At twenty-five minutes past eight Gypo left the police-station by a
door in the rear of the building. In his pocket he carried twenty
pounds in Treasury notes, the reward for information concerning
Francis Joseph McPhillip.
He walked quickly along a narrow passage into a dark lane. The lane
was empty. So it appeared at first. But as Gypo stood hidden in the
doorway of an old empty house, piercing the darkness with wild eyes,
he heard a footstep. The footstep made him start. It was the first
human footstep he had heard, the first sound of his fellow human
beings, since he had become an informer and . . . and an outcast.
Immediately he felt that the footstep was menacing, as if he were
certain that it belonged to somebody that was tracking him. How
strange! Within the course of ninety minutes the customary sound of a
human footstep had, by some evil miracle, become menacing. Ninety
minutes ago, his ears would not have challenged the sound of a human
footstep, no more than they would have challenged the sound of the
breath coming normally from his lungs. But now they pricked into
attention at the trudging shuffle that approached from the left. His
heart began to pant.
Of course it was nobody of consequence. It was only a ragged old woman
of ill fame, with a debauched face and melancholy eyes. She paused
drunkenly in front of him, muttering something unintelligible. Then
she bared her ragged teeth. She spat and passed on without speaking.
Was it an omen? Gypo did not notice that it was. He merely listened to
the sound of her footsteps, splashing carelessly through the pools.
Then he looked ahead of him furtively and moved off with the careful
listening, stooping movement of a man wandering alone at night in a
forest gorge where lions are about. He turned a corner and came face
to face with a blaze of light and a street with shops and crowds of
people going about. At first he shuddered with fear. Then he swore and
drew in a deep breath. What had he to fear? He knew the street well.
Who was going to interfere with him? His giant fists clawed up, like
talons enraged, and the muscles of his throat and shoulders stiffened.
He imagined himself throttling these enemies who might be inclined to
assault him. He felt comforted, reminded by this pressure of his
muscles, of his enormous strength. He settled his little round hat
jauntily on the back of his head. He stuck his hands in his trousers
pockets. He swung his legs and rolled like a sailor out of the lane,
arrogantly, into the glare of the street.
At the same slow, swinging, rolling gait, he crossed the street
through the traffic without pausing, without stepping aside, without
looking to the right or to the left. Motor-cars, carts, bicycles and
wagons swerved to avoid him. He went through them without looking at
them, like a great monster walking through a cloud of ants, that are
carrying on their futile and infinitesimal labours about his feet.
They turned towards him to curse, but those that saw his face gaped
and passed into the night with the curse unuttered. His face, with the
humps on it shining in the glare of the lamps, was like a subtle mask.
It was so . . . so dead.
He walked straight across the pavement into a public-house. He kicked
the swing door open with his foot, without taking his hands out of his
pockets, just as he had entered the police-station. He put a pound
note on the counter with a slap of his palm and uttered the one word:
“Pint.” He stared at the counter until the drink was served. He put
the measure to his head, opened his throat and swallowed the contents
at one draught. He uttered a deep sigh and handed the empty glass to
the barman. He nodded. When he received another pint and his change,
he walked over to the corner and sat down.
Now he definitely set out to form a plan of action. It had been a
habit with McPhillip and himself. Whenever they had done any “stunt,”
they immediately went into a public-house, got drinks and set about
forming plans for an alibi.
“Never bother about yer ‘getaway’ until yer job is done,” used to be a
motto of McPhillip’s.
Suddenly Gypo realized what a clever fellow McPhillip must really have
been. He used to make plans so easily. They jumped to his mind one
after the other, like lightning. Gypo had never given any thought to
the matter of plans. He often used to say to McPhillip with a queer
glassy look in his eyes: “Mac, you bite the easy side o’ the cheese. I
got to do all the rough work an’ you do all the thinkin’. Strikes me
you get away with it easy, mate.”
