Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel

by William Trevor

  Eating creole jambalaya, Mrs Eckdorf recalled in total detail her conversation with the ship’s barman. The ship had been steaming away from Benguela, she had been sitting on a high stool. She’d bought the man a number of drinks, for he had displayed an interest in her work. She’d told him about her books and about some of her methods. In return he’d told her about one or two places he’d been to. ‘A bawdy-house?’ she’d asked. ‘I’d love to do a bawdy-house.’

  She had imagined, as she spoke, women and girls dressed in chiffon, their hair most intricately arrayed or flowing casually to their shoulders, some with their suspenders revealed. She had imagined these attractively painted birds of paradise moving soundlessly and slowly across a hall that was, she now realized, not unlike the hall of O’Neill’s Hotel. She had seen the creatures standing idly about, in the hall and on the stairs, doing nothing whatsoever, or examining their lips in the gilt mirrors that hung here and there.

  ‘The only bawdy-house I was ever in,’ the barman had confessed, ‘was a curious place.’ After which, he had told her everything else.

  She felt almost at peace, eating creole jambalaya: she felt calm enough to sit there with the wool pulled away from her eyes, accepting the doubts that were nibbling at her, recalling that conversation with an accuracy that was necessary now. He had remembered the names of Morrissey and Agnes Quin, and of the street and the hotel. The names had stuck in his memory, she recalled his saying, because of the curiousness of everything. And he’d remembered Agnes Quin telling him that the respectable side of the family came back annually for the old woman’s birthday.

  ‘Some tragedy,’ she had murmured, handing the barman more money.

  As she ate, she heard her voice murmuring the two words. She saw the barman pouring from a bottle, treating both of them to an extra measure of cognac. It was sad, he had said: he’d felt a sadness as he passed through the hall the next morning, sensing what once it had been like.

  ‘Some tragedy,’ she had murmured again, and she recalled that she had closed her eyes and had imagined the hotel and the people, and that when she had opened them the barman was looking puzzled.

  ‘Tragedy?’ he had said.

  They had gone on drinking, until in the end he, too, had spoken about the tragedy that her intuitions had felt; but she knew now, and would admit it to herself, that it was she who had used the word first. All the barman had done was to visit a bawdy-house and to remember it for her. She had sensed the tragedy all by herself, thousands of miles away: she had put her finger on what appeared to be the truth.

  The waiter came with crêpes au mocha, and for a moment as he approached she imagined that he was encased in the form of Hans-Otto Eckdorf. She half-rose from her chair, smiling at Hans-Otto, about to tell him she’d remembered in time that it was she and not the ship’s barman who had felt the tragedy. Then, very suddenly, she saw that the figure was the figure of a waiter. He placed the crêpes in front of her; she forgot that passing confusion.

  The barman had not been sensitive. He’d been quite an ordinary servitor who carried with him a number of anecdotes, a man who could not have felt what she had felt, who had said only that the hotel was curious and sad. She was glad she had thought about it and had established the accuracy. The barman had not really been an ally.

  She rose and left the restaurant. She asked a taxi-driver to take her to Riordan’s Excelsior Bar, in Thaddeus Street. ‘Masterpieces do not grow on trees,’ she once had pronounced, ‘which is something you would know little about, Hans-Otto Eckdorf. You’re too coarse-grained, Hans-Otto, to know a thing like that.’

  She would be calm now, she resolved in the taxi, for she felt that she had not been calm enough today. She felt exhausted, as though that day she had worn one part of herself entirely out. Her professional side kept going, like one engine of a machine when its twin has died: a photographer now would continue for the time being, until the rest of her was recharged, until something happened to recharge the person that she was. She yawned in the taxi-cab, wanting to sleep. Had she hit Hoerschelmann with the edge of the small table or had Hoerschelmann hit her? She couldn’t remember. She remembered speaking about it in court, but she didn’t know why the consideration came to bother her now: how could it matter? Hans-Otto had said she had driven a fork into his hand. He had walked about with bandages on, looking at her with grim reproach: he had cut his hand trying to open a tin of fish, of that she was certain.

