He went a different way from usual, turning off to the right at the Corrigans’ black shed. He skirted Doole, and then ascended, the Vauxhall feeling as if it was only just able for the incline. If his sheep were out they would have broken through on this side of Crilly.
The dogs dozed beside him. The air his wound-down window allowed in was fresh and almost chilly. There was something, he thought. Maybe no more than a mood, but a mood wasn’t like her, never had been. Breakfast again, she’d hardly touched her food.
He drew the car in to where there was a gap and walked on, over the boglands. He saw the two white specks and could tell from where they were that they were his. He sent the dogs and went himself to find the break in the wire, his boots sinking into the water surface. She was often shy about something that was a woman’s thing and he never pressed her because it wasn’t his way to. She wasn’t evasive; all the years she’d been in the house she never had been. She hadn’t known about a farm when she’d first come and she hadn’t pretended she did. He hadn’t expected her to know, but she was more skilled than he was now at what she’d become good at - the hens, the dairy, the vegetables she grew, keeping their accounts in order. He had never been inclined to compare her with his first wife; he’d never wanted to think of them together, and never had. But he knew he had been fortunate twice.
He passed near his turf bog and realized there wasn’t much of it left. But there was turf that could be cut closer to the boundary of his land, a long strip, wide enough to make working it worthwhile. Over marshy ground, the carting would be difficult, but it could be managed at a dry time. Early next summer he’d decide about that.
Larks flew out of the heather, occasionally a snipe. He found the place where the wire had snapped, and whistled up the dogs. They didn’t hurry, knowing not to. He’d thought it was the disappointment of the hens not laying as well as usual. He had asked her if it was that and had watched her forcing herself to smile. She was all right, she’d said then too. It would be nothing, he told himself. She spread the material out on the kitchen table, the paper pattern still pinned to it. She took the pins out and returned the flimsy paper to its folds. The dress was half made, small scarlet rosebuds on a pale ground. She wouldn’t finish it today, but perhaps tomorrow.
The sewing-machine had been in the house for as long as her husband could remember, his mother’s but passed on to her too. It would have been an extravagance to abandon it for a new one, although Ellie had been offered that. The kitchen table, sturdy on its legs, its surface spacious, was where it had always been used.
She changed the spool and rethreaded the needle, then turned the handle to begin the stitching of her seam. She had known how to sew on a machine when she’d come to the farmhouse; she made her own clothes, could turn a shirt collar and put in a pocket. But she didn’t need this dress. She had bought the material and the pattern in Cor-bally’s hardly noticing if she liked either.
Demanding all her attention, which was what she had hoped for, the sewing-machine clattered on. Determinedly, she pushed her seam through, keeping it straight. The afternoon was the worst time. In the morning there were the hens, and Disc of the Day on the radio, a lot of talking between the records. But when it was an afternoon on which Mrs Hadden didn’t come, or one when shy little Tomasina Flynn didn’t come for the few duck eggs there were, she needed something. She had changed her day for going in to Rathmoye to Tuesday because he knew about Fridays. Tuesday afternoons weren’t as convenient as Friday mornings, not for her or for the presbytery, yet she had done it, knowing she should.
She snapped the thread when the seam was finished and reached out for another sleeve. But she didn’t feel like continuing now and she sat for a while longer, her sewing-machine silent, her half-made, unwanted dress spread as she had left it. She heard the tractor in the yard and dreaded the long evening.
14
Miss Connulty’s overnight lodgers one by one awoke in answer to the clamour of the alarm clock supplied in every room. Each stilled the peremptory summons, stretched and yawned, emerged from the bedclothes, drew back the curtains, then went to check the occupancy or otherwise of the lavatory and the bathroom. Twenty minutes later three men in dark business suits, with collar and tie, and shoes that Miss Connulty had the night before picked up from outside their bedroom doors and polished, descended the stairs to the dining-room. A fourth man, Mr Buckley, was still dressing. Gohery, the metalwork instructor, back now from his summer holidays, was already finishing at the breakfast table. Joseph Paul had not yet returned from early Mass.
