Part 5 (2/2)

'It's been nice seeing you again,' was what she said, and before she left the room she promised to return.

'It would be good of you,' his mother said in the kitchen. 'You've no idea how much your visit delighted him.'

Mary Louise wanted it to be a secret. She didn't want it known at Culleen, and certainly not in the Quarrys' house, that she had spent an hour with her invalid cousin. She almost asked her aunt if they might keep this afternoon as something among the three of them, but she could not find the words. Then it occurred to her that her mother and her aunt were nowadays not often in touch; sometimes a whole year went by. And since her aunt no longer shopped in the town there seemed little likelihood of anything slipping out in conversation there.

As she rode swiftly on the gra.s.sy avenue, she tried to remember what being in love with her cousin had felt like. Had it really been much the same, less potent even, than her feelings for the cinema images of James Stewart? For almost twelve years, since she was twelve herself, she had not devoted more than an ordinary, pa.s.sing thought to the boy who'd been unable to go on attending school, even though he'd been driven in a car. Unfortunate, she had considered him, leaving it at that.

That Sunday evening it was easier in the dining-room when Mary Louise took her usual place between her husband and Matilda. Elmer helped himself to the egg salad Rose had prepared, asking questions about the farm, and vaguely responding to the answers.

'I hear your sister's chummed up with Dennehy,' Matilda said.

'I think so.'

'Funny, that.'

The silence that usually followed this favourite comment of Matilda's did so again. Elmer said eventually: 'Is that the vet from Ennistane crossroads?'

Rose affirmed this. Dennehy's father was the publican at Ennistane, she added.

'Does your mother mind?' Matilda asked.

'Mind?'

'A person like Dennehy.'

'She didn't say she minded.'

'RC of course?' Elmer always cut lettuce and tomato up very fine, and mashed a hard-boiled egg. Having done so now, he reached out for salad cream.

'Oh, yes,' Rose said.

'They're not without means, the Dennehys.' Matilda nodded more than once, to lend significance to this. 'Perhaps there's that.'

She spoke lightly, as if she sought to rid her statement of its implication, or to suggest that if the words were examined carefully it would be found that, in spite of the emphasis of her nodding, nothing much was being suggested. Carefully, she sc.r.a.ped b.u.t.ter on to a slice of soda bread. Tidily, she cut the slice in half and then in half again.

'Even so,' Rose took up the theme, 'I'd have thought Mrs Dallon would be concerned.'

Mary Louise looked away. She half-closed her eyes and saw the soldiers on the table, the little printed arrows, the line of cannon. The uniforms were exactly as they'd been in reality, her cousin had explained, every detail right. She wondered where they'd come from. In a poverty-stricken household the wealth of colour seemed quite out of place.

'Rough,' Rose said, the word appearing to be thrown out at random, attached to nothing.

Matilda nodded, and again there was a silence. Elmer pa.s.sed his cup for more tea. Rose poured it. Matilda added milk.

She would go again next Sunday. She would spend no more than ten minutes at Culleen and then ride quickly on. This time she'd find the courage to ask her aunt if it could be a secret. She'd give a reason, she'd think of something during the week.

'We need to order gimp,' Elmer was saying. 'And ticking.'

On Sundays he went through the stock. He had a method, he'd told Mary Louise on one of their pre-marriage walks. Every Sunday morning he took a different line and checked the supply in stock: haberdashery one week, velvets and velveteens the next, chintzes, satins and silks, then hats and dresses, then overcoats, suits, all menswear, socks and braces. On Sunday evenings he went through the books, minutely comparing the entries with last week's. It wasn't necessary, any more than it was necessary to keep a record of the particular garments that were repeatedly rejected when sent out on approval. But all this kind of thing interested him. All this was part of trading.

'I bet a s.h.i.+lling he'll be in this week,' Matilda said, referring to the traveller from whom gimp and ticking were ordered. 'He's due since February.'

