“Oo!” chirped Mary.
“Ha ha!” laughed Jo.
“Ha ha!” squealed Mary as slowly the door opened and they looked up to witness Pat McNab standing directly before them on the step. His hair was uncombed and he was attired in his long black coat. He found his cheeks flushing a deep crimson as he was formally addressed.
“We’re on holiday, you see,” went on Jo in what were reasonably convincing “adult” tones, “we’re on holiday—”
“And we thought—” interjected Jo.
“We thought we’d go on a little mystery tour—,” said Ann.
“Hop on the bus,” said Mary.
“Hop off the bus,” smiled Jo.
“Hop hop hop,” laughed Ann.
“And go where we like!”
“Go anywhere we like!” said Mary.
“Just get on the bus and go!” chirped Ann.
“Whee!” laughed Jo.
“Who cares where it takes you?” Mary said.
“Not me!”
“Nor me!”
“Nor me!”
“For we’re three lovely lassies from Bannion!” erupted Jo at the top of her voice, making little wriggly waves in the air with her fingers.
“Ssh!” chided Ann.
“I’m sorry, but like it says above on the sign—there’s ‘no girls,’ you see,” stammered Pat, staring at the step, his face an even deeper shade of red than before.
There was a pause. During it, birds sang unremarkable melodies.
“Is that your final word, then?” asked Mary.
“I’m afraid it is,” said Pat, regretfully.
“Very well, then,” said Mary.
“McKenna! What are you on about?” hissed Jo behind her back, giving her a litde push.
There was another pause. The birds were sdill singing. Mary cleared her throat. She smiled as she turned to Ann and Jo and said, “Look! Goodness gracious me! There’s a button come loose on your coat!”
Pat swallowed, the saliva seeming to take an age to get past his tonsils.
“Loose?” he replied, pinpricks of sweat pushing through the flesh of his palms. He experienced the sensation of wearing gloves fashioned from barbed wire.
“Yes, loose!” continued Mary. “It looks like it’s about to fall off! Look, girls!”
Her two friends moved in closer as they inclined their heads the better to inspect said garment and its faulty accessory. Mary’s fingers curled about the button as she began, ever so slowly, to rotate it clockwise in what might be considered a “suggestive” fashion.
“Gosh! You’re right, Mary!” exclaimed Jo in husky tones.
“It’s about to fall off!” said Ann.
“Imagine what we could have done with it if we had known about it in time,” said Mary.
“We could have sewn it right back on!” said Ann.
“Right back on like it had never been off,” said Jo.
Mary fluttered her eyelashes and said to Pat, “Because that’s what we do, you know!”
Pat sneezed and a litde silver drop of mucus appeared below his right nostril. Considerately, Mary turned away and said, “We look after people!”
“We look after people!” said Jo.
“Take them under our wing!” said Ann.
“And look after them, right, girls?” said Mary.
“Like nobody else!” they cried in unison.
Mary coughed, placing the back of her hand delicately against her lips.
“If you have a cold—”
“Or heartburn,” said Ann.
“Or if your appendix burst,” said Jo.
“Or if you had cancer,” advised Mary.
“We’d look after you,” three voices said together.
“Just like we’d sew on a button,” Mary’s soft voice told him.
“Or blacklead a range,” said Jo.
“Or iron your jammies,” said Mary.
“We’d do it,” said Ann.
“Because we’re—” said Mary.
“Because we ‘re—” said Jo.
“Because we’re—” said Ann.
“Three lovely lassies from—” said Jo.
“Now, girlies—ssh!” chided Ann.
Mary’s tongue touched the dp of her teeth as she said, “So—where’s your thread?”
A large bead of sweat splintered over Pat’s left eyebrow.
“Where’s your thread?” asked Jo.
“Where’s your thread?” asked Ann.
Pat’s lip trembled as three voices—husky, beguiling—seemed to call to him from far away.
“Where’s your thread?” one said.
“Where’s your thread?” another said.
“Where’s your thread?” another said.
“Where’s your thread?” another said.
As the final one, with a rapid flutter of eyelashes, shrilly remarked:
“Well then! We’ll simply have to find it for him, won’t we?”
