by Edna O'Brien
“She’s bawling in there,” Eithne Duggan told her friend Doris. They had locked themselves into the bathroom with a bottle of cider.
“God, she’s a right-looking eejit in the dress,” Doris said. “And the length of it!”
“It’s her mother’s,” Eithne said. She had admired the dress before that, when Doris was out of the room, and had asked Mary where she bought it.
“What’s she crying about?” Doris wondered aloud.
“She thought some lad would be here. Do you remember that lad stayed here the summer before last and had a motorcycle?”
“He was a Jew,” Doris said. “You could tell by his nose. God, she’d shake him in that dress, he’d think she was a scarecrow.” She squeezed a blackhead on her chin, tightened a curling pin which had come loose, and said, “Her hair isn’t natural either, you can see it’s curled.”
“I hate that kind of black hair, it’s like a gypsy’s,” Eithne said, drinking the last of the cider. They hid the bottle under the scoured bath.
“Have a cachou, take the smell off your breath,” Doris said as she hawed on the bathroom mirror and wondered if she would get off with that fellow O’Toole from the slate quarry, who was coming to the party.
In the front room Mary polished glasses. Tears ran down her cheeks, so she did not put on the light. She foresaw how the party would be; they would all stand around and consume the goose, which was now simmering in the turf range. The men would be drunk, the girls giggling. Having eaten, they would dance and sing and tell ghost stories, and in the morning she would have to get up early and be home in time to milk. She moved toward the dark pane of window with a glass in her hand and looked out at the dirtied streets, remembering how once she had danced with John on the upper road to no music at all, just their hearts beating and the sound of happiness.
He came into their house for tea that summer’s day, and on her father’s suggestion he lodged with them for four days, helping with the hay and oiling all the farm machinery for her father. He understood machinery. He put back doorknobs that had fallen off. Mary made his bed in the daytime and carried up a ewer of water from the rain barrel every evening, so that he could wash. She washed the checked shirt he wore, and that day his bare back peeled in the sun. She put milk on it. It was his last day with them. After supper he proposed giving each of the grown-up children a ride on the motorbike. Her turn came last; she felt that he had planned it that way, but it may have been that her brothers were more persistent about being first. She would never forget that ride. She warmed from head to foot in wonder and joy. He praised her as a good balancer, and at odd moments he took one hand off the handlebar and gave her clasped hands a comforting pat. The sun went down, and the gorse flowers blazed yellow. They did not talk for miles; she had his stomach encased in the delicate and frantic grasp of a girl in love, and no matter how far they rode, they seemed always to be riding into a golden haze. He saw the lake at its most glorious. They got off at the bridge five miles away and sat on the limestone wall, which was cushioned by moss and lichen. She took a tick out of his neck and touched the spot where the tick had drawn one pinprick of blood; it was then they danced. A sound of larks and running water. The hay in the fields was lying green and ungathered, and the air was sweet with the smell of it. They danced.
“Sweet Mary,” he said, looking earnestly into her eyes. Her eyes were a greenish-brown. He confessed that he could not love her, because he already loved his wife and children, and anyhow, he said, “You are too young and too innocent.”
Next day, as he was leaving, he asked if he might send her something in the post; it came eleven days later: a black-and-white drawing of her, very like her, except that the girl in the drawing was uglier.
“A fat lot of good, that is,” said her mother, who had been expecting a gold bracelet or a brooch. “That wouldn’t take you far.”
They hung it on a nail in the kitchen for a while, and then one day it fell down and someone (probably her mother) used it to sweep dust onto; ever since it was used for that purpose. Mary had wanted to keep it, to put it away in a trunk, but she was ashamed to. They were hard people, and it was only when someone died that they could give in to sentiment or crying.
“Sweet Mary,” he had said. He never wrote. Two summers passed, devil’s pokers flowered for two seasons, and thistle seed blew in the wind; the trees in the forest were a foot higher. She had a feeling that he would come back, and a gnawing fear that he might not.
“Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no more, no more, it ain’t gonna rain no more. How in the hell can the old folks say it ain’t gonna rain no more?”