‘Your eggs?’ Miss Connulty called through the hatch she opened between the kitchen and the dining-room when she heard the murmur of voices. ‘How’ll I do your eggs?’
The men ordered them fried, as usually the preference was. Those of the Horton’s traveller were to be turned, which was usual also. All three said yes to Miss Connulty’s enquiries as to tomato and sausage. That bacon would be on each plate went without saying. The Wolsey (Ireland) man enquired as to the availability of black pudding this morning and Miss Connulty said there was plenty.
There was a brief delay, during which Gohery rose from the table. He nodded without speaking to the three men, as he had when each had entered the dining-room. On the stairs he nodded at Mr Buckley, who was making his slow way to the hall, where every morning of his overnight sojourns at Number 4 he had, for close on thirty-five years, tapped the weather-glass that hung beside the hallstand. In the kitchen Miss Connulty heard him greeted and introduced to the man who was a newcomer in the house. She did not need to open the hatch: these days, Mr Buckley took only Weetabix.
The Horton’s man enquired as to Mr Buckley’s health and was informed that it was first class, which the Horton’s man knew was not true: Mr Buckley was a heavily built, drooping man of yellowish pallor and comatose features, whose pretence, to others and to himself, was that he suffered no ailments and was as sprightly as ever he’d been. But it was said in the shops of the towns he visited that he often, these days, made an error in his orders, that alterations were effected by kindly shopkeepers who knew him well and protected him that he might safely reach the retirement he secretly craved, and the pension that went with it. Stationery and fancy goods were his line; in his decline, as in his heyday, he was fondly respected.
The doors of the hatch opened again and a moment later Miss Connulty entered the dining-room with a rack of toast, and buttered bread. She carried from the hatch the plates she had placed there, enquiring from the man who hadn’t stayed before if his fried bread was brown enough. He said it was.
‘In Rathmoye I wouldn’t stop anywhere only here,’ the Horton’s man informed him when she’d gone. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Buckley?’
Mr Buckley did so and the Wolsey (Ireland) man said you could travel further and fare worse. Tales were exchanged about unfortunate experiences in this respect - damp beds, food that wasn’t fit for consumption, problems with drains. He’d never known the bathroom at Number 4 in need of a bar of soap, the Horton’s man declared. And heads were nodded when he added that he’d never known the WC without an extra paper roll.
Each man poured tea for himself, passing a metal teapot around the table. Between mouthfuls the Horton’s man tapped a cigarette out of a Gold Flake packet and laid it, with matches, on the tablecloth, ready to ignite when his food was consumed. Shirts mainly he took orders for, he confided to the new man; but, in a general way, men’s apparel of every description formed his remit. The new man said he was in cement.
In the kitchen the daily girl arrived, no later than she should be. The front door banged, which Miss Connulty knew would be Joseph Paul returning from Mass. He hadn’t mentioned the stained-glass windows recently, but she knew that only minutes ago he would have glanced up at the grimy panes which were to be replaced and would have again taken pleasure in Father Millane’s proposal of an Annuciation. In time a brass plaque beside it would request prayers for the soul of Eileen Brigid Connulty.
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Miss Connulty didn’t care any more. They could do what they liked: delicious death had been a richer compensation than she had ever dreamed of. She was in charge, and today she wore the pearls.
‘See to the master,’ she instructed the daily girl, and went to put her feet up, having been on them since six. She sat in the big front room, the eye of Daniel O’Connell upon her, and she wondered for a moment what he’d been like and came to no conclusion. She dropped off to sleep, although she had not intended to, and was woken by the men returning to their bedrooms, the thump of their footsteps on the stairs, the Horton’s man saying you’d feel the better for your breakfast.
