The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B (21 page)

"We are quite sorry sir to have incommoded you."

"All right. We all, here present, know our redeemer liveth. Let that suffice. I am tired."

"Goodnight sir."

Porters departing silent and open mouthed. Beefy examining his busted door. Sad bolts and latches hanging, screws twisted out of the splintered wood.

"Don't you find this all terribly unrefreshing Balthazar. Look what they've done to my poor door. What a waste of their broken shoulders to think they could outwit Beefy. Infantry captain extraordinary. I think cannibalism is next on my calendar of lusts."

"Let us out of here."

"Right with you girls now."

Beefy at the turf bin. Lifting up the lid top. Displaying the brown piles of turf. His hand choosing a crumbling piece.

"Quite real. You see Balthazar. Now. We close this up. And here, come watch, undo this and we draw back a little secret door. And the two morsels of our delight. Good evening girls."

In the shadows, sitting upon a low bench. Breda and Rebecca grim faced and unglad. Shuffling out sideways. Fitter patter of the rain. And the wind rising. The scullery window ashake. Helping the ladies back into the little game. Beefy so gallantly plays. With rules writ. For black bliss. Oblique and naughty. Smiling he bows. This boy of all those years ago. Whose purest voice raised such sweet threnody to sound across meadows blending the lightest green with daisies and buttercups. Taken by his friendly hand through woodlands gently away from fear. He made my Tillie well again.

"Get us out of here, I want to be gone out of here altogether."

"Girls I myself would dearly like to be lost at this moment. Amid the gaieties of the London season if possible. After all the recent rattings. Buggering up the stylish sauciness I had so hoped was to be our lot. And still can be."

"Til not be arrested in this college you chancer."

"Rebecca that's not an awfully nice thing to say. After risking all to keep you safe from harm. Allow me to take this strap from your tempting shoulder."

"You're the devil himself, you are."

"Please. Both of you are my honoured guests. Good grief. Abandon ship. The windows."

A woeful crash. The door falling flat into Beefy's chambers. Over it tramping three porters. A wave of dust rising. The Proctor rigid at the disembowelled entrance. All triumph buried unseen in the sad face. The sound of doors opening on the staircase landings below. To see what the earthquake is about. Windows squeaking, and others slamming shut. A college awake this night. For an awarding of a degree. In harlotry.

"Very well. I apologise to both of you young ladies. I'm sure you've been misled here. You Beefy, and you Mr. B. Attend tomorrow at three. My office. I shall appreciate your escorting these young ladies, again with my apologies, out of the university. A taxi has been summoned. That is all. Goodnight."

A roll of drums beating. Cannons firing salvos. In a coffin two blank parchments. Of ungranted degrees. Drawn on a gun carriage. Hooves echoing their clatter up and down Dublin streets. Sorrowing people wave their little flags and tap their tears. The wind awakes and blows. Bends and flattens highland grass. The bagpipes play. A purple music across the heather. Go down to death bravely. When you go. Neither to weep nor smile. Tomorrow will be a yesterday when nothing mattered at all. It rains tonight. This bishop born Beefy.

Anointed with his own gracious infamies. A high stepper in all doggish demeanours. We both are led by the scruff of the neck. To the black long taxi. A light lit inside. To reload the girls. In this college square they call Botany Bay.

Under

The wild

Hair

Of the trees.

19

Across empty midnight cobbles of Dublin. Past the time tolling up in a tower clock. Down a steep street and by an ancient church. Beefy told the taxi to stop. He helped Rebecca alight. And said goodbye.

Balthazar B looking out the back window as the motor drew away. Four caravans on a wasteland site. Tinkers bundled up in sleep. Near an edge of lamplight Beefy stood, his arm around Rebecca. And there he seems to stay.

