The Climber


When Josie and Jackie Mangan met the two little boys in Eton jackets
walking up the narrow pathway past their home, they stood and
gaped. The older of the two boys blushed and raised his cap, and Josie
gaped more than ever for no one had ever done such a thing to her
before.

‘Hallo,’ she said experimentally, turning and staring after them.

‘Hallo,’ replied the boy who had raised his cap, halting uncertainly.

‘Come on away!’ said his brother anxiously.

‘Why don’t ye come down the river,’ asked Josie.

‘We wouldn’t be left,’ said the boy.

‘Who wouldn’t leave ye?’

“Me mother.’

‘Christmas!’ said Josie. ‘Who’s your mother?’

‘Mrs. Donoghue, the dressmaker.’

‘My ould fellow is a sailor. Why wouldn’t she leave ye?’

‘Because it wouldn’t be right.’

‘Come on away!’ insisted his brother, with a trace of a whine in his
voice.

‘We have to go now.’ he said apologetically. ‘Me mother will be
expecting us.’

Josie thought she had never met such a nice boy. In due course he
explained why he and his brother were not permitted to associate with
the other children.

‘We’re a terrible respectable family,’ he said, his voice solemn with
his great responsibility. ‘There are three branches of our family, the
Neddy Neds and the Neddy Joes and the Neddy Thomases. The Neddy Neds
are the oldest branch. My mother is a Neddy Ned. My grandfather was the
best-behaved man in Bantry. When he was at his dinner the boys from the
school used to be brought up to study him, he had such grand table
manners. He opened the skull of an uncle of mine with the poker for
eating cabbage with a knife.’

‘Oh, Christmas!’ cried Josie.

‘My mother would be a rich woman only her father used her fortune to
back a bill for a Neddy Thomas. Tim here is going to be a doctor and
I’m going to be a solicitor. We’re learning the violin only I have no
ear. Dempsey, the gardener in the lodge, is teaching us. He only knew
jigs and reels but me mother made him teach us classical music.

‘What’s that?’ asked Josie.

‘“Maritana” is classical music. And “Alice Where Art Thou?” ’Tis much
harder than ordinary music. It has signs on it and when you see the
signs you know ’tis after turning into a different tune although ’tis
called the same. Irish music is all the same tune and that’s why me
mother wouldn’t leave us learn it.’

‘Oh, Jay!’ sighed Josie in an ecstasy of enlightenment.

‘Where does your father sail?’ young Donoghue asked politely.

‘He don’t sail anywhere now only down the river. He gave up the sea
after me mother died.’

‘Was he ever shipwrecked?’ asked Donoghue.

‘He was shipwrecked on a desert island.’

‘Were there cannibals on it?’

‘He didn’t say. He killed a Lascar once.’

‘There must have been mutiny on the boat,’ Donoghue said
thoughtfully. ‘Whenever there’s mutiny on a boat they kill the
Lascars.’

‘Why don’t ye come down the river?’ asked Josie again. ‘We have a
raft.’

‘I’d love to,’ he said, ‘but me mother wouldn’t leave us.’

Josie’s father allowed her to do everything so long as she washed her
face and didn’t tell lies. The dressmaker’s son had filled her with a
sense of the poverty of these prohibitions. She wanted to be
respectable. For hours she walked up and down outside the dressmaker’s
house, the door of which was always shut. She wanted Jackie to keep his
hands clean; she nagged at Mrs. Geney, their father’s housekeeper, to
let him wear his clean suit instead of the old blue gansey.

‘Couldn’t you buy us a new dress even?’ she said to her father.

‘Isn’t the one you have good enough?’ Mr. Mangan bellowed.

‘It is not good enough. No wonder the dressmaker says we’re not good
enough for her.’