At her writing-desk she made out their bills and when she went downstairs left them on the shelf by the front door, more convenient than the hallstand, where in her mother’s day they had been left. Each man would pick his up, would rattle the little bell she had moved from the hallstand to the shelf and, hearing the summons, she would answer it.
‘Have you spoken to him?’ she enquired of her brother in the dining-room, going there when the daily girl had brought in his breakfast.
Arranging egg, bacon and a corner of fried bread on his fork, Joseph Paul consumed the combination before he replied.
‘I have him fixed for November,’ he said then.
‘I don’t understand that.’
‘Bernadette O’Keeffe has Dempsey down for November. ’
‘Down? What’s it mean, down? I’m not asking you about Dempsey.’
‘You said would we get him in for the back bedrooms.’
‘I’m not talking about the back bedrooms. You know what I’m talking about.’
‘Bernadette O’Keeffe has Dempsey booked for the back bedrooms.’ Joseph Paul spoke slowly. ‘For the month of November,’ he said. ‘Commencing on the first Monday. Seemingly, he’s chock-a-block till then.’
‘I’m talking about Ellie Dillahan.’
‘What about Ellie Dillahan?’
‘You know what about her.’
‘I’d say there’s a lot being imagined as regards that.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, have sense!’
‘Ellie Dillahan’s a married woman, why’d she be going with a photographer? Dillahan used bring his turf into the yard. Sure, I know him well. Not in a million years would he permit the like of that.’
‘Dillahan knows nothing about it, why would he? His wife’s being bothered by a scut you wouldn’t give tuppence for, and the state she’s in you’d hardly get a word out of her. The cut of him on the bicycle with the hat, he’s the talk of the town and you’re telling me he doesn’t exist.’
An extraordinary thing, Joseph Paul considered, his breakfast getting cold. It might be her mother talking, expressions used he hadn’t heard since the time of the trouble. The two red spots had appeared high up on her cheeks and he remembered them from childhood. She’d pick up a handful of slack and throw it at you.
‘I mentioned it to Ellie myself,’ she was saying. ‘No option left to me.’
‘What’d you say to the poor girl?’
‘What had to be said, no more than that. What harm would it do you to say the same to him? Haven’t we had eggs from the Dillahans since they were brought in to us on a horse and cart? Then again, there’s the turf.’
‘You want me to go up to this man on the street?’
‘Isn’t it something you could say that that orphan girl is a daughter to us?’
The tedium of the conversation had lightened for Joseph Paul with his reflection that their mother’s influence and her insistences hadn’t entirely left the house, but he was considerably taken aback by the concept of a girl he doubted he’d ever addressed a word to being his daughter.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ He spoke roughly, not meaning to. It would be a terrible thing - and he often thought it - if the peculiarities his sister had acquired over the years turned out to be a creeping dementia. You’d hear of that unfortunate affliction, people would mention a relative. It could be that the running of the house on her own was too much for her. It could be that her delusions about people getting into the picture house ruins had to do with their father being forgotten there on the night of the disaster. She had been their father’s pet, as he had been their mother’s. That had never been denied by either of them, and it would have been upsetting for her, the way their father would be when he came into the house every night since the time of her trouble - the bloodshot eyes of him, his collar and tie in his pocket, the way he’d start up a foolish whistling in the hall, stumbling and falling down on the stairs, taking money from his wallet and offering it around as a mark of his remorse. He hadn’t touched more than a drop or two before the trouble.
His sister was still standing by the breakfast table and Joseph Paul suggested that she should sit down.
‘Will I get you water?’
‘What’d I want water for?’
‘I thought you might.’
‘Ask him who he is. Tell him there’s talk. What’ll happen to the girl when Dillahan washes his hands of her? Where’ll she go? Will she walk the roads like poor Orpen Wren? If a child is born, what’ll happen then? Take it easy with him, don’t abuse him in case he’d hit you. All I’m saying is, explain to him we take an interest in the girl because of the family association. All I’m saying is, ask him straight out what he thinks he’s doing. I always liked Ellie.’
