The Old Jest (5 page)

‘Fiddledeedee! Anyway there's all that butter and marmalade on it.'

She went back to the paper and Nancy ate her toast. At last Aunt Mary folded the paper neatly and tucked it under her arm. She stood up and collected the letters scattered in front of her plate.

‘The paper is so sickening to read these days. I do wish this killing would stop. Poor Gabriel!' She sighed and stood for a moment staring across the room at nothing. ‘I'm so glad in a way he isn't here. He would have found it all so upsetting. I know I do. It's the poor people … He always wanted Home Rule, you know.'

‘Who?'

‘Your Uncle Gabriel. Father used to get so upset with him. So angry. There's nothing like the Empire, he used to say. Poor little pet! I'd better go and see how he is this morning. Half past, don't forget … It's not only incorrect to say the other, it's terribly common.'

‘Dear Miss Gulliver, thank you for your note. I can assure you that I am a great respecter of privacy and I regret that I have in any way impinged on yours. I feel sure that if you were to understand the circumstances, you would forgive me. You look like someone who would forgive. I have watched you. I saw you looking disturbed and angry as you became almost aware of my presence one afternoon. I will endeavour not to disturb you again. I hope you find everything today as you would wish to; no more cigarette ends, no stale air. I must say I am happy at your choice of books. What a piece of luck to find mental as well as physical sanctuary! I thank you. I also respect your famous name. Like he who held it before you were even thought of, I would claim to be a class of a travelling man.'

It was unsigned.

It was pinned to the door with a long gold cravat pin, like the one that Uncle Gabriel used to pin through his stock on hunting days. Carefully she stuck it in the front of her shirt. A joker, she thought. She opened the door and looked into the hut. There was no trace of him at all. A joker. She climbed up over the granite blocks on to the railway line. As far as her eyes could see the beach was empty. The only movement was from the splinters of sun on the surface of the sea. A couple of gulls lazed on the wind. Behind, through the woods and up towards the hills, sheep browsed among the whins. She balanced herself on the rail.

‘All right. All right. Joke over. Come on out, wherever you are.'

Her voice flew away into the silence.

‘Ssssh!' whispered the sea reprovingly.

‘I want to meet you.'

She waited for a moment, swaying slightly to balance herself.

‘Please.' Bridie would have wanted her to say please. She repeated the word for good measure. There was no reply.

She jumped from the rail and scrambled back down to the hut. She collected a book and a rug and lay down in the sun to read and wait.

‘Miss Nancy Gulliver?'

She hadn't heard him coming. He had climbed silently down over the blocks and stood about ten feet behind her. His feet were bare and had the stringy look of the roots of some old tree that had worked their way up out of the ground. He stood quite still while she inspected him. He was a small man. His hair was thick and soft and fell down each side of his face, making a dark frame for his bony features and water pale eyes.

‘You don't look well,' she said, after a lot of staring.

‘I'm all right.'

‘Who are you?'

‘The traveller.'

She shook her head, irritated.

‘I know that. But, who?'

‘Dear child, don't be cross. I'm just a passing stranger. As the greatest writer either of these islands has yet managed to produce said … What's in a name?'

‘I'd just like to know what you are.'

‘Are you being philosophical or merely inquisitive?'

She blushed and looked away from him. The gull on the roof above them looked incredibly bored; its head was sunk down into its body, its eyes like stones.

‘Won't you sit down?'

It had an idiotic drawing-room ring about it which made him smile briefly.

‘Thank you.'

He moved, still quite silently, across the sand and sat down beside her on the rug. They sat in silence looking at the sea. The horizon was a hard clear line in the distance.

‘It'll rain again,' he said.

‘Yes.'

‘I'm afraid the summer is over.'

She scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle slowly through her fingers.

‘Are you a criminal? That's really all I want to know.'

‘No. I hope you'll believe that.'

‘I'll believe whatever you tell me.'

‘That's not always wise.'

‘I haven't much experience of people telling lies.'

The formality of her voice made him smile again.

‘I can see that.'

