The Hard Life Read online

  ‘Do not pay too much attention to the list of subjects in the margin, I don’t see why we shouldn’t deal with them and plenty more as well, e.g. Religious Vocations, but I am not yet publicly using this notepaper. You could regard the list in the margin as a manifesto, a statement of what we intend to do. We really aim at the mass-production of knowledge, human accomplishment and civilization. We plan the world of the future, a world of sophisticated and genial people, all well-to-do, impatient with snivellers, sneaks and politicians on the make; not really a Utopia but a society in which all unnecessary wrongs, failures, and misbehaviours are removed. The simplest way to attack this problem is to strike at the cause, which is ignorance and non-education, or miseducation Every day you meet people going around with two heads. They are completely puzzled by life, they understand practically nothing and are certain of only one thing—that they are going to die. I am not going to go so far as to contradict them in that but I believe I can suggest to them a few good ways of filling, up the interval. A week ago I met a nice class of a negro, apparently a seaman, in a pub in Tower Bridge Road. He was a gloomy character at first but in three meetings I taught him to play chess. Now he is delighted with himself and thinks he is a witch-doctor. I also had a night’s drinking with one of the thousands of ladies who flood the streets here. She wanted me to go with her but no fear. By her accent I knew she was Irish; so she was, Castleconnell on the Shannon. Same old story about a job as a maid, a tyrannical mistress and a young pup of a son that started pulling her about when she was making the beds. She came to the conclusion that if that sort of thing was the custom of the country, she might as well get paid for it. There is some logic in her argument but it is painfully clear that she knows next to nothing about business. I talked to her about her mother and the green hills of Erin and in no time I had her sniffling, though maybe it was the gin. Those girls are very fond of that stuff. But don’t get the impression that I’m a preacher saving souls every night by infesting the pubs. It’s only an odd night I do that, and when I’m on my own. I’m far too busy for that sort of gallivanting. The total staff in the office just now is four—a typist, a clerk and One Other. The One Other is my partner, who has put a decent share of spondulics into the venture. With his money and my brains, I do not see what there is to stop us. Better still, he has a well-to-do mother who lives in a grand house in Hampstead. He does not live with her or in fact get on with her too well, apparently because she made him spend two years at Oxford when he was younger. He says he was horrified by that place. He signs his name M. B. Barnes. When I looked for his Christian name—and you can’t have a partner in a new resounding enterprise without using his Christian name, even when reprimanding or insulting him—I found that his full name was Milton Byron Barnes. Maybe this got him jeered at by the Oxford ignoramuses and made him sour for life. He is a gloomy type but knows what work is; and he knows how to talk to people. He is not a poet, of course, but is convinced that his father, long dead, thought he was a poet and that he owed it to the masters of the past to commemorate their genius by saddling his unfortunate son with their names. At the moment we are nursing a slight difference between us. He feels one of the fields we must cover is advertising, newspaper and magazine and otherwise. He is convinced that this is the coming thing and keeps quoting High o’er the fence leaps Sunny Jim, FORCE is the food that raises him. He is right that there is big money to be made there but we have not got the captial to wade in—yet. I keep telling him more satisfaction and happiness can be achieved by teaching 10,000 Englishmen to play billiards properly at four guineas for four lessons than by grappling and grovelling in this underground of publicity but his answer is that he does not want to make anybody happy and certainly doesn’t want to be happy himself; he just wants to make a lot of money. I find that mentality a bit cynical, but I’m sure I’ll bring him round to my own sound views in good time. We had dinner with his old lady twice and I found her quite good and intelligent. I feel it will not be long until she becomes a patron of our Academy and help it along at important stages with infusions of the red blood of LSD. You know, that is why rich people were made and why we should never envy or insult them. They are people brought into the world armed with the weapons for helping others. Contrast them with Collopy, who spends all his time obstructing and annoying others, poking about to find bad things in order to make them worse, interfering, bickering, and fomenting ill will and fights among friends. More than once I have thought of getting; together a course entitled Your Own Business and the Minding of It. I would put Collopy down for free tuition. I’m in digs with another man, an elderly bachelor who owns a tobacco shop and spends his spare time reading Greek. How do I like such company? Very well, for I don’t have to buy cigarettes, and the landlady is so old that she occasionally forgets to ask for the rent.

  ‘Keep anything I’ve said in this note or any other I send under your hat, and don’t give anybody in Dublin the firm’s address. I’ll write soon again. Pass on to me any news that arises. Slip the enclosed pound note with my compliments to Annie. The best of luck.’

  I sighed and put the letter in my pocket. There was not much in it really.

  13

  IN the months that followed the weather was particularly vile: it was a season of downpours and high wind, and the temperature at night was such as to compel me to heap two overcoats on top of my bed. But Mr Collopy ignored the nightly tempest. He left the house frequently about eight and people told me that he was a familiar figure, sheltering under a sodden umbrella, on the fringe of the small crowds attending street-corner meetings in Foster Place or the corner of Abbey Street. He was not in any way concerned with the purpose or message of those meetings. He was there to heckle, and solely from the angle of his own mysterious preoccupation. His main demand was that first things should come first. If the meeting advocated a strike in protest against low wages on the railways, he would counter by roaring that the inertia of the Corporation was more scandalous and a far more urgent matter for the country.

