To pass the time, Mary Louise walked down to the stream, but today no fish were to be seen. Cars appeared on the avenue, one or two at first, then several at a time. She sat down on the grassy bank and watched them turning at the parking sign, and people getting out of them. The sound of doors banging, and of voices, drifted down to her. She began the walk back to the house.
Some time during her first few weeks in the house above the shop Elmer had thought to amuse her by instructing her in the ingenuity of the wall-safe in the accounting office. It had no key, he began by explaining, but operated by what was known as a combination. Single digits were registered, following one another in rotation to form a given number. A lever was turned, then a second lever, and the door of the safe opened. ‘Have a go,’ Elmer had invited, as if they were two children playing. The combination of numbers had remained in her memory, often recurring to her, as if unconsciously she knew that one day she would need to make use of it.
The evening before, when Elmer was in Hogan’s and her sisters-in-law already in bed, she discovered that a whole week’s takings were there, and, in a strong-box at the back of the safe, hiding the Jameson bottle and a glass, a bundle of five-pound notes with a rubber band around it. She took everything except the coins: £403 she counted afterwards. Anything she didn’t spend she intended to return.
‘Toy soldiers!’ The auctioneer’s tone was wearily impatient, dismissive almost. ‘Colourful set of soldiers! Who’ll start me with a pound?’
No one did. Mary Louise bought the soldiers for ten shillings.
When Elmer opened the wall-safe he couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d sustained one shock already that day – Rose’s announcement that his wife had gone off cycling without her breakfast inside her. When he entered the dining-room at one o’clock he was immediately told she hadn’t returned. Now, it seemed, he’d been robbed as well.
With the door of the safe hanging open, he sat down at his desk and endeavoured to think the matter out. Had he put the takings somewhere else? Had he moved the notes from the strong-box, taken them out and then omitted to return them? Sometimes, before setting out for Hogan’s, it was necessary to open the safe and slip out a few pounds to keep him going. Sometimes, during the day, he opened the safe because he was feeling tired and needed a pick-me-up. Could he possibly, in his haste, have forgotten to lock it again? Had someone managed to get into the accounting office, noticed the safe door ajar, helped himself, and banged the door after him? But there was no sign of a break-in, unless someone had climbed in through a window of the house and made his way downstairs on the chance that there’d be something lying about.
Sometimes if he felt a bit tired when he returned from Hogan’s he sat at the desk and had a doze. When he woke up ten minutes later he often felt befuddled, the way anyone would after a nap. He’d go up to bed then, but when he entered the accounting room in the morning he’d notice that a few things were out of place, as if he’d picked them up and in his drowsiness forgotten where they should be returned to. He kept the bottle and the glass in the safe because of privacy. He’d bought the glass in Renehan’s, knowing that if he took one out of the kitchen it would be missed.
He could have had a small one last night after he’d come in. When he’d had a doze he could have opened the safe and forgotten to close it again. He could even have taken the cash out to count it, which from time to time he did. He could have walked away and left the whole shooting-match spread out on the desk.
But the bottle and the glass were at the back of the safe, where they always were: feeling the need to, Elmer took advantage of their presence. His hands were shaking. If there had been a mirror in the office he’d have noticed that his face had acquired a grey tinge where the blood had drained from it.
He searched the office. He looked in the filing-cabinets and behind them. Glancing down into the shop to confirm that his sisters were there and occupied, he left the office with an eye still fixed on them. He passed soundlessly through the storeroom at the back of the shop and mounted the stairs to the house. He examined the first-floor windows, but could find no evidence of breaking and entering. In the bedroom he shared he searched the drawers of the wardrobe, even looked under the bed in case he had secreted money there due to an error caused by drowsiness. He searched the pockets of his suits.
In the shop – under the pretext that the lock was becoming worn – he examined the entrance doors for any tell-tale signs. In the storeroom he looked everywhere he could think of – behind bales of cloth, at the back of shelves, in the remnant baskets. Sometimes when he was taking a pick-me-up he put the glass down on a surface in the office and later couldn’t quite remember where he’d placed it. He sometimes wandered down to the storeroom to cut off a pattern for re-ordering, and did the same thing. He’d end up having to put the main lights on in order to search for it.
Elmer returned to his office and sat down again at his desk. He tried to remember his movements the night before. He tried to remember if he had or had not poured himself a small one when he returned. No one could have made an entry through the storeroom window because it was barred. He’d had a look at the halldoor on his way from the house: it had not been tampered with.
‘Did you go into the safe?’ he demanded in the shop three-quarters of an hour later. He’d waited until a woman buying knitting wool had gone. He’d had a couple more drinks. ‘Did you open the safe?’
He knew it was most unlikely. One or other of them always put the day’s takings on the desk. He couldn’t remember if they even knew the combination.
‘What?’ Rose demanded, sharpness already in her voice.
‘There’s money gone from the safe.’
Mary Louise spoke to two men with a lorry who were offering to deliver furniture that had been purchased. She gave them the numbers of what she’d bought – the soldiers and the bedroom furniture. The men promised to arrive with the goods the following day.
