‘Yes, I do remember you,’ she said. ‘Of course.’
A slice of lemon floated on the surface of what she guessed was gin and tonic; there were cubes of ice and the little bubbles that came from tonic when it was freshly poured. It wouldn’t be tonic on its own; it hadn’t been the other time. ‘I’ve drunk a bit too much,’ he’d said.
‘I used to wonder,’ he went on now, ‘if ever we’d meet again. The kind of thing you wonder when you can’t sleep.’
‘I didn’t think we would.’
‘I know. But it doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘Of course not.’
She wondered why he had come back. She wondered how long he intended to stay. He’d be staying with the Prendergasts, she supposed, as he had been before. For sixteen years she had avoided the road on which the avenue that led to the Prendergasts’ house was, the curve of the green iron railings on either side of the open gates, the unoccupied gate-lodge.
‘You weren’t aware that Hetty Prendergast died?’ he said.
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘Well, she did. Two days ago.’
The conversation took place in the bar of the Tara Hotel, where Grania and her husband, Desmond, dined once a month with other couples from the tennis club – an arrangement devised by the husbands so that the wives, just for a change, wouldn’t have to cook.
‘You don’t mind my talking to you?’ the man said. ‘I’m on my own again.’
‘Of course I don’t.’
‘When I was told about the death I came on over. I’ve just come in from the house to have a meal with the Quiltys.’
‘Tonight, you mean?’
‘When they turn up.’
Quilty was a solicitor. He and his wife, Helen, belonged to the tennis club and were usually present at the monthly dinners in the Rhett Butler Room of the Tara Hotel. The death of old Hetty Prendergast had clearly caught them unawares, and Crania could imagine Helen Quilty sulkily refusing to cancel a long-booked babysitter in order to remain at home to cook a meal for the stranger who had arrived from England, with whom her husband presumably had business to discuss. ‘We’ll take him with us,’ Quilty would have said in his soothing voice, and Helen would have calmed down, as she always did when she got her way.
‘Still playing tennis, Grania?’
‘Pretty badly.’
‘You’ve hardly aged, you know.’
This was so patently a lie that it wasn’t worth protesting about. After the funeral of the old woman he would go away. He hadn’t arrived for the other funeral, that of Mr Prendergast, which had taken place nearly ten years ago, and there wouldn’t be another one because there was no other Prendergast left to die. She wondered what would happen to the house and to the couple who had looked after the old woman, driving in every Friday to shop for her. She didn’t ask. She said:
‘A group of us have dinner here now and again, the Quiltys too. I don’t know if they told you that.’
‘You mean tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, that wasn’t said.’
He smiled at her. He sipped a little gin. He had a long face, high cheekbones, greying hair brushed straight back from a sallow forehead. His blue-green eyes were steady, almost staring because he didn’t blink much. She remembered the eyes particularly, now that she was again being scrutinized by them. She remembered asking who he was and being told a sort of nephew of the Prendergasts, an Englishman.
‘I’ve often wondered about the tennis club, Grania.’
‘It hasn’t changed. Except that we’ve become the older generation.’
Desmond came up then and she introduced her companion, reminding Desmond that he’d met him before. She stumbled when she had to give him a name because she’d never known what it was. ‘Prendergast,’ she mumbled vaguely, not sure if he was called Prendergast or not. She’d never known that.
‘Hetty died, I hear,’ Desmond said.
‘So I’ve been telling your wife. I’ve come over to do my stuff.’
‘Well, of course.’
‘The Quiltys have invited me to your dinner do.’
‘You’re very welcome.’
Desmond had a squashed pink face and receding hair that had years ago been sandy. As soon as he put his clothes on they became crumpled, no matter how carefully Grania ironed them. He was a man who never lost his temper, slow-moving except on a tennis court, where he was surprisingly subtle and cunning, quite unlike the person he otherwise was.
Grania moved away. Mavis Duddy insisted she owed her a drink from last time and led her to the bar, where she ordered two more Martinis, ‘Who was that?’ she asked, and Grania replied that the grey-haired man was someone from England, related to the Prendergasts, she wasn’t entirely certain about his name. He’d come to the tennis club once, she said, an occasion when Mavis hadn’t been there. ‘Over for old Hetty’s funeral, is he?’ Mavis said and, accepting the drink, Grania agreed that was so.
