Dara asked Rita Walsh was there anything in the world that made hair look shiny like all these advertisements, or was it all a cod? Mrs Walsh told her that it was all a cod really, but gave her some sample bottles of conditioner and said to comb it through and leave it on for as long as possible.
Carrie said that if Dara was really badly stuck she could use the new hair lacquer she had bought, but to go sparingly on it.
Eddie said that Dara was trying on lipstick in the bathroom and rubbing it off on bits of toilet paper. They all said that Eddie was a boring sneak to have announced this for no reason except getting Dara into trouble because Mam said she looked like a tart with that white-coloured lipstick on. Eddie said he didn’t care what people thought of him because he’d be grown up soon and out of this place and he would never write to anyone not even at Christmas. And when he got rich he’d send a telegram saying ‘Yah boo’ and Mrs Whelan would have to take it down and have it delivered.
Eddie’s mother said that he was going to end on the gallows, and that if she had her legs she would get up and catch him and paste him into the wall.
Eddie’s father took him aside and said that life was all about rubbing along with other people and not making fights out of nothing.
‘But if I do anything I’m murdered,’ Eddie complained. ‘Dara can do anything she likes and people think it’s grand.’
‘To be fair,’ said John, ‘you do things like daubing the walls of Fernscourt with white paint. Dara only puts white paint on her own mouth in the privacy of the bathroom.’
That startled Eddie, who didn’t know that his father was up to date on the last little activity.
‘Yes, well. Yes,’ he said, at a loss.
‘And another thing, Eddie. You don’t really want the O’Neills to clear out, do you?’
‘Well, you know. It’s not right him coming in here and changing everything.’ He was a small parrot of Jack Coyne’s whining tone.
‘So no more of it. If you’re going to write on walls and get caught for it, then for God’s sake get yourself caught for writing something you mean, not something a fellow with a grudge told you to write.’
‘A fellow. What fellow?’ Eddie was too innocent.
‘Do you know why Jack Coyne does all this? He doesn’t give a damn about Mountfern and whether it’s changing or not. He doesn’t give a damn about your mother having the accident there, for all that he claims he does.’
‘He says it was all that man’s fault.’
‘That’s balls, Eddie, and if you think about it you’ll realise it is. Patrick O’Neill doesn’t send any business to Jack Coyne because he was cheated by Jack years back, and he knows what a chancer he is. Jack can’t bear that, and it makes him look a fool.’
Eddie’s eyes were round.
‘I’m telling you this not so that you’ll tell all those other beauties you hang around with, but just so that you’ll know. When you’re sent to a reformatory or whatever you should know why you’re going.’
‘I wouldn’t be sent to a reformatory?’
This was much more frightening than his mother’s belief he would end on the gallows. What made him sure that he was in real danger of a reformatory was this plain speaking. His father was treating him as a grown-up and telling him that Mr Coyne was a cheat. And he had said ‘balls’. As far as Eddie was concerned that clinched it. Things must be in a bad state if his own father would use words like that to him instead of belting the ear of anyone else who might be heard to say it.
Eddie was allowed to help at the party, he was told, but under no circumstances was he to join in. And when asked to leave he must leave at once with no arguments. It seemed a poor sort of deal. But it was the only way he would be let near the place at all.
‘Will I empty ashtrays?’ Eddie asked helpfully.
Dara and Michael looked at each other in despair. Wouldn’t you know that Eddie would manage to bring up the subject of smoking somehow.
‘There will be no need for that, thank you,’ Dara said in a glacial voice.
‘Just be generally helpful,’ Michael said.
‘Doing what?’ Eddie asked.
It was unanswerable.
He couldn’t take their coats, they wouldn’t have any. He couldn’t pass round the bottles of orange and lemon because they would all be on a table. He wouldn’t be allowed near the record player and it was probably better to keep him well away from the food too. The thought of Eddie presenting a plate of sausages or serving a trifle was not one that gave any pleasure.
‘Maybe you needn’t help at all,’ Dara said after some thought. ‘Maybe you would like an early night.’
Michael was more sensitive, he knew that an early night was something Eddie Ryan would never like, now or any time in the future.
Eddie’s face was bitterly disappointed. ‘I can’t go to bed on the night of the party,’ he said, hurt disbelief all over his round freckled face.
Even in her wish to have him one hundred miles away from the scene Dara saw that this would be too harsh.
‘Perhaps you could control the animals,’ she said.
‘What animals?’
‘Our animals, curb them, sort of.’
‘Do you mean Leopold and Jaffa?’ Eddie was totally bewildered.
‘Well yes, and Maurice.’
‘God, Dara, what could a cat and a tortoise do at the party?’ Eddie asked.
‘Aha, you put your finger on it. Not much, but Leopold might break the place up. Perhaps you could be in charge of Leopold.’
‘Like how? Not take him on a walk now, that wouldn’t be fair.’ Eddie was cunning.
‘No, but . . . um . . . put him on a lead and sort of patrol with him. They do that at parties in America, I saw it at the pictures, somebody patrols the grounds with a dog. You know, you must have seen them, they wear sunglasses and uniforms.’
