analiticheskoe_chtenie

the night into a laughing day. Through the first few streets, J ohnny had seen the jewels hanging from Dublin's ear and a shimmering circle of gems around her neck; but here he stared at the beautiful crown set lovingly .on her head. Trinity College and the Royal Bank of Ireland were dripping in jewels of light, and the countless banners fluttered like broad blossoms flowering in the midst of flames. The great mass of people stood silent and still, gazing spellbound in the midst of the wonder. The silence. was fraught with a quiet passion of esteem and fealty. It was the adorning. of the rock of their salvation, and Johnny and his mother pressed-each other's hands.

Out in the middle distance, Johnny caught sight of sparkling spots of silver shining out in the darker patches close to less brilliantly lighted buildings. They were the silver-mounted helmets of the police standing in batches, here and there, under the doorways and gateways of the

buildings.		·	·
Suddenly a crowd		of well-dressed young men, ar-.
ranged in ranks	like	soldiers,	one of them carrying a

big Union Jack, began to sing with all the vigour of their voices and all the fervour of their young hearts:

God save our gracious,Queen,

Long live our noble Queen,

God save the Queen!

"The College Boys are out, the College boys are out!" shouted the man of the wide watery mouth, jumping to his Jeet, and hanging half out over the top of the tram. "Now we'll see a snatch of the thruth at last!"

. But the vigour of the lusty singing voices was pushed down to a murmur by a low humming boo from the crowd, growing louder and deeper till it silenced the song and shook itself into a menacing roar of anger. A crash of splintered glass was heard, and pieces of a broken college window fell tinkling on to the pavement below. The menacing roar mellowed into a chanting challenge, low at first, but gradually ~rowing to the tumbling booming of a great river in flood, as the huge crowd sang .and pressed against the police in an effort to come closer to the College Boys:

The jealous English tyrant,		now, has 'banned our	Irish	green,
And forced us to eonecnl lt,		like a something foul	and mean;
But yet, by hcavl~nsl	hu'll sooner raise his victims from			the	dead,
Than force our hcurb	tu leave the green and ~otton to			the	red!_

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Someone raised a great green flag; there was a. great cheer; the crowd pressed forward, and the police were hard put to keep them back; and broken glass from the college windows continued to fall tinkling on to the pavement below, as the song went on:

We'll trust ourselves,	for God is good, and blesses those who lean
On their. brave hearts,	and not upon an earthly king or queen,
And freely as we lift our hands, we vow our blood		to shed,
Once and forever more	to raise the green above the	red!

Johnny saw the singing crowd suddenly surge forward, break the line of policemen barring their way, and attack the College Boys with fists and sticks, driving them back, back, back towards the college gates. He heard a bell tolling inside the college; saw the heavy entrance dobrs open, and a crowd of other College Boy,s pouring out, armed with heavy sticks, all cheering and yelling as they hurried on to join their comrades attacked by the people. He saw the police struggling with the crowd, trying hard to keep together, and smiting ashard as they could every head that came within reach of a baton; but one by one they were falling, to be savagely kicked and trampled on by the angry members of the dense crowd. And there in

·it all sto.od the tram, like a motionless ship in a raging sea, o/hile the gentle horses stood still together in the midst of the tumult.

Some of the crowd had got a rope, had flung it over the pole carrying a great Royal Standard, flying from a big bank building. Hundreds of hands tugged and tugged till the pole snapped, and the great flag came fluttering down among the delighted crowd who struggled with each other to be the first to tear it to pieces.

"Looka them pulling down the Royal Standard," moaned · the man of the wide watery mouth. His mouth slavered with rage, and he could hardly speak. "Where's the polish! Why don't the polish do somethin' -the ·gang of well-clad, well-fed, lazy, useless bastards! If I was betther

dhressed than I am, I be down in a jiffy to show them how to jue their job."

