Amongst Women

  Their strong need of each other drew them together, the absence of the others. In the evening they all went into town to do some shopping. Moran sat in the car while Rose and the two girls went off together. Rose knew many people in the town and she stopped to greet them. By comparison the girls were stiff and awkward with people, unsure how to act.

  ‘Daddy doesn’t like to see me talking to too many people. He thinks it’s a waste of time but the time is often wasted anyhow,’ Rose confessed to them, as if she were slightly delinquent, while hurrying back to the waiting car. ‘You know Daddy hates to be left waiting too long.’

  The car was parked past the post office along the railings of the sunken tennis courts and he sat looking out at the people that passed by without acknowledging them or being acknowledged. He had to shake himself out of his lethargy when he saw Rose and the girls approach.

  ‘You must have bought the town,’ he said when they opened the car door.

  ‘We hadn’t the time,’ Rose said. ‘Or the money.’

  ‘I’m sure you bought lots anyhow.’ He hadn’t grown impatient waiting. He started the car at once and drove home.

  They put more wood on the fire, made tea, said the Rosary, played cards until they kissed good night, the whole world shut away outside. Moran could not have been more charming during the whole weekend. He did not need to be very charming. They had learned to accept him in all his humours: they were grateful for anything short of his worst moods, inordinately grateful for the slightest goodwill, what they barely would have accepted from an equal.

  ‘I’m thankful for all you did for Michael,’ he surprised them by saying as they waited in the car outside the railway station the next evening.

  ‘We’re sorry we couldn’t get him to come home,’ Mona mumbled.

  ‘I know you did your best. That’s all anybody in the family can do.’

  On the platform he kissed them as the train drew in. They told him they would be down again before very long. The two sisters were silent as the train crossed the Shannon, travelling through fields. As the train was pulling into Dromod, the small platform black with people like themselves returning to Dublin at the end of the weekend, Mona said in an emotional voice, ‘No matter what they say, Daddy can be wonderful.’

  Sheila nodded her head in vigorous agreement, ‘When Daddy’s nice he’s just great. He’s like no other person,’ and even the small white stones under the lights on the station platform took on a special glow.

  Moran went out to the road and closed the iron gates under the yew after returning with the car from the station. He listened for the noise of the diesel train crossing the Plains behind the house but it had already passed. The light was beginning to fail but he did not want to go into the house. In a methodical way he set out to walk his land, field by blind field. He had not grown up on these fields but they felt to him as if he had. He had bought them with the money he had been given on leaving the army. The small pension wasn’t enough to live on but with working the fields he had turned it into a living. He’d be his own man here, he had thought, and for the first time in his life he’d be away from people. Now he went from field to field, no longer kept as well as they once were, the hedges ragged, stones fallen from the walls, but he hardly needed the fields any more. It did not take much to keep Rose and himself.

  It was like grasping water to think how quickly the years had passed here. They were nearly gone. It was in the nature of things and yet it brought a sense of betrayal and anger, of never having understood anything much. Instead of using the fields, he sometimes felt as if the fields had used him. Soon they would be using someone else in his place. It was unlikely to be either of his sons. He tried to imagine someone running the place after he was gone and could not. He continued walking the fields like a man trying to see.

  Dark had fallen by the time he went into the house. Rose had washed up and tidied after the visit but he did not notice. She did not ask him where he had been but more than once looked at him with covert anxiety. She would feel easier if he raged or scolded. As soon as he sat at the table, she made and poured his tea. She checked that everything he needed was on the table and then asked him if his tea was sufficiently strong.

  Mona and Sheila came every other week from Dublin to the house and twice a year Maggie came from London. After the long train and sea journey she would stay a day and night in Dublin with her younger sisters. The three girls had so much to tell one another that the time never seemed long enough. They all went home together on the train. They were in their flower and attracted many admirers. Moran always came alone to the station to meet them. Though he would be nervous with excitement and irritable for days before they came, he was distant and withdrawn as soon as he met them. Rose’s delight in seeing them was slightly tempered by her natural watchfulness but within an hour she would have completely merged with the band of girls, joking, laughing, getting them to help with chores, always giving them her full attention and they answered to her as if she were another sister rather than their father’s wife.

  If Moran was in the fields she would sometimes smoke an ‘outrageous’ cigarette. ‘I know Daddy doesn’t like it but it’s an occasion.’

  ‘Smoking is no harm,’ they would say in unison though they did not smoke themselves.

  ‘Bad habits picked up in Scotland,’ she would say lightly and look up as she laughed. ‘Of course I smoke in front of him but he never likes it.’

  ‘He’ll not change now.’

  ‘No, it’s very unlikely he’ll change.’

  No matter how far in talk the sisters ventured, they kept returning, as if to a magnet, to what Daddy would like or dislike, approve of or disapprove of. His unpredictable violences they discounted simply as they might the tantrums of a difficult child. His moods were as changeable as the moods in the long day of a child and Rose could follow them now even better than they. Sometimes the moods were of pure charm, like asking one of the girls to go with him over the fields to look at the cattle as if he were inviting them to a special place in his heart.

