‘When people get divorced,’ he said, carefully spacing the words, ‘there’s always a reason. You’ll observe that in films. Or if you read in the paper about the divorce of, say, William Powell and Carole Lombard. They don’t actually bother with divorce if they only dislike one another.’
The conductor came to take their fares. Again the conversation appeared to have reached its termination.
‘But what on earth’s that got to do with what we’re talking about, Abrahamson?’
‘Wouldn’t there have been a reason why your parents got divorced? Wouldn’t the reason be the man your mother married?’
She nodded vehemently, feeling hot and silly. Abrahamson said:
‘They’d have had a love affair while your father was still around. In the end there would have been the divorce.’
‘I know all that’, Abrahamson.’
‘Well, then.’
Impatiently, she began to protest again but broke off in the middle of a sentence and instead sat there frowning. She sensed that the last two words her companion had uttered contained some further declaration, but was unable to grasp it.
‘Excuse me,’ Abrahamson said, politely, before he went.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ her mother asked, looking across the lace-trimmed white cloth on the dining-room table. ‘You haven’t been gorging yourself, have you?’
Cecilia shook her head, and the hair she didn’t like swung about. Her half-brothers giggled, a habit they had recently developed. They were years younger than Cecilia, yet the briskness in her mother’s voice placed her in a category with them, and she suddenly wondered if her mother could somehow guess what had come into her mind and was telling her not to be silly. Her mother was wearing a green dress and her fingernails had been freshly tinted. Her black bobbed hair gleamed healthily in watery afternoon sunshine, her dimples came and went.
‘How was the Latin?’
‘All right.’
‘Did you get the passive right?’
‘More or less.’
‘Why’re you so grumpy, Cecilia?’
‘I’m not.’
‘Well, I think I’d disagree with that.’
Cecilia’s cheeks had begun to burn, which caused her half-brothers to giggle again. She knew they were kicking one another beneath the table and to avoid their scrutiny she stared through the french windows, out into the garden. She’d slept in a pram beneath the apple tree and once had crawled about among the flowerbeds: she could just remember that, she could remember her father laughing as he picked her up.
Cecilia finished her cup of tea and rose, leaving half a piece of coffee-cake on her plate. Her mother called after her when she reached the door.
‘I’m going to do my homework,’ Cecilia said.
‘But you haven’t eaten your cake.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘That’s rude, you know.’
She didn’t say anything. She opened the door and closed it softly behind her. Locked in the bathroom, she examined in the looking-glass the features Abrahamson had spoken of. She made herself smile. She squinted, trying to see her profile. She didn’t want to think about any of it, yet she couldn’t help herself. She hated being here, with the door locked at five o’clock in the, evening, yet she couldn’t help that either. She stared at herself for minutes on end, performing further contortions, glancing and grimacing, catching herself unawares. But she couldn’t see anywhere a look of her stepfather.
‘Well, you wouldn’t,’ Abrahamson explained. ‘It’s difficult to analyse your own face.’
They walked together slowly, on the cinder-track that ran around the tennis courts and the school’s single hockey pitch. She was wearing her summer uniform, a green-and-blue dress, short white socks. Abrahamson wore flannel shorts and the elaborate school blazer.
‘Other people would have noticed, Abrahamson.’
He shook his head. Other people weren’t so interested in things like that, he said. And other people weren’t so familiar with her family.
‘It isn’t a likeness or anything, Cecilia. Not a strong resemblance, nothing startling. It’s only a hint, Cecilia, an inkling you could call it.’
‘I wish you hadn’t told me.’
‘You wanted me to.’
‘Yes, I know.’
They had reached the end of the cinder-track. They turned and walked back towards the school buildings in silence. Girls were playing tennis. ‘Love, forty,’ called the elderly English master, No-teeth Carroll he was known as.
‘I’ve looked and looked,’ Cecilia said. ‘I spend hours in the bathroom.’