"Betther if we hadn't come out at all," Mrs. Casside kept murmuring, keeping a tight grip of Johnny's hand. "I wish we hadn't come out at all." _

. A frightened cry rang out as the crowd and the College Boys were fighting. The horse police, the horse police, here's the horse police! Far away up Danme Street, Johnny

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saw the silvered helmets of the horse police bobbing up and down, becoming brighter and drawing nearer second by second. A great wedge of the crowd pressed back into

Grafton	Street,	pushing, shoving, and fisting its way on
to get	clear of	the oncoming mounted police. Women

· screamed as they were shoved headlong back, and some men tried to lift terrified children on to their shoulders. In one place Johnny saw a yelling woman savagely trying to fight her way back to the thick of the crowd, screaming out:

"Me Tommie's lost; he was pushed out o' me hands; let me· back, God damn .you, till I find me Tommiel Oh, please, please make way for me!"

But the crowd was helpless, and she was pushed back and back, till Johnny lost sight of her, still screaming to be let back to find her Tommie.

The mounted constables were followed by a great crowd, booing and yelling, throwing stones, bottles, and even bits of iron coming as close as they dared to the heels of the horses. Occasionally some of the police would wheel, charge back, and the crowd following would scatter; to come back again as soon as the mounted police had turned to their comrades. Once, J ohnny saw a mounted constab le stiffen in his saddle, give a little yelp, letting go his hold on the long truncheon so that it hung by the throng of his wrist, turn his face backwards, showing that his right cheek had been cut open by the jagged end of half a bottle, flung by a hating hand in the crowd. Other constables ran to help the wounded man from his horse; and one of them tied up the gaping cheek with a large handkerchief borrowed from a comrade.

Some of those fighting the College Boys shouted a warning as the mounted men came curvetting into College Street; the fighters broke conflict, and the enemies of the loyal College Boys retreated down Westmoreland and College Streets, some running with a limp and others with bent heads, and hands.clasped over them. The man carrying the long green. banner ran with them, but the weight of pole and the folds of the flag fluttering round his legs · hampered his running. The police, angry at the fall of their comrade, came forward at a hard gallop irt pursuit of. the fleeing crowd. One of them, galloping by the man with the flag, leaned over his horse, swung his long batcin, and brought it down on the man's head, tumbling him

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over to lay him stretched out near the centre of the street,

almost hidden in		the folds		of	his green banner.
Johnny shrank		back	and	pressed close to his mother,
feeling her	body	shudder deep as she				saw.
A mounted police officer came trotting over to the
tram, leaned over his horse,					and touched the driver on
the shoulder with a slender whip.
"Take your tram to hell out of this, back to where it
came - quick!" he ordered.
The driver leaped down off his platform, unhooked the
tracing-pole	with .one		hand,		turned	the horses to the

opposite end of the tram by the reins with the other, hooked the tracing-pole again, and climbed on to the platform. The conductor pulled his bell, and the tram moved slowly back the way it had come; out of the gas-glittering homage to a Queen; out of the purple and crimson and gold; out of the pomp on the walls and bloodshedin the street; out of sight of the gleaming crowns and beaming blessings, back to the dimness of Dorset Street and home.

The last sight that J ohnny saw, as the tram moved slowly away, was the mounted police making a galloping charge towards Dame Street, in the middle ·of a storm of boos and stones and bottles; and a lone huddled figure lying still in the street, midway between the bank and the college, almost hidden in the folds of a gay green,banner.

THE CHERRY TREE

by Alfred Coppard

There was uproar somewhere among the backyards of Australia Street. It was so alarming that people at their midday meal sat ·still and stared at one another. A fortnight before murder had been done in the street, in broad daylight, with a chopper; people were nervous. An upper window was thrown open and a .startled and ·startling head exposed.

"It's that young devil, J ohnny Flynn, again! Killing rats!" shouted Mrs. Knatchbole, shaking her fist towards the Flynn's backyard. Mrs. Knatchbole was ugly; she had a goitred neck and a sharp skinny nose with an orb shining at its end, constant as grief.

