In her bedroom she did something she had not done for ten years at least: before she slipped into her night-dress she paused in front of the long looking-glass of her wardrobe and surveyed her naked body. It was most certainly no longer her best feature, she said to herself, remembering it when she was a child, standing up in the bath to be dried. She remembered being naked at last in the bedroom of the International Hotel in Bray, and the awkward voluptuousness that had followed. The bearing of four children, her fondness for sweet things, the insidious nips of gin in the clubhouse – in combination they had taken a toll, making clothes as necessary as all that meticulous care with make-up and hair. The first time she’d been pregnant, with Cathal, she had looked at herself in this same looking-glass, assuring herself that the enormous swelling would simply go away, as indeed it had. But nothing would go away now. Flesh hung loosely, marked with pink imprints of straps or elastic. If she slimmed herself to the bone there would be scrawny, empty skin, loops and pockets, hollows as ugly as the bulges. She drew her night-dress over her head and a pattern of pink roses in tight little bunches hid what she preferred not to see, transforming her again into a handsome woman.
Agnew had sensitive skin, yet could not resist the quality of finely woven tweed. He chose the sober colours, the greys and browns and inconspicuous greens. He bought his Donegal tweed in Kevin and Howlin’s in Dublin and had the suits made up by a tailor in Rathmines. Because of his sensitive skin he had the trousers lined.
Agnew had never worn these suits to his office in the toy factory, for they did not seem to him to be sufficiently matter-of-fact for business. He wore them at weekends, when he went to church and on Sunday afternoons when he drove out to Rathfarran and walked around the cliffs, ending up in Lynch’s Bar down by the strand, where by arrangement he took his Sunday supper. He wore them also on the weekends when he went to Dublin.
He would miss the cliffs and the strand, he reflected at breakfast one morning, a few weeks after his visit from Mrs O’Neill. He would miss the toy factory too, of course, and the people he had come to know in a passing kind of way, without intimacy or closeness but yet agreeably. In the snug, overcrowded dining-room of the terraced house called St Kevin’s he broke a piece of toast in half and poured himself more tea. He had been fortunate in St Kevin’s, fortunate because he was the only lodger and because the Misses McShane had never sought to share a meal with him, fortunate that the house was clean and the cooking averagely good. He’d been fortunate that his interest had never flagged in the job at the toy factory. He would take away with him a sample of every single wooden toy that had been manufactured during his time there: the duck with the quivering bill, the kangaroos, the giraffes, the little red steam engines, the donkeys and carts, the bricks, the elephants, the fox-terriers on wheels, and all the others. He was proud of these toys and of his part in their production. They were finer in every possible way – more ingeniously designed, constructed with greater craftsmanship, more fondly finished – than the torrent of shoddiness that had flooded them out of existence.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ he said aloud in the overcrowded dining-room, staring down at the spaniel, Mandy, who was wagging her tail in the hope of receiving a rind of bacon. She would eat rinds only if they were so brittle that they broke between her teeth. This morning, Agnew knew, what he had left would not satisfy her: the bacon had not been overdone. He lit a cigarette, folded the Irish Times, which earlier he had been reading, and left the dining-room, pursued by the dog. ‘I’m off now, Miss McShane,’ he called out in the hall, and one of the sisters called back to him from the kitchen. Mandy, as she always did, followed him through the town to the toy factory, turning back when he reached the forecourt.
A woman called Mrs Whelan, who came to the factory three mornings a week to attend to whatever typing there was and to keep the books up to date, was to finish at the end of the week. She was there this morning, a prim, trim presence in navy-blue, conscientiously tapping out the last of the invoices. The final delivery was due to be dispatched that afternoon, for Cathal O’Neill had already laid down the peremptory instruction that further orders must not be accepted.
‘Good morning, Mrs Whelan.’
‘Good morning, sir.’
