Death and Nightingales by Eugene McCabe

Author:Eugene McCabe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 1993-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

9

Mickey Dolphin stood in the yard looking down sideways at the cobbles, a bird listening for worms. Billy Winters stared through the yard entry in the direction of the bog and shouted yet again:

‘Mercy! . . . Beth!’

‘Where in hell are they, Mickey? If they left the bog just after you why in hell aren’t they here now?’

‘Could be they stopped on to help spread.’

‘You get washed and togged, eat something and we’ll go.’

Billy crossed the yard, went in the back door, into the scullery and through .to the kitchen. Its bareness and cleanliness angered him. One place at the scrubbed deal table was set for Mickey Dolphin. He tipped up a covering plate and looked: two boiled eggs split, radishes, chives and a slice of cold boiled bacon. From where he stood he could see through the hallway to the dining-room where a place was set for him at the top of the table identical to the place set for Mickey Dolphin. Once in the early years during an upset she had left saying ‘I prefer to eat with my own people,’ and he had muttered, ‘Aye . . . and lie with them.’

She had stood very still, her hand on the door handle for what seemed like a minute before saying, ‘That’s low,’ and he had answered, ‘You’ve said it woman; and true.’

Two decades later her clenched face still came back vividly. Why now did the two meal places set so neatly fill him with a kind of anger. Miss Beth; miscegenation; misbegotten! He lifted the silver cover, took a portion of cold bacon, stuffed it into his mouth and moved, chewing, to unlock the sideboard cupboard. He then brought a bottle of Locke’s Irish Whiskey and a tumbler to the table. He half-filled the tumbler and, still chewing, went out to the scullery for water.

Mickey Dolphin, a faded towel round his waist, was filling a tin ewer from a very slow copper tap. He stepped aside to allow Billy to fill the small glass jug with water.

‘Hurry on man, fill her up.’

Mickey put the ewer under the tap again. It seemed to fill very slowly:

‘Poor pressure,’ Mickey said, ‘on account of the dry time, the fountain must be low.’

As both stared at the flowing water, Billy became conscious of a marked personal odour, a summer dormitory smell. He glanced down at Mickey’s feet: they were a dirty grey colour.

‘Did you ever hear, Mickey, about the auld fella who went to the doctor . . . a bit of a hum off him, so the doctor told him to wash. He did that and came back; still there was a hum.’

‘“Did you wash at all?”’ the doctor asked him.

‘“I did,” the auld fella said.

‘“How,” asked the doctor.

‘“Up as far as possible,” says he, “and down as far as possible.”’

‘“Go back so,” said the doctor, and wash possible?

Both laughed, Billy a great deal louder and longer. As he crossed the yard to the loft bedroom over the coach house he called after Mickey:

‘Be sure and wash possible, Mickey.

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