"You wait, my boy, till your mother comes home, you just wait!" invited this apparition, but Johnny was gazing

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sickly aLthe body of a big rat slaughtered by the dogs of his friend George. The uproar was caused by the quarrelling of the dogs, possiqly for honours, but more probably, as is the custom of victors, for loot.

"Bob down!" warned George, but Johnny bobbed up to catch the full anger of those baleful Knatchbole eyes. The urchin put his fingers promptly to his nose.

. "Look at that for eight years old," screamed the lady. "Eight years old 'e is! As true as God's my maker I'll ... "

The impending vow was stayed and blasted· forever, Mrs. Knatchbole being taken with a fit of sneezing, whereupon the boys uttered some derisive 'Haw-haws!'

So Mrs. Knatchbole met Mrs. Flynn that night as -she came from work, Mrs. Flynn being a widow who toiled daily and dreadfully at a laundry and perforce left her children, except for their school hours, to their own devices. The encounter was an emphatic one and the tired widow promised to admonish her boy.

"But-it's all right, Mrs. Knatchbole, he's going from me in a week, to his uncle in London he is going, a person of wealth, and he'll be no annoyance to ye then. I'm ashamed.that he misbehaves but he's no bad boy really."

At home his mother's remonstrances reduced J ohnny to repentance and silence; he felt base indeed;.he wanted to do something great and worthy at once to offset it all; he wished he had got some money, he'd have gone and bought her a bottle of stout - he knew she liked stout.

"Why do yevex people so, Johnny?" asked Mrs. Flynn wearily. "I work my fingers to the bone for ye, week in and week out. Why can't ye behave like Pomony?"

His sister was a year younger than him; her name was Mona, which Johnny's elegant mind had disliked. One day he re-baptised her; Pomona she became and Pomona · she remained. The Flynns sat down to supper. "Never mind about 'all that, mum," said the boy, kissing her as he passed her chair, "talk to us about the cherry tree!" The cherry tree, luxuriantly blooming, was the crown of the mother's memories of her youth and her father's farm;

.around the myth of its wonderful blossoms and fruit she could weave garlands of romance, and to her own mind, as well as to_ the minds of her children, it became a heavenly symbol of her old lost home, grand with acres and delightful with orchard and full pantry. What wonder that in her humorous narration the joys were multiplied

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and magnified until even Johnny was obliged lo intervene.. "Look here, how many horses did your father have, mum

... really, though?" Mrs. F}ynn_ became vague, cast a furtive glance at this son of hers and then gulped with laughter until she recovered her ground with: "Ah, but there was a cherry tree!" It W!lS a grand supper - actually a polony and some potatoes. J ohnny knew this was because he was going away. Ever since itw_as known that he was to go to London they had been having something special like this,. or sheep's trotters, or a pig's tail. Mother seemed to grow kinder and kinder to him. He wished he had some money, he would like to buy her a bottle of stout - he knew she liked stout.

Well, Johnny went away to live with· his uncle, but, alas, he was only two months in London before he was returned to his mother and Pomciny. Uncle was an engine-. driver who disclosed to his astounded nephew a passion for gardening. This was incomprehensible to J ohimy · Flynn. A great roaring boiling locomotive was the grandest thing in the world. J ohnny had rides on it, so he knew. And it was easy for him to imagine that every gardener cherished in the darkness of his disappointed soul an unavailing passion for a steam engine, but how an engine-driver could immerse' himself in the mushiness of gardening was a baffling problem. However, before he returned home he discovered .one important thing from his uncle's hobby, and he sent the information to his sister: ·

Dear Pomona,

·Uncle Harry has got a alotment and grow veggutabfes. He says what makes the mold is worms. You know we puled all the worms out off our garden and chukked · them over Miss Natchbols wall. Well you better get some more quick a lot ask George to help you and I ·bring som seeds home when I. comes next week by the

excursion on ,Moms birthday.	-
Your sincerely	brother

John Flynn

On mother's birthday Pomona met him at the station. She kissed him shyly and explained that mother was going to have a half holiday to celebrate th~ double occasion and would be home with them at dinner time.-