Interrupted for the briefest of moments, she went on typing. She would be extremely useful to someone else, Agnew reflected, if she managed to find a position that suited her. ‘I think I’m going to start clearing out the inner office,’ he said, passing into it reluctantly, for it was not a task he anticipated with any pleasure. What on earth was he going to do with himself? Fifty-one was far too young simply to retire, even if he could afford to. It was all very well saying he couldn’t see himself in the fuel business, either coal or turf, but what alternative was there going to be? In the failing toy factory he had had a position, he had been of some small importance, and he had often wondered if he himself–and the predicament he must find himself in when the factory closed – hadn’t been an element in his late employer’s sentiment. Had Mr O’Neill lived, the toy factory might have struggled on until a convenient moment was reached, when its manager might gracefully retire. Still, a father’s sentiment rarely passed to a son, nor could it be expected to.
He took his jacket off and hung it up. As he did so the telephone rang and the widow of his late and sentimental employer invited him to what she described as a very small party on Friday evening. It would be in his honour, he said to himself after he had politely accepted. It was the kind of thing people did; there might even be a presentation, in the conventional way, of cutlery or Waterford glass or a clock.
‘Now, this is bloody ridiculous!’ Cathal glared at his mother, squinting in his extreme rage.
She remembered that squint in his pram. She remembered how his face would turn scarlet before exploding like a volcano, how he would beat his fists against her when she tried to lift him up. His father had had a bad temper also, though over the years she had learnt to ignore it.
‘It isn’t ridiculous at all, Cathal,’
‘You are fifty-nine years of age.’
‘I’m only too well aware of that.’
‘Agnew’s our employee, for God’s sake!’ He said something else and then broke off, his shout becoming an incomprehensible stutter. He began again, calming down and collecting himself. ‘My God, when I think of Agnew!’
‘I invited Basil Agnew –’
‘Basil? Basil?’
‘You knew his name was Basil. B.J. Agnew. It’s oh all the letters.’
‘In no way did I know the man’s name was Basil. I didn’t know what his bloody name was.’
‘Don’t be violent, Cathal.’
‘Aw, for God’s sake now!’ He turned away from her. He crossed the Italianate drawing-room and stood with his back to her, morosely looking out of the window.
‘I invited Basil Agnew to a little evening I had and he stayed on afterwards to help me clear up a bit. The Flanagans were there, and the Fitzfynnes and a few others. It was all quite above board, Cathal. Father Doherty was there, quite happy with the arrangement.’
‘You were seen out at Rathfarran with Agnew. You were in Lynch’s with him.’
‘That was later on, the following Sunday week it was. And of course we were in Lynch’s. We had two glasses of whiskey each in Lynch’s, and then we had our supper there.’
‘Will you for God’s sake examine what you’re doing? You hardly know Agnew.’
‘I’ve known him for seventeen years.’
Cathal mentioned his father, who, God rest him, would be disgusted if he knew, and probably he did know. He could not understand, Cathal repeated for the third time in this tempestuous conversation, how any sane woman could behave like this.
‘Well, I have behaved like this, Cathal. I have been asked a question by Basil Agnew and I have answered in the affirmative. I wanted to tell you before I spoke a word to Father Doherty.’
‘Agnew’s a Protestant.’
‘We’ll b
e married by Father Doherty. Basil isn’t the least particular about matters like that.’
‘I bet he isn’t. The bloody man –’
‘I must ask you, Cathal, not to keep referring to Basil Agnew as a bloody man. I do not refer to Thelma as a bloody woman. When you informed me in this very room that you intended to marry her I held my peace.’
‘The man’s after your money and that’s all there’s to it.’
‘You’re being unpleasant, Cathal.’
He almost spat. As a child, he had had a most disagreeable habit of spitting. His eyes savaged her as he continued violently to upbraid her and to insult the man she had agreed to marry. He left eventually, barging his way out of the drawing-room, shouting back at her from the hall before he barged his way out of the house.