‘Even if I hadn’t read about the development of the features I think I’d have stumbled on it for myself. “Now, what on earth is it about that girl?” I kept saying to myself. “Why’s her face so interesting all of a sudden?” ’
‘I think you’re imagining it.’
‘Well, maybe I am.’
They watched the tennis-players. He wasn’t someone who made mistakes, or made things up; he wasn’t like that at all. She wished she had her father’s freckles, just a couple, anywhere, on her forehead or her nose. ‘Deuce,’ No-teeth Carroll called. ‘No, it’s definitely deuce,’ he insisted, but an argument continued. The poor old fellow was on a term’s notice, Abrahamson said.
They walked on. She’d heard it too, she agreed, about the term’s notice. Pity, because he wasn’t bad, the way he let you do anything you liked provided you were quiet.
‘Would you buy one of my cakes today?’ Abrahamson asked.
‘Please don’t tell anyone, Abrahamson.’
‘You could buy them every day, you know. I never eat them myself.’
A little time went by. On the 15th of June Cecilia became thirteen. A great fuss was made of the occasion, as was usual in the family whenever there was a birthday. Ronan gave her A Tale of Two Cities, her mother a dress which she had made herself, with rosebuds on it, and her half-brothers gave her a red bangle. There was chicken for her birthday lunch, with roast potatoes and peas, and then lemon meringue pie. All of them were favourites of hers.
‘Happy birthday, darling,’ Ronan whispered, finding a special moment to say it when everyone else was occupied. She knew he was fond of her, she knew that he enjoyed their Sunday mornings in the workshops. She liked him too. She’d never thought of not liking him.
‘Really happy birthday,’ he said and it was then, as he smiled and turned away, that something occurred to her which she hadn’t thought of before, and which Abrahamson clearly hadn’t thought of either: when you’d lived for most of your life in a house with the man whom your mother had married you could easily pick up some of his ways. You could pick them up without knowing it, like catching a cold, his smile or some other hint of himself. You might laugh the way he did, or say things with his voice. You’d never guess you were doing it.
‘Oh, of course,’ Abrahamson obligingly agreed when she put it to him. ‘Of course, Cecilia.’
‘But wouldn’t that be it then? I mean, mightn’t that account –’
‘Indeed it might.’
His busy, unassuming eyes looked up into hers and then at the distant figure of No-teeth Carroll, who was standing dismally by the long-jump pit.
‘Indeed,’ Abrahamson said again.
‘I’m certain that’s it. I mean, I still can’t see anything myself in my looks –’
‘Oh, there’s definitely something.’ He interrupted sharply, his tone suggesting that it was illogical and ridiculous to question what had already been agreed upon. ‘It’s very interesting, what you’re saying about growing like someone you live with and quite like. It’s perfectly possible, just as the other is perfectly possible. If you asked your mother, Cecilia, she probably wouldn’t know what’s what any more than anyone else does. On account of the circumstances.’
He was bored by the subject. He had acceded to her request about not telling anyone. It was best to let the subject go.
‘Chocolate
and strawberry today,’ he said, smiling again as he passed over the two small cakes.
There was another rendezvous in Fitzgerald’s Oyster Bar. Cecilia wore her new rosebud dress and her red bangle. On her birthday a ten-shilling note had arrived from her father, which she now thanked him for.
‘When I was thirteen myself,’ he said, pulling the cellophane from a packet of Sweet Afton, ‘I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.’
Cecilia kept her head averted. At least the light wasn’t strong. There was a certain amount of stained glass in the windows and only weak bulbs burned in the globe-topped brass lamps that were set at intervals along the mahogany bar. She tried not to smile in case the inkling in her face had something to do with that.
‘Well, I see your man’s going up in front of the stewards,’ Tom the waiter remarked. ‘Sure, isn’t it time they laid down the law on that fellow?’
‘Oh, a terrible chancer that fellow, Tom.’
Their order was taken, and shouted down the lift-shaft.
‘We might indulge in a drop of wine, Tom. On account of her ladyship’s birthday.’