  ‘It’s more than Rose would do nowadays – come with me to look at the cattle,’ he would tease as he waited for one of the girls to dress for the fields.

  ‘Listen to him talk now,’ Rose would rail happily. ‘Who did everything with the cattle when you were in bed for a whole week just before Christmas?’

  ‘That’ll do you now,’ he would say indulgently.

  When Moran was out of the house they often talked of Luke and Michael. Rose’s inquiries went eagerly in search of Michael. He had had several jobs already – clerk, labourer, night porter in a hotel, even cook: ‘Poor Michael’s cooking,’ Rose laughed at the vision until it hurt. ‘I wouldn’t like to eat in that restaurant.’

  ‘It was a canteen but he burned someone with cooking oil and was sacked. He’s on the buildings now.’

  ‘Has he girls?’

  ‘Girls?’ Maggie said. ‘He doesn’t seem to mind who he has as long as they have skirts. And they go for him as if he was honey.’

  ‘He’s so young,’ Rose said. ‘Does he say anything about coming home at all?’

  ‘He says he’ll come home in the summer but he’ll have to save.’

  ‘Does he mind what went on?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Not at all. He was telling one of his girlfriends one evening about this place. She was Indian. It’d make you laugh. You’d think he was describing heaven.’

  ‘It was all his own fault anyhow; and you know Daddy.’

  ‘Michael isn’t like Luke at all that way. He doesn’t hold anything in. Once it’s over it’s forgotten.’

  Rose didn’t want to talk about Luke, or she wasn’t yet ready to do so, for as soon as his name came up she changed the conversation to a shopping trip that had been proposed.

  All these conversations were relayed by Rose to Moran: they were their main subject of conversation when they were alone, and she hoarded them like precious morsels. Moran had always pu
t on such a hurt air when Luke’s name came up that she assumed he didn’t want to hear about him at all, that he found it too disturbing; but she learned that the opposite was true, that Moran couldn’t bring himself to ask the girls. She brought to him all she knew.

  Luke had qualified as an accountant but still worked with the same firm which bought old houses round Notting Hill, converted them into flats and then sold them. The firm had grown bigger. He seemed to be one of four partners. His girlfriend was English whom he had met through his work. They weren’t sure if they lived together or not but they thought they did. She was tall, dark; she wasn’t pretty but they supposed she could be called attractive: they didn’t like her very much.

  ‘Is she hoi polloi?’ Rose asked humorously.

  ‘I think her father worked in a bank,’ Maggie said.

  ‘Daddy would love it if Luke came home though he cannot say it,’ Rose said.

  ‘I told him that,’ Maggie said warmly. ‘I asked him, was he afraid to go home or what was wrong with him. He was rude – the way he looks at you! You never can tell what he is thinking.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said that only women could live with Daddy.’

  ‘He has some neck. Something’s wrong with him. He won’t live and let live,’ Sheila added.

  Maggie was more eager to talk about Mark O’Donoghue, a young man from Wexford who worked on the buildings in London. They were secretly engaged but it was a secret she told everybody, including Rose who had of course told Moran. She wanted everybody who met Mark to be as excited about him as she. Part of her annoyance with Luke was that he had been non-committal when they met in London and he had refused to say what he thought about Mark despite her tearful pressure. ‘He’s fine with me’ was the most she could force from him by way of approval. But what she wanted most of all was Moran’s approval.

  Maggie brought Mark O’Donoghue home at Easter. After the boat journey they stayed the night with Mona and Sheila in Dublin. Though the two sisters had heard much about him before the first meeting they were taken aback by his appearance. He was as fair and handsome as they had been told but they were shocked by the black drainpipe trousers, the black suede shoes, the Elvis hairdo, and a dark wool jacket that was studded with little bits of metal that glittered when they caught the light.

  ‘Good God, he’s a teddy boy,’ Sheila said as soon as she caught sight of him at Maggie’s side on the platform.

  ‘Daddy will have a fit,’ Mona said with dismay.

  When they suggested to Maggie that Mark should buy a dark suit or a tweed jacket for the important visit home she was upset and angry. What Mark was wearing was the height of fashion. It had cost a small fortune to assemble. He would not be comfortable in any other clothes nor would other clothes show him off so well; and when they saw the tears fill her eyes they did not press.

  That evening they all went out together to a pub. Mark was charming, a good-looking man with three young women, and he drank several pints, remaining in good spirits throughout the evening. Maggie drank beer as well. Both her sisters soon saw past the good looks and glittering jacket to the kind of people he came from, the small-town poor. They felt a little sorry for him, but for Maggie’s sake as well as for their own future lives together, an overwhelming desire that Moran should approve of him gradually blotted out any feelings of their own. They saw that Maggie would marry him and that their lives would intertwine with his for years to come.

  On the train he drank bottle after bottle of Smithwicks at the bar. Maggie wasn’t worried because he never got drunk on beer. She had tea.

  ‘Why won’t you have a beer?’ he asked.

  ‘I’d feel odd meeting Daddy after drinking beer.’

  ‘That sounds bananas to me,’ he laughed. ‘But please yourself. Anyhow tea is cheaper.’

