She reminded her father that once he’d said the man they spoke of had charm to burn, but she didn’t receive a direct comment on that now.
‘I wouldn’t give you tuppence for him, Mary Louise. An awful streel of a fellow.’
‘Robert wouldn’t have been Robert if it hadn’t been for him.’
‘Well, no, that’s true, I suppose.’
There was surprise in her father’s voice, and for a moment Mary Louise almost told him that she and Robert had loved one another, first as children, and then when she was a married woman. Her father would keep it to himself, not wishing to cause anxiety: that was the way he was. She might have told him that Elmer came drunk to bed. She might have given the reason for their childless marriage. Her father would not have passed that on either. And would it matter that he knew all this, that the truth had been shared? It mightn’t matter at all, but at the same time it would distress him.
‘Father Mannion,’ a voice said, and a priest held out a hand for her father to shake. ‘How’re you doing, Mr Dallon?’
The priest was smiling, a big, pink, boyish face on a middle-aged man, a pink neck and forehead. He held his hand out to Mary Louise also, and she laid hers in it. ‘How are you, Mrs Quarry?’ he said.
She hated being called that. Ever since the funeral she had hated it. She didn’t listen when the priest and her father discussed some matter in businesslike tones, her father regularly nodding, the priest reaching out to press his arm every now and again. Gazing at the black cloth of Father Mannion’s sleeve, Mary Louise recalled the bottom sheet spread out on the bed that first evening in the Quarrys’ house, her own hands smoothing it. She walked round the bed itself to tuck it in, then spread the second sheet and smoothed away the wrinkles in that also. She remembered now the coldness of those sheets when later they slept together in his parents’ bed, he on the left side, she to the right.
‘Zinaida drank iced water all day,’ her cousin said, and Mary Louise turned away to smile. The old princess complained that so much iced water could not be good for a girl with a weak chest. As for herself, she had a toothache…
‘You have to be unmarried to be a bridesmaid,’ Letty said. ‘I told you, didn’t I, Mary Louise?’
‘Yes, you did.’
‘Is it that that upset you?’
Mary Louise said she hadn’t thought twice about the matter. Angela Eddery, in the same greenish shade as Letty, was the bridesmaid because the Edderys were distant relations.
‘I’m not upset,’ Mary Louise again assured her sister.
‘You’re different than you used to be.’
‘I’ll come out and see you when you’re settled down in the house.’
‘Yes, do,’ Letty urged, placing a hand on Mary Louise’s arm. ‘Anytime come out.’
Other voices had joined Baney Neligan’s now. A piano was being played; two girls had begun to dance. Men were crowded along the bar, talking and laughing. A uniformed garda, with his bicycle-clips still in place, searched through them to shake hands with Mr Dennehy. Two tinker children tried to enter the lounge-bar and were summarily ejected. Men she didn’t know put their arms round Letty’s waist or kissed her, saying it was their due. Mrs Dennehy went round the guests, announcing that there was a table laid out in the dining-room, down the passage next to the Ladies.
‘I remember him at the Christian Brothers’,’ Father Mannion informed Mr Dallon, referring to the bridegroom. ‘I used come in to give them a jaw. Your man sat at the end of a row.’ Mr Dallon said that was interesting, and Father Mannion added that those were great old days. ‘I better make the rounds,’ he said. ‘I have hands to shake myself.’
In an upstairs bedroom Mrs Dallon and her sister examined the wedding presents that were laid out on the candlewick cover of a bed and on the room’s dressing-table and on a larger table. There were plates and sheets, tablecloths, ashtrays, vases, cups and a teapot, an electric kettle, an electric iron, table-mats, more plates, cutlery, a salt and pepper set, a special kind of rolling-pin, a corkscrew, various kitchen implements, saucepans, a doormat, basins, bowls, jugs, baking dishes and a framed picture of the Virgin Mary, incorporating the Sacred Heart. This last offended Mrs Dallon. It had come from someone who was unaware of Letty’s religion, or else from someone who considered the reproduction a necessity in the household that was being set up. Letty wouldn’t hang it up, she’d surely put it behind something.