Dara was thinking of a security guard she had seen in a film.
It worked like a dream.
‘All right, I’ll borrow some sunglasses and get Leopold’s lead and patrol a bit.’ Eddie sounded pleased with this role.
‘Not inside, of course,’ Michael said hastily.
‘Of course not.’ Eddie was superior. ‘Leopold mightn’t know it was all posh now, he might think it was the old shed still and squat down and have a scutter.’
‘Yes, that’s what we don’t need,’ Dara said, feeling faint.
They spent ages on the invitations. Nothing in the Leonards’ shop was right for them. Either they were teddy bears holding balloons asking people to come to a jolly party or they were heavy silver lettering saying, ‘You are invited.’ One was too babyish, one was too formal.
In the end they bought plain white cards and wrote them out individually. They knew that these invitations would be kept for a long time in the different homes of Mountfern. Written invitations didn’t often arrive in the post.
There had been long debates about the food. Dara had wanted food on a plate, like a real supper. Michael said that sausages and rolls would be better, food on a plate would be messy, people might let bits of gravy fall off.
Carrie was looking out big dishes that could cook lots of sausages at the same time. Mary got one of the beer companies to give them brightly coloured trays which they could use for serving the rolls. There would be sandwiches too on the grounds that everyone loved tomato sandwiches at moments of high excitement, and there would be tons of crisps and nuts.
The pudding was a trifle which Kate would make herself. She loved putting on the hundreds and thousands, she said, and she explained to Grace that it was because she never had jelly and cream or trifle herself when she was young that she got so excited over party food. Her parents had not been festive people, birthdays were low priority.
Grace told Mrs Ryan that her own mother had often been too ill for any real birthday, but she did remember years back when Kerry was twelve and Grace was nine, Mother had put on paper hats and they had all had a birthday tea i
n the garden. The three of them.
Father had been out at work. Like he always was.
Kate patted the golden curls and wished that Dara would be eager and confiding like this.
Still, it had to be said that since the party was planned Dara was a much easier soul to live with. Kate was forgiving, it was hard being fifteen whether you had a family that loved you or not. Dara did, Kate hadn’t, but at fifteen nobody was too clear about that sort of thing.
The cake was to have thirty candles, and it was a surprise. Kate had asked Marian Johnson, who knew all kinds of people, to recommend a firm that would deliver a cake already iced.
Marian had been very cooperative and even got something off the price because she knew the people who owned the firm.
Kate thought it was sad to see Marian boasting of all the connections she had and the people she knew socially. It was not at all the way to make Patrick O’Neill think more warmly of her. Patrick needed someone like Rachel. How blind and stupid he was not to realise it. How insensitive he was to write her a note every three months or so just at the exact moment when she was making a resolve to forget him and get on with her own life.
Rachel had sent the twins magnificent shirts for their birthday. Michael’s was black and red, Dara’s was silver and white.
Kate had encouraged Dara to buy a white pleated skirt. But not directly. She had just left a magazine about, and let enough hints fall without saying she thought it was nice. Grace as usual did the persuading. She said she thought the skirt looked fabulous and when Dara got her birthday money in advance of the day she went into the big town and bought it.
They were dressed and nervous, ages before people came. Michael was handsome in the unusual colours, Dara dazzling, Kate thought, in the shimmering silver and white. Her eyes were huge and dark, her hair shone like satin. Kate looked at them proudly.
‘I hope it will be a night you’ll always remember,’ she said, trying to keep the choking emotion out of her voice.
‘I wish you were able . . .’ Michael began.
‘To be able to run in and out a bit,’ Dara finished.
Kate brushed the tear away quickly and decided to be very non-sentimental. ‘Not at all, that’s the last thing you’d wish. If I had to come in and upset the proceedings you’d hear this old chair a mile away. It will be great altogether, the place outside looks like a palace. Your father will go in from time to time to make sure you have enough of everything.’
The twins nodded. That was understood. Their father would be calling in to make sure there wasn’t too much of everything, that’s what was really meant.
It was awkward in the beginning, because these were people they saw every day. The girls were at school together in the convent, the boys in the brothers’, they knew each other from Fernscourt in the old days, some of them from the bridge, and some from the raft, Coyne’s wood or just around the town. They saw each other a dozen times a week, in the cinema, on their bicycles. They were suddenly ill at ease in their finery in a room hung with hollowed-out shells holding lights.
The conversations began and died.
Apart from Grace O’Neill: she seemed not to notice any little silences or shyness, her laughter pealed, she begged for crisps, and more fizzy orange. She praised the room over and over, she admired the girls’ dresses, and said that she was just dying to dance. Could they get some music started? And arm in arm with Maggie, who looked nervous in a pink dress with a thousand polka dots on it, she rummaged through the records, exclaiming over them even though they were her own. In no time the party had started.
Eddie, patrolling, would stop wistfully and lift his sunglasses to watch the dancing inside what used to be the old shed. It was full of mystery and enchantment tonight, but Eddie could never pause too long. Leopold would look up thoughtfully at the sky and Eddie knew that an unmerciful baying was about to begin, so the dog had to be hastened away to the river bank until the wish to howl at the stars had passed.