She looked straight into his face, offended by the remark.

‘What do you mean by that?'

‘Only dear child … young lady I should say … that you are young … very young I would guess … and I don't believe that there are many dark alleys, either of the city of Dublin or in other people's minds that you have ever even peeped into.' He sighed. ‘I can never understand why the young so despise their youth. Their one great attribute. Oh God, for the ability to be able to see again with innocent eyes!'

‘Why did you choose my hut?'

He laughed.

‘I don't suppose you'll believe me, but it was my hut long before you were even born.'

‘I certainly don't.'

‘I thought you were going to believe everything I said.'

‘Not tall stories.'

‘It's no tall story. I used to know this place as a child.' He smiled slightly. ‘Even younger than you.'

She looked at him with interest.

‘You come from round here?'

‘In a way. The original line was washed away, you know.'

‘Oh!'

‘It used to be down below where the blocks are now. They had to rebuild it further back and higher. That would have been about thirty years ago. Yes. I remember bits of the old line being washed away in a huge storm one winter. The whole shape of the coast seemed to be changed after that. I remember the men working on the line, the incredible almost musical noise of their hammers on the metal rails. Wagnerian.' He laughed. ‘Only I didn't know about Wagner then. I was neither prodigy nor prodigal. To tell the truth it must have been quite a bit longer than thirty years. More like forty.'

‘I'm raging.'

‘Oh dear, I'm sorry!'

‘It's not your fault. I had just dreamed myself into thinking that it was only mine.'

‘It's very much yours now. Everything has changed so much. Only that bird is the same. I'd know her anywhere. Kittiwake,' he called up at the gull.

‘Now that really is a tall story.'

‘Seagulls are well known for their longevity.'

‘Rot!'

‘Maybe she's the Hag of Beare … relocated.'

‘I've always thought it must be a male. He seems to have so much time to spare.'

‘No, no. An aged female. Long past child-rearing age, who just sits and grimly contemplates the mess that other seagulls are making of the world.'

Nancy sighed.

‘Yes. Perhaps you're right.'

She picked up another handful of sand and stared at it. Warm, grey gold, little fragments of shell and sparkles of mica.

‘I have to go,' she said at last, still staring at the sand.

‘So soon? We've barely met.'

‘I have to go into town. I'm going to the Abbey Theatre.'

‘That's nice.'

‘Well … yes … in a way.'

‘I suppose you're going with some lucky young man.'

She threw the sand away.

‘Well, in a way … I mean, he's not my young man. I … well … I like him a lot, but … She's coming too …'

‘It happens to us all you know.'

‘I'm a bit young Aunt Mary says.'

‘Perhaps.'

She smiled at him. For a moment her face was illuminated, rare. He felt a need to touch her, but sensibly kept his hands to himself.

‘I wouldn't worry,' he said instead.

‘Oh, I don't. I don't worry. I do silly other things.'

She stood up and wiped the sand from her hands on her skirt. ‘There's no need for you to hide away any longer.'

‘Thank you. I'd rather not, I must say.'

She held her hand out towards him.

‘Goodbye.'

He shook it. Rough sand still stuck to the palm.

‘Goodbye, Nancy.'

‘Is there anything you want?'

‘I'm quite good at fending for myself. Just discretion.'

‘I don't blab.'

‘I'm sure you don't.'

She flapped her hand awkwardly at him and scrambled up on to the line. When she looked back to catch a last sight of him, he was sitting on the rug with his back to her, staring at the sea.

She loved the station. Had always loved it – the big yard where the engines shunted backwards and forwards, sighed and puffed, groaned uneasily from time to time and then at moments of elation crashed and clattered their couplings together like a hundred chain-rattling ghosts running amok; the signal box along at the end of the platform, where Martin the signalman, when in a good mood, had let her climb up the steep wooden steps and watch him pull at the handles, hear the bells ringing from along the line and see the great signals moving slowly into place, red, crash, down, green, creeeak, up. There was also the metal bridge over the single track from the up platform to the down platform, where, if you stood as the engine passed below you, the whole world disappeared for a moment in a cloud of grey smoke.