So sang Brogan, whose party it was, in the upstairs room of the Commercial Hotel. Unbuttoning his brown waistcoat, he sat back and said what a fine spread it was. They had carried the goose up on a platter and it lay in the center of the mahogany table, with potato stuffing spilling out of it. There were sausages also and polished glasses rim downward, and plates and forks for everyone.
“A fork supper” was how Mrs. Rodgers described it. She had read about it in the paper, it was all the rage now in posh houses in Dublin, this fork supper where you stood up for your food and ate with a fork only. Mary had brought knives in case anyone got into difficulties.
“ ’Tis America at home,” Hickey said, putting turf on the smoking fire.
The pub door was bolted downstairs, the shutters across, as the eight guests upstairs watched Mrs. Rodgers carve the goose and then tear the loose pieces away with her fingers. Every so often she wiped her fingers on a tea towel.
“Here you are, Mary, give this to Mr. Brogan, as he’s the guest of honor.” Mr. Brogan got a lot of breast and some crispy skin as well.
“Don’t forget the sausages, Mary,” Mrs. Rodgers said. Mary had to do everything: pass the food around, serve the stuffing, ask people whether they wanted paper plates or china ones. Mrs. Rodgers had bought paper plates, thinking they were sophisticated.
“I could eat a young child,” Hickey said.
Mary was surprised that people in towns were so coarse and outspoken. When he squeezed her finger, she did not smile at all. She wished that she were at home—she knew what they were doing at home: the boys at their lessons; her mother baking a cake of whole meal bread, because there was never enough time during the day to bake; her father rolling cigarettes and talking to himself. John had taught him how to roll cigarettes, and every night since, he rolled four and smoked four. He was a good man, her father, but dour. In another hour they’d be saying the Rosary in her house and going to bed; the rhythm of their lives never changed, the fresh bread was always cool by morning.
“Ten o’clock,” Doris said, listening to the chimes of the landing clock.
The party began late; the men were late getting back from the dogs in Limerick. They killed a pig on the way in their anxiety to get back quickly. The pig had been wandering in the road, and the car came around the comer; it got run over instantly.
“Never heard such a roarin’ in all me born days,” Hickey said, reaching for a wing of goose, the choicest bit.
“We should have brought it with us,” O’Toole said. O’Toole worked in the slate quarry and knew nothing about pigs or farming; he was tall and thin and jagged. He had bright-green eyes and a face like a greyhound’s; his hair was so gold that it looked dyed, but in fact it was bleached by the weather. No one had offered him any food.
“A nice way to treat a man,” he said.
“God bless us, Mary, didn’t you give Mr. O’Toole anything to eat yet?” Mrs. Rodgers said as she thumped Mary on the back to hurry her up. Mary brought him a large helping on a paper plate, and he thanked her and said that they would dance later. To him she looked far prettier than those good-for-nothing town girls—she was tall and thin like himself; she had long black hair that some people might think streelish, but not him; he liked long hair and simple-minded girls; maybe later on he’d get her to go into one of the other rooms where they could do it. She had f
unny eyes when you looked into them, brown and deep, like a bloody bog hole.
“Have a wish,” he said to her as he held the wishbone up. She wished that she were going to America on an airplane, and on second thought she wished that she would win a lot of money and could buy her mother and father a house down near the main road.
“Is that your brother, the bishop?” Eithne Duggan, who knew well that it was, asked Mrs. Rodgers, concerning the flaccid-faced cleric over the fireplace. Unknown to herself, Mary had traced the letter J on the dust of the picture mirror earlier on, and now they all seemed to be looking at it, knowing how it came to be there.
“That’s him, poor Charlie,” Mrs. Rodgers said proudly, and was about to elaborate, but Brogan began to sing unexpectedly.
“Let the man sing, can’t you,” O’Toole said, hushing two of the girls who were having a joke about the armchair they shared; the springs were hanging down underneath and the girls said that any minute the whole thing would collapse.
Mary shivered in her lace dress. The air was cold and damp, even though Hickey had got up a good fire. There hadn’t been a fire in that room since the day De Valera signed the autograph book. Steam issued from everything.