  One night he came home very thoroughly drenched, and instead of going straight to bed, he sat at the range taking solace from his crock.

  –For heaven’s sake go to bed, Father, Annie said. You are drownded. Go to bed and I will make you punch.

  –Ah no, he said brightly. In such situations my early training as a hurler will stand to me.

  Sure enough, he had a roaring cold the following morning and did stay in bed for a few days by command of Annie, who did not lack his own martinet quality. Gradually the cold ebbed but when he was about the house again his movements were very awkward and he complained loudly of pains in his bones. Luckily he was saved the excruciation of trying to go upstairs, for he had himself built a lavatory in the bedroom in Mrs Crottys’ time. But his plight was genuine enough, and I suggested that on my way to school I should drop in a note summoning Dr Blennerhassett.

  –I am afraid, he said, that that good man is day tros. He means well but damn the thing he knows about medicine.

  –But he might know something about those pains of yours.

  –Oh, all right.

  Dr Blennerhassett did call and said Mr Collopy had severe rheumatism. He prescribed a medicament which Annie got from the chemist—red pills in a round white box labelled ‘The Tablets’. He also said, I believe, that the patient’s intake of sugar should be drastically reduced, that alcohol should not in any circumstances be consumed, that an endeavour should be made to take mild exercise, and to have hot baths as often as possible. Whether or not Mr Collopy met those four conditions or any of them, he grew steadily worse as the weeks went by. He took to using a stick but I actually had to assist him in the short distance between his armchair and his bed. He was a cripple, and a very irascible one.

  I had arranged one night to attend a session of Jack Mulloy’s poker school, but a crafty idea had crept into my head. A late start for 8.30 p.m. had been fixed, apparently because Jack had to go somewhere or do something first. I delibera
tely put my watch an hour fast, and hopefully knocked on the door in nearby Mespil Road at what was really half seven. A pause, and the door was opened by Penelope.

  –My, you’re early, she said in that charming husky voice.

  I gracefully stepped into the hall and said it was nearly half eight. I showed her my watch.

  –Your watch is crazy, she said, but come in to the fire. Will you have a cup of coffee?

  –I will, Penelope, if you will have one with me.

  –I won’t be a moment.

  Wasn’t that a delightful little ruse of mine? So far as I could see, we were alone in the house. Silly ideas came into my head, ideas that need not be mentioned here. I was the veriest tyro in such situations. Into my head came the names of certain voluptuaries and libertines of long ago, and then I began to wonder how the brother would handle matters were he in my place. She came with a pot of coffee, biscuits, and two delightful little cups. In the light her belted dress was trim, modest, a little bit mysterious; or perhaps I mean enchanting.

  –Well now, Finbarr, she said, tell me all the news and leave nothing out.

  –There’s no news.

  –I don’t believe that. You are hiding something.

  –Honestly, Penelope.

  –How is Annie?

  –Annie’s in good order. She never changes. In fact she never changes even her clothes. But poor Mr Collopy is crucified with rheumatism. He is a complete wreck, helpless and very angry with himself. He kept going out to get drowned in the rain every night a few months ago, and this is the price of him.

  –Ah, the poor man.

  –And what about poor me? I have to act the male nurse while I’m in the house.

  –Well, everybody needs help some time or other. You might grow to be a helpless old man yourself. How would you like that?

  –I wouldn’t fancy it. Probably I’d stick my head in the gas oven.

  –But if you had very bad rheumatism you couldn’t do that. You wouldn’t be able to stoop or bend.

  –Couldn’t I get you to call and help me to get my head in?

  –Ah no, Finbarr, that would not be a nice thing. But I would call all right.

  –To do what?

  –To nurse you.

  –Heavens, that would be very nice.

  She laughed. I must have allowed true feeling to well up in that remark. I certainly meant what I said, but did not like to appear too brash.

  –Do you mean to say, I smiled, that I would have to have a painful and loathesome disease before you would call to see me?

  –Oh, not at all, Finbarr, she said. But I’d be afraid of Mr Collopy. He once called me ‘an unmannerly school-girl’, all because I told him in the street that his shoelaces were undone.

  –His bootlaces, you mean, I corrected. To hell with Mr Collopy.

  –Now, now, now.

  –Well, he gets on my nerves.

  –You spend too much time in that kitchen. You don’t go out enough. Do you ever go to a dance?

  –No. I don’t know the first thing about dancing.

  –That’s a pity. I must teach you.

  –That would be grand.

  –But first we’d have to get the loan of a gramophone somewhere.

  –I think I might manage that.

  Our conversation, as may be seen, was trivial and pointless enough, and the rest of it was that kind.

  Finally I got a bit bolder and took her hand in my own. She did not withdraw it.

  –What would you do, I asked, if I were to kiss your hand?

  –Well, well! I would scream the house down probably.

