by Colm Toibin
‘Oh now,’ he said. ‘That’s not what I heard.’
Eventually, after much withholding and teasing, he told her how he and his sisters had seen their mother three times in the recent past in deep discussions with Birdseye, the commercial traveller.
‘We were just speaking about business, Gerard,’ she said. ‘Don’t be going on with nonsense.’
‘That’s what they all say,’ he replied.
Over the days that followed he made a point of leaving a packet of Birdseye custard at her place at the table. He was not to be stopped so she ignored him, surprised by his confidence and his cheek and unsure how to respond to him.
She did not want him to know anything about the conversations with Birdseye, who was the most popular and talkative commercial traveller who came to the shop. He ended each sentence with ‘Mrs’ as though it were a Christian name. Even when George was alive he would single her out and talk to her at great length when he came to get his order, telling her the news and knowing a good deal about the plans for expansion and the inner workings of Dunne’s Stores. He was small and chubby, with a large and friendly face. George had always laughed at him when he was gone, saying that he was a born salesman, that you would buy from him because he seemed so harmless.
She did not know why he was the one to whom she explained her circumstances. Maybe it was his harmlessness, and his living a distance away where no one knew her was certainly a factor, but more than anything she knew that he would listen to her, and that not a detail would be lost on him. She did not tell him about the cash mounting slowly in the bottom drawer because she could not gauge what his response to that would be. But she told him the rest, and he stared at her as he concentrated on each word, waiting for the next piece of information.
‘I’ll come back tomorrow, Mrs,’ he said. ‘Will you be here at four? I’ll come back tomorrow and I’ll have plenty to say to you then, Mrs.’
He came back the next day when Catherine was also working and he whispered to Nancy as soon he arrived, asking if he could see the store which was across the hallway. The old counter of the spirit grocery was still there and the window with the curtains drawn which gave on to the square, but the room was full of junk. He studied it silently, taking it all in.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘I was right yesterday, Mrs, but I needed to sleep on it, and I rang a fellow I know, I didn’t tell him what town it was, but he agreed with me, Mrs, so I have it now. There’s only one thing you can do. Low investment, Mrs, and quick money. That’s the name of the game.’
They stood in the dusty old room. He looked at her, like a small animal about to pounce, and she held his eye. She was taken aback by his seriousness and his certainty.
‘Chips, bun-burgers, Mrs, quick chicken, fish in batter,’ he said.
‘Sure I couldn’t make chips,’ she said, ‘the kids complain that I can hardly fry a potato.’
‘There’s machinery going around now that’s cheap and will do everything for you, Mrs.’
‘What do you want me to do? Spend all day making chips?’
‘The weekend trade would be the best, I’d say,’ Birdseye said.
‘I couldn’t stand out here selling chips,’ Nancy said.
‘Well, in that case you’ll be standing on the side of the road, Mrs, to put it straight to you now.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ she said. ‘That is a great help.’
‘You could have the place fixed up in no time,’ he said, his gaze focused on her in pure enthusiasm.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘I would love to get out of this town and never come back.’
‘You think about it now, Mrs,’ he said, glancing around the room once more. ‘It’s a sure-fire winner.’
THE FOLLOWING Saturday was the first night of the new bar extension in Grace’s Hotel, and crowds poured out into the Monument Square at half-past one. A few sat around the monument and others gathered outside the supermarket. Nancy could not sleep and worried in case the noise had reached the back rooms where the children were sleeping.
That evening she had met Mr Wallace as he walked his dog in the square. He must have known, she thought, that she had missed the repayment which was due, but nonetheless he smiled at her even more warmly and politely than usual. For one moment, she even thought that he was going to stop to exchange pleasantries. This added to her dread of him and her determination never to sit again in his office.
She did not have a telephone number for Birdseye. She knew that he lived near Waterford and was married, with young children, and she knew that he covered Kilkenny and Carlow and Wexford and all the places in between. She would have to wait until he arrived again to ask him the questions which had been on her mind since he spoke to her. How much money could she make out of a chip shop? How quickly could she make it? And how much would it cost to set the place up? And how quickly could that be done? She could not sleep pondering these unanswered questions.
Two men were singing below her window and others joined them so that now there was a group of singers, loud and raucous and half-drunk bawling out:
‘Her eyes they shone like diamonds
You’d think she was queen of the land
With her hair flung over her shoulders
Tied up with a black velvet band.’
She lay there waiting for them to stop, but when the song came to an end they let out a big cheer and then started another song:
‘Fare thee well, my lovely Dinah, a thousand times adieu.
We are going away from the Holy Ground and the girls we all love true.’
One of the singers, with a louder voice than the rest, began to roar out the words, and Nancy knew as she lay in the dark what was coming at the end of the first verse, a big shout in unison of ‘Fine girl you are!’ before continuing with the song. She wondered if her neighbours were awake too and if there was any point in phoning the Guards.
When the singing became louder, she went to the window and opened the curtains and pulled up the bottom half of the window frame. She thought this sound would distract them, perhaps even silence them, but they kept going. She saw that there were five or six young men, with two women standing close by.