Now, for the first time, he realized the difficulty of making a plan
without McPhillip. When he had to think it out for himself it appeared
to be devilish work. His brain got all in a tangle and he could make a
beginning nowhere. He gathered himself together several times, with
set lips and stiffened back, like a horse stiffening for a great tug
at an immense weight, but it was no use. He could not overcome the
weight that seemed to fall on his brain every time his sensibilities
approached it, probing tentatively for information. Sitting on a deal
bench at the rear of the bar, with his legs crossed and his pint of
porter in his right hand, held in front of him, with his elbow resting
on his knee and the froth of the porter dripping from the glass slowly
on to the tip of his raised boot, he stared at the ground, in an agony
of complicated thought. His little tattered brown hat, perched on the
top of his skull, looked like a magic charm, endowed with reason and
knowledge, mounting guard over his stupid strength.
He had not even cleared his brain for a beginning with this devilish
work of making a plan when he was interrupted by the arrival of Katie
Fox. She had sat down beside him before he knew she was there. He was
so immersed in his struggles that she nudged him and spoke before he
was aware of her presence.
“How’s things, Gypo?” she cried in her hard thin voice, as she nudged
him in the ribs. “Are ye flush enough to give us a wet?”
Gypo jumped to his feet, spilling half his pint. He gazed at her with
fright in his eyes and his chest heaved. Then he recognized her and
sat down immediately, flurried and confused by his display of
excitement.
“Hello, Katie,” he muttered, pretending to be vexed, “ye shouldn’t
come in that way on a fellah. I look around me an’ there ye are
proddin’ me in the ribs. Why the divil didn’t ye shout same as ye
always do?”
She put the backs of her thin, red-veined hands on her hips and stared
at him in amazement, partly real, partly born of that love of emphatic
gesture and movement and speech which is a peculiar characteristic of
the women of the Dublin slums. Katie was a woman of the slums. Her
father had been an employee of the Corporation and her mother was a
charwoman. As a girl Katie worked in a biscuit factory. Her own beauty
of body and the grinding toil in the factory made her discontented.
She joined the Revolutionary Organization. That was six years ago.
After that, her first plunge from the straight path of the tremendous
respectability and conservatism of the slum woman, she was led by
excess of feeling into one pitfall after another. Finally she passed
out of the ranks of respectability altogether by being expelled from
the Revolutionary Organization on a charge of public prostitution. Now
she had become an abandoned woman, known as such even among the
prostitutes of the brothel quarter, a drug fiend, a slattern, an
irresponsible creature. Traces of her young beauty still remained in
the deep blue eyes, that were melancholy and tired and twitched at the
edges, in her long lean figure now grown emaciated, in her black hair
that strayed carelessly about her face from beneath the rim of her
ragged red hat. But the mouth, that tell-tale register of vice, had
completely lost the sumptuous but delicate curves of innocent girlhood
and blossoming maturity. The lips hung down at the sides. They were
swollen in the middle. Their colour had died out and had been renewed
with loud vulgarity by cheap paint. The poor tormented soul peered out
of the young face, old before the years had time to wrinkle it, sad,
hard and stupefied.
She thrust out her little chin and turned her head sideways, turning
down the corners of her lips farther at one side of her mouth.
“I thought as much,” she said slowly, contorting her lips and face as
she spoke. “That’s why I came in unknownst and sat down beside ye. I
saw ye be chance, me fine buck, as I was talkin’ to Biddy Mac over at
the corner opposite Kane’s. So I just prowled in to see ye on the
quiet. But it’s clear as daylight that ye don’t want to see me. Not
while ye got money to fill yersel’ with porter. It was a different
story, wasn’t it, this mornin’ when ye begged the price of a cup o’
tay off me, an’ me that didn’t see the colour of a half-crown for
three days runnin’. Oh then——”
“Now shut yer gob, will ye,” interrupted Gypo excitedly. “It’s just
like ye takin’ a man up wrong that way. Sure I didn’t mane anythin’
like that atall. Only ye just came in on me all of a sudden. What are
ye havin’?”
