The Grip of the Geraghtys

1

Timmy McGovern was a born boon companion, though, as his friend Tony
Dowse said, very excitable. He was a big Rabelaisian man with a
handsome, laughing face and a lock of dark hair that streamed over his
right eye. He was the local representative of a Dublin hardware firm,
and a great success at his job because there were few salesmen as
welcome in the little West Cork towns where you can live for a year
without meeting anyone to talk to. He knew all the lonesome little
shopkeepers and officials, talked Rabelaisian or Voltairean to them as
the occasion required; and they were sorry to see him go and would have
felt it a slight on him not to give him an order, all the more because
he didn’t really care whether they did or not.

He was married and lived with his wife and two children in a neat
little house on College Road. She was one of the Geraghtys of
Glenameena; a neat, bird-like little woman who looked very small beside
her husband. Timmy looked big whatever side you took him from. His face
was big and his body was big, so big that his feet would hardly support
it, and he had to walk with small, mincing steps to keep his
balance. When you saw his scale best was when someone drove him home
from the pub late at night and he walked into the neat little front
room, all flushed and with his dark hair mussed, bubbling over with
talk. Then the little front room with the two leather chairs and the
two china dogs that balanced them, and the Paul Henry print over the
tiled fireplace, seemed to contract and shrink, and everything in it
tried to get out of Timmy’s way though it only got in it worse; and he
stumbled over the rug, knocked down a side table and caught his hip on
the arm of a chair—not with the drink only but with the terrible size
he seemed to have grown sitting at his ease in a bar.

Timmy was most at ease in a bar, though again, as Tony Dowse said, he
was excitable. It was the fault of his generosity of spirit. You met
Timmy for the first time, and he told you stories and flattered you
with his attention, and when you separated you felt you had made a
friend for life. But five minutes later Timmy would meet your worst
enemy, and flatter him with his attention, and tell him funny stories
against you, and next time you met him Timmy would act cagey because he
was wondering how much you might have heard till you wondered was he a
friend at all. He was, as Tony Dowse knew, only he gave himself too
readily to everyone and the good intention got lost. Tony didn’t really
give himself to anyone; he had tried it fifteen years before with a
woman and given it up after a few months as a bad job.

It seemed that Timmy couldn’t give up. After their years of friendship
Tony knew the pattern as well as he knew some poem he’d learned in
third book. Timmy would meet some girl who was a bit out of the
ordinary, and within five minutes he would be performing like a
peacock, talking Rabelaisian to rid her of her inhibitions and
Voltairean to rid her of her scruples, singing folk songs to rouse her
passions and doing Irish step-dancing to make her laugh. Next evening
when Tony and himself went for their walk round College Road which
terminated at the Western Star, Timmy would be talking darkly and
secretively about the horrors of his married life.

‘You were always the wise one, Tony,’ he would say admiringly. ‘You
knew when you had enough and you quit.’

‘I did not quit, Timmy,’ Tony would say, lifting his head in a long,
refined wail. ‘The circumstances were entirely different.’

‘Of course they were different,’ Timmy would say
excitedly. ‘Circumstances are always different, but the feeling is the
same. A man needs intellectual companionship.’

‘Oh, now, you could go farther and fare worse,’ said Tony, who had a
sort of sympathy for Elsie McGovern.

‘I know, I know. I’m not complaining about Elsie. She was always a good
wife according to her lights, and I’m grateful for it, but there was
never any real understanding between us. Elsie is a peasant and a
peasant doesn’t understand general ideas.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong,’ Tony would say, flapping his big soft
hands in protest. ‘Every woman understands general ideas till she has a
man where she wants him. Then the general ideas go out the window. It’s
only human nature.’

‘No, Tony,’ Timmy said fiercely. ‘It is not human nature. You’re
suggesting now that there’s no such thing as an intellectual woman at
all.’

‘All I’m suggesting is that they’re not intellectual to their
husbands. To me they’re all just women.’

