City of the Tribes, page 19
Until tomorrow.
Colm turned silently and walked away, conscious of her eyes on his back. She waited until he became small with distance and until a turn of the street took him from her sight, and then she removed her hand from the latch, turned away, went farther up the street, cut off through an intersection and down another street, and taking a key from the pocket of her coat went in a door. Met by the growling of a drunken man, bending over the fire.
‘Ah, go to hell, you,’ she said. ‘If you can be out, I can too.’
Colm walked up the streets of the city and he felt as if he was walking on clouds. ‘It’s all Fate,’ he was saying to himself. ‘All this. That my mother should have died and I should have come to the Galway Races. Up there in His heaven, God had it all fixed up in a little book.’
It took him into his own digs and upstairs to his room, and it sat beside him while he took off his boots and then his coat, and then while he reached into the inside pocket of his coat so that he could take his money and put it under the pillow, because there would be other men sleeping in the room later, and for all that he had the caution of a countryman.
The money wasn’t there at all. The money was gone.
It took a long time before it dawned on Colm what had happened to his money. It took a long and bitter time while the fumes of the love and drink waned and died and left his head as clear as it would ever be.
Something inside Colm crumbled then and decayed and died, never to suffer rebirth. He sat on the edge of that bed for a long time, deliberately allowing the hurt to eat into every single bit of him, and then, big man and all as he was, and thirty-four years old and all, he sank his face into the pillow of the bed and let himself be overcome.
It lasted a long time, all that.
A long time. Thirty-four more years, say.
Then he put on his boots again, and he put on his coat again, and he gathered his few belongings and went down the stairs and opened the back door into the yard, and he got out his bicycle, and he got into the lane at the back smelling sour with garbage, and he went out of the lane and got into the main street, and he cycled along it blindly, deaf to the music that was there and the loud yahoos of people in his ears, and he went down the street and headed for the railway arch where he had come in that morning. Only that morning?
Of many things he thought, but not clearly.
When the morning was chasing the dawn, he came to the hill over the village, and he looked down and he saw the lake spreading palely and eternally at his feet, and he saw the white of his own house rising over the hedge of the blackthorn bushes.
The bicycle brought him down of its own accord, almost to his own door, and he bent and got the key from under the stone, and he opened the door and went in. The kitchen was still warm from the raked turf coals. He left the front door open and saw the light growing outside, and he went to the window at the back and saw the sun rising redly out of the lake. He surveyed his kitchen, and it seemed to him a very friendly place indeed, so he got on his knees in front of the open hearth and started to separate the ashes from the still-live coals.
‘Oh God, it’s good to be home,’ Colm thought. ‘Oh God, it’s good to be alone, at home!’
The City
Almost invisibly against the background of the white-cloud-studded sky, the young gull rose from his rocky home in the centre of the great expanse of Corrib water, rose jerkily and breezily, a little ungraceful yet as his immature wings caught and held the air, propelling him ever upwards.
He screamed shrilly as his wings found the feel of the air and used it, and then he ran his body along the river of a current, zooming out of it triumphantly and turning his head downwards again to skim the gentle waves of the water, casually stirred by the summer breeze of an early morning.
He rose again then, high up in the air, where he hovered, as if he was suspended from heaven by invisible wires, and paused there to regard the world below him.
He could see his own small home, a few jumbled rocks holding pebbles in their hollows and a rib or two of grass stoutly defying all their enemies, the black rocks whitened like the outside of a cottage by the droppings of the nesting gulls; this bleak home so different to the hundreds of islands below him, with the grass very green, and most of them tree-clad like maiden ladies with long skirts. All these islands he could see from his great height, and the big lake glinting in the hidden sunshine, a lake that stretched away behind him until it met the black bulk of the shadowed mountains of Connemara, standing at the head of the lake as if to say, ‘Thus far you come and no further.’ And along one side, the foothills of the mountains ringed the lake, and on the other side there was a great plain with evenly divided fields and crops ripening in them, and on the other side still there were woods and long fields sloping to the water and townships camouflaged by woods and the ruins of monasteries and churches, very old and crumbling beneath the weight of time.
And then there was the river.
He could see away where the lake poured itself into the river, its bottled bulk tumbling through the narrows into another wide barren stretch of water, and then the river again, and away at the end of the river this time there was a hint of another gigantic stretch of water that couldn’t be a lake because it glinted green, and a lot of dusky smoke like brown clouds was rising from somewhere in the valley.
Probably because he was young and adventuresome and had just left the tender care of his mother, the young gull suddenly swung away and swept widely over the lake towards the place where the mouth of the river lay. Fast he went and joyously and sprightly because he was young and there was little need to conserve his strength.
His bright little far-seeing eyes were fixed before him, at the ribboned river and the green water that lay miles at the end of it. As he came near the mouth of the narrows, if he had looked he would have seen a village hidden in the folds of the hills. Clustered cottages with the white walls glittering and the yellow thatch of their roofs golden in the brightness. He might have swooped down over this village had he wished and seen the tall young man that was Colm, pushing his grey boat on to the waters of the lake for his morning fishing, and farther on past the narrows, he might have come down a little to investigate the one island where the brown dots that were goats darted from rock to rock and cropped the green shoots and looked warily over their shoulders in case there might have been a sign of John Willie chasing them.
