The Old Jest Page 5

  ‘Harry …?’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  They walked up Grafton Street in silence. As they crossed the road to Bewley’s Oriental Cafeé, a motor car driven by a middle-aged man passed in front of them. Nancy leant forward and peered at him as he drove slowly past.

  The warm smell of freshly ground coffee seemed to suck them through the swing doors and into the cafe.

  ‘Do you think that could have been my father?’

  Harry looked startled.

  ‘Who? Where?’

  ‘That man back there in the car.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’

  He pushed her in front of him across the shop and through the door at the back leading into the cafe itself.

  ‘I always look in passing motors for my father.’ She instantly regretted having said it. She laughed nervously. ‘Joke, joke.’

  ‘Sit down.’

  He pulled out a chair at a small table for her as he spoke. She sat down. She watched him as he hung his hat on a tall curling hatstand, then unbuttoned his coat with neat careful movements of his hands. At last he, too, sat down, and pushed the menu across the table towards her.

  ‘Your father’s dead.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Everyone knows that, you silly child!’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Of course you do. What do you want to eat? We haven’t much time.’

  ‘Where is his grave then?’

  ‘Nancy, I …’

  ‘Where is there a bit of paper saying that he’s dead? Something legal. Mr Robert Gulliver is dead. That sort of thing. Where?’

  ‘How on earth should I know! Ask Mary these silly questions. She’s the one who knows the answers.’

  Nancy shook her head. Impatiently he tapped his finger on the table and pointed to the menu. She glanced at it.

  ‘I’ll have scrambled eggs and potato cakes,’ she said, ‘and coffee.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes, sure.’

  He waved at a waitress.

  ‘She only surmises. She has no conclusions to come to.’ She leaned towards him. ‘My mother’s dead. I know that. I have her hairbrush … things like that … golly, I even sleep in her bed, but Robert … he … my …’

  ‘I should surmise, too, if I were you.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered to herself, as she watched him give their order to the waitress, ‘you are such a pain in the neck.’

  He scratched for a moment at the corner of his eye with a clean pale finger. His nails were well trimmed and perfect; his hands looked as if they had never even hovered over any of the mess of life.

  ‘I’ll tell you one thing, he’s not driving round Dublin in a motor, wherever else he may be.’

  ‘You don’t know.’

  ‘I, too, can surmise.’

  Around them people clattered their knives and forks and stirred the coffee in the heavy white cups and smiled at each other or read the paper. Outside, there was some sort of a war going on, she thought, but here, just sitting in this warm dim room, you would never know it. She looked at the calm faces around her and wondered perhaps if two of those leaning, smiling people, normal people, were plotting to kill someone, passing secret messages as they stirred their coffee, betraying someone, smiling and smiling. The waitress put a plate down in front of her and another in front of Harry, who was looking rather cross; then she shuffled the things on the table round a bit to make room for the coffee pot and a dish of fat, steaming potato cakes.

  ‘I hope that’s all right,’ said Harry politely.

  ‘Scrumptious.’

  ‘You pour out. You’re the lady. I take two lumps of sugar.’

  He picked up his knife and fork and began to eat bacon and sausages, cutting them with care, his head bent towards his plate. Her hand shook a little as she poured the coffee, but she didn’t spill any into his saucer.

  ‘Am I a bore?’

  He looked up from his food and smiled at her. For a moment she felt a little dizzy, confronted with his smile.

  ‘You’re a silly child,’ he said, ‘but not a bore. Yet. You could become one if you go on being silly, but I don’t suppose you will for long.’

  ‘A blooming bore?’

  ‘Eat your scrambled eggs. We mustn’t keep Maeve waiting.’

  10 August

  Having made the momentous decision to write daily in my book, I find to my disgust that I have been lazy … perhaps haphazard would be a better word. I think I am probably a somewhat haphazard person. Maybe this has to do with my age, and one day I will, as Harry hopes so much, become a real person. Organised. Anyway he has no cause for complaint about my behaviour last night. I behaved like a perfect lady. We kept Maeve waiting for a few minutes, but she bore it nobly. She was dressed in pale mauve, a colour I normally find quite disagreeable, but it suited her well.

  The two plays we saw were Androcles and the Lion by George Bernard Shaw and Riders to the Sea. I laughed quite a lot during Androcles and cried during Riders to the Sea. I suppose these were the right reactions to have. In spite of my laughter I didn’t really like Mr Shaw’s play very much, but I didn’t mention this to Harry and Maeve, who thought it was marvellous.

  The Abbey Theatre has a strange smell; perhaps all theatres do, but I have no experience.

  We had to hurry to get out of town before the curfew. Maeve sat in the front seat and smiled and chattered and touched Harry’s arm with her hand from time to time. We passed several military lorries on our way home, but saw no trouble of any sort. There is really no need to be frightened if you’re with Harry; nothing terrible could ever happen to you when you are with him.

  They had all gone to bed here when I got home. Aunt Mary had left the light burning in the hall so that I didn’t have to come into a dark house. At one end of the long hall table was a tray with a jug of milk, neatly covered with a muslin cloth edged with coloured beads, to keep the flies out, a glass and a plate with a slice of Bridie’s loveliest fruit cake, usually kept for visitors. I turned out the light and sat down at the bottom of the stairs.