Tony knew the pattern, only it sometimes struck him that it might be
getting worse as Timmy got older. The Twomey girl was the worst
example to date. To begin with she was twenty years younger than
Timmy, and on top of that she didn’t seem to have any inhibitions or
scruples at all. She even managed to spend a week in West Cork with
him with nobody the wiser. West Cork was another of the things Tony
Dowse had got over a long time ago. He had done a walk there one
summer with Timmy and decided that the natives were all savages and
that the publichouses were too far dispersed, but Timmy had never got
over it. He still talked about the long white winding roads, though
Tony remembered that after a mile Timmy’s feet started to give him
trouble, and of the wonderful peasants, though only a week or two
before he had been denouncing his poor decent wife as one. He was a
man without a stitch of logic in him. And here he was now, hinting
darkly that even Cork wasn’t big enough for him, A married man with
two children, blathering away about the beauties of London and New
York.

‘I made a great mistake, Tony,’ Timmy said in his eager way. ‘There’s a
certain age when you have to make up your mind about things, once and
for all. You were clever, of course. You made up your mind a long time
ago.’

‘I did not make up my mind!’ Tony wailed. ‘Don’t go on with that sort
of flattery. There was no making up my mind at all. It was made up for
me.’

‘Mine is being made up for me,’ Timmy said darkly. ‘The trouble is that
even Dublin isn’t big enough.’

‘If you’re thinking about what I’m thinking of, no place is big
enough,’ Tony said, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

‘London is, Tony,’ Timmy said firmly. ‘That’s the mistake we make in
this country. It’s too small for us. We’re an emotional race, Tony, and
we need a place we can expand in, like London or Paris or New York.’

‘Only a couple of weeks ago it was West Cork,’ Tony groaned. “‘You’re
never consistent, Timmy.’

‘But that’s a different thing, Tony,’ Timmy explained excitedly. ‘It’s
Nature, but it’s not civilisation. This place has neither nature nor
civilisation. At least in a big city you can have civilisation.’

‘Meaning you can live with anyone you like,’ said Tony. ‘You’re an
awful romantic man, Timmy McGovern. You’re always getting yourself into
impossible situations.’

‘Ah, but this is different, Tony.’

‘So was the business of the nurse—what was her name?’

‘Oh, it’s not alike,’ Timmy said irritably. That was the worst of Tony
Dowse as a boon companion. He was a born field-worker, a man who
remembered everything and compared everything and never once made the
great breakthrough that would enable him to recognise a unique
discovery. There had, in fact, been something like a scandal about the
nurse, a great riding woman who had taken Timmy to the Horse Show
where she had wanted him to buy a horse for her because it looked so
lonely, and afterwards quarrelled with him because he had taken the
dealer aside and said she was tight and had no money anyway.

‘No, I know it’s not alike,’ Tony drawled sadly. ‘All women are
different at first, but they end up just the same. I keep on telling
you but you never listen to me. What’s the trouble this time?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing,’ said Timmy in a way that showed there was
something seriously wrong. ‘Only her sister came across some letters I
wrote her.’

‘Is that the girl that goes with Chris Nolan in the Income Tax office?’

‘That’s what I mean by saying Cork is too small,’ Timmy said, wincing.

‘Any place would be too small that had that fellow in it,’ Tony said
with a curl of the lip. ‘Did she show them to her father?’

‘That’s what I don’t know, Tony. I wish I did.’

‘Because you know he could make trouble.’

‘Why would he make trouble?’ Timmy asked angrily. ‘The girl is old
enough to know her own mind.’

Tony shut up suddenly. He had been on the point of breaking into one
of his usual generalisations and saying ‘All women are of an age to
know their own minds’ but stopped because he realised that Timmy
wasn’t. Quite suddenly he felt sorry for the girl, a thing that hadn’t
happened him in twenty years. He knew Timmy’s style of letter-writing
when he was in an excitable state, and realised that all the stuff
about the long white winding roads and the wonderful peasants was the
material that had composed Timmy’s excitable unsyntactical letters to
young May Twomey. He went home, thinking gloomily how long ago he had
dreamed himself that somewhere there might be a nice girl who felt the
way he did about Communism and the immortality of the soul. He hadn’t
met one, to his knowledge, but maybe May Twomey was dreaming of a man
who felt about things the way she did and who would talk to her
sensibly in the intervals of mussing her up.

