‘I think of you only,’ sang Dano Ryan. ‘Only wishing, wishing you were by my side.’
Dano Ryan would have done, Bridie often thought, because he was a different kind of bachelor: he had a lonely look about him, as if he’d become tired of being on his own. Every week she thought he would have done, and during the week her mind regularly returned to that thought. Dano Ryan would have done because she felt he wouldn’t mind coming to live in the farmhouse while her one-legged father was still about the place. Three could live as cheaply as two where Dano Ryan was concerned because giving up the wages he earned as a road-worker would be balanced by the saving made on what he paid for lodgings. Once, at the end of an evening, she’d pretended that there was a puncture in the back wheel of her bicycle and he’d concerned himself with it while Mr Maloney and Mr Swanton waited for him in Mr Maloney’s car. He’d blown the tyre up with the car pump and had said he thought it would hold.
It was well known in the dance-hall that she fancied her chances with Dano Ryan. But it was well known also that Dano Ryan had got into a set way of life and had remained in it for quite some years. He lodged with a widow called Mrs Griffin and Mrs Griffin’s mentally affected son, in a cottage on the outskirts of the town. He was said to be good to the affected child, buying him sweets and taking him out for rides on the crossbar of his bicycle. He gave an hour or two of his time every week to the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven, and he was loyal to Mr Dwyer. He performed in the two other rural dance-halls that Mr Dwyer owned, rejecting advances from the town’s more sophisticated dance-hall, even though it was more conveniently situated for him and the fee was more substantial than that paid by Mr Dwyer. But Mr Dwyer had discovered Dano Ryan and Dano had not forgotten it, just as Mr Maloney and Mr Swanton had not forgotten their discovery by Mr Dwyer either.
‘Would we take a lemonade?’ Bowser Egan suggested. ‘And a packet of biscuits, Bridie?’
No alcoholic liquor was ever served in the Ballroom of Romance, the premises not being licensed for this added stimulant. Mr Dwyer in fact had never sought a licence for any of his premises, knowing that romance and alcohol were difficult commodities to mix, especially in a dignified ballroom. Behind where the girls sat on the wooden chairs Mr Dwyer’s wife, a small stout woman, served the bottles of lemonade, with straws, and the biscuits, and crisps. She talked busily while doing so, mainly about the turkeys she kept. She’d once told Bridie that she thought of them as children.
‘Thanks,’ Bridie said, and Bowser Egan led her to the trestle table. Soon it would be the intermission: soon the three members of the band would cross the floor also for refreshment. She thought up questions to ask Dano Ryan.
When first she’d danced in the Ballroom of Romance, when she was just sixteen, Dano Ryan had been there also, four years older than she was, playing the drums for Mr Maloney as he played them now. She’d hardly noticed him then because of his not being one of the dancers: he was part of the ballroom’s scenery, like the trestle table and the lemonade bottles, and Mrs Dwyer and Mr Dwyer. The youths who’d danced with her then in their Saturday-night blue suits had later disappeared into the town, or to Dublin or Britain, leaving behind them those who became the middle-aged bachelors of the hills. There’d been a boy called Patrick Grady whom she had loved in those days. Week after week she’d ridden away from the Ballroom of Romance with the image of his face in her mind, a thin face, pale beneath black hair. It had been different, dancing with Patrick Grady, and she’d felt that he found it different dancing with her, although he’d never said so. At night she’d dreamed of him and in the daytime too, while she helped her mother in the kitchen or her father with the cows. Week by week she’d returned to the ballroom, delighting in its pink façade and dancing in the arms of Patrick Grady. Often they’d stood together drinking lemonade, not saying anything, not knowing what to say. She knew he loved her, and she believed then that he would lead her one day from the dim, romantic ballroom, from its blueness and its pinkness and its crystal bowl of light and its music. She believed he would lead her into sunshine, to the town and the Church of Our Lady Queen of Heaven, to marriage and smiling faces. But someone else had got Patrick Grady, a girl from the town who’d never danced in the wayside ballroom. She’d scooped up Patrick Grady when he didn’t have a chance.
