Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel

by William Trevor

  Thirteen years later, in the Excelsior Bar, Agnes Quin drained the stout from her glass. ‘A small Power’s,’ she said, calling out to Eddie Trump. ‘Take something yourself, Eddie.’

  ‘She’ll be ninety-two,’ said Morrissey.

  She rose and went to get her drink. She had never in her life bought a drink for Morrissey, nor had any of the other women as far as she knew. She remembered hearing Beulah Flynn discussing the point with Mrs Dargan and Mrs Kite one time. Morrissey relied on them for his living; to buy him drinks would be an absurdity, they had said.

  ‘Is it an expensive cup, Agnes?’ he asked her now.

  She shook her head.

  ‘You saw what I gave for the spider.’

  A long time ago, walking one day in the neighbourhood of Dolphin’s Barn, she had met him. He had spoken about O’Neill’s Hotel in Thaddeus Street and she had remembered Mrs Sinnott, who had visited the convent. ‘She can’t be bothered with visitors,’ Morrissey had hastily said. ‘She likes to sit there alone.’ She had walked to the street and had seen Mrs Sinnott at the window of her room, and then she had gone into the hotel.

  Morrissey stood up and combed his hair again. ‘I’ll go over now,’ he said. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Agnes.’

  She watched him going away, pushing open the swing door so that the sunlight blazed in the rosy bar for a moment, revealing evidence of neglect. She thought of his hand writing down for the old woman sentences from Old Moore’s Almanac and sentences from the works of John Pendragon, and the old woman’s pretended interest. She would give him sixpence before he left her.

  ‘How’re you, Agnes?’ exclaimed Mrs Dargan, laboriously entering the bar. ‘Will you draw me a stout, Eddie?’

  She was a middle-aged widow of great bulk, attired almost always in a tightly belted black coat and a headscarf with horses on it. Her round, pale face was harshly marked with lipstick and eye-shadow; her hair beneath the headscarf was the colour of an orange. At all times of the year, summer and winter alike, her plump legs rose from black, fur-lined boots.

  ‘I’m dead tired,’ she said to Agnes Quin.

  She went on talking and Agnes listened, thinking, as often she did, how different her life was from the life of Olivia de Havilland. She had seen the Hollywood actress for the first time nineteen years ago, when she was eleven, playing the part of a pleasant person in Gone With The Wind. She had since seen her in other roles, giving performances that had always been moving. Regularly she wondered what it would be like to be Olivia de Havilland, to have riches all around you, to lie in sunshine whenever you felt the need, to eat food in a bath, covered with foam. She imagined changing places with Olivia de Havilland and often, when she lay wakeful, she saw Olivia de Havilland in a fur coat strolling around the streets of Dublin, extracting money from men or talking men around to an arrangement that suited her better than it suited them. ‘Have you had something to eat?’ Agnes had said to a man the night before, adding that there was a shop that stayed open late, where she could buy pieces of chicken and a few biscuits for both of them. They had walked together, agreeing on the way that as well as food a little more to drink would be pleasant also. The man gave her ten shillings with which to obtain the chicken and the biscuits. ‘There’s a place I can get a bottle,’ she said. ‘Crested Ten’s the strongest.’ She accepted more money and asked the man to wait for her while she went down an alley to the backdoor of a public house, at which, she said, she was well known. She walked through the darkness, away from the man, past the public house and out into another street. She went on walking until she caught sight of Morrissey, in conversation with the elderly man with whom she later entered O’Neill’s Hotel. She had afterwards imagined Olivia de Havilland being spoken to by Morrissey and then falling into step with his elderly companion.

  ‘Morrissey fecked a spider out of Woolworth’s,’ she said to Mrs Dargan. ‘A brooch for Mrs Sinnott’s birthday.’

  ‘Jays, he’s a shocking twister,’ said Mrs Dargan.

  ‘He rubbed off the price and wrote on two pounds ten. Ninepence those spiders are.’

  Mrs Dargan laughed, rolls of flesh shifting and wobbling on her neck. If Morrissey’s mother had known him, she said, she’d have drowned him in a bucket.

  Agnes agreed, thinking again of Olivia de Havilland and of other women in Hollywood whose luxurious lives she found pleasanter to consider than her own. Why can’t I forget it? she had written. Why would it make a difference, a man handing you in?

