‘I have to go,’ said Kathleen. ‘I’m organizing a table. Mary, will you run me up? I have all those cups and saucers and things.’ Mary nodded.
‘Can you not drive?’
‘No, I’m too nervous. But Mary is very good, runs me everywhere.’
Kathleen took on the responsibility of the silences and when one occurred she talked, mostly to Mr Maguire.
‘What do you do?’
‘At the moment, nothing. I’ve just been made redundant. One of the three million.’
‘Oh that’s too bad.’
‘Yes, when I got my redundancy money I said to heck, I’ll treat myself to a holiday.’
‘You were just right,’ said Kathleen. ‘You can’t take it with you.’
‘There’ll be none of it left to take with me.’
Both sisters smiled. Mr Maguire looked at Mary and she felt obliged to speak.
‘What did you work at?’
‘In a big warehouse. Spare parts for cars.’
‘Oh I see,’ said Mary.
‘I’d been there for most of my life.’
‘Then you know a bit about cars?’
‘A bit.’
‘It’s just that mine is not going properly.’
‘What is it?’
‘A Fiat.’
‘No, I mean what is the problem?’
‘It seems to have no power, sluggish.’
‘I could have a look at it tomorrow.’
Kathleen interrupted. ‘But I thought you were going tomorrow?’
‘Would you mind if I stayed the weekend? I have no real reason to rush back.’
‘Certainly,’ said Kathleen. ‘Especially if you can fix the car.’
‘Thank you.’ Mr Maguire had cleared his plate in a matter of minutes. Kathleen offered him second helpings.
‘It’s the sea air,’ he said. ‘Gives you an appetite. This is what I cook mostly for myself because it’s easy.’ Then he seemed embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry. This tastes a hundred times better than my efforts. I just mean that it doesn’t take much looking after on the stove.’
‘I gather you don’t like cooking?’
‘No. At home I do a standard menu. The boiled egg. The mince. When you’re on your own food doesn’t seem as interesting. I find it hard enough to get through a whole loaf without it going blue mould.’ He laughed. ‘I eat watching the news with my plate on my knees. Rarely set a table.’
‘Is there any chance you’ll get another job?’
‘I doubt it. The car trade is in a bad way and it’s the only one I know. I’m fifty-six now. Prospects – poor.’ He shrugged. Mary looked at his hands. They were big and red, making toys of his knife and fork. The nail of his thumb was opaque like a hazelnut.
‘I don’t really want a job,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll have time to do what I want.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Read. Dig my plot. I’m going to do this Open University thing. On television. I’ve just enrolled but it doesn’t start until next January. I paid the fees out of my redundancy.’
‘You make the dole sound like a good thing.’
‘I’ve always been keen. If there’s a WEA class on the go, I’m your man. History, English, Philosophy – there was a Botany year but I couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Anything and everything, I’m a dabbler.’
Kathleen got out of the car at the church hall balancing a cardboard box full of trembling cups. She slammed the door with her heel.
‘Hey, just you be careful with that Mr Maguire, Mary,’ she said through the driver’s window.
‘He’s a bit down-market for me, dear.’ Mary laughed. ‘Besides it’s you he fancies.’
‘Will you pick me up?’
Mary nodded.
On her way back she was irritated again by the lack of energy in the engine. On the hill of the High Street it seemed barely to have sufficient power to pull her up. She thought about Mr Maguire.
‘Thank God it’s Friday,’ she said aloud.
She had kicked off her shoes and was just sitting down to look at the paper when there was a quiet rap on the door. Mr Maguire stood there with a light bulb in his hand.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ he said, ‘but my reading light has gone and I wondered if you had a spare one?’ Mary, in stockinged feet, climbed on to a stool and produced a new sixty watt bulb from a high cupboard. She exchanged bulbs with him and for some reason felt foolish. He stood for a moment with the cardboard package in his hands.
‘Is it raining?’ he asked.
‘No, not now.’
He moved the piece of card that held the bulb in place against the corrugations of the package, rippling it.
‘Are you busy this evening?’ he asked. Mary hesitated.
‘No.’
‘Would you like to go somewhere – for a drink perhaps?’
‘I don’t like going into pubs.’
‘The hotel – we could go to the Royal, just for a while. An orange juice, if you like.’
