The Lady of the Sagas

It 1s a terrible thing to have the name of a saga heroine and have no
saga hero. Deirdre Costello, the new teacher at the convent, was a
slight girl with reddish-brown hair pulled back from her ears and a
long face with clear gray eyes. Having a name like that, she naturally
thought of herself in terms of the sagas and imagined Connacht raided
and Ulster burned for her.

But whatever our town may have been like in saga times, it is no great
shakes today. It seemed to Deirdre to be more like an island; a small
island where you couldn’t walk a few hundred yards in any direction
without glimpsing the sea, only that the sea was some watery view of
pearly mountains and neglected fields with a red and blue cart upended
beside a stack of turf. The islanders, except when they took a boat
(which they kept on referring to as a car) and visited some mother
island ten or fifteen miles away, were morose and self-centered, and
spent their leisure hours not in cattle-raiding and love-making but in
drinking and playing cards.

Tommy Dodd was the only man she met who even looked as though he had
the makings of a saga hero in him. Tommy was the town’s smartest
solicitor, a tall, handsome man with a heroic build, a long pale face,
dark hair, and an obstinate jaw. He was built more for defensr than
attack; a brusque man, rude and loud-voiced when it suited him, polite
and stiff when it didn’t. He was a high official in a Catholic secret
society, the members of which wore colored cowls and robes in the
manner of the Ku Klux Klan, talked in an elaborate jargon with titles
like “Worthy Warden,” and had a complicated system of grips and
signs. He was almost obtrusively pious, and went to Mass each
morning before breakfast. His room was filled with mechanical gadgets
which were supposed to develop different parts of him, and he was
quite obtrusively pernickety about food, insisting on all sorts of
unusual things like bran, nuts, and nettles. He became quite violent
if Joan, the landlady’s daughter, crossed him in this fad.

“Take that away, Joan,” he would say in a dead voice whenever she
happened to bring him the wrong thing.

“Oh, Law!” Joan would exclaim with a laugh. “Aren’t you eating that
now?”

“I never eat it. Are there any oranges left?”

“Oranges, oye!” Joan would mutter. “A wonder you don’t turn into a
monkey!”

“If you knew anything about the general health of monkeys, you
wouldn’t talk about them in that ignorant way,” said Tommy. “I don’t
know how you eat that stuff at all, Deirdre,” he would go on
anxiously. “You should see what that does to your insides. I couldn’t
touch it at all. ’Twould kill me.”

As hard as Deirdre tried, this solicitude about what she ate was as
close as she could get to a lover’s attention from Tommy. He seemed
more interested in her bowels than any other part of her. It was the
same when they went driving. Tommy had a fine but blunted
intelligence, so that he never seemed to know what would interest
her. It took her quite a while to get him talking about his job (“Ah,
what is it only old rubbish? You wouldn’t care about things like
that”), but when he did, he was fascinating. He knew who everyone was
and what everybody was worth.

“How do you get all the information?” she asked. “I suppose the bank
manager is in the Ku Klux Klan as well?”

“Is it Con Doody?” exclaimed Tommy, giving nothing away. “Ah, Con is
too smart for that.”

“He’d want to be.”

“Begor, he would. And even then he’s not as smart as the last
man. Delaney used to have a phone on his desk, and if you asked him
for an overdraft, he’d ring up head office in Dublin and recommend
you. Oh, one of his most valued customers! And you wouldn’t know the
phone wasn’t connected.”

“But why would he do that?” she asked in bewilderment.

“Because after hearing all he said about you, you’d blame the bank and
not him at all. Oh, begor, Delaney was a first-rate man.”

‘“‘And did he charge for the calls?” Deirdre asked coldly.

“How would I know?” exclaimed Tommy in astonishment. “Why?”

“Is there anyone in this town that isn’t an exploiter?” she asked with
burning indignation.

“An exploiter?” echoed Tommy in bewilderment. “How do you make that
out?”

“But you’re all exploiters, man,” cried Deirdre. “Doctors, priests,
bank managers, and solicitors; you’re out only for what you can
get. Don’t you ever want to give people anything?”

“I’m sure I’m as charitable as the next,” Tommy said in a hurt
tone. “Last year I must have given a good slice of my income in
charity.”