Katie looked at him in high dudgeon, still with her chin thrust out,
her head turned sideways, her lips turned downwards and her hands on
her hips. She murmured: “Double Gin,” without moving her eyes from
Gypo’s face. Gypo arose and slouched up to the counter for the drink.
Her eyes followed him shrewdly and she kept nodding her head slowly at
his immense back.
Her relationship with Gypo was of that irregular kind which is hard to
describe by means of one word. She was undoubtedly not his wife and in
the same manner she could not be called his mistress. But their
relationship partook both of the nature of lawful marriage and of the
concubinage that is sanctified by natural love. Katie loved Gypo
because he was strong, big, silent, perhaps also because he was stupid
and her ready slum “smartness” could always outwit his lumbering
brain. Whenever Gypo had any money he spent it with her. Sometimes
when he was without any money, she brought him home with her and
provided him with his breakfast next morning. On the whole they were
good friends. During the past six months after Gypo had been expelled
from the Revolutionary Organization and left without friends or money
or employment, Katie had stood between him and death from exposure or
starvation. She loved him in her own amazing way. The last remains of
her womanhood loved him as she might have loved a mate. But those
shreds of love lived charily among the rank weeds of vice that
flourished around them. It was only at times that they peeped out and
covered the desert waste of her soul with the soft warmth and
brilliance of their light. Each kindly act of pity for the lumbering
giant was counteracted by a score of other acts that were vicious and
cruel. While Gypo, with the nonchalance of the healthy strong man,
took her for granted as if she were a natural contrivance of life,
like fresh air or food. He would only notice her absence when she was
needed.
He brought the gin and handed it to her. She took it in silence. She
sipped it slowly, holding it within an inch of her lips, staring at
the ground as she drank, shivering now and again, as if the drink were
ice cold. Gypo watched her suspiciously out of the corner of his eyes.
“What brought ye around here anyway?” he said at last.
He was extremely irritated that she should have come in on him, just
at that moment, when he was trying to make a plan, when he had the
money of his betrayal hot on his person, without being yet embalmed by
a plausible excuse for its presence. He was irritated, but in a
confused and ignorant way. He had not reasoned out a plausible excuse,
even for his irritation.
Katie held her empty glass upside down in her hand and looked at him,
with her blue eyes almost shut.
“Why, what’s the matter with ye, kiddo?” she asked arrogantly,
encouraged by the gin. “Why shouldn’t I knock around here if I want
to. I’m not employed by a charitable institution at so much an hour to
keep out o’ yer honour’s way, ha, ha, when it’s yer lordship’s
pleasure to come into this pub. There’s no law agin me comin’ around
this part o’ the city at this hour, is there?” She worked herself into
a fit of anger gradually as she spoke. She had an idea that Gypo was
concealing something important from her and that her arrival at that
moment gave her some power over him. That peculiar intuition of the
slum woman could pierce the surface of Gypo’s embarrassment, but
without being able to probe into the real nature of it. She pushed
back her coat with her left hand and put the back of her hand against
her reddish frayed blouse below the heart. How slight her breasts
were!
“Now Katie—” began Gypo.
But she interrupted him immediately. She had been only waiting for him
to begin to speak in order to interrupt him. She was quite happy when
given the opportunity of a “barge” of this description.
“Go on with ye,” she cried, “pug nose! I know ye, Ya. You’re bum all
right. Yer all right as long as ye get nothin’. But as soon as ye can
smell yersel’ after a good meal an’ there a gingle in yer rags, ye
stick yer nose into the air an’ ye know nobody. D’ye know what I’m
goin’ to tell ye, Gypo? D’ye know what I’m goin’ to tell ye? Yer a
mane, lyin’, deceitful twister an’ I got yer measure from now on.
Don’t look for nothin’ from me from now on, my fine bucko. No then;
’twill be little use for ye.”