Timmy went home, even gloomier, because of what he had admitted to his
conscious mind and wondering what sort of old devil May’s father might
turn out to be. May herself said he was a great card and would be
delighted to know they were living together—a thing he had never had
the chance of doing himself—but Timmy sometimes thought that in her
radiant optimism she tended to make mistakes about the nature of
fathers. He hadn’t passed on her views to Tony because he knew Tony
would only say sourly ‘All fathers are alike.’ Everything was alike to
Tony. As Timmy had once said to him, his epitaph should be ‘It’s all
the same.’

Next morning Timmy found he didn’t want to go to work. It was a thing
that had happened to him before, and it always filled him with
wonder—how peaceful his little home on the College Road with its two
nice children, two nice chairs and two nice china dogs could seem and
how cruel and turbulent the world outside. When he did venture out
towards eleven o’clock he did not take his usual route into town by
the Western Road. Instead he walked down past the Protestant
Cathedral, intending to cross the river into the South Mall, but as he
turned the corner he saw a man coming up past St. Marie of the Isles’
Schools whose build and gait seemed suspiciously familiar. On the spur
of the moment he went into the cathedral. He had never been in the
Protestant Cathedral before and it impressed him. It looked just like
any other church. There was no one around, but it occurred to him that
if anyone arrived he would be in the position of a casual tourist, and
that might mean he would have to offer explanations, so he dropped on
his knees and pretended to be praying. At least he began by
pretending, as a good Voltairean should, but the familiar attitude
produced a totally unfamiliar response, and before he knew where he
was, he was praying like mad to the Protestant God that nothing
serious would happen.

In a curious way it comforted him and he went along to his office,
amused by his unexpected piety and thinking what a good story it would
make when he met Tony. He dictated a few letters to his secretary, and
when she had gone sat thinking about the nature of prayer.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t got very far with it when there was a knock at
the door, and there stood May’s sister, Joan. He had never met her, but
he knew her at once by the bold, determined Twomey look in her eyes. He
smiled; even if he was to be hanged Timmy could not have resisted
smiling at the hangman, and the effect would have been much the same.

‘I’m delighted to meet you, Miss Twomey,’ he said.

‘’Tis scarcely mutual,’ she said in the cutting tone he had noticed once
or twice in May when someone had annoyed her. ‘I believe you have some
letters from my sister.’

‘Letters?’ he asked, as though he was hard of hearing.

‘Yes. Letters from her to you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Timmy said, getting on his dignity.

‘Oh, yes, you do,’ she said. ‘You see, I have letters from you to
her. And what’s more, Mr. McGovern,’ she added, tossing her head, ‘I
may as well warn you that I intend to use them.’

‘I’m sorry you feel like this about it, Miss Twomey,’ he said
nervously.

‘And how the hell do you think I should feel about it?’ she asked, and
this time she actually put her hands on her hips like a market-woman,
a gesture Timmy had never before associated with a well-brought-up
girl.  ‘I think you must be out of your mind,’ she added
judicially. ‘A married man with two children, writing letters like
that to a schoolgirl!’

‘I can explain that, Miss Twomey,’ he said, his eyes clouding. ‘I don’t
think you’d be quite so hard if you knew the sort of life I lead. I’m
not complaining about my wife, of course, but there was never any
understanding between us. When I met May I knew she was the only girl
in the world for me. I love May, you know,’ he went on with a faint,
sad smile. ‘I’d die for her this minute.’

‘Thanks, Mr. McGovern,’ Joan Twomey said saucily, ‘but at the moment
what she needs is someone who’ll live for her, which is the reason I’m
here. I came to get her letters, and to warn you that the next time
you meet her or write to her I’m going straight up to your parish
priest with the whole lot of them, and I think you know what the
result of that will be.’

Timmy knew. At least, for the moment he thought he knew. Given a bit of
time, he might have realised that the result needn’t be as serious as
all that, but the girl wasn’t giving him time, and the prospect of
explaining himself to the parish priest in his own home was more than
he liked to contemplate. That is the worst of out-and-out idealism; it
tends to exaggerate the obstacles.

