by Colm Toibin
In work the following Monday Elizabeth was busy avoiding calls from Roger and then frantically waiting for them. Twice or three times she spoke to Ray and when she put the phone down she discussed with Nora the chances of someone telling Roger about Ray, or of meeting Ray, at some rugby dance or in some golf club bar while she was accompanied by Roger.
“The thing is, I like both of them,” she said. “Roger is so dependable and he is a member of every club under the sun and he’s very well-spoken. But I’d be bored to death down here without Ray. I don’t know if you can imagine an evening spent with Old William, Little William and Thomas going over business strategy. They drone on even while we are eating. No wonder my mother never leaves the house, it’s the result of the shame of being so bored. I don’t know what the three of them are talking about at the moment, but they have plans afoot. They talk for hours and hours and write out lists and figures. You’d think they were running the country.”
As Elizabeth’s romantic life became richer and more complicated, she spent more and more time on the phone discussing its implications with her friends. Soon, the set of invoices for which she was responsible piled up. Nora spotted her one Friday morning stuffing envelopes with invoices that she did not note in the ledger. Even though Elizabeth did not speak to Miss Kavanagh or work directly for her, each week the ledger with the list of invoices sent out had to be brought to Miss Kavanagh’s office to be checked by her with punctilious care. Despite her time on the phone, Elizabeth normally made no mistakes in her work. Nonetheless, there were often queries, but since Miss Kavanagh was not allowed to speak to Elizabeth, then she often spoke to Nora in a tone of barely controlled rage, asking her to pass on what she had said to Miss Gibney. She sometimes sent in one of the office girls with instructions to stand in front of Miss Gibney until she put the phone down and then get some details about invoices that Miss Kavanagh needed.
When Miss Kavanagh discovered that the invoices had gone out without any entries in the ledger, she approached Thomas Gibney and, Nora discovered, suggested that it was Nora as well as Elizabeth who had neglected to enter the invoice details. When Thomas came to Miss Kavanagh’s office one afternoon, they called Nora in and closed the door.
“This is a very dangerous situation,” Thomas said. “We have no record of the invoices and if they are not paid, we’ll have no way of telling. This has never happened before.”
Miss Kavanagh stood beside him with a look of great sorrow on her face. Nora said nothing, looking from one of them to the other.
“Mrs. Webster, I understand that the system has been explained to you several times,” Thomas said. “It’s not very complicated.”
Still, Nora did not reply.
“No invoices can be sent out unless the details are lodged in the ledger,” Thomas continued. “What has happened is inexcusable and will potentially mean a financial loss for the company.”
“Have you finished, Mr. Gibney?” Nora asked.
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked.
“I want to know if you have finished speaking. And when you have finished, then perhaps you will ask Miss Kavanagh if this has anything, anything at all, to do with me, and she will tell you—”
As Miss Kavanagh made to interrupt her, she left the office, closing the door behind her. Soon, she saw Thomas going from Miss Kavanagh’s office to the office occupied by his sister. He seemed pale and determined. Nora kept her head down as she heard shouting. She was aware that everyone in the large office was listening. Miss Kavanagh closed the door to her own office and did not come out for the rest of the afternoon.
The following week Miss Kavanagh began to harass Elizabeth Gibney, having, as far as Nora could make out, got agreement from Thomas that she could do so. To Nora herself, she behaved coldly and appeared unsure how to proceed. In the morning, she would wait for Elizabeth to arrive and then announce that she wished to see in the ledger all the entries for the previous day; invoices waiting to be sent out were to be left in a box outside her office so that she could check them.
On the third morning, when she had come in four times, finding Elizabeth on the phone each time, she closed the door of the office and found a chair and sat opposite Elizabeth listening with an air of impatience to the conversation. As Elizabeth continued to make arrangements for the weekend, Miss Kavanagh reached over and grabbed the ledger from her desk. She turned it towards her and began to go through the entries.
“Excuse me,” Elizabeth said into the phone, “I will have to ring off and call you later. I have a person sitting opposite me who looks like something the cat brought home, but with less manners.”
She put down the receiver.
“Now, Miss Kavanagh,” Elizabeth said, “if you ever come into my office again and as much as touch anything on my desk, I will find a nice big cage for you and I will lock you into it, and that would be the best place for you.”
“Miss Gibney, I am not here to take abuse from you.”
“Maybe that is what you are here for.”
“I will speak to your father about you.”
“Hold on, Miss Francie. I’ll get him for you now.”
She lifted the receiver and dialled an extension number and asked to be put through to her father.
“Is that Old William? Hi, Dad. I have the Kavanagh woman here and she wants to see you. And can you, when you see her, tell her to keep her claws off my things and her dirty feet out of my office? And can you put Thomas back in the kennel? Yes, I’ll send her up right now.”
Nora could not stop herself congratulating Elizabeth for standing up to Miss Kavanagh, although she knew it was easy for her as it would have been impossible for anybody else. They were both laughing as Miss Kavanagh returned to fetch the ledger. For one second, Miss Kavanagh caught Nora’s eye. The look was both wounded and threatening.