They were a set in the small town; since the time they’d been teenagers the tennis club had been the pivot of their social lives. In winter some of them played bridge or golf, others chose not to. But all of them on summer afternoons and evenings looked in at the tennis club even if, like Francie MacGuinness and the Haddons, they didn’t play much any more. They shared memories, and likes and dislikes, that had to do with the tennis club; there were photographs that once in a blue moon were sentimentally mulled over; friendships had grown closer or apart. Billy MacGuinness had always been the same, determinedly a winner at fourteen and determinedly a winner at forty-five. Francie, who’d married him when it had seemed that he might marry Trish, was a winner also: Trish had made do with Tom Crosbie. There’d been quarrels at the tennis club: a great row in 1961 when Desmond’s father had wanted to raise money for a hard court and resigned in a huff when no one agreed; and nearly ten years later there had been the quarrel between Laverty and Dr Timothy Sweeney which had resulted in both their resignations, all to do with a dispute about a roller. There were jealousies and gossip, occasionally both envy and resentment. The years had been less kind to some while favouring others; the children born to the couples of the tennis club were often compared, though rarely openly, in terms of achievement or promise. Tea was taken, supplied by the wives, on Saturday afternoons from May to September. The men supplied drinks on that one day of the week also, and even washed up the glasses. The children of the tennis club tasted their first cocktails there, Billy MacGuinness’s White Ladies and Sidecars.
A handful of the tennis-club wives were best friends, and had been since their convent days: Grania and Mavis, Francie, Helen, Trish. They trusted one another, doing so more easily now than they had when they’d been at the convent together or in the days when each of them might possibly have married one of the others’ husbands. They told one another most things, confessing their errors and their blunders; they comforted and were a solace, jollying away feelings of inadequacy or guilt. Trish had worried at the convent because her breasts wouldn’t grow, Helen because her face was scrawny and her lips too thin. Francie had almost died when a lorry had knocked her off her bicycle. Mavis had agonized for months before she said yes to Martin Duddy. As girls, they had united in their criticism of girls outside their circle; as wives they had not changed.
‘I heard about that guy,’ Mavis said. ‘So that’s what he looks like.’
That August Saturday in 1972 he’d come to the tennis club on a bicycle, in whites he had borrowed at the house where he was staying, a racquet tied with string to the crossbar. He’d told Grania afterwards that Hetty Prendergast had looked the whites out for him and had lent him the racquet as well. Hetty had mentioned the tennis club, to which she and her husband had years ago belonged themselves. ‘Of course a different kind of lot these days,’ she’d said. ‘Like everywhere.’ He’d pushed the bicycle through the gate and stood there watching a doubles game, not yet untying his racquet. ‘Who on earth’s that?’ someone had said, and Grania ap
proached him after about a quarter of an hour, since she was at that time the club’s secretary and vaguely felt it to be her duty.
Sipping the Martini Mavis had claimed to owe her, Grania remembered the sudden turning of his profile in her direction when she spoke and then his smile. Nothing of what she subsequently planned had entered her head then; she would have been stunned by even the faintest inkling of it. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ he’d said. ‘I’m barging in.’
Grania had been twenty-seven then, married to Desmond for almost eight years. Now she was forty-three, and her cool brown eyes still strikingly complemented the lips that Desmond had once confessed he’d wanted to kiss ever since she was twelve. Her dark hair had been in plaits at twelve, later had been fashionably long, and now was short. She wasn’t tall and had always wished she was, but at least she didn’t have to slim. She hadn’t become a mother yet, that Saturday afternoon when the stranger arrived at the tennis club. But she was happy, and in love with Desmond.
‘Aisling’s going out with some chartered accountant,’ Mavis said, speaking about her daughter. ‘Martin’s hopping mad.’
The Quiltys arrived. Grania watched while they joined Desmond and their dinner guest. Desmond moved to the bar to buy them drinks. Quilty – a small man who reminded Grania of a monkey – lit a cigarette. Politely, Grania transferred her attention to her friend. Why should Martin be angry? she asked, genuinely not knowing. She could tell from Mavis’s tone of voice that she was not displeased herself.