So Timmy gave in, and handed over May’s letters. Only for the time
being, of course, just to give himself time to think. It was only ten
minutes later, when he had time to think, that it dawned on him that
handing over her love letters to her sister just like that might be
something he would find hard to justify to a romantic girl like May. A
half an hour later when the fact had really sunk in it struck him that
it was something he might never be allowed to explain. Romantic girls
were like that. They expected you to be butter to them and iron to the
rest of the world. But the trouble was that unless a man was iron to
romantic women, as Tony Dowse was, he could never be anything but
butter to anybody.

He didn’t eat any lunch and went to bed. He told Elsie that he wasn’t
feeling well, which was true. By night-time she was alarmed and wanted
to call up Joe Hobson, Timmy’s doctor, but Timmy didn’t yet want him,
because he knew that Joe would already have heard talk and would have
made up his mind about the illness and what he believed would be wrong,
because Timmy felt that his fever and pains had nothing particular to
do with May Twomey. Obviously it was something he had been sickening
for. That was the worst of living in a small place like Cork. Even your
own doctor tended to examine you on the basis of gossip.

So Elsie sent for Tony Dowse instead, and Tony arrived with a bottle
of whiskey, and the two old friends went over the thing again. Timmy
didn’t need to hedge with Tony, who knew all about the business
already, and didn’t take it as lightly as Hobson would.

‘Ah, you overdo it, Timmy,’ he said, showing his teeth in his sad
sheepdog smile.

‘I know I overdo it, Tony,’ Timmy said impatiently. ‘I’m overdoing it
these twenty years. But it’s no use telling yourself you overdo it when
you’re built that way.’

‘Not much, no,’ Tony agreed mournfully ‘We set ourselves on certain
tracks and we have to go on. You’re right there. It’s not going to be
easy to change. You should say it to Joe.’

‘But what will Joe say?’ asked Timmy. ‘He’ll only tell me I must be a
man. It’s easy to be a man if you never look at the side of the road a
woman walks on, the way he does. And I can’t talk to anyone else. He’d
be hurt.’

‘He would,’ agreed Tony. ‘He’s very sensitive about things like
that. Ah, well, we’ll hope for the best.’

But Timmy couldn’t hope for the best. He knew damn well the pains were
only getting worse and that he couldn’t sleep, and all Joe Hobson said
when at last he had to be called in was that Timmy needed a holiday in
France. All Hobson could suggest whenever he was at a loss was
champagne and a little holiday in France. Bachelor remedies, both, and
quite unsuitable for Timmy’s lowered condition.

The funny thing, as Timmy discovered, was that the worse he got, the
more resigned he became, and the more grateful for the quiet service
Elsie gave him, getting the kids out to the neighbours and sitting
downstairs with a paper till he signalled for something. He realised it
all again, how beautiful his little home was and how devoted his
family, and he only regretted that he couldn’t do more for them. He
could now see quite clearly what would happen when he died. The
insurance was insufficient; the little house would bring in only a
couple of thousand that would not keep them for more than a few years,
and then it would be up to the Geraghtys—a hard, hard lot!

And then, when he had convinced himself that he was really dying, the
great scheme flashed upon his mind. He applied for a new life
insurance policy for three times the amount of the present one. If he
was really dying he would get the straight word, not the careful
evasions of Joe Hobson and his wife. If he wasn’t he would get the
straight word too.

The summons to the insurance company’s doctor on the South Mall shook
him, but he got up, bathed and took a taxi into town. He had a long
time to wait for the doctor, who was a silly old man and looked where
he should not have looked if he was a gentleman, and then refused to
tell Timmy the verdict. ‘You’ll hear from the insurance company in due
course, Mr. McGovern,’ he said firmly and Timmy went home to bed again
in despair. He knew now what the answer was.

The answer from the insurance company came three days later and Timmy
opened it with trembling hands. After that, he got up, dressed himself
and went into town. It was a Saturday morning, and the boys were
gathered in Casey’s pub in Patrick Street, so Timmy told them the whole
story of the insurance policy, beginning with the pain in the chest and
ending with the insurance company’s letter, accepting him as a good
risk, and only Tony Dowse failed to laugh because he knew where the
story should really begin and he couldn’t help being sorry for a
romantic girl who perhaps still wondered whether there wasn’t a man who
would think the way she did about Communism and the immortality of the
soul.