One Saturday night in October, with Jim and Margaret visiting, Nora turned on the nine-o’clock news. As soon as the bulletin began, there was film of a riot and baton charge with the newsreader stating that this had happened that very afternoon in Derry. Nora found herself calling to Donal, who was in the other room, to come and look. Soon, they were joined by Conor, who was in his pyjamas. The two boys stood watching as the camera seemed to sway and people on the television screamed and ran from something.
“Is this a film?” Conor asked.
“No, it’s the news. It’s Derry.”
The newsreader explained that a march in Derry had turned into a riot as the police had beaten the crowd with batons. Then there was more footage with a scene where a number of policemen lifted their batons against men who had their hands on their heads to protect themselves. One of the men batonned, the newsreader said, was Gerry Fitt, who was a Member of Parliament. The camera showed two or three of the marchers who had fallen to the ground, and then it followed some of the demonstrators who were running with the police in hot pursuit. The camera then focussed on a woman who was screaming.
When the news was over, Conor went back upstairs. Donal asked what the riot had been about.
“It’s about civil rights,” Jim said.
“Catholics marching for civil rights,” Margaret added.
“D-derry is in N-northern Ireland,” Donal said. “It’s a different c-colour on the map.”
“Yes, but it’s all the same country,” Margaret said.
Nora noticed how alert Jim had become. When Donal left the room she turned down the sound of the television, presuming that he wanted to comment. If anything like this had happened while Maurice was alive, Maurice and Jim would normally have talked for a long time about every aspect of it. When Jim said nothing, she asked him what he thought.
“That’s one scrap I wouldn’t like to be in,” he said. “There will be no easy way out of that one.”
The following day Nora spoke to a number of people after mass who had also seen the baton
charge on television; she bought some Sunday newspapers so she could read about the events. Later, she went for a walk, but met no one she knew, so she could not talk to anyone about Derry.
In work on Monday she presumed that everyone would be discussing the news, but it seemed to be business as usual. Elizabeth had been in Dublin for the weekend and had not even seen the riots on television. When Nora told her about it, she nodded vaguely. She made some phone calls while Nora worked.
In the afternoon, as Nora worked on files with one of the young bookkeepers, Miss Kavanagh came and stood watching over them.
“What are the two of you doing, in the name of God?” she asked.
Nora decided to ignore her.
“Mrs. Webster, look at me when I speak to you!” Miss Kavanagh shouted.
Nora stood up from her desk.
“Can I see you privately in your office, Miss Kavanagh?” she asked.
“I am busy, Mrs. Webster.”
“I need to see you in your office.”
She followed as Miss Kavanagh turned reluctantly and went into her office.
“Miss Kavanagh, I am going home now,” she said.
“It’s not nearly half past five.”
“Miss Kavanagh, when I am working, you will kindly control your temper and keep your voice down.”
“I am employed here to make this office run smoothly and I don’t need back-answers from you, Mrs. Webster, or anyone like you.”
“I am employed here to do my work, Miss Kavanagh, and your screeching is not helpful.”
“Go home then, Mrs. Plenty-of-quiet-at-home! Off with you now! If you see Mr. Thomas, you can tell him that I sent you home.”
Nora walked across the town. If she met anyone she knew, she tried to greet them as she normally did. By the time she was approaching the house, she was filled with energy and wondered if she should not drive back across the town and confront Miss Kavanagh once more. As she walked up the steps to the front door, her thoughts of what she might say to Miss Kavanagh and indeed to Thomas Gibney were interrupted by the sound of crying. When she opened the door with her key, the crying stopped and there was silence.
“Who’s here?” she shouted. “Anyone home?”
Donal came out of the back room, looking guilty. He was followed by Conor, who had clearly been crying.
“What happened? What’s wrong?”
Neither of them spoke.
“Conor, are you all right?”
“We were n-not expecting you h-home so early,” Donal said.
“Donal, why is Conor crying?”
“I’m not crying now.”
“But you were crying. I could hear you at the door.”
“He t-tried to open my c-camera,” Donal said.
Slowly, it emerged that they had some sort of dispute every day in the time between coming home from school and her return. Neither of them seemed to think there was anything strange about it. Donal’s tone was challenging, Conor’s almost ashamed. Neither of them wanted her to become involved. Having listened to both of them, she waited until Conor was out of the room.
“He’s younger than you, there’s no one else to look after him.”
Donal did not reply.
“I want you to promise that you won’t make him cry anymore. And keep your camera safe and then he won’t be able to touch it. Will you promise me that?”
He nodded and then sat staring into the distance.