  The taxi stopped. She left it, moving as in a tired, familiar dream. She paid the man, and then there seemed to be a vacuum in her mind, until in the same tired dream she bought for Agnes Quin yellow Chartreuse and sherry for Eugene Sinnott. She stood with them in the Excelsior Bar while they told her nothing at all. No hint, no clue dropped from their lips; the woman seemed preoccupied, the man spoke nonsensically about a greyhound that was not the greyhound in the hotel. For a while it seemed to Mrs Eckdorf that he likened her to the animal he spoke of, reminding her that the dog, like herself, had been born and bred in England. While Agnes Quin sat silent and morose, he talked about dreams he had had, dreams that featured circus people and German wine and the death of the barman who was serving them with all they drank. The barman mentioned a dream too, in which he had apparently been instructing a class of boys.

  The eyes of Eugene Sinnott appeared sightless as he bent over her, refusing to sit down. He covered her clothes with ash from his cigarettes. He said that the barman was to be buried on Tuesday morning after Nuptial Mass in the Pro-Cathedral. He swayed back and forth.

  ‘Tell me about the hotel,’ she whispered wearily to Agnes Quin, but Agnes Quin only shrugged her shoulders, and soon afterwards left the bar.

  ‘O’Shea says you’re buying us up,’ Eugene Sinnott remarked, as though the matter didn’t much concern him. The barman enquired what she intended to do with the property. Was she planning to manufacture radio-sets? he wanted to know, and added that such manufacture was common among German industrialists who had bought land or property in the country. She denied that she was German. ‘English,’ said Eugene Sinnott, nodding knowledgeably at her.

  A woman of immense size who gave her name as Mrs Dargan entered the bar and shook her hand, saying she was pleased to meet her. ‘You’re in the circus business,’ she said, and went on to say that she herself was considering a return to a trade she had once pursued, the plucking of chickens. ‘I pursue an unmentionable one now,’ said Mrs Dargan, nudging Mrs Eckdorf and giving a squelching laugh.

  She tried to ask Mrs Dargan questions about the hotel, but Mrs Dargan, like everyone else, told her nothing of value.

  ‘D’you like this city?’ enquired the barman, bringing her a drink she hadn’t asked for and standing there boldly, with his hand out for payment.

  ‘She’s buying us out,’ said Eugene Sinnott to Mrs Dargan.

  She paid for the drink she hadn’t ordered. She was tired and must go, she said.

  ‘You’re a tip for the Greyhound Derby,’ said Mrs Dargan, and the laughter in the bar began all over again.

  She walked into the hotel and felt in the hall that people weeping would soon appear. She mounted the stairs, and then mounted again, going past the room that the tall porter had allocated to her. She listened outside the door of the deaf old woman, and then went in.

  There was moonlight on the sleeping face of Mrs Sinnott. The deaf have extra senses, she thought, proceeding quietly. She lifted each stack of exercise-books to the landing. She closed the door. Making many journeys, she carried the exercise-books to her room.

  In time she heard the footsteps of Eugene Sinnott mounting to his room, and thought she heard his voice speaking to himself. She listened, and then continued her task.

  For several hours she read the conversations, while far away Mr and Mrs Gregan slept in their two beds, and Philomena slept in the bungalow and Timothy John’s tooth nagged. The thought of the tooth coming out, its deep roots grinding on bone as they were wrenched away, sickened him. He trie
d to think of business matters, but the words that Mrs Eckdorf had spoken and the face of Daisy Tulip were there in the room with him, as persistent as the pain. ‘He hasn’t eaten a midday meal for twenty years,’ said Mrs Eckdorf. ‘His days are passed in a public house.’ The eyes of Daisy Tulip laughed at him. ‘It isn’t my real name,’ she said. ‘I won’t tell you my real name.’ O’Shea slept, as did Eugene now. Agnes Quin packed her clothes into a suitcase, having found at last the strength for her resolution. ‘Have you a match on you?’ a man said to Morrissey, and added conversationally that his name was Smedley.