2

Then Elsie fell ill, and everybody but herself knew it wouldn’t be for
long. A night nurse came as well as her sister, Kate, from Glenameena,
who looked after the children. Kate was taller than Elsie, a
good-looking woman of thirty five or so. She had always tried to boss
Elsie, and still did, though Elsie, for all her muddled weakness, had
the stubbornness of her kind. Kate had warned Elsie not to marry
Timmy, and Elsie had married him just the same. Now they disagreed
about how the children should be brought up, and Elsie still continued
to disregard her advice. In fact, they disagreed almost about
everything, and Elsie knew she was very poorly indeed when she
consented to Kate’s coming at all. She said Kate was a born
trouble-maker.

It wasn’t so much that Kate was a trouble-maker. She was a clever woman
who loved power, and of course, she hadn’t been in the house a week
before she found out about Timmy and the nurse. The nurse, Josie Dwyer,
was a pretty, cheerful, conscientious girl with great inclinations
towards the intellectual life, and she had never met anyone so profound
as Timmy before. As for Timmy, he was certain he had never met before
such a mixture of gaiety and gravity. She had agreed to marry him after
Elsie died, and had even let him make love to her, not for the fun of
it, but because she felt the purity of their intentions justified
it. The children liked her too.

But Elsie had her own doubts which had nothing to do with Kate’s. She
had discovered in conversation that Nurse Dwyer’s last patient had
died, a thing Elsie couldn’t conceive of under proper medical
attention. She complained to Kate that she was sleeping too heavily and
woke each morning with a bad headache.

‘I don’t think she can have much experience,’ she said. ‘I’m not as
well at all as I was before she came.’

Elsie was a stubborn woman. Without telling Kate she held her sleeping
pill in the corner of her mouth till the nurse’s back was turned and
then slipped it out and under the pillow. Later, Nurse Dwyer came back
and looked at her before lying down herself. Elsie waited for her to
give some indication of dozing off before she took the pill. For some
reason she wasn’t sleeping easily without it.

Later, the door opened quietly and without opening her eyes she knew it
was Timmy. She would have welcomed the chance of a chat with him but
she couldn’t have it without revealing the trick she had played on the
nurse, so she kept her eyes shut. Even that way she could feel him
looking at her from the end of the bed.

‘How is she?’ he whispered anxiously.

‘What do you expect?’ replied Nurse Dwyer in the same tone.

‘Isn’t she making a great fight for it?’ he asked.

‘She might hang on like that for another couple of months.’ whispered
the nurse in a professional tone that sent a shudder through Elsie. It
was like hearing youself sentenced to death in a dream: the voices had
taken a remote and mysterious quality like voices in a dream.

‘She’s sleeping well, though,’ said Timmy.

‘That’s only the moma: said the nurse. ‘I only wish I could give her
sister a dose.’

‘Kate!’ whispered Timmy. ‘What did she do to you?’

‘She’s watching us the whole time. You’d want to be careful.’

And then Elsie opened her eyes and stared at them with bitter
accusation. Now it was Timmy who felt he was in a dream, and he gave an
awkward laugh.

‘Elsie,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you were awake.’

‘Call Kate for me,’ Elsie said shivering.

‘Now, you don’t want to wake Kate up at this hour,’ he said pleadingly.

‘Call Kate for me!’ she cried, her voice sharp with hysteria. There was
the sound of footsteps upstairs and they knew Kate had heard.

‘Ah, she codded us nicely,’ Nurse Dwyer said crossly and rose to put on
her dressing gown. As she tied the girdle Kate came in and paused
dramatically.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘What did I say about that sleeping thing?’ Elsie asked shrilly. ‘They
were trying to poison me.’

‘We were not trying to poison you,’ Nurse Dwyer said
disgustedly. ‘Youll wake the children if you go on like that.’

‘Oh, I’ll wake more than the children. I’ll show ye up. Saying I might
hang on for a couple of months. Ye thought ye were rid of me.’

