The rain which washed the statues and soaked Timothy John and lowered the spirits of Mr Gregan did not, that morning, rattle on the white mackintosh that Mrs Eckdorf had packed in Munich. The coat was still in a suitcase and Mrs Eckdorf, who appreciated the effect of rain on a city almost as much as fog, sat careless of it in Mrs Sinnott’s azure bedroom, to which earlier she had carried a breakfast tray. Receiving it from O’Shea in the kitchen, she had said that she herself would not eat again until she felt more completely at peace with herself. Eugene Sinnott, engaged with a newspaper at the kitchen table, had looked up when she had said that, but had passed no comment. In the eyes of O’Shea there was understanding. She remembered the coloured figure of O’Shea mingling with her own white clothes in the great mirror on the first landing, and O’Shea saying that for the birthday he put up a paper-chain.
She had carried the tray upstairs. She had placed it by Mrs Sinnott’s side, on the table in the window, and from that moment on, all that morning, Mrs Eckdorf remained in the company of the woman who that day was ninety-two. She remained in the room while Agnes Quin delivered, as a birthday present, a cup. She did not say anything: she watched the street-woman writing a message and watched Mrs Sinnott reading it and then kissing the cheek of Agnes Quin. It was the first time that Mrs Eckdorf had seen her express emotion.
When Agnes Quin had gone Mrs Eckdorf left the chair by the bed and sat in the visitors’ chair. She read the message that Agnes Quin had written: I am taking up a job that the Holy Rosary Sisters offered me at nine o’clock this morning. I could have worked in a kitchen in Harcourt Street but I chose the Sisters because they might be nicer to work for. It’s a job polishing and cleaning up.
Mrs Eckdorf closed the exercise-book. This woman had wished to be a nun, and life had swung her round to clearing the floors that nuns’ feet dirtied. That was not a bad thing, Mrs Eckdorf said to herself: the creature had found her place and would fill it happily now, freed maybe of introspection. She leaned forward and saw in Thaddeus Street the figure of Agnes Quin quickly striding. Mrs Sinnott regarded that figure, too. We are thinking the same, Mrs Eckdorf thought. Do you mind my sitting with you? she wrote at the back of the book that Agnes Quin had used. Say if you mind, Mrs Sinnott, and I’ll go away.
Mrs Sinnott shook her head.
I want to photograph your birthday, Mrs Eckdorf wrote. Will you mind if I do that?
Again Mrs Sinnott shook her head. Why should she mind? It was good of the woman to sit with her; it would be nice to have pictures to look at afterwards. The woman was keen on photographs, she thought, as she had thought yesterday when O’Shea had first brought her to the bedroom.
In her mind Mrs Eckdorf saw her own handwriting on the green lines of an exercise-book: I came here telling lies. I said I would buy the hotel. I said your son had gentle eyes and I did not mean it. I was cruel to O’Shea. I told lies to Philomena and to your daughter Enid Gregan. I frightened your grandson with ridiculous talk, I was impatient with Morrissey and Agnes Quin. Yet I am worthy of none of them. I should have hissed the shoes of Agnes Quin when she came in with a cup for you, I should offer to anoint the feet of Morrissey. I read the exercise– books. I plundered them like a thief. I love you, Mrs Sinnott.
She could not yet write that, any more than she could write about her husbands and her mother and Miss Tample. She could not yet explain how it was that her mother and Miss Tample and her husbands were part of the same horror in her life, that one led to another. God is in this hotel, she might have written and did not, and did not write either, although she wished to: He is hard to find in other hotels. In the Trader Vic Bar of the London Hilton God does not always seem to be present, although of course He must be. God has made you a special servant, Mrs Sinnott, like Joan of Arc and Bernadette.
Morrissey came to the room, and Mrs Eckdorf left the visitors’ chair and sat on a chair by the bedside. He looked at her nervously, and she remembered that the day before, in the office of the insurance company, she had been rude to him. She crinkled up her face, seeking to offer humility.
Morrissey kept his eyes on her. He nodded very slightly. He moved the position of the chair he was about to sit on so that his back was not presented to her.
‘Forgive my rudeness,’ she hoarsely said.