‘What dressmaker?’ Her father pulled his beard. ‘Who says we’re not
good enough?...I like her cheek,’ he snorted when Josie had told her
story. ‘Let me tell you, young woman, that before the Donoghues were
heard of the Mangans were there; and will be, please God, when they’re
planted. Ask her is there e’er a poet in the Donoghue family. And when
she talks of money ask her did she ever hear tell of Mary Mangan of the
Mountain Mangans whose fortune was spent on her wake. Ask her did she
hear of Binoculars Mangan, the famous explorer that discovered the
island of Pottyloo off the east-coast of India.’

For the first time Josie had a feeling of the social inadequacy, even
the improbability of Binoculars Mangan and the island of Pottyloo. Very
thin they seemed beside the Neddy Neds and the Neddy Thomases. More
than ever she wanted to be respectable. She refused to go out with the
other children; she stole Jackie’s new cap from the drawer where Mrs
Geney kept it, wrapped in its original tissue, and led him out by the
hand.

‘Now, will you keep on raising your cap,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what
sort of way you were dragged up at all, but you should always raise
your cap to a lady. And if anyone raises his cap to me you ought to do
the same.’

‘Where are we going, Josie?’ he asked.

‘We’re not going anywhere,’ she replied firmly.

‘I want to go somewhere,’ he whined.

‘Well, you can’t. Respectable people never go anywhere. They only goes
for walks.’

‘I don’t want to go for walks. I wants to go down the railway and look
at the engines.’

‘You’re taking after your ould father,’ Josie said morosely, ‘’Tis easy
seen you’re his son. A wonder he wouldn’t make ould Geney keep the
front door closed. You can’t even sit down to a cup of tea but there’s
someone in on top of you, gabstering. Me father and you are lick
alike. Here’s Mrs. Dunphy along now. Raise your cap to her, you little
caffler.’

At teatime, Mr. Mangan came in looking radiant.

‘Well, I had a long chat with your little dressmaker,’ he said
jovially.

‘How did you meet her?’ Josie asked suspiciously. She felt cold and
sick at the very thought of it.

‘I dropped in on her, of course. Did you think I was going to let her
go off with the notion that the Mangans weren’t good enough for her?’

‘Oh, Christmas!’ said Josie. ‘Now we’re properly ashamed!’

‘How ashamed?’ cried her father angrily. ‘She was delighted to meet me,
of course—a very nice little woman! A charming little woman! Now she
knows what a remarkable father you have. I was telling her about the
time I was working in the pawn when I used to collect the loan money on
the old nag. I had her splitting her sides about the hundredweight of
sprats and the three-legged pot.’

‘And maybe you told her how the _Avoca_ went out with the drunken crew?’
hissed Josie on a rising wail of anxiety.

‘I did of course; and how they baptized the new pier, and the gentry
had the punch made with salt water, and all the ambulances of Cork were
waiting to take them home.’

‘I might have known it,’ said Josie between her teeth. ‘I might have
known you’d disgrace me.’

She was weeping when Mr. Mangan came in to say goodnight. He looked at
her in astonishment.

‘Here,’ he said coaxingly, ‘sit up now and I’ll do Shylock for you.’

‘You needn’t mind,’ she replied, turning to the wall.

For two days she was so miserable that she scarcely left the house,
Even Mrs. Geney at last asked her what was wrong but Josie rejected her
sympathy.

‘Ah, you’ll have good reason to cry before you’re done, Mrs. Geney
said darkly. ‘Mark my words, you’ll weep salt tears over your
respectability, so you will.’

Mrs. Geney’s mysterious prophecy came true sooner even than she
expected. That evening Mr. Mangan turned to Josie.

‘You’re to go down to the dressmaker’s to tea tomorrow night,’ he
 said. ‘You and Jackie. And see ye wash yeer dirty faces before ye go.’

‘Were you in blowing to the dressmaker again?’ she asked.

‘None of your impudence now, young madam,’ he replied. ‘You’re getting
too saucy. You want someone to keep you in hand.’

‘Meaning that I’m not able to do it?’ asked Mrs. Geney in a sudden fury
that bewildered Josie.

‘What’s up with you?’ asked Mr. Mangan. ‘I never meant anything of the
kind.’