‘Because he’s nine years older. We had a letter from Aisling this morning. Martin’s talking about going up to have it out with her.’
‘That might make it worse, actually.’
‘If he mentions it will you tell him that? He listens to you, you know.’
Grania said she would. She knew Martin Duddy would mention it, since he always seemed to want to talk to her about things that upset him. Once upon a time, just before she’d become engaged to Desmond, he’d tried to persuade her he loved her.
‘They earn a fortune,’ Mavis said. ‘Chartered accountants.’
Soon after that they all began to move into the Rhett Butler Room. Grania could just remember the time when the hotel had been called O’Hara’s Commercial, in the days of Mr and Mrs O’Hara. It wasn’t all that long ago that their sons, giving the place another face-lift as soon as they inherited it, had decided to change the name to the Tara and to give the previously numbered bedrooms titles such as ‘Ashley’s’ and ‘Melanie’s’. The bar was known as Scarlett’s Lounge. There were regular discos in Belle’s Place.
‘Who’s that fellow with the Quiltys?’ Francie MacGuinness asked, and Grania told her.
‘He’s come back for Hetty Prendergast’s funeral.’
‘God, I didn’t know she died.’
As always, several tables had been pushed together to form a single long one in the centre of the dining-room. At it, the couples who’d been drinking in the bar sat as they wished: there was no formality. Una Carty-Carroll, Trish Crosbie’s sister, was unmarried but was usually partnered on these Saturday occasions by the surveyor from the waterworks. This was so tonight. At one end of the table a place remained unoccupied: Angela, outside the circle of best friends, as Una Carty-Carroll and Mary Ann Haddon were, invariably came late. In a distant corner of the Rhett Butler Room one other couple were dining. Another table, recently occupied, was being tidied.
‘I think it’s Monday,’ Grania said when Francie asked her when the funeral was.
She hoped he’d go away again immediately. That other Saturday he’d said he found it appallingly dull at the Prendergasts’, a call of duty, no reason in the world why he should ever return. His reassurances had in a way been neither here nor there at the time, but afterwards of course she’d recalled them. Afterwards, many times, she’d strained to establish every single word of the conversation they’d had.
‘D’you remember poor old Hetty,’ Francie said, ‘coming in to the club for a cup of tea once? Ages ago.’
‘Yes, I remember her.’
A small woman, they remembered, a frail look about her face. There was another occasion Francie recalled: when the old woman became agitated because one of Wm. Cole’s meal lorries had backed into her Morris Minor. ‘I thought she’d passed on years ago,’ Francie said.
They separated. Helen was sitting next to him, Grania noticed, Quilty on his other side. Presumably they’d talk over whatever business there was, so that he wouldn’t have to delay once the funeral had taken place.
‘How’re you doing, dear?’ Martin Duddy said, occupying the chair on her left. Desmond was on her right; he nearly always chose to sit next to her.
‘I’m all right,’ she replied. ‘Are you OK, Martin?’
‘Far from it, as a matter of fact.’ He twisted backwards and stretched an arm out, preventing the waitress who was attempting to pass by from doing so. ‘Bring me a Crested Ten, will you? Aisling’s in the family way,’ he muttered into Grania’s ear. ‘Jesus Christ, Grania!’
He was an architect, responsible for the least attractive bungalows in the county, possibly in the province. He and Mavis had once spent a protracted winter holiday in Spain, the time he’d been endeavouring to find himself. He hadn’t done so, but that period of his life had ever since influenced the local landscape. Also, people said, his lavatories didn’t work as well as they might have.
‘Do you mean it, Martin? Are you sure?’
‘Some elderly Mr Bloody. I’ll wring his damn neck for him.’
He was drunk to the extent that failing to listen to him wouldn’t matter. No opportunity for comment would be offered. The advice sought, the plea for understanding, would not properly register in the brain that set in motion the requests. It was extremely unlikely that Aisling was pregnant.
‘Old Hetty left him the house,’ Desmond said on her other side. ‘He’s going to live in it. Nora,’ he called out to the waitress, ‘I need to order the wine.’