But the eyes of the seagull were fixed on the sea, and his slim white body followed his eyes.
He sheered away, frightened, as he saw the sprawling city below him swallowing the river. Such an unfamiliar jumble was beyond his comprehension, so he swung north and approached the sea over the grey roads leading into the countryside.
He cleared the land and came over the sea in wonder. The sight of it was unfamiliar and the colour and the taste and smell of it that came up to meet his beak. It was a boxed-in bay he saw, its mouth stopped up by the Aran Islands that stretched themselves protectingly across it, their western ends heaped up into tall cliffs to take the batterings of the Atlantic waves. And on the other side of the bay a long range of hills was stretched, barren hills of granite rocks where even the grass refused to grow. So unlike the lake, the sea. No bottom to be seen, except down the middle where the earth shelved up and a few rocks came forth and floating brown weeds swung away from them. And near the end of the bay there was a white house that looked like a ship, and black boats with brown sails that floated along. So unfamiliar to the eyes of the lake gull who was used to small short grey boats with the things sticking out of the sides of them and bending bodies jerking the things at the water to make the boat go.
He came down from his heights now, ready to swing over the black boat to give it a closer look, but as he dived, circling gulls, enormous ones with red beaks and black backs, rose up to meet him, crying shrilly at this impudent invasion of their domain, so the gull rose sharply again and passed the boat without another look.
He might have looked at the boat. It could have been The Black Swan, and he might have seen the old man with the white hair and his gnarled hands tight on the tiller.
But he passed on and headed where this time the sea was pouring itself into the city, and chose the city as the lesser of two evils.
The size of it surprised him.
Cranes rising into the sky and big black gates holding water above its natural level and big ugly red and black boats with smoke pouring from their bellies. And buildings that were sheds and men walking and horses and carts being loaded. These things were familiar enough. He had seen men before and horses and carts. He swung away from the docks and went over the river where it went tumbling into the sea. He looked the length of it and he could see that it divided the city nearly in two and that bridges ran across it three times to join up the roads on either side. If he had paused to look to his right, he might have noticed the small houses beyond the arch where Spanish Joe had been created from a respectable citizen. But he flew ahead, and rose high at the sight of the tall church spires. He chose the one on his right and flew towards a squat one with a round white face on the front of it, bisected by two black hands. He landed on the tip-top of this and rested.
He was near now and he could see the winding street of the city below him, a narrow street, with thin footpaths on either side of it, and it nearly jammed with the cars that went and the cars that came, simple traffic that looked complicated in the narrow street. He took off and followed the street, over the heads of the people and the horses and the carts and the asses, and the funny smell of petrol came up to him and rubber and the sun striking on stone and slate. Up the street he flew until shortly it opened out into a wide square, a plot of green grass surrounded by railings, and all around that again, tall houses and short houses and hotels in most disorderly array. If it had been the proper time he might have seen the carnival in the square or he might have seen the fair of the horses and he might have seen the policeman Sean Martin and Big Peadar the tinker face to furious face, with the big sergeant hovering behind them.
But it was the wrong time, so he swung widely again and came back along the main street. On either side of the street, he could see side streets stretching out in an order that was more apparent from his position. He could see the red brick building that was the police barracks and the docks down on his left and the several churches, four on this side of the river, where the people got rid of their sins when they sinned, which was often, because they were only poor, weak mortals like any other people. But he crossed the river and followed the main street. It wound into more side streets and past more churches and rows of houses with their doors opening on to the footpaths, a warren of streets built up around the church with the slender spire. If he had paused here for a time and come down to investigate the small figures playing there, or leaning against the walls, or pelting one another with cabbage stalks, he might have met Jimjoe or seen Bill slouching along and looking curiously at the Boogie Man.
If he could have seen into the church of the slender spire, he might have had a glimpse of Pugnug, assing in the sacristy, but he couldn’t, and by this time he was a little sick of this city. It meant nothing to him. That it was nearly as old as his ancestors didn’t mean anything to him. That it was known as the City of the Tribes, on account of the thirteen tribes that had more or less owned it, meant nothing to him. That it had been stormed and blood-bathed by Irish and Norsemen, Danes, Normans and Cromwellians meant nothing to him.
So he rose up and turned his back on Galway, like many more before him. It didn’t matter to him if it was teeming with life and drama and suffering and poverty and wealth.
He preferred fish.
It didn’t matter to him if the citizens were born or died, robbed or worked, sang or jeered, whored, swore or prayed.
He preferred the aroma of the bog myrtle to the stench of man.
It didn’t matter to him if the air was warm and the sands of the sea-shore were silver, that the buildings were old and ugly and that twenty thousand people worked out their span there, beggars or boys, priests or policemen, tinkers or toilers, pub-keepers or pariahs, deputies or dunces, good, bad or indifferent. Pagans, papists or peddlers, it was all one to him.
He preferred to sweep low over the waters of the lake and scoop the delicate mayfly into his mouth.