‘Ah, yes,’ Mrs Dennehy said hastily, noticing that Mrs Dallon’s attention had been caught by the picture. ‘That’s difficult certainly.’
‘Some lovely stuff here.’ Mrs Dallon was determined not to reveal her displeasure. There were bound to be awkwardnesses. There were areas that had to settle down in any mixed marriage, no good pretending.
‘Well, aren’t people generous, Mrs Dallon? When you come to the crunch of it you’ll find they’re generous.’
Other women entered the bedroom, Mrs Dallon and her sister left it. On a corner shelf on the landing there was a statue of a saint and downstairs there was a picture like the one Letty had been given, with a red light flickering below it. All of a sudden Mrs Dallon found herself wondering whom James would marry.
‘Doesn’t the green suit Letty?’ Angela Eddery came close to Mary Louise to voice her admiration. She had a way of doing that, of speaking in hushed, reverential tones with her packed, pressed-out teeth a few inches from the face of the person she addressed. Her breath was warm.
‘Does it suit myself, Mary Louise? It suits Letty all right, but I wondered about myself?’
‘Mary Louise,’ another voice said, upbraiding her. ‘You didn’t give that invitation to Rose and Matilda. Why didn’t you, pet?’
She did her best to explain. Her mother said if there ever was anything that upset her she should bring the worry out to Culleen. That was what home was for.
‘Of course it is, pet,’ her mother pressed, even though Mary Louise hadn’t sought to deny this opinion. Somewhere in the crowd, a little earlier, she had glimpsed the wrinkled features of Miss Mullover. The old schoolteacher was someone she could tell, someone who wouldn’t be upset, as her father would have been.
‘I haven’t seen you for ages, Mary Louise.’ Her aunt’s weather-chapped face was there also. Whatever she’d chosen to drink had caused it to redden even further. ‘Are you keeping well these days?’
‘Yes, I am. What’ll become of the soldiers when you sell the house? And the books and things?’
There was a pause. Then her aunt said:
‘There’ll be an auction. Your father thought an auction was best.’
Mary Louise wondered about Robert’s clothes. A dead person’s clothes were sometimes given to charity, unless they were sold because money was short. You wouldn’t auction clothes; she’d never heard of that.
‘What’ll happen to his watch?’
‘I’ll keep his watch, dear.’
Her aunt smiled at Mary Louise as she spoke. When would the auction be? Mary Louise asked, and her aunt said the second of May, all being well.
‘Will you give away his clothes?’
The question appeared to cause consternation. Her mother asked Mary Louise to repeat it, which she did.
‘There’s a family in need,’ her aunt said eventually, ‘due to the father being out of work.’.
Pressed further by Mary Louise, she added:
‘That dingy blue-washed cottage on the Clonmel road.’
Responding to Mrs Dennehy’s invitation, some of the guests had visited the dining-room and were now sitting at the tables in the bar, eating from cardboard plates. Miss Mullover, with modest portions of tongue and salad, saw Mary Louise on her own and waved across the room at her. The rumours about Elmer Quarry were true, she’d been thinking only a moment before. She’d seen for herself this afternoon: his eyes bleary, the lids inclined to droop. Like a sack of something, she’d thought, slouched against the counter of the bar.
‘Hullo, Mary Louise.’
&
nbsp; Every time she met her, the girl seemed more reticent. You had to prise responses out of her now. ‘This tongue’s good,’ she said, but the recommendation elicited no comment whatsoever. Then, as if reading those thoughts, Mary Louise answered a polite query about her husband’s well-being by suddenly becoming garrulous. Elmer was a harmless man, she said; he meant no ill-will. He had never struck anyone in his life; he never got into a rage; he never shouted; in all sorts of ways he didn’t bother her.
‘D’you remember, Miss Mullover, how my cousin always finished his transcription first? He used to scribble on the inside of his jotter cover. My cousin Robert?’
Miss Mullover, surprised, failed to remember that.
‘We were in love you know, my cousin Robert and I. In your schoolroom we were in love. We still were when he died. We’ve always belonged to one another.’
