‘Maybe they would say to themselves up at the sawmills that you were the same way as Quigley. If he keeps company with Quigley, they might say, aren’t they two of a kind?’
‘Ah, I don’t think they’d bother themselves, Mr Lynch. Sure, if you do the work well what would they have to complain of?’
‘Has the manager up there seen you out with Quigley and the jam jars?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Lynch.’
‘Everything I’m saying to you is for your own good in the future. Do you understand that? If I were in your shoes I’d let Quigley look after himself.’
For years his mother had been saying the same to him. Brother Leahy had drawn him aside one day and had pointed out that an elderly dwarf wasn’t a suitable companion for a young lad, especially since the dwarf was not sane. ‘I see you took no notice of me,’ Brother Leahy said six months later. ‘Tell me this, young fellow-me-lad, what kind of a conversation do you have with old Quigley?’ They talked, John Joe said, about trees and the flowers in the hedgerows. He liked to listen to Quigley, he said, because Quigley had acquired a knowledge of such matters. ‘Don’t tell me lies,’ snapped Brother Leahy, and did not say anything else.
Mrs Keogh returned from Confession. She came breathlessly into the bar, with pink cheeks, her ungloved hands the colour of meat. She was a woman of advanced middle age, a rotund woman who approached the proportions that John Joe most admired. She wore spectacles and had grey hair that was now a bit windswept. Her hat had blown off on the street, she said: she’d nearly gone mad trying to catch it. ‘Glory be to God,’ she cried when she saw John Joe. ‘What’s that fellow doing with a bottle of stout?’
‘We had a man-to-man talk,’ explained Mr Lynch. ‘I started him off on the pleasures of the bottle.’
‘Are you mad?’ shouted Mrs Keogh with a loud laugh. ‘He’s under age.’
‘I came for rashers,’ said John Joe. ‘A pound of green rashers, Mrs Keogh. The middle cut.’
‘You’re a shocking man,’ said Mrs Keogh to Mr Lynch. She threw off her coat and hat. ‘Will you pour me a bottle,’ she asked, ‘while I attend to this lad? Finish up that now, Mr Dempsey.’
She laughed again. She went away and they heard from the grocery the sound of the bacon machine.
John Joe finished his stout and stood up.
‘Good-night, Mr Lynch.’
‘Remember about Quigley like a good fellow. When the day will come that you’ll want to find a girl to marry, she might be saying you were the same type as Quigley. D’you understand me, John Joe?’
‘I do, Mr Lynch.’
He passed through the door in the partition and watched Mrs Keogh slicing the bacon. He imagined her, as Quigley had said he’d seen her, belabouring her late husband with a length of wire. He imagined her as he had seen her himself, taking off her jersey because it was hot in the cellar, and then unzipping her green tweed skirt.
‘I’ve sliced it thin,’ she said. ‘It tastes better thin, I think.’
‘It does surely, Mrs Keogh.’
‘Are you better after your stout? Don’t go telling your mammy now.’ Mrs Keogh laughed again, revealing long, crowded teeth. She weighed the bacon and wrapped it, munching a small piece of lean. ‘If there’s parsley in your mammy’s garden,’ she advised, ‘chew a bit to get the smell of the stout away, in case she’d be cross with Mr Lynch. Or a teaspoon of tea-leaves.’
‘There’s no parsley, Mrs Keogh.’
‘Wait till I get you the tea then.’
She opened a packet of tea and poured some on to the palm of his hand. She told him to chew it slowly and thoroughly and to let the leaves get into all the crevices of his mouth. She fastened the packet again, saying that no one would miss the little she’d taken from it. ‘Four and two for the rashers,’ she said.
He paid the money, with his mouth full of dry tea-leaves. He imagined Mrs Keogh leaning on her elbows on the counter and asking him if he had a kiss for her at all, calling him Mr Dempsey. He imagined her face stuck out towards his and her mouth open, displaying the big teeth, and her tongue damping her lips as the tongues of the Piccadilly tarts did, according to Mr Lynch. With the dryness in his own mouth and a gathering uneasiness in his stomach, his lips would go out to hers and he would taste her saliva.
‘Good-night so, Mrs Keogh.’
‘Good-night, Mr Dempsey. Tell your mother I was asking for her.’
He left the public house. The wind which had dislodged Mrs Keogh’s hat felt fresh and cold on his face. The pink wash on a house across the street seemed pinker than it had seemed before, the ground moved beneath his feet, the street lighting seemed brighter. Youths and girls stood outside the illuminated windows of the small sweet-shops, waiting for the Coliseum to open. Four farmers left Regan’s public house and mounted four bicycles and rode away, talking loudly.
