‘You’ve got to an age,’ Mr Lynch said, ‘when you would have to be advised. Did you ever think in terms of emigration to England?’
‘I did not, Mr Lynch.’
‘I would say you were right to leave it alone, John Joe. Is that the first bottle of stout you ever had?’
‘It is, Mr Lynch.’
‘A bottle of stout is an acquired taste. You have to have had a dozen bottles or maybe more before you do get an urge for it. With the other matter it’s different.’
Mr Lynch, now a large, fresh-faced man of fifty-five who was never seen without a brown hat on his head, had fought for the British Army during the Second World War, which was why one day in 1947 he had found himself, with companions, in Piccadilly Circus. As he listened, John Joe recalled that he’d heard boys at the Christian Brothers’ referring to some special story that Mr Lynch confidentially told to those whom he believed would benefit from it. He had heard boys sniggering over this story, but he had never sought to discover its content, not knowing it had to do with Piccadilly tarts.
‘There was a fellow by the name of Baker,’ said Mr Lynch, ‘who’d been telling us that he knew the ropes. Baker was a London man. He knew the places, he was saying, where he could find the glory girls, but when it came to the point of the matter, John Joe, we hardly needed a guide.’
Because, explained Mr Lynch, the tarts were everywhere. They stood in the doorways of shops showing off the stature of their legs. Some would speak to you, Mr Lynch said, addressing you fondly and stating their availability. Some had their bosoms cocked out so that maybe they’d strike a passing soldier and entice him away from his companions. ‘I’m telling you this, John Joe, on account of your daddy being dead. Are you fancying that stout?’
John Joe nodded his head. Thirteen years ago his father had fallen to his death from a scaffold, having been by trade a builder. John Joe could not remember him, although he knew what he had looked like from a photograph that was always on view on the kitchen dresser. He had often wondered what it would be like to have that bulky man about the house, and more often still he listened to his mother talking about him. But John Joe didn’t think about his father now, in spite of Mr Lynch’s reference to him: keen to hear more about the women of Piccadilly, he asked what had happened when Mr Lynch and his companions finished examining them in the doorways.
‘I saw terrible things in Belgium,’ replied Mr Lynch meditatively. ‘I saw a Belgian woman held down on the floor while four men satisfied themselves on her. No woman could be the same after that. Combat brings out the brute in a man.’
‘Isn’t it shocking what they’d do, Mr Lynch? Wouldn’t it make you sick?’
‘If your daddy was alive today, he would be telling you a thing or two in order to prepare you for your manhood and the temptations in another country. Your mother wouldn’t know how to tackle a matter like that, nor would Father Ryan, nor the Christian Brothers. Your daddy might have sat you down in this bar and given you your first bottle of stout. He might have told you about the facts of life.’
‘Did one of the glory girls entice yourself, Mr Lynch?’
‘Listen to me, John Joe.’ Mr Lynch regarded his companion through small blue eyes, both of which were slightly bloodshot. He lit a cigarette and drew on it before continuing. Then he said: ‘Baker had the soldiers worked up with his talk of the glory girls taking off their togs. He used to describe the motion of their haunches. He used to lie there at night in the dug-out describing the private areas of the women’s bodies. When the time came we went out with Baker and Baker went up to the third one he saw and said could the six of us make arrangements with her? He was keen to strike a bargain because we had only limited means on account of having remained in a public house for four hours. Myself included, we were in an intoxicated condition.’
‘What happened, Mr Lynch?’
‘I would not have agreed to an arrangement like that if it hadn’t been for drink. I was a virgin boy, John Joe. Like yourself.’
‘I’m that way, certainly, Mr Lynch.’
‘We marched in behind the glory girl, down a side street. “Bedad, you’re fine men,” she said. We had bottles of beer in our pockets. “We’ll drink that first,” she said, “before we get down to business.” ’
John Joe laughed. He lifted the glass of stout to his lips and took a mouthful in a nonchalant manner, as though he’d been drinking stout for half a lifetime and couldn’t do without it.
‘Aren’t you the hard man, Mr Lynch!’ he said.
‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ replied Mr Lynch sharply. ‘What happened was, I had a vision on the street. Amn’t I saying to you those girls are no good to any man? I had a vision of the Virgin when we were walking along.’
‘How d’you mean, Mr Lynch?’
‘There was a little statue of the Holy Mother in my bedroom at home, a little special one my mother gave me at the occasion of my First Communion. It came into my mind, John Joe, when the six of us were with the glory girl. As soon as the glory girl said we’d drink the beer before we got down to business I saw the statue of the Holy Mother, as clear as if it was in front of me.’
John Joe, who had been anticipating an account of the soldiers’ pleasuring, displayed disappointment. Mr Lynch shook his head at him.
‘I was telling you a moral story,’ he said reprovingly. ‘The facts of life is one thing, John Joe, but keep away from dirty women.’
John Joe was a slight youth, pale of visage, as his father had been, and with large, awkward hands that bulged in his trouser pockets. He had no friends at the Christian Brothers’ School he attended, being regarded there, because of his private nature and lack of interest in either scholastic or sporting matters, as something of an oddity – an opinion that was strengthened by his association with an old, simple-minded dwarf called Quigley, with whom he was regularly to be seen collecting minnows in a jam jar or walking along the country roads. In class at the Christian Brothers’ John Joe would drift into a meditative state and could not easily be reached. ‘Where’ve you gone, boy?’ Brother Leahy would whisper, standing above him. His fingers would reach out for a twist of John Joe’s scalp, and John Joe would rise from the ground with the Brother’s thumb and forefinger tightening the short hairs of his neck, yet seeming not to feel the pain. It was only when the other hand of Brother Leahy gripped one of his ears that he would return to the classroom with a cry of anguish, and the boys and Brother Leahy would laugh. ‘What’ll we make of you?’ Brother Leahy would murmur, returning to the blackboard while John Joe rubbed his head and his ear.
‘There is many a time in the years afterwards,’ said Mr Lynch ponderously, ‘when I have gone through in my mind that moment in my life. I was tempted in bad company: I was two minutes off damnation.’
‘I see what you mean, Mr Lynch.’
‘When I came back to West Cork my mother asked me was I all right. Well, I was, I said. “I had a bad dream about you,” my mother said. “I had a dream one night your legs were on fire.” She looked at my legs, John Joe, and to tell you the truth of it she made me slip down my britches. “There’s no harm there,” she said. ‘Twas only afterwards I worked it out: she had that dream in the very minute I was standing on the street seeing the vision in my brain. What my mother dreamed, John Joe, was that I was licked by the flames of Hell. She was warned that time, and from her dream she sent out a message that I was to receive a visit from the little statue. I’m an older man now, John Joe, but that’s an account I tell to every boy in this town that hasn’t got a father. That little story is an introduction to life and manhood. Did you enjoy the stout?’
‘The stout’s great stuff, Mr Lynch.’
‘No drink you can take, John Joe, will injure you the way a dirty woman would. You might go to twenty million Confessions and you wouldn’t relieve your heart and soul of a dirty woman. I didn’t marry myself, out of shame for the memory of listening to Baker making that bargain. Will we have another bottle?’