Pat was sitting in his chair by the fire fingering his newly sewn button, feeling as though he were a pile of old clothes abandoned in this sparkling, recently feminized environment, redolent of air freshener and potpourri, as at his table three “visitors” sipped from china teacups and nibbled on snack fingers, annihilating colleagues with great gusto.
“The cow, the cow—I never liked the cow!” hissed Ann, crinkling up her nose.
“Do you know she took my Pond’s face cream and never gave it back!”
“Your Pond’s?”
“Yes—my Pond’s! And you know how much it costs!”
“For all the good it’ll do her!”
“The cow!” they chimed as one.
“And the face!” snapped Mary, nibbling. “Like a hen’s hole upturned in rain! Oops! Sorry, Pat!”
“Don’t mind her, Pat!” squealed Ann. “Don’t you know you can’t bring her anywhere!”
“Ha ha,” squealed Jo.
“Ha ha!” yelped Mary.
“Ha ha,” laughed Pat, nervous and ill at ease, still twirling his button.
“Bring her nowhere!” cried Ann, pouring some more tea. “I don’t know why we took her with us at all!”
“No!” cried Mary. “We should have left the trollop in St. Ita’s!”
“In St. Ita’s!”
“St. Ita’s!”
“Ah ha ha ha ha!”
“Long live St. Ita’s! Stupid Nurses’ Home! More tea, Mary?”
But Mary wasn’t listening, for between her intermittent ejaculations and the delicious taste of her snack fingers, she had become momentarily distracted by Pat’s persistent preoccupation with his button. She coughed politely and, brushing some crumbs off the sleeve of her pink lamb’s wool cardigan, said, “Pat—do you mind me asking you—why are you doing that?”
Pat shifted abruptly in his chair, quite startled.
“Doing? I’m doing nothing!” was his smart rejoinder.
Mary touched her upper lip with the dp of her tongue and smoothed her skirt over her knees, saying, “Don’t you know if you do that, Pat, I’m only going to have to go and sew it on all over again!”
“Sew it?” replied Pat, a trifle hoarsely. “Well, in that case, I’ll leave it alone, then!”
Mary smiled tenderly, as at an infant child, perhaps.
“Arra—I don’t mind!” she went on. “But—”
“I’ll leave it alone,” Pat replied, unconsciously tugging even harder on the button, becoming quite flushed and agitated as he, unknown to himself, cried out in a very loud voice: “Then I’ll leave it, I said! I said—I’ll leave it alone! Did you not hear me?”
There ensued an extremely long pause. If the birds were still singing out in the trees or far away or anywhere, their tunes went unremarked upon. The sole audible sound as the shocked girls stared at each other was the sound of the grandfather clock ticking in the hallway. The sole sound, that is, before the air was rent asunder by a triply hysterical effusion, accompanied by an almost primitive percus
sive rhythm of table-slapping abandon. Pat’s gray and hangdog silence seemed shameful by comparison. In his ears the noise of his swallowing was as the rush of rain-swelled rapids. His fear for a moment was that they could hear it too, but in this he was mistaken, for they couldn’t—they were too busy laughing themselves sick to hear anything.
A dainty white nylon blouse with frilled front, high neck buttoned at the back, and full sleeves with lace cuffs might be described as “very feminine.” So too might a bottle of Chanel No. 9 perfume, but a combination of both would not even present a close approximation of femininity when compared to the interior of the bedroom which had been appropriated by Pat’s “visitors,” scattered as it was with any amount of filmy pajamas and powder clouds of talc, a furious amount of hair-brushing proceeding and false fingernails littering dressing tables like confetti. Why, it appeared as if the slumber party to end all slumber parties was taking place right there in the McNab house!
“But he’s not bad-looking!” continued Mary, as she drew the hairbrush through her coiffure with deft but delicate strokes. “I mean I wouldn’t say he’s bad-looking!”
“Perhaps not, Mary—if you took a hose to him, at any rate!” squealed Jo.
“Or a blow lamp, maybe!” interjected Ann.
