Freedom comes with the decision: it does not wait for the act. She felt freer, more at peace with herself than she had felt for months. But I won’t think about that, she decided deliberately. It is best just to be free, not to let it into the conscious mind.
To be consciously anything argues a comparison, a bond with antithesis. Live in your dream, do not attain it — else comes satiety. Or sorrow, which is worse, I wonder? Dr Mahon and his dream: reft, restored, reft again. Funny for someone, I guess.
And Donald, with his scar and his stiffened hand quiet in the warm earth, in the warmth and the dark, where the one cannot hurt him and the other he will not need. No dream for him! The ones with whom he now sleeps don’t care what his face looks like. Per ardua ad astra. . . . And Jones, what dream is his? ‘Nightmare, I hope,’ she said aloud, viciously, and one collarless and spitting tobacco said Ma’am? with interest.
Gilligan reappeared with her ticket.
‘You’re a nice boy, Joe,’ she told him, receiving her purse.
He ignored her thanks. ‘Come on, let’s walk a ways.’
‘Will my bags be all right there, do you think?’
‘Sure.’ He looked about, then beckoned to a Negro youth reclining miraculously on a steel cable that angled up to a telephone pole. ‘Here, son.’
The Negro said Suh? without moving. ‘Git up dar, boy. Dat white man talkin’ to you,’ said a companion, squatting on his heels against the wall. The lad rose and a coin spun arcing from Gilligan’s hand.
‘Keep your eye on them bags till I come back, will you?’
‘Awright, cap’m.’ The boy slouched over to the bags and became restfully and easily static beside them, going to sleep immediately, like a horse.
‘Damn ’em, they do what you say, but they make you feel so — so—’
‘Immature, don’t they?’ she suggested.
‘That’s it. Like you was a kid or something and that they’d look after you even if you don’t know exactly what you want.’
‘You are a funny sort; Joe. And nice. Too nice to waste.’
Her profile was sharp, pallid against a doorway darkly opened. ‘I’m giving you a chance not to waste me.’
‘Come on, let’s walk a bit.’ She took his arm and moved slowly along the track, conscious that her ankles were being examined. The two threads of steel ran narrowing and curving away beyond trees. If you could see them as far as you can see, farther than you can see . . .
‘Huh?’ asked Gilligan, walking moodily beside her.
‘Look at the spring, Joe. See, in the trees: summer is almost here, Joe.’
‘Yes, summer is almost here. Funny, ain’t it? I’m always kind of surprised to find that things get on about the same, spite of us. I guess old nature does too much of a wholesale business to ever be surprised at us, let alone worrying if we ain’t quite the fellows we think we ought to of been.’
Holding his arm, walking a rail: ‘What kind of fellows do we think we ought to have been, Joe?’
‘I don’t know what kind of a fel — I mean girl you think you are and I don’t know what kind of a fellow I think I am, but I know you and I tried to help nature make a good job out of a poor one without having no luck at it.’
Flat leaves cupped each a drop of sunlight and the trees seemed coolly on fire with evening. Here was a wooden foot-bridge crossing a stream and a footpath mounting a hill. ‘Let’s sit on the rail of the bridge,’ she suggested, guiding him towards it. Before he could help her she had turned her back to the rail and her straightening arms raised her easily. She hooked her heels over a lower rail and he mounted beside her. ‘Let’s have a cigarette.’
She produced a pack from her handbag and he accepted one, scraping a match. ‘Who has had any luck in this business?’ she asked.
‘The loot has.’
‘No, he hasn’t. When you are married you are either lucky or unlucky, but when you are dead you aren’t either: you aren’t anything.’
‘That’s right. He don’t have to bother about his luck any more. . . . The padre’s lucky, though.’
‘How?’
‘Well, if you have hard luck and your hard luck passes away, ain’t you lucky?’
‘I don’t know. You are too much for me now, Joe.’
‘And how about that girl? Fellow’s got money, I hear, and no particular brains. She’s lucky.’
‘Do you think she’s satisfied?’ Gilligan gazed at her attentively, not replying. ‘Think how much fun she could have got out of being so romantically widowed, and so young. I’ll bet she’s cursing her luck this minute.’
