by Edna O'Brien
Mr. Conroy, as he led her through the throng, beamed. He was the one who pressed her to come, rang up and asked if he might bring her. They had walked earlier that morning on Dollymount Strand, had left their footprints on the sand that Miss Lawless had described as being white as saltpetre. On the walk they had relived several moments of their past. Mr. Conroy had made her laugh and then almost reduced her to tears. She laughed as he described his love life, or, rather, his attempts at a love life—the coaxing and wooing of women, especially women who came up from the country and wanted a bit of an adventure. He spoke glowingly of racing women, who were always good sports. Then, in quieter tones, he talked of his first love, or, as he so gallantly put it, his first shared love, because, as he added, Miss Lawless was the other half of his heart’s desire. Both Miss Lawless and a girl called Nicola had a claim on his heart, though neither of them ever knew it. Mr. Conroy, who worked in a hotel, said it was amazing, unbelievable altogether, the things that happened in a hotel, the little twists of fate, and he went on to describe how one day, returning from a weekend off, he was told there was a lady drinking heavily in Room No. 68. He chastised the barman, said didn’t he know they didn’t approve of female guests drinking in their rooms alone. What he had to do then was ring the housekeeper, and the two of them went up on the pretext that the room was going to be repapered shortly. Lo and behold, whom did he find but the sweetheart he had not laid eyes on for twenty years, who was now back in Dublin because her mother was dying, and who was, as he had to admit to Miss Lawless, blind drunk, her voice slurry and her face puffy.
“And what did you do?” Miss Lawless asked.
“I kissed her, of course,” Mr. Conroy said and painted a picture of this girl as she once was, this vision who wore hats and veils and always put her hand out when she was introduced and repeated the person’s name in a coquettish voice. Every man in Dublin had loved her, but she married a banker and emigrated to South Africa. She had come home only for her mother’s funeral, and while she was there had died herself. At her own funeral all her former friends from the fashion world and the entertainment world convened, and like Mr. Conroy, they were desolated, bemoaning the untimely death of someone who had been so beautiful. Many made mention of her veils, and how she put an arm out when introduced to people and spoke in that unique voice, and all were shaken by the tragedy.
“We must commemorate her,” Mr. Conroy had said, and all those gathered, moved by drink and grief, repeated his words and echoed his sentiments. It was decided that Mr. Conroy would commission a bronze of Nicola to which they would all contribute. Alas, alas, when the bronze was delivered, months later, Mr. Conroy indeed paid for it but did not receive the promised donations. It was, as he said, on his own mantelpiece, for himself alone.
But that was morning and it was night now—heady, breathless night—and Miss Lawless felt that something thrilling would happen to her. She did not feel like the peevish Miss Lawless who had put her stockings on in the hotel bedroom and given a little hiss as she saw a ladder starting from her big toe; and she did not feel like the Miss Lawless who feared that her black dress was a little too dressy because of a horseshoe-shaped diamanté buckle on one side, doing nothing in particular, just brazenly calling attention to itself. She saw now that her dress was perfect and, if anything, she was underdressed. The room was a pageant of fashion, and the combined perfume of the ladies, along with the after-shave of the men, drowned out the smell of carnations—that is, if they had any smell, because, as Miss Lawless reminded herself, shop flowers were not fragrant anymore. Suddenly in her mind she saw old-fashioned climbing roses, their pink buds tight, compact, and herself getting on tiptoe to reach the branch in order to smell them, to devour them. This was followed by a flood of childhood evocations—a painted-cardboard doll’s house with a little swivelled insert for a front door, which could be flicked open with a thumbnail; a biscuit barrel impregnated with the smell of ratafia essence; and a spoon with an enamelled picture of the Pope. Somehow the party had begun to trigger in her a host of things, memory upon memory, like hands placed on top of one another in a childhood game.
Meanwhile, coiffured and bejewelled, women looked around for the perfect spot in which to be seen, in which to appoint themselves, and their voices rose in a chorus of conjecture and alarm, repeating the selfsame remark: “What is she going to do? I mean, is Betty going to faint?” Some were affirming that she would faint—those who were her dearest friends adding that they would faint with her, so excruciating was the suspense. They vied with each other as to this orgy of proposed fainting, and Miss Lawless saw bodies heaped on the sumptuous carpet, some in trouser suits with jangles of bracelets, others in rah-rah skirts, their gauze frills, like the webbing of old-fashioned tea cozies, grazing their bare thighs, and still others in sedate, pleated costumes.