That evening her two married daughters, Eileen in Dublin and Rose in Trim, telephoned her. They were more diplomatic than Cathal, as they had always been. They beseeched her not to be hasty; both offered to come and talk it over with her. She had written to them, she said; she was sorry Cathal had taken it upon himself to get in touch also, since she had particularly asked him not to. ‘It’s all in my letter,’ she assured her daughters in turn. ‘Everything about how I feel and how I’ve thought it carefully over.’ The two men they’d married themselves were, after all, no great shakes. If you were honest you had to say that, one of them little better than a commercial traveller, the other reputed to be the worst veterinary surgeon in Trim. Yet she hadn’t made much of a fuss when Eileen first brought her mousy little Liam to Arcangelo House, nor over Rose’s Eddie, a younger version of Dessie Fitzfynne, with the same stories about Kerrymen and the same dull bonhomie. ‘It’ll work out grand,’ she said to her daughters in turn. ‘Was I ever a fool in anything I did?’
The following morning Thelma came round and in her crude way said how flabbergasted she was. She sat there with her vacant expression and repeated three times that you could have knocked her down with a feather when Cathal had walked in the door and informed her that his mother was intending to marry Agnew. ‘I couldn’t close my mouth,’ Thelma said. ‘I was stirring custard in the kitchen and declare to God didn’t the damn stuff burn on me. “She’s after getting engaged to Agnew,” he said, and if you’d given me a thousand pounds I couldn’t go on with the stirring.’
Thelma’s rigmarole continued, how Cathal had stormed about the kitchen, how he’d shouted at the children and knocked a pot of black-currant jam on to the floor with his elbow, how she’d had to sit down to recover herself. Then she lowered her voice as if there were other people in her mother-in-law’s drawing-room. ‘Isn’t there a lot of talk, though, about what Agnew gets up to when he goes off to Dublin for the two days? Is it women he goes after?’ While she spoke, Thelma nodded vehemently, answering her own question. She’d heard it for certain, she continued in the same subdued voice, that Agnew had women of a certain description up in Dublin.
‘That’s tittle-tattle, Thelma.’
‘Ah sure, I’d say it was, all right. Still and all, Mrs O’Neill.’
‘What Mr Agnew does with his own time is hardly the business of anyone except himself.’
‘Ah sure, of course ’tisn’t. It’s only Cathal and myself was wondering.’
The moon that was Thelma’s face, its saucer eyes and jammy red mouth, the nose that resembled putty, was suddenly closer than Mrs O’Neill found agreeable. It was a way that Thelma had when she was endeavouring to be sincere.
‘I had an uncle married late. Sure, the poor man ended demented.’
You are the stupidest creature God ever put breath into, Mrs O’Neill reflected, drawing herself back from her daughter-in-law’s advancing features. She did not comment on Thelma’s uncle any more than she had commented on the burning of the custard or the loss of the pot of blackcurrant jam.
‘You know what I mean, Mrs O’Neill?’ The subdued tones became a whisper. ‘A horse-trainer’s widow in Fortarlingtôn that went after the poor old devil’s few pence.’
‘Well, I’m most certainly not after Mr Agnew’s few pence.’
‘Ah no, I’m not saying that at all. I’d never say a thing like that, Mrs O’Neill, what you’d be after or what he’d be after. Sure, where’d I find the right to make statements the like of that?’
Thelma eventually went away. She would have been sent by Cathal, who would also have written to Siobhan. But Siobhan had always possessed a mind of her own and in due course a letter arrived from Philadelphia. I’m delighted altogether at the news. I kind of hoped you’d do something like this.
It had never, in the past, occurred to Agnew to get married. Nor would he have suggested it to his late employer’s wife if he hadn’t become aware that she wished him to. Marriage, she had clearly decided, would be the rescuing of both of them: she from her solitariness in Arcangelo House, he from the awkwardness of being unemployed. She had said she would like him to oversee the demolition of the toy factory and the creation of an apple orchard in its place. This enterprise was her own and had nothing to do with Cathal.
