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THE SISTER of the woman who ran the mini-market was married to the man who owned the garage, and it was from her that they had collected the key to the house at the beginning of the holiday. The owner lived in London and rarely visited; his wife had asthma and couldn’t manage the house’s dampness. Mrs. Tierney was also supposed to come on their last day, a Friday, to read the electricity meter; they were leaving very early on Saturday morning to catch their ferry. For some reason she turned up with a carful of friends in the middle of Thursday night. Into the deep seclusion of their sleep there burst the roar of an engine with a squealing fan belt, the slushy bite of tires in the gravel, the ill-suppressed sounds of partying from the car. A car door banged; there was incomprehensible calling, a scream of laughter abruptly broken off. Then someone pounded on the great front door knocker.
— Go round the back! someone else shouted.
All the adults within the house were at once bolt upright, startled out of themselves, expecting for split seconds whatever dreadful thing it is that one expects to break in roughly and unceremoniously in the small hours upon one’s sleep. Bram jumped out of bed and grabbed his bathrobe, but Ray in pajamas was downstairs ahead of him, pulling open the big front door they had learned from the locals not to bother to bolt.
— What in heaven’s name?
Bram and Tinsley and Opie and Clare loomed supportively behind Ray in the hall.
Mrs. Tierney, with black dyed hair and a worn face and lipstick applied approximately to her mouth, was very much the worse for whatever was in the bottle they were handing around in the car. She swayed and came to rest against the door lintel. She was wearing some kind of pale trouser suit, which, as they stood confronted, looked farcically like a match with Ray’s pajamas; perhaps that was why when he swung the door open there was another outbreak of laughter from the car, abruptly choked off. Inside the house the English family in their nightwear were sober and frowning. A crumple-faced man they didn’t recognize pushed his way in front of Mrs. Tierney on the steps, waving his cigarette that left its trail of odor on the night, sounding as if he was placating them and offering a long explanation that they could only partly follow.
— She’s come to read the meter? Tinsley snorted in disbelief.
— That’s right, missus, said the man. We’ve come to read the meter.
— But it’s the middle of the night, objected Ray.
— Sure it is, said the man. Only tomorrow she has a nephew coming up from Cork (he pronounced it Cork-e). The t’ing was, she would have come over here earlier.… He circumscribed a significant shape with his cigarette on the night.
— Only she’s pissed out of her mind and doesn’t know what time of night or day it is, said Tinsley.
— I thought it best, said Mrs. Tierney, swaying in hostile dignity, to wait till you’d have finished using the electric.
— Oh, for God’s sake, let them come in and get on with it.
The Vereys in their pajamas traipsed through the downstairs rooms of the house after Mrs. Tierney and her friend. Mrs. Tierney couldn’t remember where the meter was; they all offered more or less helpful suggestions, opening cupboards, poking around in the cloakroom and under the stairs. Others from the car drifted after them into the house, a teenage girl in a short dress and an overweight young man with a bald patch like a tonsure and a worn shiny brown suit. Clare could not be quite sure how much the party’s air of suppressed hilarity was directed at the English holidaymakers; in the dining room the girl heaved up one of the sash windows and shouted something out to whoever was left behind in the car. There was another explosion of laughter from outside, and a thick waft of black cold humming night air into the room, dispersing the smell of their sausage-and-cabbage supper.
Strangely, when they looked into the room they called the library, Genny was sitting up in all her clothes in front of the embers of the peat fire. She must have heard the noise of their arrival and crazy progress around the house: there was something prepared, theatrical, in the way she lowered her book and frowned over the top of it.
— What on earth is going on? she exclaimed.
— Stay where y’are, missus, soothed the crumple-faced man. We’ve no need to disturb you.
— Jesus, Michael, where the hell is it? Mrs. Tierney focused for a moment in perplexity.
— Cast your mind back now, Michael coaxed her.
— Could you possibly meditate elsewhere? said Genny. I’m trying to read.
When Bram eventually found the meter in a cupboard in the kitchen, they then had to find a pen and paper for Mrs. Tierney. Michael called out the numbers and she wrote them down with breathy concentration, then shoved the paper carelessly into her handbag. The party raggedly departed, calling farewells that might or might not have been mocking, their extravagance a blare that hung on the night behind them after the sound of the car engine had nosed its way far down toward the village.
— Why is Mum up? asked Opie.
— Couldn’t sleep, said Ray.
— But she’s in her clothes.
— She’s not been sleeping well.
Clare felt a thickening of meaning around this exchange, a familial alert that excluded her. In the library Genny sat holding her book on her knee, keeping her finger in her place.
— Weren’t we just wonderfully po-faced! exclaimed Tinsley. They must have been delighted!
— Insufferably rude. Whatever did they think they were playing at, at this time of night? Have they woken the children?
— You were up. Why didn’t you answer the door?
— Didn’t hear it. Until they came bursting in here.
— Are you going to bed now?
— Mum! said Opie. You’ve hurt yourself.
In surprise Genny turned the back of her hand toward herself, where three parallel weals trickled drips of blood.
— Blast, she said. I didn’t realize I’d made such a mess. I did it on the metal tape around the peat brickettes, just now. I should get some tissue or something. But she didn’t move. In fact, she sat in her chair with a strange heaviness as if she couldn’t move, her head collapsed back and her mouth slightly open; there was an effortful delay each time before she spoke, although when she did she sounded sensible and normal.
Silently Tinsley handed her a tissue from her sleeve.
Ray offered to make tea. His pajamas flapped emptily over the hollows of his skinny chest and legs; he didn’t make eye contact with his wife but looked hopefully at his children.
— I suppose now we’re up, said Bram, we might as well.
— I don’t want tea, hissed Genny, with an intensity that was a moment’s glimpse of something hidden, lethal, gleaming. Why don’t you all go back to bed? Leave me alone. I don’t know why you let those people in in the first place. In the baggy skin of her weathered face, the pouches under her eyes were purple thumbprints from lack of sleep.
— You’re probably right, said Ray. It’s too late for tea. But we could hardly have left them hammering away at the door.
Clare thought that one of them would ask Genny what was the matter. That was what would have happened in her own messy family, with its rich history of betrayals and divorces, and then there would have been recriminations, counteraccusations, raised voices, tears. But instead the Vereys did quietly what Genny asked and filed off to bed and left her alone, and Clare, for the moment, went along with that.