  –But why?

  –That’s the why.

  Uproar ensued all right, but it was in the hall. Jack Mulloy with two other butties had come in and were jabbering loudly as they hung up their coats. Alas, I had to disengage my excited mind and turn my thought to cards.

  Curiously, I won fifteen shillings that night and was reasonably cheerful over the whole evening’s proceedings, not excluding the little interlude with Penelope, as I made my way home. The route I took was by Wilton Place, a triangular shaded nook not much used by traffic. I knew from other experiences that it was haunted by prostitutes of the very lowest cadres, and also by their scruffy clients. A small loutish group of five or six people were giggling in the shadows as I approached but became discreetly silent as I passed. But when I had gone only two yards or so, I heard one solitary word in a voice I swore I knew:

  –Seemingly.

  I paused involuntarily, deeply shocked, but I soon walked on. I had, in fact, been thinking of Penelope, and that one word threw my mind into a whirl. What was the meaning of this thing sex, what was the nature of sexual attraction? Was it all bad and dangerous? What was Annie doing late at night, standing in a dark place with young blackguards? Was I any better myself in my conduct, whispering sly things into the ear of lovely and innocent Penelope? Had I, in fact, at the bottom of my heart dirty intentions, some dark deed postponed only because the opportunity had not yet presented itself.

  As I had expected, the kitchen was empty, for I had assisted Mr Collopy to bed before going out earlier. I did not want to be there when Annie came. I got notepaper and an envelope, went upstairs and got into bed.

  I lay there with the light on for a long time, reflecting. Then I wrote a confidential and detailed letter to the brother about, first, the very low and painful condition of Mr Collopy; and second, the devastating incident concerning Annie. I paused before signing my name and for a wild few minutes considered writing a little about myself and Penelope. But reason, thank God, prevailed. I said nothing but signed and sealed the letter.

  14

  A REPLY was not long coming, taking the form of a parcel and a letter. I opened the letter first, and here it is:

  ‘Many thanks for your rather alarming communication.

  ‘From what you say it is clear to me that Collopy is suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, very likely of the peri-articular type. If you can persuade him to let you have a look, you will find that the joints are swollen and of fusiform shape and I think you will find that he is afflicted at the hands and feet, knees, ankles and wrists. Probably his temperature is elevated, and total rest in bed is most desirable. The focus of infection for rheumatoid arthritis is usually bad teeth and the presence in the gums of pyorrhoea alveolaris, so that he should order Hanafin’s cab and call on a dentist. But happily we have invented here in the Academy a certain cure for the disorder, provided the treatment is sedulously followed. I am sending you under separate cover a bottle of our patent Gravid Water. It will be your own job to make sure that he takes a t/spoonful of it three times a day after meals. Se to the first dose before you leave the house in the morning, inquire about the daytime dose when you get back from school, and similarly ensure the evening dose. It would be well to tell Annie of the importance of this treatment and the need for regularity …

  At this stage I opened the parcel and under many wrappings uncovered a large bottle which bore a rather gaudy label Here was its message:

  THE GRAVID WATER

  The miraculous specific for the complete cure within one month of the abominable scourage known as Rheumatoid Arthritis.

  Dose—one t-spoonful three times daily after meals.

  Prepared at

  LONDON ACADEMY LABORATORIES

  Well, this might be worth trying, I thought, but immediately soaked the bottle in water and removed the label, for I knew that nothing would induce Mr Collopy to touch the contents if he knew or suspected that they had originated with the brother. I then resumed reading the letter:

  ‘I was certainly shocked to hear that Annie has been consorting with cornerboys up the canal. These are dirty merchants and if she continues, disease will be inevitable. I am sure that neither you nor I could attempt any estimate of how cunning and cute she is or how totally ignorant and innocent. Does she know the Facts of Life? Apart from venereal disease, does she know of the danger of pregnancy? I don�
�t think the arrival of an illegitimate on the doorstep would alleviate Collopy’s rheumatoid condition.

  ‘You did not say in your letter that you suspected that she had some infection but if she has, diagnosis without examination at this distance is rather difficult. I think we may rule out Granuloma Inguinale. It takes the form of very red, beefy ulceration. A clear symptom is ever-increasing debility and marked physical wasting, often ending in extreme cachexia and death. It is mostly met with in tropical countries, and almost confined to negroes. We may discount it.

  ‘For similar reasons of rarity, we may discard the possibility of Lymphogranuloma Venereum. This is a disease of the lymph glands and lymph nodes, and one finds a hot, painful group of swollen buboes in the inguinal area. There will be headaches, fever and pains in the joints. The causitive agent is a virus. Here again, however, Lymphogranuloma Venereum is a near-monopoly of the negro.

  ‘The greatest likelihood is that Annie, if infected, labours under the sway of H.M. Gonococcus. In women the symptoms are so mild at the beginning as to be unnoticed but it is a serious and painful invasion. There is usually fever following infection of the pelvic organs. Complications to guard against include endocarditis, meningitis and skin decay. Gonococcal endocarditis can be fatal.