‘Kate, it was all a misunderstanding,’ Timmy said gravely, trying to
master the situation. ‘I called in on my way to bed to see how Elsie
was. I didn’t know she was awake, and I talked to Nurse Dwyer. I might
have done the same with you.’

‘Hardly the same, Timmy,’ Kate said with a cynical smile. “You never
spent a weekend in Glengarriffe with me.’

‘What did I tell you?’ Nurse Dwyer commented with a shrug. ‘I knew she
was spying.’

‘Oh, it didn’t need much spying,’ Kate replied without rancour. Indeed,
she felt none. Her rancour was reserved for occasions when she felt
inferior, and now she was mistress of the situation. ‘I think you’d
better leave Elsie to me,’ she added, holding the door open for
them. ‘My room is empty—if you need a second room.’

Next morning while Kate was making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen,
Timmy came in, his fat face puffed with sleeplessness.

‘I have something to say to you, Kate,’ he said in an excited voice.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t tell you the whole truth last night, Kate.’

‘I hardly thought you did, Timmy.’

‘Neither you nor anyone else knows the way things were between Elsie
and me,’ he said sternly. ‘Elsie was always a good wife, but there was
no understanding between us. When I met Josie Dwyer I knew she was the
only woman in the world for me. I’d die for that girl, Kate.’

‘She can’t stay here another day,’ Kate said promptly.

‘She doesn’t intend to,’ said Timmy.

‘I wouldn’t allow it,’ Kate said peremptorily. ‘I’m not saying there
was anything wrong with the stuff the nurse gave Elsie, but people will
talk.’

‘There was nothing wrong with the stuff, Kate, and you know it,’
shouted Timmy. ‘But she wouldn’t stay here anyway, after what’s
happened. I’m driving her back to her digs now.’

After driving Josie home, Timmy called on Tony and they spent the
afternoon in a pub, discussing the situation. Tony was full of
alarm. It was beyond belief the number of young women who could be
taken in that way by Timmy and risk scandal and misery for him, but
Tony was beginning to doubt if any of them would ever get any benefit
from it.

‘You’re getting worse, Timmy,’ he said at last, shaking his head sadly.

‘I’m getting desperate,’ said Timmy.

“You’re getting worse,’ said Tony. ‘You’re hitting wild.’

‘But I have to hit wild, Tony. This is my last chance. It’s Josie or
suicide.’

‘Yes, and last year it was May or suicide, and the year before that
there was the other nurse—the one that wanted to buy the lonely
horse—but you’re taking bigger and bigger risks.’

‘But there’s no risk in this , Tony,’ Timmy said in anguish. ‘I was
wrong about May Twomey. I admit that. It wouldn’t have done. But now,
though I’m sorry for poor Elsie, the future is clear.’

‘The future is never clear,’ said Tony mournfully. ‘If the police start
enquiring into Elsie’s death, it’ll take more than a few soft words to
put suspicion off you. Take my advice, and whatever you do, don’t see
that girl again until Elsie is dead and buried.’

Timmy saw what he meant, and agreed that he always gave good advice,
but even Tony didn’t know what hell the house was between a dying woman
suspecting she was being poisoned, Kate with her good-humoured scorn
and the terrified children, creeping up and downstairs. Inside a week
Timmy had spent another night with Josie. Tony knew he had it bad.

A few days before she died Elsie called the children.

‘I’m going on a long journey,’ she began.

‘I wouldn’t speak to them like that, dear,’ said Kate brightly. ‘Mummy
isn’t well,’ she told the children. ‘She means she may have to go for a
little holiday.’

‘Woman, can’t I even speak to my own children and I dying?’ Elsie
asked angrily, and then went on to tell them what sort their Daddy was
and what sort of woman he would bring into the house when she was
gone. She warned them to remember her, and to remember that if they
were in any trouble they were to go to their Aunt or their Uncle. Kate
stood by, with tears in her eyes, thinking how much nicer she could
have put it all.

At the funeral people avoided Timmy, all but a few old cronies like
Tony who got him away quickly and quietly back to the house. Kate was
already there with her bags packed. Timmy took fright at once. He
showed the others into the little sitting room and talked to her in the
hall.

