J. Donleavy - Leila - Further in the Life and Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman

‘It is good to see you too. Mr Arland.’

‘Well we’ve got to stop that Mr Arland stuff.’

‘But you have never told me your Christian name.’

‘Alas with good reason, Kildare. And perhaps my middle one will better suit the purpose. My first Christian name being none other than Napoleon. It provokes endless inanities especially in Dublin. So therefore call me Patrick, please. And I shall call you Darcy if I may. Well you’re about two feet taller. And clearly a man of the world. Did you come by taxi.’

‘I walked. By way of Westland Row.’

‘A smattering of one or two decent architectural features, aren’t there, around this area, I think.’

‘Yes. One or two.’

‘Merrion Hall’s not that far away with its Protestant elevations. Does make one realize that there’s hardly a Roman Catholic thing in Dublin to boast about. I mean the church by the station of course. Nice front pillars. Plinths plain at least. Inside, does have one interesting marble plaque to boast about A viscountess who died in Paris in eighteen fifty. A County Meath family. Helps the soul to dwell on these little obscure antiquities. One attempts to cure one’s injured spirit by any means. Ah, but I think the day comes when one has to rue the senseless pleasure in having been a romantic. Graviora quaedam sunt remedia periculis. Translate Kildare. Ah I see it’s hard to change our use of names, isn’t it.’

‘I do not believe there remains a single phrase of Latin left in my head, Mr Arland.’

‘Dear me. Have I also failed as a tutor then. Well in that case, some tea perhaps.’

‘Yes please.’

‘But how are you Kildare. And do tell me. How is Andromeda Park. I hear you have taken over. How is Sexton’s Latin getting on. Or is it Greek nowadays. I did occasionally hear him rattling off the alphabet to himself. And Crooks, how is he.’

Mr Arland, limping and disappearing out the door with his kettle. Returning with a smile. Striking a match. Turning on the gas ring. The blue flames licking out under the blackened aluminium. One does somehow feel it at least encouraging, Mr Arland keeps open his eyes to what is commendable in these streets of some squalor. Perhaps it reassures him he is not entirely removed from the civilised world. But as one tells him of Andromeda Park, a lost nostalgic sadder look grows on his face as he munches a cream cracker.

‘Darcy, do have some brandy in your tea, I’m having it in mine.’

‘Thank you. But Mr Arland. Please do tell me now. How you really are.’

‘Kildare. Complaint is tiresome, you know. But I suppose it’s been a long time since last we parted. Yes. I do put a brave face upon it. And must not bore you with what I’m sure is my transparent dishonesty.’

‘But please, it would so help to know if you are here like this through design or necessity.’

‘Not design Kildare. More necessity. But I simply found I could not work after Clarissa’s death. I don’t suppose there’s any way of ever getting over it. As crushing as her dying by other circumstances would have been, it was doubly so to have been the cause oneself. Just from a glance through a window. And she was. Just innocently dining with someone else. A dreadful disease is jealousy. And what it has done to another out of one’s own selfish pique. Had I only spoken. And not written. It’s so easy to think all women flirts, and their interest in one just their passing fancy. I suppose my letter revealed to her so much past hurt of mine. And then too late to find she loved me as much as I loved her.’

‘You mustn’t talk further about it.’

‘No I mustn’t. Not while I still can’t hold back my tears. I came back here from London. Finding it there just as bleak and just as dark. If you look out the window. That street across there goes under the railway. Beneath the bridge there’s an aperture through which one can peek and see a long series of arches supporting the tracks above. And like one’s life. I’ve had to build each arch to carry one’s burden. And I’ve managed to do that from day to day. Yet I do feel very under the weather sometimes. My steady if small emolument At least allows survival. And occasionally I’m invited to dine on Commons. Rushing there like a hungry animal. To take a sherry in the Fellows’ Common Room. Sit at high table. See the girl’s sweating faces at the serving hatch having lugged up from the deep bowels of the kitchen the great roasts. The litany of grace. Scrape of chairs on the floor as we all sit down. The gowns. The swell of voices as the dishes clatter, the carvers carve and porters rush to serve. Those things keep one from entirely sinking. But I suppose living here is indeed like joining the lighthouse service, which I always said I might do. Keeping the flame going and the reflectors shined. Reading books as the seas pound. Yes, even to reading this strange volume I see you’re casting your surprised eye at. Aptly called Women, Love and Life. Treating as it does of love and beauty. Love and courage. Love and tolerance. There’s so much truth often found in the trite and sentimental. Anyway. Whiles away the solitude.’

‘But surely you don’t propose to become a recluse.’

‘Ah Kildare not quite. I occasionally at least have in my life brighter patches now. Making me able to face the world and give it back an occasional kick in the backside.’

‘Sir I am glad. I think one must always be ready to rise by dawn’s early light, shake the mud from one’s heels and remount.’

‘Yes, Kildare, yes, remount. But I suppose one has meanwhile been taught one god awful agonizingly long lesson in loneliness.’

‘And you have not even a wireless here, sir.’

‘No. I suppose if I did I could have found solace listening to the orchestral. Instead of pacing, where it permits, on this awful green carpet. Turning again and again to look out the window for life somewhere down on the street. Only to see pathetic passing figures making their hunched cold way through the damp evening. Or see queer gentlemen in search of each other in the convenience across the road. Making one shrivel up even more in one’s loneliness. Moments come when you feel that no one in the world wants your company. And what is worse, when you then see someone and think perhaps you could talk or get to know that person, and then, if you sense that he or she is lonely too, it makes you feel that their loneliness will only make your own more unable to bear. Leaving two people already so lonely, simply creeping cringing away from one another in their desperation.’

‘But you must, you must come and stay at Andromeda Park.’

‘Yes I must. One has got to know every inch nook crack and patch of this room, every spot on the wall. Stain or smudge on the carpet. The sound and squeak of every floorboard. Even know if a stranger’s steps go by in the hall. All these things, if you let them, become drum beats of a dirge. Forgive me Kildare, I suppose it’s the brandy talking now. But there were moments so wretched that time itself seemed to come and add to the crushing weight on one’s soul. To be as if one were flung away as a discarded bandage. And not even accorded the minimal dignity of being deserving of some contempt, just merely the most utterly uncaring indifference. And all of one’s own stupid making.’

‘But Mr Arland, we all must fight such things. Do them battle.’

‘Yes Kildare yes. But as much as one knew that one must soldier on, one could not crawl out from under the awful brooding gloom. The love one has for someone, left gnawing in one’s vitals. Becoming such a sickly poisonous wretchedness that you wonder how the species could allow such to exist, except, yes, and I think this is why. It is to crush to dust the hopes such as I might ever have for fatherhood. For sons being born like me, or daughters, who would be unruthless and loving, and sentimentally unwise like their father.’