O’Toole asked if any of the ladies would care to sing. There were five ladies in all—Mrs. Rodgers, Mary, Doris, Eithne, and Crystal, the local hairdresser, who had a new red rinse in her hair and who insisted that the food was a little heavy for her. The goose was greasy and undercooked, she did not like its raw, pink color. She liked dainty things, little bits of cold chicken breast with sweet pickles. Her real name was Carmel, but when she started up as a hairdresser, she changed it to Crystal and dyed her brown hair red.
“I bet you can sing,” O’Toole said to Mary.
“Where she comes from, they can hardly talk,” Doris said.
Mary felt the blood rushing to her sallow cheeks. She would not tell them, but her father’s name had been in the paper once, because he had seen a pine marten in the forestry plantation; and they ate with a knife and fork at home and had oilcloth on the kitchen table, and kept a tin of coffee in case strangers called. She would not tell them anything. She just hung her head, making it clear that she was not about to sing.
In honor of the bishop, O’Toole put “Far Away in Australia” on the horn gramophone. Mrs. Rodgers had asked for it. The sound issued forth with rasps and scratchings, and Brogan said he could do better than that himself.
“Christ, lads, we forgot the soup!” Mrs. Rodgers said suddenly, as she threw down the fork and went toward the door. There had been soup scheduled to begin with.
“I’ll help you,” Doris O’Beirne said, stirring herself for the first time that night, and they both went down to get the pot of dark giblet soup which had been simmering all that day.
“Now we need two pounds from each of the gents,” said O’Toole, taking the opportunity while Mrs. Rodgers was away to mention the delicate matter of money. The men had agreed to pay two pounds each, to cover the cost of the drink; the ladies did not have to pay anything, but were invited so as to lend a pleasant and decorative atmosphere to the party, and, of course, to help.
O’Toole went around with his cap held out, and Brogan said that as it was his party, he ought to give a fiver.
“I ought to give a fiver, but I suppose ye wouldn’t hear of that,” Brogan said, and handed up two pound notes. Hickey paid up, too, and O’Toole himself and Long John Salmon—who had been silent up to then. O’Toole gave it to Mrs. Rodgers when she returned and told her to clock it up against the damages.
“Sure that’s too kind altogether,” she said, as she put it behind the stuffed owl on the mantelpiece, under the bishop’s watchful eye.
She served the soup in cups, and Mary was asked to pass the cups around. The grease floated like drops of molten gold on the surface of each cup.
“See you later, alligator,” Hickey said, as she gave him his; then he asked her for a piece of bread, because he wasn’t used to soup without bread.
“Tell us, Brogan,” said Hickey to his rich friend, “what’ll you do, now that you’re a rich man?”
“Oh, go on, tell us,” said Doris O’Beirne.
“Well,” said Brogan, thinking for a minute, “we’re going to make some changes at home.” None of them had ever visited Brogan’s home because it was situated in Adare, thirty miles away, at the far side of Limerick. None of them had ever seen his wife either, who, it seems, lived there and kept bees.
“What sort of changes?” someone said.
“We’re going to do up the drawing room, and we’re going to have flower beds,” Brogan told them.
“And what else?” Crystal asked, thinking of all the lovely clothes she could buy with that money, clothes and jewelry.
“Well,” said Brogan, thinking again, “we might even go to Lourdes. I’m not sure yet, it all depends.”
“I’d give my two eyes to go to Lourdes,” Mrs. Rodgers said.
“And you’d get ’em back when you arrived there,” Hickey said, but no one paid any attention to him.
O’Toole poured out four half tumblers of whiskey and then stood back to examine the glasses to see that each one had the same amount. There was always great anxiety among the men about being fair with drink. Then O’Toole stood bottles of stout in little groups of six and told each man which group was his. The ladies had gin-and-orange.
“Orange for me,” Mary said, but O’Toole told her not to be such a goody, and when her back was turned, he put gin in her orange.
They drank a toast to Brogan.
“To Lourdes,” Mrs. Rodgers said.
“To Brogan,” O’Toole said.
“To myself,” Hickey said.