  The house was still and loving. The hall clock ticked and the furniture around me breathed quietly, in the way that furniture does at night when everything is silent. A mouse rattled things in the kitchen and the moon shone in through the fanlight over the hall door and made patterns like orange segments on the floor and up the stairs and indeed probably on me too. I felt very safe, well protected. I wondered was that right or wrong, but didn’t come to any conclusions.

  It was raining the next afternoon when Nancy went down to the hut. The beach was deserted. The sky and sea were the same turbulent grey; white flashes of foam rose and fell, sighing patterns of unrest. The telegraph poles sang. She carried with her an old school satchel in which she had gathered together an assortment of food.

  He was sitting hunched in the corner, his thin shoulders covered by a rug. He held a book in his hand. He laid the book on the floor and got to his feet when she came in.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It never occurred to me that you might come today. It’s hardly a day for the beach.’

  ‘I brought you some food … well not much really … just a few bits and pieces. I wasn’t sure how you managed.’

  Nervously she squeezed drops of water from the ends of her hair with her fingers as she spoke.

  ‘How thoughtful of you, and kind!’

  She held the satchel out towards him. He took it from her and put it on the shelf without opening it.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me, you know. I’m grateful … I don’t mean that … I’m … well, very good at managing.’

  They stood looking at each other for a long moment.

  ‘Did you enjoy the Abbey?’ he asked politely.

  ‘It was very good. Thank you.’

  ‘Would you like me to disappear for a while?’

  ‘Oh no! Please, no. I didn’t say a word to anyone.’

  He smiled sligh
tly.

  ‘About you.’

  She stopped torturing her hair and wiped her wet fingers on the front of her skirt.

  ‘I didn’t think you would.’

  ‘You never know with people.’

  ‘I think you know all right. Yes. Maybe it’s my great age and experience. Why don’t we sit down? I have never believed in standing when you can sit.’ He spread the rug and cushions out so that there would be room for both of them and then politely waited until she had settled herself before he sat down beside her.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He pulled a half-smoked cigarette out of his pocket and pinched some of the burnt end off before putting it in his mouth. Then he fished for matches.

  ‘Are you dying?’ she asked suddenly.

  He looked startled. He found the matches and struck one. His hand was shaking as he raised the flame towards his face. He shook the match dead before putting the charred stick safely back in the box.

  ‘Not any more than anyone else. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just thought … well … wondered … it seemed like a possible explanation.’

  ‘Why in the name of God should I choose to come and die here! No, no, Nancy Gulliver, I’d prefer to die in comfort.’

  ‘I don’t really think that would enter your head.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Rubbish, dear child. I’m no romantic hero. I’m as sybaritic as the next man. Most certainly when it comes to dying. I’d rather die in a warm bed, having just had a good meal and a bottle of claret, than after a couple of green apples on a windy beach.’

  ‘To cease upon the midnight with no pain …’

  ‘It’s an appealing thought.’

  ‘Grandfather can’t die. He just sits there waiting and nothing happens.’ She picked at the inside of her nose with the first finger of her right hand. ‘I find it very disconcerting … well worse than that really. He just waits hopelessly. Yes. We watch him. Each day he shrivels a little, but he won’t die.’

  ‘Must you pick your nose?’

  She removed her finger rapidly and blushed.

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise …’

  ‘Tell me about yourself. What do you do apart from watching the old man shrivel?’

  ‘I don’t really do anything. I’m an orphan.’

  ‘So am I.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Silly! I’ve never had parents.’

  ‘You appeared, in other words, in a puff of smoke, rather like the demon in the pantomime.’

  ‘What fun that would have been!’

  ‘And the grandfather …’

  ‘I live with him and my aunt. Over there.’

  She pointed vaguely in the direction of the railway line.

  ‘I only left school last term. I’m going to Trinity in the Autumn.’

  ‘To read what?’

  ‘History. It seems like quite a good thing to start off with anyway. Aunt Mary says I’ll probably get bored with it.’

  ‘And is Aunt Mary given to being right?’

  ‘She really wanted me to go to Oxford, but … well … we didn’t have enough money for that. She says I need intellectual hounding to keep me at work … and discipline. She says I probably won’t get either here. She says …’ She stopped and looked anxiously at him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She says it’s probably all for the best that we haven’t the money anyway because if there’s going to be a war with England … a real war … then I’d be better off staying here. After all …’

  ‘And does she think there’s going to be a real war with England?’

  His face was amused.

  ‘She says they’re all such fearful muddlers that there might be.’

  A gust of wind threw a burst of raindrops on to the roof. They sounded like pebbles landing and then sliding, and then becoming silent.

  ‘She’s good.’

  ‘Ah, yes!’

  ‘She’s very good to Grandfather, and she’s very good to me. To people, really everyone. Her life is full of order. Don’t you think that is a good thing?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘You don’t say that with conviction.’

