Sullivan, page 2
‘You must be cut, Pi,’ she said. Pi plucked up courage when he heard her saying his name.
‘Ah, it’s nothin’,’ said Pi.
‘All the same,’ she said with a furrow on her forehead, ‘ we better look at it.’ Pi backed away terrified. ‘No, no,’ he cried, ‘it’s fine. Honest, miss, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s fine.’
‘Let’s look at it,’ said Sullivan and pulled up the leg of his trousers. There was a hole in his thigh, where a barb of the wire had caught him, a sort of blue-lipped hole.
The girl had come around to look even though Pi was backing away.
‘I’ll get some iodine,’ she said, but before she could move the old man was on them. He was waving a blackthorn stick. Pi felt his mouth going dry.
‘You little demons,’ the old man was crying, ‘ what brought you in here? Why are you talking to them, Bernie? Get the police. You hear! Get the police! You saw the notice on the wall. You are trespassing, you hear that! Trespassing!’
He wore a beard, close clipped to his face. Sort of grey-black. He was dressed in a black suit with narrow trousers and a sort of swallowtail coat, and a hard hat that was a bit green with age.
‘It’s all right, father,’ Bernie said, going to him. ‘They didn’t mean any harm. They are two country boys. They were attracted by the smell of the apple blossoms.’
‘They were, heh?’ he asked. Then he came close to Sullivan. He looked closely at him. Sullivan looked at him with a frank open gaze. Sullivan was interested in the way his eyes were lined at the side and the deep fissures by the side of his nose and the permanent furrow between his eyebrows. ‘Your name?’ he asked.
‘Sullivan,’ said Sullivan.
‘That’s what I thought,’ he said, ‘and you told a pack of lies. Didn’t you?’
‘Well, no, sir,’ said Sullivan. ‘They weren’t lies really. We were attracted by the smell of the blossoms.’
‘Are you not country boys?’ Bernie asked.
‘We are not, miss,’ said Pi in a rush. ‘Sullivan is always tellin’ tales like that. He doesn’t mean it, miss, it just runs away with him. He didn’t mean any harm.’
‘Your father is Tim Sullivan,’ the old man said. ‘ I’d know you out of him. What kind of a misplaced liar are you at all? Your father is a good man. Didn’t you know he prunes my trees?’
‘Yes,’ said Sullivan. ‘He spoke so much about the beauty of the orchard that I had to see it.’
‘Another lie,’ said the old man. ‘Go on now, pack off to hell with the pair of you and don’t let me ever see you here again. What would you think if I broke into the privacy of your homes because I liked the smell of cooking meat? This is my home. All of it, you hear, all about it, walls and all, and when you break in here it’s the same as if I broke into your houses, without rhyme or reason. You mustn’t come back. Just go away and you mustn’t come back, you hear, or I’ll set the dog on you. You hear that?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Sullivan.
There was a little spittle at the corner of the old man’s mouth. His eyes were blue, but sort of washed blue. For no reason at all Pi suddenly felt sorry for the old man, and sorry that they had broken into his peace. The old man was looking over their heads.
‘Yes,’ he said suddenly. ‘In November two of the Irish peach will have to go. There’s canker on them, Sullivan. You hear? We’ll have to cut them at the roots and fell them. That will have to be done and then we must get an auger and bore a deep hole in them and fill the hole with paraffin oil. That will kill them. They have mighty roots. They are as old as the orchard. But they will have to go. Remember that. A terrible thing, Sullivan, that a tree can live longer than a man and that it doesn’t. That’s terrible. And we must burn the canker away.’
He was looking at them and didn’t see them. ‘Remember that,’ he said and turned away. Then he saw Bernie. ‘You won’t forget, Bernie.’
She said, ‘No, father, I’ll remember.’
He put a hand on her head. It was a thin hand with long fingers. Sullivan was remarking the blue shadows between the tendons. That’s what makes hands look old.
‘I don’t mind about them, I have you,’ he said. ‘You are an Irish peach, Bernie. While I have you I have the peaches. That’s right?’
‘Yes, father,’ she said, smiling at him.