Mary was now swinging the dead bulb by its tiny pins between her finger and thumb. ‘It’s Friday,’ she said. ‘Why not?’
Mr Maguire smiled. ‘In about half an hour then?’
‘Yes.’
He turned quickly, holding up the new light bulb in a gesture of thanks. For a ridiculous moment she expected it to light as if he was some kind of statue.
She closed the door and, out of habit, before she threw the used bulb in the waste-paper basket she shook it close to her ear. There was no tinkling sound. She switched off the standard lamp and removed the hot bulb with a serviette. Mr Maguire’s bulb lit when she switched it on.
In the hotel lounge after the first sip of her sherry she took a tissue from her handbag and wiped the red crescent stain of her lower lip from the rim of the glass. Mr Maguire was drinking Guinness. She sat on the edge of her seat, her shoulders back. Her mother had always chivvied her about ‘bearing’. One day as they walked to church she had prodded Mary between the shoulder-blades with the point of her umbrella.
‘If you want to keep your bosoms separate – don’t slouch.’
She could feel the ferrule to this very day. And yet now, without being told, she did everything her mother had asked of her.
‘Relax,’ said Mr Maguire. Muzak took away from the early evening hush.
‘I’m not used to places like this. I’ve only been here at weddings.’
‘It’s a nice place.’
‘The word’ll be out on Monday that Miss Bradley was seen boozing with a man.’
Mr Maguire laughed.
‘What do you teach?’
‘German and a little French.’
‘Have you been to Germany?’
‘No, but I taught for a year in a German-speaking part of Switzerland. In a beautiful place called Kandersteg.’
‘I’ve never been abroad. Never in anything bigger than a rowing-boat. And if you ever hear of me being killed in a plane crash you’ll know it fell on me.’
‘It was up in the mountains. A typical Swiss village with cuckoo-clock houses and snow when you looked up. The children were so well behaved it was a dream to teach there.’
Mr Maguire took out his pipe and lit it. By his face and the tilt of his head he was still listening to her.
‘It was like a holiday really – it’s funny how you remember the good things so vividly.’
‘Maybe it’s because there’s so few of them,’ he said. ‘I remember my honeymoon as if it was yesterday. This town, your house. It was a cold summer. I sat with you by the Rayburn and we talked to the wee small hours.
‘We did?’
‘Well, once, maybe twice. And then one night I remember you were going to a dance. You were in your stockinged feet frantically looking for your shoes. You left a wake of scent behind you.’ Mary laughed, covering her mouth with her hand. Mr Maguire drew large rings around himself with his arms. ‘You were out to here with petticoats. The dress was white with green flecks in it.�
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‘That’s right, that’s right. I remember that one. Parsley Sauce we used to call it. Those were the days when you had so few dresses you gave them names.’ She rolled her eyes to heaven. It was as if he had produced an old photograph of her. ‘Isn’t it awful that I remember the dress but I’ve no recollection whatsoever of you.’ Suddenly her face straightened in mock disapproval. ‘And you noticed all this on your honeymoon?’
‘You have no control over what you notice.’
‘And where was your wife when you were sitting talking to me – to the wee small hours?’
‘She was ill even then. She always went to bed early. I’m a night-owl myself.’
‘Oh dear me,’ she said. ‘What a thing to remember – old Parsley Sauce.’ Mr Maguire bought more drinks and Mary began to feel relaxed and warm.
‘I’m glad we’re here,’ she said. ‘This is nice.’
Some ex-pupils of hers came in and sat at the bar. They nodded and smirked towards the corner where she sat.
Mr Maguire asked her about what books she read and she told him she was an escapist reader. Four or five library books a week she got through. Anything, just so long as it didn’t make too many demands on her. And of course nothing which would disturb. None of that embarrassing nonsense. It was hard to avoid nowadays. Library books should have warnings on the covers – be graded like films. Kathleen was different – she went in for the more heavy-weight stuff.
Mr Maguire said that unless a book was making him puzzle and think he would throw it away. He had read more first chapters than anybody else in the world. With regard to the embarrassing stuff, if it was not written for pornographic reasons he could accept it. It was a part of life the same as any other.