Tommy Leonard told Dara that she looked beautiful.
‘That’s the only word for it,’ he said, anxious that there should be no misunderstandings. ‘It’s not just pretty, or nice, it’s beautiful.’
‘Thank you, Tommy, you look great yourself,’ Dara said, pleased.
‘No, it’s not just a question of looking well or not looking well. This is a description of what you are. Beautiful.’
Poor Tommy was bursting with eagerness to make it clear that this was no ordinary exchange of pleasantries. But Dara wasn’t really listening. She was looking at the door.
Kerry O’Neill had sent a note saying that if he was able to make it he would very much like to attend the party.
The note had been addressed to both of them.
Grace had said that Kerry was very unpredictable. He had left school, had got six Honours in his Leaving Certificate, and he was about to start work in a hotel in Donegal. Father had thought the best way for Kerry to learn the business of running a hotel was to start in someone else’s. Nobody knew when he would be off.
Grace hoped it wouldn’t be before the party, but with Kerry she said you never knew.
Dara hadn’t wanted to keep asking. It looked so babyish.
Maggie wondered if her dress clashed with her hair. Pink and polka dots would not have been her choice but this was a dress which had never fitted Kitty properly and was therefore pronounced almost new in the Daly family. Maggie had brought it to Miss Hayes over in the lodge and Miss Hayes had trimmed it with a red ribbon and assured Maggie that all girls with red in their hair wore this colour now.
Maggie danced with Liam White a lot at the party. Liam said that Maggie was easier to dance with than the others because she was smaller than normal girls and there wasn’t the same danger of being knocked down by her doing rock and roll. Maggie thought this was a mixed compliment, but at least it did mean she was being asked out into the centre of the floor a lot.
Jacinta White asked Tommy Leonard did he intend to dance with the hostess all night, because there was a good variety of other partners around.
Michael realised that as host he must dance with everyone, but his head turned from time to time to watch Grace as she whirled with her golden curls tied in a huge black velvet bow, and her head thrown back laughing. Grace was so alive and so beautiful. He would love to have danced with her all night, but he knew he couldn’t. He went over to Maggie Daly who looked very nice. Maggie was talking to Liam by the record player.
‘Will you dance?’ he asked her.
‘Who, me? Are you sure?’ Maggie looked startled.
Michael was annoyed. He was only asking her to dance, for heaven’s sake, why did she have to look as if it were some huge thing and she wasn’t worthy of it?
John looked in on the pretence that they might need more minerals from the bar. He sneaked back and reported to Kate that all seemed to be under control.
‘Nobody smoking, no one with a bottle of brandy under the table, and they all have their clothes on,’ he said.
‘My God, what a terribly dull party!’ Kate exclaimed jokingly, and the two of them smiled at each other in the bar. He touched her face suddenly and she held his hand to her cheek.
Brian Doyle at the counter saw it and wondered if all that sort of thing had gone by the board for the Ryans. He presumed it had. You couldn’t get up on an unfortunate woman who had all those injuries, could you. It was a terrible thing to happen to them. But still, Brian brightened, they were in their forties after all, they’d probably given all that sort of thing up long ago. Brian was thirty-four with a girlfriend in the town who was going to pack her bags and move off to another town if he didn’t make a move one way or another. He put the idea out of his mind and ordered another pint.
Carrie wanted to know should she serve the sausages and Mary said give them a bit more time yet.
Mary kept a weather eye out for Leopold and Eddie. She could see why the twins had resisted having their brother around, but she wanted to m
ake sure that Eddie didn’t tie Leopold to some far-off tree and forget him. The animal wasn’t used to being taken on such heavy walks with the lead.
When Mary saw them pass again, she made signs and invited Eddie to join her in the kitchen.
‘What’s it about?’ Eddie was suspicious.
‘I thought you and Leopold and I might have a sausage or two ourselves before the rush starts, what do you think?’
Eddie thought it was great. Carrie served them all and brought a big bottle of tomato ketchup as well, which was more than the people outside at the party would have.
Jimbo joined them for a few moments and gave Carrie’s ear a nuzzle.
‘Enough of that, Jimbo,’ Mary said firmly.
‘It’s only a bit of affection,’ Jimbo said.
‘It’s roguery and trickery and what’s more it’s unhygienic in a place where food’s being prepared,’ Mary said.
‘All right.’ Jimbo was good-natured.
Eddie was given another sausage to reward him for his hard work patrolling.
‘What are you patrolling?’ Jimbo asked.
Eddie was at a loss. He didn’t rightly know.
‘What is it exactly?’ he asked Mary.
‘Anyone knows you have to patrol at a function,’ Mary said.
‘Will there be patrolling across the river when the hotel starts?’ Jimbo asked.
‘Bound to be,’ said Mary.
‘Maybe I should get in quick and apply for it.’
Eddie smiled to himself. It was a real job, he had been afraid it might have been Dara and Michael making something up to keep him out of the way.