Irish Literature - House of Mourning and Other Stories

simply.
    The crowds went home. Bottles were left everywhere. Liam took his coat, walked to an all-night café and, as he didn’t have to work, watched the dawn come.
    She didn’t chastise him. Things went on as normal. He played his part, dressed in ridiculous clothes. Sister Sarah was in a lighter mood. She drank a sherry with Liam one evening, one cold December evening. As it was coming near Christmas she spoke of festivity in Kerry. Crossroad dances in Dún Caoin, the mirth of Kerry that had never died. She told Liam how her father would take her by car to church on Easter Sunday, how they’d watch the waters being blessed and later dance at the crossroads, melodious playing and the Irish fiddle.
    There had been nothing like that in Liam’s youth. He’d come from the Midlands, dull green, statues of Mary outside factories. He’d been privileged to know defeat from an early age.
    ‘You should go to Kerry some time,’ Sister Sarah said.
    ‘I’d like to,’ Liam said, ‘I’d like to. But it’s too late now.’
    Yet when the musicians came to rehearse the music Liam knew it was not too late. He may have missed the West of Ireland in his youth, the simplicity of a Gaelic people but here now in London, melodious exploding, he was in an Ireland he’d never known, the extreme west, gullies, caves, peninsulas, roads winding into desecrated hills and clouds always coming in. Imagine, he thought, I’ve never even seen the sea.
    He told her one night about the fiftieth anniversary of the 1916 revolution, which had occurred before he left, old priests at school fumbling with words about dead heroes, bedraggled tricolours flying over the school and young priests, beautiful in the extreme, reciting the poetry of Patrick Pearse.
    ‘When the bombs came in England,’ Liam said, ‘and we were blamed, the ordinary Irish working people, I knew they were to blame, those priests, the people who lied about glorious deeds. Violence is never, ever glorious.’
    He met her in a café for coffee one day and she laughed and said it was almost like having an affair. She said she’d once fancied a boy in Kerry, a boy she was directing in All My Sons . He had bushy blond hair, kept Renoir reproductions on his wall, was a bank clerk. ‘But he went off with another girl,’ she said, ‘and broke my heart.'
    He met her in Soho Square Gardens one day and they walked together. She spoke of Africa and the States, travelling, the mission of the modern church, the redemption of souls lost in a mire of nonchalance. On Tottenham Court Road she said goodbye to him.
    ‘See you next rehearsal,’ she said.
    He stood there when she left and wanted to tell her she’d awakened in him a desire for a country long forgotten, an awareness of another side of that country, music, drama, levity but there was no saying these things.
    When the night of the play finally arrived he acted his part well. But all the time, all the time he kept an eye out for her.
    Afterwards there were celebrations, balloons dancing, Irish bankers getting drunk. He sat and waited for her to come to him and when she didn’t, rose and looked for her.
    She was speaking to an elderly Irish labourer.
    He stood there, patiently, for a moment. He wanted her to tell him about Christmas lights in Ireland long ago, about the music of Ó Riada and the southern-going whales. But she persevered in speaking to this old man about Christmas in Kerry.
    Eventually he danced with her. She held his arm softly. He knew now he was in love with her and didn’t know how to put it to her. She left him and talked to some other people.
    Later she danced again with him. It was as though she saw something in his eyes, something forbidding.
    ‘I have to go now,’ she said as the music still played. She touched his arm gently, moved away. His eyes searched for her afterwards but couldn’t find her. Young men he’d acted with came up and started clapping him on the back. They joked and they laughed. Suddenly Liam found he was getting sick. He didn’t make for the lavatory. He went instead to the street. There he vomited. It was raining. He got very wet going home.
    At Christmas he went to midnight mass in Westminster Cathedral, a thing he had never done before. He stood with women in mink coats and Irish charwomen as the choir sang ‘Come All Ye Faithful.’ He had Christmas with an old aunt and at midday rang Marion. They didn’t say much to one another that day but after Christmas she came