The women she played bridge with still addressed him friendlily when he met them on the street or in a shop. Her golfing companions – especially Flanagan and Fitzfynne – had even been enthusiastic. Butler-Regan had slapped him on the shoulders in the bar of the Commercial Hotel and said he was glad it hadn’t been Corkin she’d gone for. Only Corkin had looked grumpy, not replying to Agnew’s greeting when they met in Lawlor’s one morning, both of them buying cigarettes. Dolores Fitzfynne telephoned him at the toy factory and said she was delighted. It was a good idea to plant an apple orchard on the site of the factory – Cox’s and Beauty of Bath, Russets and Bramleys and Worcesters. In the fullness of time the orchard would become her own particular interest, as the toys had been her husband’s and the turf-bogs were her son’s. It was a pity the family were almost all opposed to the match, but naturally such a reaction was to be expected.
She was aware of eyes upon them when they danced together in the clubhouse bedecked with Christmas decorations. What did these people really think? Did all of them share, while appearing not to, the family’s disapproval? Did fat Butler-Regan and fat Flanagan think she was ridiculous, at fifty-nine years of age, to be allowing a man to marry her for her money? Did Dolores Fitzfynne think so? Mrs Whelan, who had been his secretary for so long at the toy factory, always attended the Golf Club Annual Dance with her husband; the Misses McShane, his landladies for the same period of time in the terraced house called St Kevin’s, came to help with the catering. Did these three women consider her beneath contempt because she’d trapped a slightly younger, attractive man as a companion for her advancing years?
‘I’ve always liked the way you dance the quickstep,’ she whispered.
‘Always?’
‘Yes, always.’
The confession felt disgraceful. Cathal and Thelma, dancing only yards away, would talk all night about it if they knew. With Corkin, she wouldn’t have had to be unfaithful in that way.
‘You’re not entirely devoid of rhythm yourself.’
‘I’ve always loved dancing, actually.’
Corkin would have asked for more, and for less. Some hint of man’s pride would have caused him scrupulously to avoid touching a penny of her money, nor would he have wanted to go planting apple trees under her direction. But Corkin would have entered her bedroom and staked his claim there, and she could not have borne that.
‘We’ll be married this time next week,’ he said, ‘Do you realize that?’
‘Unless you decide to take to the hills.’
‘No, I’ll not do that, Norah.’
The Artie Furlong Band, new to the clubhouse this year and already reckoned to be a success, played an old tune she loved, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’. His step changed easily, he scarcely touched her as he guided her through the other dancers. Sweetman was appalling to dance with because of his perspiration troubles, Dessie Fitzfynne’s knees were always driving themselves i
nto you, Butler-Regan held you far too tight. She’d go on playing bridge and golf after they were married, no reason not to. He’d said he intended to continue exercising the Misses McShane’s spaniel.
‘You’re sure about this?’ he whispered, bending his long face closer to hers, smiling a little. ‘You’re absolutely sure, Norah?’
She remembered thinking how she couldn’t imagine him ever calling her Norah, and how strange his own Christian name had felt when first she’d used it. She would never know him, she was aware of that; nor could he ever fully know her. There would never be the passion of love between them; all that must be done without.
‘I’m sure all right.’
The music ceased. They went to get a drink and were joined immediately by the Fitzfynnes and Rita Flanagan. Thelma came up and said one of the children had spots all over his stomach. Cathal kept his distance.
‘We’re drinking to the happy couple,’ Dessie Fitzfynne shouted, raising his glass. Thelma scuttled away, as if frightened to be seen anywhere near such a toast.
‘Cheers to the both of you,’ Rita Flanagan shrilled, and in another part of the decorated clubhouse Butler-Regan began to sing.
She smiled at the glasses that were raised towards them. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ he said quietly. ‘We’re touched.’
She would have liked to add something, to have sorted out falsity from the truth. He was indeed marrying her for her money. But he, in return, was giving her a role that money could not purchase. Within a week the family would no longer possess her. Cathal’s far-apart eyes would no longer dismiss her as a remnant of the dead.
The Collected Stories Page 138