  In another bar Mr Smedley spoke. He spoke less directly than he had spoken before, having come to the conclusion that the barmen in this city were given to touchiness. The best ploy, he decided, would be to gain a barman’s confidence by means of interesting conversation and then, in a man-to-man way, to reveal what was on his mind.

  ‘I’m a salesman of cardboard,’ Mr Smedley said agreeably. ‘I go all over the globe.’

  The barman who had served him, now busy with bottles, made no reply.

  ‘I sell to factories,’ revealed Mr Smedley. ‘Have you a carton handy? A cardboard carton?’

  ‘What for?’

  Mr Smedley smiled. He offered the barman a cigarette, which the barman took and placed behind his ear.

  ‘The sheeting I sell,’ explained Mr Smedley, ‘is turned into boxes and cartons. After that it’s stamped with a name and a sales message. Hand me up that thing there.’

  The barman handed him a battered carton that once had contained packets of potato crisps. Mr Smedley felt it. He bent a piece of it between his fingers. He asked the barman if he might tear it slightly, and the barman replied that as far as he was concerned Mr Smedley could do what he liked with the carton. He could eat the carton, the barman suggested, if he wished to do this. Mr Smedley shook his head. He tore a piece of the cardboard away and lifted it to his nose. He handed the piece and the carton back to the barman.

  ‘That’s not of our manufacture,’ he said. ‘That’s cardboard of very poor quality.’

  ‘It does its stuff.’

  ‘You’re a man of the world,’ replied Mr Smedley. ‘Listen to me.’

  He told the barman that he had traded in cardboard in five continents. He had spent time in the company of West Indian women as well as Australian, American, and Chinese women, and the women of the Philippine Islands. He had spent time in the company of women from every European country and the outlying European islands. He was only wondering, he added, what the facilities were for a man of vigour in this present city.

  After a pause, during which he examined Mr Smedley’s face, the barman requested him to leave his bar.

  6

  ‘Are you O’Neill?’ Mrs Eckdorf asked in the hall of O’Neill’s Hotel, her left hand playing with the dark glasses she had just taken off.

  ‘I am Eugene Sinnott,’ said Eugene. ‘O’Neill is dead.’

  ‘How charming that sounds, the way you put it!’ cried Mrs Eckdorf, trying not to regard too closely this person who spoke to her. ‘And who is that man?’

  She smiled in the direction of O’Shea, who stood some yards behind Eugene, remembering the position from the past.

  ‘O’Shea,’ said Eugene. ‘Hall-porter and boots.’ He gave a laugh to indicate that he spoke humorously. He took the remains of a cigarette from his mouth. He threw it on to the ground and lit another.

  ‘And I am Mrs Eckdorf. Ivy Eckdorf from Munich in Germany, a photographer. May I perhaps sit down?’

  ‘Sit down, of course, why wouldn’t you? Can O’Shea get you a drop of something?’

  ‘My dear, nothing at all. I saw from the sign outside that here was an hotel and in I came. What a charming dog that man has!’

  O’Shea stepped forward and said that if Mrs Eckdorf wished to stay in the hotel it could easily be arranged. The hotel, he added, was not full at present, although once upon a time, on an August day, you wouldn’t have been able to get a room in O’Neill’s for love or money. ‘I am fascinated,’ said Mrs Eckdorf, her glance moving from
Eugene to O’Shea and over the maroon carpet and the tall thronelike chairs and the wallpaper that was kept in place with nails. Coloured sunlight streamed through the red and green panels of the entrance doors, on the air there remained a trace of the powerful scent of Agnes Quin. She hoped her manner was right, for it was essential that it should be. She wondered what her mother would think to see her now, standing in a place like this, saying in her professional way that she was fascinated.

  ‘Breakfast from eight a.m. onwards,’ said O’Shea. ‘Luncheon in the dining-room, a meat tea at half-past six. Special arrangements can be made –’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick,’ interrupted Eugene. ‘The lady hasn’t come to stay.’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I stay?’ cried Mrs Eckdorf, jumping up and taking Eugene by the arm. ‘Mr Sinnott, I’m not of German stock myself if that’s what’s worrying you. I was born in a place called Maida Vale. In London.’

  ‘I don’t imagine –’ began Eugene.