Mary refused another sherry saying that her head was already light, but insisted on buying Mr Maguire another bottle of Guinness, provided he wanted a third. After all, he was on the dole and she was working. When she returned with the poured glass Mr Maguire said, ‘Books should not be a means of escape.’
‘Why not? We’re surrounded by depressing things. Who wants to read about them? When I read I prefer to be transported.’ Suddenly she put her hand over her mouth in horror. ‘Kathleen!’ she said. ‘I promised to pick up Kathleen. What time is it?’
All the lights were out in the church hall and Kathleen was pacing up and down. Mr Maguire carried her box of cups for her as Mary apologised for being late. For once Kathleen was quiet. The only sound coming from the back seat was the whine of her inhaler. In the house she slammed doors.
‘There are some left-over sandwiches there,’ she said.
As Mary made the tea she dropped a spoon twice and giggled. She felt very silly and likable but was aware of herself hurrying to get back to the other room where Kathleen and Mr Maguire were alone.
The next morning she slept late and was wakened by the constant revving of an engine. She looked out and saw Mr Maguire in a navy boiler suit beneath the open bonnet of her car, tinkering. Before going downstairs in her dressing-gown she freshened up and made herself look presentable. Mr Maguire came in, his oily hands aloft, and washed at the kitchen sink. Kathleen, also in her dressing-gown, offered him a cup of tea from the pot.
‘I think you should see a big improvement,’ he said. ‘When did you last have it serviced?’
‘Goodness,’ said Mary. ‘I can’t really remember.’
‘I reset your points, put in three new plugs . . .’
‘I know nothing about it. You might as well be talking double Dutch.’ Mr Maguire shook his head in disbelief and sat down at the table.
‘You look very smart,’ said Kathleen, looking at his boiler suit.
‘I always carry this in the boot. I’ve been caught before, changing a wheel on a wet night.’
‘But it’s so clean.’
Mr Maguire nodded and turned to Mary.
‘Would you like to try her out?’
‘Let me get dressed first. Kathleen, would you like to come for a run?’
‘No, I’ve things to do.’ She said it with an echo of the previous night’s bitterness still in her voice.
‘Very well, suit yourself.’
They drove towards Spanish Point. Mary was delighted with the change in the car – it even sounded different. She said so to Mr Maguire, now back in his casual wear. She herself wore trousers – a thing she never did on teaching days. Mr Maguire said, ‘The thing that really fascinated me about this wreck was a ring they found. Gold, with an inscription round the inside. No tengo mas que dar te.’ With his Belfast accent his attempt at pronunciation was comical.
Mary smiled. ‘More double Dutch.’
‘It’s Spanish. It means, “I have nothing more to give thee”.’
‘That’s nice.’ She changed down through the gears as they came up behind a tractor.
‘I thought it very moving – to see it after all those years. What I wondered was this. Was he taking it back as a present for a loved one in Spain or had somebody given it to him as he sailed away with the Armada? It makes a big difference.’
‘Yes, I suppose it does.’ Mary indicated and passed the tractor, giving a little wave over her shoulder.
‘That’s Jim McLelland,’ she said.
They walked awkwardly on a beach of apple-sized stones, hearing them clunk hollowly beneath their feet. Mary had to extend her arms for balance and once or twice almost had to clutch at Mr Maguire.
‘This is silly,’ she said. They halted and looked across at Spanish Point. Now that the rumble of stones had stopped it was very quiet.
‘Mary.’ Hearing him use her name for the first time she looked up startled.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re a remarkable woman,’ he said. ‘I told you that I came on holiday to see this place.’ He nodded to the black rocks jutting out into the sea. ‘That’s not the whole truth.’ Mary began to feel frightened, alone on a beach with this man she hardly knew. She picked up a stone and moved it from hand to hand. It was the tone of his voice that scared her. He was weighing his words, not looking at her.
‘I had a memory of this town that was sacred in a way. And over the last couple of days I realise that it is partly your fault – I don’t mean fault. I mean you’re part of what’s good about it.’ Still he didn’t look at her but continued to stare out to sea. Mary could think of nothing, afraid of what he would say next.
‘I had forgotten about you, but not completely. Can you imagine how surprised I was when you were still here?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ She couldn’t prevent the sarcasm in her voice. But he seemed not to notice. She threw the stone with a clatter at her feet and rubbed her hands together to clean them.
