I
I
PARTISAN REVIEW
285
He owned a horse fit only for the knackers and a dray. Worked build–
ing sites and neither smoke nor drank. I looked after the two rooms
we had because my aunt was never well enough to do more than
the rosary. I also took care of the horse. Harnessing him up in the
morning and unharnessing him again at night. I fed and watered
him and cleaned his stable. And in between I was kicked. It's almost
all I can remember about my father. I've tried hard since, but I
can never remember that man giving me as much as a passing nod
of approval. All I remember is the kicks. He used to place the toe–
cap of his right boot in the small of my back. Never anywhere else;
and never once did he miss.
"His aim was always accurate. Should've been a footballer that
man. But you grow tired of pain. I did, and one day I left and
went where I wanted to be. To a room on my own in a house over
on the north strand. For the first time in my life I felt human. And
I was happy. And knew it. That was the thing about it. I was
happy and I knew it. Most of us don't, you know, even when we
are; but I did. I had a job - a good one in a shop in Grafton Street.
Dealt in sweets, cigarettes, birthday cards, and fruit out of season.
I was there two years. Then, just before the Christmas of the second,
I was in O ' Connell Street one afternoon waiting to cross and looking
at the lights and the people crowding in and out of the shops through
flurries of snow.
"It was about four. Dark enough for caution. And I was waiting
to cross the street. Waiting for a crowd of soldiers on horses to pass.
Lovely animals creating an uproar you could hear a mile away. Like
drums the hooves of them horses were. Drums beating deep . . . and
frisky, a lot of them. Sauntering past demons, shying at shadows.
A few acting flash. Tossing metal.
It
was the horses I was watching
when I was asked my name. By a soldier on one of them, bent over.
I didn't answer at all, for I could see the man asking was the kind
who'd never have to struggle through the alphabet to answer a short
letter. Besides I wasn't the kind, my aunt used to say. I never would
be. And between her and my father, I wasn't. I will tell you the
truth, my aunt used to say; and she did. The result was that at
twenty-three I couldn't say the things men wanted to hear. I couldn't
liE, or flatter either a man's vanity or his strength."
Ellen Simms paused abruptly and her glance, brooding in the
trough of the sudden silence, excluded me and fell on Annie and