That night she could not sleep. She wondered if there was anywhere they could go after school, or if there was someone who could come to the house to look after them for the two hours between the end of the schoolday and her arrival home. The following year, she hoped, Fiona would be teaching in the town and would be home in the late afternoon. Between now and then, she would have to talk to Donal regularly and watch Conor carefully. She remembered how much Donal had resented Conor when he was a baby and people paid him attention. Or if Conor got a new toy, even something Donal had outgrown, he would manipulate things so that he would have control of the toy and decide when Conor could have it and when he could not. Conor always let him do this as though it was natural. But it was not natural now, nor indeed was it natural that the two of them were alone in the house together.
She pictured the house, how strangely filled with absence it must be. She was aware now that the changes in their lives had come to seem normal to them. They did not have her way of watching every scene, every moment, for signs of what was missing or what might have been. The death of their father had entered into a part of them that, as far as she could see, they were not aware of. They could not see how uneasy they were, and maybe no one but she could see it, yet it was something that would not leave them now, she thought, would not leave them for years. She should not have been surprised to have found them fighting with each other when she came home early. She would have to do what she could to lessen their suspicion of each other and of everyone around them.
She fell asleep in the hour before dawn and then woke with a start realising that she had not heard the alarm clock. It was twenty to nine. She got up quickly and found that the boys were still asleep. If she moved fast, she thought, she would be able to get them their breakfast. But she would be late for work, even if she drove across the town, which she had never done before.
She was glad that no one noticed her late arrival. Elizabeth came in half an hour after she did, full of the events of the night before, which had taken place in the Pike Grill of the Talbot Hotel and then in Kelly’s Hotel in Rosslare.
“Your sister told me a marvellous story. I don’t know why I thought it was so funny. She was in Paddy McKenna’s in Slaney Street on Saturday getting groceries when the new woman who does her hair at Wheeler’s, Tara or Lara or something, came in and said that she’d heard that she had a beautiful engagement ring and asked to see it. And when Una turned to show her the ring, Tara or Lara began to scream about how glorious it was only to discover, when she actually looked, that Una wasn’t wearing it that day. She had had to bring it back to the jeweller’s as it was too tight. And Tara or Lara had gushed for Ireland with the whole shop listening. Seemingly, it didn’t take a feather out of her. She carried on talking as though nothing at all had happened.”
Nora wanted to say that she did not know that her sister was engaged but then she stopped herself.
“And Una’s fiancé was there last night too?” she asked.
“Oh, Seamus is great. Old William says that he is the only man in the bank he can talk to. You know, I heard that every town he has been in he has done a strong line, and that when he gets transferred he drops her unceremoniously. But this is the first time he has got engaged. They really are made for each other, aren’t they? I wish I could say the same about myself and Roger, or even about myself and Ray. I wish I could have half of Ray and half of Roger. But it would be just my luck to get the half of Roger that is even duller than the other half and the half of Ray that is never happy until he is on his way to the next place.”
Nora wondered what bank Seamus worked in, and if she would know him to see.
As she came back to work in the afternoon she met one of the lorry drivers, whose name she did not know. He was a big man with a ruddy face and sandy hair. She noticed the aura of pure freedom and self-confidence he exuded, which was lacking among the office workers and the commercial travellers.
“God, that was a terrible thing on Saturday,” he said. “It’s the sort of thing your bossman, Mr. Webster, God rest him, would have got very fired up about.”
“He would indeed,” she said.
“Mr. Webster,” the man continued, “used to make us cross out the word ‘London’ in Londonderry on every atlas. I think I still have one at home.”
“I’m sure we have one too.”
“Baton charges, if you don’t mind. Against a peaceful demonstration.”<
br />
“I saw the baton charges on television all right,” she said.
“The last time I saw a baton charge,” the lorry driver said, “was the night Bill Haley and the Comets played in the Royal in Dublin. We were all waiting outside to meet Bill Haley in person, and the men in blue decided it was a riot and they ran after us with batons. But the baton charge on Saturday was serious. They were marching for civil rights. They were on their own streets. I am telling you now that is a disgrace.”
The lorry driver was in such a state about the riots that she only managed to get away from him when she saw Miss Kavanagh coming, followed by the three commercial travellers who had been in her office the previous day insisting that they had not been paid the proper bonus. She was summoned by Miss Kavanagh to go with them into her office.
“Now, these gentlemen came to Mr. William Gibney Junior in a delegation, and Mr. Gibney has sent them to me. They want to see what all of the travellers are paid, every bonus, and every detail of every arrangement made. I don’t know who they think they represent, but as I told Mr. Gibney, we don’t have that information to hand. It’s a private matter between this company and each commercial traveller.”
“Well,” the traveller whom Nora knew as WLD, shorthand for walk-like-a-duck, said, “we thought, in that case, that we would ask to see our own details, just the three of us, so we can compare them.”
The other two nodded in agreement.
“No, you see,” Miss Kavanagh said, “we don’t have information like that set out in any format. Do we, Mrs. Webster?”
Nora wondered later how she might have responded to this had she not been so tired.
“Well, we do, in fact,” she said. “I have a folder for each of the travellers and on the first page of each folder I have noted every detail of their arrangements and this means that I can work out the bonuses very quickly and without mistakes.”