The taxi crossed the Liffey. White swans floating. Rolling now past the shuttered shops of Capel Street and out along an empty northern strand by a flat deserted park. Clontarf where so many times I sped through, hurrying by Landship to the races at Baldoyle. While little kiddies waved and shouted at me with joy. A flashing beacon of a lighthouse beyond the shadowy floating bumpiness of North Bull Island. Played a cold day of golf out there on those sandy hills. Dreaming far less sporty things as I struck the ball. Of a female I could call my own. To send tulips to. Have somewhere to put my pleasure as I lay my heart down against hers. Breda with her dark little eyes and bony narrow wrists.

"What will they be after doing to you at college."

"Rustication.' "What's that."

"They banish you. Send you down."

"Is that worse than up."

"Yes down's worse than up."

"I guess it doesn't make any difference to that Beefy. With his millions of pounds. Sure he could just laugh."

"Sometimes it's not that easy."

"I can't see what's hard about having all that money."

"Well someone like Beefy has trustees. And they can be troublesome,"

"If money's there what's trouble about that. You could give me all the trustees you like. He's some fellow the likes of him. That I've not come across before. Not that I've been anywhere in my life. I'm just ordinary working class. I've never been in a room like that before. It was like something you'd see on the films. With the carpets on the wall. And shiny things jumping out at you from the plaster. I guess I'm not what you might call educated."

"Education is learning only what you don't have to know."

"Is that a fact."

"I think so."

"You're a very funny person. Not like your friend. You're the quiet type. I guess you don't think much of me."

"Why do you say that."

"Well I won't say now but Rebecca she's my oldest friend because we were reared together down over in Irishtown. We're not exactly princesses. Are we. I don't live far now. You don't have to have the driver go any further. I can walk from here by a short cut. If you stop by the shop on the corner. Ahead there."

"We'll take you all the way."

"No I want to get out now."

"It's raining."

"I don't mind."

"Driver stop. There. By the post."

"Very good sir."

"How much do I owe you."

"Ah let's see now. Forty bob. This time of night. Been a lot of wear and tear on the tires. With the grain of cement lying the wrong way on the road if you understand me sir."

"All right."

"Now if it was another kind of road sir with the surface giving less trouble."

"Goodbye driver."

Balthazar B standing on this grey wet pavement. The rain falling through a halo of lamplight. A post office, butcher, grocer and newsagent. Lonely houses behind high hedges. The wind with a seaweed smell off the sea. This girl thinly standing, clutching her handbag. The rear red light of the taxi still seen after all its sound is gone.

"Sure you're stranded now."

"I'll walk with you home if I may."

"Sure you may and I'm glad of company. But it's an awful wet way and how will you ever get back."

"I'll manage."

"Ah God you'll catch your death of cold just in your suit."

"I'll be alright. You've only got a sweater."

"Ah don't worry about me, I'm used to it but the kind of life you're accustomed to leading. It wouldn't suit you to be wandering out here in the rain."

"You won't mind my coming with you."

"Sure you're welcome. Sure you know that. That you're welcome."

"Thank you."

"That taxi man has made himself a fortune this night, cheating like that after your friend gave him five pounds. That makes me angry."

"You musn't worry."

"It's a fortnight's wages to me."

Out into darkness. The lamplight left behind at the cross roads. All familiar just a short time ago. An afternoon expedition, a class outing looking for fossils. Students standing about in their belted up macintoshes, some in mountain climbing kit, with rucksacks strapped to backs. And I came roaring through in the Landship. Heading for the nags at Baldoyle. To stop awhile in the little gathering. I had not an acid bottle nor hammer, just the racing form. I thought I would be welcomed. That perhaps they had missed me. And all I seemed to see was a laughing Miss Fitzdare as she pedaled someone's bicycle around in a little circle on the road. Then she leaned back on the handle bars. I saw her stretched out legs in her blue stockings and they looked long and handsome. And I was so surprised.