Then he looked again at the two boys. Clarity came back to his eyes. ‘These,’ he said, ‘ get rid of them, Bernie. For God’s sake get rid of them.’ Then he turned away and went back to the house.
‘Your father is not well?’ Sullivan asked.
‘Sometimes he is forgetful,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry we broke in like that,’ said Sullivan. ‘Honest’
She smiled.
‘Maybe I’m glad,’ she said. ‘I don’t see a lot of people. I’ll get the iodine for Pi.’ She turned and walked away swiftly towards the house. They couldn’t see the house through the trees, just the grey lower part of it.
‘Jay, it was a cruel thing to do, Sullivan,’ said Pi. ‘ I knew we shouldn’t have done it.’
‘I didn’t know the old man was a bit loopy,’ said Sullivan. ‘Imagine that girl living here all alone with a loopy old man, Pi.’
‘He’s not loopy,’ said Pi. ‘ He’s just old, that’s all. Everybody forgets a bit when they get old. My oul Grannie couldn’t remember the time of the day or nothing. She always thought I was me oul fella.’
The girl came back. Pi lifted the leg of his trousers carefully. He let her dab the cut with iodine. She noticed that he winced but didn’t cry out. She noticed that his clothes were pitifully shabby but that his flesh was remarkably clean.
‘Now, Pi,’ she said, smiling at him.
‘Thanks, miss,’ said Pi.
She walked with them to the gate.
After all, thought Sullivan, feeling the petal-strewn grass under his feet and the smell of the blossoms wrapping him around, I got to walk on the grass under the apple trees.
At the gate he turned back and looked at the orchard once more and sucked the smell of it into his lungs.
‘It’s real nice,’ said Sullivan.
‘Even if you’re not country boys?’ Bernie asked.
Sullivan shrugged that away.
‘Listen,’ he said, ‘Sunday night I’m having a film show in my backyard. It will be good. Why can’t you come? Penny entrance but we won’t charge you anything. Eight o’clock. You’ll enjoy it. Can’t you come?’
She hesitated.
‘Ah, do come, miss,’ said Pi. ‘ It won’t be like to-day. Everything will be fine.’
‘I’ll try,’ she said.
‘Number eighteen,’ said Sullivan. ‘Around by the back door. Well be waiting for you.’
Then they were outside and the door closed behind them.
Sullivan had to shake himself a bit.
‘It’s like a different sort of world, Pi. In there and out here.’
‘What are you going to have for the show, Sullivan?’ Pi asked. ‘What kind of fillums did you whip? Where are they?’
They will be good,’ said Sullivan. ‘All my shows are good.’
Chapter Two
‘Sullivan! Sullivan!’ his father was calling.
‘I’m out here, father,’ said Sullivan.
He was setting up the magic lantern in the yard. He got the thing for his last birthday. His father grumbled a lot. He said it cost him more than two weeks’ wages and wasn’t that a nice to-do? His father’s average earnings were two pounds ten a week. The yard was small. It was surrounded by a wall pierced at the end by the wooden door with a latch. It was a concrete yard. Half of it was covered in with an iron roof. It was a sort of scullery, and at its far end held the lavatory. The rest of the yard was open to the weather and contained a lot of pots and boxes with plants and seedlings growing in them. Sullivan’s father loved all these things.
Sullivan had a sheet hanging from the roof covering the sink and he was setting up the yoke on an upended orange-box. He was very intent on it.
He heard his father coming from the passage behind him.
‘What’s the idea?’ his father was asking him.
‘I’m putting this thing up,’ said Sullivan. ‘Going to have a show tonight, penny a skull.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ said his father, ‘I mean what’s the idea going in and disturbing old Morgan Taylor?’
‘Oh, that,’ said Sullivan, walking back into the kitchen and shoving his head into the cubby-hole under the stairs searching for the flex and the bulb.
‘What made you do it?’ his father was asking him. ‘If I knew you were going to do that I’d make your skin tingle, I’m telling you.’
‘I didn’t know I was going to do it myself,’ said Sullivan, coming out again with the flex and going back into the yard.
‘Stand still, dammit, until I talk to you’ his father roared at him.
