“Patrick had no value on Edmund. When he was alive he let the roof of the house fall to be rid of the poor fella.”
“They say the only people missed Edmund was the dog and old Mrs. Logan. The dog is pining since the day he went to the hospital, comes and goes between the gate and the house looking for him, and the poor woman is lost. She took him in when the roof fell. He did everything for her around the place. They cared a sight for one another.”
“Did she go to the funeral?”
“The poor thing wasn’t fit,” Mary smiled a sweet, inward-looking smile. “Anyhow Patrick wouldn’t want her. There’s another person who died, John Quinn’s second wife. John turned up at the funeral though he wasn’t wanted. They didn’t let him into the house but he marched up the chapel with the coffin and knelt in the front seat and shook hands with everybody and went into the solicitor afterwards to see if there was any window through which he could get his hands on money.”
“John is a sight. It’ll be no time till he’s marrying again. God never closed one door but he opened another.” Jamesie rubbed his hands together gleefully and made a similarly playful gesture towards Mary that he had enough of talking and needed a drink. She answered with a ritualistically disapproving gesture as she went slowly to the press and took out a bottle of Powers. Kate asked for tea but Mary persuaded her that they would both have a light hot whiskey. While they were being made the small airy room filled with the scent of cloves and lemon. Margaret had a large glass of lemonade.
“Good luck and more again tomorrow and may we never die.”
“And Johnny has gone back to England after another summer,” Ruttledge said.
“The train from Dromod. Two drinks in the bar across from the station waiting for the train that you’d be as well without. There’s nothing to celebrate seeing someone going. Margaret’s father met the train, left him at the airport.”
“I hate to say but I wasn’t sorry,” Mary said. “I had Johnny for most of the whole day every day.”
“He was very good company when he was over on his visit.”
“All these fellas know how to play when they are out,” Jamesie raised his hand. “There’s a big differ between visiting and belonging.”
“Even when he wasn’t talking it was hard seeing him, remembering all that happened,” Mary said. “He thought he could not live without her. At this table he used to put his head down in his arms and cry without crying. There he was a few days ago doing the crosswords or marking the racing pages if he wasn’t talking.”
“Anna Mulvey must have been beautiful to have set anybody so far astray?”
“No. There were plenty better looking but she was far ahead of what’s beautiful. Tall, with long black hair, long back, sharp face. All the Mulveys had a swing and an air. The Playboy it was that brought them together. Anna had never any interest in Johnny. She was even two-timing him with Peadar Curran when The Playboy was still on. He had me nearly driven out of my mind when she tried to break it off. Walking up and down, talking, talking, not able to eat, not able to sit for a minute,” Mary said.
“There were times we got afraid. We didn’t know what he’d do if he got to know about Peadar.”
“Then he did get to hear,” Mary said.
“Hugh Brady went and told him when he should have packed him with lies like everybody else. He frightened poor Brady into telling. Johnny went straight from Brady to Anna and she swore she had nothing to do with Curran or any other man. Johnny was like putty in her hands. He went back and devoured Brady for spreading rumours and lies. It was a God’s charity. Omadhauns like Brady are a living danger.
“Peadar Curran went to England. That was one torment less for Johnny. There was nothing much special about his going. Everybody was going to England. He may have gone as well because the business with Anna was getting too warm for comfort. Peadar was always careful.”
“Anna was seeing Johnny but only to keep him pacified.”
“Anna was the next for England. We thought it was to get away from Johnny. The Mulveys were well off and she didn’t have to go. She went after Peadar.”
“How did Johnny take her going?”
“What could he do? By then he was grasping at every straw. She promised to write.”
“Anna got a land in England. The good Peadar had another woman. Then Anna started writing to Johnny. Johnny was delirious for those letters.”
“Instead of waiting for the post to come to the house he’d go round to meet the postman. He’d stop him on the road and make him search through the letters. Then when she wrote that she missed him and wanted him to come to England I don’t think his feet touched the ground for days.”
“Then he shot the poor gundogs, Oscar and Bran,” Mary said quietly. “I used to feed those dogs. They were beautiful.”
“Far better if he’d shot himself or rowed out into the middle of the lake with a stone around his neck,” Jamesie said.
“All this because Anna happened to be in The Playboy?”
“She was probably the worst of them as far as the acting went but you couldn’t take your eyes off her while she was on the stage.”
“Johnny used to get me to read out her lines for him when he was practising his part,” Mary said.
“Can you remember any of them?”
“Not a single line, except it was terrible old eejity stuff,” Mary smiled. “Especially when you’d compare it to what was happening under your eyes.”
“It’s Pegeen I’m seeing only, and what’d I care if you brought me a drift of chosen females, standing in their shifts itself, maybe from this place to the Eastern world?” Ruttledge quoted.
“That’s it. Terrible eejity stuff,” Mary said.
“When it was new it had power enough to get people very exercised and excited,” Ruttledge said.
“It’s easy to get people excited,” Jamesie said dismissively. “Was I like that when I was going round the lake on the bicycle trying to get at you, Mary?”
“You hardly cared. You were far too interested in everything else that was going on. I was the big booboo. What did I ever see in him, Margaret?” She put her hand on the girl’s hair.
“Did you see my Jamesie?” he mimicked, rubbing his hands together. “Those were the days, Mary. You loved me then.”
“Love,” Mary repeated. “Love flies out the window.”
“When someone falls like Johnny, it guarantees suffering,” Kate said.
“Isn’t that what courting is all about? It’s finding out,” Mary said. “Those too bound up with themselves will get their eyes opened.”
“Even the clever ones can get nabbed while they’re circling and beating about,” Jamesie said. “Is that how this fella was nabbed, Kate?”
“No,” she laughed. “We worked for the same firm in different departments, on different floors. We hardly spoke. I never thought about him in any way in particular other than it was unusual to have someone Irish working in the firm.”
“Robert Booth was Irish. He gave me the job,” Ruttledge said.
“You’d never think of Robert as Irish,” Kate said. “He went to acting school to get rid of his accent.”
“Don’t let him sidetrack you, Kate. We want the low-down on how he was nabbed. We want the feathers,” Jamesie said.
“Don’t tell him, Kate,” Ruttledge warned playfully.
“One day our copying machine wasn’t working and I went down to his floor to do some copying. We knew one another’s names and we probably would have exchanged a few words from time to time. Out of the blue he said, ‘You have very nice legs, Kate.’ ”
Jamesie cheered as if a goal had been scored, while Margaret wagged her finger at him with the solemnity of the pendulums of one of the clocks.