“Shut up, you cows!” snapped Mary, slapping Jo on the shoulder. “He’s shy, that’s all!”
“Oo! Do you hear her!” mocked Jo. “Do you hear her, Ann Magee!”
“He’s shy, that’s all!” mimicked Ann wickedly.
Jo raised her eyebrows and put on a baby voice.
“I think she fancies him!” she said cheekily.
“Fancies him!” squealed Ann.
“Do you, Mary?” asked Jo. “Fancy him, I mean?”
“Oo! Fancies him! Fancies him!”
Ann’s shoulders heaved.
“Pat! Yoo hoo! Hello there, Pat!”
Jo mimicked Mary’s voice.
“Mary wants to talk to you!”
Mary shrugged and hissed disapprovingly, but not without displaying a twinkle in her eye.
“Shut up, you cows!” she demanded, waving the hairbrush at them. At once she found herself attacked and pummeled with pillows.
“Look, Mary!” yelped Jo. “This pillow here is Pat! Give it a kiss! Go on! Give it a kiss!”
At first, Mary’s hesitancy appeared to indicate that she was hurt by the rumors. But then, suddenly, she gripped the pillow with both arms, giddily hugging it and making a large “smacking” noise on the bulky cloth with her lips.
“Look! I told you!” yelled Jo.
“Ha ha!” laughed Ann. “If only Matron was here now!”
“We’d get Pat to give her a great big coort!” laughed Ann.
As though a wickedly impish, mysterious force had been unleashed, they began to squeal anew and set about each other with a variety of fluffy toys. By the time they were finished, their fit, red-cheeked young bodies were exhausted.
The following day the three friends were as living, flapping aprons, cooking smells wafting out the door and along the hallway, up the stairs and into every nook and cranny of the house. In the corner, Pat sat fiddling with his fingers.
“You won’t regret this, Pat,” Mary said. “A few more days and we’ll have this place looking spick and span!”
“It will be the nicest house in the country,” affirmed Jo.
“The nicest B and B!” contradicted Ann. “The nicest ? and B, you mean!”
“Oh, all right, then, you cow!” hissed Jo, adding, “Pshaw! Stickler for detail!”
“Now now! Stop bickering, girls!” insisted Mary. “You know what Sister Boniface would say!”
Jo screwed up her face and in a cracked voice, mocked:
“If you ask me, youse gird-ills is mad—mad!”
“Mad after anything in trousers anyway, Sister Boney-face!” echoed Ann.
Mary’s hands shot to her face.
“Oh no!” she cried. “I’ve no eggs!”
“No eggs?” cried Jo.
“No eggs?” cried Ann.
“How can I make an omelette to go with potatoes and peas if I’ve no eggs?” moaned Mary.
“I’ll go get them! I’ll get the eggs!” volunteered Jo.
“And I’ll go with you!” offered Ann. “The pair of us will go and get them!”
“Oh, would you?” cried Mary. “That would be just peachy!”
“Don’t worry!” chirped Jo.
“After all,” said Ann, as they spontaneously sang, extremely tunefully, “We are three lovely lassies from Bannion—are we not?” before locking together their lithe young bodies in an embrace which gave the illusion of one single elegant, sweet-smelling person, albeit, as has been noted earlier, one in possession upon its shoulders of a trinity of gay and agile wavy heads.
Not long after her friends had departed for the town, Pat was busy sweeping up when he heard Mary say, “Pat—it doesn’t matter if you miss a bit, you know. I won’t mind.”
He knew she had been observing him for some time.
“What?” he gulped, without raising his head.
“I was just saying,” continued his visitor, “it doesn’t matter if you miss a bit of the floor by accident. I’ll do it later.”
Pat reddened, barely audible as he replied:
“No. It’s okay. I’ll do it.”
Mary approached, extending her hand.
“No, I’ll do it,” she went on, “honestly. It’s woman’s work, anyway. We do it all the time in the nurses’ home. We’re used to it, Pat—really.”
“Used to it?” replied Pat, unaware, however, of exactly which words had at that moment passed his lips. They might equally have been “You like marmalade?” or “Horses eat grass.”
