift on to the grass. The brick paths were weedless. The house had been built around the turn of the century of good red bricks. Bow windows opened on to the grass. A stone dolphin spouted water mysteriously from its tail into a pond. The sound of splashing water was agreeable, and the heavy evening scent of flowers.

  ‘Ah!’ said Harry. He liked order. ‘Ahhhh!’

  Nancy didn’t say anything.

  ‘I sometimes get the feeling,’ he said with severity, ‘that you don’t like Maeve.’

  ‘Oh, I do. I do.’

  Harry looked at his half-smoked cigarette and wondered what to do with it. There was no place in this garden for litter. Carefully he pinched the glowing end between his fingers and pushed the debris into his pocket. Nancy watched every thought, every move. She could be malicious, he thought, a malicious prying child. She’d grow out of it. He made sure with his fingers that the cigarette was out before he took his hand out of his pocket.

  ‘Does Maeve not smoke?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Aunt Mary does. There’s nothing wrong with smoking.’

  ‘Some people find it a disagreeable habit.’

  ‘Coooeee!’

  Maeve came out of a window to greet them.

  ‘It’s great to see you. I’m all alone. Mummy and Daddy have gone to a dinner or something up in town. I’m all alone. I hoped you’d drop in.’ Her smile embraced them both, but her eyes remained on Harry’s face. ‘Harry,’ she breathed.

  ‘Well … ah … yes … ah … isn’t it lucky we came. Isn’t it, Nancy?’

  ‘Oh, Nancy.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Nancy.

  Maeve and Harry smiled at each other. They didn’t notice the long silence that surrounded their smiling faces, pushing them closer and closer together. An angry pulse knocked inside Nancy’s forehead. The flowers stretched complacently in the raked damp earth. No snails here to munch the leaves, leave silver trails along the paths. Nancy looked with irritation at her right big toe, which was pushing its way untidily through the toe of her shoe.

  ‘My blooming feet are still growing,’ she said aloud. The smiling stopped.

  ‘Pardon?’ asked Maeve.

  ‘Oh, nothing really … just my huge evergrowing feet … nothing interesting … nothing …’

  ‘It’s her birthday,’ explained Harry. ‘She’s eighteen.’

  ‘How gorgeous!’ said Maeve, transferring the smile to Nancy. ‘You don’t look eighteen. Does she, Harry? I’d have got you a present if I’d known.’ She leant forward and dropped a scented kiss on to Nancy’s cheek. ‘Gorgeous! No more school. Next thing she’ll be getting married. Won’t she, Harry? Come in. It’s cold after the rain. I’ll get you a present next week. Better late than never, that’s a promise. What did you give her, Harry?’

  She led them through the French windows into the drawing room. It was an extension of the garden. Wherever you looked, flowers seemed to be climbing, twisting, bursting, in ordered profusion. Only the white concert grand piano, drawn across one corner of the room, was free from them.

  ‘Well, actually, nothing yet. I didn’t really know in time. Forgot. I’m hopeless about that sort of thing. Hopeless. What would you like, Nancy?’

  ‘Yes, Nancy, what would you like?’

  ‘I don’t really …’

  ‘I insist,’ said Harry. ‘Absolutely insist.’

  ‘There must be something …’ said Maeve.

  Nancy considered the matter.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Within reason of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Nancy.

  ‘Nancy would never take advantage,’ said Maeve.

  Maeve and Harry smiled at each other again as Nancy considered.

  ‘I’d like to go to the Abbey. Would you take me to the Abbey?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘What a gorgeous idea! May I come too? Please may I come?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Harry, charmed with the idea.

  ‘You wouldn’t mind, would you, Nancy?’

  ‘Why should I mind?’ Nancy bared her teeth at them both.

  ‘Well now, isn’t that lovely? Harry will arrange it all and we’ll all have a lovely evening. Gorgeous.’

  ‘Gorgeous,’ said Nancy.

  ‘So we’ll celebrate now with a glass of sherry. You could have whisky, Harry, if you prefer, but Nancy and I will …’

  She moved towards the door.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand.’

  ‘Really no need.’ But she smiled into his face and they left the room together.

  Nancy sat down with a thump on the blossoming sofa.

  Why did I come?

  Because he wanted to come. He was visibly dying to come. He wouldn’t have had the gumption to come on his own.

  They don’t want me here.

  No. Only needed your presence to get them through the first smile.

  Now. Are they touching hands in the other room? Palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss.

  Why do I prefer the inimical seagulls to this amiable girl?

  Why does he …?

  Laughter from the next room.

  Prefer …

  Palm to palm.

  Her.

  The clink of glasses almost touching.

  To … to …

  The room smelled of floor polish and sweet drooping roses.

  I find myself a pain in the neck.

  She stood up.

  ‘I must go home now.’ She inclined her head graciously towards the piano. ‘It has been delightful … thank you …’ She moved slowly towards the door, nodding, smiling at the chairs, the bowls of flowers, the table on which stood or rather pirouetted a bedizened shepherdess. ‘So nice … so kind, au revoir …’

  Once in the garden, she ran down the path and out through the gate in the hedge.