  While Mrs Eckdorf read what he had written about his other dreams, Eugene dreamed again. Animals had entered his body and were unpleasantly devouring it. They were tearing away his stomach; he was powerless to stop them because he could not move. He thought he could hear them making the sound of cats, and the teeth on his flesh felt like feline teeth. He was in a room lying down, in his own bed. He couldn’t sit up because he knew if he did the cats would snarl among his entrails. In his dream he imagined their faces, eyes gleaming through the blood that saturated their fur, their teeth bared for a new attack, the cats of his mother.

  Outside, Thaddeus Street was white with moonlight; everywhere the night was still and warm. In the Coombe Maternity Hospital the mother of the twins lay awake, worrying about the financial aspect of the birth. In the convent where Agnes Quin had been handed in other orphans slept, a novice prayed for guidance, an old nun prayed also. A man, passing the window of English’s hardware shop in Ringsend, paused to examine the wares displayed: tools for plasterers, wooden planes, oil-burners, clothes-pegs, several kinds of saws. In Reuben Street the bed of the woman who had died was empty. In Thaddeus Street Father Hennessey sat at his bureau. In a room high above the Excelsior Bar Eddie Trump put his arms around the daughter of Mr Riordan, whose belief had been that only in inebriation are people truly happy.

  Mrs Eckdorf read of their lives. In the red exercise-books the handwriting of Mrs Sinnott occurred hardly at all. Her part of the conversation had been a nodding or a shaking of her head, a hand stretched out, some other gesture in this simple communication. Mrs Eckdorf read about Doyle the lemonade clerk, and Miss Lamb in Wigan, and about the worries of O’Shea. Once, she read, a few years ago, Eugene had altered the routine of his day: he had walked past Riordan’s Excelsior Bar one morning and had continued to walk until he found himself in the centre of the city. There, he had entered a steak bar in a tall new building and had ordered a steak, being hungry after the undue exertion. He had felt dazed, he reported; the city had changed since the time he had known it better. Thaddeus Street was pleasanter.

  She read of the upbringing of Timothy John and of the gratitude that his mother felt for all that Mrs Sinnott was doing for both of them in a practical way. She read on, meeting Daisy Tulip.

  Father Hennessey, a visitor who was less involved than all the others, wrote of the legends that had developed around the lives of certain saints, a St Attracta in particular.

  I have come from nowhere, wrote Agnes Quin. I can’t make out how I’m meant to be. What shall I do? cried Agnes Quin, but Mrs Sinnott did not reply.

  I made a ragoût, murmured Mrs Gregan. I had to eat it all myself.

  In a tireless, sloping hand her husband reported a vision: produce ripening in the sun, young men and himself working all together in long glass-houses. I have never cared for office life, Mr Gregan revealed. I have never been successful in it.

  Morrissey wrote with difficulty, O’Shea in his sprawling way. Philomena’s hand was light upon the page, suggesting humility.

  I pray, she said. I cannot help myself. I know I have no right to pray for that. It will happen: what can I do?

  Her son wrote badly, as though fearful of marking the page at all. Mrs Eckdorf had to peer.

  I have brought you fudge, whispered Timothy John, and now I want to tell you.

  A man who was a stamp-collector, said Morrissey. I obliged him by listening. When I looked up he was gone.

  O’Neill’s, cried O’Shea. O’Neill’s will be famous again because I feel it inside me. People will come.

  Toytown, said Eugene Sinnott. L. Johnson up.

  Around her, the red volumes lay scattered and confused, the conversation of Agnes Quin interlaced with that of Mr Gregan, Morrissey breaking off abruptly. O’Shea’s lines were open for all to see, every one was higgledy-piggledy because Mrs Eckdorf had snatched the exercise-books from this pile or that and had thrown them carelessly from her. Her eyes were like lead in her head. She read and read, wading into the lives of all these people and yet discovering nothing of what she sought. A mother and a son, a husband and a wife, a ne’er-do-well who drank, a porter affected by religion, a strumpet obsessed by her conception, a procurer to whom no one would offer friendship: they spoke about themselves only, or about the hardships they encountered at the hands of others.

  ‘There is nothing,’ said Mrs Eckdorf.