She saw him glance towards the dressing-table on which, earlier, Mrs Sinnott had placed a sixpenny piece, having taken it from a small drawer. He took from his pocket the spider, which he had wrapped in a piece of brown paper. He handed it to Mrs Sinnott, who removed the paper and then removed the spider from the cardboard to which it was attached. She fastened the ornament to the material of her black dress.
The silence in the room was intense. It was almost eerie, Mrs Eckdorf thought, this giving and receiving without a word. Earlier, Eugene Sinnott had stood briefly by his mother, wishing her good morning without saying anything. I dreamed about your cats, he had written. O’Shea stabbed me in Dawson Street. Mrs Eckdorf had read that because, like Agnes Quin, he had left the exercise-book open. You had a cat called Polly, he had written. There’s a horse called Polly Bellino today.
It was funny taking photographs at a birthday tea in a kitchen, Mrs Sinnott thought, instead of at a picnic, under a tree somewhere. Had the woman made a mistake? Did she imagine they were all going out on a picnic? No one could go on a picnic on a day like this.
The door opened and O’Shea came in, carrying Mrs Eckdorf’s white hat. Morrissey applied himself to a perusal of his astrological volumes.
‘I was tidying up the room,’ O’Shea said, holding out the hat.
She took it and smiled a little at him. He didn’t go away. He said:
‘You would not forget it if you were going out to Mass.’
She shook her head and slowly placed the hat upon it.
Under the impression that her continued presence in the room had to do with her desire to purchase the hotel, O’Shea then explained to Mrs Eckdorf that often when some suggestion was put to Mrs Sinnott she didn’t take any notice. Mrs Eckdorf might write down a message to the effect that she was interested in the property and Mrs Sinnott might neither nod nor shake her head. It might be necessary to repeat the statement, to write it out freshly again so that Mrs Sinnott wouldn’t become irritated at being shown what already she’d been shown. She had all her wits, O’Shea said, only she often couldn’t be bothered to give a sign. She understood everything, but, as Mrs Eckdorf could easily see, she needed expert care in many ways. He had spoken to Father Hennessey about that, and Father Hennessey was going to see about getting her a place with the nuns. And Eugene Sinnott would go to a home to be cured.
‘What?’ said Mrs Eckdorf.
‘It is what she wants,’ explained O’Shea, ‘that the hotel should rise again. It is what she wants only she always keeps quiet.’
Mrs Eckdorf looked away from the eager face of the porter. She could have given herself to this man to make up for her deceiving of him. She could have pressed his face to hers, she could have endured anything.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she whispered to O’Shea. ‘In the end it will be all right.’
In the Excelsior Bar Agnes Quin shook hands with Mrs Dargan and Eddie Trump. Early that morning she’d accepted a position, she told them, having come at last to the conclusion that her hand-to-mouth existence was unsatisfactory. She had bidden good-bye to Mrs Sinnott and to Eugene; she’d explained to O’Shea he wouldn’t have to worry again. The photographer who was interested in the hotel was sitting in Mrs Sinnott’s room, she reported: she was a woman, said Agnes Quin, who gave her the creeps.
‘The girl’s better off,’ Mrs Dargan remarked after Agnes had gone. ‘Wouldn’t you say so, Eddie?’
Eddie Trump agreed, and soon afterwards Eugene came into the bar. He said that Agnes Quin had taken up a position in a convent and that the woman who wanted to buy the hotel had been sitting all morning in his mother’s room. ‘She needs a clip on the ear,’ he said.
Eugene re
lated his dreams and listened to the dreams of Eddie Trump. Mrs Dargan sighed. At least there’d be more trade about with Agnes Quin gone. Agnes had always been the first choice when Morrissey showed round his photographs, with Beulah Flynn second, herself third and Mrs Kite bringing up the rear. She’d give it another try for a week or so before considering again if she should return to plucking chickens for the butcher.
‘Polly Bellino,’ said Eugene. ‘The first race at Warwick.’
‘Or Polly’s Prize,’ said Eddie Trump. ‘Three o’clock in the Park.’
Morrissey came into the bar. He ordered a glass of stout.
‘That woman’s up with your mother, Eugene,’ he said. ‘Is Agnes around?’