Gypo became nervous and shifted his huge body. He wanted to let his
left hand fly out and hit her in the jaw. One slight blow would make
her senseless. But he had never struck a woman, owing to some obscure
prejudice or other. Still, he was terribly tired of her. Now that he
had this money on his person, without as yet having decided what to do
with it, he wanted to be free from her.
“You shut up,” he cried angrily, “or I’ll fix ye. Haven’t I given ye a
drink?” Then he added half-heartedly: “D’ye want another drink?”
Katie was still staring at him. Suddenly a change came over her.
Something suggested itself to her peculiar reason and she changed her
attitude.
“Don’t mind what I said now, Gypo,” she continued in a low mournful
voice, looking at the ground with hanging lower lip, like a person
overwhelmed and utterly defeated by some persistent calamity. “God
Almighty, the world is so hard that a person loses her mind
altogether. Misery, misery, misery an’ nothin’ but misery. You’re as
bad off as mesel’, Gypo, so ye know what I mane. No man has pity on
us. Every hand is agin us because we have got nothin’. Why is that,
will ye tell me, Gypo? Is God Himself agin us too? Ha, ha, o’ course
we were both of us Communists and members o’ the Revolutionary
Organization, so we know there’s no God. But supposin’ there was a
God, what the hell is He doin’——”
“Katie,” cried Gypo angrily, “none o’ that talk. Lave God alone.”
“God forgive me, yer right,” cried Katie, beginning to sob. But she
pulled herself together suddenly with surprising speed and turned to
Gypo almost sharply. Her eyes narrowed slightly and a quaint weird
smile lit up her face. There was a trace of beauty in her face under
the influence of the smile, a trace of beauty and merriment. “Tell us
where ye got all the money, Gypo. Ye had none this mornin’.”
Gypo started in spite of himself and glanced at her in terror. He
struggled violently, trying to formulate an excuse for his sudden
wealth. He fumed within himself for not having made a plan.
Unconsciously he cursed McPhillip, whom he had sent to his death, for
not having made a plan. He looked at Katie with glaring eyes and open
lips. Then he bent towards her, tried to speak and said nothing. But
she misunderstood him.
“Ya,” she said, “I knew ye were yellow. Have ye robbed a church or
what, an’ are ye afraid of bein’ turned into a goat be the priests?”
“Shut up,” he hissed suddenly, gripping at the word “robbery” and
hooking a plan on to it. It was a customary word, a friendly thing
that he recognized, with which he felt at home. He bent down, with
quivering face, eager to hurl out the words of his plan before he
could forget them again. “It wasn’t a church. It was a sailor off an
American ship. I went through him at the back o’ Cassidy’s pub in
Jerome Street. But if ye say a word ye know what yer goin’ to get.”
“Who? Me?” Katie laughed out loud and looked at him with emphatic
scorn over her shoulder. “What d’ye take me for? An informer or what?”
“Who’s an informer?” cried Gypo, gripping her right knee with his left
hand. The huge hand closed about the thin frail knee and immediately
the whole leg went rigid. Katie’s whole body shrivelled at the mere
touch of the vast strength.
There was silence for a second. Gypo stared at Katie with a look of
ignorant fear on his face. The word had terrified and infuriated him.
It was the first time he had heard it uttered in the new sense that it
now held for him. Katie, hypnotized by the face, panted and looked
back at him.
“What are ye talkin’ about informin’ for?” panted Gypo again,
tightening his grip on her knee. He had not meant to hurt. He merely
wanted to give emphasis to his words.
“Lemme go,” screamed Katie, unable to endure the pain any longer and
terrified by the look in Gypo’s face and by his strange behaviour.
Gypo let go immediately. The barman came striding over, wiping his
hands in his apron. He pointed toward the door. Gypo got to his feet
and stared at the barman, glad to have a man in front of him, against
whom he could vent his ignorant rage. He lowered his head and he was
about to rush forward when Katie hung on to him and cried out.
“Come on, Gypo,” she cried rapidly, “let’s get out of here. Let him
alone, Barney. He’s got a few pints on him. He didn’t mane any harm.
Come on, kid.”