‘I have a great little French one, sir. Macon, sir.’
‘That’ll suit us fine, Tom.’
It was early, the bar was almost empty. Two men in camel-coloured coats were talking in low voices by the door. Cecilia had seen them before. They were bookies, her father had told her.
‘Are you all right?’ he inquired. ‘You haven’t got the toothache or anything?’
‘No, I’m all right, thanks.’
The bar filled up. Men stopped to speak to her father and then sat at the small tables behind them or on stools by the bar itself. Her father lit another cigarette.
‘I didn’t realize you paid the fees,’ she said.
‘What fees do you mean?’
She told him in order to thank him, because she thought they could laugh over the business of the fees being late every term. But her father received the reprimand solemnly. He was at fault, he confessed: the headmaster was quite right, and must be apologized to on his behalf.
‘He’s not someone you talk to,’ Cecilia explained, realizing that although she’d so often spoken about school to her father she’d never properly described the place, the huts and prefabricated buildings that were its classrooms, the Bull going round every morning with his huge roll-book.
She watched Tom drawing the cork from the bottle of red wine. She said that only yesterday Miss O’shaughnessy’s motorized bicycle had given up the ghost and she repeated the rumour that poor old No-teeth Carroll was on a term’s notice. She couldn’t say that she’d struck a silent bargain with a boy called Abrahamson, who brought to the school each day two dainty little cakes in a carton. She’d have liked just to tell about the cakes because her father would have appreciated the oddity of it. It was strange that she hadn’t done so before.
‘Now,’ said Tom, placing the oysters in front of her father and her steak in front of her. He filled up their wine-glasses and drew a surplus of foam from the surface of someone else’s stout.
‘Is your mother well, Cecilia?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘And everyone in Chapelizod?’
‘They’re all well.’
He looked at her. He had an oyster on the way to his mouth and he glanced at her and then he ate the oyster. He took a mouthful of wine to wash it down.
‘Well, that’s great,’ he said.
Slowly he continued to consume his oysters. ‘If we felt like it,’ he said, ‘we could catch the races at the Park.’
He had been through all of it, just as she had. Ever since the divorce he must have wondered, looking at her as he had looked at her just now, for tell-tale signs. ‘They’d have had a love affair while your father was still around,’ came the echo of Abrahamson’s confident voice, out of place in the oyster bar. Her father had seen Abrahamson’s inkling and had felt as miserable as she had. He had probably even comforted himself with the theory about two people in the same house, she picking up her stepfather’s characteristics. He had probably said all that to himself over and over again but the doubt had lingered, as it had lingered with her. Married to one man, her mother had performed with another the same act of passion which Betty Bloom had witnessed in her parents’ bedroom. As Abrahamson had fairly pointed out, in confused circumstances such as these no one would ever know what was what.
‘We’ll take the trifle, will we?’ her father said.
‘Two trifle,’ Tom shouted down the lift-shaft.
‘You’re getting prettier all the time, girl.’
‘I don’t like my looks at all.’
‘Nonsense, girl. You’re lovely.’
His eyes, pinched a bit because he was laughing, twinkled. He was much older than her mother, Cecilia suddenly realized, something which had never struck her before.
Were the fees not paid on time because he didn’t always have the money? Was that why he had sold his car?
‘Will we settle for the races, or something else? You’re the birthday lady today.’
‘The races would be lovely.’
‘Could you ever put that on for me, sir?’ Tom requested in a whisper, passing a pound note across the bar. ‘Amazon Girl, the last race.’
‘I will of course, Tom.’
His voice betrayed nothing of the pain which Cecilia now knew must mark these Saturday occasions for him. The car that was due to collect them was late, he said, and as he spoke the taxi man entered.
‘Step on it,’ her father said, ‘like a good man.’
He gave her money and advised her which horses to gamble on. He led her by the hand when they went to find a good place to watch from. It was a clear, sunny day, the sky without a cloud in it, and in the noise and bustle no one seemed unhappy.