He regarded her with admiration. ‘I always thought I’d like to be a buzzard,’ he remarked, ‘but now I think I’d like to be a woman.’
‘Good gracious, Joe. Why in the world?’
‘Now, long as you’re being one of them sybils, tell me about this bird Jones. He’s lucky.’
‘How lucky?’
‘Well, he gets what he wants, don’t he?’
‘Not the women he wants.’
‘Not exactly. Certainly he don’t get all the women he wants. He has failed twice to my knowledge. But failure don’t seem to worry him. That’s what I mean by lucky.’ Their cigarettes arced together into the stream, hissing. ‘I guess brass gets along about as well as anything else with women.’
‘You mean stupidity.’
‘No, I don’t. Stupidity. That’s the reason I can’t get the one I want.’
She put her hand on his arm. ‘You aren’t stupid, Joe. And you aren’t bold, either.’
‘Yes, I am. Can you imagine me considering anybody else’s feelings when they’s something I want?’
‘I can’t imagine you doing anything without considering someone else’s feelings.’
Offended, he became impersonal. ‘ ’Course you are entitled to your own opinion. I know I ain’t bold like the man in that story. You remember? accosted a woman on the street and her husband was with her and knocked him down. When he got up, brushing himself off, a man says: “For heaven’s sake, friend, do you do that often?” and the bird says: “Sure. Of course I get knocked down occasionally, but you’d be surprised.” I guess he just charged the beating to overhead,’ he finished with his old sardonic humour.
She laughed out. Then she said: ‘Why don’t you try that, Joe?’
He looked at her quietly for a time. She met his gaze unwavering and he slipped to his feet facing her, putting his arm around her. ‘What does that mean, Margaret?’
She made no reply and he lifted her down. She put her arms over his shoulders. ‘You don’t mean anything by it,’ he told her quietly, touching her mouth with his. His clasp became lax.
‘Not like that, Joe.’
‘Not like what?’ he asked stupidly. For answer she drew his face down to hers and kissed him with slow fire. Then they knew that after all they were strangers to each other. He hastened to fill an uncomfortable interval. ‘Does that mean you will?’
‘I can’t, Joe,’ she answered, standing easily in his arms.
‘But why not, Margaret? You never give me any reason.’
She was silent in profile against sunshot green. ‘If I didn’t like you so much, I wouldn’t tell you. But it’s your name, Joe, Gilligan. I couldn’t marry a man named Gilligan.’
He was really hurt. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said dully. She laid her cheek against his. On the crest of the hill tree trunks were a barred grate beyond which the fires of evening were dying away. ‘I could change it,’ he suggested.
Across the evening came a long sound. ‘There’s your train,’ he said.
She thrust herself slightly from him, to see his face. ‘Joe, forgive me. I didn’t mean that—’
‘That’s all right,’ he interrupted, patting her back with awkward gentleness. ‘Come on, let’s get back.’
The locomotive appeared blackly at the curve, plumed with steam like a sinister squat knight and grew larger without seeming to progress. But it was moving and it roared past the station in its own good time, bearing the puny controller of its destiny like a goggled greasy excrescence in its cab. The train jarred to a stop and an eruption of white-jacketed porters.
She put her arms about him again to the edification of the by-standers. ‘Joe, I didn’t mean that. But don’t you see, I have been married twice already, with damn little luck either time, and I just haven’t the courage to risk it again. But if I could marry anyone, don’t you know it would be you? Kiss me, Joe.’ He complied. ‘Bless your heart, darling. If I married you you’d be dead in a year, Joe. All the men that marry me die, you know.’
‘I’ll take the risk,’ he told her.
‘But I won’t. I’m too young to bury three husbands.’ People got off, passed them, other people got on. And above all like an obbligato the vocal competition of cabmen. ‘Joe, does it really hurt you for me to go?’ He looked at her dumbly, ‘Joe!’ she exclaimed, and a party passed them. It was Mr and Mrs George Farr: they saw Cecily’s stricken face as she melted graceful and fragile and weeping
