PHILIP MARLOWE IN WATERFORD by Eamonn Chandler

It became known some time back that Raymond Chandler had Waterford connections ... 

THERE WAS  a cold wind blowing that night.

It was the kind of wind that comes down the river  past the glass works and the fertiliser factory and makes your nose itch so you want to pick a fight with someone – even if  you don’t happen to be married to them.

But I wasn’t looking for a fight that first night in Waterford when I walked down these wet streets, past Reginald’s Tower gleaming in the moonlight like a bad tooth.

 I pushed open the doors of  a small hostelry. I was here to recharge the batteries after too many close calls and even closer women in Los Angeles.

I just wanted a quiet beer in a quiet corner,  but as soon as I sat down I knew this might not be about to happen. For  one thing the television was too loud.

Then the  door opened again and this blonde walked in.

When I say walked I mean she walked in the way Hitler’s army walked into Poland, only without the same grace and elegance.

“So this is where you’re hiding” she snarled. I could see she meant me, and several other men nearby looked pretty relieved at this. A silence fell on the bar like a sheet in a morgue. The proprietor had turned off the television set  where some kind of  sports game with sticks had been going on. Or maybe it was a local war, because there was more blood and bandages than you’d see on a good night in Madison Square Garden.

But this blonde and what she might be about to do to me looked like a better night’s entertainment: I could tell from the way the company settled back and steadied their drinks.

“Give us another large there, Paddy” shouted one man who looked like he’d spent the day throwing tractors just to keep in shape – if you could call it a shape. “And a large Paddy, too, Paddy”, he said. This Waterford was getting to be a very confusing place.

“I’m not hiding” I said, “just recuperating”

“So you thought you could vanish and leave me high and dry”, she snapped.

“High, maybe”, I said, “but you’ve never been dry”.

She started to cry then  and I knew I’d been too quick as usual with the slick wordplay.

I could see the crowd was getting uglier. And that’s saying something considering where they started.

“That’s no way to talk to a lady” said the tractor man.

“Who are you calling a lady?” snarled the female visitor . “Haven’t you heard of women’s lib in  this neck of the woods?”

The tractor man looked puzzled as though he’d swallowed some unidentified substance from the River Suir in his glass.

“But I’m on your side” he complained. “Do you want me to punch this no-good husband of yours for deserting you like that?

“He’s no husband” said the blonde. “He took my money to do a job and never finished it. Then he vanished for ten months and it took me this long to track him down.”

The tractor man suddenly looked at me with a new  interest.

“Oh!”, he said, “you must be a builder then? I have a few jobs need doing meself.”

I thought I’d better explain. “I’m not a builder, I’m a Private Eye.”

“But you took this woman’s money and ran”, said the man behind the bar.

“Wouldn’t you?’’ I said. “She wanted me to bump off her old man so she could inherit his oil wells.”

“Just a goddam minute” said the blonde. “I never asked you to bump him off. I just wanted you to scare him a bit.”

“Wouldn’t waking up beside you not do it?” I said, and bowed acknowledging the smattering of applause this had inspired. “Anyway I did scare him, and he dropped dead. That’s why I took off.”

“But he didn’t drop dead, that’s the trouble”, she said, “He went to hospital and got so healthy that he  ran off with a bimbo one third his age.”

“Well that should do it soon enough”, I said, “Why don’t you relax and join me in a drink?.”

“I’ll have a large” she said.

The tractor man beamed. “Boys!,”, he said, “she speaks our lingo.”

She cosied up to me then. “I’m going to be be rich soon”, she murmured, her breath rasping past my ear like a CIE diesel coming out of a tunnel.

I took a deep breath and a longer drink.

“By the way” she said, “That money I gave you must have run out faster than you did. What have you been living on since then?”

It was the question I’d been waiting for all evening.

“Welfare my lovely,” I said.

Copyright Éanna Brophy

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