Bridie had wept, hearing that. By night she’d lain in her bed in the farmhouse, quietly crying, the tears rolling into her hair and making the pillow damp. When she woke in the early morning the thought was still naggingly with her and it remained with her by day, replacing her daytime dreams of happiness. Someone told her later on that he’d crossed to Britain, to Wolverhampton, with the girl he’d married, and she imagined him there, in a place she wasn’t able properly to visualize, labouring in a factory, his children being born and acquiring the accent of the area. The Ballroom of Romance wasn’t the same without him, and when no one else stood out for her particularly over the years and when no one offered her marriage, she found herself wondering about Dano Ryan. If you couldn’t have love, the next best thing was surely a decent man.
Bowser Egan hardly fell into that category, nor did Tim Daly. And it was plain to everyone that Cat Bolger and Madge Dowding were wasting their time over the man with the long arms. Madge Dowding was already a figure of fun in the ballroom, the way she ran after the bachelors; Cat Bolger would end up the same if she wasn’t careful. One way or another it wasn’t difficult to be a figure of fun in the ballroom, and you didn’t have to be as old as Madge Dowding: a girl who’d just left the Presentation Nuns had once asked Eyes Horgan what he had in his trouser pocket and he told her it was a penknife. She’d repeated this afterwards in the cloakroom, how she’d requested Eyes Horgan not to dance so close to her because his penknife was sticking into her. ‘Jeez, aren’t you the right baby!’ Patty Byrne had shouted delightedly; everyone had laughed, knowing that Eyes Horgan only came to the ballroom for stuff like that. He was no use to any girl.
‘Two lemonades, Mrs Dwyer,’ Bowser Egan said, ‘and two packets of Kerry Creams. Is Kerry Creams all right, Bridie?’
She nodded, smiling. Kerry Creams would be fine, she said.
‘Well, Bridie, isn’t that the great outfit you have!’ Mrs Dwyer remarked. ‘Doesn’t the red suit her, Bowser?’
By the swing-doors stood Mr Dwyer, smoking a cigarette that he held cupped in his left hand. His small eyes noted all developments. He had been aware of Madge Dowding’s anxiety when Eyes Horgan had inserted two fingers into the back opening of her dress. He had looked away, not caring for the incident, but had it developed further he would have spoken to Eyes Horgan, as he had on other occasions. Some of the younger lads didn’t know any better and would dance very close to their partners, who generally were too embarrassed to do anything about it, being young themselves. But that, in Mr Dwyer’s opinion, was a different kettle of fish altogether because they were decent young lads who’d in no time at all be doing a steady line with a girl and would end up as he had himself with Mrs Dwyer, in the same house with her, sleeping in a bed with her, firmly married. It was the middle-aged bachelors who required the watching: they came down from the hills like mountain goats, released from their mammies and from the smell of animals and soil. Mr Dwyer continued to watch Eyes Horgan, wondering how drunk he was.
Dano Ryan’s song came to an end, Mr Swanton laid down his clarinet, Mr Maloney rose from the piano. Dano Ryan wiped sweat from his face and the three men slowly moved towards Mrs Dwyer’s trestle table.
‘Jeez, you have powerful legs,’ Eyes Horgan whispered to Madge Dowding, but Madge Dowding’s attention was on the man with the long arms, who had left Cat Bolger’s side and was proceeding in the direction of the men’s lavatory. He never took refreshments. She moved, herself, towards the men’s lavatory, to take up a position outside it, but Eyes Horgan followed her. ‘Would you take a lemonade, Madge?’ he asked. He had a small bottle of whiskey on him: if they went into a corner they could add a drop of it to the lemo
nade. She didn’t drink spirits, she reminded him, and he went away.
‘Excuse me a minute,’ Bowser Egan said, putting down his bottle of lemonade. He crossed the floor to the lavatory. He too, Bridie knew, would have a small bottle of whiskey on him. She watched while Dano Ryan, listening to a story Mr Maloney was telling, paused in the centre of the ballroom, his head bent to hear what was being said. He was a big man, heavily made; with black hair that was slightly touched with grey, and big hands. He laughed when Mr Maloney came to the end of his story and then bent his head again, in order to listen to a story told by Mr Swanton.
‘Are you on your own, Bridie?’ Cat Bolger asked, and Bridie said she was waiting for Bowser Egan. ‘I think I’ll have a lemonade,’ Cat Bolger said.
Younger boys and girls stood with their arms still around one another, queuing up for refreshments. Boys who hadn’t danced at all, being nervous because they didn’t know any steps, stood in groups, smoking and making jokes. Girls who hadn’t been danced with yet talked to one another, their eyes wandering. Some of them sucked at straws in lemonade bottles.