‘But I’ll never be ready in time,’ he said.
‘I don’t give a damn!’ shouted Sullivan’s father. Sullivan stopped then and looked at him. He was a massive man. He had his Sunday suit of navy blue on him. He had a broad clean-shaven face, with wide-spaced eyes and heavy black eyebrows. He looked very fierce, but he wasn’t. His large hands were clenched. They were very delicate hands when they were handling young plants.
‘How did you get in?’ he asked. ‘ Even a cat shouldn’t be able to get in over that wall.’
‘We just climbed in,’ said Sullivan.
‘Now listen, Sullivan,’ his father said. ‘You are not to go in there again. Do you hear that? You mustn’t go in there again.’
‘All right,’ said Sullivan, ‘I won’t go in there again unless I’m invited in.’
‘You won’t go in there at all,’ his father told him. ‘It took me twenty years to get to know Morgan Taylor. He’s a decent man, and if I catch you spreading any tales about him it’ll be the worse for you.’
‘What kind of tales?’ asked Sullivan. ‘You mean about him being dippy?’
‘He’s not dippy,’ said his father. ‘Just because a man builds a wall and keeps himself to himself, he’s supposed to be queer. Listen, that fella could blind you with knowledge. He’s a well-educated man. You hear that?
‘All right,’ said Sullivan, ‘ but he still has a slate loose.’
Sullivan’s father turned his back. ‘ God give me patience,’ he said, ‘so that I won’t strike you.’
Sullivan grinned. It’s a good job he wouldn’t strike me, he thought. One blow from him and I’d end up in the middle of next week.
‘Ah, I’m only joking, father,’ he said then. ‘I wouldn’t say anything abroad about him.’
‘He’s a good man, you see,’ said his father, relaxing.
‘Who was Bernie’s mother?’ Sullivan asked.
‘There you go again,’ said his father. ‘Questions, questions! You’re as bad as the women. Leave them alone, I tell you.’
‘He’s not her father,’ said Sullivan. ‘She called him “father”. He couldn’t be her father. He’s a hundred years old.’
‘He’s not her father. He’s her grandfather. But he likes to think that she’s his daughter. His daughter died having her. Is there anything wrong with that, tell me?’
‘No,’ said Sullivan, ‘just so long as I know.’
‘Well, you know now,’ said his father. ‘He must be out there now for thirty years. Something happened, I don’t know what. Away back. He was something in a university. He has many books. He’s a good man. Just you leave him alone, Sullivan, and get all the other young monsters around the place to leave him alone, not hounding him.’
The voice from upstairs was calling: ‘Tim! Tim!’
‘There’s your mother,’ he said. ‘I’ll go up to her. Remember what I told you.’
‘I will,’ said Sullivan, turning back to meddle with his contraption.
Tim went into the kitchen and up the stairs. The kitchen floor was red-tiled and the range was gleaming. All the pots hanging on the wall beside it were burnished. It was mostly Tim’s work. He sighed a bit as he mounted the stairs. The stairs were covered in linoleum. He worried about his son and Morgan Taylor. It would be all right. He knew his son. Once he spoke to him it would be all right. Tim thought of his friendship with the old man. It meant a lot to him to go behind the walls of the orchard and feel shut off for a while from the life outside.
His wife was in bed in the front room. The light was on. She was a thin-faced woman with copper-coloured hair and green eyes. Like his son, but his son had more chin on him. She didn’t look well all right. Her face was a bit drawn and there were dark circles under her eyes. Her hair was flecked with grey ribs. He threw his cap on the bed, sat down beside her and took her hand.
‘Feeling better, Mag?’ he asked her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I have that tearing headache. It has me crippled. Would you get me another few aspirins? There on the table.’
‘Are you taking too much of them things?’ he asked her.
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to die?’