“Ah, who’s talking about charity?” she cried impatiently. “You don’t
even know what I mean. Ye all have the minds of robbers, even
you. This isn’t a town at all. It’s a camp of highway robbers.”

“Begor, I wish it was,” Tommy said blandly, stepping on the
accelerator. “You’d get nice pickings.”


FOR a man of such piety his morality struck Deirdre as deplorable. His
sentiment was just as bad, and she sometimes wondered if she’d ever
get down to the saga hero in him. He was far from being an uneducated
man, and he had a lot of books of his own—serious works on history and
philosophy which he read right through. The lighter types of
literature he borrowed from her, and she made him read Joyce, George
Moore, and Hemingway, in the hope that they might fan the spark of
passion in him; but if they did, he managed to conceal it
well. Instead he embarked on long and obscure arguments about
St. Thomas Aquinas, Communism, the sanctity of marriage, and even
anatomy. He called this “picking her brains.” When he had got all he
wanted, he said he had “got great value out of her.” He talked as
though she were another sort of chest-developer.

“But you wouldn’t call that girl’s conduct natural, would you?” he
asked one night when he was discussing some novel she’d given
him. “You don’t imagine Joan here would let a fellow behave like that
with her?”

“And who said Joan was natural?” asked Deirdre.

““Begod, I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe she isn’t. But to
come back to the girl in the story. Now, she knew the man was living
with somebody else already. Wouldn’t that show her he wasn’t
reliable?”

“She mightn’t want someone reliable, way, lots of women would like
it.”

“Would you say that, Deirdre?” he asked in surprise, sticking his
thumbs in the armholes in his vest. “Why would they like it?”

“Well, at least they’d know where they were with him,” said Deirdre
with a laugh.

“Excuse my being personal,” he went on, “but as I’m picking your
brains, I’d like to know what you think of it yourself. Would you like
it?”

“That would depend on the man, Tommy,” she replied. “(Damn it, the
girl was in love with him.” Then seeing from the blank expression on
Tommy’s handsome face that he didn’t even know what she was getting
at, she beat the sofa cushion in exasperation. “Love, Tommy, love!”
she cried. “Don’t tell me you never heard of it.”

“Oh, begor, I heard of it all right,” said Tommy, who was very
difficult to shake when he was on the defensive. “I was through it all
before you were out of long clothes. I’m past it now though.”

“Why? How old are you?”

“Thirty-five,” he said with finality.

“But, my God, that’s only the prime of life!

“You feel the years beginning to tell on you all the same,” said Tommy
gravely. “What I’d like now is to settle down.”

“Settle down?” Deirdre repeated in disappointment (as if anybody ever
heard of a saga hero settling down!). “What do you want to settle down
for?”

“I want a home of my own, of course,” said Tommy. “You don’t think
I’m going to go on living in lodgings for the rest of my life, where I
can’t get a bit of decent food or anything?”

“And have you a girl?”

“I have not. Not yet.”

“Ah, Tommy, you’re putting the cart before the horse,” she said
mockingly. “You should get the girl first.”

“I believe ’tis customary,” said Tommy without permitting himself to
get ruffled.

“But, Tommy,” she burst out, “you don’t want to make a home for a girl
till there’s nothing else left for you to do with her. She’d hate
it. Surely you understand that?” But it struck her that he didn’t; not
entirely, at any rate; and if she wanted to reach down to the passion
in him, she would have to begin in a key without sharps or
flats. “Anyway,” she added, “you’ll find plenty to jump at you.”

“I dare say,” replied Tommy complacently. “I mightn’t want to jump at
them though.”

“Now, who is there you couldn’t get if you wanted to?” she asked
cajolingly. “A fine, upstanding man like yourself!”

“Can’t you guess?” he asked, causing her to groan within. This wasn’t
even C major; it was more like puff-puffs.

“Do I know her?”

“What would you say to the doctor?” asked Tommy.

“Dr. O’Brien?” said Deirdre with a sinking of the heart. She knew now
she wasn’t in for courting, but confidences, and if there was one
thing more than another that destroyed her self-respect, it was
confidences. It was revealed to her at that precise moment that the
nuns and herself would have to part company. It was bad enough in the
mornings, having to hitch down her dress behind to cover her chest
without having to endure fellows talking to her about the charms of
other women. “I suppose she has bags of tin?” she added.

