DON JUAN (RETIRED) One fine summer evening Joe French went into Casserly’s pub. Joe was a tall, well-built young man, an insurance agent by trade, with a broad, smooth, pleasant face; very pious and going just a shade bald in front. He dressed well, spoke well, and had never drifted into any of the sloppy ways of young men in Irish country towns. Barring one disappointment with a girl called Celia Goodwin, who had walked out on him and run off with a commercial traveller, his life had been uneventful enough. There were two people in the pub before him: the barman, Jimmy Matthews, and Spike Ward, the motor driver. They weren’t talking. Jimmy had his two elbows on the counter and was studying the daily paper; when Joe came in he looked up in a scared sort of way. Jimmy was the leader of the local Republicans, and it may have been that which gave him the air of something peeping out of a burrow. He was tall with a haggard face like a coffin, a rather modish mop of black hair going white at the temples, and a pair of pince-nez which gave him a cast-iron intellectual expression. Spike was sitting with his back to the window, wearing a shabby old bowler hat and a pair of riding breeches. It was nearly ten years since he'd given up the horse and car, but he still continued to dress the part. ‘’Tis hot, Mr. French,’ said Jimmy, rubbing his hands briskly as if he meant that it was cold, and cocking his ears for the order. ‘A pint, I suppose?’ ‘Oh, a pint, Jimmy,’ chuckled French, taking out his pipe. ‘Have one with me?’ ‘I never touch it, Mr. French,’ said Jimmy, leaning his two palms on the counter and bending nearly half-way across it. Jimmy was a man of the most ungainly attitudes. ‘I suppose you see enough of it,’ said French without rancour. ‘I see too much of it at times,’ said Jimmy candidly, readjusting the pince-nez. ‘I suppose you could never manage to finish that, Spike?’ asked French, giving a look at the motor driver who was sitting in front of an all-but-empty glass. Spike looked at it thoughtfully. ‘Hardly, Mr. French,’ he drawled, without a trace of a smile on his lean and melancholy visage. ‘That was one of the two things my poor mother warned me against.’ ‘And I suppose the other was women?’ said French with a grin, giving Jimmy the wink to fill them up. ‘Ah, how did you know?’ drawled Spike wonderingly. ‘Oh, my Lord!’ said Jimmy in disgust. ‘Is that blooming man talking about women again? ‘Mr. French,’ asked Spike reproachfully, ‘did I bring up the subject of women?’ ‘You thundering rogue,’ shouted Jimmy, busy with the beer-engine, ‘do you ever do anything else? Sitting there all day on your behind, bragging and boasting!’ ‘Bragging and boasting?’ gasped Spike on an ascending scale, as he raised his head feebly like a man coming up for air. ‘I said one couple of words to this gentleman here, and I’m accused of bragging and boasting!’ ‘Ah, what else is it?’ asked Jimmy impatiently. ‘And I wouldn’t mind,’ he added, in the candid tone of a factory hooter, ‘only that ’tis all blooming lies!’ ‘Go on!’ said Spike wonderingly, with a great air of interest as if only now was he discovering the full extent of Jimmy’s malice. ‘So I’m a liar as well? Is there anything else now while you're at it?’ ‘My sweet Lord!’ cried Jimmy, pointing to one corner of the bar. ‘Didn’t I hear you there last night, spinning yarns about the English lady up the Glen that you said wanted to bring you back to London with her?’ ‘And wasn’t I the fool?’ Spike asked plaintively, ‘not to do it instead of wasting the best years of my life in this misfortunate hole? Sure, there’s nothing in this country for anyone.’ ‘What a fool you were!’ cried Jimmy bitterly. ‘Getting them to pay for drinks for you! I only wish I could knock it down as easy.... Thanks, Mr. French.... And I wouldn’t mind,’ he added vigorously, ‘if you were a decent-looking man itself, but a little jackeen like you that’s only two hands higher than a duck.’ He flashed a joyous look at French and threw back his head with a loud guffaw. ‘Only two hands higher than a duck,’ he repeated, making an adroit half-turn to the till, turning his half-closed eyes reflectively to heaven while he did the sum and holding his fingers poised above the cash register as if he was going to perform a piano solo. ‘Now, don’t be personal,’ said Spike, rising slowly and with great dignity. ‘Thanks, Mr. French,’ said Jimmy. Then he twiddled at his pince-nez, folded his arms and looked Spike up and down. ‘You ought to be thoroughly ashamed of yourself,’ he said severely, ‘talking like that about a woman of birth and education.’ ‘Now,’ said Spike gravely, coming towards the counter, ‘there's the mistake you're always making. Birth have nothing to do with it.’ ‘What's the secret so, Spike?’ asked French. ‘Oh, education,’ said Jimmy, with another guffaw, toppling back against the shelves with his arms still folded. ‘Nor education either,’ said Spike severely. ‘A man might be able to talk Greek and Latin, and still not be able to entertain a society woman.’ ‘Ah, for God’s sake,’ shouted Jimmy in exasperation, shooing him off as if he were a straying hen, ‘what do you know about society women?’ ‘What do I know about society women?’ asked Spike, lifting his pint and studying it with a detached air. ‘I'll tell you. There’s as much difference between a society woman and any other sort of woman as there is between one pint and another.’ Then he lifted his glass politely and almost drained it. ‘Of course, there’s something in what you say,’ said French. ‘Some of these society women are rotten.’ ‘Oh, shocking, shocking,’ agreed Jimmy gravely. ‘They're what?’ asked Spike incredulously, putting down his glass and approaching French as if he hadn’t heard him properly. ‘What’s that you said?’ ‘Ah, you have only to look at the Sunday papers,’ said French. ‘Mr. French,’ said Spike imploringly, ‘I beg and beseech you, don’t mind what you read in the papers! You'll soon be as bad as this man here for the papers.... He’s getting softening of the brain from them,’ he added, with a reflective look at Jimmy. ‘Sure, my God above, women are the same the whole world over, society women and every other sort of women.’ ‘Ah, but you're taking it to the fair, Spike,’ said French ‘You know yourself that English society women have no moral standards.’ ‘Moral standards?’ said Spike, gaping at him. ‘He never heard of them,’ cried Jimmy with a crow of glee, throwing himself across the counter. ‘Didn’t I?’ asked Spike. ‘Are you going to stand the man a drink?’ asked Jimmy. ‘Maybe you think I can’t?’ said Spike. ‘I think you're too blooming close,’ said Jimmy. ‘Go on!’ said Spike with quiet irony. ‘That’s a charming character you're giving me. I’m a bragger and a boaster; I’m a liar; and now I’m close as well! See what it is to have friends!’ He took a half-crown from his breeches pocket and laid it solemnly on the counter. ‘Bite that now and see is it all right,’ he said with an expressionless countenance. ‘Mr. French,’ he added in a pitying tone, ‘I’m surprised at you. ’Pon my word, I’m surprised!’ ‘But I know I haven’t the experience, man,’ said French with a good-humoured chuckle, pulling at the knee of his trousers. ‘Sure, that’s why I’m trying to get a few tips from you.’ ‘I hope they’re better than the tips he gives for the horses,’ said Jimmy. ‘Seeing that you know as much about women as you do about horses, drawled Spike, ‘I can’t see ’twould be much use to you.’ ‘Mr. French,’ said Jimmy eagerly, ‘isn’t it amazing, isn’t it positively amazing, that we have a respectable woman left in the town?’ ‘But I have to live in the town, man,’ retorted Spike gravely. ‘And you won’t tell us the secret?’ said French with a grin, ‘What secret?’ asked Spike. ‘How you have them all tumbling over themselves for you,’ said French. ‘How well they don’t do it for Jimmy or me!’ ‘Two good-looking men, begor!’ said Jimmy with another guffaw. ‘Now, there ye are again,’ said Spike sadly, looking from one to the other as if he didn’t know which was the worse. ‘A thing is only human nature, ordinary flesh and blood, the same in the highest and the lowest; and ye go on as if ’twas something a man ought to go and get patented.’ ‘Or insured,’ said French, but Spike ignored this facetiousness. ‘Now, I’ll give ye a simple example,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Twenty-odd years ago, I was going up to town in the train; that was before I got the old car. As we were waiting in Doulough a certain young lady got in. I won't tell ye her name. I got to know it after. She was the daughter of a respectable shopkeeper in the town; a fine, well-educated, good-looking girl. Well, we got into conversation—I was a better-looking man in those days than I am now—and when I found she was stopping in Crane’s Hotel I thought I might as well stop there too. ‘Well, to make a long story short, I went along to her bedroom that night. That was twenty-one years ago,’ added Spike, half closing his eyes as he made it up, ‘twenty-one years ago the first of next May. I suppose if I met that girl in the street tomorrow she’d hardly know me, but would you believe me when I say that hardly a day passes but I think of her?’ He gave them both a look, took a few paces to the door and spat out, glanced up and down the street and then came back to the counter. French and Jimmy were looking at him in fascination. ‘Next morning,’ he added gravely, ‘I was getting up, and as I did I noticed something. “This and that,” says I. “Were you‒‒‒?” “What did you think?” says she, and first she blushed and then she smiled and drew the clothes up about her. “But why didn’t you tell me?” says I. “What business is it of yours?” says she laughing into my face. ’Twas the courage of the girl that struck me. I went home, but, begor, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Now,’ he added, cocking his head at French, ‘you might think that I’m a bad man, but I’m not. God knows, I hadn’t much at the time, but I took my pen in my hand and sat down and wrote asking her to marry me.’ ‘You didn’t?’ said French with a grin. ‘I did,’ said Spike. ‘And do you know what she said? “Dear Mr. Ward, please don’t worry yourself about me. I have no claim on you. On the contrary, I owe it to you that at last I know what Life is.” I never forgot that,’ said Spike with a sigh. ‘“I know now what Life is.” And she hardly more than a child!’ ‘What a child she was!’ said Jimmy. ‘She had sense enough not to marry you.’ Then as it gradually began to dawn on him that Spike had diddled them again and that they had been hanging on his words like any of the poor caubogues of the town, he affected an air of great contempt. ‘Anyway,’ he added, ‘what is it, only more of your lies?’ ‘Lies?’ echoed Spike with real indignation, ‘What else is it?’ shouted Jimmy. ‘After all,’ said French, waking out of his own private day-dream, ‘we have only your own word for it.’ ‘And what the hell do you expect?’ asked Spike scornfully. ‘A signed receipt?’ ‘We want you to prove it, man,’ said Jimmy boisterously, pouring them out fresh pints. ‘What's the good of you coming in here, day after day, telling us about all the women you say fell in love with you when we don’t know whether they did or not? Can’t you go out and prove it?’ ‘There was a time I could prove it,’ said Spike, a bit taken aback. ‘But what's the use when you can’t prove it now?’ cried Jimmy, delighted at the way they had managed to corner the evasive Spike. ‘I’m not the man I was twenty years ago,’ said Spike with noble pathos. ‘Nor never were, Spike,’ said Jimmy with finality. ‘You might as well admit it, boy. You never were.’ ‘I’d lay a quid on it now you couldn’t get off with a decent woman in this whole town,’ said French with a grin. ‘That I couldn’t get off with a woman,’ echoed Spike with a trapped look. ‘Maybe ye’d come down to something within my means?’ ‘All right so,’ said Jimmy joyously. ‘We will. We'll make it ten bob, and I’ll put up five of it. But you'll blooming well have to prove it,’ he added sternly. ‘We're not going to pay out our good-looking ten bob just for another of your tall yarns.’ And he went off into another guffaw, thinking of the grand story he’d have for the fellows in the bar that night. Spike grew very red. He was thinking the same. A lot of Spike’s little comforts depended on the impression he could make on the poor caubogues of the town who were never likely to see anything of high life. He drained his pint slowly and turned to go. ‘Take care but I would,’ he said menacingly. ‘You’d better,’ bellowed Jimmy good-humouredly, ‘or you need never show your face in this bar again.... I have you now, you blooming chancer!’ he shouted after Spike. ‘Just to show you,’ Spike added over his shoulder, ‘what a man can do.... Freeing Ireland,’ he said with a look at French, ‘A pack of old women that can’t free themselves.’ He returned from the pavement to hurl a final shaft at Jimmy. ‘Who am I calling a woman to?’ he asked. ‘Sure, you're neither fish, flesh nor good red herring. I don’t know what sort of misfortunate article are you.’ ‘One minute now and I'll be with you, Spike,’ said French, finishing his own drink in a hurry. ‘And don’t forget to bring us back the proofs, Spike!’ shouted Jimmy after them. All the way down the main street they could hear him laughing to himself. ‘Jimmy is a terrible card,’ chuckled French good-naturedly. It was an unusual sight to see himself and Spike strolling down town together, but French found himself curiously attracted to the man. He had never met anyone like him before. He tried to get him to talk about the English lady up the Glen that had wanted to bring him back to London with her, but Spike wouldn’t. He was too mad. His pride had been deeply hurt. He went along with a very red face, answering only in monosyllables. French accompanied him in the direction of his home. He lived a little outside the town, on the Asragh road. As they reached the top of the hill there was a lane off to the left with a number of thatched and whitewashed cottages in it. A good-looking, red-headed girl was coming down towards the main street, and when he saw her Spike suddenly halted. ‘Hold on a minute,’ he said, his face clearing suddenly. ‘I want to have a word with this girl.’ ‘Oh, there's no hurry,’ said French, ‘I met this girl before somewhere,’ muttered Spike to himself. ‘What the hell is that her name is? Mary—Mary— ‘twill come to me in a minute.’ ‘Would you sooner I went on?’ asked French, suddenly remembering about the bet and feeling rather awkward. ‘Oh, hang round, hang round,’ said Spike, scarcely moving his lips. ‘It mightn’t be any good....Hallo, Mary,’ he added in a queer, unctuous drawl, a broad smile flickering across his melancholy beery face as he raised his battered old bowler with antique courtesy. ‘’Tis a cure for sore eyes to see you. Where were you all this time?’ ‘See you later, Spike,’ said French in confusion, and went on. He didn’t look round till he reached the bend of the road, and then he saw Spike and the girl coming slowly towards him with bowed heads, deep in conversation. The light was turning, and the little plantation beside the road was filling with a tangle of shadows. The two of them stood for a while talking, with the smoke of the town rising behind them; then the girl gave a hasty glance around, and they quickly crossed the wall. They did it so quickly that French nearly missed them. He waited for a while, and then strolled idly back, glancing into the plantation. After that he retraced his steps and sat on the side of the road, smoking his pipe. He had plenty to think about. Of course, if what Spike said was true and all women were alike, he could understand why it was that Celia had run off with the commercial traveller. His bitterness against her, he realised, should now be transferred to the whole sex. They were all a terrible lot, the best of them unworthy of a member of his confraternity. It was nearly an hour before Spike and the doll came out again, but the time did not seem long in passing. They got over the wall hastily, and this time they separated without as much as a word or a glance. The girl squared her shoulders and went down the road with her head in the air, just as though she were admiring the scenery. Spike didn’t give her as much as a backward glance, but sighting French strolled slowly towards him, his lean face as grave and smug as a parish priest’s. ‘Well,’ he said in an inexpressive tone, ‘I suppose we might as well be strolling back.’ ‘I suppose so,’ said French, and then, getting a bit red, he took out his wallet and gave Spike a ten-shilling note. ‘I owe you that,’ he added. ‘You're quite satisfied about that?’ asked Spike gravely, looking first at the note and then at French as if he didn’t know whether or not his conscience would allow him to accept it. ‘Oh, quite,’ said French in an embarrassed tone, and then the two of them strode back to town in the evening light. First Published: The Common Chord; 1947. Source: The Common Chord; MacMillan & Co.. London; 1947. URI: https://archive.org/details/commonchord0000fran