The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [26]
"Response—it's as if you didn't love me."
"Absurd."
"Don't mock me, please, Sebastian, I've got feelings just as you have. I can't help being English. Nor can I help feeling desperate left alone here and then at night too. I don't want to fight or argue any more. What's going to become of us and Felicity ? Won't your father help us ? "
"I can't ask him till we're really desperate."
"But he's rich."
"I can't"
"But you must I won't mind if every once in a while you go out and even if you drink. But I'd rather you studied at home. You have every evening after six. You used to. And if we could only be a little happier when we're together. That's all I'm asking. Just that."
"There's great strain."
"But who has to bear it all. I stay in this dreary house day after day, seeing nothing but these damp horrid walls. If we could only get out into the country for a few days, see some green fields and feel free instead of hiding behind the kitchen door in mortal fear of that frightful Mr. Skully. He called last night."
"What did you tell him."
"To see you."
"O."
"How can I put him off ? I think he was drinking too. Even had the nerve to say the front knocker could be polished. He has an excuse to walk in here any time he wants. It's such a hideous feeling. I don't like his eyes. He has no character. I even wrote to Father. But you know how hard things are for them now."
"Quite."
"They really are. I know you don't understand. They would help us if they were able."
He rolled over on his side and pushed his head into the pillow. Marion turned off the light. Her hand pulling back the sheet. A groan of rusty springs. Darkness like the sea come for him. A bed of pain. Asking the dark tide to take me away. And I went out with the sea and knelt praying in the deep.
Suddenly he was awake. In sweat and fear. Marion clinging to him sobbing. Hear the thunder of her heart and wailing. I'm smitten with remorse and calculating in my heart Dublin looming a Swiss Cheese of streets and running through them screaming in tears. Children shrinking in the doorways. Gutters running pig's blood. Cold and winter.
In the morning all silence between them. Sebastian heating soup jelly, dipping bread in it and drinking a cup of tea. How I hate the fear of it Hate my own hatred. Get out of all this with escape and murder. Poor Marion. I have never felt so sad or pained. Because I feel it all seems so useless and impossible. I want to own something. I want to get us out of this. Get out of this goddamn country which I hate with all my blood and which has ruined me. Crush Skully's head with a poker. A green Jesus around my neck and this damn leaking ceiling and this foul linoleum and Marion and her wretched shoes and her stockings and panties and her tits and goddamn skinny back and orange boxes. And the black smell of grease and germ and spermy towels. All the rot behind the walls. Two years in Ireland, shrunken teat on the chest of the cold Atlantic. Land of crut. And the drunk falling screaming into the ditches at night, blowing shrill whistles across the fields and brown buggered bogs. Out there they watch between the nettles, counting the blades of grass, waiting for each other to die, with the eyes of cows and the brains of snakes. Monsters growling from their chains and wailing in the dark pits at night. And me. I think I am their father. Roaming the laneways, giving comfort, telling them to lead better lives, and not to let the children see the bull serving the cow. I anoint their silver streams, sing laments from the round towers. I bring seed from Iowa and reblood their pastures. I am. I know I am Custodian of the Book of Kells. Ringer of the Great Bell, Lord King of Tara, "Prince of the West and Heir to the Arran Islands" I tell you, you silly bunch of bastards, that I'm the father who sweetens the hay and lays the moist earth and potash to the roots and story teller of all the mouths. I'm out of the Viking ships. I am the fertilizer of royalty everywhere. And Tinker King who dances the goat dance on the Sugar Loaf and fox-trots in the streets of Chirciveen. Sebastian, the eternal tourist, Dangerfield.