Gypo allowed himself to be dragged out backwards by the right hand
into the street. They stood together on the kerbstone, with Katie’s
arm entwined in his.
“Come on up to Biddy Burke’s place,” she whispered in a friendly tone.
“Come on up.”
In front stretched a main road, brilliantly lighted and thronged with
people. The light, the people, the suggestion of gaiety and of freedom
attracted Gypo. To the rear stretched a dark, evil-smelling lane. It
repelled him. There was where Katie wanted to bring him, down towards
the slum district and the brothel quarter. Down there were his own
haunts, people who knew him. He feared the darkness, the lurking
shadows, the suggestion of men hiding in alleyways to attack him. Out
there in front he could wander off, among strange people who did not
care a straw about informers.
“Come on Gyp, down to Biddy’s and buy us a sniff,” murmured Katie
entreatingly, in a soft voice. “Yer flush, aren’t ye? I know well them
American sailors carry a quare wad around with ’em. Let’s walk along.
I’m perished with the cold.”
“No,” muttered Gypo in a surly voice. “I’m goin’ down to the House to
book a bed for the night.”
He now remembered with pleasure that the reason for his going to the
police-station was the fact that he wanted money for a bed. So why not
go and buy a bed? It was a good excuse to get rid of her.
“What are ye talkin’ about a bed for?” cried Katie angrily, clutching
at his arm. Then her voice softened again. There was an eager glitter
in her eyes. “Sure it’s not thinkin’ about a bed ye are when ye got
money in yer pocket. Haven’t I got a bed anyway, an’ if it’s not good
enough for ye, sure we can get a bed at Biddy’s, seein’ ye have money
in yer pocket.”
“I don’t want yer bed,” snarled Gypo, “an’ I’m not goin’ near Biddy
Burke’s. I been robbed by the thievin’ old robber often enough.”
“Ye don’t want me bed, don’t ye?” cried Katie, losing her temper again
completely. “Ye were glad enough to have it last week when I brought
ye in outa the rain like a drownded rat. Wha’?”
“Now I’ll give ye nothin’ for yer imperence,” grumbled Gypo. “Yer too
ignorant. That’s what ye are.”
She moved up under his chin and held her two clenched fists to his
jaws. They looked white and tiny against the size of his face.
“All right,” she hissed, “you watch out for yersel’, Gypo Nolan.”
She turned on her heel and went off at a fierce walk to the left,
muttering curses as she disappeared rapidly into the darkness. Gypo
stared after her, listening. He strained his neck in an effort to
catch a final mumble of sharp words that floated up to him through the
dark lane, as her obscure figure drifted around a corner. Then he
shrugged his shoulders with a gasp as if he had just watched a
valuable possession suddenly drop over a cliff. With his hands in his
trousers pockets he stared at the ground.
“Look here, Katie,” he called out suddenly, reaching out his right
hand impotently towards the corner off the lane, around which she had
swept. Then he put his hand back into his pocket and gripped the tight
wad of Treasury notes. He wanted now to give her some money. She had
been good to him. He began to walk up the lane slowly. There was no
need to hurry. He knew where to find her. He must not let her go like
that.
But he had not gone ten yards before he halted again. He turned about
and walked back quickly into the main road. He had suddenly remembered
a terrifying thing.
Supposing somebody were to come into Biddy Burke’s and say that Frank
McPhillip had been killed owing to information being given to the
police? They were sure to say that. They would see him there with
money in his pocket. They would suspect. . . .
He turned to the right, past the corner of the main road. He went
twenty yards down the street and then brought his two feet together
like a soldier coming to a halt on parade. He wheeled inwards, still
in the same mechanical manner, towards a shop window. He stood at
ease, clasping his hands behind his back in military manner. Somehow,
it gave peace to his distracted thoughts, as if he had suddenly given
over the responsibility of his thoughts and actions to an imaginary
superior officer.