“Fifteen thousand,” replied Tommy complacently.

“You’d overlook a lot for that,” said Deirdre.

“Begor, you would,” said Tommy thoughtfully. “But isn’t she very
good-looking, Deirdre? I’d say she had great distinction.”

‘Another five thousand would make her a beauty,” said Deirdre.
“Honest to God, I used to think I knew what Irish towns were like, but
I was only fooling myself. They’re nothing but calculation and greed
and cunning.”

“Oh, come, Deirdre!” said Tommy gravely. “Aren’t you taking things to
the fair?”

“No,” groaned Deirdre. “That’s where ye take them.”



She was so disgusted that next day she told it all to Joan. It wasn’t
that she particularly cared for Joan, who, in her opinion, was the
sort of Irishwoman who make Irishmen what they are, but she had no one
else to discuss it with. Joan was a big, platter-faced Child of Mary
who scouted round men like some member of a primitive tribe observing
the behavior of the first pale-faces.

“Mother of our Divine Redeemer!” she cried dramatically. “The box of
chocolates!”

“What box of chocolates?”

“He have them for days hidden inside a clean shirt. Maybe he thought
we wouldn’t find them! Would you ever be equal to men? And what did he
want telling you about her for?”

“I suppose he wanted someone to talk to,” said Deirdre.

“He did, I hear!” retorted Joan ironically. “I suppose he thought you
might put in a good word for him.”

“But how could I when I don’t even know the girl?”

“Maybe you might know someone that do,” Joan suggested shrewdly. “Or
maybe your father might have influence.”

“Ah, it’s not that at all,” Deirdre said impatiently. “The man is soft
on her, and he wants someone to talk to. Sure, ’tis only human
nature.”

“The divil a much nature that fellow have unless it suited his book,”
said Joan derisively. “He wouldn’t tell you the time of day unless he
wanted to borrow a match from you.”

This all-pervading cynicism about love didn’t agree with Deirdre at
all. The country had obviously gone to hell since saga times. She
wrote to a friend in Dublin, asking her to find her a job; after that
she felt considerably better.

A few nights later Tommy invited her to the pictures. Afterwards, as
they came down Main Street in the moonlight, he looked so imposing
with his great build and long, handsome Viking head that she took his
arm. She stopped him at the bridge. The abbey tower soared over its
cluster of ragged gables with its fantastic battlements like cockades
in the moonlight, and the water, tumbling over the weir, was so
hatched with shadow that it seemed still, like seaweed left after the
tide. There was a great sense of space and joy and contemplativeness
inside her, as if a bit of the night had gone astray and nested in
her.

“God, Tommy, isn’t it lovely?” she whispered.

“Tell me,” he asked, as though he were picking her brains again, “what
do you see particularly beautiful about that?”

“Ah, stop your old catechism and try and feel something, man!” she
said impatiently.

“I don’t know why you say that,” Tommy said in a hurt tone as he
rested on the parapet of the bridge. “As a matter of fact, I feel
things very deeply. As a kid, I was so unhappy at home that I had a
row with my father and ran away to sea.”

“Did you?” she asked in surprise. “How long were you at sea?”

“A fortnight,” said Tommy.

“You didn’t stop long enough, Tommy,” she said as she sat up on the
bridge. “Tommy,” she added coaxingly, “did you ever go to bed with a
girl?”

He flashed her a quick look of mistrust.

“Why?” he asked suspiciously. “Did someone tell you?”

“Nobody told me anything. I only asked. Did you?”

“Oh, begor, I did,” said Tommy with a nod of his head.

“I never did anything like that,” she said regretfully. “At least, I
did, once, but the fellow said he respected me too much.”

“Begor, I hope so,’ Tommy said in some alarm. “You’re too young to be
going in for that sort of thing, Deirdre.”

“Ah, I don’t know,” Deirdre said, shaking her head
regretfully. “People think they have time enough, and then, before
they know where they are, their lives are wasted and they have nothing
to show for them. For God’s sake, look at the people of this town,
Tommy!  You’d think it was something they could put in the bank. Was
this some girl you picked up?”