  ‘Nancy Gulliver, you must have been a very trying child.’

  She smiled slightly.

  ‘In the photographs my mother looks very like her. I’d say she was less ordered though.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘She had me.’ She leant towards him as if she were afraid of being overheard. ‘I suspect she wasn’t married. That wasn’t very orderly, was it? Mind you, it isn’t what people say, it’s just what I suspect.’

  ‘Perhaps it would make things easier for you if you believed what they say.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Overcome with a sudden hunger she got up and took the satchel off the shelf; she peered into it.

  ‘Have a banana?’

  ‘No thanks. I never eat between meals.’

  ‘Do you mind if I have one? There are three there.’

  ‘Go ahead. Help yourself.’

  She took out a banana and pulled the peel back carefully. The flesh of the fruit was beginning to turn from cream to pulpy brown. Reluctantly she sat down again, stretching her legs out in front of her. She wanted to move them, pace like a lion backwards and forwards in her cage. Her long second toe poked inquisitively through the wet canvas of her sandshoe. She chewed and gazed at it as if she were alarmed somehow at its appearance. He wondered whether he should pick up his book and continue with his reading.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked after a long, long silence.

  ‘Haven’t we had this conversation before?’

  ‘It didn’t get us very far. One ought … really … technically … to know one’s lodger’s name. I mean … you’re not a … but… anyway.’

  He didn’t say a word.

  She folded the empty banana skin and put it into her pocket.

  ‘Your name isn’t Robert, by any chance?’

  ‘I’ve had so many names down the years.’

  ‘Was Robert ever one of them?’

  ‘Not that I can recall. It’s not really a very interesting name.’

  ‘My father was called Robert.’

  He roared with laughter. After a moment she laughed, too, and their laughter and the wind shook the little hut.

  ‘Ah now, ah come on now, Nancy! You’re not blaming me for that?’

  ‘Why not? Why not you?’

  ‘How do you know his name is Robert? After all, if you don’t believe what they say …’

  ‘I know that. Grandfather talks about Robert from time to time, and he’s well past telling lies. Anyway, I have this book.’ Her fingers stroked an ancient childhood scar on her knee as she spoke. She forever had to be moving. Her hands did not know the meaning of the word peace. ‘It’s a Yeats first edition. You know, that lovely soft paper and ragged edges where someone has cut the pages with a paper knife … He must have given it to her … to my mother. It has Helen … that was her name.’

  The nod of his head could have meant anything or nothing. She wasn’t watching him, though; her eyes were scrutinising the black looped writing on the fly leaf of the book.

  ‘ … murmur a little sadly how Love fled, And paced upon the mountains overhead, And hid his face amid a crown of stars.’

  Silence.

  ‘I don’t really know what it means.’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s nice though … good. “Helen,” it says then “from Robert.” So you see.’

  ‘Yes, I see,’ he said gently. ‘And I assure you it was not I who wrote those words.’

  ‘Oh well.’ She spoke with resignation in her voice.

  ‘It shouldn’t be so important, you know.’

  He bent down and ground out the remains of his cigarette on the sole of his shoe. He held the butt in the hollow of his hand like you might hold a tiny dead animal.

 
; ‘When you are young, there is today and tomorrow. A lot of tomorrows. It’s only when you get to my age that the past begins to play a part in your life. Uninvited. Willy nilly.’

  ‘I’d just like to know what is inside me. What sort of a person I might expect to turn out to be.’

  ‘That’s rubbish, child.’

  ‘Surely ingredients must be important?’

  ‘Irrelevant. We can do nothing about them but forget them and get on with the job of maturing, exploring and expanding our faculties.’

  ‘Is that what you’ve done? I mean, are doing?’

  He looked down at the butt in his hand.

  ‘Just throw it on the floor,’ she said.

  He got up and went over to the door; as he opened it a gust of rain burst its drops on the floor. He threw the butt out on to the sand and shut the door again quickly.

  ‘I’m not what you might call old.’ He smiled and corrected himself. ‘Not what I might call old, and yet … all the time now … willy nilly, as I said before, the past impinges on me. Nudges its way constantly into my life. Uninvited. I no longer seem to have time for contemplation. I find it very unnerving. I find I can no longer act unimpeded by voices from the past.’

  He was talking to himself, standing quite still by the door, his face a pale blur in the darkness;

  ‘The whole structure of my life begins to tremble, like this funny hut when the wind blows.’ He held his hands out in front of him in a sudden gesture, and she saw that they also were trembling. ‘So, for the first time in years, everything I do becomes tentative. I have to pretend, fool people. I used to be sure, devastatingly sure; now I have to squash doubts, sharpen constantly the edges of my thoughts. Perhaps to become lost is the fate of the middle-aged and the middle class. It might be compared with the loss of Faith.’ He looked at his hands for a moment and then let them fall slowly to his sides. She felt she was eavesdropping.

  ‘Oh dear!’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t usually meander. Another symptom.’

  He came and sat down again beside her.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I like listening to you.’

  ‘The perfect person to have around.’

  He said it gently, without irony.

  ‘I’ve never had Faith,’ she said.