She rode away, pleased that she had succeeded in securing what she had: she’d been nervous about bidding, but no one else had wanted the soldiers, and the furniture was cheaper than she’d thought it would be. On the outskirts of the town she dismounted at the blue-washed cottage her aunt had mentioned at Letty’s wedding party. She said who she was to a wan-faced woman with a child in her arms.
‘I think my aunt gave you clothes.’
‘God bless her, she did.’
‘Would you rather have the money?’
‘Money? What money’s that?’
‘If I bought the clothes back from you I’d pay for them like they were new.’
The woman, alarmed by this, called her husband. He was a big man, who had to bow his head in order to pass beneath the lintel of the door. Even before he learned the nature of Mary Louise’s request, his wife’s suspicion infected him.
‘The clothing was given to us,’ he said.
‘I know it was. I’m saying I’m willing to buy some of it back. Anything you mightn’t want.’
‘It’s for the boys growing up.’ The woman’s incomprehension made her sound stupid. She lifted the child from one arm to the other when it began to cry.
‘It’s only I thought the money might be useful. It was my cousin that died. I only want a few mementoes.’
The man nodded slowly. An agreement could be reached, he said. He stood to one side, at the same time muttering to his wife. Mary Louise entered the cottage and selected some garments, which the woman wrapped up in newspaper for her. The parcel was tied with the length of string that had made a bundle of the clothes when they were delivered in the first place. The cottage smelt of poverty. Older children stared at Mary Louise from corners and from behind chairs. She left behind more money than had been agreed.
‘You’ll never manage that on the bike,’ the woman warned, and further string was fetched. The parcel was folded in two and tied by the man on to the carrier of the bicycle. It would be secure, he said, if she rode carefully and didn’t let the extra weight sw
ay her.
‘Were you mad?’ Rose’s tone was harsh, disguising excitement.
He didn’t reply. When they got going with their questions they could draw the teeth out of your head. If he hadn’t been so upset he wouldn’t have told them that during the first few weeks of his marriage he’d instructed his bride in the ingenuity of the wall-safe, thinking to amuse her.
‘There she is now,’ Matilda said.
It was twenty to seven; the shop had been closed since six. It stood to reason, Rose and Matilda had declared, not once but several times. She’d gone for ever, they’d said, one of them agreeing with the other. They’d hurried upstairs to see if she’d packed her things and then reported, in disappointment, that apparently she hadn’t. But even so they continued to insist that this time their brother’s unsatisfactory wife had run away.
They stood in the accounting office, Rose and Matilda on either side of the desk, Elmer by the open safe. When they heard the sound in the house all three of them knew that Mary Louise had put away her bicycle in the yard and had entered by the back door. They could tell it was her footfall. Rose called her.
‘I have this to return,’ Mary Louise said when she entered the accounting office. She held out most of the notes that had been in the strong-box. The rest of the money she’d used, she explained.
‘Used?’ Rose repeated. ‘Used?’
When he spoke Elmer’s voice was hoarse. He asked his wife where she’d been all day. They’d been beside themselves with worry, he said.
‘I was at my aunt’s auction. I bought a few things.’
Elmer reached out and picked up the notes she had placed on the desk. The rubber band was still around them. Only two of them were missing.
‘You stole money out of the safe,’ Rose said.
Elmer began to protest but the words became a jumble, running into one another incomprehensibly. Mary Louise said:
‘I wouldn’t say stole, Rose.’
‘You stole money out of the safe to go to an auction.’
‘Why didn’t you ask me?’ Elmer’s question was a whisper, just audible in the office.
‘I did, only you were drunk.’
‘My God!’ Rose cried. ‘My God, will you listen to this!’
‘That’s a disgraceful thing to say,’ Matilda interjected. ‘I don’t believe for an instant you asked him.’
‘As a matter of fact, I asked him twice. I asked him the night before last and I asked him last night.’
‘You asked him when you knew – maybe when he was asleep.’
‘I’m not a fool, Matilda. I don’t go round talking to people when they’re asleep.’
‘You go round doing all sorts of things. You go round trying to get people to eat the food left behind on an unwashed plate. You go round locking doors and interfering with property that isn’t yours.’
‘If I were you,’ Rose said to her brother, ‘I’d put the matter in the hands of the Guards. Stealing’s stealing.’
‘The furniture I bought will be coming tomorrow,’ Mary Louise said. ‘It won’t be in anyone’s way.’
With that she left the office. Her footsteps were heard on the stairs a moment later and then in the kitchen, which was partly above the accounting office.
‘Listen, Elmer.’ Rose spoke slowly and emphatically, isolating each word in a deliberate manner. ‘That girl’s worse than the brother. She’s not the full shilling, Elmer.’
‘She has caused disruption in this family,’ Matilda threw in. ‘Rose is right in what she says, Elmer.’
He did not speak. It could be true that she had asked him about the money. She might have said it and, due to evening drowsiness, he mightn’t have heard her. He’d given her the combination ages ago. Since he hadn’t been able to hear her, she might just have used it. God knows why he’d ever given her the thing.
‘The family and the household,’ Matilda reiterated. ‘There isn’t a day you can draw a breath in peace.’
