‘George Anthony’s come back. Lisquin’s opened up like you’d remember it. Well, you’d know George Anthony’s back.’
‘I’m afraid I didn’t.’
‘Put them down for coal.’
‘I will of course, Mr Wren.’
Stylish, blonded, in her two-piece of flecked cherry-red, Bernadette passed on. She was forty-six, younger than her employer, younger than his sister, who was imperious when they met, which was too often for Bernadette. The imperiousness was the mother’s, although the daughter did not know it or she would have changed her ways. Her employer’s sister was a sinister woman in Bernadette’s opinion.
She passed into the public house and through the long street bar, no one at present in charge of it. There were drinkers at the far end, two men who were always there in the mornings, who never greeted her when she came in, or spoke to her when she passed close to them, whose names she did not know or wish to know.
‘Good morning,’ she said in the back bar, and her employer rose from the small round table where they did their business and she sat down at it. He poured her a 7-Up.
They were alone. There never was anyone else in the back bar when she came, or even later in the day; and in the evenings the street bar was still preferred. At that time the priests frequented the back bar, and Mr McGovern because it was convenient, and Fogarty from the courthouse to play cards if there was anyone to play with.
Bernadette spread out the papers she had brought, the cheques to be signed kept to one side. For a long time this had been a morning routine, the 7-Up, and watching while the top of her employer’s ballpoint was removed, his signature inscribed. This declaration of his identity was as meticulous and tidy as he was himself, a man who resp ected restraint, who never raised his voice or displayed anger, who lost nothing because he would not let himself lose things. Bernadette loved him.
‘We’re low on Hennessy,’ he said.
‘I’ll give them a ring.’
She didn’t have to make a note; she never forgot. He said Father Millane had been in last evening. An awkwardness had arisen in connection with the garden of remembrance: an old right-of-way over the piece of ground that had been earmarked was going to make its purchase troublesome.
‘I think I heard,’ she said.
‘Father Millane is set on stained glass instead. Seemingly, he has always had an Annunciation in mind for the three empty windows in the north wall.’
‘How’s Miss Connulty on that, though?’
‘She isn’t keen.’
‘An Annunciation would be lovely.’
‘There’s a place in the cemetery fence where Magourtey’s bullocks get in. My sister is saying we could improve the fence.’
‘In memory of your mother, is it?’
‘My sister has a wild way of talking.’
‘Still and all, a fence isn’t much. A wire fence, is it? I don’t think I ever noticed it.’
‘Wire on concrete posts.’
‘Your mother was practical in her ways. Miss Connulty is thinking of that.’
‘Oh, you can’t have bullocks hammering away at people’s graves, no doubt about that at all. There’ll be a job done on the fence as a matter of course. But seemingly the bishop would like to see the north wall given significance, too. So Father Millane’ll be speaking to her.’
Bernadette agreed that a few words from the priest would be the way to go about it.
‘The latest thing she’s got into her head,’ Joseph Paul said, ‘is that a fellow was taking photographs at the funeral.’
Bernadette, who had observed the taking of the photographs and had heard this spoken about with disapproval afterwards, who had been informed that the same man had been to the coal yards in her absence, that he’d been given the keys of the Coliseum in order to take further photographs, nevertheless agreed that Miss Connulty imagined things. She watched her employer reading through a reference offered by a man who had applied for work in the yards, a communication that had come this morning. He nodded, satisfie d, as he folded it into its envelope. He asked her to write and thank whoever it was who had communicated so helpfully.
‘No, I’ve done that,’ she said, and found what she had written for him to sign. He shifted slightly on his chair while he reached for it and for a moment Bernadette was aware of the edge of a trouser turn-up on the calf of her leg and knew that it was accidentally there.
‘Well, we’re all in order,’ her employer said, which was how he always concluded their morning sessions.
When he had again spoken to Bernadette O’Keeffe, on her way back to the coal yards, Orpen Wren remained for a little longer in Kissane’s doorway before going to the post office, where he made enquiries about George Anthony St John, whether or not he had been in since his return. The woman there shook her head and Orpen made similar enquiries at the barber’s in Cashel Street and Mac’s Hairdressing in Irish Street. He asked in McGovern’s. Then he sat in the Square.
He spread the papers he always carried on the seat beside him, smoothed them, and read their contents. For all the years of his travels he had daily read what was written there, had nodded his agreement and been reassured by his own divinations. Resting this morning, he was reassured again.
George Anthony would be occupied at Lisquin. He naturally would be. All the family would be; you couldn’t expect different. There’d be rooks in the chimneys, the windows stuck, the locks gone rusty. It would take more than a month, more than two, even three, to get a big house going again, and all you could do was to have the papers ready. Sooner or later, when the air was fresher in the rooms and any window bars had been replaced where they’d become unsafe, when the chimneys had been swept and painters brought in, the busy time would come to an end and George Anthony would have a moment to accept the papers and return them to the drawer where they belonged. Sooner or later he would be in the town again with business to do - advice to get from a solicitor, or to have a tooth extracted, or have his hair cut. He’d maybe have to be measured for a suit of clothes; or there’d be valuables to take out of safe-keeping, provisions to order. It wasn’t a hardship for Orpen Wren to wait.
9
Later that same day Miss Connulty prepared beef for a stew, cutting it into oblong pieces, dusting them with flour when she had teased out what fat and sinew she could, then laying them ready on a dinner-plate while she diced carrots and onions. She seared and browned the meat, turning the pieces over once and then sliding them into the saucepan in which the vegetables were. She poured on boiling water, added salt and Bisto and put the lid on. She scrubbed her chopping-board, washed bowls and knives in the sink. The saucepan lid rattled; she turned the heat down.
It was half past four. The meat would be tender, or tender enough, by seven, which was when an evening meal was served, the house being back to normal after the death. A change was that Miss Connulty now took her own meals with the daily girl in the kitchen, and gave her brother his either alone or with the overnight lodgers in the dining-room. Before that, a table had always been laid for three in what her mother had called the family room, adjoining the kitchen and so cramped and small you could hardly get round the table with the dishes. It would be used as a store now, and already tins were stacked on the mantelpiece and on the table itself. It was a much more sensible arrangement, which Miss Connulty had repeatedly suggested and had each time been ignored.
She set out plates and dishes ready for the oven later. She mixed mustard and filled the salt cellars. Gohery was still away on his summer holidays. The Clover Meats traveller was due, and the Drummond’s Seeds man. She doubted there’d be anyone else. She counted knives and forks and put them ready, with a jug of water and glasses. She left the kitchen then and made her way upstairs, as every afternoon at this time she did, to the bedroom that now was hers, the largest, airiest room in the house, catching the best of the morning sun.