‘You’re not going, Kate?’ he asked, and she smiled at his simplicity.

‘I don’t think my father would like me to stay on any longer than I
could help,’ she said.

‘I thought you might do it for the children’s sake,’ he said. ‘At least
until I can make other arrangements.’

‘Only until then?’ she asked sweetly.

‘You know what I said and I mean it,’ Timmy said, at the end of his
rope. ‘I’m not apologising to you or anyone else for that.’

‘Very well,’ she said shortly. ‘But you’d better make them soon.’

A few nights later Timmy was sitting with the whiskey long after Kate
had gone to bed and heard a loud knock on the door. He decided it was
probably Tony, and wondered why the blazes he didn’t tap on the window
as he usually did. But when he went out to the door he found no one
there. The street was empty. He stood and listened to see if he could
detect any sound of laughter from a group of corner boys, and then
closed the door behind him with a puzzled air. Kate’s door opened and
she looked at him down the well of the stairs.

‘Was that someone knocking?’ she asked in surprise.

‘No, Kate,’ he said with a reassuring smile. ‘Only some kids playing on
the street, that’s all.’

She looked at him doubtfully and turned on her heel. He could see she
wasn’t convinced. As he went upstairs he distinctly heard the knock
again, but this time it was quiet as though whoever it was was tiring
of the joke. Apparently Kate did not hear it, and Timmy affected not to
do so either. All the same it made him depressed. 

He was discussing it in the pub with Tony a week later, and Tony
wrinkled up his nose in distaste. He mightn’t be a Voltairean of
Timmy’s kind, but all the same he had a deep respect for reason. He
said there was no such thing as a ghost.

‘I know damn well there’s no such thing,’ Timmy said excitedly. ‘All
I’m asking is how do you explain it.’

‘I’m not trying to explain it, Timmy,’ Tony said wearily. ‘Call it
hysteria if you like!’

‘Hysteria?’ echoed Timmy indignantly. ‘I was sitting at home the other
night while Kate was at the pictures, and I distinctly heard the key in
the front door and the feet going up the stairs. It was ten minutes
after before Kate came in from the pictures.’

“And how did she get out again?’ Tony asked cynically.

“You think it was Kate?’

‘Why didn’t you go out yourself and ask her?’

‘Because I was petrified,’ Timmy said. ‘That’s why I didn’t go out. I
went upstairs after and there was nobody there. I tell you, Tony, there
are things you can’t explain.’

‘There are things you can’t explain for the time being, Timmy,’ Tony
said patiently. ‘There’s nothing you can’t explain in the long run. The
noise was probably next door. These modern houses—you wouldn’t know
whose wife you were fighting with. You’re a terrible man, Timmy, and
you’re getting worse. First it was women you couldn’t live without; now
it’s ghosts. If you ask me, the women are only ghosts, and the ghosts
are women.’

In the middle of the night Timmy was wakened by shrieks from the
children’s room. He rushed in and found the two kids in hysterics.

‘What is it now?’ he asked.

‘Mummy was here, daddy, mummy was here!’ they whimpered.

‘Ah, ye were only dreaming,’ he said, pretending to laugh. ‘Mummy
wasn’t here. Mummy’s gone away.’

‘But she’s back, daddy,’ sobbed the little girl. ‘She was here! Tommy
saw her too.’

Kate came in with a suspicious air. 

‘What is it now?’ she asked shortly.

‘They think they saw their mother,’ Timmy said despairingly. ‘I don’t
know what to say. I’m distracted.’

‘Ah, they were dreaming,’ she snapped scornfully. ‘You’re getting as
bad as they are. Go to bed and leave them to me.’

Tim went out. He heard Kate talking to the children in a motherly
tone. As she passed his door he was lying on the bed smoking.

‘Kate!’ he called.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘What am I going to do?’

‘I told you already what my uncle Dan did.’

‘What was that?’

‘He had Mass said in the house.’

‘But didn’t it lower the value of the house?’ he asked nervously.

