Part 12 (1/2)

'Any day now.'

'She's lonely with Robert dead.'

'Ah, it's an awful old house for her. Sad old memories.'

'What was he like, that man she married?'

'Useless.'

'In what way useless?' Mary Louise asked.

'He led that poor woman a dance. He'd have seen her starve before he'd step off a racecourse.'

She reminded her father that once he'd said the man they spoke of had charm to burn, but she didn't receive a direct comment on that now.

'I wouldn't give you tuppence for him, Mary Louise. An awful streel of a fellow.'

'Robert wouldn't have been Robert if it hadn't been for him.'

'Well, no, that's true, I suppose.'

There was surprise in her father's voice, and for a moment Mary Louise almost told him that she and Robert had loved one another, first as children, and then when she was a married woman. Her father would keep it to himself, not wis.h.i.+ng to cause anxiety: that was the way he was. She might have told him that Elmer came drunk to bed. She might have given the reason for their childless marriage. Her father would not have pa.s.sed that on either. And would it matter that he knew all this, that the truth had been shared? It mightn't matter at all, but at the same time it would distress him.

'Father Mannion,' a voice said, and a priest held out a hand for her father to shake. 'How're you doing, Mr Dallon?'

The priest was smiling, a big, pink, boyish face on a middle-aged man, a pink neck and forehead. He held his hand out to Mary Louise also, and she laid hers in it. 'How are you, Mrs Quarry?' he said.

She hated being called that. Ever since the funeral she had hated it. She didn't listen when the priest and her father discussed some matter in businesslike tones, her father regularly nodding, the priest reaching out to press his arm every now and again. Gazing at the black cloth of Father Mannion's sleeve, Mary Louise recalled the bottom sheet spread out on the bed that first evening in the Quarrys' house, her own hands smoothing it. She walked round the bed itself to tuck it in, then spread the second sheet and smoothed away the wrinkles in that also. She remembered now the coldness of those sheets when later they slept together in his parents' bed, he on the left side, she to the right.

'Zinaida drank iced water all day,' her cousin said, and Mary Louise turned away to smile. The old princess complained that so much iced water could not be good for a girl with a weak chest. As for herself, she had a toothache... her cousin said, and Mary Louise turned away to smile. The old princess complained that so much iced water could not be good for a girl with a weak chest. As for herself, she had a toothache...

'You have to be unmarried to be a bridesmaid,' Letty said. 'I told you, didn't I, Mary Louise?'

'Yes, you did.'

'Is it that that upset you?'

Mary Louise said she hadn't thought twice about the matter. Angela Eddery, in the same greenish shade as Letty, was the bridesmaid because the Edderys were distant relations.

'I'm not upset,' Mary Louise again a.s.sured her sister.

'You're different than you used to be.'

'I'll come out and see you when you're settled down in the house.'

'Yes, do,' Letty urged, placing a hand on Mary Louise's arm. 'Anytime come out.'

Other voices had joined Baney Neligan's now. A piano was being played; two girls had begun to dance. Men were crowded along the bar, talking and laughing. A uniformed garda, with his bicycle-clips still in place, searched through them to shake hands with Mr Dennehy. Two tinker children tried to enter the lounge-bar and were summarily ejected. Men she didn't know put their arms round Letty's waist or kissed her, saying it was their due. Mrs Dennehy went round the guests, announcing that there was a table laid out in the dining-room, down the pa.s.sage next to the Ladies.

'I remember him at the Christian Brothers',' Father Mannion informed Mr Dallon, referring to the bridegroom. 'I used come in to give them a jaw. Your man sat at the end of a row.' Mr Dallon said that was interesting, and Father Mannion added that those were great old days. 'I better make the rounds,' he said. 'I have hands to shake myself.'

In an upstairs bedroom Mrs Dallon and her sister examined the wedding presents that were laid out on the candlewick cover of a bed and on the room's dressing-table and on a larger table. There were plates and sheets, tablecloths, ashtrays, vases, cups and a teapot, an electric kettle, an electric iron, table-mats, more plates, cutlery, a salt and pepper set, a special kind of rolling-pin, a corkscrew, various kitchen implements, saucepans, a doormat, basins, bowls, jugs, baking dishes and a framed picture of the Virgin Mary, incorporating the Sacred Heart. This last offended Mrs Dallon. It had come from someone who was unaware of Letty's religion, or else from someone who considered the reproduction a necessity in the household that was being set up. Letty wouldn't hang it up, she'd surely put it behind something.

'Ah, yes,' Mrs Dennehy said hastily, noticing that Mrs Dallon's attention had been caught by the picture. 'That's difficult certainly.'

'Some lovely stuff here.' Mrs Dallon was determined not to reveal her displeasure. There were bound to be awkwardnesses. There were areas that had to settle down in any mixed marriage, no good pretending.

'Well, aren't people generous, Mrs Dallon? When you come to the crunch of it you'll find they're generous.'

Other women entered the bedroom, Mrs Dallon and her sister left it. On a corner shelf on the landing there was a statue of a saint and downstairs there was a picture like the one Letty had been given, with a red light flickering below it. All of a sudden Mrs Dallon found herself wondering whom James would marry.

'Doesn't the green suit Letty?' Angela Eddery came close to Mary Louise to voice her admiration. She had a way of doing that, of speaking in hushed, reverential tones with her packed, pressed-out teeth a few inches from the face of the person she addressed. Her breath was warm.

'Does it suit myself, Mary Louise? It suits Letty all right, but I wondered about myself?'

'Mary Louise,' another voice said, upbraiding her. 'You didn't give that invitation to Rose and Matilda. Why didn't you, pet?'

She did her best to explain. Her mother said if there ever was anything that upset her she should bring the worry out to Culleen. That was what home was for.

'Of course it is, pet,' her mother pressed, even though Mary Louise hadn't sought to deny this opinion. Somewhere in the crowd, a little earlier, she had glimpsed the wrinkled features of Miss Mullover. The old schoolteacher was someone she could tell, someone who wouldn't be upset, as her father would have been.

'I haven't seen you for ages, Mary Louise.' Her aunt's weather-chapped face was there also. Whatever she'd chosen to drink had caused it to redden even further. 'Are you keeping well these days?'

'Yes, I am. What'll become of the soldiers when you sell the house? And the books and things?'

There was a pause. Then her aunt said: 'There'll be an auction. Your father thought an auction was best.'

Mary Louise wondered about Robert's clothes. A dead person's clothes were sometimes given to charity, unless they were sold because money was short. You wouldn't auction clothes; she'd never heard of that.

'What'll happen to his watch?'

'I'll keep his watch, dear.'

Her aunt smiled at Mary Louise as she spoke. When would the auction be? Mary Louise asked, and her aunt said the second of May, all being well.

'Will you give away his clothes?'

The question appeared to cause consternation. Her mother asked Mary Louise to repeat it, which she did.

'There's a family in need,' her aunt said eventually, 'due to the father being out of work.'.

Pressed further by Mary Louise, she added: 'That dingy blue-washed cottage on the Clonmel road.'

Responding to Mrs Dennehy's invitation, some of the guests had visited the dining-room and were now sitting at the tables in the bar, eating from cardboard plates. Miss Mullover, with modest portions of tongue and salad, saw Mary Louise on her own and waved across the room at her. The rumours about Elmer Quarry were true, she'd been thinking only a moment before. She'd seen for herself this afternoon: his eyes bleary, the lids inclined to droop. Like a sack of something, she'd thought, slouched against the counter of the bar.