‘Only they weren’t so fast as now,’ Mr O’Connor added, following McVittie all the week in the way stray dogs at night will stick to any pair of heels that seem to go home.
‘Before the war, before I got married, I used to have one of the old Citroëns, and it could go for ever, only it was very hard on petrol,’ Mr Ryan said, feel of his eyes on the up and down of the tennis ball on the street.
Conversations always the same: height of the Enfield rifle, summer of the long dresses, miles to the gallon — from morning to the last glows of the cigarettes on the benches at night, always informations, informations about everything. Having come out of darkness, they now blink with informations at all the things about them, before the soon when they’ll have to leave.
The sky filled over Sligo Bay, the darkness moving across the links and church, one clear strip of blue between Parkes’ and Knocknarea, and when that would fill — the rain, the steamed windows, the informations, till the dark settled on their day.
Fear of the sky since morning had kept them on the benches away from the strand a mile downhill they’d come to enjoy, fear of the long trudge past the golf links and Kincora and Central in rain; but they’d still the air here, sea air, it was some consolation. Even the strand, reached in good weather, the mile downhill accomplished, the mile home uphill yet out of mind, and in possession of strand of Strandhill, long and level for miles, the cannon on its rotting initial-covered carriage pointed towards the Atlantic as if on guard over the two ice-cream parlours; women at the tideline, with a child in one hand and skirt held tight between thighs with the other, whinnying at each spent rush of water at their feet before it curled in a brown backwash round their heels; all this time envy of the buckets and beach ball of others to gladden a royal stay.
Cars ran miles to the gallon, still on the bench: twenty-five, thirty-two, thirty-nine with careful timing and more use of clutch than brake. Another guest, Mr Haydon, marked the racing columns of the newspaper on the edge of the same bench; hairnet of purple threads on the face, commercial traveller. ‘Never made the grade,’ McVittie had pronounced. ‘Soon for the jump.’ On the next bench a pattern for a Fair Isle pullover lay open between Mrs O’Connor and Mrs Ryan, and around them children in all postures. Ingolsby was the one guest who sat alone, retired lecturer of English, while the tennis ball hopped or paused.
‘What part of the world is Lagos in?’ Haydon stirred out of the newspaper to interrupt the wear and tear on clutches. ‘You should know that, Mr Ryan. You’re a teacher.’
‘I think Africa,’ the uncertain reply came, and his sudden flush and blanching brought Ingolsby in.
‘Because somebody happens to be a teacher is no reason why they should know where Lagos is.’
‘If teachers don’t know that sort of thing who can know?’ Haydon was angered. ‘Don’t they have to teach the stuff to kids?’
‘If a teacher has to teach a geography lesson he simply looks up his information in a textbook beforehand. A doctor doesn’t go round with all his patients’ ailments in his head. He has files,’ Ingolsby explained with solid satisfaction.
‘But it’s not getting us any nearer to where the hell Lagos is?’
‘It’s in Nigeria,’ Ingolsby said.
‘It’s in Nigeria, in Africa.’ Ryan tried to smooth over the antagonism.
‘That was what I wanted to know. Thank you, Mr Ryan,’ Haydon said pointedly and buried his head in the newspaper again.
‘Amazing the actual number of places there is in this world, when you come to think,’ O’Connor added.
‘A man could spend his whole life learning the names of places and they’d still be as many as the sands of the seashore left,’ McVittie said.
The ball was idle in my hand. The tide was full, a coal boat moving out from Sligo in the channel. There were no blue spaces against Knocknarea.
Small annual calvary of the poor, mile downhill and uphill between Parkes’ and the cannon. The Calm Sea closer, inlet that ran to Ballisodare past the lobster pool, no envy there, deserted except the one day they put flags down and held the races at low tide, but still in the dead quiet the pain of voices coming across the golf links, and Jane Simpson with others there.
The first rain was loud on Haydon’s newspaper, and it was followed by a general rising and gradual procession indoors between the still sparse drops.
‘Imagine the name they called this.’ Ingolsby paused to hold a blood-orange rose towards Ryan as they went along the flowerbed.
‘I’m not so well up on flowers,’ Ryan apologized.
‘Climbing Mrs Sam McGredy. Climbing Mrs Sam McGredy,’ Ingolsby enunciated.
‘Names are a funny thing,’ Ryan said without thought.
‘Names are a funny thing, as you put it,’ Ingolsby repeated sarcastically. ‘Peace or Ena Harkness or even the Moulin Rouge but Climbing Mrs Sam McGredy! That’s an atom bomb,’ then he lowered his voice. ‘Never feel you have to know anything because you happen to teach. Never let them bully you with their assumptions of what you should be. Say you don’t know, that it can be discovered in books, if they’re interested. It’s only pretending to know something that’s embarrassing.’
The counsel roused impotent deeps of hatred in Ryan’s eyes as they went the last steps to the door.
A Miss Evans was the one addition to the company over lunch, and when the litter was cleared away with the sheets that served as cloth, and the old varnish of the big elliptical table shone dully about the bowl of roses put back on its centre, Mrs Parkes set a small coal fire to burn in the grate as an apology for the gloom of rain. All the bars of the evening had fallen into place. ‘The rain anywhere is bad, but at the sea, at the sea, it’s the end,’ rose as a constant sighing in the conversations. The need to escape to some other world grew fiercer, but there was no money.
‘Steal, steal, steal,’ was the one way out.
Raincoat and southwester and outside — without them noticing. Mist halfway down the slopes of Knocknarea, rain and mist blurring the sea. Past Huggards, past the peeling white swan sailing on the signboard of the Swan Hotel, steady drip from the eaves louder than the distant fall of the sea and gull cries, glow of the electric light burning inside through the mist on Peebles’ window, stationer and confectioner: shock of the warning bell ringing as you opened the door.
A girl in blue overalls behind the counter was helping a man choose postcards and they were laughing.
‘Can I help you?’ She turned.
‘I want to look round.’ It was the only possible thing, and it was lucky she was busy with the man.
Rows of comics were on the counter, hours of insensibility to the life in Parkes’, Wizard and Hotspur and Rover and Champion, whole worlds.
Put a Hotspur on top of the Wizard, both on top of the yellow pile of Rovers, and draw breath. The man was paying for the postcards. Lift the three free, put them inside the open raincoat, the elbow holding them tight against the side. Walk.
‘Any chance of seeing you in the Silver Slipper tonight?’ the man asked.
‘Stranger things happened in the world,’ she answered, and they both laughed again.
It was impossible to walk loose and casual to the door, it was one forced step after the other, having to think to walk, waiting all the time for the blow from behind. ‘Excuse me,’ it’d probably begin, and then the shame, the police. To get caught the one reason not to steal. In the next world it was only a venial sin, purgatory, and the saints alone got the through express to heaven.