  She left the exercise-books and left her bedroom. Moonlight lit the landing and part of the staircase. She listened. There was a movement in the hall, so light it might have been that of a small nocturnal animal. She looked over the banister and saw below her the shadow of Morrissey. He was preparing his resting place behind the tall gilt chairs, having shaved himself in the kitchen and gone to the backyard, and eaten some bread he’d found. Through gloom that was only here and there relieved by moonlight, the precise activity of Morrissey was difficult for Mrs Eckdorf to discern: she guessed at it, remembering the voice of O’Shea as it had spoken in the exercise-books. O’Shea had not ever said that Agnes Quin conducted business on the premises of the hotel. He had not said that while Mrs Sinnott slept the hotel of her father was becoming, through the fecklessness of her son, a house of common disorder. Mrs Sinnott was protected, as was her human due.

  She ascended to the top of the hotel, to a door that the porter had sixteen hours previously indicated as the door of his bedroom. Without knocking, she entered and turned on the light. Sacred effigies hung about, an evening newspaper lay on the floor. The greyhound came moaning from a corner. O’Shea wakened at once.

  He saw her standing at the foot of his bed, with his greyhound beside her. The camera that had before hung from her neck was not there now. She was hungry, he thought: she had come for food. Her clothes were still the same pale clothes, her hat was still on her head.

  ‘You must be ravenous,’ he said.

  ‘O’Shea, it’s half-past three.’

  ‘If you’ll take a seat in the dining-room, I’ll be down at once.’

  ‘O’Shea,’ she softly said, ‘what happened in this hotel?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve read every page of those exercise-books.’

  He stared at her and continued to stare. He said:

  ‘Those are private conversations. Those are the conversations that people have with Mrs Sinnott.’

  ‘Yes. And I have read them.’

  ‘You said you were buying the hotel.’

  She stretched out a hand and touched the flesh of his hand. She could not help thinking that his pyjamas did not seem clean. She said:

  ‘An event took place in this hotel.’

  He did not reply. The greyhound jumped on to the bed beside him. She said:

  ‘This old hotel will again be famous, which is the heartfelt wish of Mrs Sinnott. People will come to Thaddeus Street and you will carry upstairs their baggage. There was a time, O’Shea, when a fly buzzed on a window-pane: another woman would have asked you to destroy that fly. It is her wish that the hotel of her father, whom she loved, should again hold up its head, as a living memorial to that man, and to her Venetian mother also, and to her husband who died for his country. Her husband married her, although she has neither voice nor hearing; he married her for her goodness and her beauty. She would like to honour him, he who might have run this fine hotel as well as her beloved father had.’

  ‘He would have done,’ cried O’Shea.
‘He would have.’

  ‘O’Shea, what was the hotel like once?’

  She closed her eyes, listening to him, seeing a vision of the hotel as it had been, according to what he described. There must have been a heavy atmosphere there, she thought, as she had noticed in the middle-class, old-fashioned hotels of Germany. The chairs that stood in the hall had a solidity that might have been oppressive. Upstairs on the second landing there was a huge leather sofa flanked by leather chairs, all in poor condition now, but not beyond reclaiming. The great mirror on the stairway and the one in the dining-room, the sideboards and the dumb waiter, must all have added to the weightiness. She imagined the carefully kept floors, linoleum daily polished, carpets brushed, the sacred pictures on the bedroom walls, the painted statues here and there on tables, everywhere clean. And at the centre of it all the woman who was kind to orphans and kept her house in order.

  ‘O’Shea, what happened once in the hall of the hotel?’

  He shook his head. The only thing he could remember that was of note, he said, was that a bookmaker called Jack Tyler had once fallen over the banisters and landed in the hall and had not been hurt. He had not been sober at the time. Only that morning Mr Sinnott had mentioned Jack Tyler, recalling that the bookmaker had died a few years ago, at Leopardstown. Mrs Eckdorf interrupted him. She told him to think, and when he had thought for a time he said that the only other out-of-the-way occurrence that had taken place in the hall was that once, in the middle of the night, Eugene Sinnott and his sister had quarrelled. When she questioned him, he replied that that had taken place a long time ago now, on the night of one of Mrs Sinnott’s birthdays.