Into his resting mind pleasant memories came, distant pleasant
memories like day-dreams on a summer day, dreamt on the banks of a
rock-strewn river, among the flowering heather. They were memories of
his youth. They came to him in a strange bewildered manner, as if
afraid of the dark, ferocious mind into which they came. Gypo stared
at them fiercely, with bulging lips, as if they were enemies taunting
him. Then gradually he softened towards them. Then a mad longing
seized him for the protection of the environment of his youth, the
country-side of a Tipperary village, the little farm, the big
red-faced healthy peasant who was his father, his long-faced
kind-hearted mother, who hoped that he would become a priest.
He wrinkled up his face and looked at his youth intently. He stiffened
himself, as if he were about to hurl himself by sheer force back
through the intervening years, of sin and sorrow and misery, to the
peace and gentleness and monotony of life, in that little village at
the foot of the Galtees.
Various, intimate, foolish, little recollections crowded into his
mind. He remembered goats, asses’ foals, rocks in a mountain torrent,
a saying of the village smith, a glance from a girl, his first drink
of wine stolen in the sacristy of the parish church while he was
serving Mass. Thousands of memories came and went rapidly. They passed
like soldiers before a saluting-point, some gay, some sad, some dim,
some distinct and almost articulate as if they had happened a moment
ago.
Suddenly he felt a wet daub coming down each cheek. He started. He was
shedding tears. The horror of the act made him stare wild eyed. He
swore aloud. He bared his teeth of their covering of thick lips and
ground them. His youth went out like a candle that is quenched by a
squall in a long passage. The grinning spectre of the present became
real once more. He shut his mouth. He sighed very deeply. Putting his
hands in his pockets again, he walked off at his habitual slouch, with
his head hanging slightly forward, hung on the pivot of his neck like
a punchball.
“I must make a plan,” he said to himself once more.
Somehow he was convinced that the Revolutionary Organization already
suspected him of having given information concerning McPhillip. He
felt that he was being sought for already. So he must make a plan. He
must have a plausible excuse.
“If ye got a good aliby,” McPhillip used to say, “the divil himself
couldn’t fasten anythin’ on ye.”
But how was he going to get an alibi for himself? He walked the whole
length of the road three times irresolutely, with his eyes fixed on
the ground. He was unable to think of anything. His mind kept
branching off into the contemplation of silly things that had nothing
at all to do with the question, the favourite for the Grand National
and whether Johnny Grimes, the comedian, had drowned himself in the
Canal or whether he had been murdered and then thrown in; the two main
questions that were agitating the Dublin slums just then.
At one moment he decided to go to the Dunboy Lodging House, pay for a
bed and go to sleep. But immediately he was terrified at this
suggestion. They might know already that he had given information.
Then maybe, while he was asleep, somebody would be sent into his
little cell with a loaded stick to murder him in his sleep. Or they
might give him “the bum’s rush,” breaking his neck silently like a
rabbit’s neck. He pictured the little narrow wooden cells in the
lodging house, the silence of the night, broken only by the dismal
sound of snoring on all sides, an indiscriminate number of unknown
people snoring loudly, dreaming, grumbling, snoring and sleeping in
all directions, while _“they”_ approached silently to murder him.
He shuddered. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. Eagerly, with
relief, he decided to keep in the open, where he could use his hands
and his strength. If he were going to be murdered he would be murdered
with his hands gripping a dead throat.
Then at last he stood stock-still and thumped himself in the chest.
“Well, I’m damned!” he cried. “Amn’t I an awful fool? Why didn’t I
think of it before? They’ll be wonderin’ why I’m not there already.
Everybody in the town must ’a heard of it be now, an’ me that was his
pal an’ I not there to say a word to his mother. They’ll surely
suspect something if I don’t go at once.”
Narrowing his eyes, he set out at a smart pace in the direction of
McPhillip’s home in Titt Street. He took his hands out of his pockets
and swung them by his sides after the manner of a policeman. He threw
his head back and towered like a giant over those whom he passed.
He passed them, almost over them, like a being utterly remote, a
unique creation.