"Pomona, did you get them worms?"·

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Pomona was inclined to evade the topic of worms for the garden, but fortunately her brother's enthusiasm for another gardening project tempered the wind of his indignation. When they reached home he unwrapped two parcels he had brought with him; he explained his scheme to his sister; he led her into the garden. The Flynns' backyard, mostly paved with bricks, was small, and so the enclosing walls, truculently capped by chips of glass, a! though too low for privacy were yet too high for the growth of any cherishable plant. J ohnny had certainly once reared a magnificent exhibit of two cowslips, but these had been mysteriously destroyed by the Knatchbole cat. The dank little enclosure was charged with sterility; nothing flourished there except a lot of beetles and a dauntless evergreen bush, as tall as J ohnny, displaying a profusion of thick shiny leaves that you could split on your tongue and make squeakers with. Pomona showed him how to do this and they then busied themselves in the garden until the dinner siren warned them that mother would be coming home. They hurried into the kitchen and Pomona quickly spread the cloth and the plates of food upon the table, while J ohnny placed conspicuously in the centre, after laboriously extracting the stopper with a fork and a hair-pin, a bottle of stout brought from London. He had been much impressed by numberless advertisements upon the hoardings respecting this attractive beverage. The children then ran off to meet their mother and they all came home together with great hilarity. Mrs. Flynn's attention having been immediately drawn to the sinister decoration of her dining t,able, Pomona was requested to pour out a glass of the nectar. Johnny handed this gravely to his parent, saying:

"Many happy returns of the day, Mrs. Flynn!"

"0 dear, dear!" gasped his mother merrily, "you drink first!"

"Excuse me, no, Mrs. Flynn," rejoined her son, "many happy returns of the day!"

When the toast had been honoured Pomona and J ohnny looked tremendously at each other.

"Shall we?" exclaimed Pomona. "Oh, yes," decided J ohnny; "Come on mum, in the garden, something marvellous!"

She followed her children into that dull little den, and by happy chance the sun shone grandly for the occ.asion.

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Behold, the dauntless evergreen bush had been stripped of its leaves and upon its blossomless twigs the children had hung numerous couples of rip~ cherries, white and red and black.

"What do you think of it, mum?" they cried, snatching some of the fruit and pressing it into her hands, "what do you think of it?"

"Beautiful!" replied Mrs. Flynn in a tremulous voice. The children stared silently at their mother until she could bear it no longer. She turned and went sobbing into the kitchen.

ACROSS THE BRIDGE

by Graham Greene

"They say he's worth a million," Lucia said. He sat there in the little hot damp M!?xican square, a dog at his feet, with an air of immense and forlorn patience. The dog attracted your attention at once; for it was very nearly an English setter, only something had gone. wrong with the tail and the feathering. Palms wilted over his head, it was all shade and stuffiness round the bandstand, radios talked loudly in Spanish from the little wooden sheds where they changed your pesos into dollars at a loss. I could tell he didn't understand a word from the way he read his newspaper - as I did myself picking out the words which were like English ones. "He's been here a month," Lucia said. "They turned him out of Guatemala and Honduras."

You couldn't keep any secret for five hours in this border town. Lucia had only been twenty-four hours in the place, but she knew all about Mr. Joseph Calloway. The only reason I didn't know about him (and I'd been in the' place· two weeks) was because I couldn't talk the language any more th·an Mr. Calloway could. There wasn't another soul in the place who didn't know the storythe whole story of the Hailing Investment Trust and the proceedings for extradition. Any man doing dusty business in any of the wooden booths in the town is better fitted by long observation to tell Mr. Calloway's tale than I am, except that I was in - literally - at the finish. They all watched the drama proceed with immense interest, sympathy and respect. For, after all, he had a million.