Bridie, still watching Dano Ryan, imagined him wearing the glasses he’d referred to, sitting in the farmhouse kitchen, reading one of her father’s Wild West novels. She imagined the three of them eating a meal she’d prepared, fried eggs and rashers and fried potato-cakes, and tea and bread and butter and jam, brown bread and soda and shop bread. She imagined Dano Ryan leaving the kitchen in the morning to go out to the fields in order to weed the mangolds, and her father hobbling off behind him, and the two men working together. She saw hay being cut, Dano Ryan with the scythe that she’d learned to use herself, her father using a rake as best he could. She saw herself, because of the extra help, being able to attend to things in the farmhouse, things she’d never had time for because of the cows and the hens and the fields. There were bedroom curtains that needed repairing where the net had ripped, and wallpaper that had become loose and needed to be stuck up with flour paste. The scullery required whitewashing.
The night he’d blown up the tyre of her bicycle she’d thought he was going to kiss her. He’d crouched on the ground in the darkness with his ear to the tyre, listening for escaping air. When he could hear none he’d straightened up and said he thought she’d be all right on the bicycle. His face had been quite close to hers and she’d smiled at him. At that moment, unfortunately, Mr Maloney had blown an impatient blast on the horn of his motor-car.
Often she’d been kissed by Bowser Egan, on the nights when he insisted on riding part of the way home with her. They had to dismount in order to push their bicycles up a hill and the first time he’d accompanied her he’d contrived to fall against her, steadying himself by putting a hand on her shoulder. The next thing she was aware of was the moist quality of his lips and the sound of his bicycle as it clattered noisily on the road. He’d suggested then, regaining his breath, that they should go into a field.
That was nine years ago. In the intervening passage of time she’d been kissed as well, in similar circumstances, by Eyes Horgan and Tim Daly. She’d gone into fields with them and permitted them to put their arms about her while heavily they breathed. At one time or another she had imagined marriage with one or other of them, seeing them in the farmhouse with her father, even though the fantasies were unlikely.
Bridie stood with Cat Bolger, knowing that it would be some time before Bowser Egan came out of the lavatory. Mr Maloney, Mr Swanton and Dano Ryan approached, Mr Maloney insisting that he would fetch three bottles of lemonade from the trestle table.
‘You sang the last one beautifully,’ Bridie said to Dano Ryan. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful song?’
Mr Swanton said it was the finest song ever written, and Cat Bolger said she preferred ‘Danny Boy’, which in her opinion was the finest song ever written.
‘Take a suck of that,’ said Mr Maloney, handing Dano Ryan and Mr Swanton bottles of lemonade. ‘How’s Bridie tonight? Is your father well, Bridie?’
Her father was all right, she said.
‘I hear they’re starting a cement factory,’ said Mr Maloney. ‘Did anyone hear talk of that? They’re after striking some commodity in the earth that makes good cement. Ten feet down, over at Kilmalough.’
‘It’ll bring employment,’ said Mr Swanton. ‘It’s employment that’s necessary in this area.’
‘Canon O’Connell was on about it,’ Mr Maloney said. ‘There’s Yankee money involved.’
‘Will the Yanks come over?’ inquired Cat Bolger. ‘Will they run it themselves, Mr Maloney?’
Mr Maloney, intent on his lemonade, didn’t hear the questions and Cat Bolger didn’t repeat them.
‘There’s stuff called Optrex,’ Bridie said quietly to Dano Ryan, ‘that my father took the time he had a cold in his eyes. Maybe Optrex would settle the watering, Dano.’
‘Ah sure, it doesn’t worry me that much –’
‘It’s terrible, anything wrong with the eyes. You wouldn’t want to take a chance. You’d get Optrex in a chemist, Dano, and a little bowl with it so that you can bathe the eyes.’
Her father’s eyes had become red-rimmed and unsightly to look at. She’d gone into Riordan’s Medical Hall in the town and had explained what the trouble was, and Mr Riordan had recommended Optrex. She told this to Dano Ryan, adding that her father had had no trouble with his eyes since. Dano Ryan nodded.
‘Did you hear that, Mrs Dwyer?’ Mr Maloney called out. ‘A cement factory for Kilmalough.’
