Читать книгу The Hard Life: An Exegesis of Squalor - Brian O'Nolan - Страница 4

Table of Contents

There is something misleading but not dishonest in this portrait of Mr Collopy. It cannot be truly my impression of him when I first saw him but rather a synthesis of all the thoughts and experiences I had of him over the years, a long look backwards. But I do remember clearly enough that my first glimpse of him was, so to speak, his absence: Mrs Crotty, having knocked imperiously on the door, immediately began rooting in her handbag for the key. It was plain she did not expect the door to be opened.

–There is a clap of rain coming, she remarked to Miss Annie.

–Seemingly, Miss Annie said.

Mrs Crotty opened the door and led us in single file into the front kitchen, semi-basement, Mr Hanafin bringing up the rear with some bags.

He was sitting there at the range in a crooked, collapsed sort of cane armchair, small reddish eyes looking up at us over the rims of steel spectacles, the head bent forward for closer scrutiny. Over an ample crown, long grey hair was plastered in a tattered way. The whole mouth region was concealed by a great untidy dark brush of a moustache, discoloured at the edges, and a fading chin was joined to a stringy neck which disappeared into a white celluloid collar with no tie. Nondescript clothes contained a meagre frame of low stature and the feet wore large boots with the laces undone.

–Heavenly fathers, he said in a flat voice, but you are very early. Morning, Hanafin.

–Morra, Mr Collopy, Mr Hanafin said.

–Annie here had everything infastatiously in order, Mrs Crotty said, thanks be to God.

–I wonder now, Miss Annie said.

–Troth, Mr Collopy, Mr Hanafin beamed, but I never seen you looking better. You have a right bit of colour up whatever you are doing with yourself at all.

The brother and myself looked at Mr Collopy’s slack grey face and then looked at each other.

–Well, the dear knows, Mr Collopy said, I don’t think hard work ever hurt anybody. Put that stuff in the back room for the present, Hanafin. Well now, Mrs Crotty, are these the two pishrogues out of the storm? They are not getting any thinner from the good dinners you have been putting into them, Annie, and that’s a fact.

–Seemingly, Miss Annie said.

–Pray introduce me if you please, Mrs Crotty.

We went forward and had our names recited. Without rising, Mr Collopy made good an undone button at the neck of the brother’s jersey and then shook hands with us solemnly. From his waistcoat he extracted two pennies and presented one to each of us.

–I cross your hands with earthly goods, he said, and at the same time I put my blessing on your souls.

–Thanks for the earthly goods, the brother said.

–Manus and Finbarr are fine names, fine Irish names, Mr Collopy said. In the Latin Manus means big. Remember that. Ecce Sacerdos Manus comes into the Missal, and that Manus is such an uplifting name. Ah but Finbarr is the real Irish for he was a saint from the County Cork. Far and wide he spread the Gospel thousands of years ago for all the thanks he got, for I believe he died of starvation at the heel of the hunt on some island on the river Lee, down fornenst Queenstown.

–I always heard that St Finbarr was a Protestant, Mrs Crotty snapped. Dug with the other foot. God knows what put it into the head of anybody to put a name the like of that on the poor bookul.

–Nonsense, Mrs Crotty. His heart was to Ireland and his soul to the Bishop of Rome. What is sticking out of that bag, Hanafin? Are they brooms or shovels or what?

Mr Hanafin had reappeared with a new load of baggage and followed Mr Collopy’s gaze to one item.

–Faith now, Mr Collopy, he replied, and damn the shovels. They are hurling sticks. Best of Irish ash and from the County Kilkenny, I’ll go bail.

–I am delighted to hear it. From the winding banks of Nore, ah? Many a good puck I had myself in the quondam days of my nonage. I could draw on a ball in those days and clatter in a goal from midfield, man.

–Well it’s no wonder you are never done talking about the rheumatism in your knuckles, Mrs Crotty said bleakly.

–That will do you, Mrs Crotty. It was a fine manly game and I am not ashamed of any wounds I may still carry. In those days you were damn nothing if you weren’t a hurler. Cardinal Logue is a hurler and a native Irish speaker, revered by Pope and man. Were you a hurler, Hanafin?

–In my part of the country—Tinahely—we went in for the football.

–Michael Cusack’s Gaelic code, I hope?

–Oh, certaintly, Mr Collopy.

–That’s good. The native games for the native people. By dad and I see young thullabawns of fellows got out in baggy drawers playing this new golf out beyond on the Bull Island. For pity’s sake sure that isn’t a game at all.

–Oh you’ll always find the fashionable jackeen in Dublin and that’s a certainty, Mr Hanafin said. They’d wear nightshirts if they seen the Brihish military playing polo in nightshirts above in the park. Damn the bit of shame they have.

–And then you have all this talk about Home Rule, Mr Collopy asserted. Well how are you! We’re as fit for Home Rule here as the blue men in Africa if we are to judge by those Bull Island looderamawns.

–Sit over here at the table, Mrs Crotty said. Is that tea drawn, Annie?

–Seemingly, Miss Annie said.

We all sat down and Mr Hanafin departed, leaving a shower of blessings on us.

It is seemly for me to explain here, I feel, the nature and standing of the persons present. Mr Collopy was my mother’s half-brother and was therefore my own half-uncle. He had married twice, Miss Annie being his daughter by his first marriage. Mrs Crotty was his second wife but she was never called Mrs Collopy, why I cannot say. She may have deliberately retained the name of her first husband in loving memory of him or the habit may have grown up through the absence of mind. Moreover, she always called her second husband by the formal style of Mr Collopy as he also called her Mrs Crotty, at least in the presence of other parties; I cannot speak for what usage obtained in private. An ill-disposed person might suspect that they were not married at all and that Mrs Crotty was a kept-woman or resident prostitute. But that is quite unthinkable, if only because of Mr Collopy’s close interest in the Church and in matters of doctrine and dogma, and also his long friendship with the German priest from Leeson Street, Father Kurt Fahrt, S.J., who was a frequent caller.

It is seemly, as I have said, to give that explanation but I cannot pretend to have illuminated the situation or made it more reasonable.