Elmer and Bleheen were interrupted at the bar. Mary Louise was suggesting they should go home.
‘Home’s where the heart is,’ Elmer said, remembering the expression suddenly, something his mother used to say. He lowered his voice. He’d had the whole thing explained, he said: an invitation had been issued but it had never reached the house. He was to carry her mother’s apologies back to Rose and Matilda.
‘Can we go now, Elmer?’
‘We’ll take a quick one for the road in that case,’ Bleheen said, raising his empty glass for attention.
‘Five minutes, dear,’ Elmer put in, ‘while Mr Bleheen charges his batteries.’
The remark was not made humorously but even so the artificial-inseminator laughed. ‘The three of us’ll charge our batteries,’ he declared. ‘What’ll you take yourself, dear?’
‘No, I’m all right, Mr Bleheen.’
Mrs Dennehy appeared at her side, reminding her about the display of wedding presents upstairs. ‘Your mother’s been up, along with your aunt. Wouldn’t you slip up yourself?’
‘Go up and enjoy yourself dear,’ Elmer urged; but Mary Louise said they’d better be getting back. She’d ask her mother to describe the wedding presents when she saw her next.
‘Well, wasn’t it a great send-off for your sister?’ Bleheen said in the car. ‘Not a ha’penny spared.’
Elmer, beside him in the front, agreed. The time by the dashboard clock was five past five. As soon as they heard the key in the lock they’d be out on the landing, waiting, the way they’d taken to doing. They’d start in at once about the house smelling like a distillery, as though any normal person could go out to a party and not return bringing traces of festivity with him. Mary Louise would walk past them, different from the way she used to be, not timid in their presence any more. What he’d do would be to stay where he was for a few minutes in the hall, and then walk into the accounting office. After ten minutes or so he’d slip down to Hogan’s.
‘All right, are you, dear?’ He half turned his head to address his wife, but she didn’t appear to hear him.
23
Miss Foye kisses her. He carries her two suitcases. The Quarrys are decent people, she hears Mrs Leavy say, they have that reputation. While she was waiting in the hall Mrs Leavy told further stories about the old days in the asylums, relating the frightening scenes she and her friend Elsie witnessed when they looked over the brick wall.
The women wave, as they waved at Bríd Beamish. The asylums were built as charitable institutions, the fashion in mercy then, as the drugs are now. She waves back, and winds the window of the car down and waves again.
She has left the house before, on two occasions: for the funeral of her father, and a year and a half later for that of her mother. At both she’d been reminded of the death of her cousin, not that reminding was necessary; but the words of farewell were the same, the repetition causing her to reflect that the dead become nothing when you weary of doing their living for them. You pick and choose among the dead; the living are thrust upon you.
‘Are they still alive?’ she asks, the silence suddenly broken, the question emerging naturally from her thoughts.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Your sisters.’
The car responds to the shock he experiences, juddering in its motion. He halts it to adjust himself, steering it into the gateway of a field. He turns to look at her.
‘Why shouldn’t my sisters be alive?’
‘We all die some time.’
‘Of course they haven’t died.’
‘I was not to know.’
‘You’d have been told, dear.’
She doesn’t say she might have been told and not been interested. She doesn’t say anything, but listens while he warns her there’ll be changes she’ll notice, in the town and in his daily life.
‘Do you remember what I told you about the shop?’
She considers for a moment, then admits she doesn’t.
‘I sold it out to the Renehans nine years ago. They joined the two premises together.’
‘Yes, I remember that.’
The television tells you what the world is like, old Sister Hannah used to say, the changes that have come. If you can be bothered to pay attention, the television will tell you all you want to know.
‘Over the shop’s the same,’ he says.
‘Yes, I’m sure it is.’
Sister Hannah’s the wise one. A person’s life isn’t orderly, Sister Hannah maintains; it runs about all over the place, in and out through time. The present’s hardly there; the future doesn’t exist. Only love matters in the bits and pieces of a person’s life.
