The four of us had breakfast together the next morning. There was no one else in the big dining-room except some night-shift workers from the mill across the road in their white caps and overalls, the pale dusting of flour still on their arms and faces. I’d always envied their high spirits in the morning. Breakfast was for them a celebration. Cronin was gloomily taciturn until near the end of the meal when he said, ‘You’re an awful effin’ so and so, O’Reilly, to do what you did last night.’
‘I haven’t even a notion what you’re talking about.’ O’Reilly bloomed. He was a small barrel of a man with a fine handsome head. He had played cornerback for Cavan in two All-Irelands.
‘No girl should have to do what you made that girl do last night.’
‘You know nothing about women, Cronin,’ O’Reilly said loudly, hoping to get the ear of the mill workers, but they were having too good a time of their own. ‘Women like to do that. Only they have to pretend that they don’t. Let me tell you that all women take a poor view of a man who accepts everything at its face value.’
‘It was a disgrace,’ Cronin said doggedly.
‘You’re a one to talk.’ O’Reilly rose from the table in high good humour. ‘Whatever yourself and the hairdresser were up to in the back of the car, I thought it was about to turn over.’
‘It was a pure disgrace,’ Cronin said to his plate.
Ryan and myself stayed cautiously neutral. I had clashed with O’Reilly from the beginning when I’d refused to become involved with the town football team, which he ran with a fierce fanaticism, and we were all the more cautious because Cronin usually hero-worshipped O’Reilly. In the long evenings they could be seen kicking a ball round for hours in the park after training sessions. Lately, they’d taken to throwing shoes and pieces of cutlery at the ceiling if they thought I was upstairs with a book or correcting school exercises. I was looking forward to the opening of the new bridge.
Ryan’s unwashed Beetle was waiting outside the gate when I finished school at three that evening.
‘I’ve calls in the Gaeltacht. Maybe you’ll come in case there’s need of a bit of translating.’
It was a polite excuse. There was never need of translation. The tied cow could be always pointed out. The breed of the bulls — Shorthorn, Charolais, Friesian — were the same in Gaelic as in English. The different colours of the straws of semen in the stainless steel container on the floor of the Beetle needed no translation. Ryan just didn’t like driving on the empty roads between these silent, alien houses on his own.
‘I got the whole business out of Cronin in the office this morning.’ A wide grin showed on his face as the VW rocked over the narrow roads between the bare whitethorns.
‘What was it, then? I won’t be shocked.’
‘It shocked Cronin.’
‘What was it, for Christ’s sake?’
‘O’Reilly got Rachael to take his lad in her mouth,’ Ryan said. ‘Then he wouldn’t let her spit it out.’
‘Spit what out?’
‘What’s in the bucket?’ He gestured towards the bright steel container on the floor of the VW where the straws were kept in liquid nitrogen.
‘They say it’s fattening,’ I said to hide my own shock.
‘Not half as fattening as in the other place.’ I was unprepared for the huge roar of laughter my words induced.
‘What do you mean?’
‘O’Reilly’s in a white fright. He’s got Rachael up the pole.’
‘Then he’ll marry her.’
‘Not unless he has to. Cronin told me that he spent all last week applying for engineering jobs in South Africa. It seems they’re building lots of bridges in South Africa.’
‘But he has a permanent job to go to in Galway as soon as the bridge finishes. He’s been boasting about it long enough.’
‘He could go if he married Rachael, but it mightn’t be so easy if he refused to do the decent. News travels.’
We’d come to the first of the plain ugly cottages the government had built on these twenty-acre farms. They were all alike. A woman met us, showed us to the cow, gave Ryan a basin of hot water, soap, a towel to wash and dry his rubbered arm afterwards. She responded to my few questions with deep suspicion, fearful that I was some government official sent out to check on grants or the speaking of Irish.
These people had been transplanted here from the seaboard as part of de Valera’s dream; lighthouses put down on the plain from which Gaelic would spread from tongue to tongue throughout the land like pentecostal flame. Used to a little fishing, a potato patch, grass for a cow between the rocks, they were lost in the rich green acres of Meath. A few cattle were kept knee-deep in grass, or the land was put out on conacre to the grain contractors who supplied the mill — and the men went to work in England. It was dark by the time we’d finished. The last call had to be done by the light of a paraffin lantern.
‘What will Rachael do if O’Reilly ditches her?’ I asked as we drove back.
‘What does any girl do? She has to nail her man. If she doesn’t …’ He spread his hands upwards underneath a half-circle of the steering wheel. ‘You might as well come to the Ball. It’ll be twice as much fun now that we know what’s afoot.’
‘I’ll not go. For me it’s just another reason to stay away.’
The dress suits came in flat cardboard boxes on the evening bus the Friday of the Ball. Tulips came in similar boxes for the altar. O’Reilly changed into his suit as soon as he came home from work and went to the hotel to have drinks with subcontractors on the bridge. There had plainly been a falling out between him and Cronin. Ryan and Cronin waited till after tea to change. They’d never worn dress suits before and were restless with excitement, twisting themselves in mirrors, laughing nervously as they paraded in front of the McKinneys. They found time slow to pass while waiting to pick up their girls. Ryan was bringing the girl who took the calls in their office.
I went with them to the Midland Bar, where we had three rounds of hot whiskeys. Still it wasn’t late enough to leave when we got back, and they went alone to some other bar, this time taking their cars. O’Reilly had taken his car to the hotel. I’d meant to read, but when left alone I found that I wasn’t able to because of the excitement and the whiskey. I was half tempted to go back up to the Midland’s with old Paddy McKinney when he went for his nightly jar, and glad when Mrs McKinney came in soon afterwards to join me at the fire.
‘You didn’t go to the Ball after all?’
‘No. I didn’t go.’
‘You may be as well off. Old Paddy was a great one for dances and balls in his day, would never miss one. And he got me. And I got him. That’s all it ever seems to have amounted to,’ she said with vigorous incomprehension. Later, I tried to ask her if she’d let me have O’Reilly’s room when he left, but she’d give no firm answer, knowing it’d be easier to let the room than to fill the bed in the upstairs room, and, as if to make up for her evasion, she made delicious turkey sandwiches and a big pot of tea instead of the usual glass of milk and biscuits.
The screeching of a car to a violent stop beneath the window woke me some time in the early hours. A door banged but I could hear no voices. A key turned in the front door. I sat up as footsteps started to come up the stairs. O’Reilly opened the door. His oiled hair was dishevelled as was the suit and bow.
‘I want you to convey a message for me when they return.’ He had to concentrate fiercely to frame the words.
‘Where are the others?’
‘They’re still at the Ball. I abandoned them there.’
‘Is Rachael there, too?’ I asked cautiously.
‘The last I saw of her she was dancing with Cronin. Cronin made a speech. He got up on the stage for a special request and took the microphone. It was most embarrassing. One should never associate with uncultivated people. I decided that the gentlemanly thing to do was to leave at once on my own. So I’m here.’ He stood solid as a stone on the floor, but it was obvious from the effort of concentration and small hiccups that he was extraordinarily drunk.