"This is the short cut I'm taking. Up back here. That's the North Bull lighthouse in the bay and the other is the Poolbeg. Rebecca and I when we were only little would ride her bike down the wall all the way to the end. Where the lighthouse is. It was like being out on a ship with water on both sides of you. She's a bit of a wild one. She'd throw rocks at old men. Her father before he got sick himself beat her within an inch of her life night after night. Take her things and throw them out the window down on to the road when she'd try to run away. Sure all she owned was an old chocolate box full of bits of old pens and her Sunday hat for church. She was trying to write a book. She got no further than the title. You might say the book was commercial romantic. It was called The Price Paid For The Pearl of Purity."

'That's a rather good title."

"She scratched it out and wrote another one later, which wouldn't be proper for me to tell you. But she didn't go on long paying the price for purity. She was paid a price is more like it. O God look at you. Rain dripping off your hair. It's very nice of you to walk like this with me. I could have managed on my own. But it's nice. I like walking. I don't ever have much time but when I do there's no one to walk with. I go along the beach out there. And collect shells. Give me your hand now, across through here, it's awfully slippy in the wet and you can't see the path through the bracken. It's only a little ways now."

Mists against the face. A faint fog horn. Her hand small and strong, to feel strangely delicate and warm. Brown slapping fern wetting the knees. A pouring sound of water against the ground.

"What's that noise."

"Ah it's nothing, the sheep, they hear something passing in the night. I don't want to be bold or fresh, but they are peeing in the grass in fear. Now that's where I am. The little bit of extension out on the back. Sure you've got an awful long trip ahead of you."

"Fve done this before. Try my luck again. I'll be guided back by the lighthouses."

"You look chilled. Ah God it's not right. You coming all this way."

"It's fine."

"You look to me of delicate constitution. I'm small looking but as strong as an ox. Sure you're just but very wispy. It becomes you, like a saint starved you might say. You know a thing I want to ask you. About your friend. Is it true or all made up what he goes on saying. We're taught a poor opinion of the protestants. But myself I've always found them honest and decent. And my own kind I found would cheat you out of your sight. I've never known the likes of Church of Ireland people to get up to the devil and mischief of your friend. I'm broadminded but Rebecca allows him shocking awful liberties. Then if a fellow can give you a laugh he doesn't cheapen you. We're nearly here. Mind now this fence. There's broken bottle and barbed wire. Listen to that. The wind is getting fierce. North westerly. Always makes me homesick. I know it's blowing across Cavan. Many a night it makes me cry to sleep. I can't think of you out in the likes of this."

"I'll be alright."

"Ah God look at you. You won't be. You're shivering."

"I always do that."

"Ah don't cod me."

"No really."

"I don't know what to say. But. But I don't want you to get the wrong idea. That I'm being bold. It's two by now in the morning. I could be murthered for it."

"What's that."

"You would say in English now, murder. In Ireland we say murthered because it takes us so much longer to do it. And I could be murthered but I mustn't let you go."

"I'm fine."

"Ah I'm no good. No good at all."

"Why."

"I'm just not that's all. What I'm really trying to say to you is I don't want you to go back. But stay. Go ahead you can say no, it won't be then for lack of me trying. Goodnight. If you go out the alley now and be careful of the barrels it will take you into the road and you go left then and keep to the sea.' "I want to say yes."

"O."

"If you're asking me to stay, and it won't be any inconvenience to you."

"It's yes then."

"Yes."

"O."

"What's the matter."

"I don't know. I didn't think you would say yes and now I don't know what to do."

"Do you want me to say no."

"No."

"But if it's upset you."

"No. I'm glad you said yes."

"Yes I said yes."

"I'm scared out of my wits. I could use a bit of your friend Beefy's nerve. O but it's not to worry. That's my room up there."

"I don't want to cause you distress. It's no trouble for me to go. If it's difficult for you."

"You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen in my life. O God. Just give me a moment. I'll collect myself now. I'll be giving you an awful swell head. And mine I may get knocked off me. Now I have got to go in and when I get up to my room. I only have to open the window and you get on that barrel and step to the roof of the gents and it's easy to pull you in off there. You won't mind, my quarters are not grand."