  ‘My dear, you don’t have to. You don’t imagine it’s my sort of place? Well, there you’re happily wrong. I cannot stand plush. I walked the streets of your charming city and met with beauty and delights. You find the real people of a city only if you go out and look for them. What can you expect if you sit on your bottom in a cocktail lounge? Reality is the grail I seek, Mr Sinnott, and I see that I have found it again.’ She gestured expansively at the whole area of the hall and at Eugene and O’Shea standing in it. ‘Could you,’ she said to O’Shea, ‘telephone through for my bags and baggage?’

  ‘There’s no phone here,’ Eugene said quickly.

  ‘I can ring through from the box outside,’ said O’Shea. ‘No trouble in the world, Mrs Eckdorf.’

  ‘Look here,’ said Eugene, but already Mrs Eckdorf was giving O’Shea the name of the hotel where her luggage was. ‘Let them put the bags in a cab,’ she commanded, ‘and the bill with them.’

  ‘No trouble at all,’ said O’Shea again.

  ‘Now listen,’ said Eugene, stepping in front of O’Shea. ‘Listen, Mrs Eckdorf, this is a bad time to stay here. Tomorrow there’s an occasion here, a lot of people coming, a family thing. It’d be awkward with a stranger about.’

  ‘Mr Sinnott, I’m like a mouse.’

  ‘Added to which, there’s only myself and O’Shea. There’s no cook in the kitchen or anything like that. The dining-room hasn’t been entered since we had a farmer from Monaghan here two months ago, a man O’Shea found wandering –’

  ‘Oh God, I love your way of talking,’ cried Mrs Eckdorf. ‘All the time this morning I’ve met only the nicest and now it’s best of all. Any old bed will do, and a meat tea I adore.’

  Eugene stared at Mrs Eckdorf and while he was occupied in doing that, transfixed by the uttering of these odd words, O’Shea slipped from the hall. He was smiling, Eugene saw. The sorrow had for a moment gone from O’Shea’s face. It was as though the advent of this smart woman made up for all the empty years: O’Shea had returned to the past he worshipped.

  ‘After all,’ said Mrs Eckdorf, ‘I’ll be paying good money. Look at it like that, why don’t you?’

  ‘It’s ridiculous, Mrs Eckdorf. A place like this –’

  ‘Mr Sinnott, I’ve explained.’

  She smiled. She was always smiling, he thought. Ever since she had come into the hotel she had been smiling and laughing, and speaking in a shrill voice that seemed itself to be full of smiles and laughter. He watched her mouth. He could see the tip of her tongue between slightly parted teeth. She spoke again. She said:

  ‘I live in the Lipowskystrasse. I’ve an apartment done out in a cinder-grey. Mr Sinnott, can you imagine that?’

  ‘Mrs Eckdorf –’

  ‘But I’m happier here. I’m happy in this hall listening to you. I wish to stay, Mr Sinnott: I like your old hotel.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said after a longish pause. ‘O’Shea will be back in a minute. I have to be on my way.’

  ‘I could eat you to your bones, Mr Sinnott! I’d like to talk and talk with you: I could listen for ever.’

  ‘I’m not here much actually.’

  ‘Mr Sinnott, you have gentle eyes.’

  He went away, and as he passed through the entrance doors she photographed his back, although she was aware that, not having re-set the Mamiya for the poor light of the hall, the photograph would be one for her record file only. He had stood there, not quite the extraordinary figure she had imagined, but a character at least who was not uninteresting. His eyes had not seemed to see her properly, and while he spoke a cigarette had shifted from one corner of his mouth to the other. She had noticed his hands shaking; she could see that he was indeed an inebriate and she felt excited by that thought, and excited too by the bizarre-looking porter who had gone to telephone for her baggage. She imagined the Sinnott man returning to the hotel later that day, lurching from side to side, mouthing words that did not make sense. She saw an image of him, with the porter supporting him all the way up the shabby stairs: she saw it in colour, the porter’s uniform glowing against a matt background.

  Mrs Eckdorf rose and strode about the hall, her professional eye alighting on details of form and colour. She narrowed her eyes, seeing everything at first in black and white and then in pastel shades. Something jumped in her stomach, telling her that the urge which had brought her in was a more fruitful one than she had ever realized. She felt she was standing on the done-for court of some done-for monarchy; bodies might once have strewn this hall; the air was heavy with people weeping.

