The Picture: An Old Man’s Story

“Did I ever tell you,” the old man asked, “how Julie Casey came in for
the fortune?”

“No,” said I, “but you may as well tell me now.”

“Julie Casey’s aunt,” he said, “had a little shop over the bridge,
opposite the Sand Quay chapel. Her aunt was a queer old soul, and
between them they were the queerest couple you’d meet on a day’s
walk. The aunt could hardly move her limbs at all, and she used to sit
in the shop all day, just blinking her eyes, and only speaking to
check Julie, for Julie was very naughty with the customers. Julie used
to go to the [auctions], and whenever a big house was selling out
you’d see her nosing about the furniture and old books, for they
used to say she was that blind she could only tell a bargain by the
smell of it. She a crop of red hair that she neither washed nor
combed, and a pair of big spectacles on the end of her nose, and a
great big mouth that used to go up and down and in and out when she
was in the humour of talking and, God between us and all harm, she had
the longest tongue and the loudest voice in the Coal Qaay!

“Well, there they used to sit all day, the pair of them; the aunt just
blinking and staring at the carts and the applewomen and the coal
porters going by, and Julie reading Speeches from the Dock with her
back to the door and the book clapped pat up to her eyes, and old
pictures and old books and old furniture piled as high about them that
sometimes all you’d see of them would be their two heads. And about
eleven at night the aunt would get up without a word and hobble into
her stretcher bed in the kitchen, and Julie would quench the light and
go to sleep on two chairs‒with respects to you‒in her clothes.

“At the time I’m speaking of they had a man staying with them, and if
I told you they were queer I can tell you he was queerer. O’Quinlan
was his name‒a queer name‒Gabriel O’Quinlan, and he used to call
himself the O’Quinlan More. His father, that had had a publichouse in
Clonakilty one time, left him a bit of money, and every Thursday
Gabriel O’Quinlan used to draw six shillings from the solicitor. He
lived on that. He was writing a history of the O’Quinlans, and he
could prove to you that they were the lost tribes of Israel, and the
only family that had a right to the throne of Ireland and a great deal
else besides. After a while we got to calling him King O’Quinlan, but
that was long after the time I’m speaking of, when we hardly knew
anything at all about him, only that he had a room in Julie Casey’s
and that he was writing a book.

“Now, somehow or other, Julie took it into her head that he was an
Irish patriot like the people she read about in Speeches from the
Dock. Maybe her head was turned by reading, or maybe it was that he
used to write such a great deal and talk so much about the ancient
glories of Ireland and steal out on her at such queer hours that she
had good reason for thinking it. At any rate she gave him his room
for nothing, and he’s the right to take what books he wanted from the
shop to help him in his studies.

“One day a man came into the shop. You could tell by his accent and
his get-up that he was one of the officers from the barracks, and he
started looking at the pictures along the walls, picking them out of
holes and corners, rubbing the dust off them and looking at them
through a glass. Now, Julie was a suspicious woman, and it was the
first time an English officer had ever come into her shop, so, though
she kept on with her reading, she watched him all the time out of the
corner of her eye.

“A last he picked out the smallest of the pictures—it was a scrubby
little thing not much bigger than your arm—and says he, ‘How much do
you want for that old thing?’—as though he put no value on it. Julie
was a suspicious woman, so she looked at him for one minute and said,
‘That’s a picture of me fawther.’ ‘How much do you want for it?’ says
he. ‘It’s a picture of me fawther,’ says she, trying to gain time. ‘I
wouldn’t like to sell it.’

“He went away then and she fell to thinking. Now did you ever hear how
if you want to buy a County Councillor’s vote you mustn’t offend him
by offering him money direct? No? Well, that’s how it is. ‘That’s a
nice dog I have.’ he says; ‘would you like to buy it?’ And you look
solemnly at the old mongrel that’s not worth five shillings, and says
you, ‘I’ll give you five pounds for the dog.’ And he looks at it again
and says, ‘It’s a fine dog. I’m offered seven for it.’

“Well, somehow or other, Julie got it into her daft head that the
officer didn’t want the picture at all and ’twas the lodger he was
after. And sure enough, that evening he came back again and said,
‘I’ll give you five pounds for the old picture.’ Julie looked at him
again and said, ‘’Tis a picture of me fawther. I wouldn’t like to sell
it.’ Well, would you believe me, he rose the bid from five to fifty
before her very eyes and she only grinned at him? Oh, was he mad!
‘You’re out of your senses, woman!’ says he. But Julie only grinned,
and God protect us and keep us, when she grinned her mouth came down
and down and slid away under the hook of her chin!

“And that night Gabriel O’Quinlan was packed out of the shop and sent
to a neighbour’s house in Liberty Street. Poor man, he was shaking
like an aspen leaf, for he didn’t know at all, at all, what he’d done
out of the way.

“Next morning the officer was round again, and this time
he was-white with rage and he could hardly talk.

“‘I’ll give you a hundred for it!’ says he.

“‘He’s gone!’ says Julie.

“‘Two hundred!’ says he.

“‘He’s gone, I tell you!’ says Julie.

“‘I’ll give you two hundred and fifty,’ says he, thumping like a madman
at the door, ‘and if you don’t take that I hope I’ll see you and your
picture burning in hell.’

“So Julie looked at him for a full minute, and says she, slowly, ‘Do
you mean the picture?’ ‘Of course I mean the picture, you bloody old
fool!’ says he. ‘You can have it,’ says she, getting very quiet all of
a sudden, and before you could say ‘Boo!’ she went off in a dead
faint. There was a hullaballoo then. The old auntie shrieked and a
crowd of neighbours came in, and sure the old auntie, crippled and
all, had to restrain them from giving the officer a bating. But after
a while Julie came to herself and the whole thing was put right.”

“And did he get his picture?” I asked.

“Of course he got his picture!” said the old man. “Did you think the
woman was a fool?”

“And what happened to Julie after that?”

“Ah, poor Julie was never the same afterwards! She gave up the shop
and took a little house in the country. ‘Look at what me patriotism
done for me!’ she used to say, and then the thought of it used to
nearly give her a fresh weakness. ‘To think,’ says she, ‘to think I
might have sold me lovely picture for half a crown.’”

“’Tis a likely story!” said I.

“I’faith, then,” said the old man, “if you’d ‘a done what she was near
doing you’d get a weakness too!”


Source: Irish Statesman, 1929-04-06