He sighed and rose and turned a few tablets out onto his hand. Was there ever a time, he wondered, that she didn’t want them? He poured water from the ewer into a glass and handed them to her. He looked closely at her, remembering. She had not always been like that. What? Nearly twenty years ago now. Up behind in the big place outside the town. He used to do the garden for her father. The garden was gone now. The town had crept up and engulfed it with houses, like a creeping disease the spread of a town was. She was a different girl then. Spry, dreamy-eyed. Not much work in the house. Three maids there. Time to help him to prune the trees; to watch over him in the greenhouse, until she became part of him, without hope, something you might never possess, like a blue rose. But her father died and he had been very fond of the drop, and when he went all went with him. And Meg was left like a ripe fruit to fall into the arms of the gardener. It would have worked out, maybe, he thought, if they had gone away altogether to another town. But here she had her memories of the good days, when she was bowed to in the shops and greeted on the streets and went to many parties here and there. She lost all that of course. He felt sorry about that. But she shouldn’t have taken it so hard. It was nearly ten years before their son was born and he came hard too and she said, ‘Never again, oh, never again, it would kill me’, and so it was. Never again. Well, all that teaches you something, he thought. Patience and forbearance. Anyhow being in a garden prunes you in a way. You learn to put up with disappointment and frustration, and hope for next year.
‘Where’s Terence Anthony?’ she asked. ‘What is Terence Anthony doing now?’
Tim had to grin, thinking of Terence Anthony. Since his son had reached the age of reason and had been asked his name he would say, ‘ Call me Sullivan’. And so it was. How could any man live under the burden of his names?
‘He’s below,’ said Tim. ‘ He’s having some of the kids in to a show.’
‘These dreadful children,’ said Meg. ‘ Why does he encourage them?’
‘It’s his business instincts,’ said Tim. ‘Making a bit of money.’
‘I don’t know where we got him,’ she said. ‘ Honest to God I don’t know where we got him.’
‘He’s all right,’ said Tim, ‘he’s not a bad boy.’
‘What would my father say if he were alive?’ she asked. ‘If he saw him mixing with the children of this street. My father was particular.’
Tim thought her father wasn’t so particular near the end. He’d drink with the devil, not to mind all the corner boys bumming around him for drinks. He had seen him, staggering down the town late at night, very well dressed in his black clothes and his starched stiff collar and black bowler, sometimes mouthing obscenities, hanging on to the arms of a bowsey. Meg never saw that, or if she knew about it she had put it away from her mind as she put every other unpleasant thing. If they were too unpleasant she went to bed and got rid of them with aspirin tablets. He chided himself for his thoughts. She was a good wife. She kept the place well when she was well herself, and even if the neighbours were awed by her standoffishness, she wasn’t a bad woman. That was the way she was brought up. She had never been brought up to live in or with the mixem-gatherum of Duke Street.
‘Send Terence Anthony up to me, Tim,’ she said. ‘He hasn’t been near me at all since I got the head. Are you staying in?’
‘I might go out and see old Morgan for a few minutes,’ he said.
‘Well, don’t be too late,’ she said.
He went then and called his son. The son was very reluctant. He was sticking two bits of film together with horrible-smelling stuff.
‘What’s up, father?’ he asked.
‘Your mother wants to see you,’ Tim said.
‘Ah, for goodness’ sake,’ said Sullivan. ‘I’m shocking busy, father, and I’ll never be ready.’
Tim clipped him on the head with his fingers.
‘Go on, do what you’re told,’ he said. Sullivan looked at him. His voice was sharp. It was always that way when Meg was in the picture. He was very patient, very forbearing about everything else, but nobody must say a word about Tim Sullivan’s wife, or disobey a command of hers or say the slightest thing about her.
Sullivan sighed.
‘All right, father,’ he said and started to mount the stairs, still holding the two bits of film in his fingers, pressing them to make them stick.
‘And be careful with all those young villains out in the yard,’ his father called after him. ‘And don’t let them make too much noise. Remember that your mother is not well. You hear?’
‘I hear and obey,’ said Sullivan, going out of sight.
Tim grunted. He put coal on the fire in the range, tidied Meg’s apron on the back of the kitchen chair and then went out of the front door into the street, closing it softly after him.
‘Why didn’t you come and see me of your own accord, Terence Anthony?’ his mother asked him as soon as he came through the bedroom door. ‘Do I have to beseech you to come and see me?’
