Brooklyn Page 0,15
the boss that we should let anyone working for us have anything they want within reason at half the price and that means we have things under control a bit more, but they still take stuff. Why I’m in change of the inventory is that I came recommended by a friend of the boss. I don’t steal spare parts. It’s not that I’m honest or anything. I just know I’d get caught so I wouldn’t risk it.”
As he spoke, he looked innocent and serious, she thought, but nervous as well as though he was on display and worried how she would view him and the life he had now. She could think of nothing which might make him more natural, more like himself. All she could think of were questions.
“Do you see Pat and Martin much?”
“You sound like a quiz master.”
“Your letters are great but they never tell us anything we want to know. And Pat and Martin’s letters are worse.”
“There’s not much to say. Martin moves around too much but he might settle in the job he has now. But we all meet on a Saturday night. The pub and then the dancehall. We get nice and clean on a Saturday night. It’s a pity you’re not coming to Birmingham, there’d be a stampede for you on a Saturday night.”
“You make it sound horrible.”
“It’s great gas. You’d enjoy it. There are more men than women.”
They moved around the city centre, slowly becoming more relaxed, beginning to even laugh sometimes as they talked. At times, it struck her, they spoke like responsible adults—he told her stories about work and about weekends—and then they were suddenly back as children or teenagers, jeering one another or telling jokes. It seemed odd to her that Rose or their mother could not come at any moment and tell them to be quiet, and then she realized in the same second that they were in a big city and answerable to no one and with nothing to do until five o’clock, when she would have to collect her suitcases and hand in her ticket at the gate.
“Would you ever think of going home to live?” she asked him as they continued to walk aimlessly around the city centre before having a meal at a restaurant.
“Ah, there’s nothing there for me,” he said. “In the first few months I couldn’t find my way around at all and I was desperate to go home. I would have done anything to go home. But now I’m used to it, and I like my wage packet and my independence. I like the way the boss at work, or even the boss in the place I was before, never asked me any questions; they both just made up their minds about me because of the way I worked. They never bother me, and if you suggest something to them, a better way of doing things, they’ll listen.”
“And what are English girls like?” Eilis asked.
“There’s one of them very nice,” Jack replied. “I couldn’t vouch for the rest of them.” He began to blush.
“What’s her name?”
“I’m telling you nothing more.”
“I won’t tell Mammy.”
“I heard that before. I’ve told you enough now.”
“I hope you don’t make her come to some flea-pit on a Saturday night.”
“She’s a good dancer. She doesn’t mind. And it’s not a flea-pit.”
“And do Pat and Martin have girlfriends as well?”
“Martin is always getting stood up.”
“And is Pat’s girlfriend English as well?”
“You’re just fishing for information. No wonder they told me to meet you.”
“Is she English too?”
“She’s from Mullingar.”
“If you don’t tell me your girlfriend’s name, I’m going to tell everybody.”
“Tell them what?”
“That you make her come to a flea-pit on a Saturday night.”
“I’m telling you nothing more. You’re worse than Rose.”
“She’s probably got one of those posh English names. God, wait until Mammy finds out. Her favourite son.”
“Don’t say a word to her.”
It was difficult to carry her suitcases down the narrow stairs of the liner and Eilis had to move sideways on the corridor as she followed the signs that led to her berth. She knew that the liner was fully booked for the journey and she would have to share the berth.
The room was tiny, with a bunk bed, no window, not even an air hole, and a door into a minuscule bathroom that also, as she had been told, served the room on the other side. A notice said that passengers should unlock the other door when the bathroom was not in use, thus facilitating