“No,” replied Tommy, getting more and more guarded. “A girl in a house
I was lodging in in Dublin.”

“Was she nice?”

“I thought so anyway,” said Tommy gallantly.

“But were you in love with her?”

“Oh, begor, I was in love with her all right,” he said with a laugh.

“Ah, but I mean really, madly, hopelessly in love,” persisted Deirdre,
exasperated by his temperate tone.

“I was mad enough.”

“And why didn’t you marry her?”

“I wasn’t in a position to marry her. My family wasn’t well off and I
couldn’t afford it.”

“Ah,” Deirdre said angrily, as much to the night as to Tommy, “I have
no patience with that sort of talk. Ye wouldn’t starve.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that.”

“And if ye did, what matter?”

“What matter if we starved?” he asked incredulously.

“What matter if ye lived? God, if I loved a man, I’d marry him on
tuppence ha’penny. You’re all terrified out of your wits of life, as
if it was going to bite you.”

“Now, that’s exactly what it would do,” said Tommy.

“Ah, what signifies a bite or two?” Deirdre asked laughingly, throwing
off her irritation. “Anyway,” she added reasonably, “you could marry
her now.”

“Is it Elsie?” said Tommy in surprise. “She’s probably married herself
by now.”

“Well, can’t you go and see, man?” said Deirdre. “Even if she is, she
won’t eat you. Anyway, wouldn’t she be better for you than your old
doctor and her fifteen thousand? God Almighty, Tommy, that’s not
life!”

“That’s the question, of course,” Tommy said sternly. “What is life?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to try and find out.”

“I read a good many books, and I can’t say I ever learned much about
it,” said Tommy. “How would you find out?”

“By living it.”

“That was tried.”

“It’s a novelty round these parts. I’m hoping to go to a job in Dublin
after Christmas Did T tell you?”

“You did not,” Tommy said in consternation. “What do you want going to
Dublin for? Aren’t you all right here?”

“My views are too large for a place this size,” Deirdre replied with a
laugh.

And after Tommy had drunk his cocoa in the sitting room, Deirdre went
to drink tea with Joan in the kitchen. The two girls had the room to
themselves.

“Well,” asked Joan, “had you a great clatther with Mr. Dodd?”

“Oh, great!” said Deirdre, thinking how disappointed Joan would be if
she knew how little clatthering they did.

“Maybe ye might make a match of it yet?” Joan said hopefully.

“I wouldn’t say so,” said Deirdre. “I fancy ‘Tommy doesn’t care much
about me, except to be talking to.”

“That fellow never cared about anyone,” said Joan. “Only himself and
his monkey nuts.”

But Deirdre couldn’t feel critical of him just then. She felt that the
memory of his abortive romance would be linked in her mind with the
bit of the night that had gone astray and nested in her; that she’d
always have a soft spot in her heart for the town and its people
because of that glimpse into their frustrated and lonely lives.

“Ah, Tommy is romantic enough when he gets the chance,” she said. “You
never heard about the girl he was living with in Dublin?”

“Living with in Dublin?” Joan said incredulously. “Tommy Dodd? You’re
not serious! Who was it?”

“Some girl he was in digs with. A university student, I suppose.”

“And he was living with her?”

“Oh, not openly, of course,” Deirdre said with regret. She could have
wished Tommy some experience less furtive, but she knew it was
impossible.

“Jesus!” Joan exclaimed. “I’d never trust a man again.”



A week passed and one wet afternoon Deirdre came in from school and
Joan gave her dinner in the parlor. It was cold there and there was no
fire. In the street she saw a father and son coming together at the
other side of the road, each of them sucking a ripe tomato. They
scarcely looked human.

“Mr. Dodd didn’t say when he was going to give the doctor the
chocolates?” asked Joan, turning as she reached the door.

“He never mentioned them,” said Deirdre. “Why? Are they there still?”

“The divil a stir out of them,” said Joan. “He’s laying his traps
well, but he might get a poacher’s welcome.”

“How’s that?”