  The gate squealed as she closed it behind her.

  ‘Traitor,’ she whispered.

  Up the hill smoke drifted from two chimneys, staining the sky: one would be the range in the kitchen, where Bridie would be creaking and humming as she cooked the dinner; the other the newly lighted drawing-room fire, the flames crackling through the structure of sticks and turf.

  As she walked across the field, the anger died inside her.

  ‘Happy birthday me,’ she said aloud.

  8 August

  It has been raining solidly since my birthday, but today the weather seems to be clearing. There are pale streaks of blue in the sky and from time to time sunlight enlivens the flowerbeds for a few moments. The swallows who spend so much of their time rattling around in the eaves just over the head of my bed are swooping and flitting outside the window. They move so fast. A flash of feathers and they are gone, and then moments later breathlessly back again. They are such excited birds. To be alive seems to give them so much pleasure.

  Grandfather has been poorly for the last two days. He has twice fallen out of his chair. He never hurts himself when this happens, as he seems to fall in a completely relaxed and
unstruggling way. He then lies helplessly on the floor, and Aunt Mary and I have great trouble in getting him back into his chair. Personally, I think he does it on purpose when he gets bored with his dreaming and singing and scanning the railway line. Aunt Mary just says ‘Tut!’ crossly when I suggest this to her, but I know, I really know, by the look in his eye, that he is getting at us in some way. If he is left safely in bed when he is having one of these little attacks, he cries and moans all day as if he were being tortured. He also refuses to feed himself, and Aunt Mary has to waste her time sitting by his side pushing food into his mouth as a mother does with a naughty child. I hate him when he is like this. He won’t wear his teeth, and mucus drains out of the corners of his eyes, and I despise myself for the violence of the feelings I hold towards him. I could at times happily hold a pillow over his crumbling face. Aunt Mary’s brusqueness is completely obliterated when she is with him. Her capacity for tenderness is amazing. That angers me too. I want him to die before we become damaged by his decay.

  Today, however, the sun will shine again and I will go down the beach to my seagulls and listen to the sea crushing the stones.

  The sun shone. Steam rose cheerfully up from the lawns, and the earth in the flowerbeds became warm again to the touch.

  They were finishing lunch. The tall windows were open and the breeze moved the curtains. The old man’s head drooped forward on his chest. A shaft of sun lay on his pale, almost lifeless hands. Aunt Mary carefully scraped the spoon for one final time around the bowl in her hand and leant towards him.

  ‘That’s the last little bit, pet. There. You’ve been so good … today so … Bridie will be pleased to see your empty plate. There, pet.’

  She pushed the spoon through his unresisting lips. It had been his own special spoon as a child. His twisted initials, J.D., decorated the handle.

  She put the bowl down on the table and patted his knee. He didn’t respond in any way, just stared down at his hands on the rug. She got up and went to the window.

  ‘Some people decay,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Some lucky people just drop dead, but others … well … others. That’s the way it is for him. We have to take good care of him. Somewhere inside he knows.’

  ‘Knows,’ repeated Nancy with contempt.

  ‘We have to take good care of him. Anyway, he’ll be better tomorrow. I can tell.’

  In the hall the telephone rang. One long jangling ring and then a pause. Nancy got up and went out to answer it. As she picked the receiver from its stand, the bell jangled again.

  ‘Hello.’

  It was Harry.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ She tried not to sound too pleased to hear his voice.

  ‘Where did you go? It was fearfully rude of you to bolt like that. Honestly, Nancy.’

  ‘I just went. Impelled? Compelled? Which word should I use?’

  ‘You’re such a bad child at times.’

  ‘I thought you’d be better off without me … so … I went home.’

  ‘Without a word.’

  ‘There’d have been such a fiddledeedee. Anyway I felt like a lonely ant lurking among all those flowers.’

  ‘Tut!’

  ‘I’m sure you were better off without me. Admit it.’

  ‘I stayed for supper.’

  ‘There you are. That couldn’t have happened if I’d been there.’

  ‘She was alone …’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a pause. Mrs Burke in the post office coughed impatiently as she listened to their silence.

  ‘It was about the theatre I rang.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘How about tomorrow night? That suits Maeve. Would it suit you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Oh yes. Thank you. Thank you.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you ask Mary?’

  ‘That’ll be all right.’

  ‘Very well then. Can you come up in the train and meet me at the office? College Street. We’ll have a quick bite to eat. I’ll bring the motor up and I can drive you home. Tell Mary you’ll be all right.’

  ‘That sounds lovely.’

  ‘Six at the office. It’s Riders to the Sea, by the way.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘That all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Well …’

  Mrs Burke coughed again.

  ‘See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  She put the receiver back on the stand and turned the handle to let Mrs Burke know that the call was over … as if she didn’t know already. She stood in the darkness for a moment listening to the sound of his voice murmuring inside her head.

  ‘Who?’ called Aunt Mary from the dining room.

  Nancy moved.

  ‘Harry.’