Eugene said he knew that Mrs Eckdorf was with his mother. Agnes Quin, he stated, had gone off to fresh pastures.
‘Pastures? What kind of –’
‘She’s taken a job in a convent. She said good-bye to all of us.’
‘She said nothing to me.’
‘She’s gone for good,’ said Mrs Dargan.
With slow movements, Morrissey drew a two-shilling piece from his trousers and placed it on the counter. Bitterly, he reflected that it was typical she hadn’t said a word to him. He had fixed her up with a well-dressed man from Liverpool, making an appointment for four o’clock this afternoon in O’Neill’s Hotel, when the place would be quiet owing to O’Shea being engaged with the birthday party in the kitchen. ‘Bad luck to her,’ muttered Morrissey, crossing the bar to where Mrs Dargan was sitting. Mr Smedley had shown little interest in Beulah Flynn or Mrs Dargan. He had peered closely at the photograph of Mrs Kite, saying she appeared to be deformed.
‘I might have something for you,’ Morrissey said quietly, ‘if I can fix it. Will you be here about four?’
Mrs Dargan nodded.
The rain continued all that morning. It streamed on the windows of the bungalow in which Philomena prepared lunch for her son and herself, while he, at her command, reclined on his bed. In the hall, the crocheted shawl, wrapped now in orange tissue paper, lay beside the tray-cloth he had bought, which was wrapped in tissue paper of the same colour.
Philomena sliced a cabbage, feeling happy because she was able to look after him. She had mixed Disprin with a little water and had watched him drink it. She’d plugged in an electric fire in his room. After he’d had a rest, he’d tell her all about it: how long he’d had to wait with the ache before the dentist attended to him, what the dentist had said, and how severe the pain of the extraction had been. She’d said that perhaps he shouldn’t go to O’Neill’s this afternoon, but he’d refused even to consider that idea. She smiled, hearing him say that: she liked him best of all when he stood up to her.
In Terenure Mr Gregan regarded the rain morosely, standing at his sitting-room window. His pipe made a noise when he drew on it and he wondered if water had penetrated when he’d been out on his bicycle, riding over to a shoe-shop to buy his new gum-boots. He longed to be standing in his field instead of in the neat sitting-room that his wife had tidied and cleaned with a vacuum-cleaner at a quarter to eight that morning. The rain would be echoing in the two empty glass-houses and running into the big tin tar-drums he’d provided. The rain would be good for the land.
From the kitchen came the spicy smell of curry, which meant she’d be cooking rice instead of potatoes. He sighed, thinking that after he’d swallowed as much of the rice as he could manage he’d have to get the car out in order to drive down to Booterstown to pick up Philomena and Timothy John, and then go on to Thaddeus Street. At breakfast she’d said she was looking forward to the drive, rain or not. She was up and down like a scallion: drooping in the heat, bright as a button when she got a little moisture. He hated driving the car and very rarely took it out of the garage. She’d bought it herself with some money her father had left her, and he had considered at the time that the little vehicle was a better investment than some useless object that was never used. She’d talked’ about week-end drives into the countryside or maybe to the coast, but when the car arrived he realized that she meant him to drive her out on these excursions, since she said she was too nervous to drive herself. He explained to her that he much preferred his bicycle and had no time whatsoever for gallivanting around the countryside in a motor-car. One of these days he’d take it into a garage and sell it so that he could put the money into something more sensible: what use was a motor-car that came out of its garage only once a year in order to drive four people over to Thaddeus Street?
In O’Neill’s Hotel Mrs Sinnott slept, having tired of watching the falling rain. Mrs Eckdorf left the room and returned with her camera. She photographed random pages of the exercise-books.
O’Shea came in with a tray of food. He said that he had prepared chicken and potatoes and parsnips, and that in ten minutes he would serve them to Mrs Eckdorf in the diningroom. In the meantime he was heating up a tin of kidney soup and stewing prunes.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I could eat nothing.’
‘Little potatoes,’ urged O’Shea. ‘And the parsnip is tender–’
She shook her head.
She left Mrs Sinnott’s room then. She went back to her own, where for several hours she sat smoking and thinking, close to the window that overlooked the street, as Mrs Sinnott’s did.