It didn’t matter to him if it was a sleepy town, good-living or bad-living, nor that it took nineteen thousand citizens to keep the other thousand living luxuriously, because they were too indolent for revolutions.
He preferred to get back to the freedom of the lake and the clear air.
So he rose from his spire and winged towards the river, passing over another church on his way, where he might have paused to see the long funeral procession that was the last tribute to Dad or the sparse one that was a credit to Bridey Corcoran. He might have turned left a little and seen the shallow basin of stagnant water and the green grass that cradled the bare feet of Mary Ann. But he just flew on, pausing at the Salmon Weir Bridge for a moment to look hungrily at the jammed salmon swaying in the river, and then seeing the lake in the far distance, he headed for it joyously with a cry.
Behind him the city rested, heavy with its tales.
An Act of Charity
I am an honest man.
I am also a just man who is seeking justice – if it is to be found. I am setting it all out here for you so that you can come to a decision, and I have no doubt that you will be outraged at the injustice perpetrated on me.
I own a four-storey premises near the bridge, a good solid house. On the first floor I have my licensed premises which I conduct with absolute honesty. Malicious people claim that the back of the premises leads to so many crooked lanes and turns that the police can never catch people drinking in my premises after hours. Facts speak for themselves. I have never been convicted for selling drink after hours, but I’m telling you what they say to show the lengths people will go to blacken the fair name of a decent man.
We keep lodgers, generally four or five, but I admit we pack them in fairly closely at festival seasons. My wife conducts this part of the operation. We don’t keep a maid. You couldn’t trust one of them; their wages are too high, and they’d steal the milk out of your tea. No, my wife is an active, hard-working woman, and since she never had any children anyhow, she can easily cope with a few lodgers. I have never chided my wife on our lack of children. This is another lie! Like most men, I get drunk once or twice a year and I say things in my cups – like most men – but it is only the evil-minded who pay attention to what a man says when he is not himself.
I think that clears the air, takes care of the lies, and gives you my background.
The trouble arose when I decided to get the outside of my premises painted.
I didn’t see the need for this, but everybody in the town seems to be gone paint-mad. Good weathered stone or grey cement was good enough for our fathers, but it’s not good enough for us. No! You look at the town now. It’s painted like a rainbow.
You have to move with the times. People were complaining a bit about the look of my place. They can’t see that, with a pub, it is atmosphere that counts. I had to tidy up inside. They were even complaining about sitting on barrels! You see? The place was dark and gloomy, but that made it cosy and charming, I thought. When I lost a few customers to the bright places (they were no good anyhow, came from bad stock, and I was better off without them), I had to do something. If you can’t educate people you have to go along with them, even if it’s going down you are. So I smartened up inside with a new counter, shelves and stools. It looked brighter, if that’s what they want, and God knows it should with what the robbers charged to put in a few pieces of timber, a lick of paint, etc.
One thing leads to another. With the inside bright, the outside drew comments, so it would have to be done, and I asked for an estimate from the painter. Well, look, if they were going to do the whole place over in gold leaf and use raw diamonds for window-panes, it couldn’t have been dearer.
I went to him, of course.
‘Roger,’ I said, ‘I don’t want my place gold-plated. I just want it painted in good oil paint. Is it so much to ask? You seem to have made a four hundred per cent mistake in this estimate.’
This seemed to annoy him.
‘Mr Manton,’ he said, ‘we all know you are a man who looks four times on each side of a halfpenny before parting with it, so I pared that estimate so low that all the profit I will get out of it is the empty paint tins if I can sell them afterwards to a tinker.’
‘If that’s paring,’ I said, ‘your toenails must be long. If I bought the paint and brushes myself, I could get the job done for one-tenth the price.’
‘Do that!’ he said. ‘Do that!’ He was red in the face; he was always a fiery man, easily roused. ‘Do it yourself, if you can borrow a ladder in the country that will hold you.’ This wasn’t a kind remark as I am a man of robust build. In my youth I was good on the sports field throwing the weight, etc., and in later life good athletes are inclined to get a little weighty.
‘Just for that remark,’ I said, ‘you have lost yourself a contract.’ ‘Thank God!’ he said. ‘Thank God!’
‘In fact,’ I said, ‘I will get the job done myself and let you see the bill of costs afterwards — just to show you.’
‘Do that,’ he said; ‘please do that, and tell me the date so that I can come and watch the work. I need a laugh.’
I left him, of course, because you cannot argue reasonably with men like that. I wonder he is successful in business. It won’t last.
Now you see the dilemma I was in, and this was where the act of charity came in.
I could easily have gone to another painting contractor and got a more reasonable estimate, but I decided that charity came before self, and I knew that Mike Ireland and Gosling could do with a few shillings and a few free drinks. They were frequently in my place. Mike had a pension which he got from the British for being in their army in an early war and getting gassed. He regarded pints of stout as the only real cure for his lungs, and who can say that he wasn’t right. Doctors don’t know everything, and you’d want gold dust just to pay them for a single visit. Gosling is a strong, able-bodied boy, a bit weak in the head, but an amiable youth who doesn’t talk back to his betters like some we all know nowadays.