‘Why would it lower the value of the house? If he didn’t do it, it
would have no value at all. Take my advice, Timmy McGovern, and see
Father MacCarthy in the morning. If you don’t, I won’t spend another
night here. That’s my last word.’

Next morning Timmy felt as though he had been very drunk the night
before. At night it was very hard to believe in Voltaire, but in the
morning light it was harder still not to. All the same he shaved,
dressed and went to the presbytery to see Father McCarthy. He and the
parish priest were old acquaintances. It was even said that once when
Timmy went to Confession to him the parish priest could be heard
laughing all over the church. Now, he did not feel so much like
laughing.

‘You’ll think I’m mad when you hear what I came about,’ he said.

‘That would depend on how much I was going to get out of it,’ Father
McCarthy said shrewdly. ‘It wouldn’t be a marriage by any chance?’

‘Not a marriage,’ said Timmy. ‘A ghost!’

‘That seems to me a clear case for the married state,’ the priest said
gravely. ‘Jokes aside, though, will you have a little drop?’ 

‘Who told you I went in for that sort of thing?’ Timmy asked, braving
it out. ‘You have spies everywhere. Of course, I don’t believe in that
sort of thing, but women find it upsetting.’

‘They do, they do,’ said Father McCarthy, measuring him out a full
glass. ‘You mean your sister-in-law, I suppose? I met her at the
funeral. She must be getting on a bit now.’

‘Thirty five,’ said Timmy.

‘As old as that!’ said Father McCarthy. ‘So you have a ghost? It
happens, of course, it happens. But what does this one do?’

At that hour of the day with the sun shining outside in the priest’s
garden it was the most embarrassing story ever told by a true
Voltairean, and Timmy couldn’t help imagining the ugly curl that would
come on Tony’s long upper lip if he heard it, but the priest only grew
more interested as he went on.

‘Well, we may have to have Mass said there eventually,’ he said with a
sigh. ‘In the meantime, I'll look over the house myself. If three
o’clock would do you, I could call then.’

At three, when Timmy answered the priest’s knock he found him
examining the knocker.

‘Oh, nothing wrong, nothing wrong,’ he said, smiling brightly at
Timmy. ‘Only to make sure that it couldn’t happen accidentally.’

Then he closed the door behind him with a bang; opened it again, and
closed it gently, looking at the hinges. He seemed particularly
interested in the carpet which led down the stairs to the door, lifted
it in several places and slipped his hand underneath. Upstairs, he
looked out of all the bedroom windows, opened them and studied the
wall at either side.

‘I think we’ll give it a week and see how ’twill develop, Timmy,’ he
said. ‘’Twouldn’t surprise me if you heard no more of it. I'll have a
word with your sister-in-law before I go, just to put her mind at
rest.’

‘Miss Geraghty, I’d like a word with you,’ he said amiably as he was
going out. He led her into the little front room and closed the door
behind him. ‘You know, I wouldn’t like that man to be driven too far,’
he said, cocking his head at her. ‘His nerves aren’t all that good.’

She stood back with folded arms and faced him with a complacent smile.

‘That was why I insisted on his seeing you, Father,’ she said
earnestly.

‘You did right, Miss Geraghty,’ he said. ‘Timmy is a man I’m very fond
of, and I wouldn’t like to see him upset. I don’t think he will be
upset from now on. By the way, I suppose you wouldn’t know who put the
fresh oil on the knocker?’

‘Was there fresh oil on the knocker, Father?’ she asked in
astonishment. ‘I never noticed it.’

‘You will if you look,’ he said. ‘Mind you, it’s only a drop but it
tells a lot. As I say, I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble with
this ghost. I hope not at any rate. If we do we may have to take
serious steps, and I know you wouldn’t like that, Miss Geraghty.’

But the priest had interfered too late. Timmy’s nerve was broken, and
when he and Kate got married a couple of months later (no sooner,
indeed, than was advisable, according to gossip) Tony felt his nerve
was broken as well. All the time he had had the wild hope that there
might be some reality behind the shadows that Timmy pursued, but now
he knew that they too were only figments of the imagination.

‘Women and ghosts!’ he said mournfully over his lonely drink in the
pub. ‘Isn’t that a man’s life for you?’