At a quarter to four she heard the voice of O’Shea murmuring to his dog, and then footsteps on the stairs which suggested that O’Shea was escorting Mrs Sinnott on her annual journey to the kitchen. ‘Be quiet, can’t you?’ his voice called out, and she imagined the greyhound whimpering and darting with excitement, affected by the novelty of it.
From the window she noted, after further time had passed, that Eugene Sinnott seemed unaware of the rain that fell upon him in Thaddeus Street. He walked with the same unhurried motion she had seen him employ before. She had thought then that he moved so slowly because he relished the warm sunshine, but it seemed this wasn’t so. The water ran from his uncovered head; he wore no overcoat.
Mrs Gregan came in a cloudy blue suit and a hat with flowers on it. She stepped from a small car and stood for a moment with the rain falling on her umbrella, a woman who looked as awkward when viewed from above as she did, Mrs Eckdorf considered, when seen face to face.
Out of the same car emerged Philomena, hatless, in a grey coat, and then Timothy John, and then Mr Gregan himself. From her window Mrs Eckdorf could hear his voice shouting across the bonnet of the car, laying down the law about some horticultural practice. He was carrying a bunch of mixed flowers; the others bore gaily-coloured packages.
From the first-floor landing, she photographed them as they passed through the hall. ‘The stem must be clear of side-shoots,’ Mr Gregan was stating.’You must always remember that, Philomena.’
She returned to her room, thinking she’d give them a little time to get going before she made her entrance. She sat down again, trying to relax. She closed her eyes and actually fell asleep.
Through the open top of the window, the wind having changed direction, raindrops came into the room, falling on to her. She slipped into a deeper sleep; her lower jaw dropped slightly. Occasionally she snored.
‘Excuse me,’ said a voice, coming to Mrs Eckdorf from what appeared to be the depths of a well. The voice echoed in her sleep. ‘Excuse me,’ it said, the voice of a man. I’ve dropped off, she said to herself in her sleep, in a panic: I’ve dropped off when I shouldn’t have.
‘Excuse me,’ said the voice again, and a rattling or a coughing commenced, she wasn’t sure which. She moaned, knowing she must wake herself because in the Lipowskystrasse Hans-Otto was waving his bandaged hand about, saying she had stabbed it with a fork, and laughing at her. She opened her eyes and saw a sandy-haired, balding man, wearing glasses and a brown suit. He was standing close to her, leaning against the window-frame. He had a cigarette in his hand that he appeared to be about to light.
‘Excuse me,’ he said.
At first she did not know where she w
as. She remembered, and wished at once to say that this was a private room in an hotel, and then remembered again.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, pushing herself to her feet. ‘This is my room –’
‘I know,’ said Mr Smedley.’I know, I know.’’
‘Who are you, please?
‘I am looking for Agnes Quin. I have an appointment to meet Agnes Quin at four o’clock in this hotel. I was told which room to go to. I thought it was this one’.
‘Agnes Quin has gone to work in a convent.’
Mr Smedley laughed, assuming the statement to be a joke. Mrs Eckdorf didn’t like him, and in a moment she realized that she was beginning to hate him. He said:
‘A man called Morrissey. He tried to make out he was a lung specialist.’
‘He is,’ said Mrs Eckdorf.
‘Oh, now –’
‘He made an error due to lack of sleep.’
‘But look at him now—’
‘It can happen.’
‘Blimey,’ said Mr Smedley, and then lost interest in the subject. Tapping one of his feet on the floor, he whistled a snatch from The Mikado. He broke off to blow his nose.
‘D’you know Agnes Quin?’ he asked.
Mrs Eckdorf did not reply. Instead she asked him not to go away. She put lipstick on her lips. She brushed her hair and tidied it. She powdered her face.
‘I say,’ said Mr Smedley softly.
Again she did not acknowledge the comment.
Mr Smedley, still leaning against the window-frame, said he was a salesman of cardboard sheeting. He told her his name. He informed her that he visited many areas of the world, trading in cardboard. He had spent time in the company of West Indian women, he said, as well as Australian women and the women of the Philippine Islands.
Mrs Eckdorf in O'Neill's Hotel Page 21