Mr. Conroy was engaged in a bit of banter with two other men. Dr. Fitz, a bachelor and long-standing friend of Betty’s family, was assuring his two male companions that he had not put on weight because, like most modern men nowadays, he went to a gymnasium. Not only that, and he winked at Miss Lawless as he said this, but a good friend of his, a “widda,” had a Jacuzzi, and he availed himself of that whenever he dropped by.
“Oh, the floozie with the Jacuzzi,” Mr. Conroy said, implying that he knew the widow. He then said that his weight never altered, simply because he never altered his diet, having a grapefruit and a slice of toast in the morning, a salad at lunch, and a collation in the evening. He was one of the few people in the room who did not imbibe. Mr. Gogarty was younger than these two men, lived in London, but hopped back and forth, as he said, to recharge the batteries and, of course, wouldn’t have missed the party for anything, as Betty was an old friend of his. With a glint in his eye, Mr. Gogarty brought it to the attention of the two other men that the city they lived in was a very dirty city indeed. They did not blanch, knowing this was a preamble to some joke.
“Haven’t we Ballsbridge?” he said, waiting for the gleam on their faces. “And haven’t we Dollymount?” he said, with further relish, hesitating before throwing in Sandymount and Stillorgan. He went on to say that innocent people visited these haunts and never registered their bawdy associations.
“I believe there’s a Carnal Way somewhere,” Dr. Fitz said, not wanting to be lacking in a reply, and he pulled at the shirtsleeve of Bill the Barrow Boy, who stood nearby. Bill knew all these places from his early days selling oranges with his mother. Bill the Barrow Boy was no longer a barrow boy, of course. He now mixed with “the cream,” being a successful broker. But he still knew his Dublin, especially the back streets, and was able to say that Carnal Way was somewhere near Wine Tavern Street, and that all those places were full of antiquity, so much so that if the pavings were dug up it would be proved that Ireland surpassed every other country in ancientness and memorabilia. He spoke with a Dublin accent, had a broad handsome face and a broad contented smile. While he talked he did a couple of card tricks, both to amuse himself and to prepare himself for the entertainment that was bound to take place later.
“Fourteen of us children,” he said to Miss Lawless, and boasted they were never hungry. He praised his mother—her thrift, her intelligence, her stamina—and described how she made money boxes out of cardboard, covered them with fancy paper, and how faithfully, every Saturday night, there were contributions to the coal box, the food box, the meat box, the candle box, and the odds-and-ends box, in case any of them ever got sick.
“Made dinners for us out of samphire and cockles,” he said proudly. Although Mr. Conroy liked to reminisce, he did not think that this was an occasion for recounting hardship, and, after praising the fortitude of mothers, he went on to draw attention to the gala that they were privileged to be party to.
“I was in on the secret from the first instant,” Dr. Fitz said, stressing that he was a bosom friend of Betty’s and of her children. Undeterred, Bill the Barrow Boy pointed to his bride, Denise, and deemed her the most
photogenic girl in the room. He described their happy and healthy life, how they never drank indoors, except at Christmastime, and how they rose at six and played a few rounds of tennis before breakfast.
“Jaysus, it’s like living in a monastery,” Dr. Fitz said, and added that he had never heard of an Irish house that didn’t have drink in it. Bill the Barrow Boy corrected him, said yes, they did have drink, oodles of it, but only for the benefit of visitors.
“Pardon my taking the liberty,” Bill the Barrow Boy said, lifting the heavy gold pendant of Miss Lawless’s necklace. She told him it was Mexican, but he insisted on believing that it was dug up in an Irish field, as it was redolent of Malachy’s colour of gold. Then he took her to task, in a joking way, for having become an exile.
