The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [23]
"Yes."
"What?"
"Sheep's head."
"O aye."
What a good-looking girl you are. White. Your body must be very white. Let me eat the lotus. I came out tonight feeling badly. How weak are our hearts. Because now I can jump with joy. The world obeys a law. Large and brown black. Eyes.
"Do you like working in the laundry?"
"I hate it."
"Why?"
"O the heat and steam and noise."
"And what's it like where you live?"
"O I don't know. Don't know how I can describe it. There are trees down the street anyway. That's always something. Just one of those terraced houses on South Circular Road. I live in the basement. It's quite nice though, compared to what I might have to live in."
"Alone?"
"Alone. I can't bear sharing."
"What would you like ? "
"Stout, please."
"How long have you been working in the laundry?"
"A few months."
"Money?"
"Not much. Four pounds ten."
"Now, Christine, I think you are a most pleasant girl."
"What do you study ?"
"Law. This is most pleasant. I was in despair. Wretched. Beat. A walk up Grafton Street sometimes kills it. But everyone looked beat like me."
"Wrong time. Just people looking for somewhere to go."
"You?"
"Just looking. I often just look. I like to feel there is some- thing in the shops I want I get off the bus at the top of Stephen's Green and walk through the park. I like that best and watch the ducks from the bridge and go down Grafton Street. Sometimes I have a coffee in one of those icecream parlors. Then I go home. That's all there is to my life."
"No culture?"
"Cinema, and sometimes I go sit in the back of the Gate for a shilling."
Sitting there and then lighting up cigarettes. I don't usually approve of smoking. I find now that things seem good. That suddenly out of the darkness the light. That's Christian. The light showing the way. When I've thought of it, I've stepped into Clarendon Street Church, to pray and sometimes to see if it was warmer and after sitting awhile, to relax a bit from the tension. I have awful tensions and in that Catholic gloom and the Erse that is in it, I grew slightly sad and pitiful, considering the after and before and I often got the feeling there that I was really going to haul down some quids. I don't know why quids get rid of gloom. But they get rid of it O Christine. What are you like underneath?
They had one more round of stout and she turned and smiled and said that she must be going home. And may I take you? That's all right. I insist. It's really not necessary. For the joy that's in it then. O.K.
They set off along Suffolk Street, into the Wicklow Street and up the Great George's. And over there Thomas Moore was born. Come in and see it, a nice public house indeed. But I must go home and wash my hair. But just a quick one.
In they went The embarrassed figures looking at them and bird whispering. The man showed them to a booth, but Mr. Dangerfield said that they were just in for a fast one.
O surely, sir and it's a grand evening. 'Tis that
And passing the Bleeding Horse he tried to steer her in there. But she said she could go on alone just around the corner. But I must come.
The house she lived in was one at the end of a long row. Went through an iron gate, just a speck of garden with a bush and bars over her window. And her door just at the bottom of three steps with a drain to run the water off that would surely be going under the door. Only that I must wash my hair I'd ask you in. That's quite all right And thank you for walking me home. Not at all, and may I see you again? Yes.
She went down the steps. Paused, turned, smiled. Key. Green door. Few seconds. A light goes on. Shadow moves across the window. Hers. What sweet stuff, sweeter than all the roses. Come down God and settle in my heart on this triangular Friday.
8
July. Be over in another week. See awnings up in Grafton Street with such a bunch of healthy people going underneath. Everything looks good with the sun out Even my affairs.
But mornings in the bed with the sheet well up over the eyes, when you hear them downstairs when Marion's out to shop, knocking hard on the door. And it can't stand it And they never stop the damn knocking and some try to push it in. O the fear of them coming up and naked, my dignity wilts and it's a poor enough weapon defending debts. And they yell up the stairs, not wanting someone to be home, embarrassed to have penetrated so far into the house.