“I heard the doctor was saying she’d fling them in his face if he as
much as opened his mouth to her,” Joan said in blood-curdling
tones. “But how does she know about them?” Deirdre asked in alarm.

“I suppose he told someone,” said Joan with a guilty air. “You don’t
think you were the only one he talked to about her, do you?”

That was precisely what Deirdre did think, and it gave her a nasty
shock to know that his words had been passed on. She had only just
begun to realize that in a town like ours, every remark starts a long
and successful career as a public event.

“She needn’t be so cocksure,” she grumbled with her mouth full. “He’s
a better man than she’s likely to get, even with her fifteen
thousand.”

“Is it fifteen thousand she have?” Joan asked in an awe-stricken
whisper, and Deirdre realized that she’d done it again. To live in a
town like ours you have to enunciate every word with an eye to its
ultimate effect, which is probably why so many people find it easier
to leave the town.

“If she had fifty Tommy Dodd would be too good for her,” she said
crossly.

“Too good for her?” gasped Joan. “And he with a fancy-woman in
Dublin?”

“But she knows nothing about that,” said Deirdre, now thoroughly
alarmed.

“Doesn’t she, indeed?” Joan said pityingly. “’Tisn’t because I
wouldn’t know it that others wouldn’t. Let me tell you, Deirdre,” she
went on, wagging a warning finger, “between the Post Office and the
bobbies, there’s very little that isn’t known in this town. How well I
could meet a woman this morning that could tell me where Celia
Johnson’s baby is after being put out to nurse, and I’ll engage Celia
Johnson thinks that no one knows she had a baby at all. He’d better
mind himself. There’s plenty of influential people were put out of
business for less.”

Deirdre finished her dinner in complete depression. Tommy was
certainly going to be ruined, and it would be all her fault. She could
never realize that others wouldn’t look at things as she did; and that
what for her had been the one interesting thing about Tommy, the one
spot of brilliant color in the gray bogland of his life, might be
murder to others. Worse than murder, in fact, because there was at
least one notorious murderer on the town council, and people fell over
themselves trying to conciliate him. But love, of course, was
different. There was no money in love. And the worse of it was that
any time now Tommy might find out from the doctor how she had betrayed
what he probably regarded as his most intimate confidences. The only
thing she could think of, in her desperation, was to try and keep him
away from the doctor.

That evening, when he came into the parlor, she encouraged him to talk
in his usual way about the townspeople. Poor man, he didn’t know the
sort of things the townspeople were saying about him now!

“You didn’t propose to the doctor yet, Tommy?” she asked, taking the
bull by the horns.

“The who?” Tommy asked with a start.

“The doctor.”

“No,” Tommy said without undue depression. “I’m in no great hurry.”

“Sure, of course you’re not,” Deirdre agreed with a real
relief. “You’d want to think a lot before you did a thing like that?”

“Why did you ask?” he inquired.

“I was only wondering was she the right sort for you.”

“Is that so?” he asked. “Now, what makes you think she isn’t,
Deirdre?”

“I suppose it’s just that I’m getting to know you better,” said
Deirdre. “Sometimes, you get very false impressions of people. It just
struck me that you’d probably want someone more domesticated.”

“You might be right,” he conceded, and in the same breath: “Do you
like chocolates?”

She could hardly believe in her own good fortune. It would be a real
achievement to get the knife out of the child’s hands before he did
himself any damage.

“Love them,” she said with a smile.

“I have some in my room,” said Tommy, and went out with great strides
and took the stairs three at a time. When he returned he handed her
the box of chocolates as though it were a gun.

“Go on with what you were saying,” he said.

“I don’t know should I,” she said thoughtfully, struggling with the
box, though in fact nothing but an earthquake would have stopped
her. “But, you know, Tommy, I have a sort of feeling that you’re not
half as calculating as you think.”

“Who said I thought anything of the kind?” Tommy retorted indignantly.

“You do, Tommy,” she said flatly. “You think you’re the smartest crook
in this town, and you’re not. You have a much finer nature than you
realize. If you married a woman like that, you’d want to cut your
throat inside six months.”

“I’d be more likely to cut hers,” said Tommy with a chuckle.

