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14

Miss Connulty’s overnight lodgers one by one awoke in answer to the clamour of the alarm clock supplied in every room. Each stilled the peremptory summons, stretched and yawned, emerged from the bedclothes, drew back the curtains, then went to check the occupancy or otherwise of the lavatory and the bathroom. Twenty minutes later three men in dark business suits, with collar and tie, and shoes that Miss Connulty had the night before picked up from outside their bedroom doors and polished, descended the stairs to the dining-room. A fourth man, Mr Buckley, was still dressing. Gohery, the metalwork instructor, back now from his summer holidays, was already finishing at the breakfast table. Joseph Paul had not yet returned from early Mass.

‘Your eggs?’ Miss Connulty called through the hatch she opened between the kitchen and the dining-room when she heard the murmur of voices. ‘How’ll I do your eggs?’

The men ordered them fried, as usually the preference was. Those of the Horton’s traveller were to be turned, which was usual also. All three said yes to Miss Connulty’s enquiries as to tomato and sausage. That bacon would be on each plate went without saying. The Wolsey (Ireland) man enquired as to the availability of black pudding this morning and Miss Connulty said there was plenty.

There was a brief delay, during which Gohery rose from the table. He nodded without speaking to the three men, as he had when each had entered the dining-room. On the stairs he nodded at Mr Buckley, who was making his slow way to the hall, where every morning of his overnight sojourns at Number 4 he had, for close on thirty-five years, tapped the weather-glass that hung beside the hallstand. In the kitchen Miss Connulty heard him greeted and introduced to the man who was a newcomer in the house. She did not need to open the hatch: these days, Mr Buckley took only Weetabix.

The Horton’s man enquired as to Mr Buckley’s health and was informed that it was first class, which the Horton’s man knew was not true: Mr Buckley was a heavily built, drooping man of yellowish pallor and comatose features, whose pretence, to others and to himself, was that he suffered no ailments and was as sprightly as ever he’d been. But it was said in the shops of the towns he visited that he often, these days, made an error in his orders, that alterations were effected by kindly shopkeepers who knew him well and protected him that he might safely reach the retirement he secretly craved, and the pension that went with it. Stationery and fancy goods were his line; in his decline, as in his heyday, he was fondly respected.

The doors of the hatch opened again and a moment later Miss Connulty entered the dining-room with a rack of toast, and buttered bread. She carried from the hatch the plates she had placed there, enquiring from the man who hadn’t stayed before if his fried bread was brown enough. He said it was.

‘In Rathmoye I wouldn’t stop anywhere only here,’ the Horton’s man informed him when she’d gone. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Buckley?’

Mr Buckley did so and the Wolsey (Ireland) man said you could travel further and fare worse. Tales were exchanged about unfortunate experiences in this respect - damp beds, food that wasn’t fit for consumption, problems with drains. He’d never known the bathroom at Number 4 in need of a bar of soap, the Horton’s man declared. And heads were nodded when he added that he’d never known the WC without an extra paper roll.

Each man poured tea for himself, passing a metal teapot around the table. Between mouthfuls the Horton’s man tapped a cigarette out of a Gold Flake packet and laid it, with matches, on the tablecloth, ready to ignite when his food was consumed. Shirts mainly he took orders for, he confided to the new man; but, in a general way, men’s apparel of every description formed his remit. The new man said he was in cement.

In the kitchen the daily girl arrived, no later than she should be. The front door banged, which Miss Connulty knew would be Joseph Paul returning from Mass. He hadn’t mentioned the stained-glass windows recently, but she knew that only minutes ago he would have glanced up at the grimy panes which were to be replaced and would have again taken pleasure in Father Millane’s proposal of an Annuciation. In time a brass plaque beside it would request prayers for the soul of Eileen Brigid Connulty.

Miss Connulty didn’t care any more. They could do what they liked: delicious death had been a richer compensation than she had ever dreamed of. She was in charge, and today she wore the pearls.

‘See to the master,’ she instructed the daily girl, and went to put her feet up, having been on them since six. She sat in the big front room, the eye of Daniel O’Connell upon her, and she wondered for a moment what he’d been like and came to no conclusion. She dropped off to sleep, although she had not intended to, and was woken by the men returning to their bedrooms, the thump of their footsteps on the stairs, the Horton’s man saying you’d feel the better for your breakfast.

At her writing-desk she made out their bills and when she went downstairs left them on the shelf by the front door, more convenient than the hallstand, where in her mother’s day they had been left. Each man would pick his up, would rattle the little bell she had moved from the hallstand to the shelf and, hearing the summons, she would answer it.

‘Have you spoken to him?’ she enquired of her brother in the dining-room, going there when the daily girl had brought in his breakfast.

Arranging egg, bacon and a corner of fried bread on his fork, Joseph Paul consumed the combination before he replied.

‘I have him fixed for November,’ he said then.

‘I don’t understand that.’

‘Bernadette O’Keeffe has Dempsey down for November. ’

‘Down? What’s it mean, down? I’m not asking you about Dempsey.’

‘You said would we get him in for the back bedrooms.’

‘I’m not talking about the back bedrooms. You know what I’m talking about.’

‘Bernadette O’Keeffe has Dempsey booked for the back bedrooms.’ Joseph Paul spoke slowly. ‘For the month of November,’ he said. ‘Commencing on the first Monday. Seemingly, he’s chock-a-block till then.’

‘I’m talking about Ellie Dillahan.’

‘What about Ellie Dillahan?’

‘You know what about her.’

‘I’d say there’s a lot being imagined as regards that.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, have sense!’

‘Ellie Dillahan’s a married woman, why’d she be going with a photographer? Dillahan used bring his turf into the yard. Sure, I know him well. Not in a million years would he permit the like of that.’

‘Dillahan knows nothing about it, why would he? His wife’s being bothered by a scut you wouldn’t give tuppence for, and the state she’s in you’d hardly get a word out of her. The cut of him on the bicycle with the hat, he’s the talk of the town and you’re telling me he doesn’t exist.’

An extraordinary thing, Joseph Paul considered, his breakfast getting cold. It might be her mother talking, expressions used he hadn’t heard since the time of the trouble. The two red spots had appeared high up on her cheeks and he remembered them from childhood. She’d pick up a handful of slack and throw it at you.

‘I mentioned it to Ellie myself,’ she was saying. ‘No option left to me.’

‘What’d you say to the poor girl?’

‘What had to be said, no more than that. What harm would it do you to say the same to him? Haven’t we had eggs from the Dillahans since they were brought in to us on a horse and cart? Then again, there’s the turf.’

‘You want me to go up to this man on the street?’

‘Isn’t it something you could say that that orphan girl is a daughter to us?’