‘Excuse me! Excuse me!’
At first no one heard her, but then one of the women pointed up to her and the singers moved out on to the roadway so they could see her.
‘Excuse me, but we’re trying to sleep and there are children here.’
‘We’re not stopping you,’ one of them shouted.
‘It’s a free country,’ the young man beside him added.
The others looked up at her in complete silence.
‘It’s very late,’ she said. ‘Now could you all to go home immediately?’
She knew she had sounded too posh.
‘Do you hear her fucking ladyship?’ one of them shouted.
‘Her high and mightyness.’
She did not know whether she should stay there or withdraw. She watched as one of them detached himself from the group. He was, she thought, the loud one. She did not recognize him as he moved towards the monument and began to shout at her.
‘You have your la! You have your fucking la!’
She closed the window and drew the curtains, but this seemed to infuriate the figure in the square even more.
‘Your big hole,’ he roared. ‘Your big hole.’
‘Ah, Murt, come on,’ one of his friends roared at him.
But he would not stop.
‘How’s your fat hole? Your big fat hole.’
WHEN BIRDSEYE came the following week, she asked him if he could return at six o’clock when the supermarket had closed for the day. She had all the questions ready as he had all the answers. It was arranged that she would go to Dublin on Thursday to look at the equipment she would have to install and discuss terms with the company which would sell her what was needed. Birdseye assured her that he would make the contacts and the arrangements for her.
‘Speed, Mrs, speed is of the
essence,’ he said to her.
As soon as he left she went upstairs and phoned Betty Farrell and asked for the name and number of the furniture dealer in Kilkenny she had recommended. Betty gave her the number briskly and without asking any questions. When she rang, the phone was answered by the owner who agreed to come to look at what she had to sell the following evening.
He was a tall man with greying hair, mild-looking like a national teacher in a country school. She showed him into the room over the store where the old dining table was kept. He ran his finger along the surface and knelt down so he could see underneath it.
‘Are you selling this?’ he asked.
‘And the two side tables if the price is right,’ she said. ‘And I have other things too.’
She brought him to the living room and showed him the painting over the mantelpiece.
‘To be honest with you now,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t sell that. You’d never get it back again.’
‘I’ll sell it if I get a good price,’ she said. ‘I have another one upstairs.’
‘It’ll be hard to price them,’ he said. ‘I might have to wait a good while to get the right buyer.’
‘Are you not a buyer?’
‘I’m a dealer.’
‘Well, there are books too. Do you deal in books?’
By the end of the evening, he had written out two lists. One had merely three items: a Georgian dining table with two side tables; two oil paintings of the River Slaney by Francis Danby; a full first edition of Hore’s History of County Wexford. The other list had fifteen or sixteen items of lesser importance.
‘Now come down here again,’ she replied. ‘The chandelier in the hall’s been there since the beginning.’
He noted it on his second list.
‘So?’ she asked when she had him at the hall door.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll come back to you with a price.’
‘Cash,’ she said.
‘You sound like someone going to do a runner,’ he said.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘It’s the first time anyone has asked me for cash for that amount of stuff.’
SHE DROVE TO Dublin on Thursday, left her car on St Stephen’s Green and met her contact in the Russell Hotel. He had the same look as Birdseye, eager, friendly, positive, enthusiastic.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘this man in Thomas Street will sell you all you need and he’ll fit it for you. He’s dead honest and knows his stuff. He’ll need to be paid on the nail in cash.’
He stopped and studied her to ensure that she was in full agreement. She did not move.
‘You’re going to need a massive freezer,’ he continued, ‘and I know someone who has one, and you’re also going to need a main supplier and that’s where I come in. Everything ready and prepared, frozen, delivered once a week. Again, cash on the nail.’
Suddenly he seemed tough, almost threatening, as though offering a hint of what he might be like if the cash were not forthcoming.
‘You can shop around if you like,’ he said, ‘but you won’t get a better deal.’
She asked him the single question which had preoccupied her on the journey to Dublin.
‘I want to know this,’ she said. ‘How much does one of your big frozen bags of chips cost and how many bags of chips would I get out of that? And how much are you changing per single frozen hamburger?’
He offered to write it out for her but she insisted that, if he had the figures in his head, he tell her instead. He gave her the details very slowly until she told him to stop because she needed to do some mental arithmetic.
‘I don’t need to shop around,’ she said after a few moments. ‘You can be my supplier.’
‘Is that all you have to say about it?’ he asked, flirting with her for the first time.
‘That’s all,’ she said and smiled.
The man in the warehouse in Thomas Street was small and fat and cheerful. He already had the measurements of the store which Birdseye had asked her for. Now he showed her a drawing, his plan for her chip shop, which he would be able to install in twenty-four hours flat, he said, working day and night.
‘You won’t know what hit you,’ he said, chuckling. ‘There’s only one thing more I need, besides a new leg.’ He winced in mock pain as he touched his leg and then laughed. ‘We need a name. We’ll put you up in lights.’