‘Look at the state she’s put you in,’ Rose said. ‘You have a bottle and a glass in that safe, the way there never was in the past. She has you so’s you can’t think straight.’
‘What’s she want furniture for? Is the furniture we have not good enough for her?’
‘She won’t eat with us, Elmer. She won’t sit down in a room upstairs with us. It’s a wonder she’ll lie in a bed with you.’
There was a silence after Rose said that. It continued for a minute and then for another. It went on after that.
‘What d’you want me to do?’ Elmer asked at last.
The next morning Rose saw the furniture lorry drawing up and snapped at the two men when they appeared in the shop. No one wanted furniture, she said. ‘Take it back where it came from,’ she ordered.
But Mary Louise stepped round the counter and directed the men to the back door of the house. Rose’s protests were ignored, as were the additional ones of Matilda: it was Mary Louise the men had bargained with concerning the expenses agreed upon.
‘I’m afraid it’s up at the top of the house,’ she apologized.
The men were obliging. Upstairs or downstairs, it was all in the day’s work. ‘What’s troubling them in the shop?’ one of them asked.
Mary Louise explained it was a misunderstanding. Her sisters-in-law hadn’t known the furniture had been bought. Her sisters-in-law were abrupt in their manner.
‘That’s the final straw,’ Rose said, red in the face, glaring in the accounting office. ‘She’s filling our attics with rubbish.’
‘I spoke to her last night, Rose. I said you were upset.’
‘And what good did it do? What good’s speaking to her? We told you what to do.’
‘I can’t go doing wild things like that, Rose.’
‘It’s an hour’s drive in Kilkelly’s car. There’s a garden to walk in. She’ll be with her kind.’
Over the years Elmer had become used to what he considered to be the outrageous side of both his sisters. It was nourished by a harsh matter-of-factness and fed on the confidence of their double presence in the household. When Rose, a few years ago, laid down that they should not pay Hickey the builder the full amount of his bill because he had been four months late in attending to the work and had thereby succeeded in making the job a bigger one, Matilda had unswervingly supported her. When Matilda insisted that Miss O’Rourke from the technical school should be obliged to accept a cardigan that had been singed by her cigarette, Rose didn’t hesitate either, even though the cardigan was of a colour that in no way suited Miss O’Rourke, and had quite by accident come into contact with the cigarette Miss O’Rourke had momentarily placed on the counter. There had been many similar instances, all of them revolving round the fact that when Elmer’s sisters felt themselves to be right they experienced no embarrassment in demanding excessive amends. They had little patience with the courtesies of moderation or compromise; pussyfooting was not in their nature.
‘One of those men’s carried in a box full of toys,’ Matilda reported, leaving the shop unattended in her excitement.
‘There you are, Elmer. Your wife’s gone into her childhood.’
‘A big cardboard box,’ Matilda said. ‘Filled up to the brim.’
The bell on the shop door jangled and both sisters hurried back to their duties. During the last twenty-four hours the excitement that possessed them had reached a fresh climax. It was an excitement that had begun when they first realized their brother’s wife made regular journeys to the attic rooms, had intensified when they discovered she’d moved most of the furniture from one attic to the other and had taken to locking the door, had intensified further with each subsequent deviation from what the sisters regarded as normal behaviour. Mary Louise’s disappearance the day before had been delight enough: not in their wildest hopes had they anticipated the ecstasy of money purloined in order to buy toys at an auction. For a single moment Matilda wondered if her sister-in-law could possibly have given birth to an infant which, for peculiar reasons,
she chose to keep hidden in an attic room and for whom she was now making purchases. As well as the box of brightly-coloured soldiers, Matilda had watched a dismantled bed and a mattress, as well as other bedroom articles, being carried from the lorry. But a baby’s cries would have been heard, especially at night, and the girl could not possibly have disguised her figure: the theory was abandoned almost as soon as it was born. Crazier, really, Matilda reflected, to have obtained toys in order to play with them yourself, at twenty-five years of age.
Elmer’s footfall was heavy on the attic stairs. His knuckles rapped on the panels of the door. He tried the handle. Several times he spoke her name. Then he went away, heavily descending.
She would get the chimney-sweep in so that she could have a fire in the tiny grate. She wouldn’t mind carrying sticks and coal up, or cleaning out the ashes. A fire would take the chill off the air.
She untied the string around the mattress and settled the mattress on the bed, which the men had erected for her. For all of his twenty-four years he had lain on it. For all of his twenty-four years he had woken every day to the scene of the hay-cart, and the dog chasing a rat in the stubble. Every day he had opened and closed the wardrobe’s pale doors.
She placed his collar-stud on the dressing-table where she could readily see it. She arranged the soldiers on the floor, remembering as best she could how they had been. She hung his clothes up.
25
She walks about the town. After thirty-one years she is a stranger and the town has changed, as her husband warned her. There is more of a bustle to it, more vehicles about, people hurry more. The goods in the shop windows look more interesting, French cheese and wines you’d never see in the old days, new kinds of sweets. The bill-posters are different, the old Electric’s gone.