‘Oh, we know what you meant all right. We’re not good enough for you
now since you got the dressmaker.’

‘What dressmaker, woman? What the blazes is after coming over you? And
what’s that thing on the mantelpiece?’

‘Nothing,’ she snapped. ‘A little ornament I found in the back room,
that’s all.’

‘’Tis the bird from my wedding cake, and well you know it, you
malicious ould hag.’

Mr. Mangan rose and stamped out of the house in a rage.

‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Geney gleefully. ‘That put him out. Now he won’t be so
easy in his mind, the ould show; gladhiatoring like that at his age; he
ought to be ashamed of himself and all the talk he had about your poor
mother, God rest her!’

‘But what’s he doing, Mrs. Geney?’ Josie asked.

‘Doesn’t the whole parish know he’s in at the dressmaker’s night after
night? And what is he doing it for?’

‘Do you mean he’s going to marry the dressmaker?’

‘Of course he is. And isn’t that what you wanted? Didn’t you want to be
respectable? Now you’ll be respectable whether you like it or not.’

Respectability suddenly lost half its value in Josie’s eyes. She lost
all desire to reform her feckless father; in fact he seemed nicer as he
was. She had very little pleasure in the tea party next
evening. Mrs. Donoghue was a tall, handsome woman; she shook both Josie
and Jackie warmly by the hand. Josie took an almost violent dislike to
handshaking. The table was laid with cups and saucers all of the same
size and pattern. The two boys kept pushing plates toward Josie;
pressed her to scones, cakes, and bread and butter. She wished they
would let her alone and allow her to have her tea in peace.

‘And now,’ said the dressmaker, ‘you and the boys must be good
friends. I do not like them to associate with the other children; they
are too rough, but you and Jackie are different. I am sure you will be
able to show them some nice walks.’

Next day the two boys called for Josie and her brother. By this time
she was disillusioned regarding the charms of walking. Like Jackie, she
wanted to go somewhere.

‘What’ll we do then?’ asked young Donoghue.

‘I’m going down the railway,’ she said ungraciously. ‘I don’t mind what
ye do.’

‘We’ll come, too,’ he said.

Josie led her little army along the river and through the busiest
portion of town to the railway.

‘Goodness!’ said Donoghue, ‘we were never as far as this before.’

‘This is nothing,’ said Josie eyeing him with contempt. ‘We goes down
the river on picnics and to the castle and everything.’

‘I was never in a castle,’ he said. ‘Are there dungeons? You might find
human bones in the dungeons.’

He was enchanted by the shining engines, moving slowly up and down the
myriad lines of rails and crashing into long trains of wagons. Just to
show him how little even this meant, Josie brought them back by the
river to show him the loading and unloading of ships.

‘’Tis going to be great fun being with you,’ he said with a little sigh
of pleasure. ‘I never did things like this before.’

‘Ah, wait’ll you see the raft,’ said Josie.

‘I know I’m going to like you. And I like your father a lot. He did
Shakespeare for us one night. And he gave mother the prescription for
the rheumatics that he got from the Zulu chief.’

Josie looked after him from the garden gate with a smile that was half
pity, half chagrin.

‘I’d like to do something to him,’ she said, ‘but I haven’t the
heart. I suppose he’s nice in spite of his old one and her notions. Oh,
Christmas, wasn’t I a gom, thinking there was anything in being
respectable. Themselves and their shaking hands and their
“How-are-yous” and “thanks” and “won’t-you-have-some-cakes?” If me
father brings that one into the house I’ll walk out of it. Look, I’m
that desperate I’d do anything at this minute. I’d smoke fags or ring
bells or anything.’

‘Did ye see yeer father?’ Mrs. Geney asked when they entered.

‘No,’ said Josie. ‘Didn’t he come in yet?’

‘I don’t care if he never comes in again,’ cried Mrs. Geney and most
alarmingly burst into tears.

‘What’s he after doing now?’ asked Josie in panic.

‘He’s after shaving off his beard that he never touched since the day
your mother was buried.’