‘There isn’t a word spoken in the back bar of anything awry going on.’
‘Who comes into the back bar would know? Aren’t the priests bound by the confessional? What I’m saying to you is a person who interferes with another person’s funeral should be spoken to, never mind the interest taken in a picture house where a tragedy occurred, never mind he’s after a young Catholic girl from the hills.’
She went on talking, repeating everything she’d said already. The fat on Joseph Paul’s plate had begun to congeal, a skin had formed on the yolk of his fried egg. The daily girl came in to clear the table.
‘I’ll make a few enquiries,’ he said.
The conversation ended with that but later, on his way to his business premises, Joseph Paul refle cted that, ever since the upheaval his sister’s foolishness had brought about in the house, he had regularly noticed her gazing out of one or other of the front windows and had known what she was looking for. He had seen her polishing the overnight shoes and had conjectured that each pair took on for her the form of Arthur Tetlow’s ornamental black brogues - a fantasy that was perhaps the last fantasy left to her and one that in her mind was somehow endangered by what she imagined was going on.
He unlocked the door of the public house while still dwelling on the matter and believing with even greater conviction that the venom directed against a stranger on a bicycle had its source in his sister’s betrayal by a traveller in veterinary requisites. Passing through the long street bar, he confirmed to himself his approval of that conclusion, even for a moment feeling sorry for his sister as once he would have.
Miss Connulty’s interpretation of the breakfast-time contretemps was different. Occupied with changing sheets, she did not regret her anger or wonder why so persistently she had gone on. Her reflections were practical and to the point: she felt better for what had been said. Had she been aware of the contents of her brother’s mind during their exchanges she could have told him that in the circumstances dementia was too convenient a term to throw about: she suffered from nothing of the kind, and it was only to be expected that in the normal course of nature she should have developed an interest in the well-being of the girl who delivered eggs to her. There was no more to anything but that.
She finished in one bedroom and began in the next, pulling off the top sheet and then the bottom one, shaking off the pillowslips. She had known what she was doing in giving herself to Arthur Tetlow, and regretted only that she had remained in a house she should not have remained in. Aloud, and firmly, she stated again that she intended to protect Ellie Dillahan in whatev
er way should be necessary. She gathered up the slept-in sheets, and knocked out four cigarette butts from the bedside ashtray. She propped the window open and settled the blind the way it should be, a little further down to make more of its lace frill.
Later that same morning, after Bernadette had been to the back bar with the letters and the cheques, it occurred to Joseph Paul that there might just possibly be another element in his sister’s eccentric conduct. Given what she believed was happening between Ellie Dillahan and the man from Castledrummond, she could have worked herself up into a state of resentful jealousy. Her own day was done; she made do with the polishing of other men’s shoes.
Affected as the morning advanced by the possible truth of this outcome, Joseph Paul again felt sorry for the sister who had once been his companion. And as if telepathy, long absent between the two, had once more come into play, Miss Connulty on her way downstairs wondered, too, about jealousy. But before the thought could get going, she dismissed it as ridiculous.
15
Florian’s passport arrived one morning. The photograph he’d taken of himself had been pasted in, his signature pasted in too, other details completed. Florian Kilderry. Place of birth: Co. Tipperary. Colour of eyes: Blue. Residence: Ireland.
It was signed by Kevin Greacen, and he wondered who that was. It was valid for all countries. It was a valuable document. With a golden harp embossed on its green Rexine cover, with Éire, Ireland, Irlande on every page, it declared its importance clearly, requesting that the bearer should be offered access to pass freely and be offered all necessary assistance and protection.
Florian put it on the mantelpiece of his bedroom, where he could see it and wouldn’t forget where it was. He wiped the mildew from the smallest of the suitcases he had found. He washed it and put it outside the back door to dry in the sun.