Balthazar B stood in the yard, a cold shadow under the eaves. Fat raindrops landing to flow down between the roots of hair and drip from eyebrows, ear lobes and nose. Water gushing from a broken gutter pipe. Shadows of crates stacked. My wet silk shirt sticking to my ribs. A smell of hay. Somewhere warm and dry. In the sheltered opening of this old cow shed. An unending night. If Miss Fitzdare ever hears. I'll never see her again. Mid fingerbowls, linen and lace. Here now in mud, manure and rain.

"Hey there."

"Hello."

"Mind now very quiet as you go. On to the barrel first. That's it. Put a foot there and I will catch holt of your hand. Grand, there now. Don't be worried, get one hand on the sill. O God hold it there. Hold it."

"I'm sorry I'm not awfully good at this."

"You're doing fine, it's only some old pebbles and bits of cement. Ah now, a little more. This way. There. In you come now."

Balthazar B scrambling across the sill. The sound of pebbles and lumps of cement falling to the yard below. Clattering above the whistling wind. Years since one was in out of inclemency. Or not pulling plaster out of walls. Safe a moment. Up here in this tiny room. Her narrow little bed along the wall under a crazy quilt. In the red electric fire light. Shadows of a tall cupboard, varnished brown. A light green plastic handle to pull it open. Two suitcases bound with belts stacked on top. A dressing table with a dish and broken brush and comb. Two jars of sea shells and a bottle of perfume throw shadows across a cloth in the candle light.

"It won't be long to heat the room. With a bit of the electric fire. Landlords raise a holy terror. Watching the electricity get to me with a microscope over the wire. God love you you're wet through you poor man, a raindrop on your nose. You're the most beautiful man I've ever seen. What kind of mother and father did you have at all. Take this jacket off you now. Put it here over the back of the chair and let the fire shine on it."

Balthazar B sneezing. Bending double as he held hands up to his face. Hair wet. Head dizzy and tight. The room goes round in circles under a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Now black and red and light. All those voices are calling me. Locked away in this room. I'm going down now and down.

Balthazar B swayed in his wet shirt sleeves and slumped with a sigh unconscious into Breda's arms. Catching him under the shoulders and lugging him onto the bed. She kissed him on the eyes and lips and put her ear over his heart. To hear. Who goes there with footsteps. Where are you in the world. Walked here through bracken along a little path of slippery clay. Her hair is black. Combed with a broken comb. I saw a movie magazine. An issue I'd read cover to cover. It lay on her bedside box. We've
the same taste for stars. Who come and go. As surely as trustees are not supposed to die. London streets turning upside down through all these recent hours. Where I walked swinging with a lightfooted stride. Out my little house. Along Brompton Road. Past the Hyde Park Hotel. Turreted, red bricked and tall. To make down the incline of Piccadilly and up again. A light breeze in the air passing the Ritz. To tea with lemon, squeezed under my tip of spoon. Feel so faint and feverish. Cold moments in school chapel so many years ago. To keel over and wake in bed. And just hear the distant singing. White owls fluttering overhead. A little girl friend looked at me on a Paris street and smiled in her white high shoes and gloves. She told me later in dancing class as I stepped on her toes. You should be ugly and I should be beautiful. My eyes are open. Fm not in Knights-bridge. It hardly matters now. A black head of hair on the pillow. Right by my side.

"You're alright now. You're here."

"What happened."

"You just went down in a heap. I caught you falling. You feel any better."

"O God."

"You're alright now. You've got a bad chill. You won't think it's a liberty I took of removing off your suit. I hope you don't mind my boldness. I left the socks on you."

"I'm sorry to be of so much trouble."

"Sure it's nothing. No trouble. As easy as handling a child. I don't mean like now you were a child. Undressing a gentleman in decency is a funny enough thing. Your ribs show. You don't mind being in bed with me. My ribs show too. But tell me. Is your will power sapped."