‘Evening, Nancy.'

‘Good evening, Mr Carroll.'

Always important with the gold braid on his cap and his green flag tucked under his arm, the station was his pride and joy, the buildings spick and span, no peeling woodwork or smeared glass, long neat flowerbeds always cheerful at the back of the down platform.

‘Up to the smoke?'

‘Yes.'

‘You want to mind yourself. Mind yourself these bad times. Sad times,' he muttered. ‘Sad times.'

He must be thinking of Sammy, Nancy thought to herself. She put her hand out and touched his navy serge sleeve.

‘I'm going to the Abbey Theatre,' she said, hoping that the information might cheer him up a little.

‘Isn't that nice now for you? Some nice young fella in the case I'll be bound. Ey?' He winked.

Nancy smiled.

‘Of course.'

‘Aren't you growing up fast. It seems like only yesterday you were down here pestering the life out of me to let you have a ride on the turntable and now there's other things on your mind. How's your ant?'

‘She's well, thank you.'

‘And the giniral?'

‘He hasn't been too well these last few days.'

‘God bless him! He's had a good run for his money anyway. Here. Hold on a minute.'

They walked down the platform together.

‘Never get in a carriage with a single gent … unless of course you know him. Get my meaning?'

He selected a suitable carriage for her and opened the door.

‘Hop in.'

Nancy nodded seriously at him and climbed into the train. Two gents were reading their papers and an elderly woman was knitting. She would be perfectly safe. Mr Carroll slammed the door. She pulled down the window and leant out.

‘Thank you, Mr Carroll.'

‘Mind yourself, Nancy. Mind yourself.'

He put his whistle in his mouth and waved the green flag.

The gents rattled their newspapers and one of them looked at his watch. The woman knitted, one purl, two plain, fingers industrious. With a great expulsion of steam the train jerked forward. Nancy waved at Mr Carroll and he waved the green flag back at her. She pulled up the window and sat down. She drew her initials in the dust on the window as the backs of some shops and then some houses jogged past and then the empty harbour, nets curled by the sea wall. The train gathered speed. The tip of her finger was grey so she wiped it on her skirt.

Clickety clunk, clunkety click, clickety clickety clickety …

The woman seemed to be knitting in time to the rhythm of the wheels. She stared out of the window at the sea as her fingers worked. An expert, Nancy thought.

Clickety clickety, mystery, mystery. Occasionally for a few moments the wheels stopped their chattering and seemed to hum. Clickety. What was he doing now, the mystery? Still perhaps sitting on the rug pondering? Perhaps. Clickety, pondering what? The lady began to count stitches, pushing each one carefully along one needle with the tip of the other needle. Her mouth numbered silently. He had a really rather splendid face. Tired. Splendid. Used. A used face. How old? Clickety, clickety. Fifty something. She always found it hard to tell.

The whistle screamed and they rushed into the long tunnel. All she could see was her own unused face in the dusty window haloed with whirling sparks.

Was he mad, she wondered. No. Lying low, Gosh, perhaps he was one of Them! After all, there were a few people like him mixed up with … perhaps even Uncle Gabriel if he hadn't been killed wearing the uniform of what was now the other side. If he were one of Them …? Perhaps, on the other hand, he might be a Bolshevist? He didn't look bad, she thought, sadly recalling his face again into her mind – only used, sick. Discretion, he said. I will be silent as the grave.

They rushed out into the light again. Directly below the line the sea was deep and sombre, while out beyond the evening shadow of the hill it sparkled gaily still. In the bay a dozen or so yachts were racing, their white sails filled with wind. Clickety, clickety. Knitting again, fingers dancing, the ball of brown wool bobbing on her knee. One of the gents looked at his watch again and made a tutting face. Impatient. The open fields on the other side had turned now to suburban gardens, neat beds of flowers, tennis courts, carefully patterned rows of vegetables, washing dancing in the wind. Then a deep cutting where you could see nothing, only high stone walls and a peep of sky, and the sound of the wheels became a roar again.