The Ginger Man - J. P. Donleavy [8]
Marion holding aloft the gin.
"All right, I'm not blind, I see it"
"O dear, this is frightful. Why you honestly are a cad. If Mommy and Daddy could only see what I've got to come back to. What are you doing on the table ? "
"Shut up."
"I won't shut up and don't look at me like that. What are these feathers doing all over the place? Dishes broken on the floor. What were you doing?"
"Goat dance."
"How frightfully sordid it all is. Disgusting. Feathers in everything. You damn, damn drinker. Where did you get the money? Didn't meet me at the train. Why? Answer me."
"Shut up. Be quiet for the love of Jesus. The alarm didn't work."
"You're a liar. You were drinking, drinking, drinking. Look at the grease, the mess, the filth. And what's this?"
"A sea bird." .
"Who paid for all this? You had smelly O'Keefe out here. I know you did, I can smell him."
"Just leave me alone."
"Did you pay the milk?"
"Yes, now sweet Jesus shut up, my head."
"So you paid it, did you? Here it is. Here it is. Exactly where I left it and the money gone. Lies. You blighter. You nasty blighter."
"Call me a bugger, I can't stand the gentility on top of the yelling."
"O stop it, stop it. I don't intend to go on living like this, do you hear me? Your brazen lies, one after the other and I was trying to get Father to do something for us and I come back to this."
"Your father. Your father is a sack of excrement, genteel excrement, as tight as they come. What has he been doing, playing battleship in the tub?"
Marion lunged, her slap landing across his jaw. The child began to scream in the nursery. Sebastian up off the table. He drove his fist into Marion's face. She fell backward against the cupboard. Dishes crashing to the floor. In tattered underwear he stood at the nursery door. He kicked his foot through and tore off the lock to open it. Took the child's pillow from under its head and pressed it hard on the screaming mouth.
"I'll kill it, God damn it, I'll kill it, if it doesn't shut up."
Marion behind him, digging her nails into his back.
"You madman, leave the child alone, I'll get the police. I'll divorce you, you blackguard, coward, coward, coward."
Marion clasping the child to her breast. Sobbing, she lay her long English body and child across the bed. The room echoing the hesitations of her wailing voice. Sebastian walked white faced from the room, slamming the broken door, cutting off the sound of suffering from a guilty heart
Dangerfield took a late morning bus to Dublin. Sat up the top side in front, clicking the teeth. Out there the mud flats and that windy golf course. North Bull Island shimmering in the sun. Cost money to leave Marion. Vulgar blood in her somewhere, may be from the mother. Mother's father kept a shop. Bad blood leaks out. I know it leaks out. And I ought tc get out. One way on the boat. She doesn't have the nerve for divorce. I know her too well for that Never gave me a lousy chance to explain the account Let her rot out there, I don't care. Got to face the facts of this life. The facts, the facts. Could square things with her. She's good with the cheese dishes. Few days without food will weaken her. Maybe I'll come back with a tin of peaches and cream. She's always airing the house. Opening up the windows at every little fart Tells me she never farts. At least mine come out with a bang.
Fairview Park looks like a wet moldy blanket. Feel a little better. O'Keefe broke a toilet bowl in that house. Fell into it when he was trying to sneak a look behind a woman's medicine chest. Long suffering O'Keefe. bent over tomes in the National Library studying Irish and dreaming of seduction.
Amiens Street Station, Dangerfield stepping down from the bus, crossing and using the ostrich step up the Talbot Street My God, I think I see prostitutes with squinting eyes and toothless mouths. Don't relish a trip up an alley with one without wearing impenetrable armour and there is no armour at all in Dublin. I asked one how much it was and she said I had an evil mind. Invited her for a drink and she