Rebecca agreed that this was probably so. She supposed she should be glad she wasn’t just a lot of mush. ‘You be the detective,’ she said.
Gerard rapped with his knuckles on the parquet floor and Rebecca opened and closed the door.
‘What do you want?’
‘Hotel detective, lady.’
‘So what?’
‘I’ll tell you so what. So what is I have grounds for believing you and your companion are not Mr. and Mrs. Smith, as per the entry in the register.’
‘Of course we’re Mr. and Mrs. Smith.’
‘I would appreciate a word with Mr. Smith, ma’am.’
‘Mr. Smith’s in the lavatory.’
‘Do you categorically state that you are named Mrs. Smith, ma’am? Do you categorically state that you and the party in the lavatory are man and wife?’
‘Definitely.’
‘Do you categorically state you are not in the prostitution business?’
‘The very idea!’
‘Then what we have here is a case of mistaken identity. Accept my apologies, ma’am. We get all sorts in the Grand Splendide these days.’
‘No offence taken, officer. The public has a right to be protected.’
‘Time was when only royalty stayed at the Grand Splendide. I knew the King of Greece, you know.’
‘Fancy that.’
‘Generous to a fault he was. Oh, thank you very much, lady.’
‘Fancy a cocktail, officer? Babycham on the rocks OK?’
‘Certainly is. Oh, and, ma’am?’
‘How can I help you, officer?’
‘Feel free to ply your trade, ma’am.’
‘A little brother,’ Gerard’s mother informed them. ‘Or perhaps a sister.’
Gerard didn’t ask if this was another mistake because he could tell from the delight in his mother’s eyes that it wasn’t. There might even be further babies, Rebecca speculated when they were alone. She didn’t care for the idea of other children in the house. ’They’ll be the real thing,’ she said.
Something else happened: Gerard returned after a weekend to say there had been a black-haired Frenchwoman in his father’s house. She strolled about the kitchen in stockinged feet, and did the cooking. One result of this person’s advent was to cause Gerard to feel less sympathetically disposed towards his father. He felt his father would be all right now, as his mother and Rebecca’s father were all right.
‘That’ll be nice for you,’ Rebecca’s mother remarked sourly when Rebecca passed on the information about the expected baby. ‘Nice for you and Gerard.’
When Rebecca told her about the Frenchwoman she said that that was nice too. These were the only comments she made, Rebecca told Gerard afterwards. Keeping her end up, her mother engaged in a tedious rigmarole about some famous actor or other, whom Rebecca had never heard of. She also kept saying the rigmarole was funny, a view Rebecca didn’t share.
‘Let’s do the time she caught them,’ Rebecca suggested when she’d gone through the rigmarole for Gerard.
‘OK.’
Gerard lay down on the parquet and Rebecca went out of the room. Gerard worked his lips in an imaginary embrace. His tongue lolled out.
‘This is disgusting!’ Rebecca cried, bursting into the room again.
Gerard sat up. He asked her what she was doing here.
‘A cleaner let me in. She said I’d find you on the office floor.’
‘You’d better go,’ Gerard muttered quietly to his pretend companion, pushing himself to his feet.
‘I’ve known for ages.’ Real tears spread on Rebecca’s rounded cheeks. Quite a gush she managed. She’d always been good at real tears.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry, my God!’
‘I know.’
‘She forgot her panties. She left her panties by the wastepaper basket when she scurried out.’
‘Look -’
‘She’s on the street without her panties. Some man on the tube -’
‘Look, don’t be bitter.’
‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I be whatever I want to be? Isn’t anything my due? You were down there on the floor with a second-class tart and you expect me to be like the Virgin Mary.’
‘I do not expect you to be like anyone.’
‘You want me to share you with her, is that it? What a jolliness!’
‘Look -’
‘Oh, don’t keep saying look.’
Rebecca’s real tears came in a torrent now, dribbling on to a grey cardigan, reddening her eyes.
‘I’d better go after her,’ Gerard said, picking up, in pantomime, a garment from the floor.
The baby was born, a girl. The black-haired Frenchwoman moved in with Gerard’s father. One Sunday evening Rebecca said:
‘She wants me back.’
That day had been spent trailing round flats that were to rent. Each time they entered one Rebecca’s mother told whoever was showing them around that she worked in the theatre, and mentioned actresses and actors by name. Afterwards, in the bedsitting-room, she said her new life in the theatre had helped her to pull herself together. She said she felt a strength returning. She intended to take the alimony. She saw it differently now: the alimony was her due.
‘So are you, dear,’ she said. If there was difficulty, a court of law would put the matter right, no doubt about that: a child goes to the mother if the mother’s fit and well.
‘What did you say?’ Gerard asked.
‘Nothing.’
‘Not that you’d rather be here?’
‘No.’
‘Would you rather be here, Rebecca?’
‘Yes.’
Gerard was silent. He looked away.
‘I couldn’t say it,’ Rebecca said.
‘I see you couldn’t.’
‘She’s my mother,’ Rebecca said.
‘Yes, I know.’
A week ago they had been angry together because unhappiness had made her mother foolish. A week ago Gerard said his father had reverted to something like his old self, his legs stuck out while he read the newspaper. But it was far from being the same as it had been. His father reading the newspaper like that was only a reminder.
Rebecca’s real tears began, and when the sound of sobbing ceased there was silence in the room they had made their own. Gerard wanted to comfort her, as once his father had comforted his mother, saying he forgave her, saying they would try again. But their game wouldn’t stretch to that.
They sat on the virgin floor, some distance away from one another, while the white shafts of sunlight faded and the washed-out yellow of the walls dimmed to nothing. Their thoughts were similar and they knew they were. The house that had been Rebecca’s would be Gerard’s because that was laid down now. Rebecca would come to it at weekends because her father was there, but she would not bring with her her mother’s sad tales of the theatre, nor would Gerard relate the latest from his father’s new relation ship. The easy companionship that had allowed them to sip cocktails and sign the register of the Hotel Grand Splendide had been theirs by chance, a gift thrown out from other people’s circumstances. Helplessness was their natural state.
A Bit of Business
On a warm Saturday morning the city was deserted. Its suburbs dozed, its streets had acquired a tranquillity that did not belong to the hour. Shops and cafés were unexpectedly closed. Where there were people, they sat in front of television sets, or listened to transistors.
In Westmoreland Street two youths hurried, their progress marked by a businesslike air. They did not speak until they reached St Stephen’s Green. ‘No. On ahead,’ one said when his companion paused. ‘Off to the left in Harcourt Street.’ His companion did not argue.