“Yes,” continued Mary. “Cooking. Cleaning. Sweeping up the floor. We don’t mind doing it. Girls don’t mind. After all—men work in the fields, don’t they? And on the farm too. Lifting all that hay. Digging. Thinning turnips, for example!”
She paused. A thin, tiny sigh escaped her breast.
“Yes, digging. And getting clay all over their hands. Clay and mud all over their hands.”
She paused anew, then said: “Here—let me.”
Pat withdrew, a little startled.
“No. It’s all right, Mary,” he repeated.
Her eyes met his.
“Mary,” she said softly, “you called me Mary.”
“I’m sorry!” cried Pat suddenly.
“No! It’s all right,” she reassured him, continuing. “Here! Please let me!”
Slowly Pat handed her the brush, meekly averting his eyes as she gazed out at him from beneath the beautifully clipped awnings of her lashes.
“You have enough to do, Pat,” she said as she maneuvred the brush deftly with short, effective strokes, “digging—and working out in the fields. Anyway—I like doing it for you. Sometimes, you know—sometimes you get fed up with girls being around you all the time. Girls, girls, girls—do you know what I mean, Pat? Girls everywhere you go. It’s sickening!”
Pat swallowed and bent his thumb back, staring at it for no reason he could elucidate.
“Huh?” he said.
“If there was a competition, Pat,” went on Mary, “if someone was to say to you, Of all the three girls—’ just saying there was a competition—‘which one, if you were asked, would you say is the best looking? Which one would you pick?’ I mean—it’s only a joke now!”
Pat stared at the floor and raised his head.
“Which one?” he said.
“Yeah! Which one!” said Mary excitedly. “Jo or Ann or—”
Pat looked away, once again experiencing the encroachment of deep color in the environs of his cheeks.
“I don’t know,” he replied uncertainly. “I’m not sure.”
Mary nodded, with understanding.
“I know you’re not,” she said, “but supposing you had to say. Suppose you simply had to say and there was no way out of it. Wh
ich one then would it be then?”
Saliva, thick as custard, tried to push its way past Pat’s Adam’s apple.
“The best looking?” he asked.
“Yes!” Mary nodded. “The best hair, best eyes, best lips—and best legs! No, I’m only joking! Not the best legs! Just the best looking overall!”
“I—”
Pat nibbled on the inside of his cheek.
“Yes?” Mary enquired eagerly.
“I don’t—”
“Like—if you had to pick one to marry—which one would it be?”
“I think,” began Pat, “I think it would be—”
Mary strained to hear Pat’s low voice.
“I think it would be—”
To Mary’s annoyance, just then the kitchen swung open and her two friends fell in singing:
There are three lovely lassies in Bannion, Bannion, Bannion,
There are three lovely lassies in Bannion
And I am the best of them all!
“Phew! I’m bushed!” cried Jo, flopping down on the sofa with her shopping bags.
“Well! Here’s the eggs!” chirped Ann, extending the gray ridged box.
“Get frying, Mary McKeogh, you great big ugly cow you!”
“Ugly cow! Ha ha!” laughed Ann.
“Justjoking, Mary! “Jo assured her friend, or attempted to, for there was clearly something tenebrous and unappreciadve in the manner Mary accepted the container of eggs. Which was not lost on Jo who, the moment Mary turned her back, exchanged looks with Ann, glances which unmistakably were meant to articulate feelings of a most emphatic nature, something along the lines of “Hmmph! Well mercy me! I wonder who stole her bun?”
Ann was seated at her dressing table some hours later, drawing an emery board across her fingernails, Jo absorbed in a magazine (Modern Screen) as she lay with one leg crossed upon the bed, chewing some gum and picturing herself chatting animatedly to assorted top twenty stars when Mary entered in her pink quilted dressing gown. Both girls noted that she looked none too pleased. She stood in the center of the floor with her arms folded and said, crossly, “Did anyone see my Pond’s?”
“Hmmph?” Jo responded without looking up from her reading.
Mary’s lips tightened.
“I said—did anyone see my Pond’s? Are you deaf or something?”
Ann coughed and inspected her right eye closely in the looking glass.