“Mud in your eye,” said Doris O’Beirne, who was already unsteady from tippling cider.
“Well, we’re not sure about Lourdes,” Brogan said. “But we’ll get the drawing room done up anyhow, and the flower beds put in.”
“We’ve a drawing room here,” Mrs. Rodgers said, “and no one ever sets foot in it.”
“Come into the drawing room, Doris,” said O’Toole to Mary, who was serving the jelly from the big enamel basin. They’d had no china bowl to put it in. It was red jelly with whipped egg white in it, but something had gone wrong, because it hadn’t set properly. She served it in saucers, and thought to herself what a rough-and-ready party it was. There wasn’t a proper cloth on the table either, just a plastic one, and no napkins, and that big basin with the jelly in it. Maybe people washed in that basin downstairs.
“Well, someone tell us a bloomin’ joke,” said Hickey, who was getting fed up with talk about drawing rooms and flower beds.
“I’ll tell you a joke,” said Long John Salmon, erupting out of his silence.
“Good,” said Brogan, as he sipped from his whiskey glass and his stout glass alternately. It was the only way to drink enjoyably. That was why, in pubs, he’d be much happier if he could buy his own drink and not rely on anyone else’s meanness.
“Is it a funny joke?” Hickey asked of Long John Salmon.
“It’s about my brother,” said Long John Salmon, “my brother Patrick.”
“Oh no, don’t tell us that old rambling thing again,” said Hickey and O’Toole together.
“Oh, let him tell it,” said Mrs. Rodgers, who’d never heard the story anyhow.
Long John Salmon began, “I had this brother Patrick and he died; the heart wasn’t too good.”
“Holy Christ, not this again,” said Brogan, recollecting which story it was.
But Long John Salmon went on, undeterred by the abuse from the three men.
“One day I was standing in the shed, about a month after he was buried, and I saw him coming out of the wall, walking across the yard.”
“Oh, what would you do if you saw a thing like that?” Doris said to Eithne.
“Let him tell it,” Mrs. Rodgers said. “Go on, Long John.”
“Well, it was walking toward me, and I said to
myself, ‘What do I do now?’; ’twas raining heavy, so I said to my brother Patrick, ‘Stand in out of the wet or you’ll get drenched.’ ”
“And then?” said one of the girls anxiously.
“He vanished,” said Long John Salmon.
“Ah, God, let us have a bit of music,” said Hickey, who had heard that story nine or ten times. It had neither a beginning, a middle, nor an end. They put a record on, and O’Toole asked Mary to dance. He did a lot of fancy steps and capering; and now and then he let out a mad “Yippee.” Brogan and Mrs. Rodgers were dancing, too, and Crystal said that she’d dance if anyone asked her.
“Come on, knees up, Mother Brown,” O’Toole said to Mary, as he jumped around the room, kicking the legs of chairs as he moved. She felt funny: her head was swaying around and around, and in the pit of her stomach there was a nice ticklish feeling that made her want to lie back and stretch her legs. A new feeling that frightened her.
“Come into the drawing room, Doris,” he said, dancing her right out of the room and into the cold passage, where he kissed her clumsily.
Inside, Crystal O’Meara had begun to cry. That was how drink affected her; either she cried or talked in a foreign accent and said, “Why am I talking in a foreign accent?”
This time she cried.
“Hickey, there is no joy in life,” she said as she sat at the table with her head laid in her arms and her blouse slipping up out of her skirtband.
“What joy?” said Hickey, who had all the drink he needed, and a pound note which he slipped from behind the owl when no one was looking.
Doris and Eithne sat on either side of Long John Salmon, asking if they could go out next year when the sugar plums were ripe. Long John Salmon lived by himself, way up the country, and he had a big orchard. He was odd and silent in himself; he took a swim every day, winter and summer, in the river at the back of his house.
“Two old married people,” Brogan said, as he put his arm around Mrs. Rodgers and urged her to sit down because he was out of breath from dancing. He said he’d go away with happy memories of them all, and sitting down, he drew her onto his lap. She was a heavy woman, with straggly brown hair that had once been a nut color.