  As she walked about, more slowly now, she knew instinctively that this would be a greater work than her study in Marrakesh, where she had lived with the Haziti family, recording a story of incest. She had caught some bug and had been laid up for days in the little raggy bed they gave her and which had afterwards appeared on the dust-jacket of her book. When she returned to Munich she discovered that she had lost a stone and a half, which did not surprise her since most of the food supplied in the Haziti household was inedible. She was used to such hardships, though: she had suffered in a similar manner in Sicily, on the Ganges, in Lesotho, Afghanistan, and in the home of a nailmaker in Peru. It had never not been worth it.

  Mrs Eckdorf sat down again. That porter was taking his time, she thought. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  Give attention to wardrobe and cage-birds, wrote Morrissey. Venus moves forward in Aries.

  She remembered the herrings that O’Shea had carried to her earlier. She had always enjoyed herrings when they were fresh. The best way to cook them, she remembered, was to hold them in boiling water like the fishermen themselves did.

  She had taught Enid to stuff herrings and to pot them. You baked herrings with cloves and mace for an hour and a half in a slow oven, or you could bake them with mustard butter. Enid had written one time that she’d stuffed herrings with shrimps, but her husband hadn’t liked them done that way. She remembered Enid as a child in the kitchen, beating eggs in a bowl and Kathleen Devinish showing her how to make bread. O’Shea simply fried the herrings and that was enjoyable too, fish with a crisp skin. Dublin herrings were supposed to be particularly tasty, Ardglass herrings were famous. A herring that wasn’t fresh was a different commodity and had a different taste. Kathleen Devinish had claimed that gently boiled herring flesh could be fed to babies at birth. Herring-bone, her father had somewhere written.

  A moment ago she had seen Eugene moving slowly down Thaddeus Street, as he did every morning at that time. A little before that, O’Shea had walked urgently from the hotel accompanied by his dog. It was pleasant that O’Shea had a pet; a pet was company. She saw weathered bricks in a zig-zag pattern: was it in Italy? The sun was on them, sunshine that was soft and reddish like the bricks, the sunshine of a late evening.

  She had pets herself, two cats she’d been given by old Mr Riordan. They used to follow her everywhere like O’Shea’s greyhound followed him, they used to sit with her in the dining room. It was a long t
ime ago now.

  She saw O’Shea hurrying back, seeming more cheerful than usual. His body was not bent in despondency, his swift motion was like that of a man on stilts, as though he employed elements within himself that had fallen into desuetude.

  The sun is square to Saturn, wrote Morrissey, Uranus and Jupiter in your fourth house. Buy no new clothing.

  Her father’s finger pointed and she looked at the zig-zag brickwork. Herring-bone, he had written. Leo had promised, she suddenly remembered, that he’d teach her to fish in the Dodder.

  For the last two weeks of this month, continued Morrissey, prefer easy mountaineering to water-sports.

  The pencil and the exercise-book were violently snatched from his hands. Exclaiming a protest, he looked up to see that the sombre hotel-porter had silently entered the room. There was something that might have been a smile on the lips of this man who had never addressed him.

  A visitor has come from Germany, reported O’Shea. A woman dressed in white.

  She had seen a woman in Thaddeus Street and had wondered about her. They are at war with Germany, someone once had written for her: she had not been much interested.

  O’Shea began to leave the room, having dropped the exercise-book at Morrissey’s feet. Morrissey picked it up and heard for the first time in his life the porter speaking to him. He turned his head and saw O’Shea standing by the door, not looking at him but looking at a corner of the room.

  ‘If you pass water again on my flower-bed,’ said the voice of O’Shea, ‘I will hit you with a knife.’

  The door closed. Morrissey stared at it for a moment and then stared at the page in his exercise-book that O’Shea had spoiled with his large, ungainly handwriting. He tore the page out and began to write, continuing his advice about the last two weeks of the month. It was a time, he noted, for hair-trimming and scalp treatments. He wrote that down, keeping the magazine from which he culled the information out of Mrs Sinnott’s sight. His sixpence was waiting for him on the dressing-table, where a similar coin always was. O’Shea had stood in a bank and the teller had counted out sixpences and put them in a little bag for O’Shea to carry away. It pleased Morrissey that O’Shea was obliged to go to that trouble so that this small payment might daily be made. If O’Shea caused any injury to him because of the flower-bed he would receive compensation in the courts and O’Shea would suffer a gaol sentence, which was the best thing that could happen to him. Ridiculous, the man coming into the room like a thunderstorm and writing down that a woman from Germany had come into the hotel. Who could be interested in that?