“She’s here,” “She’s here,” “She’s here,” voices said, and the urgent signal travelled back through the room. Lights were quenched, and those nearest the door kept calling back to those at the rear of the room to “for Christ’s sake, shut up.” Everyone waited, expecting to hear a little applause out in the hall, because it was those people that Betty would encounter first; in fact, the very first person Betty would encounter was the mime artist who had been hired for the occasion. There he was at the doorway, on this bright spring evening wearing a black suit—pale as a gargoyle, moving nothing but one red-painted eyebrow, which he wriggled to amuse the arrivals. Yes, Betty would see him first, and no doubt she would guess that a birthday celebration had been arranged in her absence. She had gone innocently to the races and had intended to come home and have supper in bed, but her friends and family had foxed her and devised this surprise party.
“False alarm!” someone shouted, and the crowd laughed and resumed drinking as the lights were put on again and the waiters were summoned more urgently than ever, for people reckoned there would be many more false alarms before the birthday girl showed up.
* * *
WHEN BETTY DID ARRIVE, she took it totally in her stride, walked through the entryway, it seems winked at the waiters, and told one of the staff that the hall fire was smoking. Loud cheers hailed her as she came into the sitting room—a youngish-looking woman with short brown hair and sallow skin, wearing a coral suit and a coral necklace. She stood as an accomplished actress might, her hands reaching out to welcome a group that she certainly had not been expecting. She waited a moment before singling out any one person, but soon friends rushed to her, especially those women who had vowed that they would faint. People were kissing her, handing her presents, others were pulling her to be introduced to this one and that one, including Miss Lawless.
Mr. Conroy said to Miss Lawless that it was a good thing they had taken that walk by Dollymount in the morning, or otherwise he would never have thought of inviting her. She agreed. Seeing her after several years—a little aged, but still glowing—it occurred to Mr. Conroy that maybe there dwelt in some secret crevice of her heart a soft spot for him. He had seen her through love affairs. Once he had taken her to a fortune-teller on the north side of the city, saw her come out crying. Soon after, he had rung up a lover on her behalf, a married man, only to be told by the man’s wife that he did not wish to come to the phone. He had had to report those uncompromising words to Miss Lawless. “He does not wish to come to the phone,” he had to say, and then witnessed the hour or two of dementia that ensued. To others, she might seem composed, but he sensed that inside a storm raged and all those attachments battered her.
* * *
SUDDENLY THERE WAS a loud call for dinner from the chief waiter, followed by cheers and whistles from waiters and guests alike. All were relieved. A few grumbled jokingly and blamed Betty for having taken so long to arrive. Mr. Gogarty asked where in heaven’s name she could have been from the time the races ended until she got to her own house.
“Mum’s the word,” Dr. Fitz said, but the glint in his eye betrayed his indiscretion. He knew that she had met her husband and had gone with him as his wife to get the trophy that he had won.
The dining room was temptingly lit, and red garlands dipped from the ceiling in loops. The tables were covered with pink cloths and lit with pink candles, and all over the walls there were blown-up snapshots of Betty in a bathing suit and a choker. At the far end of the room there was a dais, where the orchestra already sat and was playing soft, muted music. Balloons floated in the air—blue, yellow, and silver orbs, moving with infinite hesitation. Miss Lawless was seated with the group she had already talked to, and Mr. Conroy introduced her to the remaining few whom she had not met. There were Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan, a girl called Sinead, and Dot the Florist. There was also one empty place. Dot the Florist was wearing a pink cat suit, so tight-fitting that she seemed to be trussed. Mrs. Vaughan—Eileen, who was in a grey angora suit—made not the slightest attempt to be sociable. Mr. Conroy whispered to Miss Lawless that Mr. and Mrs. Vaughan had not spoken for over a year, but that nevertheless Mrs. Vaughan insisted on escorting him everywhere.
“Any windfalls?” Mr. Conroy called across, knowingly, to Mr. Vaughan. It was their code word for asking if Mrs. Vaughan had at all thawed. By his look, Mr. Vaughan seemed to be saying that hostilities were dire. Sinead, who was in a black strapless dress, told her fellow guests, for no reason, that she was in mourning for her life.
“Cut out the histrionics, Sinead,” Dr. Fitz said, and glowered at her. They were courting, but, as she was quick to tell the present company, he was full of moods. To his chagrin, Bill the Barrow Boy was not seated with his bride, Denise, a thing he could scarcely endure. He allowed himself a moment of misery as he thought of the one blot on their nuptial bliss: Denise did not want a child. Her figure mattered to her too much. “Later on” was what she said. Many’s the time he slipped into the Carmelite chapel off Grafton Street and gave an offering for a votive candle to be lit.