24
On the day of the auction at her aunt’s house Mary Louise cycled out of the town just before eight o’clock. The streets were quiet. Mrs Renehan was out with her cocker spaniel. The bell of the Church of Our Lady was chiming. A lorry with barrels on it was drawn up at the bottom of the town, waiting to make deliveries, its driver and his companion reading newspapers in the cab. Bakers’ shops and paper-shops were open. In the window of Foley’s the elderly assistant was laying out rows of rashers. Two nuns made their way to the new convent classrooms on the Clonmel road.
Mary Louise wondered if he knew. If you believed in heaven there was no reason to suppose that he wouldn’t. She imagined him with his half smile watching her, knowing what she was up to. When she was seven or eight her mother had taken Letty and herself to the auction there’d been when old Colonel Esdaile died, three weeks after his wife had gone. She remembered a white marble statue in the garden, a draped woman. ‘Not another like it in Ireland,’ the auctioneer had bellowed. ‘Every detail in place, down to the toenails.’ And he was right: the toenails were delicately incised, she and Letty had gone to look. Mrs Dallon had hoped to bid for a job lot that consisted of a clothes line, scrubbing brushes and a bucket, but unfortunately the auctioneer, running out of time, placed it beyond her reach by throwing it in with two other selections of household items.
The morning was mild and sunny. Primroses still bloomed on the verges. Buds dotted the hedges, catkins were heavy on the new season’s shoots. Still softly green, cow parsley and elder bided their time.
There was a car ahead of Mary Louise on the green avenue. It moved slowly, as if wary of an unfamiliar surface. She watched it draw away from her and finally turn on to the grass before it reached the house. She could just see figures moving away from it. When she was closer a cardboard sign read Park Here.
‘The sale won’t start till two, miss,’ a man in the kitchen said. He was sitting at the table with another man and a boy. There was a blue Thermos flask on the table, and three cups without saucers. The boy was eating a doughnut he’d taken from a torn-open paper bag beside the flask.
‘I just want to look around,’ Mary Louise said.
The two men seemed doubtful, the boy wasn’t interested. The man who’d spoken said that viewing would commence at ten. Ten was what was advertised, he added.
‘I’m a member of the family,’ Mary Louise explained, and the two men appeared to be relieved.
‘Go ahead for you
rself in that case,’ the second man said, and Mary Louise passed through the kitchen.
Her aunt had declared she would herself find the auction too painful to attend, and in the circumstances Mary Louise guessed her mother would not drive over either. Other people she knew would arrive, but that didn’t matter, provided they didn’t bother her with their inquisitiveness. She mounted the stairs and opened the door of the first room she came to. Clearly it had been her aunt’s. The mattress was rolled up on the bed, tied with string. Each piece of furniture had a number stuck on it.
In her cousin’s room there were further numbers, black figures on a small blue rectangle. Framed in badly chipped gilt, a picture on the wall facing the bed was 91: farm workers in old-fashioned dress crowding round one of the wheels of a hay-cart, which had broken beneath the strain; near by, a dog was chasing a rat through the stubble. The mattress on this bed also was rolled up and tied. A china water jug, and the basin it stood in, were numbered 97, the wash-stand 96. There was a sun-bleached wardrobe and a dressing-table without a looking-glass, brown linoleum on the floor. The room’s single window had a view of the distant stream, and Mary Louise remembered her cousin telling her that he’d first seen the heron from his bedroom. On the mantelpiece, seeming as if he might have left them there himself, were his binoculars. A corner press, built into the two walls that formed it, was empty. So was the wardrobe. The dressing-table had a single drawer, lined with old newspaper. It, too, was empty, except for a collar-stud and a bottle of green Stephens’ ink, both of which she took.
Downstairs, in the room he had been so fond of, the scattered papers had been cleared. Books were tied into bundles. The French and German soldiers, still battling as he had left them, were numbered 39. She pulled out drawers and searched in the mahogany cupboards on either side of the door, but her cousin’s papers, his drawings and his scribbles, were not there. She had hoped to find them tied up in a bundle like the books – not an item in the auction but simply tidied away. Her Aunt Emmeline might have kept them by her, she decided; she might have packed them into the luggage she had taken to Culleen. One day, if her aunt didn’t want them any more, she’d ask if she could have them.