Martin Duddy gripped her elbow, demanding the return of her attention. His face came close to hers: the small, snub nose, the tightly hunched, heated cheeks, droplets of perspiration on forehead and chin. Grania looked away. Across the table, Mavis was better-looking than her husband in all sorts of ways, her lips prettily parted as she listened to whatever it was Billy MacGuinness was telling her about, her blue eyes sparkling with Saturday-evening vivacity. Francie was listening to the surveyor. Mary Ann Haddon was nervously playing with her fork, the way she did when she felt she was being ignored: she had a complex about her looks, which were not her strong point. Helen Quilty was talking to the man who’d come back for the funeral, her wide mouth swiftly opening and closing. Francie, who’d given up smoking a fortnight ago, lit a cigarette. Billy MacGuinness’s round face crinkled with sudden laughter. Mavis laughed also.
The waitress hurried away with Desmond’s wine order. Light caught one lens of Mary Ann’s glasses. ‘Oh, I don’t believe you!’ Francie cried, her voice for a single instant shrill above the buzz of conversation. The man who’d come back to attend the old woman’s funeral still listened politely. Trish – the smallest, most demure of the wives – kept nodding while Kevy Haddon spoke in his dry voice, his features drily matching it.
There were other faces in the Rhett Butler Room, those of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh reproduced on mirrored glass with bevelled edges, huge images that also included the shoulders of the film stars, the décolletage of one, the frilled evening shirt of the other. Clark Gable was subtly allowed the greater impact; in Scarlett’s Lounge, together on a single mirror, the two appeared to be engaged in argument, he crossly pouting from a distance, she imperious in close-up.
‘This man here, you mean?’ Grania said to her husband when there was an opportunity. She knew he did; there was no one else he could mean. She didn’t want to think about it, yet it had to be confirmed. She wanted to delay the knowledge, yet just as much she had to know quickly.
‘So he’s been saying,’ D
esmond said. ‘You know, I’d forgotten who he was when you introduced us.’
‘But what on earth does he want to come and live in that awful old house for?’
‘He’s on his uppers apparently.’
Often they talked together on these Saturday occasions, in much the same way as they did in their own kitchen while she finished cooking the dinner and he laid the table. In the kitchen they talked about people they’d run into during the day, the same people once a week or so, rarely strangers. When his father retired almost twenty years ago, Desmond had taken over the management of the town’s laundry and later had inherited it. The Tara Hotel was his second most important customer, the Hospital of St Bernadette of Lourdes being his first. He brought back to Grania reports of demands for higher wages, and the domestic confidences of his staff. In return she passed on gossip, which both of them delighted in.
‘How’s Judith?’ Martin Duddy inquired, finger and thumb again tightening on her elbow. ‘No Mr Bloody yet?’
‘Judith’s still at the convent, remember.’
‘You never know these days.’
‘I think you’ve got it wrong about Aisling being pregnant.’
‘I pray to God I have, dear.’
Desmond said he intended to go to Hetty Prendergast’s funeral, but she saw no reason why she should go herself. Desmond went to lots of funerals, often of people she didn’t know, business acquaintances who’d lived miles away. Going to funerals was different when there was a business reason, not that the Prendergasts had ever made much use of the laundry.
‘I have a soft spot for Judith,’ Martin Duddy said. ‘She’s getting to be a lovely girl.’
It was difficult to agree without sounding smug, yet it seemed disloyal to her daughter to deny what was claimed for her. Grania shrugged, a gesture that was vague enough to indicate whatever her companion wished to make of it. There was no one on Martin Duddy’s other side because the table ended there. Angela, widow of a German businessman, had just sat down in the empty place opposite him. The most glamorous of all the wives, tall and slim, her hair the colour of very pale sand, Angela was said to be on the look-out for a second marriage. Her husband had settled in the neighbourhood after the war and had successfully begun a cheese-and-pâté business, supplying restaurants and hotels all over the country. With a flair he had cultivated in her, Angela ran it now. ‘How’s Martin?’ She smiled seductively across the table, the way she’d smiled at men even in her husband’s lifetime. Martin Duddy said he was all right, but Grania knew that only a desultory conversation would begin between the two because Martin Duddy didn’t like Angela for some reason, or else was alarmed by her.