His face when he came in presented a sight so horrible that Josie could
not bear to look. It was round and chubby and chinless; it had lost all
its majesty and romance; it looked ridiculous.

‘Jackie!’ Josie called to the distant cot as she got into bed.

‘What is it now?’ moaned Jackie.

‘I’ll have no mercy on him.’

‘On who, Josie?’

‘On the dressmaker’s son. I was only going to get him to destroy his
suit; and even that much I hadn’t the heart to do; but now, I’ll ruin
him. I’ll have the most terrible revenge anyone ever heard of.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Jackie.

“You’ll see soon enough. They’ll kill me, but I don’t mind.’

Next day, when the two boys called, Josie declared they would not go
either to the castle or the raft, on both of which young Donoghue
seemed to have set his heart. Instead she took them up the hill and
paused beside a high wall.

‘We’re going to climb this,’ she said firmly.

‘I could never climb that,’ he said, looking up.

‘If I can do it you ought to be able,’ she sneered. ‘You can stand on
my shoulder.’

‘But won’t we be stopped?’

‘Why should we be stopped? Isn’t the gardener a friend of my da’s?’

‘Was he a sailor, too?’ he asked innocently.

‘He was.’

There was a great deal of difficulty in bundling the two respectable
children over the wall, and it was not done without damage to their
clothes. They found themselves in a wide orchard which sloped
uphill. Josie led them to where a big house shone in the sun with all
its width of red wall.

‘Take a couple of apples,’ she said.

‘But will we be left?’

‘Of course we will. Stuff yeer pockets well with them.’

‘She helped to stuff their pockets. Next moment there was a shout and,
dropping the apple which she had been trying to stuff into Donoghue’s
trouser pocket, Josie was off without as much as one backward glance,
dragging Jackie behind her by the hand. The two boys stood
stock-still, petrified by fear and bewilderment. Then they ran, too,
but by this time Jackie was already over the wall and Josie following
him. The two boys stood at the foot of the wall casting up glances of
wild appeal, but she ignored them. She looked at the woman in riding
breeches and carrying a horsewhip who was almost on top of them — the
terrible Mrs. Ryder-Flynn who was reported to have the legs of a
greyhound and the arms of a prizefighter. Then she loosed her hold and
fell. She picked herself up, weeping though the fall had not hurt
her. She was suddenly filled with remorse and pity; she felt that
whoever had said revenge was sweet didn’t know what he was talking
about. Jackie, munching an apple, eyed her respectfully. When they got
to the end of the road they saw Mrs. Ryder-Flynn emerging from her gate
with a Donoghue in each hand.

Both Josie and Jackie were in bed when their father came in that
evening. There was a lot of talk between himself and Mrs. Geney. First
it was heated: then it dropped to a friendly mumble. Mr. Mangan came in
on tiptoe. He stood at the head of Josie’s bed. She pretended to be
asleep.

‘Ah, you fly boy!’ he muttered. “You’re your father’s daughter. You
were too good for me. I have a good mind to murder you.’

Josie ceased to breathe.

‘Sacked, dismissed, booted out without mercy. You limb of the divil. If
I was another father I’d lace you within an inch of your life. Here,
sit up now till I do Shylock for you.’

‘Daddy!’ Josie sat bolt upright in bed. ‘Do Romeo.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t like that.’

‘Never mind. Do it. can’t you?’

‘Aha, so that’s what you were up to? All right. You’re Juliet. Jackie,
you can be Tybalt. Tybalt is the saucy bloke I killed. Now I’m coming
into the vault with me little lantern.’ He took up the candlestick and
began to creep on tip-toe about the room. ‘Disgraced before the world,
indeed. I have a good mind to wring yeer necks, the pair of ye!’

‘Is that in the play, daddy?’ asked Josie.

‘It is not. Shut up now. Tybalt, you little divil, will you keep quiet?
How the blazes can I think you’re dead if you kick like that?’

Josie sighed ecstatically. Though chinless and chubby, her father was
his old feckless self again.


(1940)