‘I think we’d better be getting back,’ she said. They turned and began to walk towards the car.
‘I’m sorry. I hope I haven’t overstepped the mark.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean.’
‘These past few days have been very real for me. You turn out to be . . .’ he paused, ‘better than I remembered. You have a kind of calm which I envy. A stillness inside.’ Mary smiled at him and walked round to the driver’s door.
‘You don’t know me at all’, she said, ‘if you think I’m calm and still. I’m shaking like a leaf with the kind of things you’re saying.’
‘I’ll just say one more – and that’ll be the end of it. I’d like you to think about the idea of marrying me.’
She turned to him, her eyes wide and her mouth dropping open. She laughed. ‘Are you serious?’
Mr Maguire smiled slightly as he stared at her, his brow creased with wrinkles. ‘Yes, I am.’
‘I don’t even know your first name.’
‘Anthony.’
‘You don’t look like an Anthony, if you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘You don’t have to say anything. All I want you to do is give it some thought.’
Mary turned on the engine, indicated left and did a U-turn to the right but stalled midway. She trie
d to switch on the engine again.
‘What have you done to this machine?’ she said.
‘Would you like me to drive?’
Mary agreed and he drove her home in the most embarrassing silence she had ever known.
Mr Maguire climbed the stairs. Mary went straight to the kitchen where she heard Kathleen singing.
‘Well?’ said Kathleen. ‘Big improvement?’
Mary sat down on the stool by the Rayburn. She said, ‘Make me a cup of tea. I need it badly.’
‘What’s wrong? Did it break down?’
Mary began to laugh. ‘You’ll never believe this.’ Her sister turned from filling the kettle. ‘But I’ve just been proposed to.’
‘What? Who?’ Her voice was a screech. Mary hushed her and rolled her eyes to the ceiling as Mr Maguire closed a door. ‘I don’t believe you. You’ll find out then if it’s a real toupee.’
‘It’s not funny,’ said Mary, still laughing. ‘I was there.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘I said I’d think about it.’
As Kathleen made the tea her shoulders shook.
‘You’d end up keeping the shine on his wee shoes. And the crease in his boiler suit. Mother would be pleased.’ She wiped her eyes and gave her sister a cup.
‘You’re not seriously thinking about it?’
‘No, but . . .’
‘But what?’
‘It’s just that I’ve never really been asked.’
‘You have so. Twice. You told me.’
‘But they were ludicrous.’
‘And this one isn’t?’
‘There’s something gentlemanly about him.’
‘A gentleman of leisure. He’s on the dole, Mary.’ Kathleen grinned again. ‘Did he go down on one knee?’
‘Don’t be silly.’
Later that afternoon when the laughter had worn off and Mr Maguire had gone for a walk Kathleen said, ‘And what would become of me?’
‘For goodness’ sake Kathleen, I only said I would consider it.’
‘I don’t think I’ll be able to manage on my own. Financially.’
‘Kathleen! Will you excuse me. I’d like to make up my own mind on this one.’
Mary went to her bedroom and sat looking at herself in the dressing-table mirror. A hot flush came over her and she watched her face redden, like an adolescent blushing. She flinched at the thought of a kiss from Mr Maguire. And yet he would make a good companion. Eccentric, yes – but basically a good man. In so far as she knew him. Pinpoints of sweat gleamed on her forehead and upper lip. She pulled a tissue from the box on the dressing-table and dabbed herself dry, then she lay down on the bed. Perhaps she should stall him. Write letters for a period. That way things would not be complicated by his physical presence. By that time, with any luck, these fits would have passed and she would have returned to normality. Stall him. That was the answer. He would enjoy writing to her. It would give him a chance to quote poetry. For some reason Kandersteg came into her mind and with a little thrill she thought of going there on her honeymoon. In July just as soon as the school holidays had started. She would have to do all the translation for Mr Maguire. They could call and see if Herr Hauptmann was still alive and they could relive their days at the school while poor Mr Maguire would have to stare out the window at the beautiful view: the grey clouds of mist that moved against the almost black of the forest; the cleanness, the tidiness of their streets; the precision with which the trains came and went, not to the minute, but to the second; Herr Hauptmann’s hazel-coloured eyes as he listened to her.
Collected Stories Page 33