“Isn’t Denise a picture?” he said to the others, and Mr. Conroy seized the moment to remark on Miss Lawless’s beauty, to say that it was a medieval kind of beauty, and that he believed she was a throwback, like that queen, Maire Ruadh, who lived in a castle at Corcomroe, and who when she had her fill of a lover had him dumped over the casement into the sea.
“Didn’t Yeats set ‘The Dreaming of the Bones’ at Corcomroe?” Mr. Gogarty said, with a certain bookish authority. Bill the Barrow Boy said he wouldn’t know, as he never read a “buke” in his life, he let Denise do all the reading, and assured them that she could read any ordinary book in a sitting.
“Oh, river and stream,” Mr. Conroy said, as plates were placed briskly on the table. Some said it was trout, others said it was salmon. In fact, things became rather heated at one moment, as Dot the Florist insisted it was trout, said she had grown up on a river in Wicklow and knew one kind of fish from another, and Dr. Fitz said that any fool could see it was salmon, its blush diminished by the subtle lighting. Miss Lawless put her fork in it, tasted it, and said somewhat tentatively that, yes, it was salmon in an aspic sauce. Dot the Florist pushed hers away and said she wasn’t hungry and grabbed one of the waiters to ask for a vodka-on-the-rocks. Dr. Fitz said it was a crying shame to drink vodka when good table wines were being served, although, he added somewhat ruefully, not as good as they would be if the great man of the house were present. He boasted to Miss Lawless that they had often drunk two thousand pounds’ worth of wine at an intimate dinner party in that very house.
“Now, now,” Sinead called to Dr. Fitz, not wanting the missing—indeed, the vagrant—husband to be given any mention. She was on Betty’s side; Betty was her friend; she made it clear that Betty had poured her heart out to her often, and that she well knew the evenings Betty had supper alone on a tray in her bedroom, like many another jilted woman. Then, fearing that she might have betrayed a friendship, she commented on Betty’s figure and, pointing to the various blown-up photos of Betty all over the room, she asked aloud, “Why would any man leave a beautiful woman like that for a slut!” Why indeed? Dr. Fitz told her to pipe down and not to talk about people she
knew nothing about. Yet he was pleased to tell Miss Lawless in confidence one or two things about Betty’s rival, a Danish woman called Clara. Miss Lawless somehow envisaged her as being blond, with very long legs, and also as being very assured.
“Not a bit of it,” Dr. Fitz said, and described a woman who was not at all svelte, who wore ordinary clothes, had never gone to a hairdresser or a beauty parlor in her life, and was overweight.
“So why did he run off with her?” Miss Lawless asked, genuinely mystified.
“She makes him feel good,” Dr. Fitz said, and by the way he gulped a swig of wine he seemed to express a desire for such a woman and not the needful, tempestuous Sinead.
* * *
MR. VAUGHAN AND MR. CONROY were in a pleasing exchange on the subject of Mr. Conroy’s tie. Nothing pleased Mr. Conroy more than to relate yet again the story of how he came to get such a beautiful tie and what a double-edged gift it was. It had been given to him, he said, by a very generous lady, a rich lady whose baby he was godfather to. One day at the races, the tie was admired by a bloke and Mr. Conroy heard himself saying rather gallantly, “Oh, I’ll get you one, Seamus,” thinking to himself that all he had to do was to go into Switzer’s or Brown Thomas’s and fork out fifteen quid and he’d be in the good books of this man, Seamus, whom he had reason to want to befriend. Seamus used to do night work in Mr. Conroy’s hotel, but had been summarily dismissed because of incivility. Late at night when guests from overseas arrived, he would tell them to “feck off,” as he was too lazy to get up from the stool and help with a suitcase or open a door. However, the fellow they got to replace him was even worse, and an alcoholic to boot, so they hoped to coax Seamus back. Lo and behold, as he confessed, the next day he scoured the shops, to find there was no tie like it, not even one approaching it. He finally had to ring the rich woman’s secretary—the woman herself was always travelling—only to be told, “Didn’t you know? That’s a very special tie. That’s a Gucci tie.”