Every once in a while through the long steamy day, a boy came and cleaned Mr. Galloway's shoes: he hadn't the

147

right WOI'ds to resist them - they pretended not to know his English. He must have had his shoes cleaned the day Lucia and I watched him at least half a dozen times. At midday he took a stroll across the square to the Antonio Bar and had a bottle of beer, the setter sticking to heel as if they were out for a country walk in England (he had, you may remember, one of the biggest estates in Norfolk). After his bottle of beer, he would walk down between the money-changers' huts to the Rio Grande and look across the bridge into the United States: people came and went constantly in cars. Then back to the square t_illluncn time. He was staying in the best hotel, but you don't get good hotels in this border town: nobody stays in them more than a night. The good hotels were on the other side of the bridge; ·you could see their electric signs twenty storeys high from

the little square at night,	like lighthouses marking the
United States.	·

You may ask what I'd been doing in so drab a spot for a fortnight. There was. no interest in the place for anyone; it was just damp and dust and poverty, a Kind of shabby replica of the town across the river: both had squares in the same spots; both had the same number of cinemas. One was cleaner than the other, that was all, and more

·expensive, much more expensive. I'd stayed across there a couple of nights waiting for a man a tourist bureau said was driving down from Detroit to Yucatan and would sell a place in his car for some fantastically small figuretwenty dollars, I think it was. I don't know if he existed or was invented by the optimistic half-caste in the agency;_ anyway, he never turned up and so I waited, not much caring, on the cheap side of the river. It didn't much matter; I was living. One day I meant to give up the man from Detroit and go home or go south, but it was easier not to decide anything in a hurry. Lucia was just waiting for a car going the other way, but she didn't have to wait so

long. We waited together and watched Mr.Calloway waih ingfor God knows what. .

I don't know how to treat this story -'- it was a tragedy for Mr. Calloway, it was poetic retribution, I suppose, in the eyes of the shareholders he'd ruined with his bogus transactions, and to Lucia and me, at this stage, it was pure comedyexcept when he kicked the dog. I'm not a sentimentalist about dogs, I prefer people to be cruel to animals rather than to human beings, but I couldn't help

148

being revolted at the way he'd kick that animal -with a hint of cold-blooded venom, not in ·anger but as if he were getting even for some trick it had played him a long while ago. That generally happened when he returned from the bridge: it was the only sign of anything resembling emotion he showed. Otherwise he looked a small, set, gentle creature with silver hair and a silver moustache,

and gold-rimmed gl(lsses, and one	gold tooth like a
flaw in character.
Lucia 'hadn't been accurate when	she said he'd been

turned out of Guatemala and Honduras; he'd left voluntarily when the extradition proceedings seemed likely to go through and moved north. Mexico is still not a very centralized state, and it is possible to get round governors as you can't get round cabinet ministers or judges. And so he waited there on the border for the next move. That earlier part of the story is, I suppose, dramatic, but I didn't watch it and I can't invent what I haven't seenthe long waiting in ante-rooms, the bribes taken and

refused, the growing fear of arrest, and then the	flight -
in gold-rimmed glasses -covering his tracks	as well

as he could, but this wasn't .finance and he was an amateur

. at escape. And so he'd washed up here, under my eyes and Lucia's eyes, sitting all day under the bandstand, nothing to read but a Mexican paper, nothing to do but look across the river at the United States, quite unaware, I suppose, that everyone knew everything about him, once a day kicking his dog. Perhaps in its semi-setter way it reminded him too much of the Norfolk estatethough that, too, I suppose, was the reason he kept it.

And the next act again was pure comedy. I hesitate to think what this man wprth a million was costing his country as they edged him out from this land and that. Perhaps somebody was getting· tired of the business, and careless; anyway, they sent across two detectives, with an old photograph. He'd grown his silvery moustache since that had been taken, and he'd aged a lot, and they couldn't catch sight of him. They hadn't been. across the bridge two hours when everybody knew that there were two foreign detectives in town looking for Mr. Callowayeverybody knew, that is to say, except Mr. Calloway, who couldn't talk Spanish. There were plenty of people who could have told him in English, but they didn't. It wasn't cruelty, it was a sortof awe and. respect: like a bul1, he was on show,

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