‘There’s a boy at school,’ she said, ‘who brings two little cakes for the eleven o’clock lunch. He sells them to me every day.’
He wagged his head and smiled. But in a serious voice he said he hoped she didn’t pay too much for the cakes, and she explained that she didn’t.
It was odd the way Maureen Finnegan and all the others, even the Bull, had suspected the tidy settlement there’d been. It would be ridiculous, now, ever to look after him in his flat.
‘I hate to lose poor Tom’s money for him.’
‘Won’t Amazon Girl win?’
‘Never a hope.’
Women in brightly coloured dresses passed by as Cecilia’s father paused for a moment by a bookmaker’s stand to examine the offered odds. He ran a hand over his jaw, considering. A woman with red hair and sunglasses came up. She said it was good to see him and then passed on.
‘We’ll take a small little flutter on Gillian’s, Choice,’ he finally said. ‘D’you like the sound of that, Cecilia?’
She said she did. She put some of the money he had given her on the horse and waited for him while he transacted with another bookmaker. He approached a third one with Tom’s pound for Amazon Girl. It was a habit of his to bet with different bookmakers.
‘That red-haired woman’s from Carlow,’ he said as they set off to their vantage point. ‘The widow of the county surveyor.’
‘Yes,’ she said, not caring much about the red-haired woman.
‘Gillian’s Choice is the one with the golden hoops,’ he said. ‘Poor Tom’s old nag is the grey one.’
The horses went under starter’s orders and then, abruptly, were off. In the usual surprisingly short space of time the race was over.
‘What did I tell you?’ He laughed down at her as they went to collect the winnings from their two different bookmakers. He had won more than three hundred pounds, she fourteen and sixpence. They always counted at the end; they never lost when they went together. He said she brought him luck, but she knew it was the other way round.
‘You’ll find your way to the bus, Cecilia?’
‘Yes, I will. Thanks very much.’
He nodded. He kissed her in his awkwa
rd way and then disappeared into the crowd, as he always seemed to do when they parted. It was standing about in the sun, she thought, that caused him to have so many freckles. She imagined him at other race-courses, idling between races without her, sunning himself while considering a race-card. She imagined him in his flat in Waterloo Road and wondered if he ever cried.
She walked slowly away, the money clenched in her hand because the rosebud dress had no pockets. He did cry, she thought: on the Saturdays when they met, when he was on his own again. It was easy to imagine him because she wanted to cry herself, because on all their occasions in the future there would be the doubt. Neither of them would ever really know what being together meant, downstairs at Fitzgerald’s or anywhere else.
Mulvihill’s Memorial
The man, naked himself, slowly removed the woman’s clothes: a striped red-and-black dress, a petticoat, stockings, further underclothes. In an armchair he took the woman on to his knees, nuzzling her neck with his mouth.
A second man entered the room and divested himself of his clothes. A second woman, in a grey skirt and jersey, was divested of hers. The four sprawled together on the armchair and the floor. Complex sexual union took place.
The film ended; a square of bright light replaced the sexual antics on the sheet of cartridge paper which Mulvihill had attached to the back of his drawing-office door. He switched on a green-shaded desk light, removed the cartridge paper and the drawing-pins that had held it in place. Packing away his projector in the bottom drawer of his filing-cabinet, he hummed beneath his breath an old tune from his childhood, ‘Who’s Sorry Now?’. The projector and Mulvihill’s films were naturally kept under lock and key. Some of his films he could project at home and often did so; others he did not feel he could. ‘Whatever are you doing, dear?’ his sister some- times called through the door of the garden shed where now and again he did a bit of carpentry, and of course it would be terrible if ever she discovered the stuff. So every Friday evening, when everyone else had left the Ygnis and Ygnis building – and before the West Indian cleaners arrived in the corridor where his office was – Mulvihill locked the door and turned the lights out. He’d been doing it for years.
The Collected Stories Page 99