  Aunt Mary was polishing the old man’s face with a table napkin.

  ‘He’s taking me to the Abbey tomorrow night.’

  ‘That’ll be nice.’

  ‘Riders to the Sea.’

  ‘Do take care of the Black and Tans and … trouble …’

  ‘And Maeve,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Pretty girl.’ Aunt Mary dropped the crumpled napkin on to the table. ‘Tiresome, I find.’

  ‘It’s a birthday present.’

  ‘Just take care. I suppose he’ll take care of you really. He’s dropped off to sleep. I think I’ll bring him into the drawing room. He always likes that window.’

  ‘I think I’m in love with Harry.’

  Aunt Mary leant down and took the brake off the wheelchair.

  ‘What nonsense!’

  A cloud moved across the sun and for a moment the room was dim.

  ‘It isn’t nonsense to me.’

  ‘Maybe not, dear. I expect you just have a crush on him. That happens you know. It’s not love, though. Love is damn big, pet, don’t consider it yet awhile. Anyway, Harry wouldn’t be the right sort of person for you.’

  The cloud moved on and the sun made patterns of brilliance on the floor and wall. Nancy didn’t say a word.

  ‘I don’t mean he isn’t nice pet. He really is … he’s just not amazing in any way.’

  ‘He’s beautiful. Amazingly beautiful.’

  Aunt Mary grasped hold of the handles and began to push the chair across the room. ‘Beauty,’ she said, ‘as you know, is only skin deep. There’s a flat sort of beauty and a … well … something more interesting. He’s flat. He should have stayed in the army, he’d have made a perfectly beautiful general. Much more beautiful than father ever was.’

  ‘That’s your opinion …’

  ‘What are you going to do with yourself this afternoon, now that the weather’s better?’

  ‘I thought I’d go for a walk. Bathe perhaps.’

  ‘You should have friends of your own age. Play tennis. I played a lot of tennis at your age.’

  ‘You’ve always been a sporty sort of person.’

  ‘Bring a woollie. There’s a cold wind.’

  As they moved out into the hall, the old man, disturbed by the movement, began to sing.

  ‘I fear no foe with Thee at hand to bless …’

  ‘Isn’t that marvellous,’ said Aunt Mary. ‘He’s getting better. Maybe I’ll be able to get to the races after all tomorrow.’

  ‘Ills have no weight and tears no bitterness.’

  Nancy went out into the porch, which was filled with the sweet, heavy scent of geraniums.

  ‘Woollie,’ called out her aunt.

  Everything seemed the same as usual. Safe. Unpeopled. The tide was ebbing and small waves frilled at the water’s edge. A seagull, immobile on the roof ridge, stared at the horizon. Among the pounded shells to the right of the door lay a cigarette butt. Nancy frowned at it for a moment before kicking sand over it with her bare toe. She opened the door and looked into the hut. There was no one there; but someone had been there. Someone had moved and breathed
there. Someone had touched her belongings, threatened her secret. For a moment she was angry and then frightened. Above her the bird shifted its claws on the roof. She became calm again. She took down a notebook and pencil from the shelf and began to write a note.

  ‘Dear sir, I would be grateful if you didn’t come here again. This is a very private and personal property. Yours sincerely Nancy Gulliver’

  Carefully she tore the page out of the notebook and stood, tapping the pencil against her teeth, looking round for a suitable place to leave the message. Finally she propped it up against the books on the shelf facing the door, just where it would catch the eye of anyone coming in through the door. The thought of swimming didn’t really appeal to her any more, so she closed the door very carefully, waved to the seagull and went home.

  Harry telephoned again the next morning as they were having their breakfast.

  ‘Nancy.’

  ‘Oh, hello.’

  He’s going to cancel it, she thought. Don’t let him cancel it.

  ‘I’m just dashing off to work.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Aunt Mary rustled the Irish Times with irritation.

  ‘I just thought I’d ring and find out if Mary was happy about you coming up.’

  ‘I told you. It’s all right.’

  ‘Your toast will get cold,’ called Aunt Mary.

  ‘Good. She doesn’t mind you coming up alone on the train.’

  ‘No.’ Fuss, fuss.

  ‘Remember not to get a return. I’ll be driving you both home.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There is nothing more awful than cold toast. People should have the manners not to use that damn machine at mealtimes.’

  ‘I’ll put the motor near the theatre so we won’t have far to walk.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So Mary needn’t worry.’

  ‘I don’t think she is.’

  ‘Toast.’

  ‘That’s all right then. I’ll see you at the office. We’ll snatch a quick bite to eat.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Half past six should be time enough.’

  ‘Half six.’

  ‘Half six is three,’ shouted Aunt Mary’s furious voice. ‘At least use the language as it should be used.’

  ‘I’d better be off.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye. Thank you for ringing.’

  ‘The Germans,’ said Aunt Mary from behind the paper, as Nancy sat down again, ‘say half four when they mean half past three. Halb vier. Halb fünf … half past four. It’s confusing, but then they’re foreign. Different constructions and things. Eat your cold toast.’