  Once the train passed Mullingar she found herself getting nervous. After Longford she went and spent a long time in one of the toilets. When she returned to the bar Mark noticed that while she had combed her hair and made up her face she had also taken off her engagement ring. There was a sharp edge to his voice when he asked her where it was.

  ‘It’s in my handbag.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We didn’t tell Daddy we are engaged. If I wore the ring it’d look as if we got engaged without his leave.’

  ‘That’s what happened.’

  ‘It wouldn’t look right.’

  ‘What if the old boy can’t stand me?’

  ‘It won’t matter, love. You know I love you. I know he’ll like you. They all do. You look just great. Trust me. We’ll do it this way.’

  ‘Whatever you think,’ he said shrugging his shoulders. As their station was the next one they took their luggage out and stood in the corridor. ‘We’re passing the house now.’ She pointed out tall trees in the distance across fields of stone walls. Despite the beer, he had caught some of her excitement and he remained silent, stroking her hair lightly with his hand.

  From deep within the shadows Moran watched them get off the train. In this quiet place where dress was conservative, all violence hidden, Mark appeared like a figure out of pantomime. Moran smiled grimly, feeling that he had the advantage, and came firmly out of the shadows. Maggie kissed him nervously and introduced the two men.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Moran said without warmth as he shook his hand.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Michael,’ Mark said. Michael was the form of address Mark and Maggie had agreed on since he would not call him Daddy. It was the kind of ‘with it’ thing they felt went with Mark’s good looks. Moran disliked the familiarity and drove home in silence. Maggie kept up a nervous commentary on how Luke and Michael were doing in London. Moran appeared not to be listening.

  ‘They are very economical – these cars,’ Mark said after a long silence.

  ‘They go,’ Moran responded without taking his eyes from the road.

  In the house it was easier, Rose making him welcome, putting hot food on the table, inviting him to eat his fill after the long journey. He smiled his sunny handsome smile but, though Rose acknowledged it brightly, he did not feel it worked and he noticed the furtive watchfulness behind Rose’s charm. Everybody was watchful here. It was like moving about in a war area. What had first impressed him about Maggie was her air of separateness and superiority when they had met one Saturday night in the Legion after he had come half-pissed from the Crown. In this house it disappeared as if it had never existed. She who had never appeared to him less than confident was nervous here, cautious, careful in every word and movement.

  Suddenly he was angry. ‘You have a fine house here, Michael,’ he said with manly aggression.

  Moran looked at him but Mark did not flinch, waiting openly for a fair answer to his salute. Moran pushed his plate and cup away from the edge of the table.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and the two women smiled and were able to move again. ‘The family was brought up here. I suppose everything wasn’t done completely right but we did all we could according to our lights. Nobody starved. We asked nobody for anything.’ Suddenly he changed. ‘I suppose now in the name of God that we had the tea we might as well say the Rosary and get it done early.’

  He took the purse with his beads from his pocket and without waiting for any response let them spill out into his palm. He put a newspaper down on the cement and knelt where he had sat upright at the table. He waited for the others to kneel. Maggie handed Mark a newspaper and motioned him to kneel at table or chair. He raised his eyebrows but he too knelt.

  ‘I’m afraid I have no beads,’ he said looking around to Maggie’s trepidation.

  ‘You have fingers,’ Moran said, and began, ‘Thou, O Lord, wilt open my lips,’ which never had rung out more domineeringly. Maggie recited the Third Mystery. There was a long pause when she finished. Not until she called sharply Mark did he realize they were waiting for him to recite the Fourth Mystery. He stumbled over the first lines, with Maggie suffering tortures in
case he would be seen to be so unused to prayer as to have forgotten the words; but by the time he got to the Hail Marys he was able to fall back on the repetitive rhythms and Maggie was able to breathe easily again. He remembered to count on his fingers. As a child he had never counted on anything else. In their house prayers were never said aloud. Each child would say his own private prayers until they were forgotten about in their growing up. His mother went to church most evenings but he always thought that it was more in search of peace after the turmoil of the day than for any need to pray – the way his father went to O’Connell’s bar on the corner when he was flush. Moran himself recited the Fifth Decade but still the prayers continued: Hail Holy Queen, the Litany, Blessed Oliver Plunkett, St Jude, the Grace of a Happy Death, Absent Members of the Family. Mark found that as long as he made a show of mouthing the responses he did not have to pay much attention, that he could imagine who was in the Three Blackbirds at this particular moment and what they were drinking. Murphy’s crowd would still be throwing darts in the public bar, the single bottles of light beside the pint glasses on the counter. It came as a surprise to hear the chairs move as Maggie and Rose got to their feet. Moran dropped his beads slowly back into the black purse, still kneeling, and then lifted himself off his knees.

  ‘They say the family that prays together stays together,’ Moran said. ‘I think that families can stay together even though they’re scattered, if there’s a will to do so. The will is the important thing.’

  Then Moran began to question Mark with heavy authority: what subjects had interested him at school, what did he do before he went to England, what was he doing now in England.

  ‘The buildings is the readiest money once you get to England,’ Mark said.

  ‘But not as you get older,’ Moran said.

  ‘I’m learning to drive.’

  ‘Drive what?’