Mary Louise wondered if there'd be a different battle on the table the next time. Would there be two different sides, the uniforms different, the words on the arrows printed in a different language? She imagined her cousin in the vegetable garden that kept his mother and him going. She saw him bent over a bed in the suns.h.i.+ne, weeding between rows of lettuce. How strange his solitary life must be! And how strange for her aunt to have married money that was not there! Was what they implied about Letty true? Was she going out with the vet in the same way as she herself had gone out with Elmer Quarry? Would Letty marry him and sometimes in the night reach out for him, seeking his physical warmth? Or would all that be a different kind of thing for Letty?

'There's a couple of those travellers getting slack,' Elmer said.

She and her cousin had nothing in common; pushed away into a corner, this realization had remained there ever since he'd talked about the battle in France. Reading was what he liked; sometimes when he said something she didn't understand it. He'd be bored if she kept turning up on Sundays; you could see he liked to be alone in spite of what his mother said.

'Surprising your mother could accept Dennehy's roughness,' Rose said. 'Surprising, that.'

11.

In time all those who can understand realize that nowadays things are being ordered differently. The three doctors who regularly visit the house talk in turn to those whom they believe would be better off in what they make a point of calling 'the community'. Where there is no family, or if a family does not wish to cooperate, places will be found in sheltered accommodation.

'Is it community singing?' Belle D inquires. 'Is that what they mean?' Her name is Belle Dymock, but for reasons of her own she has forbidden her surname's use, while insisting also that her first name should not be employed on its own.

'The community's where you came from,' the Spanish wife replies. Her surname, too, has caused difficulties, not because she dislikes it but because no one can p.r.o.nounce it. She is not, in fact, Spanish herself, but has acquired her sobriquet through marrying a Spaniard who deserted her in Gibraltar.

'Did you ever hear the like?' another woman asks, a faded woman who speaks only when a subject catches her imagination.

'It's the tablets,' Mrs Leavy explains. 'Medication works wonders.'

They all say that. They say it and repeat it: the new drugs of the 1980s make the miracle possible. The doctor who cares for Belle D has told her she could easily work in the carpet factory again. Pretty Brid Beamish no fault of her own she took a wrong turning will be adorned in wedding finery yet, no reason in the world why she shouldn't be. All that must be ensured is that the medication is taken, daily and precisely as prescribed. The a.s.sistance of family members will be required, a.s.surances insisted upon. 'Isn't it the best leave-taking you could have?' jovially remarks the doctor who has a beard, smiling at the faces of the unsmiling. Father Malley sits with each departing inmate, recalling Our Lady and her mercy.

'Mary Louise! Come here, Mary Louise!' Small Sadie beckons, and questions when she is obeyed: 'Will you go back to the graveyard, Mary Louise? Will you get up to your tricks?' Laughter cackles from the tiny woman's throat. In the house she is often likened to a hen because of that noise she makes.

'What tricks are those, Sadie?'

But Sadie only shakes her head. At night she is locked away alone. She broke a gardener's arm one time. She's in the house because too often she believes she has to break things and tear off wallpaper. A week ago she was told she would remain in care for a while yet.

'Sadie's the lucky one!' she cries in the same shrill way. 'Poor old eejits, what good is it to you? What good the Holy Apostolic Church? What good the dogs in the traps? Dog eats dog, Thundering Joe and Flashby. Tinned with rabbit.'

'Oh, hold your d.a.m.n noise,' a woman snaps.

12.

He brought binoculars in case the heron was about. The soldiers had been his father's, he said. There were just those she'd seen, French and German: the battles he could reconstruct were limited.

'You've heard about the watch?' He lifted it from his jacket pocket. They were standing on the shallow bank of the stream he'd spoken of. If Mary Louise kept watching she'd see tiny trout swimming by.

'It's a pretty watch.' She had admired it without saying anything when she'd first noticed him snapping it open. It was slender, golden, its case engraved, the chain finer than was usual.

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