Mrs Dwyer wagged her head, placing empty bottles in a crate. She’d heard references to the cement factory, she said: it was the best news for a long time.
‘Kilmalough won’t know itself,’ her husband commented, joining her in her task with the empty lemonade bottles.
‘’Twill bring prosperity certainly,’ said Mr Swanton. ‘I was saying just there, Justin, that employment’s what’s necessary.’
‘Sure, won’t the Yanks –’ began Cat Bolger, but Mr Maloney interrupted her.
‘The Yanks’ll be in at the top, Cat, or maybe not here at all – maybe only inserting money into it. It’ll be local labour entirely.’
‘You’ll not marry a Yank, Cat,’ said Mr Swanton, loudly laughing. ‘You can’t catch those fellows.’
‘Haven’t you plenty of homemade bachelors?’ suggested Mr Maloney. He laughed also, throwing away the straw he was sucking through and tipping the bottle into his mouth. Cat Bolger told him to get on with himself. She moved towards the men’s lavatory and took up a position outside it, not speaking to Madge Dowding, who was still standing there.
‘Keep a watch on Eyes Horgan,’ Mrs Dwyer warned her husband, which was advice she gave him at this time every Saturday night, knowing that Eyes Horgan was drinking in the lavatory. When he was drunk Eyes Horgan was the most difficult of the bachelors.
‘I have a drop of it left, Dano,’ Bridie said quietly. ‘I could bring it over on Saturday. The eye stuff.’
‘Ah, don’t worry yourself, Bridie –’
‘No trouble at all. Honestly now –’
‘Mrs Griffin has me fixed up for a test with Dr Cready. The old eyes are no worry, only when I’m reading the paper or at the pictures. Mrs Griffin says I’m only straining them due to lack of glasses.’
He looked away while he said that, and she knew at once that Mrs Griffin was arranging to marry him. She felt it instinctively: Mrs Griffin was going to marry him because she was afraid that if he moved away from her cottage, to get married to someone else, she’d find it hard to replace him with another lodger who’d be good to her affected son. He’d become a father to Mrs Griffin’s affected son, to whom already he was kind. It was a natural outcome, for Mrs Griffin had all the chances, seeing him every night and morning and not having to make do with weekly encounters in a ballroom.
She thought of Patrick Grady, seeing in her mind his pale, thin face. She might be the mother of four of his children now, or seven or eight maybe. She might be living in Wolverhampton, goin
g out to the pictures in the evenings, instead of looking after a one-legged man. If the weight of circumstances hadn’t intervened she wouldn’t be standing in a wayside ballroom, mourning the marriage of a road-mender she didn’t love. For a moment she thought she might cry, standing there thinking of Patrick Grady in Wolverhampton. In her life, on the farm and in the house, there was no place for tears. Tears were a luxury, like flowers would be in the fields where the mangolds grew, or fresh whitewash in the scullery. It wouldn’t have been fair ever to have wept in the kitchen while her father sat listening to Spot the Talent: her father had more right to weep, having lost a leg. He suffered in a greater way, yet he remained kind and concerned for her.
In the Ballroom of Romance she felt behind her eyes the tears that it would have been improper to release in the presence of her father. She wanted to let them go, to feel them streaming on her cheeks, to receive the sympathy of Dano Ryan and of everyone else. She wanted them all to listen to her while she told them about Patrick Grady who was now in Wolverhampton and about the death of her mother and her own life since. She wanted Dano Ryan to put his arm around her so that she could lean her head against it. She wanted him to look at her in his decent way and to stroke with his road-mender’s fingers the backs of her hands. She might wake in a bed with him and imagine for a moment that he was Patrick Grady. She might bathe his eyes and pretend.
‘Back to business,’ said Mr Maloney, leading his band across the floor to their instruments.
‘Tell your father I was asking for him,’ Dano Ryan said. She smiled and she promised, as though nothing had happened, that she would tell her father that.
She danced with Tim Daly and then again with the youth who’d said he intended to emigrate. She saw Madge Dowding moving swiftly towards the man with the long arms as he came out of the lavatory, moving faster than Cat Bolger. Eyes Horgan approached Cat Bolger. Dancing with her, he spoke earnestly, attempting to persuade her to permit him to ride part of the way home with her. He was unaware of the jealousy that was coming from her as she watched Madge Dowding holding close to her the man with the long arms while they performed a quickstep. Cat Bolger was in her thirties also.