“You wouldn’t, Tommy,” Deirdre said gravely. “You see, in your heart
and soul, you’re really an idealist. You can’t help it. You ought to
have married that girl in Dublin—Elsie What’s-her-name.”

“Begor, I ought not,” said Tommy with grave enjoyment.

“You ought, Tommy,” said Deirdre with finality. “Whatever you may
think now, the girl had courage. You don’t want to admit it, because
you know you treated her badly.”

“Oh, indeed, I did nothing of the sort,” Tommy said with conviction.

“Ah, Tommy,” Deirdre cried impatiently, “why do you be always denying
the better part of your nature? You know yourself you treated her
badly, whatever disagreement you may have had with her. You don’t want
to do the decent, manly thing even when you know you ought to. That
girl might have had a child.”

“There was no danger.”

“There’s always danger. Anyway, you ought to meet her again; even to
talk to her. I think you’d find you looked at the whole thing
differently now. I can’t help feeling, Tommy, that Elsie was the only
real thing in your whole life; that all the rest of it, your life
here, and your plotting and planning with the Ku Klux Klan, doesn’t
mean any more to you than dreaming. Do you understand me, Tommy? She
was the _only_ real thing.”

“Begor, I hope not,” he said with a laugh, striking his knee.

“Why not?”

“Because there’s no such woman,” he said with a guffaw.

“But you told me yourself, Tommy.”

“Ah, surely you can understand a joke?”

“That’s a queer sort of joke,” grumbled Deirdre, so shaken by this
fresh revelation that she couldn’t even be certain of her own original
impression of his sincerity.

“What’s queer about it? ’Twould be damn queer if there was any
truth in it, if I went round doing that sort of thing, making an idiot
of myself. ’Tis all very well in storybooks, Deirdre, but it won’t do,
girl, it won’t do.”

“’Twould be no joke for you if someone went and repeated it,”
Deirdre said shortly, still incensed at the suggestion that she had
mistaken a joke for a confession.

“No one would believe them, girl,” said Tommy, but his face lost some
of its glow.

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Deirdre said stiffly. “Plenty of
influential people were put out of business for less.”

She hardly knew that she was quoting Joan, but Tommy recognized his
master’s voice. He might know little about love-making but he knew a
lot about small towns and their inhabitants.

“Anyway, I didn’t say it to anyone only you,” he said humbly. “Will
you marry me, Deirdre?”

“Ah, will I what?” she snapped at this fresh shock.

“Marry me? You know I never gave a damn for another girl only you. I’m
telling you no lies. Ask anyone you like.”

“But didn’t you tell me yourself in this very room only a couple of
weeks ago that ‘twas the doctor you wanted to marry?” she cried
angrily.

“Ah, for God’s sake!” exclaimed Tommy. “You don’t mean you took that
seriously too. I couldn’t be bothered with the old doctor. She hasn’t
a brain in her head. You were the only one I ever met that I respected
enough to ask.”

“But, Tommy,” she cried almost in tears, “you said you wanted to marry
her for the fifteen thousand.”

Tommy looked at her in real surprise and consternation.

“And you took that seriously?” he exclaimed. “Do you know, Deirdre,
I’m surprised at you. I declare to God I thought better of you. I’d
have thought a woman of your discernment would know that I wasn’t the
sort to marry for money. If I wanted to do that I could have done it
years ago. Anyway, she hasn’t fifteen thousand.”

“Tommy,” Deirdre said desperately, “you don’t mean that was all lies
too.”

“I don’t know why you call it lies,” Tommy said indignantly. “We have
to say something. It seems to me there are a lot of misunderstandings.
Anyway, will you marry me now?”

“I will not,” snapped Deirdre ungraciously.

“Why not?” he shouted with real anger.

“Because you’re too young.”

“Too young? I’m fifteen years older than you.”

“You’re old enough to have sense,” she retorted, picking up her
handbag and strutting to the door. She felt hopelessly undignified.
“Oh, God, for the age of the sagas!” she thought, and reaching the
door, she broke down. “Ah, Tommy, what did you want to spoil it all
for?” she wailed. “A fortnight ago I’d have jumped at you, but how the
blazes could I marry you now? It’s too ridiculous. Too ridiculous!”


(1946)
Source: Collected Stories, 1981