‘For the shop?’
‘We need to make a big bright sign.’
‘The Monument,’ she said. ‘We’ll call it the Monument.’
‘Right so,’ he said, noting down the words. ‘So we’ll be ready in two weeks. I’ll need half the money next week and the other half when the job’s done.’
‘Cash,’ she said.
‘You’re too right,’ he replied.
THE MAN FROM Kilkenny began to prevaricate on the phone.
‘I can’t price the paintings at all. No one knows what they’re worth. They’d need to be sold at a big auction in Dublin,’ he said.
‘So why don’t you buy them and put them into the auction?’
‘That’s what I mean,’ he said. ‘The big one especially could go for five or six times what I could give you.’ ‘Lucky you,’ she said.
‘I don’t work like that. I pay a fair price,’ he said coldly.
‘If you make me a decent offer and pay me now and in cash, I’ll take it. And there’ll be no complaints from me if you become a millionaire once you pay me a fair price.’
‘I’ll give you a ring tomorrow.’
SHE TOLD NO ONE that she planned to open a chip shop in the storehouse beside the supermarket. Having considered telling Betty Farrell, she decided against it, presuming that Betty would react with little enthusiasm to such a venture. Nonetheless, she continued changing cheques with the Farrells and hoarding the cash. She had no further dealings with the bank. When, finally, she made an agreement with the man in Kilkenny for more money than she had expected, she drove to see him. He quietly handed her an envelope full of twenty-pound notes, enough to pay for the deep freeze and the machines and their installation as well as the sign and the decoration. But she also needed money for supplies and to pay staff and to keep the place going. Although she did not want to touch her stash of money, she knew that if she put it in the Credit Union she would be able to borrow double her savings.
Jim Farrell, she knew, was on the committee of the Credit Union. She asked Betty to enquire from Jim if the Credit Union could give her a loan in cash or a cheque which Jim and Betty could cash for her.
‘Jim will arrange it in cash,’ Betty told her later that same day, ‘but you’ll have to go to the meeting, and the other members of the committee, he says, can be very nosy, they’ll want to know all your business, but he says you’re not to mind them, and say nothing to them about the cash part.’
She thought once more of confiding in Betty, but realized that, if she once said out loud what she had in mind, she might lose all courage. She said nothing. Betty, she realized, must have been very curious; she admired her for not asking her straight out.
The day after she had lodged the money in the Credit Union, she waited her turn to face the committee to ask for her loan. While she had recognized no one in the waiting room, once in the office she knew four of the five men from the committee. Jim Farrell tried to be businesslike, making clear that they all knew her and wanted to welcome her to the Credit Union. She disliked the others watching her as Jim Farrell spoke, she understood they disapproved of people seeking loans the day after their first deposit. She knew that they would not be able to resist asking her questions, nor would they be able to resist telling their wives about her when they got home.
‘I’d say Dunne’s Stores has had a big impact on your business,’ Matt Nolan, one of the committee, began.
‘A certain impact, yes.’ She wondered now if she had put on too much lipstick.
‘I’d say you feel the pinch in the square with no parking,’ he continued.
She s
tared at him blankly and said nothing.
‘We all respected George and Nancy as business people,’ Jim Farrell said, ‘so if no one has any more questions …’
‘It’s funny you never came to the Credit Union before,’ Matt Nolan persisted. ‘And,’ he raised his hand, ‘if you will allow me, Jim, I’d say it might be difficult for a woman with no experience to take over a business. And so I’d be worried about you expanding. I’d like to know what advice you had, I’d like to see more figures.’
One of the other committee members, the one whom she did not know, lit a cigarette. Nancy remembered Matt Nolan as a young man coming to her mother’s shop buying sweets and bags of sherbet for himself. He had the same shiny suit, she thought, and the same oily haircut for the last thirty years and the same pioneer pin.
‘So if you could—’ he went on, but Jim Farrell interrupted him.
‘Nancy, thank you very much for coming and once again welcome to the Credit Union. We’ll be in touch with you if we need any more information.’
As she stood up, Matt Nolan looked at her with resentment. She knew what he was thinking; she had married into the Sheridans and she had a nerve now to be borrowing on the strength of their name.
Late that evening, when she had come back to the living room, having spent time with the children, Betty Farrell phoned her to say that the loan had been approved. Jim, she said, would bring the money in cash the next day.
She drove to Dublin and paid half the money to the man in Thomas Street; she found the two girls whom she had previously laid off from the supermarket and offered them their jobs back, specifying that the hours would be different. They needed the work, she knew. With the help of the children, who were puzzled at her sudden need for tidiness, she removed all the boxes and other rubbish from the store and brought several loads out to the town dump. She found a man to paint the store and paid him in cash when he had finished. And she discussed each detail with Birdseye when he came to the supermarket to take her order. She phoned his friend to discuss what supplies she would need for the opening two weeks. Then there was nothing more she could do except maintain silence.